Stubb gave an amused cackle. “They’re all vacant, I believe.”
Well, yes. But they’d all be full on the voyage home, thanks to the dwindling profits of sugar plantations. Scarcely anyone was traveling to the West Indies anymore, save Methodist missionaries. And, apparently, the occasional winsome governess.
Seeming to recognize defeat, Joss bowed. “Welcome aboard the Aphrodite, Miss Turner. I hope your voyage is pleasant.”
The young lady curtsied once again before Stubb escorted her to the narrow stairs that led belowdecks. Gray watched Miss Turner descend into the belly of the ship, knowing that for good or ill, this voyage had just become a great deal more interesting.
“Where’s Bains?” Joss asked suddenly. “What are you doing, rowing yourself back to the ship? Is he following with more cargo?”
“No. I let him go.”
“You let him go? What the devil for?”
“Something’s wrong with his eyesight.” Any man who mistook Miss Turner for a dockside whore had to be losing his vision. Not to mention, Gray didn’t want a sailor who had a habit of taking what wasn’t offered him. In voyages past, that attitude might have been a desirable trait, but not anymore. The Aphrodite was a respectable merchant ship now.
Joss’s jaw clenched. “You can’t let him go. He’s my crewman.”
“It’s already done.”
“I can’t believe this. You go ashore for two hours of trade, and somehow you’ve exchanged an experienced sailor for a governess.”
“Well, and goats. I did buy a few goats—the boatman will have them out presently.”
“Damn it, don’t try to change the subject. Crew and passengers are supposed to be my responsibility. Am I captain of this ship or not?”
“Yes, Joss, you’re the captain. But I’m the investor. I don’t want Bains near my cargo, and I’d like at least one paying passenger on this voyage, if I can get one. I didn’t have that steerage compartment converted to cabins for a lark, you realize.”
“If you think I’ll believe your interest in that girl lies solely in her six pounds sterling …”
Gray shrugged. “Since you mention it, I quite admired her brass as well.”
“You know damn well what I mean. A young lady, unescorted …” He looked askance at Gray. “It’s asking for trouble.”
“Asking for trouble?” Gray echoed, hoping to lighten the conversation. “Since when does the Aphrodite need to go asking for trouble? We’ve stowed more trouble than cargo on this ship.” He leaned back, propping both elbows on the ship’s rail. “And as trouble goes, Miss Turner’s variety looks a damn sight better than most alternatives. Perhaps you could do with a bit of trouble yourself. It’s been a year, you know.”
Joss’s face drew tight. “It’s been a year, two months, and seventeen days. I have troubles enough of my own, Gray. I’m not looking for more.” He turned and stared out over the harbor.
Damn. Gray knew he shouldn’t have said that. It was just—well, he missed the old, piss-at-the-devil Joss. He missed his brother.
He kept hoping the old Joss would surface someday, once he released all that pain dragging him down. But the chances of that seemed even less likely, now that Gray had made him captain. Navigating the sea would be the least of Joss’s worries on this, his first voyage in command. Navigating the balance of power between a green captain and fifteen men more accustomed to plundering cargo than protecting it—now that was treacherous going. Here there be monsters.
And Joss was worried—perhaps rightly—that having an attractive, unmarried young lady aboard would cock it all up.
“I’ll keep the girl out of trouble,” Gray said, in what seemed to him a rather magnanimous gesture. “I’ll watch out for her.”
“Oh, I’ve no doubt you will. But who’s going to watch out for you?”
Gray’s nerves prickled. So, it wasn’t the girl Joss was concerned about. No, he expected Gray to cock it all up.
“Right, Joss. I’m an unprincipled, lecherous bastard.” He paused, waiting for his brother to argue otherwise.
He didn’t.
Gray protested, “She’s a governess, for the love of gold. Prim, proper, starched, dull.” Soft, he thought in counterpoint. Delicate, sweet. Intriguing.
“Ah. So you’ll dally with any chambermaid or serving wench who’ll lift her skirts, but you’d draw the line at seducing a governess?”
“Yes. Have a look at me, man.” Gray smoothed his brushed velvet lapel, then gestured upward at the banners trimming the freshly tarred rigging. “Look at this ship. I’m telling you, my libertine days are over. I’ve gone respectable.”
“It’s easy to change your coat. It’s a great deal harder to change your ways.”
Gray sighed heavily. He’d never been a model brother, and God knew he’d never be a saint. But whether Joss believed it or not, he’d worked damn hard to launch this business. He’d worked damn hard for them—to give this patched-together family of theirs some security, the place in society their father had forfeited de cades ago. He’d talked investors into entrusting him with thousands of pounds; he’d promised the insurers he could be trusted to safely deliver the cargo.
Yet his own brother didn’t trust him to keep out of a girl’s skirts.
The irony would have struck him as humorous, had it wounded him any less. Had it been any less deserved. Gray rubbed his face with one hand and tried again, all trace of joking gone from his voice. “Listen, Joss. I won’t pursue her.”
“She’s beautiful.”
“I won’t pursue her,” Gray repeated slowly. “And I thought that you weren’t looking.”
Joss stared back out at the water. “I was widowed, Gray. I didn’t go blind.”
No, not blind, Gray thought. Just … numb.
When Joss turned and caught him staring, Gray just smiled and shook his head. “The girl’s right, you know. We both have his ears.” He pushed off the rail and straightened, pulling a hand through his hair.
His uncovered, wind-mussed hair.
“Witch’s tit,” he muttered. “When did that happen?”
Joss raised an eyebrow. “What’s that?”
Gray wheeled about, searching the deck and glancing over the rail. “I’ve lost my damn hat.”
Joss broke into low laughter.
“It’s not funny. I just bought that hat. I liked that hat. Cost me a bloody fortune, that hat.”
Joss laughed again, and this time Gray laughed with him. Yes, that hat had cost him a bloody fortune. And now that hat had purchased him a moment of carefree laughter with his brother, on the deck of the Aphrodite. An echo, somehow, from a happier time past.
Gray smiled to himself. Damn, but he loved a good bargain.
CHAPTER
THREE
Surely there was a man in there somewhere, Sophia thought. Somewhere under all that hair.
The hunched, ancient steward shuffled down the narrow staircase, whistling a jaunty tune as he went. She followed, treading gingerly on the bowed boards. As her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, she took in the greasy, gray tangle of hair that hung midway down the man’s back, the grizzled froth of beard that extended nearly as far down in front, the lightly furred forearms exposed by his loose checked tunic.
“ ’Ere we are, miss,” he announced. “Ladies’ cabins.” He pushed aside a thin curtain of dark fabric, and they entered a small, low-ceilinged chamber with a round table and chairs occupying the center. Sunlight streamed into the space from a skylight above. Four doors opened off the small room, two on either side. The steward crossed to the door marked “Seven” and opened it with a flourish. “Your berth, miss.”
“Thank you, Mr. …”
“Just Stubb, miss.”
“Thank you, Stubb.”
“The privy’s just there.” He nodded toward a small door. “Go through the cabin this way, and you’ll hit top steerage—that’s where all the provisions are kept—and then the forecastle. Go the other direction, a
nd you have the gentlemen’s cabin, the galley, then the captain and mates’ cabins at the stern. But if you need anything, you just call on me, miss.”
“Thank you, Stubb.”
“I’ll have your trunks down in a wink, then.” He bowed extravagantly, sweeping the floor with the fringe of his beard.
Sophia entered her berth and shut the door, then turned a slow circle in place. There wasn’t room to do much else. The little closet, for lack of a better term—her family’s Mayfair town home boasted cupboards larger than this—consisted of a narrow bed protruding from the wall at shoulder height, storage space beneath the bunk, and a small writing desk that folded down from the wall.
No chair.
Sophia removed her bonnet and knotted the ribbons together, then hung it from a peg driven into the wall. She might have sat down, but there was nowhere to sit. She could have lain down, but she wasn’t certain how to vault herself into the high bed. Instead, she returned to the common area and sat at the table, dropping her head into her hands.
Had she succumbed to seasickness already? The gentle rolling of the anchored ship seemed insufficient to occasion this amount of dizziness. The whole vessel was a study in contradictions. The captain who wasn’t a captain. The governess who wasn’t a governess. Two men—one white, one black—claiming the close kinship of brotherhood.
Strangely enough, she believed the last. Something about their square-tipped ears, and the way their angular jaws balanced those arrogant grins … They were like two garments cut from the same pattern, but fashioned from different cloth.
Ah, yes. They were half brothers, of course. This overdue realization of the obvious gave Sophia a bit of peace. Apparently, her flow of comprehension had not been dammed entirely. Merely slowed, to the trickling rate of syrup.
She knew what—or rather, whom—to blame for that.
Him, and his insufferable teasing. Coming to her rescue in the tavern, only to humiliate her further. Deliberately misleading her about the captain’s identity simply to gather amusement from her befuddlement. And possessing the unmitigated gall to do it all looking so handsome, with that roguish smirk and the mocking scar beneath it.
How did he get it, that scar? So thin and straight, slanting from the cleft of his chin to the corner of his mouth. From a blade of some sort, most definitely. Perhaps a stray swipe of a knife in a bawdy-house brawl. Or maybe a more honorable man had called him out in a duel, to avenge his callous acts of insolence toward unsuspecting ladies. A flick of the rapier could make such a scar. But if he had walked away from the duel with a scratch, what had become of his opponent?
Her imagination ran wild with the notion, painting a vivid scene in her mind. She could visualize the knot of muscle in his arm, sketch the straining sinew in his wrist as he loomed over his trembling rival, lifting the sword for a lethal blow—
“ ’Ere we are, then.”
Sophia’s head jerked up.
Stubb reappeared in an aura of grizzled hair, followed by two sailors each balancing one end of her stacked trunks. The steward directed, “It’s berth seven, what’s marked for the lovely miss.”
Her trunks deposited, Sophia stood to offer her thanks. At that moment, however, the ship gave a sudden lurch, and she found herself tossed right back in the chair.
“Anchors aweigh!” The call came echoing through the grated skylight. “All hands! All hands!”
The three men hurried back the way they’d entered, and Sophia followed them up the narrow staircase and onto the deck.
What a glorious commotion awaited her there—the sailors shouting and hauling and climbing into the rigging like spiders scaling webs. She craned her neck to watch their progress, shading her eyes with one hand. One by one, the square sails unfurled, four apiece on each of the two soaring masts. The wind quickly found and filled the sails, puffing them out like frogs’ throats.
She went to the rail and stayed there for hours, watching the river widen beneath them and the dense clamor of Gravesend diffuse into pastoral calm. Before she expected it, the Thames spat them out into a wide basin of churning water. They had yet to reach the open sea, but the arms of land on either side grew increasingly distant, as the tide tugged the Aphrodite free of England’s embrace. Daylight was fading, and tendrils of fog wound over her neck and before her eyes, obscuring her view of the low, chalky banks.
Sophia fought the childish impulse to wave farewell. She clung to the lip of wood instead—for strength, and for stability, as the vessel’s pitching grew increasingly violent. The ship crested a large swell, then dipped into a gray-green valley. Cold, salty spray rushed up to sting her eyes and cheeks.
It must be the fog, she thought, squeezing her eyes shut and wiping her cheeks. Or the steady rocking of the ship, like a cradle. Perhaps it was the encroaching darkness and the muted roaring of the sea that made her feel, for the first time in many years, so very small.
And so very, very alone.
But then, suddenly, she wasn’t.
“Homesick already? Or merely seasick?” Mr. Grayson joined her at the rail.
Sophia tried not to look at him. It was a struggle.
When a few moments passed without her reply, he said, “I’d offer a few soothing words, but they’d only be lies. It’ll get worse before it gets better.”
She didn’t ask which type of sickness he referred to. Both, she suspected. “Are the waves always this large?”
But when she turned to him, he’d disappeared. A shout drew her gaze heavenward. Above her, sailors called to one another as they ascended the rigging again. Her stomach churned, just watching them sway back and forth against the backdrop of greenish sky. Sophia clutched the rail and shut her eyes.
“Be reasonable. It’s just a few clouds,” came a low murmur, behind her.
“Aye, a few big, black clouds to the West. You know as well as I do, a storm’s coming.”
“A bit of a blow, perhaps. The Aphrodite’s weathered far worse. Reef the topsails, keep all hands at the ready.”
There was a pause, thick with enmity.
“Not in the Downs,” came the terse reply. “I’ll not risk springing a mast our first night at sea. We’ll drop anchor and furl the sails, and we’ll wait it out.”
“Joss, you’re behaving—”
“I’m behaving as the captain of this ship, Gray. If you don’t start affording me the respect that deserves, I’ll order you below.” The voice sank deeper still. “And if you dare contradict me in front of my crew, I’ll throw your arse in the brig.”
A burst of spray hit Sophia’s face again, startling her eyes open. With droplets of seawater clinging to her eyelashes, she slowly rotated her neck until the two brothers came into focus.
The men glared at each other, and the fog swirling around them took on the charged heat of steam. Apparently, the Grayson brothers shared no more affection than Sophia and her sister did.
The captain turned toward the ship’s bow, calling, “Mr. Brackett!”
A third man joined them. The fog and spray obscured the features of his face, but Sophia could see he was tall and lean, standing ramrod straight despite the waves.
“Mr. Brackett,” said the captain, “see that all passengers”—he shot another glance at his fuming brother—“are returned to their cabins. Furl the topsails and prepare to drop anchor.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.” Mr. Brackett strode forward, sharp cheekbones and blade-thin nose slicing through the fog. He began barking orders, and the crew exploded into activity.
“Come along then, Miss Turner.” Stubb took her elbow and urged her toward the companionway hatch. They crossed the deck in a lurching gait as the waves rolled beneath.
Once they were safely below, Stubb left her alone, only to return a few moments later with a bucket threaded over his arm. Behind him followed another of the sailors—an impossibly tall and broad-shouldered black man whose size required him to nearly double over and turn sideways just to thread his body through the co
mpartment entry.
“Levi ’ere will be putting up the deadlights.” Stubb tilted his hoary crown toward the black man as he bent to lash the chair legs to the table’s bolted base.
“Deadlights?” Just the sound of the word left Sophia cold, and she braced herself against the table to receive its meaning.
“Shutters for the cabin windows,” the steward explained. “To keep out the storm and sea.”
Levi nudged past her, squeezing into her berth. He carried a circular plate, drilled ’round with screw holes.
Stubb passed the bucket to Sophia. “You’re like to have need of this.”
She looked down at the leather pail. “Am I to bail out the seawater, then?”
Stubb cackled with laughter. “Levi! The lovely miss thinks she’ll be put to work, bailing out the bilge!” Levi made no reply as he emerged from her berth, but Stubb laughed twice as loudly to compensate. “Nay, miss. If we take on some sea, there’s a pump in the hold.”
“Then why the bucket?” Sophia asked. The ship dropped suddenly, and her stomach rolled with it. “Oh. That.”
“Now don’t be worried about the waves, miss. Save your concerns for the lightning.”
“Lightning?” She didn’t like the sound of that.
“Aye. Strange things occur when lightning strikes a ship. That electric fluid bounces all through the hull, and woe to the sailor caught holding a bit of metal.” Stubb fluffed his whiskers. “What do you think turned this beard of mine to white?” He flashed a toothless grin. “Had me a whole set of gold teeth. All melted to slag.”
“You’re teasing me.”
“I am not,” the steward said, though he threw Sophia a sly wink. “Just ask Levi here. He won’t speak a word to contradict me.”
Neither would he speak a word to support you, she surmised. The black man hadn’t broken his silence since entering. But arms crossed and face stony, he looked capable of supporting the London Bridge.
“Don’t you know?” the old man continued. “That’s why they call me Stubb. Before the lightning struck, I used to have a wooden leg.”
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