Georgana's Secret (Proper Romance)

by Arlem Hawks

  Georgana bound together the seams of her jacket with needle and thread. The coat had been pulled too many times of late. She moved slowly since she had to work from the outside instead of the inside. Any poorly formed stitches, as she was prone to make, would show.

  No, she would not think like that. No one but her Grandmother would think her stitching poor. If she did make a mistake, not a soul on this ship would notice.

  “What causes any disease?” The surgeon sighed. “Bad air? Bad food? An incompatibility with the elements? I am doing all that I can, but there is only so much I can do.”

  Papa steepled his fingers in front of him. She didn’t like to see the lines of worry around his mouth. Those lines echoed in the faces of every man on board. Their friends, companions, and kin were fading in the sick bay. And no one, not even the surgeon, knew how to restore them or prevent the disease’s spread.

  “Thank you for your work, Étienne.”

  The surgeon didn’t give his usual wry smile as he quit the room. He only saluted and slipped out. When the door closed, Papa slumped in his chair.

  “What am I to do, George?”

  “What is there to be done?” She lowered her work. “We can only trust the surgeon.”

  “Perhaps Jarvis is right. What if the Frenchman is trying to sabotage the crew?” He didn’t look convinced, but she heard seeds of doubt in his tone. Georgana did not know of Étienne’s loyalties, but she had seen him in the sick bay as he cared for his patients. She did not believe him capable of poisoning the men, even if he was from an enemy country.

  Georgana picked up her needle and stabbed it into the material. “Jarvis is never right.”

  “We at least have the same opinion on that.”

  She threw him a sharp look. What did he mean, suggesting there were things on which they did not agree?

  Before she could ask, the door opened, and all thoughts of the previous conversation fled.

  Lieutenant Peyton walked in, eyes flitting to her and quickly away. He stopped and stood at attention with a salute. As his hand fell to his side, a sliver of paper fluttered from his fingers and drifted to the deck. The table blocked her father’s view of it.

  “You called for me, sir?” the lieutenant asked.

  Papa leaned forward. Georgana stared at the scrap and swallowed. Surely he wouldn’t notice something so small.

  “Has the ship behind us been sighted today?”

  “No, sir.”

  The paper lay beyond her reach, though it had floated a little way behind Peyton. She sneaked her foot out, but her toes couldn’t touch it.

  “Good, and I would like it to stay that way,” her father said. “We don’t have the manpower for a confrontation. Set our course east-northeast.”

  Georgana twirled the thimble around her finger. Papa got to his feet, and her stomach gave an unwarranted leap. She flicked the thimble away, and it clinked across the deck. The little pewter bauble rolled, then stopped at the seam of two tiles.

  Murmuring an apology, she dropped to her hands and knees to retrieve the thimble. Her shirtsleeve grazed the lieutenant’s leg as she swept up the scrap of paper. Her breath caught from being so near to him. If she did not put a stop to this, she would give herself away. She scurried back to her seat on her sea chest.

  Her father finished his instructions to Peyton, and she didn’t miss his pointed look in her direction, though she pretended to. She kept the paper crushed to her palm with two fingers. The rest of her fingers awkwardly continued the repair of her coat.

  “I’ll be above directly,” Papa said. She didn’t watch Lieutenant Peyton leave for fear his grin would set her blushing.

  “What was that?” her father asked when they were alone.

  She blinked her eyes wide, trying to appear innocent. “What was—”

  He motioned to the floor. “What was your little act?”

  Her mouth went dry. She held up the thimble. “Just my thimble, sir.”

  “I see.” His brow stayed raised.

  “Do you have anything that needs mending?” Did her voice squeak?

  He shook his head then left. Georgana took a deep breath, her hands falling still. Was she keeping secrets from everyone? Until recently, Papa had been the only person on earth she wasn’t keeping things from. But now she had something else to hide.

  She feared her affection for Lieutenant Peyton would anger him. But she would eventually leave the Deborah, and this infatuation would fade. No sense in troubling Papa about it now.

  She opened her hand. The little scrap of paper had two hastily scrawled words—“first watch.”

  She scowled. Did Peyton have first watch tonight? She calculated the hours. Yes, he did. What did he mean by informing her he had first watch?

  Then the answer clicked into place, making her heart skip. He wanted her to meet him.

  Before she could stop the silly gesture, she pressed the paper to her lips. She dropped to her knees, opened her trunk, and tucked it carefully into a corner. What did it matter that he thought she was a boy in need of his protection and advice? She would treasure every moment she had with him. And when she set foot on English soil, she would keep these sweet days burning bright in her memory for as long as she lived.

  Five chimes of the bell. Half past ten o’clock. Dominic tapped his fingers on the rail beside the bowsprit. He’d watched her pick up the note. Had she not understood it? Or the note had been too forward. Fool. What had he been thinking?

  That he wanted to talk to her again—that’s what he’d been thinking. He wanted to know why she had been so withdrawn yesterday. He traced the constellations with his eyes up to Polaris, then over to Canes Venatici, the hunting dogs. The bowsprit pointed toward the southern hound’s paws, whose stars hovered protectively over the ship’s destination—his mother and home.

  Dominic rested his chin on his fist. This voyage had been the strangest he’d taken. Few battles, discord among the officers, a young lady in disguise. But bizarrely, he did not want the journey to end. And this time his reluctance to reach land had nothing to do with the pull of the sea.

  Timid steps across the forecastle deck brought his head around. A slender shadow stood in the lantern light from the foremast, and for a moment he imagined standing outside a ballroom waiting for a young lady to sneak away from her chaperone to meet him at the balcony.

  He banished the fanciful image. He preferred the reality. “I didn’t think you would come.”

  She joined him at the rail. “The captain stayed awake musing later than usual.”

  “He does have a lot to think on.”

  Georgana kept a safe distance between them, something she hadn’t done while retrieving the note that afternoon. He had not expected her to come so close. His fingers had nearly touched her dark hair as she crouched to pick it up. They wanted to touch her hair again now, to smooth it out of her eyes so she could better see the tranquil night.

  “You want to ask me again what happened Saturday,” she said.

  He chuckled. She wasn’t easily fooled, which was why he needed to take caution.

  “I won’t tell you, so you might as well not ask.”

  Dominic huffed, half out of frustration and half out of admiration. For as shy as she was, Georgana had a stubborn streak. It was no wonder she’d survived so long at sea.

  “Either Jarvis hurt you or he threatened you. Or both,” he said. “I wish to know which it was.”

  She crossed her arms over her buttoned coat. “And what would you do, if I admitted to it?”

  “I’d keelhaul his sorry—”

  “And that is why I will not tell you.” She glowered at the water below. “You shouldn’t worry over a ship’s boy who cannot even do that rank justice.”

  “That is your grandmother speaking.” Dominic turned his head to glance behind him. All seemed right on the deck. The movement cleared the steam rising inside him. Jarvis had done something. “You should keep yourself out of situations where Jarvis
could catch you alone.”

  “Yes, the captain reminds me of that every day.” She straightened and tucked her hands into her pockets. The autumn air must have felt too cold on her bare hands, but he didn’t feel it. Too many sentiments, both pleasant and unpleasant, twisted within. “You cannot change what happened. We might as well forget it, as you told me to do with my grandmother.”

  Dominic pursed his lips. “But suppose I could change it. Would you allow me to?”

  She walked away from him, pulling a hand from her pocket and trailing it along the rail. “The only way you could fix it would be to undo the past. It’s useless to think that way.”

  He followed behind her and halted at the bowsprit. “I find it an interesting exercise.” In an instant he planted a shoe on the base of the spar and pulled himself up. He grasped one of the overhead lines to steady himself. The bowsprit’s wood was dry under his feet, minimizing his risk of slipping into the black water below. “If you could change anything about your past, Georg . . . what would it be?” He had nearly misspoken and said Georgana.

  It did not take her long to answer. “I would change my father’s absence.”

  Dominic walked forward. He paused as the ship’s bow rose higher than usual. The wooden shaft heaved, the power swelling up his legs and through his whole body, as though he were part of the vessel. The ship settled down again, and the rush lifted his soul. He walked out farther, drawn by the ocean’s melody.

  How would it feel to be in command of such a ship as this? To ride the waves at the speed of the wind on his own orders, with no care for what danger tomorrow would bring? There was no place in that dream for an anchor pulling him back to harbor. His mother was anchor enough.

  “You would not have had him go to sea so often?” he asked.

  “I would not have had him go at all.”

  Dominic’s head swung around. “Why not?”

  She watched him with a guarded expression. “Because my mother never smiled when he was gone. And my grandmother was at her worst.”

  A valid reason. “Perhaps he could not help it. If he loved the sea, how could he not return to it?”

  “Is it good to love the sea more than wife and child?” She glanced from Dominic’s precarious position to the water many feet below. “It does not seem right to give more to something that cannot return love than to the people who can and do.”

  He could not tell if she spoke of her father now or hinted at his own position. Dominic retraced his steps and hopped lightly from the bowsprit to the deck. Her words filled him with a swarming confusion he hadn’t experienced since determining whether or not to accept his promotion to post-captain.

  One thing was clear. When Georgana Woodall returned to England, she would not seek out a husband among the ranks of naval officers. The idea brought a scowl.

  “And what would you change about the past, Lieutenant?”

  A facetious remark flew to his tongue, but he bit it back. The look of pride on his mother’s face jumped forward, along with his guilt at having kept his promotion offer and refusal from her.

  If he had accepted, he would never have met Georgana.

  For the first time in months, his mind settled on that matter. No, he would not have changed his choice to remain a lieutenant.

  The next thought to surface made him recoil. There was something he wished could be changed about his past, but it was something he had never said aloud. Not even to his mother, though she had lived the trial more horribly than he had.

  Polaris hung suspended in Georgana’s eyes, the star’s attendants glittering around, as she waited for him to speak. She seemed to have no trouble waiting. She had waited for her father’s return—she waited on her father now. Someday she might wait for Society to set her up as a wife, and then she would wait on her husband. How did she have such patience?

  Dominic wouldn’t make her wait any longer, and he wouldn’t have another lie between them. “I would change something about my parents as well. I would change the way my father swept my mother into a corner and left her there, embarrassed by her low birth, and how he taught my older brother to do the same.”

  The words tore from his mouth, leaving a trail of unveiled hurt in their wake. Georgana only nodded, as though she knew there were no words that could ease the ache.

  “He hardly spared me a glance either, but after his passing I only had to convince my brother to allow me to join the navy. My mother, on the other hand, had no way to escape the position he had put her in. He left her nothing.”

  A light touch on his arm made him freeze, except for his galloping pulse. “I think she did have an escape,” Georgana said. Too soon she snatched her hand back, as though realizing what she’d done. She hid her hands behind her back. “I should return. The captain won’t be happy if he wakes and sees I’m gone.”

  Dominic nodded. He should patrol the deck, check their location, and assess their speed.

  When he had dropped the note, he didn’t think she would distract him from his duty. But she had the potential to distract him from more than just his responsibilities on the Deborah. If he allowed anything beyond friendship to develop, it would be a disservice to his mother. He couldn’t possibly have room in his heart or the little Portsmouth house for more than one woman.

  Could he?

  He muttered a farewell and watched the young lady drift down the step to the main deck, then down the hatchway. If only she could walk out of his head—and his heart—as easily.

  Dominic adjusted his bicorn and tried to breathe in the wind off the sea. The aroma didn’t invigorate him as it usually did. He stormed the length of the ship from bow to stern, the clomp of his shoes awaking sailors who had dozed in the quiet of the watch.

  He leaned over the side to watch the wake as the ship moved dreamily on. With a metallic creak, a window from the captain’s cabin beneath him opened. A hand crept through, clutching a page that glowed faintly in the light of the stars. He could just make out a ripped edge. The hand hesitated, then slowly drew back in with the paper still intact.

  The sides of Dominic’s lips lifted. And a little part of his soul whistled an old tune he hadn’t sung in many years.

  She hadn’t thrown the drawing away.

  Chapter 22

  Georgana balanced a teacup in her hand as she climbed the ladder to the upper deck. The ship heaved to the side, and she paused to steady the dish. A little tea sloshed into the saucer. If her father got his hands messy, it would be his own fault for taking his morning tea on the quarterdeck.

  “Careful, Taylor.”

  The unexpected voice brought Georgana’s head up. “Fitz? Has Étienne given you leave to work?”

  Fitz scratched his light hair with a shrug. “He says I’m well enough. My head isn’t hurting as it used to.” His teeth still whistled as he spoke. He kept his mouth half closed, trying to hide the missing tooth. When they arrived in Portsmouth, he could get a false one made, but he would never be the same.

  “It must be a relief to be out of the sick bay,” she said.

  He glanced down toward the sick bay beneath them. Even if he still wasn’t well, she had the feeling Étienne would have approved him for work. With more than a quarter of the men unable to work, the ship needed as many hands as possible. If they should run into an enemy ship . . . Georgana didn’t want to think about the results.

  “It’s good to see you up and about,” she said.

  He gave her a sharp look, then shrugged. “We both have duties to attend to.”

  Georgana remembered the cooling teacup in her hand. Fortunate for her, Papa was used to tepid tea. Fitz shuffled off before she could say anything more. She wondered if he still hated her or if they had moved to becoming neutral acquaintances.

  She hurried up to the quarterdeck, where her father stood with a telescope to his eye. Moyle stood nearby, hands clasped behind him.

  “I would have sworn it was a frigate yesterday,” Papa muttered. “Now it looks to be a sch
ooner.”

  Georgana could barely make out a speck on the horizon. Her insides wriggled at the sight of the other ship. Crossing paths with another ship rarely made for a pleasant day aboard a frigate of His Majesty’s navy.

  “She doesn’t seem to be moving very fast,” Moyle said. “If we continue to lose her, she must not be in pursuit.”

  Papa snapped the telescope closed and exchanged it for his cup of tea. “We can only hope.”

  Georgana twisted her hands around the instrument, praying Moyle was right. While Jarvis would curse and shout about not getting any prizes this voyage, she didn’t find prizes worth the loss of life.

  “George, bring me Peyton,” her father said, sipping at the now cold tea. “Moyle, you’re dismissed. Get some rest before your watch.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

  She followed the second lieutenant down from the quarterdeck and then climbed up to the forecastle. Peyton stood at the bow, just like he’d done a few nights ago when they’d talked. She had hoped he would repeat the invitation for a midnight chat, but in the days since, he had hardly spoken to her.

  She couldn’t blame him. He had shared something so personal about himself with a mere ship’s boy. Friends or not, she wondered if he regretted his decision to let her see a corner of his life he usually left covered.

  The lieutenant stood with the triangular sextant held to his eye. They sailed against the wind this morning, and the contrary breeze blew the tails of his blue coat out behind him. The brass buttons glimmered as they caught the sun. His brown hair rippled beneath his hat, and a hint of a smile graced his lips.

  He fit naturally at the prow, as though he’d been written into the building plans and placed just so. A ship didn’t need a figurehead if it could have a captain such as this. Why he hadn’t received a promotion by now, she couldn’t say, but a ship could not hope for a better commander than a Captain Peyton.

  Peyton said something to the midshipman at his side, and the young man wrote quickly. Georgana waited a few paces away until he dismissed the midshipman to look up the numbers on charts to determine their location. She saluted as the young gentleman passed and again when Peyton turned to her.