“The answer is yes. You’re my new chief mate, if that’s what’s on your mind. Think you can cut it?”
“Yessir, I sure do—that is, I’ll try like the devil to take Billy’s place, but that weren’t what I was fixing to ask.”
“No?” Matt didn’t slack his pace.
“It’s about Rose, Cap’n.”
That brought about a slight hitch in his gait. “Rose?”
“Yessir, you see, I was thinking—that is, if you’ve got no objection, I’d like to pay court to her next time I see her, but I don’t have much to offer. So what I was thinking was that if she married me, then she could stay on at the Point, and when your wife comes, she could sort of be company for her—maybe help out with Annie and all?”
Hellfire. Slowly, Matt turned to stare at the good-looking young seaman. “You what?”
Two drunks, apparently just headed home after a night of debauchery, stumbled against Matt. Instinctively Matt clapped a hand over his wallet, caught the hand snaking inside his coat and gave it a crippling twist. The pair of pickpockets turned tail and ran, and Matt turned back to Luther.
“You want to marry Rose?”
“If she’ll have me. I’m not in any hurry, but it strikes me that a man needs a wife and a baby or two, else when he’s gone, he’s just plain gone. You take Billy—”
“We’ll talk about this later,” Matt snapped. “I’ve had about all the distractions I need.”
He strode off toward the waterfront office that housed the brokerage, a ship’s chandler, an insurance firm and a flock of maritime lawyers.
He would need them all before he was done.
Chapter Eleven
She broke his heart. There was no other word to describe the pain he felt as he stood on the dock and stared across the harbor at the Black Swan. She was like a grand lady fallen on hard times. A proud young beauty who had been forced to take to the streets. Coarsened, ashamed, the pride that had once been so much a part of her now a thing of the past.
Matt swore at great length. By the time he had run out of words, there were tears in his eyes.
“We’ll take care of you, lady,” he whispered.
If he had to sell Powers Point—and it well might come to that—he would see her clean and gleaming once again, her damaged superstructure properly repaired, with a brand-new set of sails sparkling above her deck instead of the filthy, badly patched rags she wore now.
What he saw from here was bad enough. It was what he didn’t see that had him worried sick. God knows what condition her bottom was in. Riddled with worm, more than likely. Quimby had warned him there’d been some damage to her keel and rudder when she’d gone through that bad blow off Barbados, but Matt had taken for granted that the damage would have been quickly repaired. No man who owned a valuable ship would allow structural damage to go unrepaired, certainly not on something so crucial.
Unless she was insured well beyond her value….
“Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus, Cap’n, that ain’t her, is it?”
Luther had come up behind him. The two men stood silently, staring across the water at the ship they both loved, the only home other than Powers Point that Luther had known since he’d gone to sea a dozen years ago as a ten-year-old lad.
“We’ll not be bidding on cargo anytime soon.”
“No sir, I reckon not. Can she make it as far as Norfolk? If we could get her there with a skeleton crew, we could send Peg up to oversee the work.”
Matt nodded. He’d been thinking along more or less the same lines. She drew too much water for the sounds inside the Banks, but Norfolk wasn’t all that far away. A damn sight better than Boston.
“John could stay out at the Point to help out while me and Peg stay aboard the Swan,” Luther continued.
The boy had a solid head on his shoulders, for all his occasional foolishness, Matt reminded himself. “We’ll see. I guess the first thing to do is pump her bilges and see if she’s fit to sail.”
By the end of the day, Matt had commissioned Luther to hire the best men available capable of making a preliminary inspection and patching the Swan up enough so she could make the journey south. Once she was back in Norfolk harbor they could undertake a thorough overhaul.
Matt went back to the bank and arranged to borrow enough to cover the cost of temporary repairs; the rest could wait until he got her closer to home.
Home? For as long as he could remember, the ship herself had been his home.
Not until two days later when the Swan had been pumped dry and he had personally inspected every inch of her hull and superstructure did Matt allow himself to think beyond the moment. With debt already beginning to accumulate, he had tracked down the company that had held her insurance policy only to learn that coverage had lapsed nearly three years ago, which doubtless explained why she’d been allowed to fall into such a state of disrepair. No one in his right mind would insure her in her present condition.
As he had already scraped the bottom of the barrel to come up with the purchase price, plus Quimby’s commission and emergency repairs, Matt made another appointment with the banker. As much as he hated it, he was going to have to mortgage the Point.
Considering its location, the bank officer was reluctant. “If it were in one of your major cities—Charlotte, perhaps, or Charleston—”
“Charleston’s in South Carolina,” Matt had said, disgusted with the provincialism of the Yankee banker.
“But there’s nothing there,” the man had gone on to say, to which Matt had replied that there was a ten-room house, a herd of horses, a slew of outbuildings and dockage. Not to mention several towns to the north and south.
Which might have been something of an exaggeration, but if the man didn’t know any more than to shift Charleston a couple hundred miles to the north, he didn’t deserve any better.
It took him four hours to convince the banker to lend him three thousand dollars against his ship and an estate that extended from the Pamlico Sound to the Atlantic Ocean, and four miles from north to south.
It sounded a hell of a lot more impressive than it was.
Meanwhile he commissioned Luther to hire on four good men, preferably men with some carpentry skills in case further repairs had to be made on the trip south. He had never sailed her with fewer than nine, but Luther could stand double watches. As for himself, Matt knew he wouldn’t sleep until they were secure in a familiar port.
Fortunately, it was late in the season for the nor’easters that could lay offshore and batter the coast for days at a time; early for hurricanes. With any luck at all they could be in Norfolk in three days—four at most. Having wired ahead to arrange for moorage, they set out on a Tuesday, with two men taking turn and turnabout at the pumps.
Calm seas, scarcely enough wind to ruffle the surface, meant slow going, which was safer than the alternative as long as they could stay ahead of the leaks. With her crudely repaired rudder she had a tendency to yaw. Matt manned the helm, first shedding his boots so as to be aware of her slightest vibration.
Hour after hour, he eased her along, talking softly, encouraging her, reminding her of the good days they’d shared in the past, and the many that lay ahead.
They passed two northbound steamers; three more passed them, headed south. Off the mouth of the Delaware they passed the new steel warship that had just been built at Newport News. It was a sad reminder that the days of sail were rapidly coming to an end.
For two hours out of every twenty-four Matt allowed Luther to spell him at the helm. The boy was everywhere, measuring the levels in the bilge to see that the pumps kept up, checking the rigging for signs of weakness they might have missed, overseeing the crew. Twenty-two was young to make chief mate, but he was a good, experienced man. Matt knew his strengths and weaknesses. Given another ten years, he would make a fine captain.
Thank God one of the new men kept a pot of coffee boiling on the stove. At regular intervals he handed Matt a thick mug of the stuff along with two stale,
shore-bought biscuits stuffed with sausage and cheese.
By the time they passed Cape May the wind had picked up, but the sun was damnably hot. His beard was itching and he could swear his hair had grown three inches longer. Luther, making his rounds, dipped a gourdful of water from the juniper barrel on deck and poured it over his head and shoulders.
“Want me to bring you your razor?”
“I’m not shaving until we drop anchor,” a red-eyed Matt growled, but his tone was cautiously optimistic. Sailors had always been a superstitious lot. Matt was far too intelligent to believe in such nonsense, but when the chips were down, why take chances?
The boy grinned and dipped up another gourdful of water to add to the coffeepot on his way past the galley. “We’ll make it just fine, Cap’n. She might not be much to look at now, but she’s still got what it takes.”
Now why the devil, Matt wondered, did that make him think of Rose? Because Rose had tumbled out of the cart a few months ago looking like a bundle of old rags washed up on the shore? Because she’d come around to where she was almost pretty?
Hell, she was beautiful.
She was also a cheating, conniving woman who had set out to deceive him before she’d even met him, he reminded himself. He still hadn’t made up his mind what to do about that. At least he was no longer married to her, not if Bagby had followed his instructions.
His mind ranged ahead, exploring several possibilities. Once the Swan was safely berthed, he would send for Peg to oversee the work. It would leave them shorthanded at the Point, but he’d be damned if he’d send Luther back there.
He would go himself. By that time he would have thought of a way to deal with his ex-wife.
Trouble was, he needed her.
Correction: Annie needed her. Matt had never needed any woman, except in the most fundamental sense.
Yeah, say it often enough, Powers, and you might even believe it.
Swearing, Matt removed his leather-brimmed cap, wiped a hard forearm over his burning eyes, and jammed the cap back on his head. He was too old to go without sleep more than thirty-six hours. It messed up a man’s mind, caused it to play tricks on him.
“All you need to remember is that the woman lied to you,” he told the wind.
“It’s the flying tails she likes,” John said quietly. He said everything quietly. He was a quiet man, an even-tempered man, which appealed to Rose enormously. Even when Jericho had thrown him up against the paddock fence and kicked down yet another gate, John had simply picked himself up, brushed off the sand and walked slowly after the bucking stallion, still talking in that quiet way of his.
Annie smacked her hands together and chortled. She loved watching the horses, and John was right—when the wind blew their manes and tails, she loved it most of all.
And the wind had blown steadily for three days without once letting up, not even at what Peg and Crank called the calm o’ day, the hours just before daybreak. There’d been no rain, yet clouds constantly threatened. Rose, tired of being housebound, had come outside, braving the stinging sand, to watch John work the horses.
At least there were no biting insects. Blown all the way out to Diamond Shoals, according to Crank, who had a bit more spring in his step now that he was taking the patent medicine he’d ordered out from the mainland.
Rose suspected it was the high alcohol content, but if it worked, then who was she to complain? Besides, a case of Porter’s Cure-All cost far less than a case of brandy.
Not a day passed that she didn’t climb the ladder that led to the widow’s walk on the roof to watch for Matt’s ship, even though she knew very well the Black Swan would most likely put into Norfolk Harbor if she even came that far south. She’d listened to the men talk, picking up bits of information to store away until she could fit them all together. A sea captain’s wife should at least know enough to be an intelligent listener.
The two old seamen had described Matt’s ship right down to the gold-leaf curlicues surrounding her nameplate. To hear them tell it, she was the fastest thing under canvas, the most beautiful ship that ever sailed, with the finest crew’s quarters and a captain’s cabin fit for a Persian prince.
All of which she fully intended to see for herself someday.
“John,” she called now, “do you think you could teach me to ride?”
The dark-eyed young man from the village turned to study her. She could never tell what he was thinking. He didn’t say much at all. “Why?”
Nonplussed, Rose considered telling him the truth—that she wanted to impress her husband when and if he ever came home. Goodness knows she’d had little to brag about when he’d left. Practically everything she had planted had died. Obviously, she was no gardener, but if she could learn to be more self-sufficient, he might overlook her shortcomings. “Just teach me, that’s all. I can drive the cart, but I don’t trust that mule.”
That drew a smile that disappeared almost before it could be appreciated. He was a handsome young man, Rose had to admit. She wondered if he had a wife. And if he did, did the woman resent his spending so much time at the Point?
“No woman’s saddle,” he told her.
“Then teach me to ride without one, the way you men do.”
“Ma’am, I don’t think the captain would like it.”
“The captain’s not here.”
“He’ll know.”
“How?”
“I reckon I’ll tell him.”
Exasperated, Rose shook her head. “Never mind, I’ll teach myself.” She had taught herself not to be seasick. At least, not to be sick sitting on a bench in the skiff on a calm day when the skiff was tied up at the wharf. It was a beginning.
The very next day while Annie napped, with Crank sitting outside her door shelling beans, Rose had her first riding lesson. She had borrowed a pair of Luther’s trousers, tied them around her waist with a yellow dimity sash, and now she stood on an upturned barrel, working up her nerve to throw her limb over the horse’s back again. Her first attempt had been a spectacular failure.
“You’ll be sore,” John warned her.
“I’m already sore. I might as well have something to show for it.”
Face set in lines of disapproval, he held the mare steady. Seeing that she was going to do it with or without him, he had reluctantly agreed to help. “If you’re going to mount, then climb aboard. No, not that side. Always come up on a horse’s port side, else they’ll spook.”
It was the most words he’d said at one time. Impressed, Rose took a deep breath, hung onto a handful of black mane, and threw herself onto the horse’s back.
“There now, Katie,” she said nervously when the mare pranced a bit. “We’re going to be very gentle with one another, aren’t we?”
Good Lord, she’d done it. She was finally sitting on top of a horse. She’d been driving since her dog-cart days, when her nanny had walked her around the block in a wicker basket behind a patchwork pony, but until the day Matt had rescued her and brought her back to the Point, she had never actually sat on a horse before. Her mother had refused to consider letting her have a saddle horse. Riding, she’d said, was an unsuitable pastime for unmarried girls.
“Later, when you’re married, you can ask your husband if he’ll allow it. By then, it won’t make a difference.”
She had finally reasoned out, after several whispered conversations with other girls her age, that it had something to do with being a maiden. Evidently, riding horseback robbed a girl of her virginity.
Hogwash, she thought now, wishing she hadn’t been such a coward. She’d been afraid to do anything that might cast her into any more disfavor than her unfashionable height and lack of looks already did. She’d once heard her mother confide to her father that the poor child would never find a husband.
“Then she’ll be a comfort to us in our old age” had been his reply.
Neither of them had lived to find out, and Rose, after all, had found herself a husband. Or rather, he’d found he
r.
And now she had yet another husband, one who probably wouldn’t want her once he realized who she was, so what difference could it possibly make if she raced a dozen horses bareback on the beach and spent all day sitting in that blasted boat not being sick?
“Just hand me the reins, if you please. I can do it,” she snapped.
“Yes, ma’am,” John said, his black eyes sparkling with what looked suspiciously like amusement.
Crank heated a small sack of rice on top of the range, tactfully leaving the room so she could apply it where she hurt the most. He laced her tea with some of his patent medicine, which didn’t improve the taste.
Then he called through the door. “Dixon said last time he was here he might have some good news for the captain by the time he come home.”
“That’s nice,” Rose said absently. Groaning, she wondered if she had inherited more from her dotty old grandmother than flyaway hair and a pair of pale amber eyes.
“Never again,” she vowed to Annie, whose crib had been placed beside her bed. “Pinch me if I ever go near another horse.”
Pinching was Annie’s newest achievement. Ears, for the most part, but lips were a second target. Especially moving lips. Motion seemed to fascinate her.
“All right, call me foolish. It seemed a good idea at the time. Other women ride, I used to see them all dressed up in fancy habits, circling the statues in Monroe Park.”
Annie batted her tiny hands at the wooden geegaws Peg had carved to hang suspended over her bed. When she’d outgrown her cradle he had built her a small bed with sides so that she wouldn’t tumble out.
“I wonder where he is tonight.” She sighed. How many times had she voiced that thought? A dozen?
More like a hundred.
Grimacing, she rolled over and rubbed her behind to see if the ache had disappeared. It hadn’t. “No one told me I’d flop like a sack of oats when the blasted horse took off. How was I to know I shouldn’t allow my feet to touch her sides? John didn’t tell me.”
He might have tried to, but Rose had insisted on doing it all her own way.
The Paper Marriage Page 14
