Romance Classics (98 page)

Claire paused, wide-eyed.

“Oh, come now,” she protested vigorously, but there was more than a faint memory of her first night aboard ship, and the one when she had heard Nora weeping and had seen the ugly marks of a violent hand on her face.

“It’s true,” MacEwen insisted stubbornly. “It’s happened several times. I’ve seen Nora with a mark on her face and bruises on her arms so purple that she couldn’t wear a sleeveless dress. Somebody ought to kick that mother of hers overboard, somewhere where the sharks are good and hungry. They’d have to be hungry to bother with that hell-hound.”

“Look, I’m afraid you’re being too melodramatic about all this — ”

“You think a fine, sweet girl like Nora would try to kill herself just for an idle whim?” snapped MacEwen sharply.

“I don’t know why she would do such a thing, and I know her mother is devoted to her — ” Claire began, but MacEwen’s disgusted snort silenced her.

Before either of them could find words, Curt came striding down the corridor, eying MacEwen without favor and saying briskly to Claire, “Captain would like you to have dinner in his quarters, Claire. Dinner is over in the salon, and Captain wants to thank you personally.”

Relieved to be free of MacEwen’s troubling questions and thoughts, Claire smiled warmly at Curt and said, “That’s very kind, but I’ll have to change my dress.”

She glanced down with distaste at the stains that speckled it and turned back to her own room. She heard Curt and MacEwen talking in low voices as they waited. Swiftly she got out of her dress, into a brief shower and, freshly clothed, came out to meet them.

Whatever they had been discussing, MacEwen’s face was a dark storm cloud as he strode away, and Curt looked down at Claire with a wry smile.

“That young man seems to have quite a bee in his bonnet,” he admitted.

“I know. He was telling me,” Claire said as they walked toward the captain’s quarters.

“You don’t believe that bilge he was saying, do you?” demanded Curt sharply.

Claire asked quietly, “Do you mean about Vera abusing Nora?”

“It’s the most arrant nonsense. Why, Vera couldn’t possibly mistreat the girl. She’s crazy about her, devoted to her!”

“So much so that she dragged the girl away from the man she loved and wanted to marry?” asked Claire quietly.

Curt hesitated, scowling.

“Well, she said the man was no good,” he pointed out, and added in a firmer tone, “And you yourself told Nora that no man on earth was worth a girl’s destroying herself for.”

“I know I did,” Claire agreed with him firmly.

For a moment, outside the captain’s door, his hand on the knob, Curt looked down at her, scowling.

“You don’t look like a man-hater, but you sure sound like one,” he accused her. And without giving her a chance to answer, he opened the door and ushered her into the captain’s quarters.

Captain Rodolfson welcomed her with gallantry and admiration, and when Claire had been seated at the small table where the wizened, monkey-like cabin boy was serving a delicious meal for her, she smiled up at him.

“Really, Captain, all this isn’t a bit necessary,” she assured him.

“I feel it is, Miss Frazier,” the captain answered, and gestured to Curt. “Sit down, Curt. I want you in on this.”

Claire looked from one to the other above her dinner.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” she began uneasily.

“Miss Frazier, there is something going on aboard this ship that I don’t understand and I don’t like,” the captain told her firmly. “Curt agrees with me. He doesn’t understand it any more than I do, and we very much hope you can help us.”

Claire looked from one brown, intent face to the other, deeply puzzled, vaguely uneasy.

“Why, Captain, I’m not quite sure I know what you’re talking about,” she said warily.

Captain Rodolfson’s big face was touched with a friendly smile.

“We aren’t asking you to spy on the other passengers, Miss Frazier, if that’s what you are afraid of.” He dismissed the thing that was making her uncomfortable and uneasy. “We have no right to do that. But you are a nurse, taking care of our crewman, and now of this passenger. Miss Frazier, have you any idea what could have caused this girl, little more than a child, to want to destroy herself?”

“Frankly, Captain, I can’t believe that she really meant to do any such thing,” Claire told him earnestly. “I think she made the pretense in a fit of temper, to frighten her mother, perhaps. The cuts were scarcely more than surface cuts. I admit the bleeding could have been quite serious if Vera hadn’t happened to discover her in time. But I think Nora was counting on her mother doing just that.”

The captain and Curt exchanged significant glances, and then, as though Captain Rodolfson had reached a sudden decision, he leaned toward Claire, smiling.

“Please go on with your dinner, Miss Frazier. Curt and I will join you in a cup of coffee, though we’ve both had dinner in the salon, while we tried to calm down the other passengers,” he began. And when the monkey-like little man had served them coffee, he went on gravely, “I believe you have been seeing quite a bit of Major Lesley?”

Claire blinked in surprise, jolted by this sudden shift in his questioning.

“Why, yes, Major Lesley is a friend of mine, and I like him very much,” she answered with spirit. “You surely aren’t going to try to involve him in this escapade of Nora’s?”

“That’s what puzzles me, Miss Frazier,” the captain said quietly. “Whether or not he could be involved.”

“Well, I think — I hope! — I can set your mind at rest on that subject,” Claire answered vigorously. “Major Lesley barely knows the girl. Very few of the passengers have more than a nodding acquaintance with her. She’s been sulking ever since I came aboard; the only passenger who seems to have made any impression at all on her is MacEwen Russell.”

Once more significant glances passed between Curt and the captain and once more it was the captain who spoke.

“Oh, yes, they’ve made a few shore trips together, I believe,” he said smoothly.

“Well, that seems logical enough, don’t you think, considering that they are the only two young people aboard?” Claire pointed out.

“Oh, yes, of course.” The captain accepted and dismissed that in a single phrase; obviously his interest was not deeply taken. “Curt tells me that Mrs. Barclay seems to be afraid of this Major Lesley.”

“Afraid of him? I’d hardly call it that.” Claire hesitated, frowning thoughtfully. “She seems a bit — well, bothered is the word I would have used, because she has the feeling she has met him before and can’t remember where. Women are sometimes like that, Captain. For no reason at all, if they see someone who looks vaguely familiar, they fret themselves trying to remember where and under what circumstances.”

“Under what circumstances,” the captain murmured thoughtfully.

“I don’t think that really means anything, Captain,” Claire assured him, smiling. “Women are funny people, you know — ”

Both the captain and Curt grinned at that.

“I’m afraid we
don’t
know, Miss Frazier, which is the reason we are badgering you like this.” It was the captain who spoke, his tone friendly, a twinkle in his eyes. “You don’t think, then, that Mrs. Barclay is afraid of the Major?”

“I don’t see how she, or anyone else for that matter, could be.”

“He
is
a self-confessed card-sharp, you remember,” Curt reminded her, and she turned on him swiftly.

“That’s not true,” she flashed. “Oh, I mean he confessed, but he was really lying because he wanted so much to return MacEwen’s money that he had won the night before, and it was the only way MacEwen would accept it.”

The captain nodded thoughtfully.

“That brings us to MacEwen,” he said after a moment. “Odd sort of fellow. Curt tells me that MacEwen has complained to him that Mrs. Barclay abuses her daughter.”

Curt spoke before Claire could get her thoughts in order.

“Which, of course, is the most outrageous nonsense,” he said swiftly. “Vera Barclay is devoted to the girl; too much so, maybe. She seems determined to keep Nora as much of a baby as she can, for fear, I suppose, that if she grows up as she should, she’ll marry and be lost to her mother.”

Claire studied him curiously, wondering if he really believed that, and Curt looked back at her steadily, as though daring her to deny it.

She lifted her shoulders in a tiny gesture that just barely missed being a shrug.

“I’m afraid I couldn’t be very helpful on that phase of the situation,” she drawled. “After all, Curt knows Vera much better than anyone else on board, I’m sure.”

Curt merely grinned, obviously completely undisturbed by the gentle taunt.

“She’s a very interesting woman,” he said politely.

“And beautiful.” Claire could not keep back the words.

“Oh, yes, that, too,” Curt agreed, and she thought there was a twinkle in his eyes as they studied her.

“Well, it’s a most disturbing business,” said the captain heavily. “I can’t remember when we’ve carried a passenger list like it, can you, Curt?”

“Well, we’ve never had a card shark aboard — sorry, Claire, he said he was — or an attempted suicide,” Curt agreed cautiously.

Claire smiled at the captain.

“Makes you wish that your ship had never been required to carry passengers as well as cargo, doesn’t it, Captain?” Her voice commiserated with his frame of mind.

He smiled warmly at her. “Oh, no, Miss Frazier. If we’d never carried passengers, we wouldn’t have had the pleasure of your company aboard,” he reminded her. And the slight flamboyance, the faintly old-fashioned gallantry were tempered by his obvious sincerity. “I — ah — I’ve been wondering about something else, Miss Frazier.”

Claire tensed slightly and said only, “Yes, Captain?”

“I believe that you are, at the moment, unemployed?”

“I’m on vacation, Captain,” she corrected him firmly.

“You plan to return to your work at the hospital when your vacation ends?” he pursued.

“Why, I really haven’t any plans, Captain.” She was puzzled but not offended at his persistence. “I want to have a visit with my parents in Honolulu, and I may decide to stay there. I resigned at the hospital, but if I should ever want to go back, they’ll accept me.”

“With great good pleasure and benefit to the hospital I’m sure,” the captain assured her. “I was wondering if we could dare offer you a job with our line?”

Claire’s eyes widened as she looked from one to the other.

“You mean aboard the
Highland Queen
?” she asked, bewildered.

The captain nodded, smiling at her bewilderment.

“You see, as things stand now, we may only carry twelve passengers because we don’t carry either a doctor or an RN,” he explained. “But there is space that could carry a larger number, if we had an RN aboard. And if we could persuade you to be that RN, we would all be very happy.”

“Very happy indeed,” Curt echoed politely, but there was a warmth in his voice that lent an unexpected emphasis to his words.

Claire looked from one to the other and laughed helplessly.

“You really are two of the most amazing men I’ve ever met,” she admitted. “I don’t know what to say — ”

“You don’t like the sea? Shipboard?” asked the captain anxiously.

“Of course I do. I’ve enjoyed every minute,” Claire soothed his anxiety. “It’s just that I’m not sure I would like it indefinitely. I mean, after all, I’m a landlubber. You’ll have to give me time to think about it.”

“It’s a good life,” Curt assured her, and there was more than a trace of eagerness in his voice. “I honestly believe you would like it. There’s enough variety about our ports of call to keep you from getting bored; we rarely know exactly where we are going when we set out or how soon we’ll get there. Some of our passengers have called us ‘The Good Ship, What’s Your Hurry?’ They seem to feel it’s a welcome relief from the hustle and bustle of life ashore.”

“I can see how it would be,” Claire answered, remembering the days of her training and then her service on Emergency and in other wards of the hospital where everybody but the patient, usually supine and helpless, seemed to be rushing about like mad.

She looked from one face to the other, saw the eagerness in their eyes, and added swiftly, “For a vacation, I mean. I’m not a bit sure how it would be for a steady diet.”

“We’d try very hard to keep you from being bored,” Curt assured her so eagerly that the captain shot him a swift, rather startled glance. “Promise you will at least consider it, won’t you, Claire?”

“Of course,” the captain cleared his throat as though bringing them back to a realization of his presence, “you understand, Miss Frazier, I’d have to get authorization from the home office of the shipping line, and we might not be able to offer you a very fancy salary — ”

Claire stood up, smiling.

“I’ll think about it, Captain,” she promised him. “But I must warn you I won’t be able to make up my mind until I’ve had my visit with my parents.”

“Of course, of course, my dear Miss Frazier,” answered the captain heartily. “Just bear us in mind, and we’ll give you an address at which you can cable us. Meanwhile, my most hearty thanks for all you’ve done.”

“I was glad to be of service, Captain, and thank you for everything.” Claire put her hand in his and turned toward the door. “Good night, and thank you both.”

Curt held the door for her and walked with her down the corridor to her own door. She paused at the door of the Barclay cabin and touched the knob. But the door was locked, as she had been certain it would be. Either Vera or Nora — and it was most likely to have been Vera — had fought off the effects of the sedative sufficiently to lock the door and slip the chain in place.

Claire leaned her ear close against the panel and heard a faint, lady-like but quite unmistakable snore. She smothered a smile, remembering how many times her most refined, most dignified feminine patients had emitted that same sound beneath the effects of a sedative.

Curt frowned at the locked door and offered a master key, but Claire shook her head, moving on to her own door before she answered, her voice quite low.