The Elusive Flame (23 page)

At the moment, her husband leaned back in his chair, his long legs stretched out to the side, very much at his leisure. It occurred to her as she eyed him surreptitiously that he didn’t necessarily appear older than his years, yet he seemed vastly more mature than other men of the same age. He bore the weight of authority and experience remarkably well, she thought, for he seemed to casually accept the responsibility of his command, as if he had been born to it. It was also something he deftly maintained without a display of tyrannical demands.

Lamplight burnished his features, emphasizing the crisp line of his jaw and the noble elegance of his face. His eyes were darkened by the shadow which the hanging lantern presently cast across his face, leaving the color impenetrable, but she could sense his gaze hawkishly devouring her.

“When you left Charleston, Captain, did you deliberately pursue such an adventurous life?” she queried quietly.

Beau twirled a glass of ruby port between his long fingers and shrugged. “Our experiences only seem daring in the retelling, madam.”

“No such thing!” Mr. Oaks objected with a chuckle. “Every word was true and the captain knows it.”

“You’ve sailed rather close to the wind a time or two,” Cerynise persisted.

“More like a time or a hundred,” Mr. Oaks boasted. “There was that month we spent holed up in Majorca when—”

“I think that will do, Mr. Oaks,” Beau murmured tolerantly with a grin, but even so soft a rebuke was capable of shushing his mate. Beau was just lifting the decanter to refill the other’s glass when a disturbance in the companionway interrupted. He rose almost leisurely and swung open the door, revealing several crewmen who glanced at each other rather dubiously. One was pushed forward to serve as spokesman.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, Cap’n, but there’s a spot o’ trouble below.”

“What sort of trouble?” Beau asked quietly. Stephen Oaks was already on his feet, moving around to stand beside his captain.

“Wilson’s drunk, sir,” another man blurted out. “He’s already knifed Grover an’ now he’s got himself an ax. Choppin’ away at the walls below decks, he is, sir. Thinks it’s funny, he does.”

Chopping holes in the walls of a ship while at sea didn’t seem particularly amusing to Cerynise. Neither did wielding an ax while raging drunk nor, for that matter, knifing a man. Yet Beau showed no visible sign of alarm as he turned back to her. “Please excuse us, madam.”

“Of course.” She stood up hastily. “I’ll go to my cabin.”

“No, you’d better stay here.” At her look of surprise, Beau further instructed, “Lock the door from inside, and don’t let anyone in here until I return. Understood?”

“Yes, Captain,” Cerynise acknowledged with an uncertain nod.

It might have been all well and good to challenge Beau Birmingham about their marital status, but she had the
good sense to know this was not the time to argue about staying in his cabin. If truth be told, she was relieved that he was so well experienced in handling adverse situations, as Oaks’s discussions over dinner had confirmed.

With that in mind, she softly begged, “Please be careful.”

He was about to step through the door, but paused to give her a quick glance over his shoulder. He smiled faintly and left the cabin with Mr. Oaks following hard on his heels.

Cerynise released a quavering sigh, realizing just how anxious she had become, not for herself but for her husband. Oaks hadn’t really done her a favor by bragging on his captain’s daring feats. One thing she had learned from the mate’s stories, that when there was trouble to be reckoned with, Beau usually took charge, and her imagination conjured up a whole plethora of diabolical things that could happen to him while trying to take an ax or a knife from a drunk.

Cerynise pressed a trembling hand to her brow as she faced the gallery windows. Darkness loomed beyond the stern, but she would have seen nothing beyond the square panes even if dawn had been breaking. Her awareness that Beau was in danger reduced her to a quivering mass of womanly concern for a man whom she dearly cherished. At that realization, Cerynise sat down abruptly upon the cushions, barely an instant before her legs would have given way beneath her.

She was still frozen with anxiety when she heard footsteps in the companionway. Without giving a thought to Beau’s command, she raced to the door, unlatched it with fumbling fingers, and yanked it open. Her husband had lifted a hand to knock, but when she appeared, breathless and fearful, a sudden scowl darkened his countenance.

“Didn’t I tell you not to unlock the door until I told you to?”

He was right. Her behavior had been no less than foolish. Anyone could have been standing in the passageway. But she didn’t care at the moment. In a heartbeat, she flung
herself toward him and clasped her arms around him. “Oh, thank goodness you’re all right! I was so worried.…”

Beau’s arms encircled her and steadily tightened until she was held snugly against him. He pressed a cheek against her hair, somewhat awed by her fear. It was much like the time Sawney had bucked him off and he had been knocked nearly senseless after his head scraped a nearby tree on the way down. He had awakened from his daze to find his head in Cerynise’s lap and her frightened tears pelting his face.

“Of course, I’m all right,” he soothed near her ear.

Released from the depths of her trepidation, Cerynise felt like soaring. Indeed, she was nearly giddy with relief and, in an instant, was pulling his head down and covering his face with laughing kisses, expressing her joy with girlish fervor. Her delight increased significantly as his mouth began to snare hers with quickening zeal. Brief though they were, his kisses were exotic little morsels that made her hungry for more. Rising on tiptoes, she locked her arms about his neck and clung to him unashamedly as she answered his questing tongue and lips with frenzied rapture. Even when his hand wandered beneath her buttock and pressed her up against him, she felt no desire to pull away from the burgeoning hardness that became evident even through the layers of her skirts and petticoat.

Fate would have it that the hapless Mr. Oaks chose that very moment to enter the passageway. Upon espying them locked in an embrace ill suited for the passageway, he gasped in surprise and then, abruptly realizing his mistake, made to reverse his direction. But it was too late. The couple broke apart, and Cerynise, upon spying Oaks, fled to her cabin with a vivid blush while Beau turned aside.

“I beg your pardon, Captain,” the mate apologized, horribly flustered. “I was just…”

“Never mind,” Beau bade curtly, and drew in a ragged breath. A battle of wills raged within him as he debated the choices between following his wife or returning to his own cabin. After the interruption, it was doubtful that
Cerynise would want to see him, and certainly not with the same enthusiasm she had displayed only a moment before. A wise man would wait until her embarrassment had eased. A wise man would return to his own cabin and spend a hellish night tossing and turning in his lonely bunk while he cursed his mate’s untimely intrusion.

His eyes glittering dangerously, Beau strode to the familiar portal and, a brief moment later, slammed it closed behind him. Stephen Oaks winced sharply and retreated like a timid little mouse to the small cubicle that served as his temporary quarters. The captain hadn’t elaborated on the status of his relationship with his wife, but from all previous indications, the lady hadn’t seemed at all inclined to fall into her husband’s lap like Oaks had seen other women eagerly do in the past. The fact that she had apparently been responding with a fair amount of passion of her own only made his embarrassment more acute. He had certainly bungled it for his captain this time.

Exhausted and aching from a wearisome night of restless turning, Cerynise rose, bathed, and garbed herself in a demure, dark blue woolen gown. She gathered her hair in a somber knot at her nape and tried to pinch some color into her cheeks. Billy Todd arrived with her breakfast tray shortly after her toilette, but this was not the grinning, gregarious Billy whom she had come to know. This morning he was pale and silent, and apparently was struggling to maintain a semblance of composure that he wasn’t necessarily feeling.

“Is something wrong, Billy?” Cerynise asked in growing concern as he set the tray down.

Avoiding her gaze, he shook his head. “No, mum. Everything’s fine.”

She wasn’t at all convinced. Fevers could spring up so easily and even a strong boy like Billy could fall prey. “Are you perhaps ill?”

“Oh no, mum.”

Billy had left the door open when he entered the cabin,
and though she strained to hear, the usual morning sounds from the deck to which she had become accustomed were not in evidence. In their stead was a somber silence.

An undefined sense of dread filled Cerynise. “Billy, are you sure…?”

The lad hastened toward the door, reluctant to answer any questions. “I’ll come back later to collect the tray, mum.” He hesitated briefly before adding, “Ye’d best stay put for the morn’n.’”

He flushed, nodded quickly and withdrew. Cerynise stared pensively at the tray of food. All she could hear in her mind was the silence that had been more deafening than the rattle of drums and fife. Her curiosity got the better of her, and she went to the door, opened it, and stood in waiting silence. The ominous hush drew out in ever-lengthening degrees.

There were almost a hundred men on board the
Audacious
. What could possibly have rendered them so deathly still? Having little knowledge of shipboard life other than what she had gleaned since their departure from London, Cerynise was at a loss to explain the hush that had settled over the frigate. They were making good time, but at present there was none of the thumps and rattles of daily chores being performed, the calls from the morning watch, the snatches of song or the low murmuring voices that were usually discernible in her cabin in the mornings.

There was only silence.

Cerynise slipped cautiously through the passageway and then ascended several steps of the companionway until she was able to have a look about the deck. To her amazement, she found the entire crew assembled in stony silence on the main deck, drawn up in ranks facing away from her. They stood with legs braced apart, hands clasped behind their backs, looking toward the forecastle. Cerynise couldn’t see beyond them and had to climb a few more steps to do so. This she did only to instantly regret it. A man, naked from the waist up, was lashed to the backstays of the foremast against the starboard rail. His wrists were
stretched outward above his head and were secured with cords. Standing beside him was the burly bosun’s mate whose arms were as thick as battering rams. From his huge hand dangled a cat-o’-nine-tails.

That lash was the most wicked thing Cerynise had ever seen, and with an effort, she dragged her eyes away and sought Beau. He was also there on the forecastle, tall, stoic, his powerful body stiffly erect, a figure of immense power and authority, yet cold and distant as though devoid of all humanity. As she watched, her heart crept into her throat.

Mr. Oaks stepped forward and, in a clear voice, announced, “Seaman Redmond Wilson, having been found guilty of dereliction of duty, possession and excessive use of alcoholic spirits aboard ship, and endangerment of the life of one Thomas Grover, as well as the welfare of the crew and the condition of the vessel, is thereby sentenced to receive twenty lashes, punishment to be carried out forthwith.”

No one moved except for the bosun’s mate, who turned his head slightly in Beau’s direction. With a single nod, the captain of the
Audacious
signaled for the punishment to commence. The cat hissed forward through the air like a striking snake, making contact with human flesh and drawing a roar of pain from the man. Cerynise cringed, hardly aware that a sharp gasp had been wrenched from her own lips. In the grim silence that ensued, all heads turned toward her.

Her first instinct was to escape, but it was all too obvious what she had done. Pride refused to let her flee the consequences of her actions. Scarcely breathing, she climbed to the deck and mutely awaited her reckoning. Billy Todd stood nearby, staring at her in horror. The rest of the crew regarded her with expressions that ranged widely from disbelief to sympathy.

A path opened as Beau strode across the deck toward her. Not for a moment could she mistake his rage. He gripped her elbow and, without a word, escorted her down the stairs and through the passageway to her cabin.

“You shouldn’t have come on deck,” he rumbled as he threw open her door. “Didn’t Billy warn you not to?”

“He told me to stay put,” she admitted in a hushed tone.

“Usually there’s a reason for instructions of that sort,” he stated crisply. “In the future, madam, you’ll be wise to heed them.”

“I will,” Cerynise whispered, very close to bursting into tears.

Detecting an unusual brightness in her eyes, Beau stepped forward but caught himself abruptly, aghast that he should even think of apologizing. Whirling about-face, he stalked from the cabin, leaving her to close the portal behind him.

The muted sounds of Redmond Wilson’s screams drifted down to haunt her, and try as she might, Cerynise could not block them out. She knew the man had deserved his punishment, and because she was a passenger on a ship that usually carried none, she was the intruder, the one who had blundered into her husband’s affairs and caused him acute embarrassment in front of his men.

The screams grew silent at last and in a surprisingly brief time the customary noises of shipboard life began anew, but no one came to her door. Cerynise remained isolated in her cabin, and this time she vowed to stay until she was given permission to leave or they dragged her moldering from her crypt.

By nightfall, her nerves had been stretched taut. Billy Todd hadn’t appeared with the noon meal or even supper. That didn’t trouble her overmuch since she had grave doubts that she could’ve eaten a morsel. As full darkness descended, her agitation steadily increased. Obviously she was being left entirely alone to consider her guilt in disobeying an order, however casually it had been given.