A Scandal to Remember (27 page)

And because Dance knew what it was to feel such crushing responsibility, he could not bear for her to feel that way. And so he kissed her.

He had been wanting to kiss her for days. Weeks. Since the first moment she had smiled at him, and said she was looking forward to being sorted out.

He had wanted and wanted until it had all but eaten him up inside.

But now he could take. In the face of gruesome death he wanted to cling to wholesome life.

Dance slid his hands upward along the fine line of her jaw, to cradle her face, and thumb the wet tears from her cheeks. “Jane. Don’t.”

Her lips were soft, and bittersweet with salt tears. Everything easy and forgiving. Everything he wanted. He wanted to breathe in her sweetness and her goodness and her warmth. He wanted to subsume her within him to drive away the cold that had settled deep within his bones. He wanted
her
.

He ached for her, this forthright, innocent woman.

And she was an innocent. She barely knew how to kiss—her eyes were open wide as she clutched his waistcoat front and pressed her mouth to his, but her lips were sealed together in an ardent, battened-down, buttoned-up manner that spoke more for her inexperience than her exuberance.

Dance gave her the only gift he had to give—his patience. He battened down his own need, and took his time, stroking his thumbs along her cheek, tipping her head back gently so he could play, and suck and nip at the plush line of her lower lip until at last she learned to kiss him back. Learned soft sips and sighs, and opened her mouth to allow his tongue to touch and taste her.

Dance heard a sound of encouragement tunnel out of his chest, and hoped it wasn’t too much like a groan. Hoped he didn’t scare her away.

But she was made of sterner stuff, and pulled herself closer, wrapping those surprisingly strong little arms around his neck and giving her innocence to him like a gift.

It felt like he had waited forever to be kissed like this, by such a woman. And it had been worth the wait.
She
had been worth the wait. Worth every travail and hardship on this misbegotten voyage. Because she tasted like life, and kissed like the end of winter.

He turned her into his arms, pressing her into the upholstered bench, so he could ease his weight into her and appease the aching need that had built and built for weeks and weeks until he felt as if it would consume him.

And she didn’t protest. She held him tight, drawing him down upon her, opening herself to him, letting her skirts tangle with his legs, and her lips taste the lobe of his ear. He could feel her breathing fast and hot against the skin of his neck, and knew his own breath was sawing in and out of his chest, as if he had hauled up the anchor cable by himself.

But she was a different sort of anchor, holding him firmly in the world of the warm and living, keeping him off the jagged shore of recrimination and regret. And he would not regret her, he would not. Not until he was old and gray, and cast upon the shore, and she was a distant memory of days gone past.

But she was here now, beneath him, and he could explore her at will, running his hands along the sweet curves of her body, from the trim flare of her waist up the run of her stays until he could cup the drowsy weight of her breast in his palm. She filled his hand completely. Perfectly. So perfectly, he could not stop himself from finding the subtle evidence of her arousal in her tightly budded nipple, and thumbing the peak through the layers of fabric.

The gasp of shock that flew from her lips was enough to remind him anew that she was an innocent, and that he was not only supposed to be the captain, but a gentleman. And she was not only a lady, but a person under his care.

She was sweet and kind and smart and brave and nothing he had a right to.

To take advantage of her grief to ease his own was not the action of a gentleman. Now was not the time, or the place. Not with the captain’s dead body lying enshrouded on the other side of the sleeping-cabin wall.

Dance eased his hand away. He rested his forehead against hers, and tried to slow his breath. Tried to listen to the sounds of the ship stirring around them with the change of the watch, and wait for their breathing to return to normal.

Normal. Such an out-of-place word on this ship where nothing was normal. And nothing could be with this woman in his arms. Nor did he want it to be.

But he did not let her go. He could not. He would hold on to her for as long as he possibly could.

“I…” She closed her eyes. “I ought to go.”

He nodded, but said, “Not just yet.”

He held her there, not kissing, not speaking, until the watch had changed and the ship settled once again into creaking quiet. And then he kissed her just once before he set himself away from her.

Because if he didn’t set himself away from her now, while good sense still ruled his head, he was like to never let her go.

“You stay,” he said. “I’ll go.” It were better for him to go on deck, than for her to try to make it down to the wardroom unseen. If he stayed on deck all would be well.

Dance shrugged on his coat, and went out into the blistering cold before he could change his mind. It was just as well, devil take him. He’d never sleep anyway, but at least now he had something better to think of—the alarming perfection of Jane Burke’s soft, ripe breast in his hand.

Chapter Sixteen

It was a wonder that Jane managed to push herself back up to sitting, because she could not feel her spine. She couldn’t feel anything but the heady thrum of wonder pulsing through her veins.

Because Lieutenant Dance had kissed her. And she couldn’t feel anything but the breathless wonder that warmed her like the summer sun.

He had kissed her. And it was marvelous. And unexpected, and sweet and messy and undeniably exciting and scary to be the object of such a man. She had no idea kissing would feel like that—like her breath had been pushed from her lungs, but she didn’t need to breathe.

And she had not known that a man’s face would feel like that under her palm—soft and prickly and endearing. She had not known that his lips would taste tangy and clean and delicious, or be so smooth and yet so strong.

But she knew now.

And she wanted to do it again. As soon as possible. With stony, impassive Lieutenant Dance. Who was not stony or impassive in the least.

And neither was she. She was not the logical, scientific creature she had thought herself.

Her body felt foreign—a new uncharted world she had never before wanted to explore. Her hands tingled, and her breath came fast, and her legs had gone all rubbery. And her breasts felt full and heavy and aching for the unexpected pleasure of his touch.

Beneath her thick wool gown, her body felt riper for the knowledge—for the fact that she had never felt something she could not control and keep neat and tidy and manageable.

It was messy and bewildering and lovely. Just like him.

“You all right then, miss?” Punch asked when he brought in a hot mug of something steamy and alcoholic.

“Yes, thank you.” Jane felt her face flame to the roots of her hair. “The lieutenant went above.” She felt she ought to explain herself more, but Punch seemed satisfied. Or perhaps he was simply as embarrassed as she.

“Did he now?” The old tar kept his eyes everywhere but on her. “Good night then, miss.”

Jane had never been so mortified in all her life. It was as if the steward expected that she would, and perhaps should stay in Dance’s cabin. As if he thought she and Dance had been doing exactly what they had been doing. And that they might be doing more of it.

Jane didn’t know which embarrassed her more.

And with that it all came flooding back—the grief and the guilt, the sure knowledge that she had made an irreversible mistake. That she had pushed and prodded and managed a man into his own death. No matter what Lieutenant Dance said, or how he had kissed her, that fact remained unforgivably true.

And would have kept her from sleep that awful night, had she not kept hold of Lieutenant Dance’s black silk stock tie. She had taken hold of it somehow when they had kissed, and she never let it go, slipping it into the pocket sewn onto her petticoats.

She took it out now, in the safety of the dark cabin, and let the smooth silk run through her hands, and held it up against her cheek. It still held the lingering scent of lime and soap and cold wind. But it was him. And for that one small moment she could close her eyes and pretend she was still with him, and all was right with the world.

Because even she knew it could not last.

*   *   *

They buried Captain Muckross at dawn, commending his soul to God, and his shrouded body to the cold, dark sea.

Dance spoke only briefly—he asked the Reverend Mr. Phelps to read out the service in his quavery voice. Because no sooner had the body slid beneath the gray waves, than the sea seemed to rise up in protest, and Dance was forced to turn his mind to more important things—to the fate of the living. To the safety of all the souls aboard
Tenacious.

The serrated landscape of Tierra del Fuego far off the starboard bow was rugged and rocky and littered with ship-wrecking rocks just lurking below the surface ready to rip open the bottom of his hull. Dance had expected worsening weather when
Tenacious
turned into the contrary westerlies at the tip of South America, but he had hoped against hope that they would be spared the kind of blow that howled upon them from the polar south, pushing
Tenacious
relentlessly toward the inhospitable lee shore.

But the looming lee shore wasn’t their most pressing problem—the relentless battering of the headwind against the bows was.

“She’s opening up again, Captain.” The carpenter Pritchard came to him already soaked from the constant spray blowing across the deck, and the wet work to stop the leaking. “I’ve patched and caulked and shored her up, but the rollers twist her up something fierce, so’s I can’t stop her working apart at her stem.”

Dance gave the order to shorten sail—though he didn’t like to send the men aloft in such pitching seas—and set the course farther to the southwest, to take them around the Horn well out to sea, where they would have greater room to maneuver than in the narrow Strait of Magellan, and would not have to tack constantly to make headway.

But farther out to sea, the unpredictable weather of the polar summer forced them all to their duty. He pushed the men as hard as he dared, but he couldn’t be everywhere, though he didn’t spare himself. Any job he asked the men to do, he turned his hand to as well.

The long days began to blend together, and still the weather did not abate. Nor did the men cease complaining.

“This is the best weather Cape Horn has to offer,” he assured them. “This is the height of the southern summer, with the calmest weather and the longest hours of daylight. We can’t afford to sit and wait, because it’s only bound to get worse.”

If the men were disinclined to believe him, Dance kept his curses to himself. Because the life of the ship had to go on—the men had to be fed, and they needed to be led. To that end, Dance made his promotions and his demotions. While the elevation of Lieutenants Simmons and Lawrence could surprise no one, the promotion of young Rupert Honeyman to acting third lieutenant served not only to make up for the lad’s mistreatment, but also to enliven the Marine Society midshipmen to renew their efforts to excel under tutelage of the sailing master.

Similarly, the promotion of the topman, Flanaghan, to master’s mate, where his years of experience could be useful to Mr. Whitely despite his clipped wing, as he called his broken arm, helped to lessen Ransome’s underhanded manipulation of the crew.

And as for Mr. Ransome— Dance spent an inordinate amount of time mulling what to do with Ransome. He was too useful and too powerful a man to strip him of his warrant and turn before the mast—more underhanded skullduggery was likely to ensue.

He settled instead for keeping the man as close as possible to hand, calling upon his personal assistance nearly constantly so the man was kept off balance and too busy to plot.

And Dance kept his eyes and his ears open in a way he never had—and never had had to—before. So the moment he heard even the vaguest of mutterings from Larson, one of Ransome’s bosun’s mates—“We’d all be better off making back for Rio instead of carting bloody scientists across the seas like a bunch of cooped hens”—he disrated the man and turned him before the mast as an example to Ransome, and replaced him with Morris, who had remained helpful, hardworking, and loyal.

But Ransome was as tenacious as the brutal westerlies. “Don’t like it,” he muttered day after day, until even mild Doc Whitely began to wonder at Dance’s course.

“Do you think we ought to turn back?” The sailing master clamped a hand over his hat as he shouted his doubts over the shrieking winds. “Or seek a more sheltered course?”

“Our orders are for Valparaiso, and to get north we must first go due west.” And turning back would do no good. They might find some shelter at a deep bay in the Hermit Islands, but they would find little in the way of materials for repairing the leaking bow. Dance had rounded Cape Horn more than once in his long time in the navy, and it was ever so. Wishing in the face of the relentless westerlies was useless—the wind was not going to stop. They might wait until they were all as old and dead as the captain, and still the wind would not change. “Best to set ourselves to it, and grit it out.”

The only one who seemed able to grit it out with any equanimity was the dauntless Miss Jane Burke, who came where none of the other naturalists, and few of the crew would venture, and made an appearance on the treacherous, sloping quarterdeck.

The moment he recognized her dark felt hat coming up the companionway, Dance was at her side, offering her a steadying hand. “Jane. Have a care, the deck is icy and slippery.”

They had not spoken in days—not since he had kissed her in his cabin, and they had buried the captain. After such an absence, everything within him warmed at her appearance. She had donned her heavy cloak as protection against the steady stinging spray off the bow, but beneath the enveloping hat, those wide, shining blue eyes greeted him with a steadiness that was like a balm to his misapprehensions. “Lovely weather you seem to have found us, Captain.”