Almost a Scandal (31 page)

“Au feu!”
The cry of fire went up, and a bell began to peal out the alarm.

Sally felt the terror of the greedy flames as only a sea person could. She paused at the oars to stare as the fire grew larger, and the townspeople began to be silhouetted against the orange glow of the flames.

“Steady on, Kent,” Col told her. “And for fuck’s sake, keep rowing.”

Three stops on the west bank—near the monastery of the Capuchin monks, near the buildings of the more heavily guarded arsenal, and lower still, across from the buildings of the fortress itself—three fires, all growing slowly to light up the night.

And as they went, the alarm bells followed, clanging out from church steeples and bell towers, until it seemed half the city must be awake. And still, on they went.

She stayed in the boat, because he ordered her to, and because in the beginning, it seemed like a smart plan. But she was no good at waiting. And when he instructed her to pull up to the east quay, just upriver from the fortress, she could no longer hold her tongue.

“Col, I’m coming with you.”

“No.” Both his face and his voice were grim and determined, as if he had already battened himself down to withstand her.

It was beyond ridiculous. “Why are you deliberately trying to stop me from helping you? I could—”

“No. You’re helping me by staying in the boat.”

“The boat is fine on its own. It doesn’t need me to defend it. I could be so much more useful if you would let me—”

“No.” He hit the bottom of his voice. Bedrock with no further leeway.

“Why not?”

“Because I said no.” Sally could practically see the frustration and exasperation coming off him in waves. “Because I’m still your commanding officer, Kent. Just because we fucked doesn’t give you the right to challenge my authority.”

Sally had never been slapped before, but she reckoned this was what it must feel like—scalding heat scorching her face and a topsy-turvy feeling wringing up her innards, as if she were being churned up in a wave.

But she was a Kent, and she would damn well give as good as she got. She made her words hit back. “You may be my commanding officer,
Mister
Colyear, but that doesn’t make you any less of a
cad
. And just because we
fucked
”—it hurt to even say the word—“is no reason for you to start treating me as if I hadn’t a brain in my head, or an ounce of usefulness in my fingers.”

“Jesus, Kent. I don’t have time—”

“Sally.” She made her voice firm and positive, even though she felt anything but. The knot of doubt sitting at the bottom of her stomach like day-old porridge wouldn’t go away. She’d thought it all such an adventure. She’d thought it was worth it for the beautiful experience of being loved by Col that afternoon. She’d thought nothing but Col mattered. But now everything had changed. But the devil could take her before she’d let him ruin it without a fight. “It’s
Sally,
Col, Sally, until the minute we get back on board
Audacious
and I have to act like you don’t exist. But until that moment, I do exist, and you”—she jabbed a finger at his chest—“need me.”

“I can do this better alone.” Col was as immovable as a granite boulder, solid and hard. And just as wrong.

“You couldn’t have done
any
of this”—she threw her arms wide—“if you’d been alone. You would probably still be facedown in a stream, not a mile from the coast, if you’d been
alone.
”

“Damn you, Kent. Damn your fine gray eyes.” His voice broke, cracked open like a spilled yolk. “Don’t you understand?” He grabbed up a fistful of her bodice and hauled her flush against his chest. “I can’t protect you if you don’t stay in the damn boat. If you don’t stay in the goddamn boat, and something happens to me—if I’m shot or taken—the only thing that will keep me sane, the only thing, is knowing that you can get away. That you are so capable, you will find a way to steal a damned ketch all by your bloody self and sail it all the way through Le Goulet and back to bloody fucking Falmouth. You don’t fucking understand.”

The anguish in his voice lashed at her, punishing her for her intransigence. But she was a Kent, devil take her, and she had come too far, and done and said too much to back down now. He had to understand as well. “
Ask
me. Nicely.”

The wind went out of his sails for a moment. But only a moment, before he took a deep breath and
asked
. “Please. Please, Sally Kent. Will you please stay with the goddamn boat, so I can—”

“Yes, thank you, I will. So go.”

He kissed her, hard, as if he could press his will upon her. And then went away at a run, and Sally had to swallow the cold heat of her own fears and misgivings, and wait. The bells from the church towers were still tolling out their warnings, and it seemed to Sally as if there could not possibly be a person left in the city who did not know they were under some sort of an attack. Who would not be looking out for just such a person as David Colyear, skulking in their shadows and lighting their world on fire?

And while she was postulating dire predictions, Col came back at a run, low and fast, all but jumping into the boat.

“Pull,” he ordered, his breath full of strain. “Hard and fast.” He looked back up the street as she yanked the painter free and pushed them off.

“Who is after you?”

“Just row, damn it. Or let me.” He moved to take the oars from her.

“No.” She shook him off as the heavy tramp of boots echoed down the street and across the water. “Not even you can row that fast. I’ve got a better plan.” It wasn’t a plan really, just a crazy idea, born of fear and desperation, and the thought that people only ever see what they are looking for, unless they see something else. She pushed him to the bottom of the boat. “Lie down.”

Col’s long, lean body took up nearly the full length of the boat, and barely fit beneath the thwart, but he did as she directed.

Sally pulled hard on her starboard oar, and sent the boat whirling sideways, so they were drifting in lazy circles toward the middle of the stream of the river. Then she slid off the thwart seat, climbed atop Col, and pulled the top of her bodice loose. She all but shoved her bosom into his face. “You wanted to see my breasts? Well, try and look happy, Mr. Colyear, sir. As if you like fucking your midshipmen.”

“Kent?” His voice was brimming with warning. “If I may be so imprudent as to say so, you don’t look anything like a bloody midshipmen now. You look—”

“Chut,”
she hissed. And with that she began to pantomime what she hoped looked like a bout of noisy, acrobatic peasant sex.
“C’est ca! Encore, mon brave, encore.”

“God Almighty, Kent.” Col was laughing against her breasts, as if the same insane desperation had infected him. “You’re going to get us killed. But at least I’m going to die happy.”

“We’re not going to die,” she insisted. But she pulled the highly identifiable red wool cap Col had been wearing when he went off to light the fire off his head, and hid it beneath her skirts before she laced her fingers through his lovely dark hair. And then rammed his skull hard against the thwart. “Pretend, Col,” she instructed quietly through her teeth.
“Pre-tend.”

“I don’t have to pretend this.” His big hands came around to clasp her bottom and press her down against the hard length of his body.

Sally clamped her hand directly over Col’s mouth. Soldiers with guns at the ready had burst out onto the quay, their burning faggots held high in search, the red whorl of torchlight dancing on the surface of the water. “Stay down,” she instructed Col, as she began to move above him with greater enthusiasm, swaying back and forth, as if she were on a rocking horse.
“Ooh. Là, mon brave, là!”

Across the water, one of the soldiers called out.
“Au bateau. Arrêtez!”

She ignored the directive, and kept on pantomiming, rocking herself against Col’s laughing, supine form, watching all the while, reckoning the time and distance until they would be out of range of their guns. The boat had already drifted half a hundred yards from the shore.

“Arrêtez!”
they called again.
“Retournez au quai!”

Sally tossed up her hair as if she hadn’t noticed them until that moment.
“Moi?”
she asked breathlessly, before she sent them a lazy smile.
“Peut-être le plus tot possible, eh?”
she answered. “Now, pull me down,” she instructed out of the other side of her mouth.

Col reached up to tangle his hand in her hair and yank her back down into the boat against him. “What else did you say?”

“Maybe later.”

“Damn your eyes, Sally Kent,” he swore into her ear, but his voice was full of bemused laughter. “I always knew you were a game girl, but this beats all.”

Sally wasn’t sure if that was a good thing, but Col was holding her tight against him, and that did seem to be a good thing. They stayed there in the bottom of the boat, holding on to each other, ears straining and waiting in the dark of the river, until they could see above them that they were drifting under the rampart of the fortress.

Col pushed himself up to cautiously take a bead on their position. “They’ve gone.” He promptly set her aside and took the oars. “Cover yourself. Not that I’m not appreciative, but don’t ever do that again.”

His voice was light, but strained, as if he were making an effort to be … nice, so Sally tried to reciprocate with the same. “Rest assured, I hope to
never
have to do that again.”

A quick smile was all the response she got. Col rowed as swiftly as possible the rest of the way downriver, passing under the big guns of the Fort of Brest and out into the harbor by riding the midstream current out onto the outgoing tide.

The anchorage where the many ships of the French navy were moored lay primarily to the south of the city, just below two smaller islands of the estuary of the Élorn River. They would have to establish the fireship farther across the bay to the west, so the wind would push the vessel straight into the fleet where they stood clustered together in the lee of the land.

The ketch Col had picked out, a worn-out coastal trader in ill repair, still rode at anchor a cable length and a half from the shore to the west of the city. But the sloop he had chosen to take them out of the harbor was no longer at her mooring.

“The
St. Etienne
is gone.”

“Damn their eyes.” Col paused and looked over his shoulder, scanning the inky darkness for a suitable replacement. “What about that? It looks American. And fast.”

Sally was pleased to note that he had asked her opinion. The vessel in question was a sharp-built schooner anchored close in to the beachhead, where she must have been unloading stores after eluding the offshore blockade. “She’d make a valuable prize. She’ll likely go like stink, as the Americans are fond of saying.”

Because nothing traveled as fast as stink—the truth of which was borne out by the heavy smell of ash and smoke coming from the city, even though they were to windward of the conflagration. Half the city was awake with the toll of bells, and just as they had hoped, in the French fleet, boats were being lowered away to send crewmen on shore to fight the fires. Leaving the warships vulnerably undermanned.

“The big ketch first.” Col turned the boat in the direction of their potential fireship, while Sally dug their weapons out from their hiding places beneath the stern sheets. She looped the canvas belt for her short sword over her shoulder and took up a pistol. Unlike the last time, when she had boarded the xebec dangerously unprepared, she now knew enough to keep the gun in her left hand.

As they came within a quarter of a cable length to the ship, she felt the penetration of Col’s regard.

He nodded at her. “That’s it. All ready? Silent as we go.”

The vessel appeared deserted as they approached—the eighty feet of deck remained empty, and at the stern, the wheel was lashed fast. Col brought the boat under the starboard bows, and Sally tied off the painter before she took up her weapon.

But Col said, “Stay here until I give the all clear.”

Sally bit back the argument gathering behind her teeth and nodded her understanding, but the moment he had disappeared down the aft hatch, she followed him over the rail. She was no bloody good at waiting. And besides, she could better stand ready on the deck than she could in the boat.

To prove her point, she could start on a few simple, useful tasks while Col checked the lay of the deserted vessel. She began by casting off the bow anchor cable, so the ship would swing around in the wind onto its stern anchor and be headed in the right direction.

The cable was thick, and she had to put the gun down to use two hands to hack her way through the hemp rope and then feed it through the cathead, so it made no splash going over the side. She had just finished and was contemplating her next move when a heavy crash sounded from below.

She instinctively dropped to the deck in a crouch to listen, but when no other sound was forthcoming—no further noise or cry of alarm—she cursed herself for being so skittish. Col was probably only breaking up the furniture to start the pyre for their fire.

The ketch was rigged like an old-fashioned mortar ship, with square sails before the main, so her next job was to go aloft to unfurl the main course from its yard, so the ketch could be pushed easily across the bay, before the westerly wind. She climbed the narrow shrouds slowly, hampered by her skirts flapping against her legs and getting in her way. Once she had gained the stability of the masthead, she had to take the time to tie off her skirts between her legs, before she could ease herself carefully along the yard and cast loose the mainsail. That done to her satisfaction, she headed higher, to unfurl the small square topsail.

She had loosed all but the last point when the unmistakable reverberation of a gunshot blasted through the hull.

Sally immediately scrambled down a backstay as quickly as her cumbersome skirts would allow, but she had dropped to the deck before she recognized the metallic clang of steel blades meeting at killing force.