Lady Reluctant

by Maggie Osborne

  There had been a time, long ago, when she had wept in the darkness for a mother. A time when she had touched the golden curl Beau Billy carried inside the gold disk he wore on his chest and she had tried to imagine the woman who had laughed and cut that curl from her hair.

  Even now, her secret heart burned with curiosity. But there was hatred, too, and resentment. And they were stronger.

  ~ ~ ~

  The moment Blu entered the central square, returning for the midday meal, she spied the Duke on the wharf directing the loading of provisions. For a moment their eyes met and locked. Holding his gaze, she licked her thumb and spat on the ground. That’s what she thought about rat-dropping Dukes who did not honor their promises.

  Then she turned sharply on her heel and strode past the iron kettles bubbling atop the cooking pits and entered the great hall. Face like a storm cloud, she marched directly to her father and kicked him awake.

  He jerked his head from the table with a growl and his hand dropped to his knife. When he saw it was Blu, his expression turned sheepish. “Monsieur told you.”

  She stared at him, her expression revealing her anger and pain.

  Beau Billy stood and took her arm, pulling her from the great hall. Once outside, he paused, then walked away from camp, following the curve of the beach, adjusting his long strides to allow for Blu’s shorter gait. Without speaking they walked a quarter of a mile to the line of tumbled stones that formed one arm of the cove enclosure.

  Beau Billy sat on one of the rocks and Blu dropped down beside him. From here she could see into the camp, could see the William Porter riding anchor in the cove. If she leaned to the right, she could see one corner of her hut. There was not much inside. A pallet, a palm mat, hooks to hold her second shirt and pair of kicks. She had a hand mirror Monsieur had given her, and an ivory comb and brush set. Bits of hemp to tie back her hair. A collection of shells that dated back to her childhood. She could have had any item in the warehouse, but there was nothing she wanted or needed.

  “What will it be like?” she asked at length, holding her voice steady.

  “Nothing I say can help ye imagine it.” Beau Billy followed her gaze to the camp. “Ye’ve seen St. George. London is taller, bigger, noisier.” He shrugged.

  She kicked her feet at the water. “Why did you leave?”

  For a moment he regarded her, then looked away. “I didn’t want to build ships, I wanted to sail them. A third son can labor a lifetime, gel, and still not earn the blunt to purchase a piece of a ship. So I stole one and put to sea.”

  “Then you captured Lady Katherine.”

  “In time.”

  “I have to know about her.”

  Absently, he fingered the gold disk against his chest. “When I was a lad laboring in the yards, the countess Lady Merribee and her three daughters occasionally accompanied Lord Merribee to the docks. I’d doff me cap and dip me head, but I never spoke to the daughters though they cast many a juicy glance across the tops of their fans.” He smiled at Blu. “‘Twas said I were a fine-looking lad in me time. But when I took yer mam’s ship, ‘twas the first I ever spoke words with a true lady.”

  A fight erupted beneath the camp tower bell and they watched the progression without real curiosity.

  ‘Twas me idea in them days to be a gentleman pirate. I spoke better. Not better enough to flam genuine quality, but good enough to wrinkle those of me own class. And I weren’t labeled the beau for naught. In them days I were as eager to poach the clothing chests as ever Monsieur be today. I puffed meself on me appearance—boots from Valencia, waistcoats from Paris, kicks and stocks from Bond Street.”

  Blu’s eyebrows soared. She could no more imagine Beau Billy Morgan wearing a cravat and stockings than she could have imagined him wearing a woman’s gown and hat. The image lay beyond her creative abilities.

  “I tell ye this so’s ye will grasp that Lady Katherine did not see before her what ye see before ye.”

  “Did you force her?”

  Shock and indignation stiffened his shoulders. “Beau Billy Morgan never forced a woman in his life!”

  Silently, Blu added another pejorative to her mother’s qualities. Hypocrite.

  “Am I like her?”

  “Ye take to the Morgan side. Yer mam had hair as gold as sunshine and eyes like cove water. Dainty as a new cat, she was.” An unconscious sigh lifted his chest. “Her parents in England offered the ransom immediately, but by then she was quickened. So’s they wouldn’t know, I strung out the negotiations. As God stands witness, Blu, she wept when she left ye.”

  “But she left me.”

  “‘Twas the onliest way she could have a life.”

  “She could have stayed here.”

  Again he looked shocked. “Lady Katherine? On Morgan’s Mound? Nay, gel. The Mound is no place for yer mam! She be a lady.”

  Blu turned to face him. “And if I become a lady will there be no place here for me either?” When his eyes slid away from hers, she had her answer. Suddenly it felt as if her ribs had tightened and she couldn’t breathe. Looking back toward camp, she struggled to keep her voice even. “Will I ever see you again?”

  “Ye’ll have a fine life, Blu. Ye’ll marry a lord.” Tilting his head back, he looked at the William Porter. “No lord will have ye if he learns from whence ye sprang.”

  Her mouth dropped and she stared. “You’re saying I’m to deny my own father?”

  Beau Billy’s hands pressed against the rock so hard the sun-blackened skin over his knuckles turned white. Without looking at her, he stood abruptly and strode back to camp along the beach.

  Blu watched him go, blinking rapidly.

  No one was going to make a lady out of her if it meant never seeing her father again. If it meant she could never come home.

  “I’ll be back,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “I’ll come home again.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Thin wisps of mist trailed above the water. Overhead the sky was as gray as Blu felt. Clenching her teeth, she stared at the people assembled on the wharf and told herself she would not cry. She was Beau Billy’s daughter and Beau Billy’s daughter did not wear her heart for all to see.

  Heavily provisioned, the William Porter rode low in the water, straining at anchor. Monsieur and Isabelle had been first to board. Already Monsieur looked green and ill. Isabelle stood at the railing, holding her shawl over her face, waving to the whores clustered behind Blu.

  When Blu stepped onto the wharf, Mouton loomed out of the mist to stand beside her. Raising his hands, he gestured she must board immediately if they were to take advantage of the tide.

  Turning, she reached blindly for her father. She might have held to her determination to say goodbye without weeping if he had not been wearing his eye patch. But the moment Blue saw the patch, tears scalded her eyes. Her resolve crumbled and she threw herself into his arms, her voice breaking on a sob.

  For once he didn’t push her away. He held her in a bone-breaking embrace, regardless of who might see, and he buried his face in her hair so she couldn’t observe his expression.

  “Respect yer mam and do as she bids ye,” he said against her hair, his voice harsh,

  “I will.” At this moment she would have promised him anything.

  “Remember who ye are. Hold yer head high.”

  “Aye.”

  “And if ye fight, fight to win.”

  “Aye, Pa. Aye.”

  Then Mouton was pulling her away, half carrying her up the plank. A half-dozen hands drew in the board and snapped shut the rail gate. The squeal of chain winding on chain sounded as the anchor winched upward and the ship’s deck swayed beneath Blu’s feet. Men scrambled up the masts and out along the yards. In a moment acres of canvas spilled down and slowly cupped in the wind. The ship drifted from the wharf.

  Running, Blu crossed the decks and took the stairs two at a time. Leaning against the upper railing, she waved frantically, and angrily dashed the tears blurring her vision. />
  Beau Billy stood alone at the end of the wharf. He held his arms stiffly at his sides, his spine as straight and rigid as a whipping post. Only now did Blu notice he had trimmed his hair and beard and he wore his best boots. That and the patch undid her.

  Sobbing, she felt Mouton grab her shirt as she leaned far forward over the rail and cupped her hands around her lips. “I’ll be back!”

  The strip of gray water between the wharf and the William Porter widened and the mist closed over her father. Pressing the heels of her palms hard against her eyes, Blu collapsed backward against Mouton’s chest. She didn’t open her eyes until she heard that hated voice.

  “Mr. Pastor will be pleased to show you to your cabin whenever you are ready.”

  She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes and nose, then looked at the Duke standing before her.

  “Go bugger yourself,” she snapped, appalled that he had observed her tears.

  He smiled and bowed from the waist. “Charming as ever.”

  “May you catch the French pox from your sister and die in screaming agony.” It was the worst curse she knew. “Step aside. Make way for a lady.” Lifting her nose high, she shoved past him, resolved to locate her cabin herself.

  Mouton looked after her, then moved his hands to say, “The journey will be long.”

  “Indeed,” the Duke agreed. “And will seem even longer.”

  They listened to a cracking female voice cursing steadily across the main deck. The Duke managed another tight smile.

  “This may in fact prove to be the longest journey yet undertaken by this captain and crew.”

  As Mouton followed Blu below deck, the Duke lit one of the thin Caribbean cigars he enjoyed and recalled Blu’s demand that he make way for a lady. The words amused him and he wondered idly what lay behind them. Making a lady out of Blu Morgan was about as likely an event as making a Christmas pudding out of bits of splintered iron.

  5

  As their first week at sea drew to a close, Blu reluctantly conceded her party had not acquitted themselves in a particularly exemplary fashion.

  Within hours of boarding, Isabelle, ever mindful of opportunities for profit, cheerfully opened shop in the cabin next to Blu’s. Day and night Isabelle’s cabin door slammed open and squeaked shut. Immediately after each watch changed, a line of eager swabbies crowded the corridor before Isabelle’s door to await their turn. Isabelle contentedly predicted she would be a rich woman before the William Porter dropped anchor at the port of London. Isabelle’s activities seemed in every way logical and inoffensive to Blu, but the hated Duke thought otherwise.

  Mouton lived and slept outside Btu’s door, maintaining order in the lines before Isabelle’s room, insuring that no overeager tar mistakenly rapped at Blu’s door. When one excited boatswain proved persistent in demanding Blu, Mouton found it necessary to thrash him soundly then fling him overboard. Three hours of prime sailing time were lost as the William Porter drifted to anchor then dispatched a dinghy to retrieve the battered boatswain. The Duke was not pleased.

  Not surprisingly, Monsieur retired to his cabin in a fit of seasickness, complaining to all who would listen that he was dying. Too dickey to hold a quill, he called for the ship’s scribe and dictated a lengthy will bequeathing his goods to Blu and admonishing those left in the world to mend their ways and avoid sea voyages.

  As for Blu, she passed the first week in depressed solitude, sequestered in her cabin, feeling as hipped as ever she had in her life. Although the limitations of her small stuffy cabin were self-imposed, she shrank from the enclosing walls and yearned for the open dunes of Morgan’s Mound. She longed for her father and Black Bottom and the Spaniard and old Mother Galway and all the others. It required only a few hours of misery to realize the blame for her anguish fell squarely on the shoulders of Lady Katherine Paget. To ease the sting of resentment and homesickness, she kept herself as drunk as Davy’s sow on large quantities of slingo and belch. And she deliberately ignored the rappings at her door and the messages slipped beneath it.

  At the end of the week, Monsieur dragged himself from his sickbed and rapped on her door, insisting it was time they talked and appeared above deck to take the air. After a brief argument, Blu emerged pale faced, her head splitting. For a moment she and Monsieur regarded one another in the narrow passageway, then both grimaced at the other’s appearance. Wobbling past the line waiting before Isabelle’s door, they pulled themselves up the stair railing and stepped into the harsh sunlight flooding the decks.

  Groaning, Blu covered her eyes and staggered backward against the bulkhead of the quarterdeck. The hiss of the waves, the slap of canvas, the shouts of the men made her head feel as if cannons were exploding inside. The glittering sunlight scalded her eyes. Her stomach looped in a long queasy roll as she tried to recall when she had last eaten anything solid.

  “Ah, Miss Morgan. How kind of you to honor us with your presence at last.”

  “May God’s pox rot you.” She didn’t open her eyes, but she could visualize the Duke standing before her, his expression as sarcastic as his tone.

  “Your Lordship,” Monsieur murmured, bending into a low bow accompanied by a weak flourish of the wrist. He rescued his wig with a hasty gesture as it fell from his head.

  The Duke acknowledged Monsieur’s greeting and inquired after his health.

  “Improving, thank you,” Monsieur responded, steadfastly preventing his gaze from touching upon the waves. For the first time in Blu’s memory, Monsieur’s attire had been assembled without his usual fastidious care. His stock rode askew at his throat, the tail of his wig emerged from behind one ear, his stockings sagged. Examining him from squinted eyes, Blu considered informing him that his shoes appeared to be upon the wrong feet. The bumps in the leather caused by his bunions now protruded on the outside. As the energy to speak required more stamina than she possessed at the moment, however, she weighed against it.

  “May I offer a stool, Miss Morgan, or do you prefer to remain pressed to the bulkhead?”

  She cracked her eyes enough to glimpse polished Spanish boots and coarse seaman’s stockings. The kicks the Duke wore were dyed navy; otherwise they, too, were of common cut, not what she would have supposed for the captain of a ship. Even his shirt was sewn of heavy unextraordinary goods. Having progressed thus far, Blu opened her eyes wholly and glared at his lifted brow and condescending smile.

  “I need a pint of bub.”

  “I rather thought you might.” His gesture brought a boy running forward with a tankard which the lad offered with an uncertain dip of the knee. She accepted it gratefully and drained it by half in a single long swallow. By the time she wiped her lips with the back of her hand, her head had eased somewhat and the hiss of the water splitting over the hull no longer roared like shot in her ears.

  “A most impressive performance,” the Duke commented, continuing to observe her with a measure of curiosity. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of knowing a woman capable of remaining foxed for an entire week.”

  Letting her knees collapse over the stool, Blu sat hard and scowled.

  “I have known men who would have been near death three days ago had they consumed the amount of slingo you have done.”

  Though the Duke spoke in a noncommittal conversational tone, Blu sensed an insult lurking beneath his words. After a moment of reflection, she decided with regret to allow the slander as she lacked the coordination and the acuity for a challenge. Additionally, it now occurred to her that she had not observed her sword since boarding the Duke’s vessel.

  Shielding her eyes from the sunlight, she lifted her head to Monsieur, who stood staring at the planks between his mismatched boots, his hands clasped behind his coat.

  “Did you board my sword?” Blu demanded as Mouton loomed behind her.

  “A lady has no need of a sword,” Monsieur pronounced. Though the brisk sea air had restored a bit of iron to his tone, his face remained an ashen green shade. Regardless,
Blu would have mustered the energy to leap on him had not Mouton placed a restraining hand on her shoulder.

  She swung toward Mouton, her eyes wide with fury and dismay. “Did you hear? I have no sword.” Even the idea of it stunned her. Without her sword, she felt naked and exposed. “How shall I protect myself?” Now her gaze settled fully on the Duke and her lashes narrowed. Whatever insult he chose to offer, she would be fain to swallow and digest. The realization appalled her and proved enough to sweep the foam from her drink-soaked mind.

  “You have ignored my messages,” the Duke said, watching her. “I wish a word with you.”

  “I want a sword. Today. Now.”

  “We urgently need to discourse upon some rules of conduct. Aside from turning my vessel into a brothel, members of your party have prevented my scribe from his duties, have attempted murder upon a boatswain, and have single-handedly drained a quarter of the ship’s supply of slingo. These outrages are unacceptable. We can negotiate an agreement or I shall correct these events myself. The choice is yours.”

  “Are your ears as useless as your cod? I am telling you I demand a sword. Immediately!”

  The Duke’s fine white teeth bit down and ground together. “You shall have a sword,” he said finally, speaking between his teeth. “May we now discourse on more pressing matters?”

  Despite her aching head and the distress of having no sword at her side, Blu possessed the presence of mind to curl her lip in an expression of contempt for his show of weakness as she deliberately walked away. If he ill liked what was occurring on his ship, he should have knocked a few heads and flogged a few backs instead of requesting a simkin discourse.

  “Such is not the manner of an English gentleman,” Monsieur explained later. “Good form is all.”

  “Flam!” Pacing in her small cabin, Blu walked three steps to the bulkhead, then turned. For reassurance, she gripped the handle of the sword thrust through the rope tied at the waist of her kicks. At least the bilge rat Duke had kept his promise. Mr. Parsons had delivered a sword to her cabin door minutes ago. “I say flam!” To make certain Monsieur took her point, she licked her thumb and spat.