A Different Sort of Perfect (35 page)

And the honest truth of the matter — he'd soon miss
her company if forced to do without it.

He turned the penner's sand pot in his hands, around
and around. "I've never asked you regarding your father. You say he
was a sailor?" He'd never asked her anything about her home life;
why it mattered now, he didn't know.

She glanced up from the dining table, littered with
foolscap scraps trimmed from every possible document and covered
with spare sentences, some under consideration, some cast aside.
"My father, yes. In the American War he was a ship's captain—"

He nearly dropped the sand pot. "A
post
-captain?"

"I don't know." Her eyes turned down again, and she
resumed sorting the scraps. "He commanded a ship called
Astraea
—"

"A frigate." It was rude to interrupt, but the words
simply fell from him in his astonishment. "She's still in service,
although old-fashioned. And a frigate, yes, that would have made
him a full post-captain."

For a moment the fire burned behind her eyes, the
tigress peering from the night beyond the campfire's circle. His
heart soared and tiny invisible zephyrs breathed over his skin; he
nearly shivered, the imaginary night was so real. Then the
firelight died, leaving a dignified, restrained lady fingering bits
of paper, and the returning ache made him catch his breath.

"With two other British ships, they captured an
American blockade-runner called
Julius Cæsar
and took her
into Halifax. While there, he met a beautiful young lady at the
port admiral's ball." A dreamy smile drifted over her curving lips.
"I barely knew Mama, she died when I was quite young, but Father
always said it was love at first sight. She wore the most
enchanting
robe à l'anglaise
in green silk, with an
embroidered stomacher, a big round skirt, and the tiniest corseted
waist he'd ever seen." Her smile grew. "Or so he always said. And
they danced a minuet and the cotillion, and he admitted before the
evening's end he wanted to sneak her out the back way, but instead
he asked her to marry him."

The sand pot was made from the oxhorn's base,
hollowed out and fitted with a shaker top. Bands of color ran from
top to bottom, sepia, tan, cream, and back to sepia. It fitted so
perfectly to the inkpot, carved from the middle section of the
horn, that the stripes aligned to a hair.

"Would you wear an enchanting green silk
robe à
l'anglaise
with an embroidered stomacher?" For a modern,
fashion-conscious gentlewoman, it was the most aggravating thing he
could think of to say.

But her smile only twisted into something wry. "Not
for love nor money."

"Not even for love?"

The embers glimmered behind her eyes, but only for a
second. "Mama agreed to his proposal that very night, but only if
he gave up the sea and settled with her in England. It took months
of persuasion on her part, but that's how he came to be a rich,
knighted merchant shipping spars and gunpowder and cordage from the
Baltic, silk and spices and jewels from the Orient, rather than a
fighting admiral in charge of a fleet." Her smile died away. "Would
you do that for love, Captain?"

His stomach knotted.
No,
he wanted to shout,
as loudly as possible, until it echoed from the rafters and reached
the bowsprit and main crosstrees and brought Hennessy running. No
need to consider. He opened his mouth—

—and no sound came forth.

Was she seriously
asking
him? No, surely she
knew better; she should know by now it would kill him to leave the
sea. Her parents' romance differed, for her mother had never been a
sailor, might even have been afraid of sailing, and could not have
known what she asked. Just considering the notion — leaving the
sea, leaving the service — was an odd, unsettling thought, and it
rippled through the great cabin, through him, like an Atlantic
roller that gained strength as it crossed the two thousand miles
from America's coast before it crashed onto the western shores of
Ireland and Cornwall and Spain and Portugal, before slamming
through the Bay of Biscay with its pent-up energy and roughing up
the weather like an angry Poseidon. The ripple swelled to a storm
wave, almost to anger, but he quashed it; he wanted to rile her,
not be riled himself.

And he had no business making comparisons, in any
case. There were no parallels between her parents' romance and the
relationship between him and his clerk, because there was no
romance here.

None.

Was there?

No. Surely not.

Her father's sacrifice, though — it went beyond
poignant. Just the thought of it was unbearable. It ripped and
shook Fleming to his core.

No. Not quite. As she shuffled papers beside him, his
unconsidered, soul-searching thoughts found, in the very center of
his heart, a solid chunk of his most inner being that remained
undisturbed. Deep within him lived a man who could leave the sea,
unhappy perhaps, grieving certainly, but without bitterness or
remorse. He could do it.

For love.

And the unshaken nature of that chunk of his soul, as
he contemplated such a change at her rhetorical request, could mean
only one thing.

He could do it for her.

No other explanation accounted for his unsettling
thoughts. He'd fallen, not in lust, but in love with Lady Clara.
And if the only way he could have her was by leaving the sea and
the service, then a cold, contained part of himself was prepared to
do so.

Just like her father.

He wanted Lady Clara beside him, not only at table
and on the quarterdeck, but when he awakened each morning in the
hanging cot — and more importantly, when he laid down in it each
night. It wasn't the satin sheet he yearned to feel stroking him,
nor even her crow quill. And the thought of turning around during
gunnery exercises without bumping into her stripped all the heady
thrill from the imagined smells of gunpowder and slow match. She'd
proven she'd go below during battle; his only concern would be
keeping her away from the cannons once she was there.

And
bonne chance
to that.

But could she love him in return? That blasted
Frenchman
had broken her heart, and now the woman he loved
had buried herself within that brittle shell of dignity and refused
to relax her guard. He'd dearly enjoy to "engage the enemy more
closely," as the signal flag said, but she had the weather-gauge
and he couldn't force the battle. Nothing he'd tried had helped an
ounce and he'd run out of ideas. Watching her pen scratch out
another sentence on the sheet of foolscap, Fleming realized the
next move would have to be hers.

Five days. They'd enter Plymouth in five days. Unless
a fever broke out aboard ship, forcing them all into quarantine, he
had that long to break through her self-imposed shell.

In the background, something squawked. An
all-too-well-remembered, evil squawk.

And a
frisson
of horror rippled up his
spine.

They were framed by the open stern window, forming
their horrid little battle line on the ledge of the central panes:
Red Spectacles, Blue Cheeks, and Mask. Blue Cheeks clacked his beak
as if clearing his throat, Red Spectacles turned his head and
riveted them with one gimlet eye, Mask opened his mouth—

—and Fleming wondered if he could reach his cavalry
saber from where he sat at the dining table, preferably without
Lady Clara noticing. It was past time to find out how parrot soup
tasted.

She stared back at Red Spectacles with something
awakening behind her eyes. It didn't seem to match his horror.
Perhaps primness, but that didn't seem right, either. And the
pettifogging parrot never blinked.

Mask said, "Mary."

Blue Cheeks clacked his beak a few more times for
good measure. "Mary. Mary." He nudged Red Spectacles, who
obediently joined in. "Mary. Mary."

"Mary had a."

"Yes indeedy."

"Mary had a little lamb."

Oh, no.

Oh,
no.

He hadn't heard this one. Whatever was coming, he
could no more prepare for it than Lady Clara. If he didn't frighten
the silly things away or behead them first, of course.

"A little lamb."

"Lambie pie."

"She kept it. She kept it."

""Where oh where."

"She kept it.

"In a bucket."

They passed the lines back and forth like children
with a ball, like dock workers unloading goods from an Indiaman,
like a servant braiding a lady's hair. The waisters must have spent
hours training the little pepperpot nuisances. He could reach out,
grab the saber, and put the birds out of his misery. But he'd be a
remarkably unpopular captain in tune with the stroke, and there was
no guarantee they wouldn't duck beneath the saber and invade the
great cabin. Then Hennessy would be hours getting rid of them. At
least right now they only stood on the window ledge.

"Mary had a little lamb." Mask bobbed his head like a
deranged horse nodding in a field.

"She kept it in a bucket." Red Spectacles turned that
beady eye his way and fixed him with a malicious glare. "In a
BUCK-et."

No.
That rhyme he could see coming a nautical
mile away. Fleming moved more slowly than a wet week, stretching
one hand toward the weapons arranged in decorative groupings on the
wall.

Blue Cheeks edged away. A tiny little brain, perhaps;
stupid, no. "BUCK."

Red Spectacles
chasséd
sideways. In the other
direction. "BUCK. BUCK."

And Mask climbed vertically up the window's railing,
needle-sharp claws digging in. "BUCK." He bit into the wood, held
on while he arranged his feet, then let go. "BUCK." The little
fornicating dunderhead grabbed the upper edge of the window frame
and side-stepped onto it. Upside down. "BUCK."

"And every time." Blue Cheeks ran out of ledge for
easing away and stepped onto the upper cushion of the window seat.
Into the cabin. Still inching sideways out of reach.

"Every time." Red Spectacles hopped down onto the
seat itself and walked along it with mincing Hackney steps. "Every
time."

Mask took up the song. Still upside down. "Every time
the bulldog came."

If he jumped for the saber, they'd flap off in all
directions at once. If he took much longer reaching for it, it
would be too late. Either way, he and decency would lose.

And Lady Clara was about to hear it. Her eyebrows
were pinched together, cheeks pink. Her lovely lips were pursed as
if she'd tasted something acidulous, and her eyes reflected growing
horror — or growing something. Clearly she'd heard a few naughty
words in her time and knew what was coming just as he did.

"Mary had a leet-tle lamb." Mask seemed to love that
line, savoring it syllable by syllable.

"She kept it in a BUCK-et." As Red Spectacles seemed
to love that one. He lifted one foot from the seat and posed,
tilting his head sideways. No chance he'd fall, of course.

"And every time the bulldog came." Blue Cheeks
paused. His dramatic sense was flawless. "He always tried to."

They'd reached the peccant part. And he'd reached his
target. His fingers fumbled along the wall. There. The basket hilt
of his lion-hilted cavalry saber. He tried to draw it from the
mounted scabbard without undue noise disturbing the rowdy Greek
chorus, but at the whisper of steel they moved more quickly.

Mask spread his wings and flapped where he dangled,
ready to go. "Always."

One reasonable target. That was all he asked.

"Always tried to." Red Spectacles scurried for the
window seat's far end.

Blue Cheeks crowded into the other corner. "Al-ways.
ALL-ways."

"He always TRIED to," Mask crooned. Like a
signal.

In desperation, Fleming swept the saber free and
swung at Mask. The parrots erupted into flight and Lady Clara leapt
to her feet, dancing back out of the line of battle. Wings filled
the great cabin, beating as if tiny flying demons had invaded. They
screamed together: "CHASE IT ROUND THE YARD!"

He sagged. Oh, would he inspect the waisters come
Sunday. Not half, he wouldn't. He'd inspect them straight to a
rigged grating and take the cat out of the bag, something he hadn't
done in months at sea.

Something wheezed behind him.

For a moment he allowed himself to hope that his wild
swinging had felled at least one of the little brutes. But maybe
he'd struck Lady Clara. Appalled, he whirled around.

She leaned back against the for'ard bulkhead, well
out of range, still wheezing. Hand pressed to her side. Chest
heaving in huge gasps, released puff by puff. Her knees buckled and
she slid down the wall, slumping into a disordered heap on the
sailcloth rug. She paused, wiped the first tears from beneath her
eyes, hauled in a deep breath.

And resumed laughing.

"Oh." She wiped more tears. Her shoulders shook and
she slumped lower. "Oh, dear, your face."

He'd thought she laughed at the birds. Impudent
little baggage. He hefted the saber.
No. Not a good idea, Mrs.
Fleming's little boy.
With infinite care, he slid the heavy
weapon back into its scabbard.

The beating wings faded away and the parrots settled
on the backs of the dining table chairs, their show over. Fleming
stared down at Lady Clara. She was helpless with laughter, young
and carefree. Perhaps he'd been too hasty, reaching for a weapon,
when the worst the birds could do was swear in front of a lady.
They'd never offered to bite or claw anyone. He'd been cruel and
thoughtless, risking the waisters' beloved pets.

Even if they'd made a fool of him. She hadn't laughed
in so long, not since the night they'd danced on the quarterdeck
before the storm. She was welcome to make up for lost time at his
expense. He settled cross-legged on the sailcloth rug beside her.
She sounded so delighted, so pleased. His heart sang within him and
he knew he grinned along with her.