“Mr. Finn, you shouldn’t be ’ere!” scolded the tavern wench. “It’s the constable’s night to come in for a pint, you know that. And Father’s home already, there’s no transacting business here tonight. What can you be thinking?”
“Alas, fair Marie, I could stand to be parted from you no longer.”
Freddie rolled her eyes when the girl broke into a giggle.
“Oh, and you know it’s just plain Mary. You do have a way with words, Mr. Finn. But ’ere, you’re soaking wet! What on earth?”
“Soaking wet and in dire need of assistance from a kindly soul, good Mary. Do you have a room for us? I have coin.”
“Up the stairs with you. And you two. Oh wait, you’re dripping everywhere. I’ll need Lizzie to come after us with a mop and pail.”
Once Lizzie was summoned, mop in hand, Mary led them up to a snug room on the top floor of the inn over the pub. Though small, and hardly quiet with the barroom noise filtering up, it had a fireplace and a view of the shore. And one large bed.
Oh dear.
Per Mary’s copious instructions, Lizzie laid a tidy fire in the grate, then disappeared to fetch hot water and spare blankets, leaving the three to parse out their boarding arrangements. More than anything, Freddie wished she could have a few moments alone with Barnabas to consult him on his preferences about sharing information with his brother. Sadly, those moments were not forthcoming. Furthermore, Phineas seemed to have forgotten one of his party was of the opposite gender. This, despite the time he and Barnabas had just spent treading water outside the submersible while they waited for Freddie to change from her uniform into her tinker’s clothes. As soon as Lizzie left the room, Phineas started stripping off his drenched shirt. He had his trousers half off his hips before Barnabas’s fervent throat-clearing and hand-waving stopped him. Fortunately he’d kept his drawers in place.
“Are you having some sort of fit?”
“No, Phineas, we can’t disrobe. Not in front of Miss Murcheson.”
Sighing, Phineas stopped removing his trousers and shifted a chair in front of the fire, draping his shirt there to dry. Freddie had to appreciate the magnificence of him as a physical specimen, though she could do without his hot-and-cold personality. His scraggly mop of hair and idiotic mustache took a fair number of points off, as well.
“I don’t want you to catch your death,” she said magnanimously. “Perhaps I could face the wall. You two carry on.”
“We can’t.”
“You have to get your clothes dry somehow, Barnabas. Be practical. It’s not as though I’ll peek.”
Would she peek? Naturally. She was quite interested to see more of Barnabas in particular, and he was still covered by Phineas’s big coat and uniform trousers. Turning her back, she perched on the edge of the bed and removed her hat, sliding pins from her hair until she could shake the whole thing loose.
“Your clothes are wet too. You’re dripping on the bedclothes.”
“Just the edge here. It’ll be fine. Hurry up, so I can take my turn. It’s cold this far from the fire.”
In truth, it was such a small room that the fire quickly warmed the whole thing. When she removed her jacket, the muslin shirt beneath began to dry almost instantly, though the many layers of padding beneath and the wool trousers did not. Itchy, wet wool aside, she was quite content as she combed her fingers through her hair and stole glances at the gentlemen, who stripped to their drawers and huddled by the fire. Barnabas was quite as fit as Phineas, but smaller and smoother all around, like a slightly miniaturized and less finely chiseled version of the same model. Freddie liked that. He looked manageable. Phineas, with his brooding eye and stony muscles, looked like a treacherous rock that a woman would crash her ship into. She didn’t want to crash. Barnabas, hapless and eager, had a sunny lighthouse smile for her at the strangest times, and it always made her feel she knew what to expect with him. Guidance and reliability, although she wasn’t sure that was what he intended. Freddie hadn’t been aware of a need in herself to be led or steered, or to rely on anybody for their smiles. But she must have those needs, because clearly Barnabas met them and she felt the better for it.
She tried to imagine returning to her work rounds with Dan instead of Barnabas on the pony trap. Stoic, occasionally sarcastic, prudent Dan. He was huge, strong, the better guardian by far in a tight pinch, and not a bad right hand when a stiff bolt wouldn’t come loose or something needed the heavy mallet. He was the sensible choice for a companion, but the picture wouldn’t form in her head. It was all Barnabas now, smiling and sometimes looking vaguely awed when she repaired something that seemed hopelessly broken. Or trying to trick her into leaning over so he could better ogle her bottom. She always had trouble keeping a straight face when he did that. It was necessary, though, because if he knew that she knew, he would stop. And Freddie quite liked being ogled by Barnabas, although of course she could never admit that to him. One didn’t.
One didn’t accost gentlemen in their chambers late at night either, of course, and she had done that. Would like to do it again, should the opportunity present itself. If only Phineas would go chasing the barmaid.
He seemed happily ensconced before the fire, though. Barnabas, more restless, stretched his arms overhead, leaning from side to side to work out muscles that had to be stiff from his long, freezing stint in the sub. Freddie felt much the same, and she had been dry for most of the trip. It would be a lucky thing if Barnabas didn’t catch cold or, worse, experience a relapse of his recent influenza.
“We should have Lizzie bring up some hot toddies,” she suggested through a veil of hair.
“Stop peeking,” Phineas admonished without turning.
“You’re a bit full of yourself, lad.” She let the street creep into her voice, drawing the mantle of her adopted manhood around her.
“Not really. Not at the moment, anyway.”
“Phineas!” Barnabas whirled on his brother, staring up at him aghast.
Unable to help herself, Freddie cackled at Barnabas’s shocked expression, the way he’d propped his hands on his hips like an angry nursemaid settling in for a good long scold.
“Oh, Barnabas, I don’t care. I hear worse on the streets nearly every day I’m out working. At least your brother has some hint of subtlety.”
“I am mortified for all of us,” he retorted. “This is the decline of the British Empire, writ small right here in this room. Gentlemen cavorting unclad in front of young ladies, and those same ladies laughing at ribald remarks, all after engaging in any number of illegalities all the day long. Not to mention relying on the goodwill of a smuggling front operation for hospitality, if I’m not very much mistaken.”
“No, you got it in one, brother. I do have coin to pay the fetching Miss Marie, however. I’m not entirely larcenous, nor does her goodwill extend to housing dangerous criminals free of charge.”
“Do you come here regularly?”
“The less you know of my activities, the better. But . . . it’s a point of contact, yes. One of many. Furneval vaguely remembered me from before my untimely departure to the Dominions; he’d heard nothing to make him distrust me while I served his brother Lord Orm, so when I returned with Orm’s token he took me into his confidence to a degree I found frankly alarming. He’s not the most stable individual to work for. Although he’s a vast improvement over Orm, I must admit.”
“From the things Matthew Pence told me about his ordeal with Orm at El Dorado, I can believe it. It sounds like a waking nightmare.”
“It was hell,” Phineas said curtly. “I’d rather not discuss it.” He set himself to rearranging the clothes in front of the fire, pulling the second ladder-back chair over from the room’s small table. A gentle steam had begun to rise from the garments, and with it the smell of wet wool, and cotton that had been worn far too long between washings.
A scratch on the door a
lerted them to Lizzie’s return. Freddie snatched up her hat and shoved her hair into it as best she could, but the serving girl paid her no mind in any case. It was a busy night, and they’d been lucky to get this room, which had been the last one available. All this she told them in a steady, amiable stream as she set down the armload of clean, coarse blankets she’d brought and poured the ewer of steaming water into the waiting basin.
After agreeing to return with hot toddies, the girl left as quickly as she’d come, leaving a sudden silence behind her.
Phineas finally broke it, pulling his trousers from the chair back and tugging them on, though they were clearly still damp. “Give me one of those blankets. I need to talk to Mary’s father, and then I’ll probably find a place to sleep in the stable.”
“But why? Isn’t it safer if we all stay together?” Barnabas countered. “Not that I’m arguing, if you think it’s best to go. But you needn’t think you must go, just on account of . . . well.”
His brother raised his eyebrows, looking from Freddie to Barnabas until she felt herself blushing. Pretending great interest in the rearrangement of her hair, she turned away from the men.
Phineas cleared his throat. “I have a reputation to uphold as an opium trafficker who is unfortunately and notoriously a user of the product himself. I’ll see old Bob at his cottage near the tavern, and ask if he has anything I can purchase to ease me to sleep. I sincerely hope he does not, as otherwise I may have to pretend to smoke it. That’s difficult to do without actually smoking it. But in any case, he wouldn’t expect me to take the product back to my compatriots to share. It would not be remotely in character. Ergo, I go alone and sleep off my shameful excess in the stable. From where, I should mention, I can more readily observe the shore and road, and remain at liberty if it turns out that Furneval’s men are on our trail. They’d be most likely to come after us here in the inn, because of my established preference for the lovely Marie. If I’m elsewhere at the time, I can then come after them, thereby apprehending them and rescuing you.”
“You’re leaving us here as bait?”
“Would you prefer to go bunk with the livestock? I can remain here in the comfortable room, and I’m sure Miss Murcheson and I can come to some sort of agreement regarding the sleeping arrangements.”
Barnabas didn’t answer. Freddie risked a peek and saw that his jaw was white, strained, and his fists were clenched so tightly she feared he might draw blood from his own palms. After a few seconds of staring one another off, Phineas spoke again, swinging the blanket around his broad shoulders like a shawl. He hadn’t bothered with a shirt or shoes.
“Sleep well, brother. And you, Miss Murcheson. I’ll be back at dawn.”
SEVENTEEN
“HE KNOWS, DOESN’T he? Somehow he knows.”
Privately, Barnabas agreed with Freddie, but he shook his head anyway. “He just wanted to be alone. Even if he suspects, it’s not as though he’s likely to tell anyone. By the time he got to that part of the tale, he’d already be either in the stockade or possibly promoted to rear admiral. Either way, I doubt we’re in much danger. And his misanthropy is our good fortune.”
Good fortune, or a temptation sent by the Devil? Barnabas wasn’t at all sure he believed in the Devil, but this scenario could have been handcrafted by the old sinner expressly for the purpose of ensnaring a young man’s soul.
A room. A bed. An entire night to spend there. And Freddie, studying him with those remarkable green eyes, with half a smile playing hide-and-seek at the corners of her mouth between sips of hot toddy.
She was dressed as a boy. She was quite possibly more than a little mad. They had been impersonating military officers, stealing government property, were probably being hunted by smugglers and maybe also facing encounters with giant, rampaging squid things.
He’d never felt so happy or content. So sure of what he was doing. Which made no sense, because objectively Barnabas was aware he had no idea what he was doing, with any of this. Not the job he had been assigned, certainly. Not anything he’d ever planned to be doing with his life, or even contemplated as a set of options. He ought to be horrified by the entire situation.
“What are you thinking?” Freddie asked.
“I’m thinking about . . . you.” It was more or less the truth.
“Not sure I like that, with the look on your face just then. You can’t have been thinking anything very nice.”
“How did I look?”
“Baffled. Do I baffle you?” She frowned, as this was clearly a matter of grave concern.
“Only in the best possible ways. I do sort of wonder what comes next, however.”
“I find it more than a little worrisome you don’t know what happens next. Of the two of us, you’re really the one who ought to know.”
“No, no,” he laughed, moving a step closer. “That part I know. Minx. I mean after all this is over. Assuming neither of us is dead and I’m not thrown in prison, and we both go back to our lives. Or do we? Is that what you want? Is it even what I want, because I honestly have no idea at the moment. It’s as though, where once I looked ahead in my life and had a general idea of how I expected things to go, now I find I can’t even picture what lies in store. I’m not sure whether that should make me feel liberated or petrified.”
“Instead of thinking about how it should make you feel, maybe let yourself think how it actually does make you feel. That seems a better place to start.”
“Do you know your future? Can you see what you think it’ll be, I mean?”
She considered it a moment, then shook her head, frowning. “It’s that same problem with should, I suppose. I was the pot calling the kettle black, wasn’t I? I know all the types of futures I should want, the ones that I know are available to a woman such as myself, and it ought to be a simple question of choosing between them. It isn’t, because none of them seem remotely palatable, but I have no idea what to picture in their place. It’s as though I don’t have a wide enough frame of reference even to imagine what I want yet. I don’t know what my possibilities ought to be.”
“You’ll have to make new ones, then.” He wanted to see her try. Wanted to see the world she might construct, given free rein to do so. And he hoped there would be room for him in her orbit. “You’re still in wet things, I’ve just realized.”
“So I am.” Her frown vanished, but she tried to hide her smile behind the hot toddy. “I’m probably headed for a nasty case of pneumonia.”
“We really ought to do something about that.”
“Yes, but what?”
“Fortunately for us both, I know what happens next.”
He took the still-warm mug from her hands, placing it carefully on the table by the bed, and drew her off to stand in front of him. The buttons of her shirt seemed to melt open under his fingers, but he stopped cold when he saw what lay beneath once the shirt dropped to the floor.
Padding. Layers of it, bandaged into place. All sodden, heavy, and now dripping seawater onto the floor by his feet. “I’d forgotten all about this. How can you stand it?”
“At least it’s kept me warm. Here, I’ll do that.”
He plucked at a knot where she’d tied a bandage off. “No. I’ll unwrap you.”
It sounded more intriguing than it turned out to be. In truth, the bandages were tricky to remove, and the prurience Barnabas had started out with was quickly subsumed by more practical thoughts. Such as whether to find a knife and simply cut through the entire mess, saving time and effort. Freddie refused to allow this, however, as she needed the stuffing and wrappings intact to wear again the next day.
The soaked linen seemed to have congealed where it was knotted, however, and Barnabas was yawning by the time he got the first one untied and began unwinding it, passing the wad of bandage around Freddie’s midsection with quick, efficient movements. She was already at work on another knot and ke
pt having to move her arms out of his way. It made an odd ballet, the two of them working at cross purposes until they found a rhythm that allowed them both to operate.
“This is a great deal less lascivious than I had hoped it would be,” he complained, when he realized there was still another bandage left to work on, besides the one Freddie had started on. The last one tied off near her hip, and Barnabas dropped to his knees to attack it once he’d dropped the first bandage on the hearth to dry.
“I imagine any sinful impulse left will be completely annihilated once the padding is off, because I’m sure I smell frightful under there.”
“I smell like fortnight-old halibut myself, so I’m positive I won’t even notice.”
He really only heard the under there part of what she’d said, because it reminded him that beneath the tricky padding and fiddly bandages was a naked girl, a naked Freddie. More than worth the bother.
She was, however, sadly accurate regarding the smell. It centered on the bag of cotton-wool-stuffed muslin that formed the basis of her figure-transforming disguise, but clearly the source was the skin beneath. He’d envisioned revealing her torso and immediately conducting a sensual exploration prior to shucking off her trousers. Instead, despite the astonishing visual appeal of her smoothly curved waist and high, small, rose-tipped breasts, his first impulse was to suggest she wash first.
“Ugh. I told you,” she said before he could figure out what to say. She stepped from between him and the bed and went to the washbasin, grimacing as she lifted her arms to scrub with the scrap of rag draped over the side.
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