A Scandal to Remember (21 page)

But whichever it was, he was going to make someone pay.

“Mr. Dance?” The big bosun had answered Dance’s summons with alacrity, but there seemed to be nothing of surprise, no trace of emotion, in the man’s face when he stepped into the wardroom and cast his eyes over the chaotic scene. And while it was perfectly possible that someone might have already told the bosun why Dance had sent for him, for some reason, the man’s attitude of forbearance bothered him in the extreme.

“Mr. Ransome, you had charge of discipline on the ship while I was ashore. How do you answer for this?”

“I can’t say, sir,” was the man’s cool answer. “Mr. Lawrence had the deck.”

“And if Mr. Lawrence had the deck, he could not know what was happening two decks below. Where were you? Did you near nothing?”

“No, sir.” Ransome looked Dance right in the eye without blinking, as if he had nothing to hide. And it made Dance want to hate him, for no other reason than he could find no excuse to blame him. “Is anything gone?”

“The point is not if anything is gone, Mr. Ransome, but how this could have happened in the first place.”

“Yes, sir,” the bosun said. “It’s a bad business, sir.”

“It is,” Dance agreed. Which only fueled the rage within. “I want this ship turned out. Every chest and storeroom. Every locker and cuddy. I want to know what else has been disturbed, and what else might be missing. I want the name of the person responsible for this—this unwarranted intrusion to the goddamned wardroom—and I bloody well want it
now
.”

Fuck all. Now he sounded as vulgar as whomever it was he was accusing of this intrusion. So be it. “Muster the men, and turn this ship out.”

The ship was duly turned inside out.

And while Dance supervised the slow march through the decks, turning out every hammock and sea chest, and looking into every nook, cranny, and storeroom with every ounce of the angry righteousness he felt, Jane hid herself behind the wardroom’s closed doors, putting away her things with shaking hands.

Dance felt fit to murder someone.

But the feeling of righteous rage roiling in his gut vanished the instant the culprit was found, and a drawing ripped from the pages of Miss Burke’s sketchbook was found secreted in the dunnage of the young midshipman, Mr. Rupert Honeyman.

Ransome had the squirming, white-faced boy hauled up by his ear in front of Dance. The bosun shook the boy hard, and shoved him forward. “Tell Mr. Dance what you done.”

“I ain’t—”

The protest earned the child a vicious cuff. “You tell ’im what you took from the lady. You hear me?”

“The paper,” the boy stammered, his eyes rolling back to look at Ransome.

“Thank you, Mr. Ransome. That will be all.” Dance made his voice as calm and cool as a polar ice floe in defiance of the sick shock he felt at such an unlikely betrayal. “Dismiss the men to their watches. I want all the material brought on board stored, and the cutters properly stowed. And I want it done
this instant
.”

And he wanted it done and over before the ship could descend into rumor and innuendo. Damn their eyes and loose tongues, but there would be talk and whispers enough without a public flogging adding the fuel of rumor onto the dry fire.

“Aye, sir.” Mr. Ransome flicked a glance to his cane-wielding mates, who moved along, dispersing the men who had gathered with typical morbid curiosity.

When the orlop deck had been cleared of all but the other midshipmen, Dance said. “Give me the paper.”

It was a simple drawing, done with concise strokes of black charcoal, showing young Honeyman, with his distinctive head of curls, and another midshipman, taking the sighting of the noonday sun. The paper was ragged along one edge where it had been torn from Miss Burke’s book, and was crumpled and smeared from having been shoved down into the bottom of the lad’s small sea chest—which the Marine Society had outfitted with only the barest of necessities for each boy. “Mr. Honeyman, explain yourself.”

The boy, who by his bold quickness and cleverness was something of a natural leader among the midshipmen, swallowed hard, and skirted a decidedly nervous glance at Mr. Ransome.

Who cuffed him hard on the ear, and growled, “The lieutenant asked you a question. You tell ’im. Or I will.”

“That will do, Mr. Ransome.” Dance could hear the cutting edge of his own voice, and felt himself poised precariously on the thin blade of his control. “I should like Mr. Honeyman to speak for himself.”

“Go ahead,” Ransome told the boy anyway with another hard prod.

“I took the paper,” the boy blurted.

“Why?”

“Dunno.” He shot a wary glance at the drawing Dance held in his hand. “Because.”

Dance made his voice calmer by force of will alone. “You took this paper from Miss Burke’s possession
because
?” It made him abnormally—monstrously—angry to think of anyone touching
any
of Miss Burke’s things. No matter that he had nearly done the same by sleeping in her linen—that was … He didn’t know what that was. But this—this was an outrage. “Stealing, Mr. Honeyman, is a serious offense.”

“Yes, sir.”

“An offense which cannot, and will not, be permitted to stand.”

The boy swallowed again, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing in the wake of his throat. “What’s going to happen to me, sir?”

“You’re going to be punished.” The thought made Dance sick to the pit of his stomach, because something—something about the way the boy looked at Ransome, and the way Ransome hovered threateningly over the boy who had become the officers’ favorite—struck him as entirely and irrevocably wrong.

But discipline had to be maintained, and the guilty seen to be punished.

And punish he would. He could not be seen favoring the boy. He could not be seen to be lenient and lax when it came to such a public crime. Because he had already been too goddamned lax—he had let cursed purser Givens get away.

It had been a mistake. A giant one.

And he would not willingly make another, no matter how it made him feel. “You will kiss the gunner’s daughter, as it were, Mr. Honeyman. You will be bent over a cannon and caned with six strokes.”

The pale boy blanched an even paler shade of white. “But, sir—”

“The only reason”—Dance made his voice sharper still—“you are not going to be stripped and seized upon a grating and given the lash, is that you are a volunteer—a junior officer—and so will be treated like the gentleman you ought to be. See it done now.”

There was no sense putting it off. The punishment would only grow in the lad’s head with the anticipation. Best to have the brutal thing done with.

As there were no guns on the crowded, low-ceilinged orlop deck, Dance pointed to the nearest sea chest. Ransome pushed the boy over the curved top of the chest and directed him, “Hold on to them straps.”

And without so much as a blink of an eye, he reared back with the cane and laid into the boy.

By the third hideous whip of the cane, the boy passed out. But Ransome still laid on.

Dance stopped the man’s arm in midair. “That is enough, Mr. Ransome.”

Ransome pushed on for a second before he caught himself. “Six strokes, you said.”

“The boy passed out after the third.”

“It’s a mercy.” Jack Denman appeared right on time, just as if Dance had sent for him. Bless Punch’s eyes.

“Take him away, Mr. Denman, and do what you can to ease his way.”

“Don’t deserve to have his way eased.” Ransome shrugged his arm out of Dance’s possession.

“Be that as it may, Mr. Ransome, that is my order.”

Denman helped the other white-faced midshipmen bear Honeyman away, leaving Dance alone with Ransome.

Dance watched as the man’s hand flexed and then retightened on his cane, as if he were not yet through thrashing it, before his grip finally eased, and he tucked it under his arm. “That’s that, then sir.”

It was said respectfully enough, and not for the first time, Dance wondered whom he could really trust aboard
Tenacious
. Whom he could truly rely upon.

Not the captain, nor most of the Royal Society expedition members, except perhaps Jack Denman. Simmons, and perhaps Flanaghan and Morris. And certainly Jane Burke.

But not many men. Yet for all his distrust of the bosun, Ransome seemed to be holding fast.

Perhaps he had misjudged the man? Perhaps he had let his assumptions and prejudices from the first, when he had seen Given and Ransome together, color his perceptions of the man? Guilt by association, as it were.

And it shamed him. If he were to ever be a captain in name as well as in action, he would have to do better.

“Thank you for your swift attention to the matter, Mr. Ransome. Much appreciated.”

“Sir.” Ransome tugged briskly on the stiff brim of his tarred hat, and gave Dance the barest hint of his knowing cat’s smile. “Just doing my job, Lieutenant. You can always count on me to do exactly that.”

Chapter Thirteen

For the second time in her entire life, and the second time within one day, Jane Burke did not know what to do or think. She had never in the whole of her life been so afraid. Or so angry.

Something that had to be frustrated rage simmered under the cold chilling fear, heating her lungs with righteous anger. Fueling her determination.

Her preferred solution to every problem she had ever encountered was to study it until she understood it enough to manage it—to break difficulties down into their component parts so she could organize and arrange everything just so.

And why should she not do so now?

Perhaps she had been going about it—this being a female scientist on an expedition and a ship full of men—all wrong? She had tried to keep herself quiet and out of the way, but clearly, that plan had failed her. Perhaps she ought to simply be herself, and involve herself in their lives, and the life of the ship, until she became a part of the fabric of it, the way Mr. Denman had.

And so, she set out to arrange things more to her liking. Because she didn’t like it when little boys got flogged. Because the action demonstrated that Lieutenant Dance was not a fair-minded man—fair-minded men did not wrongfully punish little boys.

Granted, young Mr. Honeyman was not that young, or that little, but she did not believe for a minute that he had taken the drawing, and ransacked her cabin. Not for one single minute.

So she set out to prove it.

She took a pot of sweetened willow bark tea—taken from her own precious stock of herbs and sugar—with her as a posset for young Mr. Honeyman, who lay on his stomach on a flat pallet in the sick bay.

But all her managing and making home remedies for Mama and Papa could not prepare her for the sight of the fearful welts that crossed the width of the boy’s thin back, like scratches from some great beast. “Who could do such a thing?” she gasped.

Like Lieutenant Dance, Mr. Denman seemed entirely immune to pity. “The navy. In this case acting in the person of Mr. Ransome. It is the bosun’s job to dispense discipline.”

“That is not discipline. That is vindictiveness.” Jane could not say how she knew, but she did. It was as if she could feel Mr. Ransome’s satisfaction in dealing out such blows oozing out of the poor boy’s skin. “If this is what he does with a cane, I hope to God I never have to look at what he does with a lash. It’s a wonder the man can sleep at night.” She might have included both Mr. Denman and Lieutenant Dance in with Ransome until she remembered that the lieutenant already didn’t sleep much at night. She heard him tossing and turning in the cabin next door, and arising in the dead of night to see to other men’s duty.

“It’s not bad, miss,” poor Honeyman insisted.

If it wasn’t bad, it was because the poor boy couldn’t see it. “Here, Mr. Honeyman.” She held the warm cup of willow bark tea to his lips.

He took a grateful sip. “Thank you, miss.”

“You are welcome. I’ve also taken the liberty of mixing a tincture of arnica to bathe upon your back, if Mr. Denman approves. It will give you some ease from the pain.”

“A very good idea,” Mr. Denman agreed. “I didn’t judge laudanum appropriate to administer to a boy. But how come you to know about herbs? I thought you were not interested in botany.”

“I am a country woman, Mr. Denman. I know as much as any housekeeper who keeps a well-stocked stillroom. But I would be happy to do some still work for you here, and restock and organize these shelves.” She could not even look upon the jumbled mess that was the sick bay’s shelves without becoming positively itchy with the need to clean and organize and arrange.

She tamped the impulse down. “You look like you could do with some new medicines,” she suggested instead.

“I could.” Mr. Denman seemed to consider the possibility for the first time. “And I thank you. I have never done any distillate work myself. Surgery is my forte. I leave herbal healing to others.”

“I am happy to be that other, Mr. Denman, if it will be to the benefit of your patients.”

“I thank you, Miss Burke.” Mr. Denman nodded gravely. “Now, if you will excuse me, I should like to check on Flanaghan—excellent man, but I fear he will try to do too much with his injured hand, and the bone will not set properly.”

Jane excused him gladly because his absence would give her greater leeway to turn her attentions to young Mr. Honeyman.

The cool bath did wonders for both the boy’s back and his spirits. So much so that he felt himself able to sit up, and regard Jane with a rather wondrous equanimity. “Why are you being so nice to me, miss?”

“Why shouldn’t I be nice to you, when you have suffered a grievous hurt?”

“But it was a punishment, done for what I took from you. By all rights you should hate me.”

“Hate, I have found, is a rather useless emotion, Mr. Honeyman, unless it motivates us to something better. I do not hate you. And I certainly do not feel that the punishment suits the crime.” In fact, she did not believe that a crime had been committed at all—at least not by this boy.

She turned to contemplate the shelves. “You know, Mr. Honeyman, I would have given the sketch to you if you had but asked. I have no objection at all to sharing my drawing. I am not so hard or miserly.”