A Different Sort of Perfect (3 page)

It was a lie that all captains loved their ships.
Some ships were simply unlovable, fractious brutes that should
never have been built or had outlived their beauty, balking in
stays, sagging to leeward, and refusing to come up into the wind;
while some captains, those who'd been at war for two decades or
more, had lost the capacity to love. But
Topaze
had always
reminded Fleming of a foxhunter, fast in the gallop, bold at the
fences, willing to run all day to be in at the kill. He'd commanded
her for two years and lost his heart to her the first hour.

The discreetly gleaming satin, thick and soft,
rippled beneath his hesitant touch. He'd spent so little time on
shore since his midshipman days, such a small percentage of the
family funds on himself, that this luxury incarnate felt
self-indulgent, unnecessary, sinful, downright odd. And oh, so
sensual. The twelve-pounder's cool bronze felt more natural; had he
lost his sense of beauty, a first step in that metamorphosis to
brutality?

Was there any way to prevent that transformation?
Let it be so.

A knock sounded. "Come in," he called.

Staunton stood in the doorway, number-one scraper in
hand. "If you please, sir, Mr. Abbot's compliments and the fortress
signals
permission to depart.
"

And so it begins.
"On my way."

Underway with tops'ls, past the point and Mewstone,
and into the chops of the Channel as the sun leaned on the western
sky. The northwesterly wind held steady, a point abaft the beam,
and as the swell took her,
Topaze
tucked her bow to the
waves and shouldered them aside, getting up a fair corkscrew and
picking up speed. He called for more sails in late afternoon, when
the shoreline behind vanished into building clouds. Courses and
tops'ls and, before the wind could back to the southwest, Fleming
added t'gallants, until the quarterdeck sloped like a hillock. The
bow wave flashed white and rainbow-touched spray kissed his
upraised face; better not try for stu'nsails on the weather,
starboard side. Ed Rosslyn vanished below, his face a startling pea
green and one hand grasping whatever was handy to keep him upright,
but a crash at the bottom of the aft ladder testified to the
failure of that intention. The topmen flemished the lines and
huddled in the waist, beneath the boats and away from the
splashing. Forecastleman Jeremiah Wake, middle-aged and sober,
stared at him from that shelter, a particular, knowing leer as if
Fleming had been caught at something deliciously naughty. It was an
aggravating stare. But he wouldn't notice that, either. Not yet,
anyway.

"How many hands didn't answer the blue peter, Mr.
Abbot?"

"Three, sir." Abbot's gaze roamed the upper deck and
the press of sails, never pausing, always watching for the first
hint of trouble. Since Abbot had come aboard and proven himself as
first lieutenant, Fleming found he slept more deeply. "A waister,
rated landman."

He paused, eyebrows up, but Fleming shrugged off the
waister; a landman could be expected to run at the first
opportunity and the low rating made one an unappetizing chase. But
now he knew Abbot was starting at the worthless end of the list.
His muscles tightened; someone correspondingly important would top
it.

Abbot nodded, not a trace of surprise beneath his
keen competence. "The surgeon's mate missed the last boat. But the
stores he ordered from the apothecary came aboard."

"They're more important." The surgeon's mate, a
butcher's boy before his naval career, wasn't squeamish. But he
also wasn't gentle, and perhaps this was a suitably subtle way for
him and the ship's crew to part company.

"And Titus Ferry didn't show."

"
Ferry?
"

The wheelmen didn't glance over, nor did the master
behind them. But some change in the quarterdeck's atmosphere, some
flow of invisible magnetism, convinced Fleming the conversation was
no longer private. He stepped to the taffrail, well away from
inquisitive ears.

Abbot followed. "I asked Mr. Chandler, and when I
threatened to stop his grog he finally admitted that Mr. Ferry had
seemed eager to go ashore, but hadn't mentioned when he'd return."
He lowered his voice further, until it blended with the wind
harping through the mizzen backstays. "Presumably he's run."

It couldn't be true. Titus Ferry, captain's clerk and
enthusiastic volunteer less than a year ago, had worked like a
slave throughout the refitting, with never a wry look or
discontented sigh. His books were models of penmanship and he'd
fair-copied letters and ledgers hours into the night. "I'm more
inclined to believe something's happened to him."

Abbot pursed his lips. "Perhaps so. And perhaps one
of the warrant officers writes a decent hand."

Not likely. Fleming would have to keep his own books
until a replacement clerk could be found. "A better question is,
who's going to tackle the mids?" Their education couldn't be
entirely abandoned; someone had to teach them, even if he couldn't
immediately find someone with Ferry's head for figures.

The wake boiled below, stretching long miles back
toward England. Slanting evening sunlight struck the water a
glancing blow and glowed golden on the bubbling white froth. "No
volunteers, Mr. Abbot?"

"Never set myself up for a schoolmaster, sir."

And in all fairness, the major reason Fleming wasn't
saddled with more of the little brutes was Abbot's reluctance, as
first lieutenant, to manage them. A well-trained and disciplined
midshipman was an important part of any ship's crew, but a herd of
rowdy youths was another matter, and there'd been no mids ashore at
Plymouth whose character had recommended them for the assignment.
The starboard six-pounder stern chaser caught a flash of sunlight
and the bronze resembled the brass it was commonly called.
"Hopefully we'll find
Armide
this side of the Cape and they
won't forget everything they've learned."

The sun peeked beneath the rigging and tossed its
golden offering across Abbot, glittering from his formal coat's
buttons and the decorated brim of his number-one scraper. But a
brighter glow lit him from within. A hawk sighting its natural
prey, a predator on a successful hunt, could look no more keen.
"The
Armide,
is it?"

Land was well astern and there'd be no chance for the
news to filter through Napoleon's spies for six thousand miles.
They'd water at one of La Palma's hidden gorges running to the sea,
and their other stores would hold them until the Cape. It couldn't
matter now how many of the crew heard, and Fleming knew all too
well that one whispered sentence from him would spread throughout
the ship within minutes, no matter how low his voice.

"Our chase, Mr. Abbot, has a beast in view. We're
hunting
Armide,
broadside weight of metal four hundred
twenty-eight pounds, before she can intercept the East India
convoy."

"Four hundred twenty-eight pounds." Abbot clasped his
hands behind his back. His hound-on-scent smile never wavered.
"More than two and a half times our own. What a pretty fight this
will be." But he touched wood, nonetheless.

Red glowed in the west, the first stars peered from
blue-violet shadows in the east, and still the wind held. The cabin
steward, Hennessy, brought sandwiches and Fleming munched by the
binnacle, sipping tea from a battered tin mug as the stars marched
across the darkening sky. He could have gone below for dinner and
supper, but this delightful sailing, averaging nine knots through
the Channel, had a magical feel this early in a cruise and the
spell might shatter if he looked away. Even when something crashed
and voices raised below deck, with the horned moon peeping above
the horizon and full night claiming the sky for its own, he
listened but didn't notice.

A shadow approached and the binnacle's glow showed
Abbot, in his working rig of duck trousers and blue watchet coat,
sennit hat in his hands and ruddy hair blown back off his forehead.
"Sir, if you please, there's—" He broke off, mouth moving but no
words coming out. His eyes were glassy and staring.

In the waist, someone sniggered.

"Yes, what is it?" Whatever it was couldn't be good.
He'd seen Abbot leap through the shattered gunport of a French ship
of the line, leading a boarding party into a whirling, bloody
melee, with a saber in his hand and a brilliant smile lighting his
face. A growling mass of murderous enemies hadn't slowed Abbot.
This had to be something awful — a leak in the hold, water sloshing
into the powder kegs, the wardroom's wine forgotten on shore. It
would be something he'd have to notice.

Abbot swallowed. "There's — there's a woman in your
cabin."

…the deck. The deck was
alive.

Clara had known the ship was moving; of course she
had, with the hanging chair swaying, beams and timbers groaning
like a protesting cart horse, and a splashing that rippled past her
hiding place, sounding close enough to dip in her hand. Of course
she knew the ship was moving through the water and they must have
left the land behind. But such intellectual knowledge was totally
different from what she felt the moment her slipper touched the
deck and the
Topaze
spoke directly to her.

Both delighted and terrified, she'd huddled in that
blackened, cramped cocoon for hours, pinching her nose shut as the
aroused dust tickled her toward another sneeze, her knees bumping
her chin and the liquid eddy growing steadily louder. Early on,
unseen footsteps had padded close by (barefoot? how odd),
accompanied by the sort of little clinks and thumps that Nan made
when sorting out the music room. Suddenly the chair had jerked and
whirled, sending her startled heart and another sneeze crowding
together into her throat. It was too soon for someone to find her;
she needed the ship to be far away from shore, too far to easily
return her to Plymouth, and surely she hadn't been hiding that
long. The canvas had slithered down and the night-dark blackness
surrounding her had eased to twilight. Fine floating dust had
settled on her face, eyelashes, and lips. But the glorious satin
hadn't been yanked aside. Instead the footsteps had padded away, a
door had snicked closed behind them, and after a momentous battle
she'd muffled the sneeze and her giggles. She was finally alone,
still hidden, uncaught, and giddy with success.

Not long after, the rush of water beyond the wood had
intensified and Clara hugged herself, trying not to wriggle with
glee and shake the hanging chair; she didn't even know what the
room about her looked like — she didn't dare peek yet, and the
wrong person passing by an open door could still ruin everything.
So far her plan had worked wonderfully. The ship was underway,
leaving Plymouth and the Sound behind, and after a while, she'd
step out from her hideaway. They'd be surprised, of course; there
would be explanations and she might have to wheedle some — with the
utmost dignity, needless to say. But no gentleman worthy of the
name would refuse to help a lady in distress, and while Papa had
never spoken of the actual mechanics of sailing a ship nor of
shipboard life, his stories about the officers he'd known had
painted all of them as gentlemen. Indeed, his wistful voice had
made his years in the Royal Navy sound wonderful, and he'd only
left the service when he'd met and married Mama.

Hours passed as she imagined how the conversation
with the ship's captain might run and how they might search for
Phillippe's ship. The Navy List catalogued every Royal Navy ship
and its captain; perhaps the French Imperial Navy had some similar
publication. Once they knew the ship's name, they could stop and
question other vessels until they struck the proper trail, and then
it was only a matter of time before the two ships met under a flag
of truce. She'd see her perfect Phillippe again. He'd be surprised,
but oh, so happy to see her, and the
Topaze
's captain could
perform the marriage ceremony; Papa had told her ship's commanders
had the authority. She wouldn't even care that she was marrying
without a new carriage or a proper gown. No lace; shameful, but if
that was required, she'd make the sacrifice.

But perhaps the Imperial Navy didn't have a List, or
perhaps this captain wouldn't have a copy. In that case, she'd
convince him to take her to France itself. That would be an
adventure, as well as a chance to use all those hours of French
lessons with Miss Hadley. She'd be an unofficial diplomat and
negotiate her way to Paris, until love broke down the final
barriers and the Imperial Navy sent for Phillippe. Then they could
be married in the Notre Dame de Paris, with
French
lace. It
might even bring about the end of the war, for who could continue
fighting after such a
rapprochement
?

Guilty thoughts of Aunt Helen's undoubted panic,
Uncle David's deepening sorrow, Clara shoved firmly aside. In a
way, the entire situation was their fault. And of course she would
return home at some point in the future, so their fears at present
had no real foundation. She'd concentrate on how happy they'd be
then, and not on their needless emotions of the present. And yet
the image of Aunt Helen, her face streaked with tears and swollen
from weeping, insisted upon intruding into Clara's most blissful
imaginings.

More hours passed, and still more. Her legs cramped.
The air trapped behind the drapes became stale, her breakfast's tea
became a painful pressure, and the tawny satin started to look
edible to her hollow stomach. Finally she swallowed, hugged herself
one last time, and straightened her spine. Perhaps some of her
daydreams stretched reality a trifle. All right, more than a
trifle. She was here now, she had to find Phillippe, and surely
she'd hidden long enough. But still her heart pounded, ever more
painfully, as she parted the drapes and swung her stiff legs out
and down. Through an open doorway across the cabin, a sailor
arranging books on a shelf glanced up and dropped his armful with a
rustle and thump. Distant shouts, muttered swearing, the sailor's
stammered response, hasty eyes peering through the doorway and
vanishing like a scalded cat. Not the loveliest of beginnings.