A Scandal to Remember (4 page)

“Take ’em below, Mr. Lawrence,” he ordered with a nod at the shivering boys. “And see to making men, if not gentlemen, out of them.” Then he turned back to the hubbub of men idling on every side, and roared, “Now get that cutter swayed up. You idlers—lend a hand here.” And off he went, supervising as the cutter—the boat Lieutenant Dance and this cargo of boys had come in—was brought up over the side by both ingenious pulleys and brute strength, and swayed inboard.

Right toward her head.

“Oh!” Jane pitched herself flat onto the deck.

“Hold fast. Bloody—” The lieutenant was back to her in a flash, pulling her up and bodily away from the path of the hanging boat. “Handsomely now, ma’am. Miss Burke, was it?”

Oh, how very, very lowering. She was all squashed into his coat, with his arm wrapped around her back to crowd her into his chest so he could drag her away from the rail, and he could not even remember her name.

“Yes, sir. Miss Burke,” she answered into the warm wool of his coat. Her voice sounded small and breathless, but her chest didn’t feel at all tight. How curious. “The conchologist,” she tried again. “J. E. Burke.”

“So you said.” A deep frown—a scowl almost—etched itself like steel down the middle of the lieutenant’s forehead. “I suppose I ought to ask, just what is a conchologist, Miss Burke?”

“Conchology is the study of seashells, of the form of the animal’s shell.” Back on more familiar ground, both metaphorically and literally, Jane’s voice sounded more normal. “I am the author of—”

But the lieutenant did not seem particularly interested in her bona fides. “As you say, ma’am.” He touched his hat again and steered her away from the hoist. “If you would be so kind as to stay here at the taffrail, where you’re out of the way, until the Royal Society fellows can get you sorted out.”

“Yes. Quite.” Jane nodded as if she were manhandled by tall, steely, handsome lieutenants quite every other day. As if it hadn’t been the strangest, most astonishing occurrence of her rather quiet, parochial life. “I’m rather looking forward to being sorted.”

Oh, Lord. The look the lieutenant bent upon her—his incredulous, wide-eyed scowl—told her she had said the very wrong thing.

The corner of the lieutenant’s mouth twitched upward into a smile, though he tried to chew down on his lower lip to keep his stony face. But his voice was nigh unto full of that wry amusement. “His Majesty’s Royal Navy will do what it can to accommodate you, madam. I’ll be damned if it won’t.”

Oh, Lord. She wasn’t going to the South Seas. She’d never make it that far. She was going to go up in a flame of astonishment, singed to an ashy crisp, right there in Portsmouth harbor.

Lieutenant Dance—what a name for a man so tall and imposing that he looked as if he had never danced in his life. His head would have scraped the low ceiling of the Fountain Inn’s ancient assembly rooms. And his expression was so carved into his face as to make it seem likely that he never unbent enough to enjoy anything so frivolous as a country dance.

Of course, neither had she. She had always been too busy with their work, hers and Papa’s. Planning and arranging all their collecting. Making sure everything was just so.

But the lieutenant was not in the least similarly affected. He carried on as if he made such saucy quips every day. “If you’ll give me a moment before your sorting, Miss Burke—” His attention shifted back to his sailorly business. “Mind that hoist, man. Damn your eyes. You’re in Portsmouth harbor, under the eyes of the bloody fleet, man. Have some pride.”

Jane had never in her life heard such a load of cursing—her ears felt positively singed. And she was nearly bowled over by two seamen jostling by with crates perched high on their shoulders.

She dodged out of the way, and bumped up into some deck furnishing of some kind.

“Careful, ma’am,” the lieutenant said again.

Jane felt all the mortification her clumsiness could bring. “Perhaps it were best if I went somewhere else, so I am not so very much in your way? Perhaps it were best if I spoke to someone else—Sir Richard Smith, or the captain?”

The look on the lieutenant’s face turned from wry to sour amusement. “You may try, madam, but I would save your breath to cool your porridge. The captain is…”—he heaved in a breath, as if he were trying to give himself time to find the right word—“currently indisposed.”

No matter. She had more than enough patience to go around. She had waited what seemed like half of her life to come this far. “Then I will wait until he can see me.”

“Be careful what you wish for, Miss Burke.” For a moment the stony façade held. But then he shook his head and looked at her directly, and Jane thought she could see something else, something decidedly more direct and honest. And tired. “I do not mean he is busy, madam. I mean he is drunk. So drunk that you will get no satisfactory answer from him no matter what you say. You’d best take your chances with me.”

Gracious. How cynical. “And what, if I may ask, are my chances with you?”

Oh, Lord. She had done it once more, because there it was again, that astonishing and almost unnerving awareness that sprang between them like … like nothing she had ever known or experienced before.

The lieutenant shook away his rising smile. “Even seas, Miss Burke. I am only commanded to take the Royal Philosophical Society’s party of naturalists on this voyage, not to determine who that party of naturalists may be. You’ll have to take up your cause with the Royal Society itself.” But he could not rid his voice still of that edge of secret amusement.

“But you do not approve?” This she was prepared for—the same condescending disapproval she had weathered in scientific circles all her life.

Yet the lieutenant surprised her again. “It is not my place to approve or disapprove, Miss Burke. It is my place to see to this ship, and her men, and prepare her for this voyage.” He squinted out over the harbor. “But to that end, I’ll simply warn you—this ship quite literally has no place for a woman. No place for privacy. No place to hide. No place for lies.”

The force and acuity of his warning cut away all of her rehearsed argument until there was nothing left but the truth. And the truth was that she was nothing but determination and lies.

But justifiable lies. So though her voice was small and breathless, she made herself face him. “Would you put me off?”

“Again, Miss Burke, it is not my place. My place is only to see that your presence aboard, amongst all these men, does not disrupt the working of my ship.”

But he had not put her off. Not yet.

And so she pledged him what she could of the truth. “I shan’t disrupt a thing, sir. I promise.”

He turned to her with that cynical, amused eye. “Too late, Miss Burke. You already have.”

Chapter Three

Fuck all. As if it weren’t bad enough taking on a cargo of useless naturalists across the globe on a dilapidated ship, one of them had to turn out to be a pocket-sized lady scientist. With dancing blue eyes.

She was tiny and blond and creamy pink in a way that made him think of wide-eyed woodland creatures—all soft, harmless doe eyes. Except she wasn’t harmless. She was Miss Jane Burke, the conchologist, a walking collision course, wreaking havoc each way she turned. Clumsy, inept annihilation. Nothing but wide-eyed trouble.

Dance shifted his gaze over the harbor, narrowing his eyes so he wouldn’t look at her. Wouldn’t be taken in by her seemingly fragile air. Wouldn’t think of her as anything more than cargo. Buttoned-up innocent lady scientist cargo. Who didn’t have enough experience of the world to know what she was saying.

Or perhaps, because she was a lady scientist, she
did
know what she was saying.

Dance didn’t know which possibility frightened or amused him more. He tried like the devil to keep his voice even. “If you’ll be so kind as to stay by the taffrail, ma’am.”

He had to restrain himself from putting his hands on her again. Dance had never been one of those men who were categorically and adamantly opposed to women on board—any woman. His time on
Audacious
had taught him that a woman could be as capable as any man. But Miss J. E. Burke was no Sally Kent. Miss Burke appeared to be as small and sheltered and inept and clumsy a sailor as his former shipmate Sally Kent had been tall and experienced and capable.

Unlike Sally Kent, if Miss J. E. Burke the conchologist stayed aboard
Tenacious,
she was going to need to be protected, both for her own sake, and for the sake of order on the ship. He had not imagined the leering eyes of the sailors or the contemptuous look Ransome had given her when she had thrown herself upon the deck. Granted, Ransome seemed contemptuous of just about everyone, but there had something more than usually malignant in his eyes when he looked at Miss Burke.

Or not. Perhaps the randy old bosun was just ogling her trim, white ankles.

But Miss Burke was not Dance’s problem to sort out. He would have to leave her to the scrutiny of the party of sober-suited men approaching in watermen’s boats, because in the absence of his captain, he had his ship to run. “Mr. Ransome, if you would pipe our guests aboard.”

And up they came, one after another, men who looked more like industrious Quakers than eminent naturalists. They gained the deck slowly, and with a great deal more deviation from course, and trouble than even the clumsy but sprightly Miss Burke had occasioned. But at last a scholarly older man in a black worsted coat approached. “Captain Muckross?”

“No, sir.” But Dance gave him the courtesy of touching his hat. “Lieutenant Charles Dance, at your service.”

“Sir Richard Smith.” The man bowed in turn, and introduced his colleagues. “And Mr. Denman, the Reverend Mr. Phelps, and Mr. Parkhurst of the Royal Philosophical Society.”

Dance bowed smartly to the group. “Welcome aboard. We’ve been expecting you. Is this all of your party?”

“All but one, sir. The last, Mr. Burke, was to make his own way from the Isle of Wight, but I should expect him to arrive aboard shortly.”

From the Isle of Wight. That explained the trim little pinnace. But it did not explain
her
as opposed to the
him
that Sir Richard clearly expected. At least Dance wasn’t the only one caught out flat. “That party has already arrived, sir.” Dance ignored the pleasurable stirring of anticipation in his gut as he turned to indicate the dangerous bundle of cloak and science standing off to the side. “Sir Richard Smith, I give you your conchologist, Miss J. E. Burke. Sir Richard,
Miss
Burke. And now, if you’ll excuse me, ma’am, sir. I have a ship to see to.”

And with that, Dance had done his duty. He touched his hat to her, and forced himself to withdraw to the other side of the quarterdeck from whence he might continue his streaming supervision of the vessel. “Why the hell isn’t that cutter stowed? Get after it, man. Handsomely now. Mind that davit. Damn your eyes, man…”

Dance tried his level best to keep his own eyes, and that of his crew, on the tasks at hand. “Mercer. See to that line.” But the unfortunate truth was that he had no attention for anything but the intriguing confrontation happening on the quarterdeck.

Miss Jane Burke, she of the dancing blue eyes and careful, naïve smile, stood with her sensible dun-colored skirts blowing in the wind like the flag for a gale warning.

“Good afternoon, Sir Richard. As the lieutenant said, I am Miss J. E. Burke.” The young woman offered her hand to Sir Richard, the botanist in nominal charge of the expedition, even if he had no authority over the men or the vessel. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance after all our correspondence.”

Unlike Dance, Sir Richard did not take the hand she offered. Wise man. Dance would be careful not to touch her again, after his too-close encounter at the davits. The feel of the surprising soft flair of her back concealed by the voluminous cloak beneath his hands had been enough to wipe the entire contents of his mind momentarily clean.

God’s balls. This is what he had come to—lurid imaginings about a wide-eyed, buttoned-up spinster.

Sir Richard was being much more prudent—he was looking at the dangerous girl as if she might harbor the plague. “There must be some mistake. James Burke is a man.”

“I imagine he is.” Miss Burke kept up her very polite, if very determined smile, and let her empty hand drop. “But my given name is Jane, and I assure you, I
am
J. E. Burke, and I am a conchologist.”

“That cannot be.”

Miss Burke retained her poise and her smile with some effort—a bloom of high color was streaking across her smooth cheeks. “I assure you, sir. I am she. But to save us from going on in this rather unscientific manner perhaps I might offer you proof? I have the letters of our correspondence here, written in your own hand, and the hand of Sir Joseph Banks’s secretary, detailing our agreements and arrangements for the voyage.”

Miss Burke fished out a packet of letters—the same letters she had brandished at him in her boat. Then, Dance had thought the stiff breeze had been ruffling the papers, but now in the lee of the rail, he could see that it was her hand that was trembling. Indeed her whole body was nearly shaking with some mixture of indignation and … Could it be fright?

Dance took a surreptitious half step toward her. All it would take was for the tiny spinster to collapse in a fit of vapors upon his deck.

But somehow Miss Burke the conchologist rallied—she put her hand to her chest to ease her fright, and hid her tremors by raising both her chin, and the letters of correspondence. “Are these not your letters to me, sir?”

“Yes, but…” Sir Richard was clearly discomposed, and losing sea way. “But I had no idea that you were— I was given to understand that J. E. Burke was the son of Lord Thomas Burke, and the grandson of the Duke of Shafton.”

“Lord Burke is my grandfather, and His Grace of Shafton my great-grandfather. Both, I am happy to say, enjoy excellent health and correspond with me regularly. And with the Duke of Fenmore, our expedition’s patron.”

Sir Richard’s anxieties were not in the least allayed by Miss Burke’s strong connection with her illustrious ancestors. “But there must be some mistake.”