Almost a Scandal (5 page)

It only left to be discovered if the boy would have the infernal impudence to say so.

But, “Aye aye, sir,” was all the youth said as he ducked his head in obedience. Yet even with his eyes downcast, Col could detect the telltale trace of all-too-familiar Kentish mischief gamboling at the corners of his lips.

In contrast, both Will Jellicoe and Ian Worth, who was now a rather extraordinary shade of dead-fish white, looked openly terrified at the prospect of scaling the rigging. Col knew he did them a kindness, though they would never see it as such. The midshipmen needed to learn sooner rather than later to manage their fear and their footfalls upon the shrouds and horses aloft, because if they couldn’t do it whilst they were safely in harbor, in weather that was merely damp, they would never manage it on the heaving, open sea or in one of the howling gales of the unforgiving Atlantic.

Young Kent showed no such trepidation. Indeed, quite the opposite. He was all swift decision, already moving toward the starboard rail, as if the prospect filled him with eager anticipation, and signaling by an encouraging toss of his head for Worth and Jellicoe to follow.

There was another thing to tax Matthew about—contrary to Matthew’s opinion, his younger brother was clearly a natural leader. Within a handful of hours, the two younger midshipmen were already looking to him for guidance. Richard Kent was only the son of a mere, although distinguished, sea captain, but he had quite literally assumed command over his little band of midshipmen, two boys who were the sons of important noblemen. Jellicoe was the second son of the Earl Sanderson while young Worth was the “spare” of the Viscount Rainesford. But such behavior was entirely in keeping with the Kent family’s forthright character. Standing and lineage mattered little to them—the only things that counted were loyalty and usefulness.

In all, young Kent was exactly as Col might have wished. So why wasn’t he pleased? Why did his skin prick when he looked at the boy? What was this slow roiling tension deep in his gut?

Such unease was normally reserved for men like Damien Gamage, whose habitual ineptitude and malice had earned him Col’s oversight, not an eager, almost gamin boy with a wide-open, guileless face that showed his every thought.

And right now Kent’s thoughts and concerns were all for his friends. The slight offshore breeze brought Kent’s quiet instruction to Col’s ears.

“Right,” Kent was asking Worth and Jellicoe, “have you ever done this before?”

“No.” Will Jellicoe strove to mask his fear with grim determination.

Ian Worth, on the other hand, looked not only terrified but miserably so.

Kent gave him a gentle pat of encouragement on the shoulder. “You’ll do just fine. It’s like climbing a tree, only a bit wigglier. Just follow me and place your feet as I do.” Kent swung himself over the rail onto the chains, and started up the lower set of shrouds easily, with the sort of natural animal grace of the young and fearless. “It’s like shinning up a rope, not climbing a ladder. Stay centered on the shroud, and place your feet on the ratlines to either side, like this.” He demonstrated the most stable position. “And don’t look down.”

Jellicoe followed at a slower but steady pace, with some of the same easy coordination. Young Worth did well enough, though he moved very slowly, and soon began to lag behind.

“That’s it, lads,” Kent called encouragement down to them. “Steady on. Nearly there.” Though they were only a fraction of the way up the mizzen masthead, and had a full other set of shrouds to the mast top above them. But Kent kept them at it, coaxing them at the parting of the futtock shrouds and coaching them onto the masthead over the tricky weather edge, instead of through the easier lubber’s hole.

It was all something Col had seen a hundred, if not five hundred, times before. So why was he wasting his valuable, short leisure time watching three midshipmen go aloft for the first time? He had already remained on duty, making the final preparation to sail and taking on the powder, through three changes of the watch. By all rights he ought to be snug in the gunroom with a good glass of claret, washing the taste of the rain from his gullet, not watching three adolescent boys go through their paces. Their education was not his job.

But still he stayed, unable, or unwilling, to turn his eyes from the problem that was Richard Kent. Because, despite the encroaching dark, the height, the danger, and the trivial nature of the task, the lad’s young, freckled face was split with an impish grin that beamed with happiness, and even though the flaming Kent hair was hidden beneath the dark beaver round hat, the boy all but glowed with an aura of delight and vitality. There was so much of a boyish, single-minded sense of fun in the lad that turned the mundane task into a game.

Richard Kent looked ridiculously happy.

Col remembered that feeling, of being alone, yes, and away from his family for the first time, but also being on his own and ready to prove himself, of wanting to show what he could do. Of liking the physical exertion and inevitable exhaustion that followed. Of being hungry enough to eat anything that was put in front of him, no matter where it came from, or what species it had once been. Of being not just satisfied with the work, and ambitious for what was to come, but happy with each new skill acquired or new situation conquered. Happy discovering the man he was meant to be.

“Mr. Colyear, sir?” Lieutenant Horner asked cautiously. “Are you … remaining on duty, or leaving the deck?”

Col craned his neck upward to the rigging above, growing darker in the purpling evening twilight, searching his head for an excuse, any excuse, to stay. The boys were at the second set of shrouds, working their way up to the crosstrees of the mizzenmast top. In another moment, Kent would clear the lines and take in the signal pennant. Then all they had to do was climb themselves back down, and he would be shed of them.

Aloft, Kent made short work of untying the offending pennant, furling it carefully and stowing it safely inside his waistcoat. And then, in the long moment while Kent waited for the other two midshipmen, Col swore he saw the boy close his eyes and lean into the wind, like a carved figurehead at the bow of a ship, all heedless delight.

The air in Col’s lungs grew still like the atmosphere before a storm, pent up and watchful. Warning him to pay attention.

His feet were already moving, carrying him to the rail, giving him a better vantage point.

But there was nothing else to see. The boy was in no danger. He gripped the lines surely, though his hands did look too small, his slender, articulate fingers and almost fragile wrists too delicate to be so capable. But he
was
capable and sure aloft. There was no need for alarm. No need for the feeling that clawed at his chest like a maddened bear straining to get loose.

In another moment all three boys were collected at the crosstree, and then Kent directed them back down before slinging himself out into the standing rigging to come sliding hand over hand down a backstay like an experienced topman, looking like he had enjoyed the ride all too much. Col remembered that euphoria well from his own first conquering of the mastheads.

But Kent took Col’s watchful demeanor as disapproval. “I’m sorry, sir.” The boy bit his grin into obedience.

“It’s no sin to enjoy yourself, Mr. Kent. There is a great deal of pleasure in a job well done, and in a fear conquered, as long as it never interferes with duty.”

A wary relief spread itself across the boy’s animated face. “Aye, sir. Thank you, Mr. Colyear. But I wasn’t afraid. I like being aloft.” And then, as if he thought he had said too much, the boy ducked his head to hide beneath the brim of his hat. A long sweep of his Kent-red hair escaped his queue to slide down around the curve of his cheek. Kent fished it back over his ear with a quick, economical flick of his fingers.

The gesture, and the strange grace of the boy’s hands, sent another shot of alarm firing into his gut, demanding attention.

Damn his eyes. It was only hair, however vibrant a ginger, pulled back in a short queue, much like his own. The other two boys, the scions of Society, had had theirs cut shorter in deference to fashion. But young Kent just looked like a naval man through and through, like his brothers, or like Mr. Horner and Col himself. There was nothing strange about that.

Yet try as he might, his head could not convince his gut. What was he missing?

Kent fished the signal flag out of his waistcoat, folded and rolled improbably precisely, and ready to be stowed. “The signal flag, sir.”

“Thank you, Mr. Kent.” Col acknowledged the task with a nod. “Mr. Horner, you have the deck. When the watch is done, you can show these three”—he cast a look up to include Jellicoe and Worth, still picking their way down—“and make a thorough tour of the lower decks to see that all the lights are put out. Then send them to bed, so they’ll be ready for the sailing master to make a mash out of their brains with the mathematics of navigation in the morning.”

Col left the quarterdeck to Mr. Horner, and headed down for the sanctuary of his small cabin in the gunroom. All his gut needed was a decent claret to chase away any lingering thoughts of the inconvenient strangeness of Richard Kent.

“Will you be wanting to set a kedge, sir, before the storm comes?”

Col was halfway down the quarterdeck ladder when Kent’s words made the hairs at the back of his neck stand to attention. He had turned back, retracing his steps to Kent before he could stop himself.

“What storm?” Horner was asking, full of a junior officer’s perturbation for a midshipman. “The rain has stopped.”

Kent said nothing, but Col could see one eyebrow arching up into the brim of his hat. In answer he turned to look over the larboard rail to the southwest, toward the Channel, his nose tipping up to the light breeze.

Col followed his gaze, but saw nothing particularly ominous. It was as it had been all afternoon—the worst of the rain had passed and the leaden sky was dripping its slow way into evening. But his brain still held the image of the way the lad had put his nose into the breeze above, and Col had shipped with enough Kents to not discount the boy. “What makes you think so, Mr. Kent?”

The boy winced his eyes closed for the briefest moment at finding Col near. His answer was so reluctant and low Col had to bend his head down to hear it. “I suppose I can smell it, sir.”

Jack Horner looked to Col. For himself, he could smell nothing out of the ordinary.
Audacious
smelt of salt and air, and tar and hemp, and the funk of two hundred and sixty-odd men living cheek by ruddy jowl. “And what does a storm smell like, Mr. Kent?”

The boy’s shoulders shifted in an uncomfortable shrug. “Like storm.”

Col chose to be patient. He made a simple spinning motion with his finger to draw the response out of the reluctant lad.

“It smells like heat over cold, or today, like cold over heat. The air, I think, felt colder when I was above and it was moving. Maybe slightly faster, or in a slightly different direction, than below?” He scrunched up his nose. “And it smelled heavy, like…” He tossed up his hands in exasperation. “Like there was a great bloody blow coming out of the western Channel.”

Kent seemed to think better of continuing, but Col could hear what he reckoned was the ring of truth in Kent’s tone. The boy believed he could smell it. And the boy was, for all his alleged faults, a Kent.

“Then we had best ready a kedge, should the need arise. Mr. Horner, if you would? Take Mr. Worth and Mr. Jellicoe, so they may learn the benefit of the kind of preparedness young Mr. Kent here so presciently advises. And as for you, Mr. Kent.” Col swung the fullness of his regard back to Kent, who ducked his head again, still vainly trying to hide beneath the brim of his beaver hat. “If there’s as heavy a blow as you predict, then we had best clear out the lower decks of all visitors. And women.”

A careful stillness fell over the boy as his eyes met Col’s. “Women, sir?”

“Yes, women. Surely you noticed them belowdecks earlier? I must say I found it hard not to.”

The look Kent gave him in answer was hard to classify. His face turned an interesting shade of crimson, and his gaze faltered, as if he hardly knew where to look, he was so discomposed. When he answered, his voice was cracked with the uneven anxiety of adolescence. “Yes. I saw them.”

Here at last was something of the parson. “Well, we had best get them off while they can still be got off. It will be a hell of a thing to try and shift them out of here in a gale. Mr. Larkin.” Col moved to the quarterdeck rail and called to the bo’sun’s mate on duty below in the waist. “Pipe all visitors ashore.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Very good.” Col turned back to young Kent, who was twitching uncomfortably inside a blue, hand-me-down midshipman’s coat that had to have once been Matthew’s, judging from the carefully repaired tear along one sleeve. Col remembered that night. And he could never forget that fight. “Well, Mr. Kent? Are you ready to brave the bawdy?”

There it was again, that twitch of his lips that didn’t dare to be a smile—a familiar though more reserved cousin, perhaps, to Matthew’s mischievous grins. “Aye, sir. I suppose this is the portion of my training that falls under the heading of becoming a man.”

The tone was so angelically bland that Col could all but see the mischievous imp sitting on Kent’s shoulder. Damn, but there was
much
more Kent to this boy than anyone could have thought.

“That it does, Mr. Kent, that it does.”

The bo’sun’s shrill whistle rent the air as Col descended the companionway ladders from the quarterdeck down two flights to gun deck level. It always amused Col that the gun deck on a frigate was an arcane naval misnomer, as the guns were all housed on the main deck above, and the so-called gun deck was instead fitted out for the accommodation of the crew. Forward of the mainmast was a large open area where the men hung the hammocks, messed, and stowed their dunnage. And occasionally, when in port, entertained.

Although “entertainment” was probably not the best word to describe the frantic action on display. Indeed, the first sight that greeted Col as he stepped off the companionway ladder was the bare naked arse of a sailor oscillating away like a bilge pump. The fellow—Griggs, one of the quarter gunners, he thought, from this view—was pumping away into a woman who had backed up to a deck post for better leverage.