A Different Sort of Perfect (10 page)

But her eyes didn't leave him. "It is good,
then?"

Stubborn to go with spoiled. But not flighty and not
shy. "I have known better, Lady Clara."

She deflated, rather like James Sadler's flash modern
balloon, the one that had dumped him into the Thames.

His lips defeated him in the end, their edges curling
up despite his determination. "But never by much. And I promise you
that when the enemy's in front of their cannons, they'll fire even
straighter and faster."

In the depths of the gun deck, somewhere in the stern
battery beneath the quarterdeck, a young soprano sniggered.
Staunton or one of the powder boys had overheard, blast the little
monkey. Her face brightened to a rosy glow, startling in the grey,
misty seascape surrounding the
Topaze
. She straightened her
spine, squared her shoulders.

And drilled Fleming with an old-fashioned,
governess-for-twenty-years, take-no-prisoners glare.

The heat from the gun deck rose through the decking,
from his collar to his cheeks. But it wasn't really the heat, of
course. He'd made game of her, she didn't appreciate his sport, and
she had no qualms against directing her displeasure toward its
proper target. If he wished to keep her temper sweet, he needed to
lose his hunting license.

But that wouldn't guide her into place as a member of
his crew. No one else was safe from the captain's sport, and if he
didn't treat her in the same manner as he treated everyone else,
the crew would see through his charade.

Unfortunately, even with that disaster dangling over
him, his usually quick tongue refused to risk another shot. Perhaps
it feared being bitten off should hers prove quicker. But the image
of tongue versus tongue wasn't one he needed to pursue, either, and
Fleming caught himself clearing his throat.

It was her eyes, those dark liquid pools. It could
only be so. They were too dark to be natural, so dark that the word
popped into his thoughts whenever he glanced at her, and the
shifting emotions they displayed enthralled him. Using them, she
had mesmerized him at some deep, incomprehensible level, as that
Austrian physician claimed he'd accomplished with animal magnetic
fluids. Not that concepts such as
animal
were any safer
topics of thought.

Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. His mind had carried
him around in a complete circle. And now that startling rosy pink
glow again crept up her cheeks. He'd been staring and she didn't
appreciate such forwardness, either. She searched for the man she
loved, and any impertinence from Mrs. Fleming's little boy would be
treated in the manner it deserved.

He yanked his gaze away. On the gun deck below, every
face waited for his next orders, or for something. Abbot watched
and waited along with the rest, scraper in hand, chin sinking onto
his chest. If Fleming didn't know his first lieutenant better, he'd
swear the man was worried.

Which was even more ridiculous.

"Mr. Abbot," but his voice sounded hoarse, as if he'd
run a mile on dry, dusty roads. He cleared his throat again. "Mr.
Abbot, take each gun crew through three shots slowly. Once the new
men have learned their tasks, we'll try a rolling broadside."

Abbot's mouth moved, chewing over his orders. "Aye,
aye, sir." He clapped on his hat and swung around. "Mr. Chandler,
Mr. Staunton, let's teach our crews. From for'ard aft, each gun
will singly fire three shots." Unspoken words waved for attention
beneath his orders:
watch how I instruct the new hands.

"Aye, aye, sir." The two young voices, soprano and
tenor, spoke together.

Abbot stalked for'ard, nearly walking into a
moongazing landman who didn't know enough to get out of the first
lieutenant's path — no, that was Hennessy, the captain's steward
and an experienced loader, and he certainly knew better. But there
he stood, staring at the quarterdeck with his mouth drifting open
and mechanical wheels spinning behind his sharp little eyes. Abbot
snaked out an arm, pushed him into his proper position — Hennessy
stumbled, started, grabbed onto the fireman beside him, stayed
standing by a mutual effort, and Abbot stalked on.

Whatever she'd done with her eyes, his entire crew
seemed affected.

The for'ard-most starboard gun, number two, fired its
three slow shots, only threatening the target with its final
effort. The lovely gunpowder smoke drifted along the ship,
billowing over the quarterdeck, enticing, alluring, beckoning, and
before number four fired its second time Fleming snapped alert and
found he'd drifted down the ladder to the gangway on its haze.
Clerk glued to his side —
female
clerk, crab it — he hovered
above the guns in turn, observing the crew, the timing, the fall of
each shot. Habit yanked the necessary information from him, and the
scritching of the crow quill pen followed his steps.

It was the only way he knew she was there. He wasn't
going to look and be mesmerized again.

And halfway through, as Chandler instructed his
second crew on their duties, his feet found the midship ladder
before them and of course descended to the gun deck itself.

Clerk in tow.

Female clerk.

And no one seemed to notice.

Except him.

The firing continued unabated. Heart singing, Fleming
joined in the exercise. The splendid exercise.

His plan was coming off. And it seemed perfect.

Oh, she never expected anything like this aboard even
the most fighting of ships! Raging, dizzy excitement lurked within
the crisp chemical smells of burning gunpowder and slow match, the
pacing thunder of the rolling broadside, the laboring men swarming
about the cannons, the crack of muskets and swivel guns from the
fighting tops. Heat suffused Clara's face in another flush, but not
this time of mortification. Her heart pounded in time to the firing
and she had to fight not to be swept along by the thrill. If
Captain Fleming indeed depended upon her to keep accurate records,
then it would be horrible to contribute only errors to something so
exciting.

Book and pen in hand, inkhorn bouncing on its strap
about her neck, she hung on Captain Fleming's coattails and
followed him from clew to earring as he oversaw the exercise. With
so much to learn, his actions promised to be an excellent guide,
and so she took him as her example. When he crouched behind a
particular gun, she too peered along its length, trying to
ascertain what he found so fascinating. When he exclaimed, "Good
shot!" to one gun crew, she noted where the cannonball splashed
into the sea in relation to the floating target, and marked the
entry for future reference. And when he instructed the next-to-last
gun crew to pause and wait for the uproll before firing, she
watched how the ship's extra height carried the shot farther than
that fired by the preceding crew, and made a note of that, as
well.

The excitement seemed to affect almost everyone. Even
the dullest of landmen perked up and closed his mouth as the long
guns banged and roared. Several sailors, upon catching her eye
through the billowing gunpowder smoke, treated her to a kind,
disarming grin, some nodding in greeting, and in the waist's
central battery — what the captain called the slaughterhouse — Wake
took a moment from shoving in quoins to touch his knuckle to
forehead in cheerful salute. Only Mr. Abbot and Chandler didn't
include her in their masculine satisfaction.

Well, hers wasn't the sort of personality that needed
for everyone to like her. They'd just have to carry their swollen
heads about without her assistance.

It seemed to last for hours, and indeed the sun fell
well toward the horizon before Captain Fleming ordered the guns
bowsed down as he returned to the quarterdeck. By then Clara panted
from her exertions, throat parched but enthusiasm unbounded. And
only as the last gunpowder smoke drifted away did she realize how
deafened she felt, how everyone seemed to be speaking more loudly
but still she had difficulty discerning their words. In a daze, she
slipped the crow pen into the inkhorn's holder and yanked the
leather strap from around her neck.

Without warning, a cloud darkened the misty, retiring
sun. She glanced up. The sails flapped, a forlorn, desolate sound.
Clara shivered in a sudden foreboding chill and time slowed to an
expectant crawl around her—

—as her fingers lost their grip on the inkhorn and it
tumbled to the spotless white deckboards below.

While the stopper remained in her hand.

* * * *

He knew it was coming. Somehow Fleming knew, when her
trembling hands put away the pen and unslung the inkhorn's strap,
somehow he knew disaster hovered on the quarterdeck's wings. Every
humor in his system yearned to fly forward and grab the inkhorn
before disaster could uncoil and strike, but his shoes seemed
nailed to the deck. And as the catastrophe unfolded, all he could
do was stand there and watch as the inkhorn tumbled, too slowly to
be anything but the worst nightmare, spilling black ink across her
skirt, the mainmast fife rail, the coiled halyards and belaying
pins, and finally the deck itself. The inkhorn clunked onto the
white boards, thumped to its side, and happily drained out Titus
Ferry's prized oak gall ink.

For a moment everyone stood rooted. Fleming wished he
could close his eyes and go back in time, so he could warn the
silly chit not to handle the blasted thing without first tightening
the stopper. But that would have sounded patronizing and wouldn't
produce the effect he needed. And now she presented him with an
infernally awkward situation and there was nothing to be done but
work through it.

Somehow.

In the unnatural silence permeating the ship and its
crowd of staring sailors, Lady Clara gasped, the sound loud,
sudden, and startling. Her hands flew to her cheeks and hovered,
uncertain, over her mouth and pallid face. She stared in horror at
the mess and those huge, dark eyes seemed to widen even
further.

And she dropped to her knees on the deck, scrubbing
at the spreading stain with her skirt.

As if that would clean it off.

His temper broiled just beneath his surface, sporting
a satiric, disagreeable snarl. He wanted to scream, rant, rave,
carry on until he turned blue in the face, but not only would that
not repair the catastrophe, it might upset the crew. Tamping the
tantrum away, he instead attempted a smile, as if nothing important
had occurred, but it felt strained and across the quarterdeck,
Abbot's eyes prepared to pop from his whitened face.

At the least, he could stop her from making such a
fool of herself. Fleming reached down, wrapped his hand about her
elbow, and tugged. More capable hands could take over and repair
the mess. But in her frantic dismay, she misunderstood his
intention and yanked her arm from his grip.

Still scrubbing away. With the hem of a silken dress.
Like the lowest scullery maid using her apron to rub out a spot on
the hearth. He wondered her pride could bear the humiliation.

"Beg pardon, cap'n. Beg pardon." The voice behind him
rode a higher timbre, as if the speaker didn't quite shout but came
close. Nevertheless, after the drubbing the long guns had given his
ears, the speaker yet seemed distant.

But the bucket nudging against his knee wasn't.
Fleming stepped aside, and Wake and Mayne, the two sailors who'd
stitched her new gown, doffed their hats and crowded beside her,
thumping down buckets of sand and water by the soaked-in pool of
black ink.

"Beg pardon, m'lady," Wake said, "we knows you mean
well, but that won't help it none. Here, let's sprinkle this here
stain with some sand — go ahead, Mayne, show her how it's done
Bristol-fashion — then we'll drip some water on it and use the
holystones. That's what they're for, y'know." The old fo'c'sleman
leaned over the mess on one side of her, the young foretopman on
the other, and three backs blocked Fleming's view of their
work.

"I didn't mean to." Her voice sounded as if she
wanted to cry, and the satiric sneer in Fleming's heart felt a tug.
Oh, please, let the common sailors react the same. She certainly
seemed to have charmed these two, and while Wake wasn't educated,
not a foolish bone resided in his wizened body.

"Course you didn't, m'lady, we knows that. See?
Mayne's scrubbing with that there holystone and he's getting it
right out. This won't take nothing but a few minutes to clear up,
so don't you worry your head none about it. Needs more sand here,
Mayne."

It sounded… it almost sounded as if… He glanced
around. Crossing the gangway and clearing up around the ship, the
old hands mainly wore indulgent smiles. Several glanced at Lady
Clara in a reassuring, paternal sort of manner. As if she were a
much-loved young member of the family.

As if part of his job were already done.

Fleming raised his eyebrows at Abbot:
Are you
seeing this?

Abbot looked away:
No. Sir.

No pity there, at least. The world remained on its
axis.

Finally the three rose and stepped back, revealing a
deck and railing as clean as before. But still Lady Clara wilted,
her hair drooping, her eyes sad.

Her dress a stained, crumpled disaster.

"Now, you just soak that pretty gown of yourn in
cold, fresh water overnight." Wake wore the same indulgent smile as
the other experienced hands; he'd been charmed right out of his
usual sharpness. "And if that don't work, we'll hit up the old
pusser for some lemon juice, and that will tayke it right out. It
would be the pity of the world to leave such horrid stains in such
nice twillt silk." Behind him, Mayne nodded without ever looking up
from the again spotless deck.

"Thank you, both of you." Even her voice drooped.