A Different Sort of Perfect (2 page)

The fresh breeze tried to snatch her shawl away,
billowing the silk behind her, and she tightened it about her arms.
The bonnet's brim shaded her eyes from the noonday light, but
welcome summer warmth reached her face when she tilted up her chin.
Behind her, the assembly hall and shops tempted, a promising source
of news and fun. Perhaps the latest fashion plates had arrived from
Paris, and if so, Harmony and Diana would have something droll to
say about them. But it was likely the viscount had discussed his
intended marriage with his friend, Colonel Durbin, who would of
course tell Mrs. Durbin, which meant Miss Dersingham and therefore
everyone else in town knew about it, too. Better to avoid the
popular places until she felt more capable of speaking rationally
on the subject; Harmony and Diana would consider her scrape just as
worthy of their wit. While there was a ridiculous side to the
affair, she wasn't yet prepared to discuss it.

It was impossible to think on private woes while
walking a public street. She hurried on, determinedly keeping her
mind and features a composed, sociable blank. As she neared the
Dock, the ocean's scent counterbalanced the horses and coal-smoke.
The houses crowded together and the streets narrowed. But before
respectability deteriorated too far, a mews opened to the side.
Clara ducked inside, away from the lane. Halfway down the long, low
building stood a faded yellow door, locked, of course. But Paul,
Papa's stable boy, had taught Harmony and her how to open it during
their long-ago hoyden days. A shake of her wrist while turning, one
hard push, and the door clacked open in defeat.

Inside was dark as the darkest night, quieter than
the streets, and the slice of brilliant sunshine cutting through
the open door revealed dust cloth-covered lumps — long sofas and
loungers, high-backed, old-fashioned wingchairs, stubby little
tables for teas long gone. She and Paul used to peer beneath the
white sheets at the fine old furniture, giggling and sneezing as
dust flew about them, Harmony worrying her fingernails and hanging
on her heel in the doorjamb, ready to run at the first hint of
trouble and adamant no dust would touch her white gossamer gown. No
one had ever come near, though.

They'd had so much fun together. But then Papa had
died, all the horses but two had been sold, Paul had been let go,
Harmony had convinced her to turn up her hair and attend to
fashion, and high-society Diana had taken Paul's place in their
little trio. When Uncle David had written Paul's reference, he'd
printed
finis
to her childhood.

Without her consent, tears blurred the mounded shapes
around her. She left the door on the latch for what little light it
offered and slipped through the silent aisles, her wrap catching on
a dressing table and raising dust that tickled her nose toward a
sneeze. In the nearest corner, a large, cone-shaped bundle hung
from the rafter, covered from hook to bottom with aged canvas and
bound with cleverly knotted ropes. Clara slid beneath the canvas's
folded and stitched edge, twisted beneath the binding — tighter
than it used to be, or was she larger? She squeezed inside anyway.
Beneath the covering, rippling softness slid across her cheek and
clavicle, and she settled cross-legged within the hanging chair's
satin draperies. Here, in her secret place, gently rocking, away
from everyone, with no sights or stray sounds to distract her,
finally she could think.

Why,
why
had Papa written that odious clause
into his will? She wanted his money, of course she did — it was her
inheritance by birthright. But she would only inherit if she
married before her nineteenth birthday, less than half a year away,
and that meant she had to marry with Uncle David's permission and
approval. Her time was running out. And the only man she'd ever
want to marry was so far out of her reach, he might as well be
dead.

Sobs broke through and she crumpled her handkerchief
to her face. Phillippe. Captain Phillippe Levasseur, beyond elegant
in his pristine white breeches and blue uniform coat trimmed with
bullion and lace. Those careless auburn locks, cut short in the
modern Brutus manner, had cascaded over his smooth-cream forehead
and his commanding dark eyes had never left hers as he bowed over
her hand when Diana's older brother introduced them in the assembly
room. She'd been weak-kneed then, oh, indeed. If he'd commanded her
to wed him at that moment, she'd have taken his arm without
hesitation.

Everyone in her set knew he was perfect, had said so
time and again. He'd danced the first
six
with her at the
Mallorys' ball, setting tongues wagging throughout the three towns,
and Uncle David had scolded her for the imprudence. Phillippe had
taken to calling on the Barlows every Tuesday, when he knew she'd
be there, too, and they hadn't been able to claim their meetings at
the assembly room were accidental for long. Of course his political
views were odd, republican and democratic and so on, but surely his
charm and delightful manners made up for all that. And the
possibilities once she owned a chateau and vineyard in France!

But the peace had collapsed more than a year ago.
She'd heard nothing,
nothing
from him since then. Fashion
plates could cross from France, Royal Society fellows traveled back
and forth as they pleased. But the tear-stained notes she wrote him
could only be burned.

How could an odious viscount, or even a duke, compare
with perfection? And how could Uncle David expect her to marry that
brute? Uncle David had been so kind when he'd first arrived in
Plymouth to care for her, sitting quietly in the music room while
she'd poured out her heart through the harp and pianoforte. He'd
told her stories of Papa's years at sea, during the American war
and the early days of the revolution in France. But he'd grown
quieter during the brief year of peace and as she'd neared her
penultimate birthday, he'd set himself to select her husband. As if
he couldn't wait to be shot of her. And as if she couldn't be
trusted to select her own husband perfectly well.

She wiped her eyes and fought the tears. Viscount
Maynard was out of the question. But she did need a husband. She
could pray for peace, final, blessed peace, and wait for Phillippe.
But if peace took too much time, she'd lose Papa's home, the rooms
where they'd played and watched ships in the harbor, everything
he'd intended for her.

Or she could marry someone less than perfect.

Hinges creaked, not nearby. A hollow boom echoed in
the warehouse's cavern. Clara gasped. Even her tears froze as
footsteps approached. No one had ever interrupted before, in all
the years she'd visited the warehouse. It almost seemed a sign.

"Right, that one there." The Cheapside voice made no
pretension toward being anything but mercantile. "And these.
They're to go to the
Topaze,
out in the Sound. Oh, and that
hanging thing. Be careful with it, clumsy Joe."

The chair swung, rocked, rocked again, jolted up and
back. Clara grabbed the wooden frame, her heart pounding so loudly
it seemed impossible they didn't hear it.

"Heavier than it looks, mate."

And then the hanging chair floated free, the unseen
footsteps' owners carrying it — and her — away.

It would be humiliating, but she had to say something
before she wound up on board a ship. She opened her mouth.

No sound emerged. Her voice refused. She closed her
mouth, rolling her lips together.

A ship. A ship could take her anywhere. Including
France. Across the seven seas, in search of her perfect
Phillippe.

She could vanish for more than a few hours, indeed
for as long as it took. She could find him, marry him, bring him
home to Uncle David, a
fait accompli.

Uncle David. Aunt Helen. They'd worry when she
vanished, when they discovered she was gone. It would serve them
right. How could they imagine they knew what was best for her when
they refused to even consider her wishes?

It was a wild, a desperate gamble. But her situation
was dire.

And she wouldn't have to see the viscount again.

Simply as that, she had a third option.

Wood and water, victuals and cordage, canvas and
coal, all had come aboard and were stowed before noon. The powder
hoy had paid her dangerous visit and been warped back across the
harbor, the shot garlands and lockers were filled, and Captain
Alexander Fleming, reminding himself that
Topaze
preferred
her balance half a strake by the stern, directed the last of her
six-month stores into the hold himself. All hands worked double
tides, and Fleming ignored the rueful looks slanting his way every
time he demanded more speed; it would do no good to start the
cruise with floggings for sulkiness. Some things a ship's captain
simply couldn't afford to notice.

And some things he must.

"Mr. Chandler," he yelled at the foretop, "should you
like your hammock to be sent up?"

A pair of startled young eyes peered down from the
crosstrees. "Almost finished, sir." The eyes and brown mop vanished
behind the t'gallant shrouds. In one of those sudden, unpredictable
hushes that sometimes happened when three hundred laboring men
paused at the same moment, a whisper and shrill giggle sounded
startlingly loud.

He wouldn't notice that bit, though. Fleming swept a
slow glance along the controlled chaos of the frigate's deck, hen
coops stacked abaft the mainmast, a barrel between the bow chasers,
someone's embroidered seabag atop the capstan head. The first
lieutenant guided a crew of dockmen over the larboard gangway,
their arms loaded with — Fleming took another, longer look before
he recognized the second-hand furniture he'd bought for his great
cabin, dining room, and coach, all still wrapped up in sailcloth
and cordage. It was embarrassingly old-fashioned stuff, gilt edging
and piping, cushions and drapes the color of polished antique gold,
like something Marie Antoinette would have installed in the Palace
of Versailles, and not to his taste at all. But it was mahogany,
the wood was stout and beautifully carved, and more importantly, it
was all he could find in the hurried hour he'd stolen from the
refitting. They'd done well with prizes last cruise, capturing a
Spanish snow-brig loaded with sugar cane from the West Indies among
a half-dozen other vessels, and his now-proud back was no longer on
friendly terms with hammocks. His personal fortune had moved up in
the world; now his cabin furnishings needed to follow it.

One of the dockmen carrying the hanging chair
stumbled. The sailcloth, bound closed around the wooden frame and
satin drapes, rippled as if struck. The
thunk
of wood
smacking wood cut through another of those unexpected hushes, and
in its midst someone sneezed.

The workers froze, glancing at each other with blank
faces, as if trying to figure out who did that. Fleming frowned. It
seemed a silly thing to hide.

"Mind the paintwork!" First Lieutenant Benjamin Abbot
yelled, his normally thoughtful face cracking into tense lines
through the turmoil. "And don't scar my decks. Now, get that
furniture below, you louts."

The dockmen scrambled away.

Another half-hour, and the
Topaze
transformed
from a floating catastrophe to something nearer the elegant frigate
that Fleming loved. The hen coops, barrel, seabag all vanished.
Young Tom Chandler and the bosun's mates completed the replaced
foretop's running rigging, and the thumps and howls from the hold
died away as Edward Rosslyn arranged the final barrels of
provisions and water. Dick Staunton, the signal midshipman, raised
the blue peter to the foretruck, emphasizing the recall order for
hands ashore with a windward gun every ten minutes. In the still
harbor, he squinted through the biting smoke from the slow match
and recorded the hands' names as they came aboard. With black curls
cascading beneath his fore-and-aft scraper, Staunton looked like a
maritime Puck on the quarterdeck, a wild, slit-eyed buccaneer all
of thirteen.

Fleming ignored that, too. Too much smiling spoiled
the midshipmen, just as too much flogging or arrant disdain soured
the hands. A not inconsiderable part of his job was to train the
mids into exemplary officers, able to sail a ship, lead the crew,
and fight the king's enemies. Showing them his example always
seemed the best method; prating had never fired his imagination
when he was a boy and he couldn't believe these youngsters were all
that different.

"Turn the glass and strike the bell," said the
quartermaster. The red-coated Marine flipped over the half-hour
timer, paced for'ard with measured steps, and struck seven bells,
clear ringing tones that sliced through the fading turmoil and
echoed in the pauses:
ring-ring-g-g, ring-ring-g-g,
ring-ring-g-g, ring-g-g
.

Fleming clasped his hands behind his back. It was
almost time, but he wouldn't display his eagerness. He'd be the
calm, steady post-captain he'd taught his officers and crew to
expect, and no more. "Mr. Staunton, let this be the final gun then
house it and make all fast. Mr. Abbot, Mr. Abbot there, are we
ready?"

"Ready, sir," Abbot yelled, "aye, ready."

It was a polite fiction, of course; the first
lieutenant could never tell his captain that he needed more time.
But the last details weren't quite sorted out and any call to make
sail immediately would result in chaos rather than departure.
"Then, Mr. Staunton, in fifteen minutes signal
Topaze to port
admiral: request permission to depart
. Mr. Abbot, I'll be
below."

Down the ladder to the gun deck and the brilliant
forenoon sunshine flashed away to 'tween-deck dimness, glare
through the portholes and open gunports, soft glowing light from
the stern gallery windows painting the great cabin with amber.
Layers of oak planking muffled the distant roar above and his heels
thumped on the decking below. The new dining table and chairs
comfortably filled the coach, and the long twelve-pounder cannon
bowsed against the side, if covered with bunting, would make a
useful sideboard during dinners. The mizzenmast, behind the table's
head, was sleeved with burnished copper, a shimmery accent to the
mahogany's subtle gleam. His new cot hung in the sleeping cabin,
portable bookcase along the inner bulkhead, the framed looking
glass above the washstand's ceramic basin, and the hanging chair,
outer canvas and bindings removed, swung gentle inches back and
forth, between another twelve-pounder and the quarter gallery door.
The antique gold drapes, polished wood, glowing light, gave the
already lovely cabins a new, rich texture; the unknown captain
who'd selected the material had known what he'd been about, after
all.