A Scandal to Remember (20 page)

She could see the worry, the weight of responsibility settle upon him like a heavy suit of leaden cloth. “Yes.” He swept his gaze toward a small group of blue-clad sailors waiting some twenty paces away. “The carpenter is waiting to accompany me to search and bargain for suitable timber.”

“Then I will leave you to your work, and take myself off to make my own purchases.”

He looked down the quay toward the shipyard, and then back again at the plaza and the shops ringing its edge as if he were torn between his duty and his desire.

No. She was only fooling herself into thinking that. It was not desire. Just escape—a momentary diversion that he sought from the cage of truth and responsibility. To keep him to herself any longer would be nothing but selfishness. “You must go, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, I must. But I don’t like to leave you. I did tell Sir Richard that I would see to your safety.”

“I am perfectly safe, Lieutenant. And I do have your stalwart man Punch to assist me.”

That narrow frown was back, pleating up his forehead as his gaze found Punch in the crowd. “Yes. But—”

It was clear that the lieutenant did not like to leave off any task he had appointed, or pledged himself to do, even if it was as insignificant as escorting her shopping. And she also suspected that he didn’t like to admit to needing help, or that there might be something wrong that he could not fix on his own. So different from her own family, who always wanted help, who always relied upon her to fix everything.

How strange. And almost sad.

But the day was too fine for melancholy. Yet, Jane could think of nothing else to say, so she simply dropped a curtsy and headed toward Punch before the lieutenant could say anything else.

He followed, if only for a moment. “Mind your mistress, Punch,” was his only instruction for the steward before he touched his hat, made a short bow, and took himself off.

“Aye, sir. That I will,” Punch pledged.

And he did. Punch led her out of the bright plaza through the shaded, cobbled side streets to an English-speaking grocer with fresh produce and poultry. “We’ll get another hen, miss, for the coop, and some good dry onions and tatties. And carrots—they’ll keep well enough. And turnips…”

Jane set herself to the task with confident vigor. This she knew. She was well experienced at bargaining the price down at every chance, insisting on Punch’s putting things back if she thought the cost too high, as she had managed such purchases for her small household at home. And it was a pleasure to feel that she had some skill and experience that could help Lieutenant Dance, and alleviate his burden rather than add to it.

She was wading through the stacks of crates when a grubby urchin grabbed at her skirts.

“You there!” the merchant instantly cried.
“Vai plantar batatas!”

Whatever they meant, the words had the desired effect, for poor child darted away. But not before she had pushed a scrap of paper into Jane’s hand.

It was some sort of handbill written entirely in Portuguese, of course, but on the back in small block letters was a note. A threat actually.

If the lady values her life she won’t go back to her ship.

Jane stared at it for a full minute before it hit her—a pain, like the quick numbing cut from a knife, sliced into her chest, and choked off her breath. Someone wanted her dead.

The stinging surge of panic bolted through her veins, and she shot up, searching wide-eyed for the child. “Where did she go?”

The merchant made an offhand gesture of good riddance. “Gone, mistress. I’ll not have street rats bother you. I’ve good beetroot as well here, at a very good price.”

Bother the beetroot. Nothing mattered but the child. “Punch, we have to find her!”

“The child, miss?” Punch could not comprehend her urgency. “Here now, what’s—” Punch took the paper from her nerveless hands, and turned it over, examining it. “What do it say, miss?”

Thank God he could not read. “Nothing.” Jane couldn’t understand her instinct to keep the threat a secret, but she obeyed it. She snatched back the handbill and crumpled it in her hand. “It’s nothing.”

“’Tweren’t nothing if it’s got you so upset, miss. Here, sit you down.” Punch dusted off a crate with his kerchief and gestured her toward it.

“No, I’m fine,” she lied. But she wasn’t fine. She was the furthest thing from fine. She could feel her breath rising in agitation. Hear her harsh panting intake of the soft morning air.

“There now.” Punch took her arm and half pulled, half pushed her to sit on the sturdy crate. And just in time. Because she couldn’t seem to feel her legs to make them do as she wanted.

“I’ll be quite all right in a moment,” she lied again. “I only need to…” What was she to do? How on earth was she to obey the threat? Perhaps she could appeal to the grocer—he was an Englishman. Perhaps if she said she needed to lie down, or take a glass of wine, there might be a room where she could hide, or stay.

Jane fumbled for her purse, tucked safely down in the pockets sewn onto her petticoats. She would need money for a passage back to England. She would have to abandon all her dunnage, as Punch would call it. Abandon all of her dreams.

But what else was she to do? End up pitched over the side on some dark cloudless night? It could be anyone on the ship—
anyone
—who wished her gone.

Her mind cast over Sir Richard and Mr. Phelps and Parkhurst. And even Mr. Denman. Perhaps they had—

“She’s here, sir,” Punch was saying.

Jane looked up to see Lieutenant Dance striding down the street with the grocer’s son in tow. Punch must have sent the boy for the lieutenant while she had sat there, frozen with uncharacteristic indecision. Before this voyage, she had always known what to do, always known which road to take. No more. Everything she had known and been sure of—her talent and her ambition, and her absolute right to follow both—was gone, just as surely as if it had fallen over the side and been swept away in the ship’s wake.

And here was Dance. Dance who saw everything and let nothing go by. Dance who always did what had to be done. She could rely upon him. She
would
rely upon him.

She thrust the note into his hand.

“Fuck all!” The lieutenant swore magnificently before his narrow, focused scowl bored into her. “Who gave this to you?”

“A child. She’s gone now. She was just a messenger, I’ll warrant.” In his presence, Jane began to breathe easier. With him at her side, she felt less afraid. And more indignant.

How dare they try and stop her.

Jane shook her head and moved, shielding herself from his penetrating scowl with her bonnet. “I’m fine, now. I just took a small faint.” She willed her resolve back. “The ground feels a little strange, as if I were still on board
Tenacious
.”

“Fair enough,” the lieutenant said. “It’s a common enough feeling. But you are still an abominable liar, J. E. Burke. Your face has gone all red and splotchy.”

Jane immediately covered her answering smile with her hands. “You are no gentleman to tell me.”

He was a gentleman. The best kind. The kind who respected her ambition, and didn’t mollycoddle, or try to wrap her in cotton wool, and tell her she was too small and ill and delicate, and ought never to have left home in the first place.

But she had left home, and she hadn’t come this far to be frightened off. She was
not
a witless girl. She was a woman grown who had worked hard all her life to take this one chance fate had given her. She would not give up now.

“No, I am no gentleman,” Dance agreed with her. “I’m a bloody sailor, and I’m going to take you back to the ship where I can make damn sure no one can bother or accost you. Oh, for fuck’s sake, Jane.” He stopped and swore under his breath. “It’s got to be someone from the ship, hasn’t it?”

“Yes.” And she ought to be turning her mind to the problem. But the ability to think lucidly was gone. Just gone.

He had called her Jane.

The only thing that registered in her air-starved brain was the fact that his eyes were really the deepest, warmest green. The color of the tropical ocean. And he smelled of soap and lime.

While she was swimming in that lime-green ocean, he took hold of her elbow again, as if he thought she needed to be propped up, even though she did not feel in the least bit faint or breathless. What she felt was his bare hand against the inside of her arm.

His fingers were long, and strong and callused, right there on the edge of his index finger. She could feel the delicious abrasion all the way down her arm to the tips of her tingling fingers.

But the lieutenant was not in the least bit similarly affected. His gaze bored down on her, a heavy weight in contrast to the lightness of his touch. “Goddamn it, Jane. What am I going to do with you?”

Jane felt so light-headed that his oath brought out a sort of giddy humor. “I thought you didn’t believe in God.”

In response he swore more colorfully.

“I liked it better when you called me Jane.”

Until the moment he had spoken she had not known how much she had missed hearing her own name. How she had missed that sense of the familiar and intimate. Of being understood and known.

But even at home, where they had always called her Jane, she hadn’t been understood, or really known. They had never understood her needs and her ambition, and neither had she. Not the way the lieutenant did.

“Forgive me.” He shook his head, his motion as abrupt and clipped as his voice. “I did not mean— I was only concerned for your well-being.” But he gave lie to the words by the way he tucked her arm over his like the veriest cavalier, giving her his escort as he walked her back through the winding streets to the quay. And by saying “I’m going to take care of you, Jane.”

Something more powerful than relief washed through her. For the first time in her life, someone had pledged to take care of her, instead of the other way round.

It was heady. And humbling.

And there was nothing, really, she could do with her arm entwined with his, and the long length of his body pressed against her side but accept his help gratefully. She could only walk with him, and enjoy the feeling for as long as it lasted, and pray that she was doing the right thing.

*   *   *

Miss Burke kept quiet the whole of the cutter ride back out to
Tenacious
. She looked pale and drawn despite the warm southern sun streaming over them and her claim to feeling fine in the face of such an abominable threat.

And her looks did not improve any when they retreated to the wardroom only to find the door to her cabin open, and all the contents strewn about.

As were his. Their cuddies had been ransacked.

There were not sufficient curses to mitigate the feeling of bloody roiling rage ripping through his chest like a loose grenade.

“Get me Ransome,” he growled at no one in particular. “Get him now.”

The anger in his voice made Jane jump. “Oh, Lord.” Her voice was small and thin, and she looked completely done in. “Oh,” she cried again, “my barnacles.”

She fell to her knees among the messy heaps of clothing and books scattered across the floor. The glass jar in which she had been attempting to keep her barnacles alive had been trod underfoot, and crushed to a shattered, chalk-colored mess.

“It’s the barnacles you are worried about?” He would never understand the workings of the female mind, and certainly never understand the workings of this particular female scientist’s mind. “There are plenty more where those came from,” he said as he drew her to her feet. “And you should be trying to do away with them rather than keep them alive, anyway.”

“But the point is that to understand how the creature comes to attach to ships in the first place, one has to understand— Oh.” She pushed back a lock of butterscotch hair that had come loose from its pins. “You’re just trying to humor and soothe me.”

Underneath all that soft butterscotch was sharp intellect. “Is it working?”

“No. Not really.” Though she did give him a wan smile, and push the hair out of her face with the back of her wrist. “What an awful mess. All my things—” She hastened to snatch up some article of clothing that looked white and filmy, and was undoubtedly underclothing, judging from the furious blush streaking across her cheeks and down her neck.

And he was a cad, because all he wanted to do was follow that delicious swath like a smear of jam under the high neck of her gown to see where it led.

And he was furious, because someone among his crew had dared to lay their filthy hands upon Jane Burke’s private things.

Dance drew in a deep breath, and tried to push aside the stormy, electrical feeling of gathering rage, so he might think more critically. “What could they have been looking for?” Other than the simple chance to run their grimy hands through her delicate things. “Is anything missing?”

Jane began to catalogue her belongings, and Dance ducked his head back into his own cuddy to ascertain that nothing of his seemed to be gone—but he had so few possessions besides his uniform clothing, that it was easy to collect that the ransacking of his cuddy seemed to have been done purely for spite, or to cover up for the more deliberate and far more spiteful mischief done to Jane’s cabin.

The topman Flanaghan’s face came to mind. He was one of the most vocal of the objectors when Miss Burke had come aboard. But Dance could not imagine that the hardy tar had either the strength or the desire to give in to such small-minded vandalism.

“I can hardly tell,” Jane finally answered. “Such mean, willful mischief.” And for only the second time in his acquaintance with her, Miss Jane Burke looked as if she might give way to tears—her wide blue eyes were glassy with obscuring liquid. But she brushed the unshed tears away with the back of her hand, and she seemed to notice his cabin for the first time. “Yours as well, I see. Are there any others?”

The closed doors to the other cabins gave no clue. “We’ll know presently. The second cutter is returning as we speak.”

In the next minutes the wardroom became crowded with the members of the Royal Society’s expedition, and their servants, all of whom helped to confirm Dance’s suspicions—that Miss Burke, and, to a much lesser degree he, were the targets of a scurrilous invasion of privacy and propriety. Dance wasn’t sure which disturbed him more.