A Scandal to Remember (17 page)

That self-deprecating charm annihilated the last reserves of his resolve. “You’re not so bad.”

She gave him a sunny little smile that peeked from the corners of her mouth, like a warm dawn priming a good day to come. “Am I not? Then why do you always scowl at me?”

Because he was clumsy in his own way. Because he had a run-down ship to keep afloat. And because he
was
an idiot.

“I am trying, for your sake as well as mine, to do what is right and prudent. But that doesn’t seem to work around you, Miss Burke, because if you were right and prudent, you never would have undertaken this expedition, nor I think, ever become a scientist at all.”

She was such a tidy bundle of contradictions—prim and proper and still somehow daring—that he could not help but be fascinated by her. He could not help but want—

Dance never finished the thought, because overhead, a great shuddering crack rent the air.

The fore topgallant mast—the one he had asked to be refidded, damn it all—had gone, cast forward by the press of the fore topgallant sail, snapping lines and rigging as it shuddered over, taking the fore top royal mast with it.

There was a strangled scream as a man above was pitched through the air, only to be caught in the tangle of the falling lines and the jibs. It was Flanaghan, the captain of the tops. Caught upside down in the tangle of spars and lines. Hanging as limp as a rag, with blood streaming from his head.

“Hove to. Hove to! Mr. Whitely, helm over.” Dance was already running forward bawling at the top of his lungs. “Get a man to the fore brace. No! Starboard side, starboard on the fore. Larboard on the mizzen.” Hadn’t they had sail drill enough for the men to know how to bloody well hove to? “Brace over hard. Hard, I say.”

He was across the waist, up onto the forecastle, and at the foot of the foremast with Flanaghan dangling in the air forty feet above. “Get a netting. Rig it beneath.” Only the devil knew how long it would take to fish the netting out of the cable tier, but they had to do something for the man.

“Take in the fore course, keep it from fouling.” Some of the men were running to obey, while others were frozen in their tracks, staring up at Flanaghan’s eerily still form. “Get out from under there, man!” Dance ordered as he pushed crewmen out of the way. “Do you want it to come tumbling down upon you?”

Above, one of the agile topmen began to cautiously shin down the fore jib stay to try and reach Flanaghan.

“Get a line first.” Dance tipped back his head to roar at the man. “Get a whip purchase to secure him.”

The topman stopped and turned back to his mate on the foretop, while others of his mast mates swarmed up the shrouds to pass and rig the line.

But Dance was already thinking ahead, and ordered the foot of the outer jib to be braced back under the hanging man like a sling. “Cast loose. That’s it, man. Handsomely now. Look sharp.”

From the quarterdeck—where he should have stayed—Dance could hear Doc Whitely ordering the helm brought up, and Able Simmons calling for other sails to be braced back as the ship came up into the wind.

It seemed an eternity before the nimble topmen could fasten a line around Flanaghan, and fish his limp body upright. But the sailor was still out cold, and did not yet revive in the other men’s arms.

“Lower him down. Handsomely now, handsomely. Take your time.” Dance tore his gaze from the scene above on the foremast to the men who stood by with their heads tipped upward. “Rig a litter. And pass word for the surgeon, Mr. Denman.”

“I’m here.” Denman was coming swiftly across the larboard gangway with his sick bay assistant in tow, and in another moment Flanaghan was lowered down to the waiting canvas litter, and borne away to the surgery by his mates.

And all Dance could think as he watched them carry the topman away past the gaping men, was that the accident was wholly and entirely his damn fault.

His fault that this ship wasn’t fit to cross a pond much less an ocean. His fault that he hadn’t personally supervised the work he had ordered on the foretop. His fault that he had been flirting with the intriguing and infuriating Miss Jane Burke, and not minding his damned ship and his damned men the way he ought.

Damn, damn, damn his eyes.

And still there was work to be done, and men to put to that work, and a ship rising and falling beneath his feet that needed to be pointed once again southward.

“Get some axes above to cut away that bloody mess.” The moment he spoke, Dance thought better of the idea, and countermanded his own order. “No. Avast there. Don’t just cut it away and let it go by the boards. We’ll have need of everything salvageable.” He hated that he sounded as if he didn’t know his own mind, or couldn’t make his mind up fast enough to suit the circumstances. But his pride could take a cold swim, because the damn fact was, they hadn’t any bloody spars to spare. “Bring it down as slow and easy as you can. And get the carpenter’s mates up there to do the job properly this time, damn their eyes.”

And to show them that he bloody well knew he was as much to blame as anyone else, Dance shucked his coat and his dignity to climb up the bloody shrouds himself and see to the work on the foretop. It wasn’t the sort of thing a damned lieutenant who had the command of his vessel ought to do, but there was no one else he could trust to supervise.

They got the foremast properly rerigged even without the fore topgallant or royal masts before the forenoon watch was called, and Dance had
Tenacious
put back before the trade winds with a course south by southwest, bound for the first port he could make on the coast of South America.

And because he had not yet exhausted himself with that work when Mr. Lawrence came to take the deck, Dance took himself below to the sick bay, where Jack Denman was pouring some concoction down Flanaghan’s throat after binding the man’s arm up in a splint. “How does he fare?”

“Well enough.” Denman gestured to the thick bandaging encircling the man’s temple. “He came to once the bleeding stopped. Took a gash four inches long. Probably clipped a tackle.”

“Will he live?”

Denman looked grave and solemn, and spoke cautiously. “Always hard to say with a head wound. But most likely. I reckon an old tar like him is too tough to die from a little knock on the head.”

It had hardly been a little knock—a full quarter of the mast had given way under pressure. Dance left the orlop deck feeling only slightly more relieved than when he had descended, but his feeling of unease redoubled as he moved through the ship. The men were quiet and grim at their work, casting silent glances and passing quiet words from one to another as they waited to hear how Flanaghan fared.

It was as if a pall had descended over the ship—a pall Dance had foolishly thought he could cast off the vessel with attentiveness and duty and work and repair and decisive action.

Instead of welcoming the work, it seemed to Dance the men welcomed the accident—as if they wanted a reason to be morose and superstitious. He could feel it in the chary glances cast his way, as if he had somehow been responsible for the damn spar giving way. As if his making them work and repair the ship had been the cause, rather than a result of their inattention and idleness.

He heard the mutterings as he moved throughout the hull.

“Never would have happened with the cap’n having his way.”

“If the cap’n a had his way, we’d still be safe in Portsmouth harbor, where we belong. Don’t know why the cap’n don’t put a stop to it.”

“It’s curst bad luck, the lieutenant being in charge.”

He’d give them bloody bad luck.

But as long as they didn’t pin their dangerous delusions on Jane Burke, he’d take all the derision they could hand out. He had derision aplenty of his own. Starting with the man responsible for
Tenacious
’s miserable state of repair—the captain who wouldn’t captain his own ship.

Dance strode the length of the gun deck all but daring the men to give him the eye, but he couldn’t even growl at the poor stupid sods, because the poor stupid sods were smart enough to give him a wide berth as he stomped his way aft, patrolling his ship. Even Jane Burke had sensibly disappeared below.

It promised to be a long miserable night.

At six bells of the middle watch, Able Simmons climbed to the quarterdeck, and came to stand by Dance at the instruments. “She’s sailing well, even without the foretop.”

“Well enough.” Dance had nothing to say that didn’t involve a load of self-loathing, so he let the comment pass. “You’re up early.” The watch didn’t change for another hour, at four o’clock in the morning. The night was still and black around them.

“Yes, by design. With all due respect, Mr. Dance, you need some sleep.”

Dance would have objected, or made some ridiculous pronouncement about duty and endurance and hardship, but the moment he opened his mouth, all he could seem to do was yawn. And tired men made poor decisions—he stood as proof enough of that. “Damn me, but you’re right.”

“Go on, then.” Simmons nodded his head toward the companionway ladder. “Somehow she’s contrived it.”

There could be only one she. “Contrived what?”

“She’s shifted everyone so you might have a proper cabin to sleep in, as you ought. Can’t have the first lieutenant looking like day-old meat from lack of sleep.”

“Did she say that?” The revealing question was out before he could wish it back. “Never mind. So long as I don’t smell like like day-old meat it doesn’t matter.” The truth was, he
felt
like day-old meat.

“Go on, sir. I’ll take the deck.”

There was nothing he could do but concede gracefully. “Thank you, Mr. Simmons.”

In the dimly lit wardroom, Punch awaited him at the door to the cuddy he had originally assigned to Mr. Denman. The cuddy next to his own—the cabin normally assigned to the first lieutenant, but now inhabited by Jane Burke. “What’s afoot?” he asked Punch. “Where is Denman?”

Punch pointed across the wardroom to the largest of the cabins on the larboard side. “Shifted,” was the simple answer. “Miss Burke cleaned out the purser’s storeroom, what with it being empty.” Punch’s scathing tone held a wealth of condemnation of the former purser. “And them two young lieutenants was kind enough not to object to being moved on t’other side of the wardroom door with the warrant officers. Shifted.”

Something that ought to have been gratitude, but wasn’t, stirred deep in his gut. She had contrived it. For him. Everything had been arranged, just so. But of the arranger, there was no sign. He had only the steward to thank. “Thank you, Punch.”

“Nothing to it, sir.” The steward held open the door. “I shifted your dunnage back from the storeroom, and she gave back your hanging cot, as none was so long as your former.

She had managed all this. Again, his weary mind shouted, for him.

So he might have a place to lay his head after so many nights of catching his rest in stiff-backed chairs. “Thank you, Punch. I’m sure I’ll manage.” Dance fished a finger under the edge of his black silk stock and began to tug the neck cloth from around his neck.

“Is everything acceptable?” came a soft, straightforward voice—Miss Burke come to torment him in his waking dreams.

Punch turned to her. “Sorry to wake you, miss.”

“It’s quite all right, Punch,” she claimed, though her voice was still cottony with sleep, her hair was loose from its normally strict pins. And he could see a foam of soft white lawn peeking out from under the edges of the voluminous, dark cloak she had thrown on for modesty.

But despite her bed-tousled appearance, she was all whispered purpose. “I wanted to make sure everything was arranged as it should be. So you can get some sleep.”

Sleep was the farthest thing from his mind. And his body, which had roused itself to an almost painful state of alertness in her soft, sleepy presence.

“I’ll just finish changing the linen out for you—” Punch was saying.

“No.” Because Dance had already made the mistake of letting his hand slide down upon the pillow. And he fancied the linen was still warm from the heat of her body, where she had laid her head. His hand flexed into the pillowed softness and would not let go.

“Out,” was all he could say. His voice was nothing but a hoarse croak.

“But, sir, if I might just—”

“Out.” He sounded done in. Because he was.

“Leave him be,” she said. “It’s quite all right, Punch. The poor man is all but dead on his feet.”

Oh, he wasn’t dead. Not by a long shot. Not with the heat and scent of her rising from the bedding to wreathe his head and fill his brain with visions of Miss Jane Burke, soft and sleepy, and entirely unbuttoned. Entirely.

Dance shut the door in the steward’s face, and shucked his clothing with no thought for its care. All he wanted was to tumble naked into the cot, and let the scent and heat of her lingering in the linen envelop him. Let the soft brushed cotton slide over his skin, and the light scent of white flowers, of jasmine and rose, surround him like a balm for his ills—like an opiate sliding into his veins, carrying him into dreams, hot and powerful.

He would have taken himself in hand had he had any spare energy.

But all he could do was breathe, and dream.

Oh, devil take him, for he was as good as done for. Bloody well smitten. And where the hell would that lead them all?

Chapter Eleven

The Portuguese port of Recife rested on coastal lowland at the confluence of two rivers, where the occurrence of a natural offshore reef protected it from the tempestuous waters of the Atlantic. Despite the treacherous approach to the city through a narrow cut in the reef, the protected port had remained throughout the wars a safe harbor to English ships and trade. Thus there existed more than enough good English merchants who would be happy to take Dance’s coin.
Tenacious
would find what she needed—as long as his purse held out.

At least the fine imported Madeira wine could be gotten at a good price, even if the rest of the fresh provisions and timber were bound to cost him the entirety of the fortune it had taken him all these bloody long years to make.