A Scandal to Remember (22 page)

“I didn’t think you was, miss.” The boy was the picture of contrition—every fiber of his being dripped with misery. “I am sorry.”

She gave him what she hoped was an encouraging smile. “Then you are forgiven. Have some more tea.”

“Just like that, miss?”

“Just like that are you forgiven? Yes. How else is a Christian to act? Do drink some more tea.”

The boy took a long draught of the warm brew before he answered. “I don’t know, miss. I never thought about it.”

“Well, think about it now, Mr. Honeyman.” With Mr. Denman gone, Jane could busy herself arranging the jumble of implements to her liking—such a dusty, disordered mess. The shelves cried for a good clean out. “And think as well,” Jane went on in as casual and disinterested a voice as she might manage while she began to sort things in an organized fashion, “what you might do to truly earn that forgiveness.” She let another long moment pass, before she suggested, “For instance, perhaps you might like to tell me the truth.”

If poor Mr. Honeyman had looked miserable before, he looked acutely so now. He pressed his lips together tightly, and blinked hard to drive away his incipient tears.

“Because I know, you see,” she added quietly, “that you haven’t told the truth.”

Honeyman gave a little hiccup, and rubbed the back of his wrist across his face.

“And do you know how I know, Mr. Honeyman?” Jane asked gently. “Because I think I know your character. I have seen how hard you have worked for Lieutenant Dance and Mr. Whitely. In fact, I have heard the sailing master praise you, and say he has high hopes for you. And I know that if someone as ignorant of the navy and the way of ships as I can see that
Tenacious
is in very great need of another junior lieutenant, then you, who are so quick and smart, must have perceived the lack. And I doubt very much that you would have jeopardized your whole career over a mere drawing.”

“It wasn’t for the drawing,” Honeyman said, and nearly threw himself off the pallet in a movement rife with adolescent overfeeling.

“No?” Jane probed gently. “Then what was it for?”

“He tricked me,” the boy blurted. And then he amended his accusation. “No. I let him trick me. It was my fault. I was acting all superior, wasn’t I? Thinking I could read and write and he couldn’t, and that’s why I was going to be a proper officer. But now I’ve ruined it all.”

He turned from her and buried his face in the pallet, and Jane had to curb the impulse to rub his back for comfort. Not in his state. She settled for laying a gentle, reassuring hand on his shoulder, and asking just as gently, “What did he trick you into doing?”

“The writing,” Honeyman mumbled. “He got me to write out that note.”

Jane would have been shocked to her core if she had any feelings left to spare that day. But as it was, she could feel nothing but the sort of rightness one felt when the last color went into one of her drawings and made it complete, or she hit upon just the right idea or word to describe a specimen—a simple satisfaction of finally knowing she was correct.

But she could not be entirely numb to the significance of Honeyman’s confession. However tricked or mistaken he had been, he knew who it was that wanted her kept from the ship.

Her heartbeat kicked up to fill her ears. But she made herself ask calmly, “And who tricked you, Mr. Honeyman? Who got you to write that note warning me away from
Tenacious
?”

“Mr. Ransome.”

Any leftover fear faded into that same sense of logical rightness. Who else could it have been? Who else but Mr. Ransome, who never looked at her but to ogle and sneer and amuse himself with her clumsiness? “But why should Mr. Ransome care about me?” Unless he was one of the men Lieutenant Dance had talked about, who didn’t like her based solely on the superstitious fear of her sex, as if she were harboring ill luck the way the young midshipmen had once harbored their lice.

“I don’t know, miss. Only that he got me to write the words. And then, after he’d sent the note off with one of the bumboat women, he told me that I’d have to be a man, and take what was coming in silence, or I’d be in even more trouble because I wrote the note.”

“Mr. Honeyman!” Jane could keep neither the astonishment, nor the pity from her voice. It was monstrous. Absolutely monstrous for Mr. Ransome to have then inflicted that punishment, laying such strips into the boy himself. Monstrous.

The whole ship—the entire voyage—was a monstrous mess of lies and ill-kept secrets and rotting timbers. No wonder the lieutenant didn’t sleep at night.

“I’m that sorry, miss. I am.”

“I know, Mr. Honeyman, I know. But we’re not beat yet, you and I. Well, you have been, but I mean to see that it doesn’t happen again.”

“Nothing you can do to stop Mr. Ransome, miss. Not even the lieutenant can do so.”

“Then you have misjudged the lieutanant’s worth just as badly as Mr. Rasome has misjudged mine.” There was nothing she hated more than being patronized by a man who felt free to think little of her. And that was what Mr. Ransome had done if he thought he could scare her off so easily. “We’ll see about that, Mr. Honeyman. We’ll see if I don’t. Now drink your tea.”

She was a firm believer that a good dish of tea could make almost everything turn out all right. And even if it couldn’t solve any of the problems rolling around
Tenacious
’s decks like unexploded grenades, at least a cup of tea couldn’t hurt.

The boy did as she asked. “Thank you, miss. Thank you for being so nice to me.”

“Of course, Mr. Honeyman.”

“Do you think you might call me Rupert, miss, the way my mam did afore she died?”

Jane brushed the damp, tear-wetted hair off the boy’s forehead. “Certainly, Rupert. You may safely leave it all to me to arrange things. Just the way they ought.”

*   *   *

The first thing she was going to do to make good on her promise to young Mr. Honeyman was to speak to Lieutenant Dance. But though they remained within the shelter of Recife’s rivers, the lieutenant returned her note with word that she was to stay in the safe confines of the wardroom, as he had no time to spare to speak to her. The wood for the much needed repairs had been delivered on board, and he had more work than ever, closely supervising the repairs to the foremast, and the bowsprit, and the breastwork knees. The carpenters’ hammers began to pound endlessly through the hull.

Jane would have done as Dance asked, and retreated to the wardroom, but she found her way blocked by Mr. Ransome, who loomed out of the dimness of the low orlop passageway like a gruff, dark-haired billy goat, determined not to let her pass.

“Have a good chat, did you, miss?”

In the close confines of the passageway his presence pressed upon her like a weight, the stale smell of sweat and onions choking the breath from the air, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of backing away. Though she did sound as breathless and unsure as a debutante, not a grown woman scientist of six and twenty. “A very informative chat, Mr. Ransome.” And since she was already out of breath, she decided not to waste what little she had dancing around the issue at hand, and to simply be brave. “Why should you want me to stay away from the boat—which I am sorry to tell you I had no chance of doing, as Lieutenant Dance marched me straight back here.”

“It’s a
ship,
” he growled. But Ransome seemed to have as little desire to dance as she, for he admitted his involvement by asking, “Did he see the note?”

His question made so little sense Jane answered his question with a question of her own. “Did you want him to?”

“Makes no matter. So long as you saw it.”

“I most assuredly did. But may I know why?” The bravery seemed to get easier the more she practiced it. “What harm or hurt have I done to you to make you go so far as to beat stripes into that boy?”

Ransome dismissed Rupert Honeyman’s fearful welts with a scornful twist of his lips. “Boy don’t have nothing to do with it.”

“But I do?”

Ransome stepped closer, until she could see clearly the narrow look in his eyes. “Why, it’s for your own good, ma’am. I’m that worried about the state of things, I am, and how the men’s taken such a dislike to you.” For all the odor of onions that came out of his mouth, his tone had a sort of ardent sincerity that made her stop, and listen to him. “Wouldn’t want to see you come to any harm, miss, is all. Wouldn’t want you to wake up swimming in the night. It’s a big empty ocean out there, miss. A little bit like you’d get gobbled up by the sea in no time. No one would ever know you was gone.” He shook his head sadly, like a great barn cat tsking over the size of a runty mouse. “Be a shame, that.”

“Are you— Are you threatening me?” Jane was ashamed of the way her voice cracked like a broken shell.

“No, miss.” Ransome spread his tar-stained hands wide, as if he were as innocent as a milkmaid. “It’s for your own good.”

“My own good?” And now Jane was well and truly afraid, because she could not for the life of her tell if the big, oniony man were being sincere.

“Aye, miss. And I can help you off with no one the wiser.”

“You can?” But why should she want such a thing?

“Aye, miss.” He said it as if he were offering her the greatest of favors.

“Miss Burke?” Another voice, from behind Ransome’s back. Mr. Dance on his quiet way to find her. “Ah. Mr. Ransome. I’ve come to fetch Miss Burke for her dinner.”

“Yes, I’m just coming.” How much had he over heard? He seemed calm enough.

Ransome seemed not to want to linger to find out. “Thank you, miss.” Ransome knuckled his forehead and backed quickly out of sight. “You think about that idea now, miss, and you let me know if I can be of any service.”

“Service. Yes, I’ll do that.”

Certainly she would. Just as soon as she figured out who on this godforsaken boat—ship—she could trust.

“Is it true?” Sir Richard was grilling Lieutenant Lawrence when Jane and Dance reached the wardroom door. “That three men jumped ship as soon as it fell dark?”

The young lieutenant hunched his shoulders uncomfortably, but gave them the truth of the matter. “It is,” he said. “Slipped out onto the chains and swam to shore, near as we can tell. And they must have bribed the marine on sentry duty into going with them, for Lieutenant Dance found his uniform coat and musket where he abandoned them on the chain wale this evening.”

This then accounted not only for Lieutenant Dance’s industry, but his fearful demeanor when they stepped into the wardroom. He looked, to put it in language he himself would undoubtedly choose, like hell. His eyes looked red and tired, and whiskers shaded the sharp planes of his cheek. He looked so tired, it would be a wonder if he did not fall asleep in his soup.

Not that she was looking. Indeed, with so many others at the table, it was all she could do to get close enough to whisper, “I went to go see that poor boy this afternoon.”

“Spare me your outrage, Miss Burke.” His voice was as cutting as it was weary. “It is as wasted on me, as your pity would be on him.”

Jane would not let the bite in his tone put her off. “If you mean Mr. Honeyman, Lieutenant, you are wrong.”

He turned the green blaze of his eyes on her. “I may be wrong, Miss Burke, but devil take me, I’m in charge. And if you want to get to that South Sea island of yours, then pray let me do my bloody job without any interference from you.”

She had weathered the cold blast of his displeasure before. “It is not interference, Dance, it is
help
. And if you want to get me to that South Sea island so you can get me out of your hair, then you might learn to accept others’ help when it’s bloody well offered.”

Oh, that stopped him, and brought that delightfully stony gaze straight to hers. But his fierce scowl migrated from his brow down and around until it was a slow smile curving his lips. “An oath, Miss Burke? Truly, you astonish me.”

Jane could not keep herself from basking in the warmth in that small smile. “Truly, I find I no longer astonish myself. And I
can
help you, Lieutenant.”

“I liked it better when you called me Dance.” He blew out a long, frustrated breath. “But please, don’t tempt me so.” His voice grew so low she had to lean toward him to catch the words. “Don’t tempt a man in hell with such a vision of paradise.”

And then hell came to them when the door to the wardroom slammed open, and in stumbled a man who could only be the captain.

Up close, within the confines of the wardroom, he was a distressing specimen—unsteady on his feet, and just shy of being disheveled in his person. His white hair stood up in tufts from his head, as if the wind had just snatched the better part of it away this instant, and he had not yet realized that he was bald. He looked ancient and infantile and utterly vulnerable as he groped his drunken way toward the table, frowning at them all with angry frustration in his cloudy old eyes.

“What is this? A dinner? And am I not to be invited to a dinner on my own ship?”

Lieutenant Dance—who had stood the moment the captain, in his dirty blue coat, had entered—did not falter. He bowed and held out his own chair at the head of the table. “Your place is here, sir.”

Lieutenant Dance seated the captain at the place of honor, while Punch quickly fetched a chair for the lieutenant, and tucked it in right next to hers. Jane was shifting over to give Dance room when his glance found hers, sharp and abrupt and raw—naked almost, unclothed by his usual stoically cynical manner.

For the first time in their acquaintance, the granite countenance had cracked, and Lieutenant Dance was entirely himself, exhausted and completely at sea.

It was all such a mess. And the poor man had no one to shoulder it with him.

And what was also entirely interesting was that the lieutenant had most assuredly not exaggerated. The captain was more than drunk—he was a stinking, fall-down, roaring drunk, as pickled as a ginger root and twice as pungent. He stank so much that Jane felt compelled to move the open flame of the candle away from him at the table.

“I want an explanation,” the old drunk all but shouted at Dance.