Or she could marry someone less than perfect.
Hinges creaked, not nearby. A hollow boom echoed in the warehouse's cavern. Clara gasped. Even her tears froze as footsteps approached. No one had ever interrupted before, in all the years she'd visited the warehouse. It almost seemed a sign.
"Right, that one there." The Cheapside voice made no pretension toward being anything but mercantile. "And these. They're to go to the Topaze, out in the Sound. Oh, and that hanging thing. Be careful with it, clumsy Joe."
The chair swung, rocked, rocked again, jolted up and back. Clara grabbed the wooden frame, her heart pounding so loudly it seemed impossible they didn't hear it.
"Heavier than it looks, mate."
And then the hanging chair floated free, the unseen footsteps' owners carrying it — and her — away.
It would be humiliating, but she had to say something before she wound up on board a ship. She opened her mouth.
No sound emerged. Her voice refused. She closed her mouth, rolling her lips together.
A ship. A ship could take her anywhere. Including France. Across the seven seas, in search of her perfect Phillippe.
She could vanish for more than a few hours, indeed for as long as it took. She could find him, marry him, bring him home to Uncle David, a fait accompli.
Uncle David. Aunt Helen. They'd worry when she vanished, when they discovered she was gone. It would serve them right. How could they imagine they knew what was best for her when they refused to even consider her wishes?
It was a wild, a desperate gamble. But her situation was dire.
And she wouldn't have to see the viscount again.
Simply as that, she had a third option.
Chapter Two
Wood and water, victuals and cordage, canvas and coal, all had come aboard and were stowed before noon. The powder hoy had paid her dangerous visit and been warped back across the harbor, the shot garlands and lockers were filled, and Captain Alexander Fleming, reminding himself that Topaze preferred her balance half a strake by the stern, directed the last of her six-month stores into the hold himself. All hands worked double tides, and Fleming ignored the rueful looks slanting his way every time he demanded more speed; it would do no good to start the cruise with floggings for sulkiness. Some things a ship's captain simply couldn't afford to notice.
And some things he must.
"Mr. Chandler," he yelled at the foretop, "should you like your hammock to be sent up?"
A pair of startled young eyes peered down from the crosstrees. "Almost finished, sir." The eyes and brown mop vanished behind the t'gallant shrouds. In one of those sudden, unpredictable hushes that sometimes happened when three hundred laboring men paused at the same moment, a whisper and shrill giggle sounded startlingly loud.
He wouldn't notice that bit, though. Fleming swept a slow glance along the controlled chaos of the frigate's deck, hen coops stacked abaft the mainmast, a barrel between the bow chasers, someone's embroidered seabag atop the capstan head. The first lieutenant guided a crew of dockmen over the larboard gangway, their arms loaded with — Fleming took another, longer look before he recognized the second-hand furniture he'd bought for his great cabin, dining room, and coach, all still wrapped up in sailcloth and cordage. It was embarrassingly old-fashioned stuff, gilt edging and piping, cushions and drapes the color of polished antique gold, like something Marie Antoinette would have installed in the Palace of Versailles, and not to his taste at all. But it was mahogany, the wood was stout and beautifully carved, and more importantly, it was all he could find in the hurried hour he'd stolen from the refitting. They'd done well with prizes last cruise, capturing a Spanish snow-brig loaded with sugar cane from the West Indies among a half-dozen other vessels, and his now-proud back was no longer on friendly terms with hammocks. His personal fortune had moved up in the world; now his cabin furnishings needed to follow it.
One of the dockmen carrying the hanging chair stumbled. The sailcloth, bound closed around the wooden frame and satin drapes, rippled as if struck. The thunk of wood smacking wood cut through another of those unexpected hushes, and in its midst someone sneezed.
The workers froze, glancing at each other with blank faces, as if trying to figure out who did that. Fleming frowned. It seemed a silly thing to hide.
"Mind the paintwork!" First Lieutenant Benjamin Abbot yelled, his normally thoughtful face cracking into tense lines through the turmoil. "And don't scar my decks. Now, get that furniture below, you louts."
The dockmen scrambled away.
Another half-hour, and the Topaze transformed from a floating catastrophe to something nearer the elegant frigate that Fleming loved. The hen coops, barrel, seabag all vanished. Young Tom Chandler and the bosun's mates completed the replaced foretop's running rigging, and the thumps and howls from the hold died away as Edward Rosslyn arranged the final barrels of provisions and water. Dick Staunton, the signal midshipman, raised the blue peter to the foretruck, emphasizing the recall order for hands ashore with a windward gun every ten minutes. In the still harbor, he squinted through the biting smoke from the slow match and recorded the hands' names as they came aboard. With black curls cascading beneath his fore-and-aft scraper, Staunton looked like a maritime Puck on the quarterdeck, a wild, slit-eyed buccaneer all of thirteen.
Fleming ignored that, too. Too much smiling spoiled the midshipmen, just as too much flogging or arrant disdain soured the hands. A not inconsiderable part of his job was to train the mids into exemplary officers, able to sail a ship, lead the crew, and fight the king's enemies. Showing them his example always seemed the best method; prating had never fired his imagination when he was a boy and he couldn't believe these youngsters were all that different.
"Turn the glass and strike the bell," said the quartermaster. The red-coated Marine flipped over the half-hour timer, paced for'ard with measured steps, and struck seven bells, clear ringing tones that sliced through the fading turmoil and echoed in the pauses: ring-ring-g-g, ring-ring-g-g, ring-ring-g-g, ring-g-g.
Fleming clasped his hands behind his back. It was almost time, but he wouldn't display his eagerness. He'd be the calm, steady post-captain he'd taught his officers and crew to expect, and no more. "Mr. Staunton, let this be the final gun then house it and make all fast. Mr. Abbot, Mr. Abbot there, are we ready?"
"Ready, sir," Abbot yelled, "aye, ready."
It was a polite fiction, of course; the first lieutenant could never tell his captain that he needed more time. But the last details weren't quite sorted out and any call to make sail immediately would result in chaos rather than departure. "Then, Mr. Staunton, in fifteen minutes signal Topaze to port admiral: request permission to depart. Mr. Abbot, I'll be below."
Down the ladder to the gun deck and the brilliant forenoon sunshine flashed away to 'tween-deck dimness, glare through the portholes and open gunports, soft glowing light from the stern gallery windows painting the great cabin with amber. Layers of oak planking muffled the distant roar above and his heels thumped on the decking below. The new dining table and chairs comfortably filled the coach, and the long twelve-pounder cannon bowsed against the side, if covered with bunting, would make a useful sideboard during dinners. The mizzenmast, behind the table's head, was sleeved with burnished copper, a shimmery accent to the mahogany's subtle gleam. His new cot hung in the sleeping cabin, portable bookcase along the inner bulkhead, the framed looking glass above the washstand's ceramic basin, and the hanging chair, outer canvas and bindings removed, swung gentle inches back and forth, between another twelve-pounder and the quarter gallery door. The antique gold drapes, polished wood, glowing light, gave the already lovely cabins a new, rich texture; the unknown captain who'd selected the material had known what he'd been about, after all.
It was a lie that all captains loved their ships. Some ships were simply unlovable, fractious brutes that should never have been built or had outlived their beauty, balking in stays, sagging to leeward, and refusing to come up into the win
d; while some captains, those who'd been at war for two decades or more, had lost the capacity to love. But Topaze had always reminded Fleming of a foxhunter, fast in the gallop, bold at the fences, willing to run all day to be in at the kill. He'd commanded her for two years and lost his heart to her the first hour.
The discreetly gleaming satin, thick and soft, rippled beneath his hesitant touch. He'd spent so little time on shore since his midshipman days, such a small percentage of the family funds on himself, that this luxury incarnate felt self-indulgent, unnecessary, sinful, downright odd. And oh, so sensual. The twelve-pounder's cool bronze felt more natural; had he lost his sense of beauty, a first step in that metamorphosis to brutality?
Was there any way to prevent that transformation? Let it be so.
A knock sounded. "Come in," he called.
Staunton stood in the doorway, number-one scraper in hand. "If you please, sir, Mr. Abbot's compliments and the fortress signals permission to depart."
And so it begins. "On my way."
Underway with tops'ls, past the point and Mewstone, and into the chops of the Channel as the sun leaned on the western sky. The northwesterly wind held steady, a point abaft the beam, and as the swell took her, Topaze tucked her bow to the waves and shouldered them aside, getting up a fair corkscrew and picking up speed. He called for more sails in late afternoon, when the shoreline behind vanished into building clouds. Courses and tops'ls and, before the wind could back to the southwest, Fleming added t'gallants, until the quarterdeck sloped like a hillock. The bow wave flashed white and rainbow-touched spray kissed his upraised face; better not try for stu'nsails on the weather, starboard side. Ed Rosslyn vanished below, his face a startling pea green and one hand grasping whatever was handy to keep him upright, but a crash at the bottom of the aft ladder testified to the failure of that intention. The topmen flemished the lines and huddled in the waist, beneath the boats and away from the splashing. Forecastleman Jeremiah Wake, middle-aged and sober, stared at him from that shelter, a particular, knowing leer as if Fleming had been caught at something deliciously naughty. It was an aggravating stare. But he wouldn't notice that, either. Not yet, anyway.
"How many hands didn't answer the blue peter, Mr. Abbot?"
"Three, sir." Abbot's gaze roamed the upper deck and the press of sails, never pausing, always watching for the first hint of trouble. Since Abbot had come aboard and proven himself as first lieutenant, Fleming found he slept more deeply. "A waister, rated landman."
He paused, eyebrows up, but Fleming shrugged off the waister; a landman could be expected to run at the first opportunity and the low rating made one an unappetizing chase. But now he knew Abbot was starting at the worthless end of the list. His muscles tightened; someone correspondingly important would top it.
Abbot nodded, not a trace of surprise beneath his keen competence. "The surgeon's mate missed the last boat. But the stores he ordered from the apothecary came aboard."
"They're more important." The surgeon's mate, a butcher's boy before his naval career, wasn't squeamish. But he also wasn't gentle, and perhaps this was a suitably subtle way for him and the ship's crew to part company.
"And Titus Ferry didn't show."
"Ferry?"
The wheelmen didn't glance over, nor did the master behind them. But some change in the quarterdeck's atmosphere, some flow of invisible magnetism, convinced Fleming the conversation was no longer private. He stepped to the taffrail, well away from inquisitive ears.
Abbot followed. "I asked Mr. Chandler, and when I threatened to stop his grog he finally admitted that Mr. Ferry had seemed eager to go ashore, but hadn't mentioned when he'd return." He lowered his voice further, until it blended with the wind harping through the mizzen backstays. "Presumably he's run."
It couldn't be true. Titus Ferry, captain's clerk and enthusiastic volunteer less than a year ago, had worked like a slave throughout the refitting, with never a wry look or discontented sigh. His books were models of penmanship and he'd fair-copied letters and ledgers hours into the night. "I'm more inclined to believe something's happened to him."
Abbot pursed his lips. "Perhaps so. And perhaps one of the warrant officers writes a decent hand."
Not likely. Fleming would have to keep his own books until a replacement clerk could be found. "A better question is, who's going to tackle the mids?" Their education couldn't be entirely abandoned; someone had to teach them, even if he couldn't immediately find someone with Ferry's head for figures.
The wake boiled below, stretching long miles back toward England. Slanting evening sunlight struck the water a glancing blow and glowed golden on the bubbling white froth. "No volunteers, Mr. Abbot?"
"Never set myself up for a schoolmaster, sir."
And in all fairness, the major reason Fleming wasn't saddled with more of the little brutes was Abbot's reluctance, as first lieutenant, to manage them. A well-trained and disciplined midshipman was an important part of any ship's crew, but a herd of rowdy youths was another matter, and there'd been no mids ashore at Plymouth whose character had recommended them for the assignment. The starboard six-pounder stern chaser caught a flash of sunlight and the bronze resembled the brass it was commonly called. "Hopefully we'll find Armide this side of the Cape and they won't forget everything they've learned."
The sun peeked beneath the rigging and tossed its golden offering across Abbot, glittering from his formal coat's buttons and the decorated brim of his number-one scraper. But a brighter glow lit him from within. A hawk sighting its natural prey, a predator on a successful hunt, could look no more keen. "The Armide, is it?"
Land was well astern and there'd be no chance for the news to filter through Napoleon's spies for six thousand miles. They'd water at one of La Palma's hidden gorges running to the sea, and their other stores would hold them until the Cape. It couldn't matter now how many of the crew heard, and Fleming knew all too well that one whispered sentence from him would spread throughout the ship within minutes, no matter how low his voice.
"Our chase, Mr. Abbot, has a beast in view. We're hunting Armide, broadside weight of metal four hundred twenty-eight pounds, before she can intercept the East India convoy."
"Four hundred twenty-eight pounds." Abbot clasped his hands behind his back. His hound-on-scent smile never wavered. "More than two and a half times our own. What a pretty fight this will be." But he touched wood, nonetheless.
Red glowed in the west, the first stars peered from blue-violet shadows in the east, and still the wind held. The cabin steward, Hennessy, brought sandwiches and Fleming munched by the binnacle, sipping tea from a battered tin mug as the stars marched across the darkening sky. He could have gone below for dinner and supper, but this delightful sailing, averaging nine knots through the Channel, had a magical feel this early in a cruise and the spell might shatter if he looked away. Even when something crashed and voices raised below deck, with the horned moon peeping above the horizon and full night claiming the sky for its own, he listened but didn't notice.
A shadow approached and the binnacle's glow showed Abbot, in his working rig of duck trousers and blue watchet coat, sennit hat in his hands and ruddy hair blown back off his forehead. "Sir, if you please, there's—" He broke off, mouth moving but no words coming out. His eyes were glassy and staring.
In the waist, someone sniggered.
"Yes, what is it?" Whatever it was couldn't be good. He'd seen Abbot leap through the shattered gunport of a French ship of the line, leading a boarding party into a whirling, bloody melee, with a saber in his hand and a brilliant smile lighting his face. A growling mass of murderous enemies hadn't slowed Abbot. This had to be something awful — a leak in the hold, water sloshing into the powder kegs, the wardroom's wine forgotten on shore. It would be something he'd have to notice.
Abbot swallowed. "There's — there's a woman in your cabin."
Chapter Three
…the deck. The deck was alive.
Clara had known the ship was movi
ng; of course she had, with the hanging chair swaying, beams and timbers groaning like a protesting cart horse, and a splashing that rippled past her hiding place, sounding close enough to dip in her hand. Of course she knew the ship was moving through the water and they must have left the land behind. But such intellectual knowledge was totally different from what she felt the moment her slipper touched the deck and the Topaze spoke directly to her.
Both delighted and terrified, she'd huddled in that blackened, cramped cocoon for hours, pinching her nose shut as the aroused dust tickled her toward another sneeze, her knees bumping her chin and the liquid eddy growing steadily louder. Early on, unseen footsteps had padded close by (barefoot? how odd), accompanied by the sort of little clinks and thumps that Nan made when sorting out the music room. Suddenly the chair had jerked and whirled, sending her startled heart and another sneeze crowding together into her throat. It was too soon for someone to find her; she needed the ship to be far away from shore, too far to easily return her to Plymouth, and surely she hadn't been hiding that long. The canvas had slithered down and the night-dark blackness surrounding her had eased to twilight. Fine floating dust had settled on her face, eyelashes, and lips. But the glorious satin hadn't been yanked aside. Instead the footsteps had padded away, a door had snicked closed behind them, and after a momentous battle she'd muffled the sneeze and her giggles. She was finally alone, still hidden, uncaught, and giddy with success.
Not long after, the rush of water beyond the wood had intensified and Clara hugged herself, trying not to wriggle with glee and shake the hanging chair; she didn't even know what the room about her looked like — she didn't dare peek yet, and the wrong person passing by an open door could still ruin everything. So far her plan had worked wonderfully. The ship was underway, leaving Plymouth and the Sound behind, and after a while, she'd step out from her hideaway. They'd be surprised, of course; there would be explanations and she might have to wheedle some — with the utmost dignity, needless to say. But no gentleman worthy of the name would refuse to help a lady in distress, and while Papa had never spoken of the actual mechanics of sailing a ship nor of shipboard life, his stories about the officers he'd known had painted all of them as gentlemen. Indeed, his wistful voice had made his years in the Royal Navy sound wonderful, and he'd only left the service when he'd met and married Mama.
A Different Sort of Perfect Page 2
