A Scandal to Remember (40 page)

“Yes. The truth that I have never shared with another person on this earth is that I never knew the man, and have no idea if he is living or dead. I only know that sixteen-odd years ago, when I was twelve years old, he paid for my position as a midshipman in the Royal Navy, and that was the first and the last that I have ever heard of him. I can only assume I am the natural son of some man of consequence who felt he could discharge his duty to me and my mother by starting me in a profession, and leaving it at that.”

“Did your mother never say?”

“No. She did not. Never. I had thought she might, once, just before I had first shipped out with the navy. But she had held her peace.”

“And she left no record? No indication?” How someone could omit recording a fact of such importance to a young man, Jane could not fathom.

“No. Not that I know of. But I never went back.”

“Back to where?”

“Our home. Her home, I suppose, for she lived there longer without me than we had ever lived there together. But I hadn’t lived there for almost seven years by the time I found out she had died. It didn’t seem important to go back.”

“Not even to find out who your father was?”

“If she had wanted to tell me, she would have. The cold truth of the matter, Jane, is that I am a bastard, and no better than I should be. I have advanced thus far in my career only through hard work, but I will, as soon as we are either rescued, or I can repair the pinnace and we can rejoin the rest of the civilized world, be court-martialed for my loss of
Tenacious.
”

“But you did everything to save the ship. You alone—”

“The Admiralty will decide that for themselves. So think very carefully before you— I am a bastard, Jane, with nothing and no one to recommend me except my conduct, and that too will be called into question. I have nothing to offer.”

She made a cautious but heartfelt reply. “You have yourself. Just as I have myself.” She would show him how she felt about him, so he would be left in no doubt. “I am all I have to offer. But offer myself I do.”

“Jane.” When he said her name like that, it was as if he had touched her, as if he played some secret chord within that only he knew. “So you see why we must go back? Sooner rather than later. The sooner I can clear my name— Without doing so, I have no chance.”

It didn’t make sense to her. They could stay right where they were indefinitely, where problems of court-martials and dubious ancestry meant nothing. “Can we not stay long enough for me to finish my catalogue?”

He looked away, out over the lagoon. “How much longer do you need to fill those precious notebooks of yours?” he asked.

Months, she wanted to say. Another month at the least, was on the tip of her tongue. But she had already found and recorded at least three new species—more than enough to see her made famous for her discoveries. More than enough to publish her own monograph of conchology under the aegis of the Royal Society. More than enough, even though she felt as if she had barely catalogued the first two sections of the reef.

But more than that would be selfish. “I’d like to make one last check of the northern tip of the island after that change in the wind last week.” She ought not be greedy. He had his reasons for needing to return. So even though she had rather stay for the rest of her life alone on the island instead of face the sea in a boat again, she said, “If I have to choose a limit, one more week should be enough. Please. Promise me you’ll wait another week.”

“Then one week you shall have. I promise. But after that I’ll light the signal fire and keep it burning until such time as we sight a ship.”

*   *   *

Dance left her to her shells and her snails and her disquiet, and headed up the hill, ignoring his instinctive need to take her in his arms and kiss her until they both forgot there was anything else in the world besides the two of them. Because she wasn’t likely to have him now, was she, now that he’d told her all?

But the telling had left that sour feeling in his gut as if he’d swallowed a barrel of brine. He felt betrayed, even though he had been the one to betray himself.

But it were better for her that he had told her. Better that she knew exactly what he was. Unfit for the granddaughter of a lord, and the great-granddaughter of a duke.

She deserved better.

The only problem being that he didn’t want her to have better—he wanted to have her himself. He wanted to have her and hold her until death did them part.

But he could not have her until he cleared his name. And he could not clear his name if he did not get them off this island.

And so on he tromped up the hill with leaden feet, until he came to his well-stacked pyre, laid with layers of dry tinder and brush to catch easily and burn dirty, throwing up as much smoke as possible into the sky. Everything was in readiness for the moment when he would light it, and keep it lit day and night to draw someone—anyone at this point—to the island.

It was another flat, gray day, with the wind out of the southwest, and the sea stretching pale and colorless in every direction. Not very promising.

But he had nothing else to do, so he kept himself busy by taking out her telescopic glass—
her
telescopic glass. He didn’t even have his own bloody, beat-up glass—it was on the cutter somewhere, hopefully being employed to better purpose by Punch or one of the officers. If they had survived.

That grim thought pushed him back to scanning the horizon, back to his usual three-hundred-and-sixty-degree rotation, checking the seas in all directions. He made a full turn of the compass, when something, some irritant, like an eyelash stuck in his eye, made him look again east by south.

The sea was flat and placid, and with the wind out of the southwest, any ship from the east would have to take a more northerly heading—Dance’s mind wandered to the ordering and setting of sails, as if he needed to come up with the correct trim for answering a question before the lieutenants’ board of examination.

But there it was again—the thin shadow, as fine as an eyelash, a darker tick above the surface of the sea.

Dance steadied his suddenly slick palms on the cool brass of the glass, and tried to control the surge of blood pounding in his ears. Steady on, man. This was no different than sighting another ship at sea from the quarterdeck of
Tenacious.
Except that it was.

He tamped his excited impatience down as if it were an exuberant midshipman, and kept his eye steady on the dark tick mark, willing it to evolve into the high crosstree of a foremast top. And there, the wide slash of flat color from a rectangular sail beneath.

He waited another full minute for the tiny bits of shape and color to resolve themselves into something more, something that would prove that the sight was not a product of his imagination—a hallucination he had conjured out of demented will—something that he could distinguish as a number of masts or a particular set of sails to work out its identity.

And then that single tick mark shifted, and changed, presenting three clear mast heads, leading away. The vessel was changing course to the south. Away from them.

Dance abandoned his glass and leaped to the pyre, falling to his knees to fumble with the tinderbox and flint. Striking over and over, until he could calm himself enough for the dry tinder to finally catch a spark. He fed the fire, blowing gently to tease the licking fingers of fire into flame. It seemed so monstrously slow that he moved to the other side of the pyre, and pulled away some of the brush so that the steady southwesterly wind could fan the flame.

Finally, finally inky gray smoke from the green brush began to curl into the air.

He kept at it, feeding the growing fire, replacing the green brush from the stack he had made nearby to keep the smoke billowing into a column, checking over his shoulder to see if the ship had gone over the horizon, or if it had altered course.

He took up the glass again, scanning the area where he had last seen it, squinted down the length of the telescopic lenses until his head began to ache. And still he could not find it. There was nothing.

It was gone.

He had failed. He had lost his chance to take Jane back to civilization.

Jane. She would not be upset by his failure. She would be relieved, the strange girl.

But Dance could not shake that sour feeling that still swilled around his gut like a keg of stale, vinegared wine. The feeling that told him the longer he was away, the harder it was going to be to reclaim his life and his profession. The feeling that told him Ransome was out there, alive, and doing them both, he and Jane, ill.

Fuck all. Dance gave in to the roil of frustration and anger and kicked the nearest log with his threadbare boots. Sparks danced into the atmosphere and faded away. Just the way he would if he could not get them off the island.

Forget what he had promised Jane. Time was of the essence—he could feel it in his bones. He would keep the fire burning from this moment on, even if he had to chop the whole of the island down to do so.

*   *   *

Normally, Jane filled her notebooks with detailed lists of each shell’s dimensions—volume and measurements—and characteristics, as well as informal sketches of her shells, drawing them from different perspectives, and working out the exact colors she wanted to record or highlight in the formal drawing. There was an unwritten code to scientific drawing. The perspective was always precisely from above. The proportions were exactly to scale, and the colors had to be as true to life as possible—something that was often difficult with shells, as their colors changed and faded when out of the water.

Which was why Jane took such great care to keep her subjects as alive as possible when drawing them. Her treasure of the morning was the murex comb. She had delineated the outline on a loose page before starting on the formal drawing in her book.

She bent over her drawing board in concentration, relaxed and happy, clothed only in the simple cover of her shift and petticoats, comfortable as the morning warmed slowly. Jane was already deep into articulating the finely wrought arms of the spiny murex comb, wanting to get the delicate colors exactly right, when the hair on her arm stood up, as if from an ill wind.

And she smelled the fire that Dance had promised her he would not light.

Well, damn his eyes.

Jane threw down her pen—no, she stopped herself from throwing it, though she wanted to. But the ink would stain the drawing, or obliterate the detailed notes, and where would she be for her fit of pique? Instead, she wiped the pen dry, and took up one of her collapsible pails to march down the beach to get more cool lagoon water to cover the murex, and perhaps she could find another one of the
Triton
whelks, in a smaller, more juvenile size.

And out at the edge of the beach, where the larger island tapered into the thin line of reef, she could look up and see the dark plume of smoke Dance was sending high into the sky. Just as he had so earnestly promised her he would not. Why would he do that?

Only if he needed to.

Her selfish indignation faded into something more acute.

Jane turned and looked out to sea, at the flat gray expanse stretching in every direction, following the long line of the reef as it circled around them. And there, at the far south side of the atoll, was a ship riding to anchor.

A Royal Navy ship, judging from the pennant flying at the masthead. Just as he had wanted. Just as he had told her it must be.

She heard the clanging roll of the bower cable as the ship let go its anchor, and came to moor outside the reef. A ship’s boat immediately appeared over the side.

And there she was, exposed on the slip of beach in nothing more than a chemise and a scrap of canvas apron. Oh, God, what would they think?

Jane hunkered down and scuttled behind a rock, trying to gauge the distance back to the camp where her only gown hung on a line beside the tented tarpaulin. Pray God Dance was watching and had seen—both her and the boat—and would head down to the beachhead on the south side. He had brought them here—he could go greet them.

She abandoned the shelter of her rock for a low run down the length of the beach, trying as soon as she reached the tree line to stay in the shelter of the deeper shade, where she might pass unseen. Because all she could think of was the row of officers on the quarterdeck of that ship, with their array of brass telescopic glasses all trained on the island.

All peering at her as she tugged the worn wool dress and stays off the line, and ducked behind the cover of the shade tent. Heat and shame took a chokehold of her throat, and built into stinging pain behind her eyes.

Because as she hastily laced up her stays, and threw the dress over her head, she was full of childish, angry resentment. They had come, and ruined it all. Damn their intrusive eyes.

“Well,” growled a voice she had hoped never to hear again. “Isn’t this cozy?”

Jane whipped around, and there was Ransome.

Chapter Twenty-four

Goddamned Ransome, the ill wind that blew nobody any good, standing not ten feet away from her on her beach.

She hated him. Hated him. His presence seemed to still the breeze and suck the air from her lungs. She had to fight for breath.

But where were the others? And where was Dance? How could Ransome be here alone, sneering at her?

“Shoulda known you’d land on yer feet, like a cat in the cream.”

Cats never put their feet in cream if they could help it, so neither would Jane. She saved her breath to cool her porridge. Or scream for Dance if need be. Because Ransome did not look as if he were weak from enduring the privations of days and days at sea. And he had not taken the oiled canvas water bag down from its place hanging in the tree and slake his thirst, or try to shove coconut meat into his wide, leering mouth.

Instead he came into the neatly organized confines of their camp, and looked until he found Dance’s cloak. “So you both got out. Damned if he hasn’t the devil’s own luck.”

Jane held her tongue. They hadn’t drowned, no thanks to him, and it clearly had him madder and meaner than ever. His wide leering smile was the same, though his clothes were new—likely given to him from the stores of his new ship.