Almost a Scandal (4 page)

Above their heads, where the preferred object of her thoughts was presumably directing the stowing of powder without pitching anyone else into the drink, seven bells rang out. Only a half hour left until the end of the watch.

“Has it gone as late as that?” She wanted to get on deck, to get on with the business of being twice as useful as anyone else, and becoming acquainted with the crew before Mr. Colyear had need to look for her, but she couldn’t just abandon Jellicoe and young Worth. Someone needed to wake the boy up and set him to rights.

Just when she had set herself to performing the job, a nut-brown old seaman wove his uneven way into the room—the mess attendant, carrying a posset in his gnarled, arthritic hands. “I’ve got just the thing for the young sir, here.”

The devil and Saint Elmo. Fate was certainly playing dice with her today. Here was another person who knew her. And knew Richard. Angus Pinkerton, the former personal steward of her father.

To be sure, he looked a vast deal older and more careworn than the last time she had seen him, when she had lived aboard her father’s ship. He resembled nothing so much as an old apple, his cheeks polished red by the wind, and what was left of his hair rose in white tufts from his pate, as if the years of exposure to Atlantic gales had blown all the color out of it.

She could not hope to pass unnoticed under the attention of this man, who for years had been like a mother to her, shepherding her and Richard under his care. Angus Pinkerton may not have been the brightest star in the constellations, but he had an uncanny ear for knowing what went on in a ship. It was a devilishly small world, the navy.

But whether he recognized her or not, she ought to be safe with Angus Pinkerton. He was an honest man, through and through, but loyal down to his creaking bones. She had only to keep him from blurting out the truth to anyone else.

“Pinky?” Sally ventured. “Is that you?”

“Young sir?” The old tar swung around. “Why, bless my heart, it’s—”

“Richard,” she broke in with what she hoped was a confident smile. “Richard Kent. Captain Kent’s son, from
Adamant,
back in the year one. Do you remember?”

Pinky squinted up his cloudy blue eyes and laughed. “Of course I remember. Is that
you
then, young sir? Well, I never would have recognized you, so tall and grown you’ve gotten. But my eyes aren’t what they used to be. How kind you are to remember your old Pinky.”

Sally breathed out her relief. “Good to see you, as well. But Pinky, what in heaven’s name are you doing aboard
Audacious
? And as servant to the orlop? I thought you were meant to be comfortably pensioned off, at your sister’s farm, somewhere in Dorset. Or was it Devon?”

“How good you are to remember. But my Jeanie—that was my sister, you see—well, she died.” He heaved a sigh of lament out of his chest. “And her husband, well, he weren’t what could be called a
comfortable
man. And I got to missing the sea. And good Captain McAlden found me this easy berth, looking after you young gentlemen.”

“My father will be glad to know you’re safely tucked up here.”

“Good of you to say so, and you’ll be sure to send my compliments to your father, Cap’n Kent. But
you
won’t be needing no looking after at all, if I know you, young sir. Sharp as a brass needle, you always were.” He cast his rheumy eyes around the cabin. “And you’ve put this all to rights, I shouldn’t guess.”

“Just so,” Sally answered, even as she swallowed down the cold lump of apprehension clogging her throat. Richard had not been as sharp as anything. He had been miserable aboard their father’s ship, often ill, and always out of sorts. It was she who had followed Pinky around like a remora and learned all the tricks of the old salt’s trade. But if she and Richard seemed to have melded themselves together in Pinky’s mind’s eye, so much the better. “How long have you been aboard, Pinky, and what can you tell me about Mr. Gamage?”

Pinky’s eyebrows rose in proportion to his wariness, while he lowered his head and his voice to a soft growl. “I only been with Captain McAlden’s young gentlemen for this last cruise, when young Mr. Beecham came aboard. I don’t mess for Mr. Gamage. He’s got his own creature, Tunney, as his servant, and doesn’t share with anyone else. Likes to have his own way, Mr. Gamage does. An’ he knows how to make it so. You didn’t hear it from me”—he cupped his hand over his mouth to speak confidentially—“but you young gentlemen be sure to lock up your valuables, and your foodstuffs—whatever you brought with you—or he’ll have ’em for his own in a trice.”

“Do you mean he would steal them?” Sally couldn’t keep her voice down. She wouldn’t. She was appalled at the very idea. She was quite sure such a thing, no matter how trivial, would never have been allowed on her father’s ships. “You’re joking. Please tell me you’re joking. Stealing is a flogging, if not a hanging, offense. Captain McAlden doesn’t strike me as the sort of man who would put up with anything of the sort. He knows as well as any—probably better than any—that a man who would steal, especially food, from his shipmates will do just about anything…” It was beyond Sally’s comprehension—too much of an abomination of all codes of conduct to which she had been raised.

“That’s just low,” she sputtered. “The lowest.”

“Now, young sir, that’s just the way things are, more often than not. He’s too canny to let it look like thievery, but it’ll be gone all the same. But you didn’t hear it from me.” Pinky was shaking his jowly head like a wary bulldog. “I don’t want no more troubles.”

Pinky’s tepid plea couldn’t hope to soothe the hot indignity rising in her chest. “Has Mr. Gamage made trouble for you, Pinky?”

The old man began to look even more uncomfortable. His already glowing face flushed a darker shade of crimson. “Now, nothing out of the way of things.” He rubbed his nose to hide his discomfort at her scrutiny while he relocated his glance down to his feet. “I’ll say no more.”

“Come now, Pinky. You know you can trust me. I give you my word as Captain Alexander Kent’s son that no mention of what you say will pass beyond this berth.” She shot an instructing glance at Jellicoe. “And I’m sure Mr. Jellicoe will give you his word, as well.”

“Indeed, Pinkerton. I pledge you my word as Earl Sanderson’s son to keep your confidence.”

Good Lord. No wonder the accommodations on board were not what Will Jellicoe had expected, or been accustomed to. And he’d never breathed a word of it, not even when she was ordering him about like a dockyard stevedore. Sally liked him all the more for it.

But Pinky didn’t seem much impressed by titles. Sally supposed that at his age, he had earned the right to never judge a man on anything less than his own character. He screwed up his face sideways, as if he were trying to chew on his dilemma a moment longer before he decided what to tell them.

“Is it gambling?” Sally prompted. “You always did like to throw the bones, Pinky. Did you get into debt to him?”

“No, no. It weren’t the money, just the deed. It were just a few of us, you understand—Edwards, he’s steward, and Coggins, who’s purser. Just a few friendly throws. But Cap’n McAlden, he don’t stand for no gambling on board while at sea.”

“Mmm.” Sally tried to make a sound of comforting commiseration. “Not even card games in the wardroom?”

“Well, them’s gentlemen’s games, ’int they? Mr. Colyear sees to it the officers play only for penny points.”

“And you weren’t playing for pennies?”

Old Pinky canted his head sideways and closed his eyes with a wry smile, as if to ask, What had she expected? “Ah, well, young sir. A man’s got to look after himself.”

“So he does, Pinky. I can’t disagree.” But it was certainly a damned pickle, if this Gamage had both the purser and the captain’s steward in his obeisancy. “Tell you what—I’ll put my brain to it for a spell, and see what I can think up for you.”

“That’s right good of you, young Kent. You were always a good ’un. Don’t know how I can thank you enough.”

“Yes, well, you might begin to thank me by getting young Mr. Worth here up and presentable before eight bells. I’d like to get us all on deck before Mr. Colyear has even begun to think of us.”

“Right you are, young sir. But don’t you worry about Mr. Colyear. He’s another good ’un. Knows his business. Fair and hardworking, he is.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I’m counting on you to help us get on, and stay on, the good side of the man.”

“Right you are, young sir. For you surely don’t want to get yourself caught out by him on the other side.”

Chapter Three

There was something about young Mr. Kent that had already gotten under Col’s skin. Something … not exactly wrong, but certainly not quite right.

But Col would damn himself before he gave any more time over to pondering the prickling unease that wandered down the back of his neck whenever he thought of the boy. He had already missed his dinner by working through the watches, and still there was more work yet to be done.

“See to it that tarpaulin’s stowed,” Col directed the third lieutenant, Jack Horner. God only knew what the man’s proper Christian name was, for they had rechristened him Jack years ago. “And get some men of the afterguard to take the slack out of that mainsail brace.”

“Aye, sir.” Horner was already calling to the men idling in the waist. “You there—”

There was always something more to be done, some task, or piece of equipment, or tackle no one else managed to see. Excepting, of course, the captain, who saw everything. And Col would be thrice damned before he would let his captain down by failing to notice even something so mundane as a slack rope. More lives were lost through carelessness than ever were to cannonballs.

But Col was clearly the only one who could see something wrong with Kent. No one else, even the captain, seemed to share his confounded unease—or was it distrust?—of the boy.

Col found his hand migrating to rub the pent-up, pinching tension out of his neck. Perhaps he was still on his guard from overseeing the careful stowage of so many tons of volatile black powder in the hold. In such an endeavor there was no room for error. And certainly no room for niggling thoughts about inconvenient midshipmen.

Perhaps he had let himself become predisposed to disliking the boy after reading the letters Matthew and Owen Kent had sent. Or perhaps he was simply annoyed at the sopping waste of time and daylight it had taken to collect the little sod from the quay.

But he hadn’t exactly been a little sod, had he? It would have been easier if Richard Kent had remained the recalcitrant laggard of the sally port, or the hesitant parson of his brother’s letters. Col would have known how to deal with such a boy—tossed him in the drink the way he had Ian Worth. But once young Kent had seemed to snap out of his dithering at the sally port and come aboard ship, he had been nothing but bright and pleasing. Too pleasing.

Something was wrong.

Yet, here was Kent, ushering Will Jellicoe and a still groggy, though slightly less green, Ian Worth up the quarterdeck ladder, before the quartermaster had even rung the eight bells signaling the changing of the watch.

Kent was instructing the others in a low tone, but with the aplomb of a twenty-year veteran, gesturing here and there, confident, knowledgeable, and professional, and with a connoisseur’s interest in the work. His wide, urchin’s face was as bright and shiny as a new penny—an open canvas of his obvious enthusiasm.

Why had Matthew warned him the boy wouldn’t know a halyard from a handspike when there he was, pointing out the various masts, and shepherding the others to the correct corner of the quarterdeck where they could observe without being in the way of the running of the ship? The boy was more than just pleasing, he was downright useful.

It didn’t tally up. Something, damn his clenching gut, was definitely off.

Though the rain had abated, Col was still as wet as the painted wooden figurehead at the bow of the ship, and in no mood for inconvenient midshipmen who had somehow already gotten underneath his skin. There was work to be done.

“Gentlemen,” he addressed all three of them, careful to keep both his tone and his gaze neutral, to mitigate this strange awareness of young Kent.

“Mr. Colyear, sir.” Kent answered for all three with a neat tug on the brim of his hat, which he had pulled down low over his eyes, almost as if he hoped to avoid Col’s notice.

No chance of that.

“I make you known to Lieutenant Horner. Mr. Horner is the officer of the deck for the dog watch.” He indicated each in turn. “Mr. Jellicoe, Mr. Worth, and Mr. Kent, midshipmen.”

Kent repeated his obeisance to the lieutenant, and, with a subtle elbow to Jellicoe, encouraged the younger boys to follow suit. Already the leader.

Contrary to Matthew Kent’s assertions. The fist of unease in Col’s gut punched higher. Perhaps a test was in order.

“Normally,” he addressed the three boys, “your education will be left to Mr. Charlton, the sailing master, but as he is at this moment busy with the captain, your training falls temporarily to me. And as we remain safe at anchor in port, and you three have yet to learn enough to make yourselves particularly useful, you young gentlemen can spend an hour or so climbing the mizzen shrouds to fetch me down that pennant.” Col pointed upward to the signal flags that had been raised earlier to communicate with the dockyard powder barge. “However long it takes.”

Up, up, up their eyes went, to the faraway-looking flags flapping lightly in the damp evening breeze. All but Kent, whose quick, perceptive gaze danced from Col to the signal chest, and from there to the running line from whence the flags would normally be hauled down, as if he knew well and good that Col could have taken the pennant down from the safety of the quarterdeck if he so chose. As if he knew Col had ten such tasks to hand, ready to be assigned at a moment’s notice, to keep the men and boys employed and away from idleness. Within the space of a second, the boy had seen all.

Perhaps the knot in Col’s gut was merely the unpleasant and highly inconvenient result of having been so quickly found transparent. There was definitely more Kent in this boy than any of them suspected.