Almost a Scandal (8 page)

Chapter Five

She was half afraid her hands would be clumsy and fumbling in her excitement. But experience and elation buoyed her, and in no time she was above, at the masthead. Around her, the wiry, agile topmen climbed to their stations with a minimum of instruction from their captain of the foretop, a long, lanky, earringed fellow named Willis.

“Lay out.” She ordered them out along the yards. “That’s it. Steady now, lads.”

They arrayed themselves across the rope horses of the forecourse sail yard, and above, on the foretopsail yard, and even gallant and royal yards in anticipation of the order to unfurl. Clearly
Audacious
’s people wanted to see her out of port in the style of their namesake—boldly.

“Up and down,” came the cry from the bow as the ship was warped over the bower anchor.

Below in the waist, the capstan was manned by idlers and marines, who lent their discipline as well as their strength to the endeavor. Above, as she looked out from the foretop, the barely bowed line of the horizon stretched out before her in an infinite arc. It was nothing and everything all at once—it was infinite possibility.

Elation was like an opiate blossoming through her veins. She had never been so happy.

At the capstan, one of the older crew members scraped an old, worn-out fiddle into a lively song to set a rhythm for the effort of turning the great winch, and for hauling sheets and tacks. Sally recognized the old tune—a favorite of her family, but not one usually employed in the navy, where “Heart of Oak” was the preferred tune—and from the sheer exhilaration of the moment, she began to sing.

Dance to your daddy, my little laddie.

Dance to your daddy, my little man.

She broke off when she found the men staring at her, but a wiry young sailor encouraged her. “Go on then, young sir. You’ve a fine voice for it.”

The compliment couldn’t help but warm her. Her voice was perhaps average, certainly not the kind of female voice that was characterized as “accomplished” in a drawing room, but it was strong and clear, and well suited to the buoyant tunes of the navy.

Ye shall have a fish and ye shall have a fin.

Ye shall have a herring when the boat comes in.

Ye shall have a codling boiled in a pan.

Dance to your daddy, my little man.

At the chorus, more of the men of her division joined in. The singing didn’t stop her vigilant attention to the task at hand. “Mind the lifts, there.” She watched for fingers and feet placed correctly so as not to get wrenched up by running lines. “Hold ready.”

The predictable easy motion of the ship at anchor began to give way as
Audacious
began to respond to her helm and Mr. Colyear’s booming baritone brought the orders for the loosening and setting of the sails. “Let fall the forecourse. Haul away there.”

“Forecourse away,” she called at the top of her lungs.

Below her, canvas cracked and began to swell with the wind.

“Sheet home,” came the call as the foresail caught the breeze and billowed out.

Elation poured over her, leaving her drenched and breathless, sputtering to draw air into her lungs as she felt the ship beneath her feet respond to the helm. The hempen stay she clutched grew taut and alive in her hand, vibrating with the power of the wind rushing over her, washing her clean. She felt free, and empty of expectations.

And conversely full of possibilities.

She turned her gaze farther aloft, to the next course of sails. Any second now, Mr. Colyear would call out, and she wanted to be ready. She wanted the men of her division to be ready so that she might show Mr. Colyear she knew her business twice as well as anyone else. She would make a fine example to
Audacious
’s people.

“Cast off your foregallant gaskets and stand ready.” And just as the men complied, she could hear Mr. Colyear’s voice calling the next order.

“Away t’gallants,” she called out the moment his commanding voice reached her straining ears.

It was an added thrill, this give and take, the anticipation and completion of his orders. It was heady to know she played an integral part in the great choreography of making sail. It made her daring and full of herself and her own importance. It made her almost want to tell him that it was
she
—it was Sally Kent and not Richard who so capably leapt to do his bidding almost before he told her. It was she who was useful enough to earn his admiration.

When ye are a man and ye shall want a wife

Ye shall wed a maid and love her all your life

She shall be your lassie, ye shall be her man

Dance to your daddy, my little man.

Up in the rigging she was useful. She was happy. She could sing with all her joy and elation and let the wind take it away wherever it would.

*   *   *

It broke over Col suddenly and swiftly, the knowledge. So swiftly that he pushed it away, for once distrusting his finely honed instinct. He had no time to ponder imponderables. He had a crew to run, heading out of the Portsmouth roadstead, with the eyes of the rest of the bloody fleet upon them.

“Let go the main’sle,” he ordered. “Take in that starboard tack. Mizzencourse away.”

He raised his brass speaking trumpet to make sure he was heard over the singing from the foretop. The damned singing, pounding and nagging at his brain like an alarm bell.

Normally he never minded singing. He actually preferred to have a fiddle at the capstan to give the men a lift, set the pace and help them along. It was tedious, backbreaking work raising two anchors, and every help was welcome. And the topmen were known for their daring and élan, and often sang when hauling away and setting or reefing sails.

But that song. He heard it now, just as he heard it in his head every time he thought of that summer he had spent with the Kents at Cliff House in Falmouth. It had only been a six-week, taken for the purpose of studying for the lieutenancy exams while the
Fortune
had been laid up for repairs, but the memories had stayed strong with him.

A vivid mental image of the sister, the only girl, dropped into his mind like a miniature discovered in his pocket—all burnished red-gold hair and sun-kissed cheeks. Sarah Alice—Sally. She had been everywhere with them that summer, a constant shadow, sailing, fishing, laughing. Everything he and the Kent boys had done, she had done, too. And she had been good company—the best. Always game and laughing. She had been the first girl whom he thought it a pleasure to be with. Her brothers had accepted her company without question or bother, in a way that they never had with Richard, who had been felt to be too young, too unathletic, and too uninteresting to be included in their games and adventures. And so Col had accepted her, too. And she had sung.

In the evenings, as the light leached out of the day and darkness had fallen, they had taken out their instruments and played. And she had laughed and sung with such cheerful sweetness that he had never forgotten it. Or her.

The boy singing in the foretop could not be Richard Kent. He could not be the diffident, solemn boy of Matthew’s letters, who preferred his own company and the reading of Fordyce’s sermons to adventure and games. The Richard Kent who had hidden from his brothers’ rough teasing would not have climbed the ratlines with such eagerness, not to mention skill and grace. The Richard Kent who had preferred the indoors would never have grabbed a handful of rope and leaned his face into the bright, blowing wind.

Col rounded the quarterdeck and strode forward, heedless of his duty, heedless of his captain’s surprise. Heedless to everything but the need to see. To make sure.

Col tipped up his head and shaded his eyes, and looked again at Kent. At the urchin face turned almost gamin with delight. At the red-gold hair streaming from his queue in the wind. At the unbridled smile widening his mouth. Without his hat to shield and darken his features, Kent looked, as the captain had said with such accuracy the first day he arrived, a soft, pretty sort of boy.

Because he wasn’t a boy at all. Because now, in the clear morning light, Col could see nothing but the sister. Sally Kent. Damn her.

Now that his brain had finally caught up with his gut, recognition roared through his body like a wayward cannon shot. Awareness scorched every fiber of his being. He should have known. He should have recognized her immediately.

But part of him had. The part that had lain awake nights, in the dark, cramped confines of his cabin, thinking of tall, laughing, ginger-haired girls. Thinking about the supple, natural grace of her body. And wondering what her lips might have tasted like.

Sally Kent. Damn her eyes.

“Mr. Colyear?” The sailing master was recalling him to his forgotten duty.

“Royals away,” Col ordered through his teeth. The command, he noted, was immediately carried out in the foretop, as if she had anticipated his order. Damn her laughing gray eyes.

He wanted to haul her down from the crosstrees by her coat and shake the truth from her. He wanted to cast her over the side like so much jetsam. He wanted to examine every last inch of her to make sure, to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had not dreamt her up to assuage his unanswered longings. To make sure that it really was she and not Richard Kent. That he had not imagined it to be her just to satisfy this unnerving, unholy attraction.

God help him. What he wanted wasn’t bloody important. He was an officer of His Majesty’s Royal Navy and his thoughts and actions were not his alone—they were his ship’s. Somewhere off the blasted larboard rail Napoleon had gathered his bloody army not ten miles from the English coast. And he needed every able man he could get. Even if they weren’t a man.

But he had to be bloody damn sure.

Sally Kent. Damn, damn, damn her fine gray eyes.

When Col regained his place on the quarterdeck, his captain approached. “Mr. Colyear.” His tone was bemused. “You seem preoccupied. That’s not like you, sir.”

“I beg your pardon, sir.” Col recalled himself and checked his instruments. Despite his momentary lapse in judgment, the ship was still making good sea way, sailing west by south on the larboard tack with the wind out of the east, six points large on the quarter.

The forenoon was stretching fair and bright before them. And he was in hell.

Consumed by his thoughts. By her.

Her. Her. Her.

It ought to be a comfort to know he wasn’t going mad. Not entirely. He ought to feel vindicated. He had been right. Something had been wrong. Terribly wrong. And terribly right.

He had to tell his captain. The sooner the better. In fact, every mile of ocean that slipped under
Audacious
’s stern would make it more and more difficult to see her put ashore. If he were to speak, he had to do it now.

And yet, he found himself hesitating. Finding other tasks that demanded his immediate attention. “Take the slack out of the mizzen topcourse brace.” Gathering his thoughts and mustering his arguments, while he tried to find equally compelling reasons not to do so.

The list that ran in his head was short, uninspiring, and insufficient. Because the Kent family would suffer if he allowed her to be called down now, disgraced before the entire ship’s company. Because there was work to be done and
Audacious
needed all the able seamen it could carry, and as long as she did the work, he could choose the time and way to tell Captain McAlden without embarrassing the Kents, or endangering his ship. And because he still wasn’t entirely sure.

Because he had to be sure he wasn’t making excuses for the bloody unwarranted fascination he seemed to have developed for a young boy.

Damn his own eyes. Either way, he was in hell.

“I expect we will have a most rewarding cruise,” his captain was saying to Mr. Charlton, “blockade duty notwithstanding.”

Normally, Col would have welcomed such conversations and discussions amongst such men. Despite the vast difference in their ages, the captain and the sailing master had always honored him with the distinction of being treated like a colleague and not merely a subordinate. Mr. Charlton was the most senior of all the officers—warrant or commissioned—at the age of fifty-eight, while Captain McAlden was a seasoned thirty-six. Col’s years only numbered four and twenty, yet he was never made to feel inferior in the presence of the two men, who had a great deal more experience than Col. Their principled treatment of him gave him his own model to follow in his interactions with the officers and men beneath him, from the grizzled, veteran bo’sun to the youngest, greenest midshipman.

Well, apart from throwing green young boys covered with vomit into the harbor, he treated all of his brother officers with the respect he himself had been so decently given. And he would have to give Kent that same respect, that same benefit of the doubt, until he was sure.

“Blockade duty is good only for two things.” Captain McAlden’s words on their duty mirrored Col’s opinion. “Gun drill and sail drill. After a month, we shall be well practiced and out of patience with both.”

“If we were to take prizes, the men would put up with any number of hours of gun drill,” added Mr. Charlton.

“We
will
take prizes, wherever we can find them,” the captain asserted. “And we will do more than that to harry the French. We will take the fight to them, if they will not bring it to us.”

Col could hear the relish, the unbridled enthusiasm and determination behind his captain’s words. “Sir?” he prompted.

“We are victims of our own success. If we blockade the ports too well, the French won’t venture out, so we have fewer chances of taking prizes. We will need to be bold, Mr. Colyear, and think beyond our normal horizons.” The captain gave Col one of his wry half-smiles before he asked, “When was the last time you were on land, Mr. Colyear?”

Col’s gut clenched up at the mere thought. “You know I never go ashore if I can help it.”

“Did you even set foot upon the quay in Portsmouth?”