The Lost Countess That Counted Stars (Historical Regency Romance)

by Patricia Haverton

  She shuddered.

  Turning, she watched the sailors carry the huge chunks of the sailfish down the steps to the galley, then offered Christopher a wan smile. “Maurice will need my help preparing all that for dinner this evening.”

  She started past him, only to have him block her way.

  “You do not have to,” Christopher told her, his pale blue eyes warm.

  “I know. I want to. But perhaps we might dine on the rear deck tonight, under the stars.”

  Christopher grinned. “What a lovely idea. I will order it done.”

  Below decks in the galley, Merial gazed in awe at the huge piles of fish meat that seemed to cover every flat surface. “How will we cook all this, Maurice?” she asked, imagining some of it fried, some baked, and some made into fish pies.

  “Ah, with your help, cherie, ‘twill be an easy affair,” he replied with a jaunty grin. “Oui, much will be salted and kept for a time. We have too much to cook for this day and the next.”

  Just as she suspected, she and Maurice fried slabs of the sailfish with oil, lemon, onions, and herbs from his boxes. As some would keep through the rest of the evening, he declared he would prepare the rest for breakfast and lunch. Two men loaded the remainder into the barrels of salt for preservation, and Merial suspected that if their luck with the fishing continued, no one would starve through the rest of their voyage to England.

  “Ah, but one cannot live by fish alone,” Maurice informed her with a grin when she mentioned it. “One must have fruits and vegetables to maintain one’s health.”

  “How long will our fruits and vegetables last us?” she asked, breathing in the delicious scents of the fish frying.

  “Do not worry your beautiful head, cherie. We no starve on the Valkyrie. M’lord get us home, he will.”

  With the crew dining on the day’s catch below decks, Maurice himself served Christopher and Merial as they sat on the high platform on the rear of the ship. A lit lantern stood on their table, and the cook poured their wine into their goblets as they cut into the hot fish.

  He bowed his way from their table, leaving them alone to dine. Only the helmsman, the night watch, and the crow’s nest remained above with them. Thus, the two of them enjoyed one another’s company as they ate their meal, often smiling at one another.

  “Once I return to England,” Merial said, relishing the flavors of the sailfish, “I must order this from the coasts. It is delicious, the flavor is so unlike anything I have ever tasted before.”

  “Sailfish is difficult to come by,” Christopher told her, taking a bite of his own. “They are a deep-water fish, and seldom come near to the coasts to get caught. Fishing vessels do not travel very far away from land.”

  “What a terrible shame.” Merial could not get enough of the food, and yet filled her stomach until she could eat no more.

  “Perhaps I will order my men to continue their fishing for a while longer,” he told her, smiling at her, and Merial did not think she had ever seen a face more handsome than his in the light of the lantern. “Perhaps our good fortune with the fishing will continue.”

  “And if the winds come again?”

  Christopher shrugged. “No reason why we cannot try our luck even as we get under way.”

  The stars above gleamed like diamonds in a box of black velvet, and once again, Merial glanced up in time to see one shoot across the horizon in a brief there and gone flash. “A good omen,” she told Christopher with a smile. “The winds will come tomorrow. You will see.”

  As the night watch passed just yards from them the moment she spoke, Merial knew that, if her prediction came true, word of it would pass among the crew like wildfire. She observed Christopher, his cup raised to his lips, flick his glance at the man, then grin. He took a drink.

  “Is that so?” he asked, setting his goblet down on the table. “Are you now our ship’s seer?”

  “I just know in my heart it will happen,” she replied, her tone lofty. “Perhaps then I will be back in the crew’s good graces.”

  “I have little doubt it will,” Christopher went on. “I, too, think it will return, but my reasons are different than yours.”

  “How so?”

  “I smell it. It is like it is just beyond the horizon, waiting, like a storm.”

  “Could it truly be a storm?”

  “It is quite possible,” he replied, his smile fading. “Often times, we have a calm like this just before a wicked storm comes to call.”

  “The calm before the storm.” Merial grinned.

  “Exactly. If my prediction comes true, will you remain below?”

  Merial’s mouth opened. “But I rode out the last one just fine.”

  “True enough.” In the light, his eyes had grown eerily darker as he stared at her. “But if I am right and we have a storm, it will be vicious and long. We did not have waves washing over the decks during that one. We will with this.”

  “You are certain.”

  His lips failed to smile, and that worried her. “I am certain.”

  “Then I will obey you, Christopher. May I put Henry in a cabin, and stay with Maurice? I have no desire to wait out a storm in my cabin, alone.”

  “I will agree to that. Gauthier will keep you safe.”

  * * *

  Flames. Explosions. The roar of cannon fire. Screams of the wounded, the dying. Men falling, or leaping, overboard. “My Lady, stay below, I beg you.”

  The flames reflected off the churning waves. “Come with me!”

  Someone picked her up and threw her. Falling—

  With a scream snagged in her throat, Merial woke. Sweat and tears streaked her cheeks, she felt it tricking down her neck her back. “Oh, my God,” she cried, weeping, seizing Henry and holding him tight. “They are dead, they are all dead.”

  “Who are dead?”

  A shriek of terror escaped her mouth before she realized it was Christopher standing in her doorway.

  “I do not know,” she sobbed as he walked toward her, pausing only to turn the wick of the lamp up. “I just know they are dead.”

  Henry notwithstanding, Christopher sat on the edge of her bunk, and pulled her into his arms. She clung to him, crying into his broad, strong shoulder, her arms around his neck. The cat struggled to escape, and wiggled out from between them.

  “Shh,” Christopher murmured in her ear, his hand stroking her hair, her back. “You are safe now, Merial. You are safe. Hush now, my sweet.”

  As before, his calm strength, his whispered words, soothed her night terrors. The dream scattered and vanished, leaving behind only the grief and the inner knowledge that people she knew were all dead now. “What could have happened?” she cried. “What happened to them?”

  “I do not know, Merial,” he replied, still holding her tightly.

  She knew he would continue to keep her in his arms until the impropriety of the touching overwhelmed her fears. The instant she thought of that, she straightened. She hated the fact that such contact was forbidden between two unmarried people, but it was so strongly ingrained into her that she withdrew from him.

  Christopher put space between them by sliding down the bunk.

  “I am sorry,” she whispered. “I am so sorry.”

  “Do not apologize,” he replied, and Merial glanced up to see his grin. “It is not proper for me to hold you thus, and I would not save that I cannot see you in such fear and pain without doing something to help.”

  “You are so kind, Christopher,” she told him, wiping her cheeks with her fingers.

  “I try to be.”

  Henry crept into her lap, purring, and Merial stroked his fur, feeling her fears ebb. “Did I wake you?”

  “No. I was on deck seeing to the sails and course. Our wind has returned.”

  Merial gazed at him in astonishment. “Really?”

  He laughed. “Really. A fine brisk wind from the west. Take a look for yourself.” Christopher gestured toward the porthole.

  Merial glanc
ed down, realizing she wore only her shift under the blanket. “Perhaps after you leave.”

  His smile fading, he took her hand. “I will leave now if you are quite all right.”

  “I am, dear Christopher,” she told him. “I may stay awake a while, but then I will sleep again.”

  Standing up, he brushed his knuckle gently across her cheek. “Good night, then.”

  “Good night.”

  Alone once again save for Henry, Merial got up from the bed to pace to the porthole. She heard the distinctive creak of the mast as the sails filled with the night wind, the rush of the waves beneath the hull. “Do you hear that, Henry?” she asked, joy replacing what was left of her fears. “We are underway again.”

  She stared out the tiny round window until she grew cold, then turned the wick down, then in the darkness, she crawled under the blanket. As Henry curled up in the hollow of her stomach, Merial let the comforting sounds and motions of the ship under full sail took her closer to home.

  “England.”

  Awakened by a violent roll of the Valkyrie, Merial discovered she was within an inch of tumbling off her bunk. Swiping her hair from her face, she felt the ship lurch to the side, the shouts of the crew from above. Thunder crackled, loud over the crashing of the waves even as lightning flared in the porthole. “The storm.”

  Not bothering to braid her hair, she dressed in the sailor’s clothing, and made certain Henry could not escape her cabin. “You will be safe here,” she said as Henry cried from her bunk.

  Thrown from side to side as she climbed to the main deck, she found that dawn had not arrived even if the storm had. She heard Christopher’s voice bellow orders from the bow, men climbing the rat lines to the sails and clinging to them to avoid being thrown into the surging waves. One such crest crashed across the deck and wet her from head to toe.

  “Christopher!” she screamed, now afraid.

  Running on the now slick deck, Merial skidded to the side as the Valkyrie pitched to starboard, her body slamming painfully into the bulwark. Now she knew why Christopher did not want her above during this storm. In the brief, flashing lightning, she saw him turn toward her.

  “Get below,” he roared.

  Another wave crashed across the deck, seizing anything that was not tied or nailed down, and taking it back out to sea as it withdrew its deadly fingers. Holding onto the gunwale with all her strength, Merial made her way back toward the steps that would lead her down to the galley and the safety Maurice offered.

  “Man overboard!” came the shrill cry from behind her. “Man overboard.”

  Chapter 11

  Spinning around, Merial caught her breath as a man in the rat lines pointed again to the starboard side, not far from where Merial stood. “Man overboard,” he yelled again.

  Grabbing the gunwale, she stared over the edge and down into the surging, roiling sea. A man struggled down there, screaming for help, sinking below the surface to rise again, coughing, shrieking. Panic clutched her throat.

  Dear God, take him quickly, for surely there is nothing anyone can do.

  In the next flash of lightning, Merial caught a rapid glimpse of a man leaping to the top of the gunwale a few feet from her. Christopher! As the Valkyrie reared high, Christopher dove down into the heaving waves. “No!” she screamed, and had she been taller, she might have leaped down after him. “Christopher!”

  “Throw him a line!”

  Wheeling, Merial found Mr. Mayhew beside her, roaring orders. “Get that line out, damn your eyes,” he bellowed. “Toss it out, be ready to haul them up.”

  Unbelieving, Merial stared down into the black water, the darkness, then glanced back to see men tying a wide loop in a heavy rope. They then threw it down into the rolling waves. The ship lurched sideways, another wave crashing over her port side, the Valkyrie listing to starboard. Half fearing the ship would continue to roll, and turn over, crushing all aboard beneath her, Merial stared into her death.

  In the flash of lightning, she watched the rope float toward Christopher as though drawn there on a string. Christopher, one arm around the sailor, grabbed it. Just before the Valkyrie tilted back to port, he slung the loop around the two of them.

  “Haul them up,” Mr. Mayhew roared. “Haul lads, for your lives. Pull that rope.”

  Unable to stop staring at the sea below, Merial peered into the gloom. She saw nothing until the lightning cracked again, and then caught a rapid glimpse of both men helplessly bound in the rope and being lifted into the air. “Hang on, Christopher!” she yelled. “Hang on.”

  Behind her, the crewmen winched the men up inch by inch, but the storm failed to cooperate. The Valkyrie once again listed to starboard, then sprang back as though seized by the sea. Merial heard the distinctive thud of flesh on wood as both men were slammed into the outer hull. Mr. Mayhew continued to blast the crew into hauling them up, but Merial began to fear they dragged up only corpses.

  A head appeared over the gunwale, then an arm grasped it. “They are here,” she screamed, grabbing the arm. “Help me.”

  Mr. Mayhew and several others swarmed over her, pushing her aside as they grabbed the two men. Still precariously balanced as the ship was battered from side to side, Merial breathlessly watched as Christopher and the crewman were both pulled onto the deck. Heedless of whether she was wanted there or not, she pushed her way through them to drop to her knees.

  Cursing vile oaths, Christopher struggled to sit, coughing, trying to get the rope from him. “Is he all right?” he gasped.

  “Get them both below!” Mayhew ordered, heedless of Christopher’s presence. “Put the captain in his cabin, Johns in mine. Hop to it!”

  Her feet sliding on the wet deck even as the storm continued to batter at the Valkyrie, the ship heaving from side to side, Merial accompanied the crewmen who carried Christopher and Johns down the steps. Slammed into the walls of the companionway, she ignored the bruises as she opened Christopher’s cabin door.

  “I will look after him,” she told the crewmen as they lay him, still cursing, bleeding from his forehead and holding his arm across his chest. “Save the ship, gentlemen,” she ordered, holding tightly to the bunk as the ship threatened to toss her onto the floor.

  The men ran out without knuckling their brows, and she heard their feet on wood as they ran onto the deck. Christopher tried to rise.

  “I need to be up there,” he gasped.

  Merial forcibly pushed him back down. “Mayhew has everything in hand. Let me have a look at you.”

  The ship rocked and swayed as Christopher lay back, sweat sheening his brow under the salt water. “My ribs,” he groaned. “I think—they are broken.”

  “Who is your physician?” she asked, holding him steady as the storm threatened to roll him out of the bunk.

  “Pierce. Everyone is needed up there.”

  “Then I will do what I can for you, and for Johns, until the storm is over.”

  However, there was not much she could do save dry him off as best she could, and wrap him in thick blankets to keep him warm. Cleaning the gash on his forehead, she discovered it was not deep, and would not require stitches. Christopher grabbed her hand, his eyes pleading.

  “Please. Look in on Johns.”

  Merial smiled, and tucked the blankets more securely around him. “I will be right back.”

  Through the windows in his cabin, she saw that a grey, lusterless dawn had arrived, and that the storm had not abated. Walking across his cabin to the door took every effort she possessed, and several times she thought she would be flung violently to the floor.

  Going into Mr. Mayhew’s cabin, she saw Johns lying under heaps of blankets much as Christopher did. He heard her enter, and caught sight of her in the doorway. Then he smiled, and it became clear he was missing several teeth.

  “M’lady,” he whispered. “Bless ye fer the fine luck ye brought us.”

  Under the ship’s pitching and yawing, Merial made her careful way to him. He seized her ha
nd and kissed it as she grabbed the bunk’s edge and sat beside him. “Johns,” she asked, “how badly are you hurt?”

  “I think me leg be broken, M’lady,” he replied. “But I be fine.”

  “Once the storm passes,” she said, “I will have Pierce set your leg. Are you in great pain?”

  “Aye,” he whispered, still smiling. “But I be alive.”

  “If I can find some laudanum, I will bring it to you.”

  “Bless ye, M’lady.”