A Scandal to Remember (3 page)

“I tell you what?” The first sailor leaned his elbows over the rail. “Instead o’ you comin’ aboard, why don’t I come down to your little skiff, and you can preach your little sermon to my pri—”

“Mercer.” A deep voice cut across the sailor’s lewd invitation like a dark wave, drowning him out. “What goes on?”

Jane peered around the edge of her luffing sail to find three other boats riding the choppy waves not more than ten yards off. The vessels were manned with a motley-looking assortment of sailors, scarlet-coated soldiers, and shivering boys. But the voice must have come from the tall, stony-faced officer standing in the stern of the second boat.

The officer whose rock heavy displeasure weighed down upon Jane and the sailor, alike.

The miscreant at the rail above tugged his forelock to the officer. “Lieutenant Dance, sir. Just havin’ a bit of fun with some bird—”

“Mercer.” The officer’s growl carried effortlessly across the water between them, instantly silencing all opposition. And then he turned his displeased attention solely to Jane. “Madam.” He touched the brim of his dark beaver hat, but his voice was hard and unwelcoming. “Pray explain yourself.”

The look the officer bent upon her was so keen and sharp with intelligence, Jane thought he could cut to the heart of her at a glance. The look he gave her—gave them all, to be fair—was nothing short of intimidating. This man did not have to rehearse his surety. Everything about him was certain and authoritative, even predatory. The wide set of his eyes gave him the look of a night-hunting owl, all pitiless hunter.

And she felt entirely like his prey—a gray mouse of a woman. This morning, she had selected her clothes for ease and practicality, for looking serious and scholarly and scientific. Armor against skepticism. Now, she felt dowdy and insignificant. Unworthy.

But she was not unworthy. She was J. E. Burke, the conchologist and she deserved to be there. Jane fumbled for the packet of letters—her correspondence with Sir Joseph Bank’s clerk at the Royal Society—to show him the proof. Yet her hands shook so badly she nearly sent the lot fluttering over the water.

The suffocating heat began in her chest, squeezing the air from her timid lungs.

Oh, God, not now. Not in front of this pitiless man, and all these men staring down at her.

“I … Forgive me, I—”

“Forgive me.” He touched his dark bicorn hat again, recalled to his manners by her distress. “Lieutenant Dance of
Tenacious
at your service.”

He did not look as if he were at her service. He looked as if he were at her inconvenience. As if he were exhausting a very short supply of patience just to speak to her.

Of all the things Jane had imagined—and she had imagined a fantastical assortment of things about this voyage which likely had no basis in reality—she had not imagined handsome, impatient young men. Old, dignified naturalists, yes. Beautiful men, no.

Above her head, the impatient, not-so-beautiful man Mercer was giving his side of the story. “She said as how she was to come aboard, sir. So I told her you’d already had the whores rousted out.”

“Mercer.” The deep tone grew more laconic, though the lieutenant’s face was as calm and stoic as the sea, grim and unreadable—neither his face nor his voice gave anything away. “Apologies, madam.” He directed that dark baritone at her. “I believe you must have mistaken our vessel for another. This is His Majesty’s Ship
Tenacious,
bound for the South seas on an expedition of the Royal Philosophical Society. Perhaps I can assist you by directing you elsewhere?”

Jane fought down the urge to take the excuse he so readily offered. To retreat to her soft, predictable, mousy life. To give in gracefully, while she still had the chance.

But if she gave up now without a fuss, she would never know what she was capable of. Never find out who she might have been, or what she might have accomplished if only she had had the nerve. If she did not make the attempt, foolish as it was, she would never know if her detractors—her parents and the local doctor, and any others who said she wasn’t capable—were wrong.

She closed her eyes against the sight of the men and the boats and the bright light shining off the water, and drew a long draught of air in through her nose. And again, in and out. She put her hand to her chest and felt the reassuring movement of her ribs in and out. In and out until she could speak.

“I thank you, sir.” Jane had to tip her head back in order to look him in the eye. “But my ship is His Majesty’s Ship
Tenacious.
I am J. E. Burke, the conchologist. I am a member of the very same expedition.”

The raucous silence which greeted her pronouncement nearly unnerved her. Even the gulls across the harbor ceased their endless screeching. The steady slap of the water against the pinnace seemed to fade into nothingness in the still air.

Jane braced herself for the inevitable objection, the hasty judgment and blanket dismissal she had endured every day of her adult life. But she had misjudged him, for when he spoke, there was no hint of any censure or displeasure. “I see. One moment, if you please, ma’am, while we square things away. If you would just lay off a bit, ma’am, we’ll lay alongside her and get this sorted out.”

No huff of distain. No sneer of disbelief.

Yet Jane did have to work to decipher the officer’s naval talk—she could sail a small pinnace, but had never much been around naval men—and attempted to put her boat’s luffing sail back into the wind. But in the shelter of the tall hull, and in the constantly shifting space between the boats, she could find no wind, and fumbled as the bobbing pinnace drifted toward, rather than away from him.

She could feel the creeping pressure start up again in her chest, which only made her clumsier, fumbling and bumbling in her attempts to push the tiller in the right direction.

The officer either ran out of patience, or found it—either way, he mercifully intervened. “Mercer, take charge of the lady’s boat. Madam?”

And there he was, standing in the stern of his boat as it slid between her vessel and the ship’s hull, ready to assist her, impervious to the rise and fall of the boat beneath his feet, holding his bare hand out to her as if he were a perfect, if rough, gentleman, courteously handing her onto a ballroom floor, and not across a crowded boat, and onto a Royal Navy ship.

As if he really were going to assist her aboard.

Jane was too shocked to move. And where on earth in that crowded boat was she to step? Good Lord, did he mean to take her into his arms?

And just as if he had read her overactive mind, he growled, “Give way.” In the ship’s boat, the sailors slid apart on the thwarts, the sea of blue coats parting at Moses’ gruff command.

There was nothing for her to do but gather every ounce of courage she had saved up through years and years of merely dreaming instead of doing, and give the tall officer her hand, and hope that his chivalry would somehow extend to the rest of the assemblage—who would all have a prime view up her lady parson-like skirts if she were to climb up the ladder cut into the side of the hull.

Clearly, the officer felt her hesitation. “Up you go, madam.” His voice held something—a knowing hint of laughter that sounded very much like amusement at her expense, but before she could object, his sure hand was at her waist, clasping her securely through the material of her cloak, and boosting her up the ladder as if she weighed nothing more than an empty sea chest.

Jane scrambled upward without knowing how she did so. It was as if her mind had gone completely and utterly blank. No one—not even her family—had ever touched her so familiarly. She had felt the press and span of this stranger’s hand all the way to the boning in her stays.

And to make matters worse, once upon the deck she mistimed her step. Or rather, the deck seemed to fall from beneath her foot when it ought it to have risen, whereupon Jane pitched face-first toward the wooden flooring, knocking the wind out of her lungs.

She landed like a fish out of water, stunned and gasping for air. And exposing her boot-clad ankles.

Before she had time to do anything more than feel a hot blush heating her face, a guiding hand came under her arms and hoisted her to her feet. Though his hands were gentle, his voice was all barely restrained amusement. “Careful, madam.”

Jane hid her embarrassment by busying herself straightening her skirts, and setting her sturdy hat to rights to save herself the trouble and dismay that would be sure to follow should she look at the men who had but lately mistaken her for a superannuated whore. Now they would think her a clumsy old whore, to boot.

And she’d never seen so many men in her life. Not even at the meetings of the Isle of Wight’s Naturalist’s Society that met regularly at the assembly rooms over the the Fountain of England Inn in Cowes. Every size and shade of man she could think possible were before her. Small, tall, round, and lanky. Officers and sailors. Young and old. As ugly as a worn old boot and as handsome as the lieutenant.

Not that the lieutenant was handsome, now that she had a closer look at his wide, sharp owl’s face. He was too dark for handsome—dark hair and darkened skin from the constant exposure to the sun, and those relentlessly sharp, dark green, wide-set eyes. Much too predatory for handsome. Though he must be a gentleman, since he was an officer, there was something about him—an air of something uncivilized under the smooth covering veneer of his uniform coat.

That barely restrained amusement—that sense that he was laughing at her—she could feel as surely as she had his touch.

A younger, blue-coated officer hurried across the deck. “Mr. Dance, sir,” the younger man stammered. “Welcome back aboard.”

“Thank you, Mr. Lawrence. Anything to report? Has that anchor cable on the second bower been swapped out yet? But first, let me introduce you.”

The tight feeling of alarm eased from her chest. Here were manners she understood. Perhaps this lieutenant was not so very uncivilized after all. Jane lifted her chin, and tried to put her most serene, accomplished expression on her face.

“I’ve brought us another lieutenant—pending the captain’s approval, of course.”

The lieutenant put his hands on Jane’s shoulders to shift her to the right, away from the ladder—just shifted her right over, as if she were a sea chest, or any other inanimate object in his way.

How lowering. Jane covered her mortification, and the rather alarming feeling of being so casually and continuously touched by a man, by busying herself with scientific observation. Lieutenant Dance was the tallest of the three young officers arrayed before her, as well as the oldest. And he was the most senior in other ways as well—in the commanding, loose-limbed way he held himself, as if he were very much at home on the ship, and within his own skin.

Another officer, this one only slightly younger than Lieutenant Dance, had come up the ladder to be introduced. “Lieutenant Able Simmons is an old shipmate of mine from our days on
Irresistable,
as Captain McAlden renamed the old
Swiftsure
we took at Trafalgar. Able, this is Mr. James Lawrence, who I hope will be glad of the assistance in having another officer to stand watches.”

“Very glad, I’m sure.” The younger officer, Mr. Lawrence, a thin young man of some one and twenty years, held himself much more stiffly, as he shook hands with the third officer, who appeared to be somewhere between the two others in age, with a lighter, sandy complexion.

“Good.” Dark Lieutenant Dance looked pleased, thought he did not actually smile. But his face softened a bit, and somehow it made him look more human, and less of a displeased, stone-carved god. “I’ve also brought up a half-dozen infant midshipmen the Marine Society has taken fresh from the parish rolls. They’ve been scrubbed and all but holystoned to free them of passengers. Take them to Mr. Whitely, if you would, and have him find them a berth and put them to making their hammocks.”

Passengers? Did he mean pests?

Jane’s hands instinctively went to the folds of her cloak to pull it aside, as the boys in question tumbled up the ladder and onto the deck like a pack of untrained puppies.

Lieutenant Dance gave her a wry, amused slice of a smile that almost curved up one side of his mouth. “That’s right, ma’am—fleas, lice, and the like. The lads have been scrubbed within an inch of their lives, but best watch your skirts.”

He was being deliberately provocative. Testing her out. This was the uncivilized, secretly laughing lieutenant’s attempt at humor, for nothing else could have caused his stony façade to crack into that hint of a smile.

Jane decided there and then to disoblige him by making him smile full out. She gave him her own best, most amused smile. “So kind of you, Lieutenant, to assume that I am not carrying any vermin as well.”

Oh, that brought his stony gaze straight back to hers, and for just one instant, his eyes widened as if in astonishment, or pleasure, or … something. She could not be sure, because in the next instant his dark eyebrow shot upward as he fired off another wry salvo. “To be honest, ma’am, you look as though you’ve already had a holystoning.”

Well. Jane would have admired his wit if she hadn’t been its target. She could feel her ears grow hot under the cover of her hat. She had never in her life heard, or been subjected to, such flagrant innuendo. She had never heard such a comment made about her
person.
It made her feel as if she
had
been holystoned—all her fragile delusions scrubbed away. How provoking.

And provocative. “How good of you to notice, Lieutenant.”

And that was the moment when he stopped running his eyes over the whole of the ship, and stopped to look at her. Really look at her for more than a moment. As if he had not truly seen her before, but was now trying to see inside her, into the busy workings of her mind.

The effect was unnerving. And his eyes were a very deep green. As green as the South Seas she had dreamed about in her narrow bed at night.

What a strange, unwelcome thought.

Jane might have felt the heat of her mortification return, but the moment passed—the lieutenant had already turned away, back to the business of his ship.