Almost a Lady (2 page)

The door opened and a man stepped inside, closing the door carefully behind him. The bird rose up on the perch and flapped its wings. Instantly Meg’s visitor held out his arm and the bird swooped from its perch to the offered wrist like a falcon returning to his jesses.

Meg stared at him. “Who the devil are you?” she demanded.

Her visitor’s slight smile was a gleaming white flash in a deeply tanned face. He leaned his shoulders against the door and regarded her with an amiable curiosity. “Oddly enough, I was about to ask you exactly the same question.”

Meg shook her head as if she could somehow clear it of confusion. “I would have thought you’d know the name of a person you’ve kidnapped,” she stated.

“Ah, well, you see, although I can understand you might find this difficult to believe, you were not exactly kidnapped.” As he spoke he moved across the cabin, setting the bird onto its perch again.

It went with a slightly protesting caw and a disgruntled flap of its wings, muttering to itself, “Poor Gus . . . poor Gus.”

Meg gazed at the bird in bewildered stupefaction. This really couldn’t be happening. “Gus?” she queried.

“Poor Gus,” the bird corrected.

“Gus is a scarlet macaw,” the man informed her, scratching the bird’s poll. “He’s rather talkative.”

“I had noticed,” she said dryly.
Dear God, why on earth were they having a discussion about a parrot?
She struggled to bring the unruly conversation onto some pointful track. “If I was not kidnapped, how did I come to be here?”

Her host, if that was what he was, hitched himself onto the corner of the table and sat with one leg on the floor, the other carelessly swinging. There was something about the casual grace of his movements that seemed familiar. And then Meg suddenly knew who he was. The man she had watched from The Leas climbing aboard the sloop-of-war.

“This is your ship?” she said, the query purely rhetorical.

“The
Mary Rose,
” he returned. “Are you hungry . . . would you like breakfast?”

Meg realized that she
was
hungry, ravenous in fact. When had she last eaten? “How long have I been here?”

“We picked you up late yesterday afternoon. It’s mid-morning now.” He reached behind him for a small handbell and rang it. His head moved through a ray of sunshine that caught copper glints in the auburn locks. His hair was a color that Meg, with her own unashamedly red curls, had always envied for its subtlety.

She leaned back against the bulkhead and scrutinized him with narrowed eyes. She didn’t feel in the least alarmed, which struck her as a lunatic lack of reaction in the circumstances, but at the moment there was nothing remotely threatening about her companion.

A rotund man opened the door and came into the cabin. He didn’t so much as glance at the figure in the box-bed. “Yes, Captain?”

“Bring breakfast, Biggins,” the man said. “And coffee . . . or would you prefer tea, ma’am?” He smiled politely at Meg. His eyes were the washed-out blue of a distant horizon.

“Coffee, thank you,” she said with an enthusiasm that she couldn’t restrain.

“G’bye . . . G’bye . . .” the macaw spoke from his perch as Biggins departed.

“Does he have a large vocabulary?” she asked involuntarily.

“Large enough,” the captain of the
Mary Rose
replied. A slight frown drew his copper eyebrows together. “I was told you hurt your head. How is it?”

She touched the bump. “A little sore, but nothing serious. Where are my clothes?”

“You won’t wish to wear them again. They were ruined by mud and water.” He dismissed the issue of her clothes with a wave and a gesture towards the side of the cabin. “You’ll find plenty of replacements in the cupboard in the port bulkhead.”

“I see,” Meg said, although she didn’t. “And what I’m wearing now . . . ?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “What
are
you wearing?” He sounded genuinely curious.

Meg closed her eyes on renewed confusion. Maybe some threads of sense would emerge from this tangled conversation. “A nightgown,” she stated. “A most fashionable and elegant garment from what I’ve seen of it.”

He nodded without apparent surprise. “You were taken to the sick bay; I daresay the surgeon took care of getting you out of your wet clothes while he was seeing to the wound on your head.”

Well, that solved one little mystery at least, and a surgeon’s intimate attentions were unimpeachable. The ship suddenly swung sharply to the left. Meg grabbed the sides of the box-bed as a cracking sound came from above her head. Her mysterious host didn’t seem to notice the change in movement.

“What was that?” Meg demanded.

“A tack to port,” he informed her, sliding off the table as the door opened and the rotund sailor reappeared with a laden tray followed by a lad of about seven, bearing a jug of coffee.

Meg stayed where she was as the table was laid. The boy cast her a curious, slightly guilty look before hurrying from the cabin, but Biggins kept his attention entirely on his task. When he’d gone, accompanied by a chorus of farewells from Gus, she cast aside the coverlet and edged herself out of the box. The floor swayed beneath her and she grabbed the back of a chair.

“You’ll get used to it,” her breakfast companion said calmly. He ran an eye over her as she stood beside the table. “Yes, a very elegant garment,” he observed. “How fortunate that it fits you so well . . . I hope you like eggs and bacon.”

Get used to it?
Meg stared at him for a second, then decided that food would enable her to take charge of this insane situation. Her bemused weakness was entirely to do with hunger. She said nothing but sat down and attacked the full plate before her.

Her host offered no conversation until she had wiped her plate with a piece of barley bread and taken her last sip of coffee. Meg set down her cup and thought rather self-consciously that she must have presented a sight of pure greed in the face of her companion’s rather more decorous table manners. But then she’d eaten nothing since a light lunch at noon the previous day. The reminder banished self-consciousness as the image of that carriage with its open door barring her progress returned in full color.

“So how is it that this kidnapping is not really a kidnapping?” she inquired in tones of deceptive mildness. “I’m knocked unconscious and many hours later find myself somewhere where I have no desire to be . . . imprisoned on a ship, no less. That seems to me a perfect description of kidnapping.”

“But as you’ve already pointed out, I would surely know the name of a person I’d kidnapped,” he said, with another flickering smile. The little smile-creases around his eyes were much paler than the rest of his complexion.

“Who brought me here?”

“My men.”

“Res ipsa loquitur,”
she declared with an air of triumph.

She hadn’t expected a mere sailor to understand the legal term, but he shook his head and said, “Not in this case. My men were under the impression that you were the person they had been sent to collect. A person coming of her own volition. When you slipped trying to get into the coach—”

“
Around
it,” she interrupted. “The open door was barring my passage.”

“It was open in invitation,” he explained with an air of patience. “To make it easy for Ana . . . for the lady my men were supposed to be collecting.”

Meg stared at him. “So where is she . . . this Ana?”

His expression darkened and a shadow crossed his eyes. He regarded her with what felt like an uncomfortable closeness before saying rather curtly, “I wish I knew.”

She glanced down at the creamy silk folds of her nightgown. “This belongs to her?”

He nodded. “A perfect fit. You see, my dear ma’am, my men’s error was quite understandable. They had never seen their intended passenger in person but had been given a description that in essential details matches your own. They brought you here in good faith.”

“Well, why didn’t you just take me back?” she exclaimed, rising from the chair with an agitated movement that set the skirts of the nightgown swirling. She stood, one hand on the back of the chair, facing him, her mind now clear, her eyes filled with anger.

He said simply, “I couldn’t.”

“What do you mean,
you couldn’t
?” Biting scorn hid the fear that up to now had been suppressed. For some reason it hadn’t occurred to her that this situation could not be rectified.

“Sit down again,” he said quietly, but Meg understood it to be an instruction, not a request. She hesitated for a moment, then took her chair.

“The tide was full when you were carried on board wrapped in a cloak. It didn’t occur to me to identify a woman I thought I knew, and when I was told that you’d slipped and knocked yourself unconscious, I instructed them to take you to sick bay. After that, with the storm coming up I had no time for anything but sailing us out of the harbor and through the storm.” He spoke with the same quiet authority, so that against every instinct she began to feel it all made sense.

“Once matters were under control on the quarterdeck, I inquired after you and the surgeon told me that you would suffer nothing worse than a possible concussion and they had put you to bed in my cabin.” He shrugged. “I thought nothing of it . . . until I came below just before dawn and realized the disaster.”

“Disaster,”
Meg said. “
I’m
a disaster?”

He ran a hand through the wavy auburn hair that was a little longer than current fashion dictated . . . something that Meg noticed almost in passing. “It’s a little difficult to explain,” he said vaguely. “The lady you’re supposed to be was willingly engaged in an enterprise of vital importance. Her absence and as a consequence your unwitting presence is indeed a disaster.”

Meg stared at him as if he was a snake charmer and she the snake. “Who are you?”

“Names would certainly smooth the path,” he said with a sideways tilt of his head. “Just whom did my men pick out of the kennel yesterday afternoon?”

“My name’s Meg Barratt,” she stated and the declaration finally brought the grim reality of an unimaginable situation home to her. She thought of her parents and of Arabella and Jack. They would be frantic. “If I am not returned to Folkestone immediately, I can’t imagine what will happen. I
have
to go home.” Her desperate gaze fixed upon the cabin’s bank of windows . . . at the ceaseless, inexorable movement of the sea as it slipped beneath the stern, carrying her heaven only knew where.

“I can’t do that,” he said, and there was an almost regretful note beneath the implacable statement. “Even if the tide was not against us, time is. My mission can only be accomplished at a certain juncture. I cannot lose the opportunity.”

And Meg slowly understood that she was indeed trapped. She could not turn this ship around. If its master would not, then where it sailed so did she. “Who are you?” she repeated.

“My name’s Cosimo.” He gave her a little bow as if in a formal introduction.

“De Medici?” she inquired with unconcealed and disbelieving sarcasm. Such a name was a perfect fit with all this nonsensical talk of missions and vital enterprises.

Disconcertingly he merely laughed. “My mother combined a love of Italian history with a somewhat fanciful temperament.”

“So if it’s not de Medici, what is it?” Her lip curled a little.

“Just Cosimo,” he said, untroubled by her scorn. “You need know me only by that name.”

“I have no wish to know you at all.” She turned away and went over to the bank of windows. She knelt on the cushioned bench beneath and stared out at the sea, trying to control the tears that filled her eyes.

“When you’re ready to dress, you’ll find clothes in the cupboard. I’m sure that like the nightgown they’ll be a perfect fit.” He spoke quietly as ever behind her. “Come to the quarterdeck whenever you feel like it.” She heard the door open and close.

“G’bye . . . g’bye . . . poor Gus . . . poor Gus,” the macaw muttered.

“Oh, be quiet,” Meg said fiercely through the infuriating tears that clogged her throat.

“Poor Gus,” the bird murmured and tucked his head beneath his wing.

Chapter   2

C
osimo went up on deck, the serenity of his expression belying the fierce turmoil of his thoughts. The helmsman offered him the wheel as he climbed the steps to the quarterdeck but he shook his head. “I’ll take it later, Mike, when we come close to the harbor.”

“Aye, Captain. The rocks around the island are as treacherous as any on the Brittany coast,” the helmsman said solemnly.

Cosimo laughed slightly and patted the man’s shoulder. “I’m not implying that you’re not up to the task, Mike. But I like the challenge myself.”

A grin twitched the other man’s mouth. “And there’s none better to do it, sir.”

Cosimo looked up at the sails that barely stirred beneath a faint breeze. “It’ll take us hours to make landfall with this wind.”

“You know what they say about calm following the storm,” Mike observed with a sagacious nod. He leaned sideways and spat over the rail. “Sea’s a millpond.”

Cosimo nodded and walked over to the stern rail, where he stood leaning his elbows on the topmost bar gazing out at the faint outline of land on the horizon. The Channel Islands, just off the coast of Brittany. With a good wind they’d be maneuvering through the rocks to the harbor on the island of Sark within four hours. At this rate it would be nightfall and they’d have to stand out to sea during the night. Only a fool would attempt the landing in pitch dark. And although his anxiety and the urgency of his mission made him impatient, Cosimo was no fool.

What had happened to Ana?
A simple accident that had delayed her arrival at the rendezvous? Or something more sinister?

He forced himself to consider the latter possibility. If Ana had been betrayed to the French, if she was now in the hands of their expert interrogators, it would not be long before they knew everything there was to know, if they didn’t already know it. She was a strong woman, a perfectionist, an expert agent who did not tolerate failure, but Cosimo was under no illusions. He would not himself be able to withstand such an interrogation for long, and he could not expect it of Ana.

A simple accident? Most unlikely. Ana left nothing to chance. But maybe, just maybe, she had slipped and knocked herself unconscious and missed the rendezvous. If such a fluke accident could happen to his unwitting passenger, why not to Ana? But he knew that he had to assume the worst. If Ana had been betrayed, then more than the present mission was endangered. Ana knew too many secrets, too many identities. His own life was probably now not worth a farthing.

But maybe there would be a message for him at the naval outpost on Sark. Ana knew he would have had to sail without her. If he missed the tide, he might not reach Toulon in time to catch Napoleon. If her failure to make the rendezvous had been caused by an accident, she would have used the pigeon courier service to get him a message, knowing that he would stop off there to pick up dispatches. She might already be making her own way to France. There were other crossings, other routes.

He shook his head. There was no point speculating about any of this until he reached Sark.

The sails flapped and he spun from the rail to look up at them, now hanging limply as the last whisper of breeze faded. The midday sun beat down, hot for mid-April, and the blue waters of the Channel danced with light.

“We’re making no way, sir?” Mike called.

“No, I can see that. Furl the sails and we’ll sit it out. We’ll have to hope the wind picks up towards evening.” Cosimo pushed himself away from the rail. “Mr. Fisher?” He called to a man keeping a respectful distance across the quarterdeck.

“Sir?” The young man came over briskly.

“Tell the men to stand down. Sleep, cook, do whatever they like for a couple of hours. We’re not going anywhere for a while.”

“Right y’are, sir.” The sailor jumped down the steps to the main deck, hollering through cupped hands.

Cosimo smiled to himself. Such rambunctious informality would not be tolerated on a sloop-of-war belonging to the British navy, but the
Mary Rose
was only loosely affiliated with the official navy and her captain offered his services to the crown according to his own lights. He preferred the freedom of a privateer to the rigid hierarchical structure of the navy, and, because he had proved indispensable on more than one occasion, the British navy bit its stiff upper lip and endured the outrage to its sense of decorum.

The smile faded rather quickly as the thought of Miss Meg Barratt chased away other concerns. He’d invited her to come on deck but there was no sign of her. She hadn’t been too happy at finding herself aboard the
Mary Rose,
and he couldn’t really blame her for that, but he could put her ashore on Sark and one of the fishing boats would take her back to Folkestone for a consideration.

Could
put her ashore or
would
put her ashore?

Cosimo was accustomed to the way his mind worked. It seemed to operate on two levels. While the conscious level blithely did its work, the unconscious was busy as a bee, and the results of its activity just popped up at an opportune time. Miss Meg Barratt was so physically similar to Ana it was almost uncanny. The petite physique, the red hair. Ana’s red was a little more subdued than Miss Barratt’s, but not so much that someone only vaguely acquainted with Ana would notice. The freckles . . . they could be concealed. The features . . . definitely different, but again Napoleon had only met Ana twice and the last time was over a year ago. He wouldn’t remember the details but the resemblance would be sufficient to catch his eye.

He turned back to the railing, humming tunelessly as his mind worked. It was, at first sight, an absurd plan. But an assassin was accustomed to adapting and to using what tools came to hand. Maybe he would
not
put Miss Barratt ashore on the island of Sark. But nothing could be done until he’d discovered what he could about Ana’s situation.

Meg finally turned her mesmerized gaze from the still and gleaming sea beyond the window, sniffed with a resolute end to tears, and took in her surroundings anew. The breakfast table and its used dishes remained. Gus, still in a huff, sat on his perch with his back to her. A large birdcage, door open, swung from a hook in the ceiling. Her eye fell on two books neatly placed on a shelf below the starboard window. Mrs. Radcliff’s
The Italian
and Wordsworth’s
The Borderers.
Someone had taken the trouble to rescue her library books from the torrent of water in the kennel. Puzzlingly considerate.

She stared at the door that led to whatever lay outside the cabin. Did she want to venture forth? Even if she did, she couldn’t go in a nightgown.

She slid off the cushioned bench and went over to the cupboard in the port bulkhead. There were several gowns, a hooded cloak, shawls, and a neat array of drawers that revealed stockings, chemises, petticoats. Two pairs of serviceable, leather buttoned boots completed the offerings. Serviceable boots on slippery decks seemed an obvious choice, Meg reflected with a sardonic grin that reassured her somewhat. She hadn’t completely lost her sense of self and humor in this transformation from reality to sinister fairy tale.

A knock at the door, however, made her heart beat fast and it was with an effort that she was able to steady her voice to call, “Come in.” But Gus got there first, and his raucous invitation continued as she turned slowly towards the opening door. The man who entered was not Cosimo, and she was not sure whether she was relieved or alarmed by the stranger.

“David . . . David . . .” Gus called, once more a lively host. He hopped off his perch onto the table and picked his way through the dishes, bridling like a harlot on a street corner.

Meg’s visitor was a pleasant-faced man with salt-and-pepper hair, wearing a black coat and britches and carrying a leather bag. He gave her an apologetic smile that illuminated light gray eyes as he scratched Gus’s poll and returned the greeting. Gus flew up onto his shoulder and sat there with an air of triumph and what Meg would have sworn was a glare in her direction.

“Good day, ma’am,” the man called David said.

“Good day,” she responded, closing the cupboard door softly behind her.

He set his bag down on the box-bed and said with a smile, “Forgive me, I don’t know how to address you, ma’am. But I’m the ship’s surgeon. I tended to you last evening.”

“Then I’m grateful to you, sir,” Meg said with a frank and friendly smile. She came over, hand extended. “My name is Meg Barratt.”

“David Porter at your service, Miss Barratt.” The surgeon shook Meg’s offered hand as he inquired, “How are you feeling? No headache, I trust?”

“No, none. Just a little soreness.” Meg touched the spot behind her ear.

“That’s to be expected. A little witch hazel will help.” He reached up and lifted the muttering Gus down from his shoulder, setting him back on the table. The macaw, apparently restored to good humor, pecked at the crumbs on the breadboard. David opened his bag. “Do you remember what happened?”

“Absolutely,” Meg declared. “Down to the last instant before I started to slide beneath the coach.”

“Good . . . good. Concussion can do strange things to the brain,” he said. “If you’d sit down . . .” He gestured rather tentatively to a chair.

Meg found his courteous hesitancy immensely reassuring. She sat down and tilted her head for a deftly gentle probing of the swelling. He laid a cool pad of witch hazel over the wound and she felt herself relax. “Dr. Porter, do you know where we’re sailing to?”

“That’s not really my business, ma’am,” he said without hesitation. “You should ask Cosimo.”

“Oh . . . I see.” She hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Does only he know where we’re sailing?”

At that a tiny smile quirked the corners of the doctor’s mouth. “We all think we know where we’re going, Miss Barratt, but only Cosimo is aware of matters that could change that.”

Meg turned her head sharply and the pad of witch hazel fell to the floor. “Everyone on this ship is happily sailing at the whim of one man to a destination that could change at a moment’s notice?”

“Basically, Miss Barratt, yes,” the surgeon said with the same tranquil smile. “The swelling should go down in a day or two. Until then, don’t be too energetic—”

“Energetic!”
Meg exclaimed. “How could one be energetic confined to this cabin?”

David Porter frowned. “I was not under the impression that you were confined, Miss Barratt. I did not advise it.”

Come to the quarterdeck whenever you feel like it.
Meg heard Cosimo’s quiet invitation and realized that she had no intention of accepting it. “I choose to keep myself to myself, Doctor,” she said stiffly. “I’m here against my will . . . however it came to pass . . . but until I can return home I don’t intend to leave this cabin.”

He looked grave. “I see. But I do recommend fresh air and a little gentle exercise . . . a walk around the decks, for instance. It’s not good to stay within doors for an extended period.”

“Extended period?” Meg could almost hear a squeak in her voice. “How extended?”

“As I said, you should ask Cosimo.” David packed the tools of his trade back into his leather bag. He regarded her thoughtfully for a moment. “You must, of course, do what seems right for you. I understand your situation is rather disturbing. But you have nothing to fear on this ship, Miss Barratt.”

Gus flew onto his shoulder as he turned back to the door. “G’bye . . . G’bye . . .” the macaw squawked as doctor and bird left Meg to her seclusion.

Nothing to fear?
Meg sat down on the bench beneath the window again. Gus’s absence was like balm on a wound. The silence was pure heaven. And then she became aware that the motion of the ship had changed. It now rocked gently and when she looked out of the window the sea was not slipping beneath the bow. So they were not moving.

Well, she decided, this was not a situation to be dealt with in a nightgown. She returned to the cupboard in the bulkhead and picked out underclothes and a bronze muslin gown with a paisley shawl. She glanced uneasily at the cabin door. The prospect of changing her clothes became less attractive. As if in confirmation of her lack of privacy there came a brisk knock. “Permission to remove breakfast dishes, Miss Barratt.”

She took a minute to swathe herself in the paisley shawl before calling, “Come in.”

The rotund Biggins entered, gave her a nod of a bow, and swiftly cleared the dishes onto a tray. “I’ll bring hot water, ma’am,” he said as he left with another nod. He left the door slightly ajar and was back in minutes with two steaming jugs. “I’ll put these in the captain’s head, ma’am,” he declared, stepping across a narrow lintel into a space Meg hadn’t noticed before that was set into the bulkhead.

Curious, she followed him. The tiny area was furnished with a plank with a hole in it, much like a regular privy except that the hole gave access to the sea beneath, and a shallow porcelain indentation with another opening to the sea and a stopper attached on a chain. It was an arrangement that was clearly intended as a makeshift bath. “How neat,” Meg observed, surprised into the involuntary comment.