by Jane Feather
“I don’t know,” she said. “It felt as if some shadow had fallen over you.”
She was acutely sensitive, Cosimo reflected. Ana would never have noticed that moment and if she had would have dismissed it as unimportant and no business of hers. Once again he wondered if Meg could be ruthless enough to partner him in his enterprise. Was she perhaps too sensitive? Her emotions running too close to the surface? She was an unusual woman, certainly, but was she unusual enough?
“Oh, just someone walking over my grave, I expect,” he said with a careless shrug.
Meg considered this and decided it was a most unsatisfactory explanation, but she was disinclined to press the matter. She didn’t know the man well enough to pry. “I’m starved,” she said instead. “Aren’t you hungry?”
Cosimo, relieved at this change of subject, responded, “I suppose so. It’s the middle of the afternoon, after all. A long time since breakfast.”
Meg looked at him with curiosity. “You don’t normally recognize when you’re hungry?”
“Not really,” he said, jumping off a low stone wall that separated the hamlet from the bottom of the hill. “Often I don’t have time to notice, so I suppose I’m accustomed to ignoring the signs.” He reached for Meg’s waist and swung her down onto the dirt-packed alleyway. “There’s a tavern on the quay. They make a pot of excellent steamed mussels with wine and garlic, accompanied by a tankard of home brew.”
“I thought you had to be back on the ship.” She caught her foot in a wheel rut and righted herself hastily, grabbing hold of his sleeve.
“Close to it,” he said. “The tavern’s within earshot of a whistle if I’m needed . . . Are you stable now?”
“As much as I can be with only one arm,” she declared. It was a little strange that they could be having this mundane conversation after what had happened in the copse, and yet, at the same time, it increased her anticipation. What had passed between them had been merely the preliminary, and pretending in some way that it hadn’t happened heightened her excitement. They would eat mussels and drink ale and return to the Mary Rose . . . How did one make love in a box-bed? Maybe a hammock . . . A chuckle escaped her.
“What’s funny?”
“Oh, nothing much. I was wondering how hammocks reacted to activity . . . certain kinds of activity.”
“It depends on the expertise of those engaged in the activity,” he responded solemnly.
Meg let that go and allowed her imagination full rein.
The tavern was low-ceilinged and smelled of ale-soaked sawdust and stale tobacco. A few fishermen sat on the ale bench outside, but within only a surly man in a stained waistcoat leaned against the bar counter, his nose buried in the froth of his tankard.
Cosimo gave him a nod that was barely returned and banged on the counter. A slatternly woman appeared within a few minutes, adjusting a grubby cap on dirty yellow hair. “Aye? Oh, ’tis you, Cap’n.” The greeting didn’t sound too enthusiastic to Meg’s ears. “What’ll it be?”
“Mussels, Bertha, if you please, a loaf of bread, and two tankards of your best bitter. We’ll be outside.” He gestured to the door he’d left open behind them.
The woman merely nodded and disappeared. “Shall we?” Cosimo indicated the door and Meg followed him with alacrity.
“Is it safe to eat from that kitchen?” She was reluctant to show her squeamishness but couldn’t help it.
“There’s enough garlic in the mussels to ward off a host of vampires.” He sat on the low bench and leaned back, resting his elbows against the split wood of the table.
“And if we both eat them, we won’t need to ward off each other,” Meg observed, following his lead, lifting her face to the sun.
“Precisely.” He laid a hand briefly over hers and the electric crackle was almost audible.
“Should you let your crew know where you are?” Meg asked, trying to put the conversation on an ordinary footing.
“Oh, they know,” he said lazily. “Thank you, Bertha.” He smiled at the woman who set two foaming tankards on the table.
“Mussels’ll be a few minutes,” she muttered, hurrying away.
Meg looked towards the Mary Rose, bobbing gently a few hundred yards from the quay. Of course at the very least Miles Graves or Frank Fisher would be watching for the captain’s appearance on the quay.
The mussels arrived in a steaming fragrant cauldron, with a long thin loaf of crusty bread. Cosimo broke into the bread, passing Meg half of the loaf, and then dipped his fingers into the bowl until he found an empty shell. He used it like a spoon, extracting golden morsels from their shells and supping the juice.
It was a new technique for Meg, who was accustomed to thin pronged forks when it came to eating shellfish, but she adapted swiftly, using her bread to sop up the garlicky vinous liquid, chasing it with deep gulps of the rich brown ale.
Cosimo reached over and scooped an errant trickle of juice from her chin with his finger. He sucked it off slowly and the suggestive little game moistened her loins. Her half smile was alluring as she dipped her bread in the cauldron again and held the succulent morsel to his lips. He took her fingers into his mouth with the bread, and their eyes held, promise dancing between them.
Meg wondered fleetingly what any watcher would make of this little seductive play and then dismissed the thought. It mattered nothing to her. She was unencumbered. No one here knew who she was, and for the moment she was responsible to no one.
It was late afternoon when they got up to return to the ship. Meg felt a certain reluctance to leave the sun-drenched quay and return to the Mary Rose. Cosimo was different on land; the watchfulness that was a natural part of him when he was on his ship was relaxed somewhat. On board she had seen how he was constantly on the alert, despite the apparent relaxation of his manner, but the underlying tension in his frame had been absent once they’d left the pigeon cottage . . . except for that one moment, she amended. She wondered if the inevitable constraints of the ship, the confined space, the presence of others all dependent on Cosimo’s authority, would also constrain their time together. Well, she’d discover soon enough.
Cosimo lifted Meg down into the dinghy with a lack of ceremony that earlier would have offended her. He untied the little boat and pulled for the Mary Rose, where a waiting seaman grabbed the rope Cosimo threw up and made the dinghy fast. “I’m assuming you’ll scorn the lady’s seat,” Cosimo remarked, indicating the swing still in place against the deck rail.
“You assume right,” Meg said, although she regarded the ladder that hung a couple of feet above her head with some dismay, unsure how she could one-handedly grab it and swing herself up.
“I’m also assuming you won’t scorn my helping hand,” he said with clear double entendre and a skimming brush of his lips against her ear.
“No,” she agreed.
He lifted her onto the ladder and she climbed up with some difficulty, favoring her injured arm and not refusing Frank Fisher’s assistance over the rail and onto the deck. Cosimo swung himself over the side beside her.
“Captain, there’s a message from the Leopold,” Frank said. “It arrived an hour ago.”
“Good,” Cosimo said, and as she’d expected or feared, it was as if the last couple of hours had never existed. “Is it in my cabin?”
“Aye, sir.”
Cosimo nodded and strode off to the companionway. Meg, after a moment, followed him. She still felt uncertain about her position on this vessel, and its captain hadn’t done anything to clarify it for her. Indeed, if anything, he’d made it more confusing.
“Cosimo, what do your crew know about me?” she asked, closing the cabin door behind her.
“Nothing,” he said, breaking the wafer on a sheet of paper. “Why?”
“No reason.” Meg turned her attention to Gus, who was exhibiting considerable pleasure in their return. Or at least Cosimo’s, she amended, scratching his poll. “Were they expecting Ana, or just any woman?”
He lo
oked up from the paper, his eyes sharp. “Does it matter?”
She had told herself that this was a short, limited liaison. Why should it matter what anyone on this ship thought or knew? “No,” she said decisively. “Of course not.”
He smiled slowly. “It shouldn’t. I’m invited to dine with the commander of the Leopold this evening. Do you care to join me?”
Meg frowned. It was one thing not to care what the sailors on the Mary Rose made of her presence on board in the captain’s cabin, quite another for the outside world. There was no knowing who the naval commander was acquainted with. Could she risk the story of her sojourn with the privateer becoming food for the social gossips? No, she had never been foolish in her indiscretions and she wasn’t about to start now. Arabella and Jack would scotch all rumors unless they became unscotchable. She was not going to allow that to happen.
“No,” she said. “I couldn’t do that unless I was asking for their official protection. I’d have to explain how I come to be in need of that protection.” She raised her eyebrows in quizzical fashion. The die had been cast in the pine copse. Obviously, asking for the navy’s protection and assistance in her return to English shores was not consonant with a liaison, however brief, with the privateer.
“I’ll return to England as clandestinely as I left,” she continued. “The fewer people who know anything about this misadventure, the better.”
Cosimo would have liked her to have thrown her hat over the windmill and propriety be damned, as Ana would have done. But Ana lived outside society and was not subject to its rules. Meg Barratt, for all her unusual conduct, still belonged to an unforgiving world. He couldn’t at this point expect her to do anything that would instantly ruin her reputation. She hadn’t thrown in her lot with him, merely tacitly agreed to a short, discreet, mutually satisfying liaison.
“I see your point,” he said. He contemplated declining the invitation for himself but he was interested in knowing where the frigate’s orders were taking them. He might need assistance getting out of Toulon once his mission was accomplished, and it would be useful to know what ships would be in the area.
“I wish I didn’t have to go, but I must. I’ll be back before midnight.” He lifted her chin and lightly kissed the tip of her nose. “Try to stay awake.”
“Oh, I will,” she declared. “If only to discover the tricks of activity in a hammock.”
“Then you’d better take a nap beforehand,” he murmured, kissing the corner of her mouth. “It could be an energetic night.”
“That had better be a promise,” she returned, her flat palm stroking the significant area of his britches. “I too have a promise to keep.”
He threw up his hands and stepped hastily away from her. “Enough, now. I have things to do on deck before I leave.” He left quickly before temptation got the better of him, but he couldn’t prevent a flickering smile as he climbed the companionway.
“Cap’n looks like he’s had a saucer of cream,” the grizzled boatswain murmured to Biggins, who was sewing buttons on a jacket in a patch of sunlight on the mid-deck.
“Oh, aye?” Biggins glanced up as Cosimo passed him. He grinned a little. “Oh, aye, that he does, Bosun, that he does.”
Seaman Hogan stood on the brow of the hill and watched the little gray bird beating its way steadily across the sea towards the island. The last rays of the evening sun lent a pink tinge to its wing tips. As it drew closer to where he stood it began to descend, catching a thermal for a moment and drifting with it, before swooping down, flying straight for the pigeon hut. It landed on a windowsill and folded its wings as fastidiously as a laundry maid folding a tablecloth.
Hogan lifted the bird and examined it carefully. The tiny identifying tag on its left leg was in place and he frowned at it for a minute. “Where have you been, girl?” he murmured. “We thought you were lost.” Its heart beat fast against his enclosing hand but it cooed in soft greeting as he stroked its throat.
He unfastened the tiny cylinder from its right leg, then took corn from his pocket, offering it in his cupped palm. The pigeon pecked delicately for a moment or two, then flew up and through the window to a resting place on one of the long perches in the dim interior.
Hogan went into the cottage to where Lieutenant Murray was finishing his supper. “Number 6 is back, sir.” He laid the cylinder on the table beside the lieutenant’s plate of bread and cheese. “I thought we’d lost her for good.”
Murray wiped his mouth with a checkered napkin and took up the cylinder. “It’s been what . . . six weeks since we sent her out last?”
“About that, sir.”
“Usually they send ’em back within a week,” Murray observed and then dismissed the puzzle with a shrug. “I expect they forgot she was there.” He opened the container and took out the near-transparent roll of onionskin. He held it up to the lamplight and examined the hieroglyphics. “For the captain of the Mary Rose,” he concluded. “Must be what he was expecting.” He rerolled the paper and inserted it into the cylinder again. “Take it down to the Mary Rose, Hogan.”
The seaman pocketed the cylinder, saluted, and loped off down the hill in the gathering dusk. A few lamps shone from the windows of the little hamlet but the narrow lanes were deserted. This was a community that lived by the sun. When he emerged from the clustered cottages onto the quay, he saw that the Mary Rose was lit by lanterns fore and aft, another two suspended from the yardarm. A couple of men leaned idly against the deck rail and the scent of tobacco wafted across the water.
Hogan caught himself envying them the apparent freedom from restraint. He’d joined the navy cheerfully enough, following in family footsteps, and his present post was far from uncomfortable, although a little isolated, but life on a privateer, or at least this particular privateer, had its appeal.
He put two fingers to his lips and sent a piercing whistle across the intervening water. One of the sailors raised a hand in acknowledgment and in a few minutes the dinghy was bumping up against the quayside.
“Message for your captain,” Hogan said, leaning over to give the canister to the oarsman.
“He’s on the Leopold,” the sailor informed him as he took the cylinder. “Is it urgent?”
Hogan shrugged. “No idea. The lieutenant said your captain was expecting it.”
“He’ll be back afore midnight.” The sailor raised a hand in farewell and pulled back to the Mary Rose.
Cosimo leaned back in his chair in the Leopold’s comfortable wardroom and took an appreciative sip of a rather fine port. “You live well,” he observed.
The little group of officers laughed in appreciation of the truth. “I doubt you live too badly on your ship, Captain,” the commander observed.
“Not too badly,” Cosimo agreed. He set down his glass on the highly polished table and pushed back his chair. Meg was waiting for him and now that he had the information he’d come for, his impatience was running out of bounds. “I thank you for your hospitality, gentlemen, but I must get back.”
“I take it you’re sailing for Brest,” the commander observed.
It was a reasonable assumption given the course the Mary Rose had been following, but Cosimo merely offered a noncommittal smile. “That rather depends.”
“Cagey bastard,” the commander muttered to his first lieutenant as they followed Cosimo back on board. But he was all polite smiles and renewed expressions of appreciation for their easily won prize as they made their farewells and the captain of the privateer entered the longboat with its bank of oarsmen that would take him back to his own ship on the other side of the island.
Cosimo sat in the stern, to all intents and purposes completely at his ease after a good dinner. He tilted his head back to look at the stars, and none of the oarsmen, or the young ensign directing the crew from the bow, could guess that he was very far from relaxed as he calculated and sorted through alternative courses of action. The frigates had orders to head into the Mediterranean to engage with the French flee
t now mustering at Toulon. That was good news for him. Once his mission was completed he might well need all the support he could get.
It would take them close to a month to sail across the Bay of Biscay, around the tip of Portugal and through the Strait of Gibraltar, and it would probably take him almost as long to reach Toulon by his own route. His present plan did indeed entail making landfall at Brest and going overland from there to Toulon. He and Ana. But now he didn’t know. If Ana didn’t contact him, would it still be safe to follow the original planned route? It was a long haul overland across the rugged center of France, but not only could they keep away from major towns and military centers, it was such an unlikely route for an enemy agent to take, no one would suspect that they were anything but the casual travelers they appeared.
They. For the mission to have a real chance of success, he had to have a partner.
The longboat rounded the corner of the island, rowing close in to the shore. The surf pounding on the dangerous outcrop of rocks farther out was deafening at times and a fine mist of spray dampened his coat.
A partner. He had a potential partner. Was she awake and waiting for him, eagerly contemplating the erotic prospects of the night ahead? Could he use that night to bind her to him in such a way that she would be willing to extend their love affair, to join with him in a very different enterprise?
He was so lost in the question that he didn’t notice immediately when the longboat drew alongside the illuminated Mary Rose.
“Good evening, Captain. Welcome back.” The fresh face of Frank Fisher hung over the deck rail as the longboat bumped against the side.
Cosimo shook himself out of his reverie. “Thank you, Mr. Fisher,” he said formally, swinging himself onto the rope ladder. He climbed onto the deck and raised a hand in dismissal to the crew of the longboat. “So, all’s well in my absence?”
“Aye, sir,” the young man said. “But this came for you.” He handed the cylinder to his captain.
