His Heart's Obsession (2 page)

Chapter Two

Kingston, Jamaica

Hal’s excitement had reached the stage of physical discomfort. His heart fluttered beneath his breastbone, his breath came short and unsatisfying, leaving him gasping the fetid air as though he’d been running, and the sweat ran down his back, soaked his waistband and flanks until he feared it would seep through his heavy woollen coat.

A cloud of dust enveloped him, and from it there came the sound of hooves, making him step back and press himself against the front wall of Kingston’s only milliner. He caught a glimpse of a high-stepping pale horse with madness in its eye, its little black jockey in his once-crisp uniform holding on tight to its reins. The boy’s eyes were alight with joy on this day of all days when he was mounted and feted like a king, and Hal found himself echoing the smile, and the hope that went with it.

He checked his reflection in the sash windows of the shop. It was as he feared. This morning he had allowed his hopes to overpower his good judgment and powdered his face as well as his wig. Now the whole layer, in Jamaica’s humid heat, threatened to slide off and soil his collar. He dug his handkerchief out and busied himself wiping it off.

The handkerchief was filthy before he’d finished, leaving him piebald, as though he had caught leprosy. His racing heart gave a sad lurch into his mouth and came down trailing a feeling of nausea. He could not be seen by William…no, even in his thoughts, that was too close a familiarity to be allowed. He could not be seen by Captain Hamilton looking like this.
What would he think of me? And today, when he made such a point of desiring to meet me alone?

Hal closed his eyes, the better to stamp down on the rush of delight, yearning and pre-emptive despair. When he opened them again it was to see a second handkerchief, held out to him like a lifeline by his friend, Miss Isobel Kent.

Her mother, behind her in the door, held a silk-covered hatbox in both arms and smiled on him benignly. “Good day to you, Lieutenant Morgan.”

“Good day to you, Mrs. Kent, Miss Isobel.” He bowed, they curtseyed, and then he took the handkerchief from Isobel’s insistent hand.

“It is very hot today,” she said. “I envy you that you can simply scrape it all off. I’ve been telling Mama that it’s all very well in the cool climate of England, but that here—”

Mrs. Kent narrowed her eyes. “Here it is incumbent upon us all to remember that we are English and not to fall into native ways.” But even she sighed at the light and dust and heat of the street. “Though I must say that I do not relish the thought of carrying this hat through town on a race day. Stay there a moment, and I will arrange for the boy to deliver it instead.”

With her eyes turned from him, Hal finished cleaning his face. “Is it quite…?”

Isobel took the wipe from him and dabbed gently at the corner of his eye, causing Midshipmen Fleming and Smith—who were passing—to reel away, giggling. “Powder, Hal?” Isobel asked, ignoring them, “You surprise me. I thought you were above such vanities.”

“I should have been,” he agreed, pausing to say a cheerful good day and exchange the obligatory remarks upon the weather with Miss Graham, Miss Emma Graham and Miss Frances Graham as they came trooping out like so many ducklings behind their elderly governess. Ugly girls, all of them, but more likely to find a husband here than at home.

Once everyone had agreed that the dust was intolerable, and that next year a committee should be formed for dampening the streets with seawater before the races began, they were led off towards the shoemakers. Hal found himself so breathless that he had to lean against the wall.

“You are not yourself today,” Isobel remarked, still with that look on her face as though she had seen jonquil ribbons paired with a chartreuse dress. “What has happened to make my dashing warrior come over as faint as a maiden on her wedding day?”

“It is simply the heat.”

“Ah, because heat such as this is so rare in the Caribbean.” She laughed, and having squirreled her handkerchief away in her voluminous skirts, she brought out a fan and tapped him on the arm with it. “Perhaps you should have not worn your heavy dress coat or done your best lace cravat so strangling tight. If you would know what I think…I think you are dressed to go wooing. You look very fine, very manly. I’m sure she will be favourably impressed.”

“It’s…” Now embarrassment was added to the ever-present edge of fear in his chest, the little hook that caught at the flesh of his lungs every time a man looked at him.

A recollection caught him unawares, of the night when he had awoken from lurid dreams to find Hughes watching him, as though seeing something that dazed him. For a moment he hadn’t known he was awake, had thought the dream had shifted into stranger paths, unexplored but intriguing, and then the fear had stabbed him through the stomach, as it so often did when he found Hughes’s eyes upon him.
Does it show? My vice, my affliction, does it show?

No. No, it must not, for Hughes had smiled.

“Nothing of the sort. I came only to view the races. And…and I have an invitation to Miss Chapman’s ball and no wish to go back to my lodgings in between to change.”

Isobel gave him a sly look concealed from the shop doorway by the top of her fan. “Of course. I have often found that a day spent sweating into my ballgown in an environment of ever-present dust and horseshit is the best way to give it that
recherché
touch for the evening. Miss Chapman will be pleased.”

Her teasing amused him at other times. Now, not so much. He could feel his mouth go hard, like a horse stubborn against the bit. Seeing it, her expression softened in sympathy. And then it touched, briefly, on revelation, as though she had understood all, before she curtseyed for someone behind him. He had only started turning, a kind of painful delight leaping in his throat, when Captain Hamilton took him by the elbow—actually touched him, closing a strong, square hand around his forearm—and bent down—he was so tall!—to say, “Hal. I might have known you would be with a pretty young woman.”

He called me by my name
, Hal thought, despising himself for the fierce joy he felt at the fact, yet still trying to concentrate all his thought on that, and none of it on the second sentence, the captain’s assumption that he and Isobel had been flirting like any normal couple.

Why should the captain not assume such a thing? He was the epitome of a man, and he did Hal honour by assuming that Hal was as normal as himself. It was certainly safest that he should continue to assume it. But…

Oh, dear God, the man was so beautiful, slender and refined as a sword blade, turned out with a perfection Hal could not hope to mimic despite all his efforts. He even looked cool and fresh, with his shirt crisp and his wig gleaming, and his grey-green eyes bracing as a northern sea. His lower lip was plumper than the upper, and Hal felt instinctively that the slight irregularity must vex him. He’d offer to push it back inside, to even them up with his tongue, if only Hamilton would give him a single sign the gesture would be welcome.

Hal shook himself. The captain had said something and was looking at him now with a polite gaze, waiting for a reply. His lips tilted upwards with amusement as the seconds went by, and those stormy eyes filled with genuine warmth. “I shall not blame him for being distracted,” Hamilton said, bowing to Isobel gallantly, “but we have a matter of some delicacy to discuss, so I will ask you to cede him to me for today.”

“Be kind to him,” she replied, with an almost maternal expression, strange on such a young face. It was a look compounded of fondness, worry and something secretly bleak.

Hal wondered what it was and determined to ask—another day. Not now, when she was all that stood in the way of himself and William spending a day together, not as commander and servant, but as friends.

“He will tell you otherwise, in some proud attempt at stoicism, but he is a little under the weather today, and I’m sure would appreciate your solicitude.”

I do not appreciate yours, madam!
Hal would have kicked her, had she been a man, for drawing attention to his weakness. He had to hope that the heat at least would be blamed for his flush.

“Farewell then,” she said, “until this evening, for I am at Miss Chapman’s ball too. Mark me down for the third dance and don’t forget this time. I am owed it after the embarrassment of last week.”

She seized a crossing sweeper to make her a way across the crowded street and was instantly swallowed up in the race-day crowd. At once, alone with the man he idolised, Hal felt dangerously, wantonly exposed.

“You do look a trifle flushed.” Hamilton leaned down again to peer into his face. Their breath mingled—the captain had been chewing cloves and smelled sweet. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”

The concern warmed him from the inside out, even while he was cursing the shame of it.
I am not a maiden to swoon on the sidewalk and be picked up in your strong arms, sir. But oh Lord, if I was, I should do it at once. I should faint away so you could carry me, clutched to your chest, with my face tucked into your neck and your heaving heartbeat under my lips.

He took a deep breath and shook himself, mentally. These were unworthy thoughts for a lieutenant in His Majesty’s Navy. “It’s nothing, sir. I’m finding the heat oppressive, that’s all.”

Hamilton smiled. His smiles were rare and all the sweeter for it, and Hal was not the only one of his crew who would have walked through fire to receive one. That slight upturn of the lips was held in reserve for a perfect broadside, or a dashing cutting out expedition or an impeccable spread of sail, and all his ship had grown to see it as worth a thousand words of praise from a more effusive man. “Then let us go and walk by the sea.”

Hal was instantly contrite. “Forgive me, sir. I thought you wished to see the races. I’ve been speaking to many of the owners—I can give you a deal of inside information if you wished to hazard a guinea or two on a bet.”

Hamilton’s smile broadened until it crinkled his eyes. “I ask you to come to the races, and you have identified your enemy’s weaknesses and drawn up a battle plan for me already. I could not wish for a better officer. Thank you.”

The praise knocked him off what little balance he retained. He had wished for words like these, without ever imagining he might hear them. Was it at all likely that Hamilton reflected some of his dedication, some of his adoration? Was it possible that a man so upright, so impeccable, might feel something of the yearning that turned every waking second of Hal’s life into torment?

“But today, I don’t wish to speak to the First Lieutenant,” the captain continued, taking Hal’s arm again and leading him towards the coast and the ruined glory that was sunken Port Royal. “I wish to speak to my young friend Hal. Man to man, as it were.” He lowered his voice to a confiding softness, leaning in again, so that Hal could see the feathery arc of his sandy-brown eyelashes, the suggestion of faded freckles on his cheek.

He would kiss them too, every one, if he was only given the chance. Just that—almost chaste kisses, nothing to frighten, nothing to condemn. He would not—of course not—trouble the captain with the kind of lewd and unseemly imaginings he suffered at night in his bunk. What he felt for
William
was pure. Pure! And damn his treacherous body for wishing otherwise.

“You will understand that I desire this to be very private between us. There are few men I would trust as I do you.”

Hal dared not hope, and yet the hope was there, clawing against its restraints in the pit of his heart.
What if he has noticed I love him? What if he returns it? I would dare anything for him. If he were only to touch me…

“You are a popular fellow with the ladies. And why should you not be, for you are a well-made young man and eloquent with it.”

Hal was leaning forward now to hear the whispered confidences. He could feel the heat of the other man’s skin on his own, and his faintness had returned, breathless, exhilarated, terrified.
Oh, please.

“I am neither of these things. Yet I have had the temerity to fall in love—”

Please!

“—with a young lady. She is every grace together personified—”

The words wrapped around Hal’s ribs and pulled tight, crueller for the hope. It was as though he had been snagged in a loop of anchor cable as it weighed, and his chest was taking the strain of tons upon tons of cold iron.

Thank God you at least made no sign of what you really felt. He knows no more than he did. A man like that—you knew all along he was too perfect to be what you are. You would have thought worse of him if he was. Now at least he still thinks you are his friend. That is honour enough.

I don’t want to be his fucking
friend!

But if it is all I can have?

“You will let me tell you a little about her?” Hamilton’s eyes were without guile, oblivious, still as clear as water. “And then perhaps you will give me some advice in how to win her? If anyone can charm the maidens to his hand, it is you.”

Hal forced a smile and stood up straighter, neatening the fall of his coat. He no longer felt so very hot now that the cold deadweight of despair was back, chilling his blood from the inside. “Of course, sir. Whatever I can do to help or please you. You only have to ask.”

Sometimes it was clear enough he was born to be damned. They said, didn’t they, that there were only a chosen few singled out for salvation, and it became clearer and clearer that he was not one of them. How strange, though, that a good God would do so repugnant a thing as to create a man already destined to burn. It were better, surely, that he had not lived at all.

But if it was his destiny—inescapable—to go to hell, he wasn’t sure it could hurt any more than this. It would be a relief, perhaps, to have it over with and the hope gone, for it was the hope, the possibility of happiness held out and then snatched away again, that was cruellest of all.

He thought, madly, while he listened to the man he loved praise the virtues of the woman
he
loved, that it would be good to confess. If only he could tell someone the truth of what he was, stop this endless pretence. If only—just once—he could be open about his true desires, it might almost be worth the inevitable condemnation.