Columbine (3 page)

Captain Abraham Welles stood leaning over his desk, reviewing orders with his first mate. He frowned at the interruption, and his scowl deepened as the guard explained his errand.

“Damn it, man, they told me you’d come tonight, not here with the sun bright as brass!” he exclaimed impatiently.

“I’ve no time to deal with the wench now. “I’d my orders, sir,” replied the guard.

“I’ll not take ‘er back.”

“I didn’t ask you to, did I? She’s here and there’s no changing that.” Welles sniffed, then motioned irritably to the mate.

“Harper, take her below with the others. And find her a bucket of water, too. She stinks like a ruddy henhouse.”

“Aye, aye, Cap’n Welles.” The young seaman came forward and nodded respectfully to Dianna, but the guard still clung to her arm.

“She’s a bad ‘un, Cap’n,” he explained doggedly.

“Taken for murder, she was. Best I stow her below for ye.”

Dianna caught the startled glance Harper shot to Welles, and the way the older man’s bushy eyebrows came sharply together.

“I never murdered anyone,” she began.

“It was not my—” “Silence, woman!” roared Captain Welles. He stalked around the desk, and to Dianna’s embarrassment, jerked up her skirts to her knees.

“Good God, so they’ve got you in chains, have they? What do they take me for, a blasted slaver? Free her, you black dog, then off my ship before I have you thrown into the Thames with the rest of the offal!”

Muttering to himself, the guard unlocked the shackles and stomped from the cabin. The mate followed, carefully closing the door behind him, and Dianna was left alone with the sandy-haired captain.

His arms crossed, Welles leaned against the front of his desk, still scowling as he studied her.

Dianna waited, watching him warily in return. In Bridewell, she’d heard plenty of stories about shipmasters who treated the female convicts in their care as their own private harems. True, he’d had the shackles removed, but Captain Welles was still a man, and thanks to her uncle, she knew too well the folly of trusting men.

“You haven’t the look of gallows-bait, I’ll grant you that,” said Welles at last.

“No, nor slattern, neither, and God knows a mariner sees his share of those.”

Dianna bristled and drew herself up proudly.

“I’m no slattern, sir, but a lady. Lady Dianna Grey.”

The captain’s laugh was harsh.

“Oh, no, my girl, you’ve lost your claim to that nicety. English law says you’ve tried to murder a man, and it’s only through the mercy of the Crown that you’ll not be strung up by that pretty neck of yours. On my ship there’s no place for lords and ladies and other such trumped-up gentry.”

“I’m none of your trumped-up gentry, any more than I’m a rascally Yankee sailor like you!” cried Dianna.

“My family is older than Queen Anne’s, and more noble, too, and—” “Hold your tongue! You should have thought of that noble family before you started behaving so common. I’m your master as long as you’re on this vessel, and I’ll hear no more lady this-and-that, or I’ll dangle you from the yard-arm myself. Do you understand me, woman?”

He glowered at her from beneath his brows until, reluctantly, Dianna nodded.

“Good.” Welles cleared his throat, drumming his fingers on his crossed arms as a slow, knowing smile crept across his face.

“Now, pretty lady, as to what I’m intending.”

Dianna braced herself for the demand that she felt sure would come.

“You don’t deserve it, not for a moment,” continued Welles, “but on my ship you’ll have one last chance to set your life to rights. I’ll put you among honest people who know nothing of you or your sins, and you’ll be like any other poor lass out to make her way through indentures, though, to be sure, you’ll work off your passage when I sell your papers in Saybrook.”

“And what…” asked Dianna slowly, “what will you expect in return?”

“Only that you behave like a decent woman on my ship and keep yourself clear of my men.”

Even to Dianna, the proposal seemed odd, and she peered at him closely, waiting for the catch. It was very much to her advantage, and none to Captain Welles’s, and yet she had the distinct feeling he was trying to coax her into agreement.

He laughed again, this time with a false heartiness, and nervously drew his hand across his upper lip.

“I warrant I’m just soft-hearted and loath to see a little mite like you suffer. You’d likely not last through the crossing on one of the ships bound for the plantations in the spring. Worse than slavers for disease and dying, they are. But Prosperity here, she’s true to her name.”

There were little beads of sweat on his upper lip as he once again wiped his hand above his mouth.

He’s lying, Dianna realized with surprise, lying and afraid he’ll get caught.

Welles glanced past Dianna to the cabin’s door.

“Look here, girl, I haven’t all day. Truth is, Prosperity’s owner is a God-fearing man and wouldn’t take well to a convict wench on board. You swear to act proper, and I’ll see you’re treated well enough.”

The truth perhaps, decided Dianna, but only part of it.

“It’s my uncle, isn’t it,” she said softly.

“Sir Henry Ashe. He has paid you very well to take me away, hasn’t he?”

Beneath his weather-worn skin, Welles flushed and Dianna had her answer, just as she knew it didn’t matter. Her life here in England was over, and had been, if she were honest, since her father’s death. If she were honest, too, she would admit that the opportunity Captain Welles was offering her was not so very bad. She would be done with prison and beyond the groping reach of Sir Henry Ashe. Besides Captain Welles, no one would ever know she had been a convict.

She lifted her head high and bravely met Welles’s eyes. He had accepted money from her uncle, but he had neither abused nor robbed her nor, as Potter had suggested, had he simply claimed the money and tossed her overboard.

“Please, would you tell me, Captain Welles,” she said.

“Is it hard work, this planting and harvesting of tobacco?”

“Tobacco! Nay, girl, I told you before. Prosperity’s no convict ship, and she doesn’t traffic with the southern colonies. She’s a Yankee ship to the heart of her timbers, and you should thank your maker she is. You won’t break your back pulling tobacco leaves where we’re headed! We’re bound for New England, the prettiest, finest country under heaven.”

“To New England, then,” said Dianna defiantly.

“And may I never see the old one again!”

“Cap’n’s respects, sir,” said the boy, “but we’re passing the last landfall, if you’ve a mind to see it.”

“Very well, Isaac, tell the captain I’ll be topside directly.” Carefully Kit sanded and blotted the ledger before closing it. He had worked without stopping since before dawn, striving to settle the last loose bits of his London business while the details were still fresh in his mind. The sun was high overhead now, and a break would do him good.

“The last of England,” some sentimental fool would feel bound to say to him, and though Kit shared no such attachments, the dark strip on the horizon would be the last land he would see for weeks, maybe months, and he’d do well to look his fill while he could.

He plucked his hat from the narrow bunk and, with a sigh, glanced around his tiny quarters. The bunk, a folding, triangular table, a mended chair and his trunk were all the cabin’s meager furnishings, yet Kit still had the sensation of squeezing his outsized frame into a child’s playhouse. He thought again, longingly, of the captain’s cabin and the seven-foot long bunk tailored to fit his brother. By rights, Kit could have claimed it in Jonathan’s place—he was, after all, the vessel’s owner, if not the captain—but in a moment of rash generosity, he’d chosen the first mate’s cabin instead, and it was too late to switch now. Besides, after the mess he’d made of this voyage, he didn’t deserve any rewards.

It wasn’t that he’d failed to turn a profit, for the ledgers showed he was every bit as sharp a trader as Jonathan. But in the process he’d managed to destroy the carefully built relationship with one of London’s most powerful merchants and abruptly ended their best market for Sparhawk timber.

Even now he wasn’t exactly certain how he’d become so embroiled in the personal affairs of Sir Henry Ashe. It had been bad enough to stumble into the quarrel between the man and his mistress, and worse still to have to testify against the girl in that circus of a courtroom. Although Kit had told only the troth, no more, no less, the lawyers had twisted his words to serve Sir Henry’s case. No wonder the dark-haired girl had blamed him for her own misfortune.

She had listened in silence to his testimony, denying nothing, but the look that flashed from her silvery eyes might have scalded him with hatred and reproach.

No, not a girl, but a lady, and an elegant one, too.

Lady Dianna Nerissa de Were Grey. With her face and throat ivory pale above the black silk bombazine of her gown, she had stood as proud as a queen in the defendant’s box, and as the lawyers had accused her of every sort of debauchery, Kit had found it almost impossible to reconcile this self-possessed noblewoman with the frightened girl who had wept in his arms. A practiced performance, that was all it had been, and now Kit felt thoroughly disgusted with her—and with himself, which was worse—for believing it.

The disgust hadn’t lessened when Sir Henry congratulated Kit on his useful testimony and gleefully expressed his hope to see his niece on the gallows.

But when the man offered to show his appreciation by completing the Sparhawks’ return cargo without charge, Kit’s temper had boiled over. He had first wished Sir Henry to the devil, and then, while the baronet had sputtered indignantly, Kit had struck the man’s fleshy jaw so hard that Sir Henry might still be lying glassy-eyed in the muddy street. No, thought Kit sourly, there would be no further business between the Sparhawk brothers and Sir Henry Ashe.

On deck, an icy wind whipped off the Channel.

With his hands in his coat pockets, Kit watched with satisfaction as the ship raced across the dark green water, dancing neatly through the whitecaps. At this rate, they’d be home in no time. He pulled his hat down lower on his head and hunched his shoulders as he made his way into the wind, back to where Abraham Welles stood by the wheel.

“A fair morning and a stout breeze at our tails,” said the older man cheerfully.

“What more could a man want? I’ll have you back among your blessed trees before you know it.”

Kit grinned. After the stuffy little cabin, the wind felt good on his face and in his lungs.

“I’d wager by now my brother’s just as eager to back on his blessed ocean. He hasn’t been this landlocked since he hopped off our mother’s lap and toddled off to sea.”

“Aye, he’s part fish, that lad. Though we likely could ‘ave made a shipmaster out of you, too, if you’d a mind to try.” Welles shifted his clay pipe from one side of his mouth to the other, and his expression grew serious.

“Have you heard more of him, Kit?”

“Nay, just that first letter from Dr. Manning, and that was only a fortnight after we’d sailed. Too soon to know anything for certain. Months ago, now.” Kit frowned, his green eyes clouding as his thoughts turned to his brother. Two days before the Prosperity had left Portsmouth, a snapped cable had sent his brother tumbling twenty feet to the deck. His right leg had borne the brunt of the fall, an ugly, jagged fracture splintering bone and tearing into muscle. It was the kind of injury that could easily turn putrid and cost a man first his leg, then his life. That fear had haunted Kit in the months since he’d left. Again and again he’d prayed for his brother. Please, God, not Jonathan, too!

Welles touched Kit lightly on the shoulder.

“Your brother’s a strong man and too full of spark and rum to let a little fall best him. You’ll find him hobbled, mayhap, but well enough.”

Kit forced himself to smile.

“Thank you, Abraham, for both of us. Jonathan couldn’t have sailed the Prosperity better himself.”

““Twas nothing I wouldn’t do again for you boys, for your father’s sake, and I ‘spect you know it,” Embarrassed, Welles cleared his throat gruffly and squinted up at the sails, Kit, too, looked away, to the bow. For the first time he noticed a small group of people clustered along the rail, three men, and women and children, too.

“Ah, Kit, those are the passengers I told you of,”

said Welles, noting Kit’s interest.

“Likely having second thoughts about leaving home, from the looks of them.”

The little group huddled against the wind as they stared back at the last glimpse of their homeland, and Kit felt a surge of Sympathy for them.

“Immigrants, are they?”

“Aye, and so desperate for passage they offered me double the fare. One of the women’s with child, and they want to be settled before her time. When Sir Henry pulled out his cargo that way—” Kit’s tone turned chilly as the wind.

“That could not be helped, Abraham.”

“I’m not saying it could, Kit, am I? Nay, it just seemed wiser to take a few passengers ‘tween decks than leave the space empty.”

“I told you before that the decision was a good one, Abraham. You don’t have to justify it to me again.”

“They won’t be any bother to you, Kit, none at all. They’ll keep to themselves. They’re only on deck now to say farewell, then they’ll go back down. Why, you’ll scarcely know they’re on board!”

Kit listened curiously. This was at least the fourth time Welles had explained about the passengers, and Kit wondered if perhaps his father’s old friend had accepted that offer of a double fare and kept the difference himself. Not that Kit particularly cared–Welles had done him an enormous favor by replacing Jonathan as captain on such short notice—but Kit hoped that he wouldn’t have to hear about these miserable immigrants for the entire voyage home.

“More women than men, I see,” said Kit, hoping at least for a different perspective on the same wearisome topic.

“Any comely daughters to ease my journey?”

“Two girls of an interesting age, but you keep those thoughts to yourself, Christopher Sparhawk! I swore to their father that this was an honest, Christian ship and his daughters’ virtue would be safe enough. So you leave them be, mind, and the wives, too. Kit laughed.