Georgana's Secret (Proper Romance)

by Arlem Hawks

  The ship pulsed with it.

  Against her will, her mind fled to Lushill House—the soft greenery of the gardens, the serene architecture. If she wanted a better chance of seeing that place again, that place of so many bittersweet memories, she should have stayed in the powder room.

  She chewed the corner of her bottom lip to distract herself from the quaking inside.

  Jarvis uttered a long string of curses. Dominic almost joined him.

  The glow of morning had increased enough to see the enormous flags flying from the approaching vessels. Blue, white, red.

  The third lieutenant lowered the telescope and slammed it into Dominic’s waiting hand. “It’s the St. Germain and the Intelligence. I told you we should have taken the Intelligence. Now we get to suffer from your lack of intelligence.”

  “It can’t be.” Dominic raised the instrument to his eye. The Intelligence had been American. He sighted the frigate. It certainly appeared to be their previous foe.

  Twenty-eight guns on the St. Germain. A thirty-eight-gun frigate like the Deborah should have the advantage, but add the ten or twelve guns of its schooner companion . . .

  He set his jaw. It would be a fair fight.

  He scanned the deck of the smaller boat, looking for a sign that Jarvis’s assumption was right. The crew looked to be an unassuming mixture of nationalities, like many crews. He dropped the telescope to the man at the wheel, and his fingers contracted around the shaft. Thick red hair topped the burly man’s head. Dominic remembered the stammering captain. Now the man shouted, but he didn’t seem to be in charge. The dark-featured man, who had acted as a mate when Dominic inspected their cargo, was giving orders and striding the forecastle.

  They’d been fooled.

  “It is the Intelligence.” His stomach tightened, as though it had been rammed into the barrel of a cannon. He’d walked that boat. He’d heard the odd accent of the real captain pretending to be a first mate and the uncertainty of the American acting as though he was in charge. The red-haired man was probably the only American that ship had on board. And they’d duped him. Rice and tobacco. No doubt they had only enough to make a convincing storeroom.

  Dominic spun on his heel and raced to where Captain Woodall stood with the sailing master, Mr. Jordan. The ship hadn’t come up to speed as quickly as they had hoped.

  “The St. Germain and the Intelligence,” Dominic said.

  The captain’s eyes closed. They should have listened to Jarvis. The lieutenant would gloat when this was over.

  “If every man does his duty, we will see this through,” Captain Woodall said.

  Dominic nodded. The flags that bore Nelson’s last message to his men as they sailed toward the Battle of Trafalgar waved in his mind. England expects that every man will do his duty. How many men, like him, drew strength from that phrase?

  A pop echoed across the water, and as one, the entire crew hit the deck. The cannonball whistled harmlessly off the larboard side. Dominic’s mind shifted, more slowly than usual, into its practiced numbness.

  “Turn her about,” the captain shouted. “To your post, Jarvis. Ready a broadside and load the chase guns. We need to throw as much as we can at them before we’re surrounded.”

  The third lieutenant ran for the hatch. Dominic almost followed him to check that Georgana wasn’t with the powder monkeys. Instead he turned and relayed the wearing orders to the crew. She’d told him she’d go to the orlop deck, had she not? He couldn’t remember.

  Seamen drew in the sails above him. They couldn’t run anymore. Now was the time to stand and fight.

  Georgana gripped the ladder as the boy above her swung his feet. He’d already kicked her face twice, and they had only made it to the messdeck.

  Someone had called for more ammunition, even though the ship hadn’t fully turned yet. She moved more slowly than usual, not wanting to put up too much powder at once. Some of the boys moved at regular pace, mindlessly following the ill-advised orders. They were on their third round of powder as though in the midst of battle already.

  A broadside shot from above rocked the ship back. She braced herself against the next ladder, then mounted and continued her journey. Now they could move at normal speed, though with all crews working shorthanded, loading would take longer than usual.

  Darkness still prevailed on the gun deck, but they were starting to see clearer. The gun crews’ faces glowed blue in the light of the rising sun seeping through the ports around the cannons. Midshipmen snapped orders, and powder monkeys scuttled about to avoid getting trampled.

  Georgana set down her cartridges. With two enemy ships, this battle could last hours. She jumped to her feet and ran for the hatch.

  Her head didn’t turn at the boom—not until it knocked her flat. She skittered across the deck, bowling into men and boys. Arms and legs, waistcoats and petticoat breeches, lay in a jumbled mess across the floor.

  Smoke filled the room. Georgana’s ears whined so loudly they nearly blocked the cry, “Fire! Fire on the gun deck!”

  She pushed herself away from another stunned powder monkey and cringed at the burning in her palms. They bled through the dust and powder coating her skin. She stared, her brain not engaging. What . . . ?

  Someone grasped her under the arms and hoisted her up. Fitz shook her shoulders. “Fire!” She saw his lips move more than heard him.

  Fire.

  Flames licked the deck, and men beat them with shirts and jackets, whatever they had. Guns abandoned, crew members ran for the elm-tree pump to fill buckets. Lifeless bodies lay scattered across the floor.

  Fitz dragged her to the messdeck to get out of the way of the men fighting the fire. Crewmen laden with bleeding comrades eased down the ladders toward the surgeon on the orlop deck.

  Too much powder. They’d had too much powder. Fitz shook her again. “Are you hurt, George?”

  Despite her stinging hands, she moved her head slowly left and right.

  “Good. Come on,” he said as though the explosion hadn’t happened and men weren’t lying dead on the floor above them.

  They headed for the magazine and more powder.

  Chapter 26

  Dawn brought clearer views and smoke rising from the hatchway. The crank of the elm-tree pump beat time with the steps of men towing buckets down to the gun deck. Cannon fire punctuated the steady rhythm, its thunder reverberating up through Dominic’s shoes.

  The Deborah rocked back and forth each time a ball hit her hull. The Intelligence had ridden up on the larboard side. She didn’t have many guns but enough to drive the carpenter’s crew across the ship patching holes. The St. Germain had neared, placing the Deborah in range of the French ship’s twelve-pounders, though she’d already used the swivel gun at her bow to inflict damage to the Deborah’s mizzenmast.

  Dominic ran across the deck, shouting orders to the midshipmen for how to set their guns. He couldn’t stop moving. Stopping would give him time to think about the fire on the gun deck. Though she was supposed to be two decks below it, the blaze started near the bow of the ship, just above Georgana’s position in the powder room.

  They’ll put it out, he told himself repeatedly, trying not to let the fears consume him.

  The St. Germain’s masts nodded toward them as the ship sailed closer. The large French flag snapped defiantly.

  “Give them a broadside the moment she’s in line,” Captain Woodall said, voice tight. His gaze kept darting to the hatchway’s smoke.

  “Yes, sir.”

  A ruddy head lifted through the hatch before Dominic could give the command. Captain Woodall jumped toward the edge of the quarterdeck, eyes piercing.

  The crack of another round of enemy fire echoed across the water.

  “Back to your post, Jarvis!” the captain screamed, jabbing a finger at the lieutenant in the hatchway.

  Grapeshot whizzed past Dominic’s face, its hot lead beating the air against his skin. His eyes clenched, and he waited for the pain of a piece hitting
its mark. But that was not the shock he should have been bracing for.

  Dominic heard a scream that rattled his soul, and his eyelids flew open to splinters and rope raining down on the quarterdeck over a writhing figure. Blood stained the sawdust and planks beneath a mangled hand.

  “Captain!” Dominic dropped to his knees. The whites of the man’s wide eyes shone in the growing light.

  Jarvis ran up. “Stupid oaf, I came to tell him the fire is out.”

  Dominic ground his teeth. “Stow it, Jarvis,” he said, jaw taut. Jarvis withered under his glare. “Take him below.”

  Jarvis was the last person he wished to entrust the captain to, but Dominic had to stay on the quarterdeck. Someone must be in command.

  Dominic shouted for sailors from the surrounding gun crews, and they lifted the battered captain from the deck and eased him toward the hatch.

  Dominic had watched this scene before. It had played over and over through his mind for months. A different captain, a different ship, but both then and now Dominic was left alone on the quarterdeck with three hundred men at his command. Only this time it wasn’t just the captain who was wounded. It was Georgana’s father.

  Dominic caught the arm of a powder monkey running past. “Find George Taylor in the magazine. Send him to the surgeon.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  The boy ran off after the men carrying Captain Woodall. The captain’s eyes were closed, and he pressed his arm into his stomach. Crimson stained his waistcoat and jacket.

  Dominic’s heart begged him to run for Georgana himself, but his feet stayed planted. Now was not the time. He was acting captain, not a lovesick lieutenant. With all his fortitude, he slammed an iron door shut against the impulse and let his battle instincts take over.

  “Run out the guns!” he cried. “Fire!”

  White smoke filled the air, heralding the start of his command.

  Georgana met them on the ladder. For a moment she stared, not comprehending the scene before her. Jarvis hauling her father down to the orlop. She saw red. So much red.

  “George!” Jarvis snapped. “Back to your duty.” He guided the group holding Papa toward the ladder to the orlop.

  Georgana’s feet didn’t move. Her stomach heaved. She couldn’t . . .

  “Lieutenant Peyton wants him to go with the captain,” one of the boys said, coming down on the heels of the group.

  Jarvis’s eyes flashed. He quit his position, making the men stumble under her father’s weight. Georgana dashed in. She didn’t ease the load of the sturdy crewmen much, but she helped keep her father steady.

  The third lieutenant stood to the side, watching the struggle. Hot indignation, thicker than the smoke that filled the gun deck, billowed inside her. She urged to launch herself at the smirking officer.

  “Come, sir,” she said quietly to her father as they descended. “Étienne will help you.” The deep lines across Papa’s face wrenched at her heart. Though partially covered, she could see the mutilated flesh of his arm. Could this much blood have come just from his hand?

  Scorched and broken men filled the surgeon’s workroom. The curly haired Frenchman quickly tied off a bandage before running to the captain’s side. “Here. Put him here.”

  They laid her father on a stained table amid a display of surgeon’s tools. Georgana balked at the sight of their sharp edges.

  “My arm,” Papa wheezed. “My arm.”

  Étienne took one look and turned, motioning to his mate. “The arm, it has to come off.” A mate jumped forward to grab straps to secure Papa to the table.

  “It . . . what?” Georgana’s tiny voice got lost in the groans of the wounded around them. They couldn’t take his arm. How would he function as a captain? He wouldn’t be able to write. Grandmother would shame him. What sort of life could he lead? “No, you can’t!”

  Étienne glowered. “If I do not take the arm, infection will eventually take his life. Plenty of men will line up behind him waiting for my care. Will you help, or must I send you out?”

  “George,” her father whispered. He panted under the straps the surgeon’s mate tightened about him. Étienne made a cut in the sleeve of her father’s coat and tore it off.

  Georgana flinched at the callousness. Her eyes burned. She wasn’t supposed to be here. She should be sitting at Lushill in the breakfast room listening to Grandmother’s shrieking and the clinking of china. She should be a young lady, naive and sheltered from the horrors of the world.

  But she wasn’t a lady. She had seen war and helped fuel cannons that maimed and destroyed. She didn’t fit into the genteel life anymore, and she didn’t fit into this one either.

  Her fingernails dug into her palms. Papa needed her. She pushed herself forward to the end of the table and knelt. “I’m here.” She put a hand on his head. Her chin trembled. “I’m here.”

  She closed her eyes and ducked her head, steeling herself as the surgeon took Papa’s strong arm that had lifted her to his shoulders in the few happy moments of her childhood, and sawed it away.

  Chapter 27

  Georgana carefully lowered her father onto the makeshift bed in the corner of the carpenter’s workshop with the help of a blood-covered surgeon’s mate. The young man retreated quickly, leaving her and Papa alone in the dark room. Here the deck didn’t rock so violently with the ship’s movement. Walls muted sounds of wounded and dying men. Bringing him to the workshop was the best she could do.

  She moved the little lantern she’d found in the room to a secure place near him. Then she sat on the floor to watch. His shuddering breaths had strengthened a little since the trauma of surgery. She couldn’t break her gaze away from the knob that ended just above where his elbow should have been.

  “The ship,” he said. His eyes stayed closed. “The fire.”

  She took his shaking hand, the only one he had left. “The fire is gone. The deck was damaged, but the men worked fast enough that it didn’t eat down to the messdeck.”

  “Thank the heavens.”

  “Would you like something for the pain?” she asked, thinking of their brandy stores. He gave one curt shake of his head.

  “Please, sir.” Papa. “You’re hurting.”

  “I will not put you in danger.”

  Georgana rested her forehead against her knees. Of all the times to risk revealing their secret, now was it. What crew member would think twice about a wounded, delirious captain talking about his daughter?

  Papa lay silent for several minutes, and she hoped he was dozing. Soon she’d need to go for a blanket. His skin was hot and slick now, but she didn’t want him to catch cold in the chill of the orlop.

  “Peyton is commanding?” her father asked.

  “Yes.” Walking the same deck where Papa had suffered his wound. She murmured a prayer, not knowing if it would ascend past the carnage of the upper decks. Please, keep him from harm.

  Dominic whirled as Moyle met him on the quarterdeck. “Gather a boarding party for the Intelligence.”

  The second lieutenant glanced at the floundering ship off the larboard rail. Its crew frantically hacked at the grappling hooks slowly pulling them toward the Deborah. “She hasn’t struck her colors, sir.” Indeed, the French flag still waved behind the Intelligence.

  Dominic clapped him on the shoulder. “She will soon. Or you will do it for her.”

  “Yes, sir,” Moyle said through a grin.

  “Once we silence those guns, we’ll double our efforts on the St. Germain.” The French frigate had drifted out of range to regroup but kept launching periodic shots. Geysers exploded up from the sea around them. “What say you to a pair of prizes for the return journey?”

  The lieutenant’s smile widened. “I don’t think even Jarvis could frown at that.” Moyle hurried away to gather his party, and Dominic turned to the mizzenmast. A cannonball had taken a bite from the side of the mast and wreaked havoc in the rigging. Mr. Byam stood aloft, untangling and fixing the lines. Too much pull in one direction or an
other could topple the already weakened spar. They could sail with two masts, but not well.

  “Hold her steady, Mr. Fitz,” Dominic said as he passed by the wheel. The coxswain nodded.

  Dominic could practically taste the victory. The Deborah had sustained damage in the hour and a half since the first broadside, but much of it had been to her masts, yards, and rigging—all of it difficult to repair, but none of it a threat to the immediate safety of the ship. The St. Germain, however, had taken several hard hits at the waterline. Her pumping crews would be working frantically to clear the flooding.

  Just as the sun burst up from the horizon, he ordered men to fire a volley at the St. Germain from the long-range cannons. The sailors cheered. The deck shook as the long guns let go their loads. At least one shot hit the St. Germain.

  Yes, they would win the day. Dominic brushed a trickle of sweat from his cheek. When he glanced down, a smear of blood lined his hand. Blasted debris.

  “She’s coming back around!”

  To his right, the enemy frigate pulled in, as though on course to collide with the Deborah. “Ready a broadside,” he said, then turned to the opposite rail. The captain of the Intelligence raced aft and pulled down the French flag in surrender as Moyle and his party climbed aboard with pistols raised.

  A midshipman ran up beside Dominic. “The St. Germain is leaving, sir.”

  He swore. The French ship intended to turn tail, bold enough to start a row but not honorable enough to finish it. They couldn’t cut the Intelligence off and give chase now, not with Moyle and his group aboard. The St. Germain lumbered just out of range of the Deborah’s eighteen-pounders, tacking south. She rode much lower in the water than she had almost two hours ago.

  “Fire the long guns until she’s out of their range.”

  On the main deck of the Intelligence below, the captain handed his sword over to Moyle. The decimated crew drew together behind him, their red-headed pretender nowhere in sight. Dominic couldn’t believe he’d mistaken them for Americans. They were almost as obviously French as Georgana was female. The corner of his lip curled.