“You’ll see that Caesar is well taken care of?”
“I already have,” he assured her, although he could see by the look in her eyes that she distrusted his claim. No doubt she would attempt to check on things as soon as she had the chance. God knew where one of his crew might find her next. “You’re safest here. Rest.”
“I’m not a child, Captain Corrvan,” she pointed out, quite unnecessarily. “And I am not accustomed to being ordered about like one.”
“Well, Miss Holderin, you’ve found your way onto my ship. I give the orders here,” he said as he turned toward the door, snapping his fingers to bring Caliban to his side. “And when I give orders, they are obeyed.”
Caliban, however, remained firmly planted at Tempest’s feet. Emboldened, she gave a sly smile. “Always, Captain Corrvan?”
With a black look for her and a muttered oath for the dog, he ducked under the lintel, then fished a key from the pocket of his waistcoat and locked his cabin door behind him.
* * *
“Of all the—” She was at the door in three quick steps, but still too late to keep herself from being locked in. Twice she slapped her palm against the door, demanding release, but she soon stopped, finding the act far more injurious to her battered hands than to the unforgiving wood. Anyway, Captain Corrvan was probably at the other end of the ship by now, and who among his crew would defy him in order to set her free?
With an eye to possible routes of escape, she made her way slowly around the cabin. Caliban, already familiar with the territory, quickly grew bored with the project and curled up under the table, releasing his breath with a whoosh as he laid his head on his paws.
There were two rooms, the great room and a smaller chamber, hardly bigger than the bed it housed. Both were bright and airy, thanks to a row of square windows across the rear of the ship. Although they opened, going through one would get her nothing but wet, as she discovered when she peered out, for there were no footholds to be seen. The lines of the ship curved downward toward the keel and disappeared into the foamy wake.
Other than the door, then, the only remaining openings in the cabin’s tight walls were two gun bays, one on either side—useless to her, because she hadn’t the strength to move the guns—and a skylight above the table whose frame she could just brush with her fingertips while standing on a chair.
She was well and truly stuck there until morning.
Unless this Mr. Beals could be brought to see her side of things? Or whoever brought her food and water? Surely there would be an opportunity to free herself from this temporary prison.
Clambering off the chair, she examined the larger room more thoroughly. Its furnishings were rather sparse: two chairs and the table at which Captain Corrvan had been standing when she entered; beneath the window, two leather-topped benches built into the wall, and between them, a small, disorganized desk, cluttered with papers held in place by some instrument for navigation she could not name; and finally, a bookcase with a wire-fronted door over each shelf, designed to keep the contents in place if the sea grew rough.
Deciding that the bookcase offered the most potential to appease her curiosity—since the sea chest in the next room was locked—she sat down on the bench nearest it and lifted one of the little doors. Every shelf was so tightly packed and stacked with books that selecting one volume might cause the remainder to tumble like a poorly mortised brick wall. She ran her finger along their spines, muttering over their titles: a volume of poetry beside a book on navigation, the travelogue of a famous explorer beside a popular work of sentimental fiction. She remembered what he had said about the works of Mrs. Radcliffe. So, the captain really did read novels?
Carefully, she eased a few leather-bound volumes from the spots into which they had been wedged. Some—a geometry text, a Latin grammar—were clearly schoolbooks, his name written inside the cover in boyish copperplate. Others were evidently of more recent acquisition. With her fingertip she traced the thick strokes of his pen. A. Corrvan. Darker, bolder, sharper—suggestive of the man he had become.
Last on the shelf was a much older book, its boards worn, its pages tattered. Compleat Works of Wm. Shakespeare, she read on the spine in embossed letters that had once been outlined in gilt. He had written his name on its flyleaf too, in the schoolboy script. Above it, in faded brown ink was written Alastor Mitchel, 1732.
The edition was familiar to her, and she found it more than a little unsettling to discover that Andrew Corrvan had something, anything, in common with her father. But she knew the captain had read The Tempest at some point, and really, what had she expected to find? A well-thumbed copy of A Gentleman’s Guide to Piracy?
At first glance, the great room of the captain’s cabin had struck her as an elegantly masculine space, with its wool carpet and polished dark wood. But while it might be a space befitting a gentleman, the man to whom it belonged strained the edges of that polite label. The coarse clothes that hung from the hard lines of his body made it unapologetically clear he was a man who labored for a living. Yet something in his voice and his demeanor hinted that he had not been raised to do so. It was as if the captain’s loyalties were somehow divided between the rough and the refined, the sea and some other world entirely.
Curling up her legs beneath her on the bench, she laid the Shakespeare aside. She could not remember ever having felt so tired. With a sigh to match the dog’s, she leaned her cheek against the cool glass and from beneath drooping eyelids watched English Harbour fade from view. How many hours until dawn, until she could return to Harper’s Hill?
While propelling the lighter across the harbor, she had hardly noticed her discomfort, bent as she was on saving Caesar. But sometime since then, the mixture of fury and fear that had driven her onward had drained away, leaving only exhaustion—tinged with remorse—in its wake. A truly rational creature would not have acted so impulsively and gotten herself into this predicament. She had not succeeded in rescuing the boy, only in endangering herself. Or at least, in endangering her reputation.
Since she meant never to marry, she had rarely spared much concern for her reputation. The less desirable she was in suitors’ eyes, the better. But the recent discovery that Lord Nathaniel had been telling tales to her grandfather gave her pause. What might happen if news of this little adventure reached Sir Barton’s ears and made him decide she was unfit to inherit the plantation? It would mean the destruction of all her dreams.
She could only reassure herself with the knowledge that, if all went according to plan, she would be home again before almost anyone discovered she had been gone.
Unless, of course, they were not really headed toward Angel’s Cove. What reason had she to trust anything Captain Corrvan said to her?
Oh, at least let the boy be all right! Surely he had no reason to lie about that . . .
She awoke to a rap on the door, the rattle of the latch, and an unfamiliar voice calling, “Miss Holderin?” By the time she sat up, a man with a balding head, portly build, and horn-rimmed glasses was crossing the threshold, a young man—really, a boy—following at his heels.
“Miss Holderin? I’m Geoffrey Beals, ship’s surgeon. And this lad is Timmy Madcombe.”
Caliban emerged from beneath the table, offering a wag of greeting to the visitors.
“You old rascal,” Mr. Beals said as he squatted near the door to scratch the dog’s ears. “What are you doing here? Cal gener’ly sticks pretty close to the cap’n,” he explained, pulling himself upright and looking at Tempest, who had not risen from the bench.
At a loss to explain the bond between her and the dog, she merely lifted her shoulders—and then winced from the twinge of pain even that slight movement caused.
“There now,” Mr. Beals said, noticing her discomfort. “Timmy, put those things down.” The boy, struggling to juggle the weight of a tray, a steaming ewer of water, and another bundle besides, looked relieved by the order. Dropping the bundle in a chair, he set the water on the floor an
d then placed the tray carefully on the table.
Despite her uncertainty, Tempest’s stomach rumbled when she spied the food: soup, bread, cheese, and tea.
The surgeon must have heard the sound. “Go on, then. Eat,” he told her as he opened his bag and began to spread the tools of his trade across the table.
She needed surprisingly little encouragement. Rising from her place by the window, she made her way across the room and took a seat at the table. Although the state of her hands made it impossible to hold the spoon properly, she managed to get most of the soup in her mouth, mopping up the last of it with a piece of bread pinched between the very tips of her fingers. The boy, Timmy, watched from the shadows near the door, eyes wide, as she ate.
“Mr. Madcombe,” the surgeon barked, when he had followed Tempest’s gaze, “that will be all.” The boy nodded and scampered out the door, leaving it ajar. Before she had a chance to consider how she might put his oversight to good use, Caliban rose and lay down across the opening, blocking her path. “You’ll have to forgive the boy,” Mr. Beals said. “Like as not, he hasn’t ever seen a lady before.”
As she brushed a few crumbs and a tangled strand of hair away from her mouth with the back of one hand, she was tempted to suggest he still hadn’t. Tempest was no stranger to scrapes. Usually, however, they were not of the physical variety. Even without the aid of a mirror, she could guess how wild she looked.
Seemingly reading the direction of her thoughts, Mr. Beals rubbed his palms together and said, “Now, let’s get you cleaned up.”
He reached up to light a pierced tin lamp that hung from the ceiling over the table. It cast a speckled glow around the room. When had it gotten so dark? She glanced behind her, but the windows showed nothing but her own blurry reflection and the outline of Mr. Beals lifting the ewer of steaming water onto the table. When she turned back, he was untying the bundle Timmy had dropped into a chair, revealing clean squares of linen and a roll of bandages.
With gentle hands, he dipped a corner of linen into the water and began to sponge off her face, probing a tender welt at the edge of her hairline, where she had bumped her head climbing into the ship. “You’ll have the headache in the morning, if you don’t already,” he proclaimed. “Let’s see your hands.” Reluctantly, she uncurled her fingers and held them out for his inspection. When she stiffened in anticipation of his touch, he muttered, “Tsk-tsk.”
Rising from his chair, he stepped past her to one of the cupboards in the wall near the desk and removed a crystal decanter and a glass. After he had poured one scant measure, he put the stopper in the bottle and brought the glass to her. “This’ll help. But be careful,” he advised as he handed it to her. “T’ain’t likely you’re much used to this.”
“Brandy?” She raised the faceted glass and sniffed.
“Irish whiskey. Cap’n’s personal favorite,” he added with a wink.
That was no recommendation as far as she was concerned, and she knew she ought to have refused. But she could not help but hope that whatever Mr. Beals had poured had the promised power to blur and blunt the edge of her pain. So, as she had seen Edward do once or twice, and Lord Nathaniel do all too often, she flicked her wrist and tossed the golden liquid down her throat.
The effort it cost to suppress the ensuing cough brought tears to her eyes, but when they had cleared, she saw that she had earned Mr. Beals’s grudging admiration. He did not, however, offer to pour her another tot.
With what she hoped was a steady hand, she set the empty glass just inside the raised edge of the polished tabletop, one of those shipboard conveniences that kept items from sliding where they shouldn’t.
Caliban was studying her with his head tilted to one side, as if the whiskey had had some visible effect he could assess. In truth, it probably had. She could feel its warmth spreading through her, pinking her cheeks.
“Irish,” she murmured to herself.
“Aye,” nodded Mr. Beals. “Born and bred.”
She knew few Irishmen, and those with whom she was familiar—overseers, drivers—were valued for their violent temperaments. Certainly none of them spoke in a soft, cultured voice that betrayed just a hint of a lilt.
“And the rest of the crew?”
“Well, now, we’re what you might call a mixed bag,” he said with a laugh as he sat down beside her again and lifted her right hand toward the light. “Mr. Bewick, t’ quartermaster, is a Londoner. Fleming, the boatswain, is a Scot, o’ course. Young Madcombe’s an orphan. Come aboard the Colleen last month in Kingston.”
“The Colleen?”
“That’s the ship you’re on. The Fair Colleen, to give ’er her proper due. Irish name. Means ‘lovely lass’ or some such falderal.”
Lovely lass? Had Captain Corrvan named the ship? And if so, had he been thinking of a particular “lovely lass” at the time? Tamping out a spark of curiosity that verged inexplicably on jealousy, she asked instead, “What of you, Mr. Beals?”
“Oh, I was raised in a little village in the West Country. Haver-hythe, by name. Got family there still—a younger brother. My pa cut me out for a baker’s boy, but my heart was for the sea. So he ’prenticed me to a Bristol surgeon instead and . . . here I am.”
She knew there must be a wealth of stories in that brief pause, and she sensed Mr. Beals would be only too happy to tell them, but she didn’t press, other than to ask, “Have you been surgeon aboard the Fair Colleen long, then?”
As if the calculation required some effort, Beals rubbed one finger behind his right ear, dislodging his spectacles. “Oh, eight years. Give or take.”
Was that a lot of time for a surgeon to stay with one ship, or a little? She had no guide by which to measure. “So, you know the captain well, then?” Could the man be coaxed into revealing something more useful than Andrew Corrvan’s Celtic roots?
“Well enough, I guess you’d say.” Suspicion began to cloud his features. “Only Mr. Bewick and a handful of t’ others been here longer.”
“And Mr . . . .um . . . ?” It was better to keep the surgeon talking, both to maintain the flow of information and to prevent her from thinking about her hands. “The one who found me?”
“Ford,” he supplied as he finished work on one hand and started on the other. “Ship’s carpenter.”
“A slave, I suppose.”
“Naw,” Beals protested, shaking his head. Then a pause, accompanied by an expression that was almost sly. “Leastways, not Cap’n’s.”
“He’s a runaway, you mean? Or stolen?” she added, thinking of Caesar. When Beals did not answer, she pressed further. “What about the boy who came aboard just before I did? I saw two men take him from his place and bring him here. Did they harm him?”
“Someone did,” he said, a rumble of anger in his voice. “He says Cap’n saved his life, an’ then Bewick and young Madcombe brought him here.”
“Madcombe?” she repeated. “The lad who just left?”
“Aye.”
In her memory Caesar had been dragged away by two hulking giants. The discovery that one of them had, in fact, been very little older than Caesar himself gave her pause. Perhaps she had misunderstood the situation.
“You can ask the boy for the particulars when he’s on his feet again in a few days,” Beals suggested.
“I—I won’t be here. Captain Corrvan is putting me ashore in the morning.”
Beals gave a little grunt of surprise as he daubed salve onto her palm. “That right?”
“And I hoped to take the child with me.”
“That’s between you and the cap’n, I reckon. The boy seemed right excited about going to sea. Now,” he said as he tied off the second bandage and then pushed back from the table, “to bed with you, missy.”
Tempest glanced down at her tightly laced boots, her filthy dress, and lastly her hands, now bandaged to the tips of her fingers and perfectly useless. The slightest sigh escaped her lips. She hated nothing so much as having to ask for help. Well, she would
simply sleep fully clothed tonight. Under the circumstances, it was probably the wisest course of action.
But Mr. Beals had recognized her difficulty. “Here,” he said, kneeling at her feet and drawing off her boots, then putting a hand beneath her elbow to help her to rise. “Turn about,” he motioned, reaching to unfasten her dress. When she hesitated, he laughed. “You’ve naught to fear from ol’ Geoff, miss. It’d take more than stockings and a shift to turn this gray head.”
Not so very gray, she wanted to say. She had been revising her initial estimate of the man’s age steadily downward over the course of their conversation. But she let him assist her because she had little choice. Besides, he was a medical man, even if his female patients were likely few and far between. Once she could step out of her dress, however, she darted to the relative security of the small, shadowy bedchamber. “I thank you, Mr. Beals,” she called after him.
“Think nothing of it,” he said with a gallant little bow.
She closed the door between the two rooms and heard Mr. Beals leave a few moments later, locking the outer door behind him. She was too tired even to be disappointed by the sound of the key turning in the latch.
As she elbowed her way into the bed, collapsing gratefully onto the pillow, the scent of sandalwood and sea air—Captain Corrvan’s scent—rose from the linens. From the edge of sleep, a question niggled at her.
Where was he spending this night?
Chapter 5
A narrow seam of pale pink edged the western horizon, making the sky over Angel’s Cove appear blacker yet. Even after all these years, the speed of a Caribbean sunset still surprised him. A moment ago it had been full daylight. In another moment, it would be night.
Why had they come this way? Not because he intended to take Tempest Holderin back where she belonged, although the better part of him knew he ought. Yet he hesitated to order Bewick to make for open water instead, as if keeping a stretch of coastline in sight could make Andrew somehow less complicit in this strange affair.
To Tempt an Heiress Page 5
