Seasons of War 2-Book Bundle (68 page)

Helena regarded her with cold indifference. “As you are still a child, Emeline, and therefore likely to spend it on frivolous amusements, I’ve been instructed by your family to manage your allowance.”

A silence dropped between them like the ghastly thud of a guillotine. The force of those words felt like a slap to the face, leaving Emily stifling the urge to return the blow. Fortunately, before she dumped the contents of the teapot upon Helena’s lacquered curls, relief arrived in the form of a distraction as the world outside the music room enlivened with the noisy clatter of wheels on gravel. Both women eagerly sought the window, and watched as three large wagons entered the courtyard and came to a stop before Hartwood’s north doors, there to be greeted by Fleda, her prancing dog, and a number of the household staff.

Helena set down her teacup in a manner that intimated the interview was at an end. “Ah, this will be the French chef I hired for the ball, and the first of the supplies. Now I must oversee to their unloading, and make certain they’ve brought us wax candles and the right cuts of meat for our guests.” She rose from her chair; Emily following suit.

“Do not despair about your simple dress and lack of accessories at this time, Emeline. My maid has been busy these past days, making a most sumptuous gown for you.” Helena studied Emily’s head as if she were examining a poorly executed painting. “And on Saturday, once she’s set my hair, she’ll be exceedingly pleased to dress
yours
.”

They exchanged bows, and Emily, her temples throbbing with pain, watched her drift from the music room and into the antechamber. Lost in a helpless stare long after Helena’s footsteps had echoed away, Emily tightened her fists. Though her mind was a vexatious jumble, a slight movement near one of the chamber’s columns caught her attention. At first she thought a member of the household staff had come to alert the duchess of the deliveries; however, the figure that emerged did so with a degree of surreptitiousness, leaving her wondering if perhaps she had spotted an eavesdropper. For a fleeting moment, as the figure dashed from the column and into the safety of Hartwood’s endless halls, Emily’s eyes met those of Lord Somerton.

10

Friday, August 13

Near Midnight

Aboard HMS Amethyst

Magpie’s eye popped open
. In the blackness of the sail room on the
Amethyst
’s orlop deck, he froze in his hammock, hardly daring to breathe, and listened to the night. What was it that had disturbed his sleep: a figment of a frightening dream, the wind whipping the ship’s old timbers, or someone lurking beyond the door — a drunken sailor, perhaps — trying to feel their way to their bed in the blinding darkness?

Three decks up the quartermaster tolled the ship’s bell eight times. Magpie had been late retiring on this night, thrilled to have been invited to play games with the young midshipmen in their lively berth, but he had no idea if the eight bells marked the end of the First Watch or the Middle Watch — if it was midnight or four in the morning. Then again, maybe it was dawn, later than Magpie had surmised, and one of the men simply had need of a new sail.

But his good sense told him otherwise.

There … there it was again! That sound! A rattling of the door latch! Someone
was
attempting to get in. Magpie yanked his blanket to his nose, but his alarm prevented him from calling out, or scrambling for a weapon of some kind, or blocking the door with rolls of heavy canvas. If someone had come to do him harm, he was in a hapless predicament.

The door opened with a foreboding creak; a lantern’s glow eerily illumined the sail room, sending Magpie into a cold sweat. Peering over his thin blanket, he watched helplessly as a longhaired sailor — hunched over on account of the orlop’s low ceiling — ambled toward the corner where Magpie kept the sails stacked up against the wall. The man muttered to himself, queer, incoherent words, and — as if incited to a fit of rage — began vandalizing the canvas rolls, hurling them about, and tearing at the sturdy material with his teeth. Was he looking for something? Did he think he’d stumbled into the closet that housed Captain Prickett’s wine and spirits? Was he under the misconception that Magpie had stolen his purse of coins and hidden it here in this room?

As suddenly as it had begun, the man’s fit ceased, and he turned on his heels and trudged toward Magpie’s hammock. For a brief second, the lantern cast light upon the sailor’s countenance, revealing swollen, ugly features and a conspicuous nose. Magpie stiffened like a cadaver and squeezed his eye shut. Best to pretend he was sound asleep, though no silent coaxing could slow the awful hammering of his heart.

Hoisting the lantern high above the hammock, the man stood transfixed for an eternity, growling like a mad dog and releasing vapours of stinking breath that reeked of rotting meat. Magpie was so grateful for the blanket that enshrouded his nose. Holding his breath, bracing for the worst, he feared the man’s hands would soon close on his throat and crush the life from him; instead he set the lantern down upon the floor and snatched the
Isabelle
hat from his pillow. Then laughter — surely a sound only a savage could create — filled the dimensions of the sail room, and the man — much to Magpie’s relief, for he could again draw breath — shuffled away from his bed. With his eye still tightly shut, it was hard to discern his exact whereabouts as he delivered words that chilled Magpie to the bone.

“Time’s comin’ when ya won’t be seein’ outta the other eye neither.”

Then Magpie heard no more.

Wild-eyed, he risked a peek over his blanket, fully expecting to find the man brandishing one of his sharp sail-making tools, or preparing to set the room afire, but he was gone; he’d vanished, as if he had slipped through the oak walls of the ship, taking the
Isabelle
hat with him.

Liberating all of his anxiety in one giant whoop, Magpie propelled himself from his hammock, his bare feet barely touching the floor. He seized the deserted lantern and dashed for the exit, beyond caring if the man —
the spectre
— lay in wait behind the door, intent on tearing him apart with his teeth. He
would
not … he
could
not spend the remainder of the night in the sail room.

Saturday, August 14

7:30 a.m.

(Morning Watch, Seven Bells)

With a start, Leander
straightened in his chair. While he yawned he looked with dismay at the ink-blotted, crumpled letter upon his hospital desk, which had spent the night under the weight of his crossed arms and sleeping head. What would Emily think if she were to receive such a letter? Surely she would believe an interloper had rescued it from the wastebasket, and it was, therefore, not meant for her consumption. He tucked it away in his writing box with myriad others neatly addressed to her, in care of the Duke of Clarence at Bushy House. What did it matter that not a single one had yet been dispatched to her? In all likelihood, he would be back in London before the Amethysts met with and entrusted their homeward-bound letters to the crew of a fast-sailing clipper, en route to England, and thus be able to hand deliver them himself. The prospect made him smile.

Standing up, he stretched out the knots in his back, gazing as he did so into the forepeak’s narrowing, wishing — as he always did — that Emily’s cot was hanging there as it had on the
Isabelle
, and she still slumbered there … and that he could soon wake her to delight once again in her sleepy smile.

“Is that a sigh I’m hearin’ from ya, Doctor?” asked Biscuit, lumbering into the hospital with the ponderous breakfast tray.

Leander took the tray from the cook, whose own breakfast leftovers were still wedged between his grey teeth, and plunked it down upon his desk. “It is!”

“Why, ya should be givin’ thanks! No sails on the horizon, fresh winds, the
Lady Jane
is still sailin’ within scope like a good lass.”

“Yes,” Leander said, lost in thought, “another long, uneventful day —”

“Is it eventful ya want? Now ya’re not hopin’ fer a battle, and yer hammocks to fill up with the dead and dyin’, are ya?”

“I think you know me better than that.”

Biscuit placed his roughened hands on his hips and winked his good eye. “I suppose yer recallin’ the time when a lovely princess were keepin’ ya company.”

Leander poured milk into his morning tea and kept his face hidden from Biscuit, not caring to have the cook guess his feelings. “That seems a lifetime ago now,” he replied quickly, handing Biscuit two wooden bowls of oatmeal. “Now, if you please, help me pass round the breakfast.”

Although Biscuit was happy to oblige, the moment he set off on his task he let loose a deprecating snarl. “Ach, Doctor, ya might’ve warned me ya had a fifth patient, so’s I knew how many oats to boil.”

Leander swung around in time to see Magpie’s curly head appear above the side of a hammock that he had assumed was empty. There was a worrying redness in the boy’s one eye, and his face was swollen and blotchy. “Biscuit, would you see to a cup of chocolate for our newest patient?”

“Right away, sir,” the cook chirped, departing at once for the galley.

Leander dispensed the breakfast bowls to his four other patients before checking in with Magpie. “And why didn’t you wake me?” he asked, pretending to be cross.

“’Cause I felt sorry fer ya, sir, sleepin’ at yer desk.”

“Are you unwell?”

“Nay, but I —” Magpie paused to study the faces of the others in the hospital, as if he were looking for someone in particular. “Ya don’t mind me comin’ here, and pilferin’ a hammock and all, do ya, sir?”

“You know I don’t.” Leander dragged his chair over to Magpie’s bedside and sat down. “Now then, tell me what brings you here?”

Magpie opened his mouth to speak, but stopped short, and glanced around him again. The four patients, who previously had been occupied with the mechanics of silently spooning oatmeal into their mouths, had all lifted their chins to listen.

Recalling a time on the
Isabelle
when Octavius Lindsay had posed a threat to the boy, Leander leaned in closer. “Is there someone … someone bothering you?”

Magpie fixed his eye on Leander’s face, and whispered, “I bin seein’ and hearin’ things.”

“What kind of things?”

“He’s bin comin’ at night.”

“Who?”

“The spectre.”

“The spectre?”

“Last night he were in the sail room.”

Leander relaxed his furrowed brow. “Did he hurt you?”

“Nay, but I almost fainted dead away with fear.”

Biscuit hurried into the hospital with Magpie’s cup of chocolate and handed it off to him. “Are ya okay, wee lad?”

Leander’s tone was crisp. “Magpie’s fine, thank you, Biscuit, but I should like time alone with him. Could you engage my google-eyed patients in conversation? Lead a sing-song if you must.”

Biscuit grinned. “I’ll tell ’em a few jokes, sir, to keep their ears off o’ ya.”

“Now then, Magpie,” Leander said, returning to boy, “start at the beginning.”

“The first time, I saw him on deck — at night, in Halifax … all legs and arms he was, like a spider, and he said such things, strikin’ terror in me somethin’ fierce.”

“And you’ve no idea who he was.”

“I bin thinkin’ he ain’t real, sir.”

Leander crossed his arms as he pondered that one. “First off, tell me about last night.”

“He came into the sail room … through the door … holdin’ a lantern, and he messed around with the sails, and stole me
Isabelle
hat from under me nose. And when he left … well, I think he passed right through the side o’ the ship.”

“Are you quite certain of that?”

“I ain’t certain ’o nothin’, sir.”

Being no closer to understanding Magpie’s plight, Leander’s lips curled in disgust upon hearing intrusive steps on the ladder and the simpering voice of Lord Bridlington.

“Doctor, come away from the sailmaker. You must attend me at once.”

Leander could not resist a sardonic reply. “Did Captain Prickett make good on his promise and perform a botched amputation on you?”

The hospital inhabitants laughed, Biscuit the loudest of them all, for, having distracted the patients with his wit, he was already warmed up and in a jokey mood. Twisting his neck around, Leander was disheartened to find Meg Kettle straggling behind the first lieutenant. “What rabble is this? Oh, Mrs. Kettle! And to what do we owe the pleasure of your company? Do you need immediate attending as well?”

“I might be,” she sneered, rolling her hips about provocatively. “But best ya come visit me tonight, so’s we ’ave a bit o’ privacy, eh, Doctor?”

An ensuing rumpus struck Leander’s ears. He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead in exasperation. Whispering an apology to Magpie, he stood up. “It’s far too early in the morning for your side-splitting humour, Mrs. Kettle.”

“And, Doctor,” added Biscuit with gusto, “here ya was thinkin’ the day would be dull.”

“I thank you all for providing me with an auspicious start to my day, but I require quiet in here, and a clearing out. Goodbye, Biscuit! Mrs. Kettle, collect whatever laundry it is you’ve come to collect, and leave. Now then, Mr. Bridlington, how can I be of assistance?”

The men in their cots piped down, Biscuit reluctantly returned to his galley stove, and the first lieutenant started in on a litany of calamities relating to his lost finger. “I can neither write in the logbook nor raise a sword, Doctor, and I take no pleasure in my meals for I cannot cut my meat, and it is hellish buttoning one’s jacket with one hand, and Captain Prickett becomes irritable and unreasonable whenever I ask him for assistance —”

While Leander examined Bridlington’s offending hand, he noticed Mrs. Kettle hovering near the ladder. It seems she had not come to collect anything at all. Though she ignored the warning glance he darted in her direction, she withdrew a few steps and made an attempt to conceal herself behind a timber post. Then the sides of her mouth fell and she glared like a fiend at Magpie, and before disappearing into the cheerless recesses of the ship, she dragged her forefinger across her neck in a terrorizing, throat-slicing gesture.