A Scandal to Remember (9 page)

“If you do, Mr. Ransome, you’ll be the first one on this bloody ship who does.”

Because his own next job was to try and convince the captain to do his. At the entrance to the captain’s cabin all looked as it should—a scarlet-coated marine stood at sentry duty in front of the door. But beyond the closed portal Dance knew he would find a shambles to match the rest of the ship.

“Captain Muckross, sir?” Dance didn’t wait for the marine to announce him—his polite tap would never be answered. He knocked hard on the door. “Sir?”

Some men idled nearby, looking for a glimpse of their reclusive captain. “See to your work.” Dance pulled a selection of tasks from the endless list at the top of his brain. “You men, I want the breeching on every larboard gun inspected. Report the length of cable needed to Mr. Ransome. And the knee at the head on the mess deck needs be recaulked. Pass word for the carpenter to await me when I’m through with the captain.”

The mention of Mr. Ransome had the desired effect, which meant that Dance was able to slip into the stern cabin without an audience. “Captain Muckross, sir?” He pitched his voice toward the small sleeping cabin partitioned off from the wide stern gallery. “Sir?”

“Sir, he’s sleeping now, sir.” Manning, the quiet tar who served as servant to the captain, appeared in the stern cabin. “Just got him down and away from it this moment.”

As if the captain were a suckling child. Perhaps he was. “Down? It’s morning, man. Shouldn’t he be getting up? And away from what exactly?”

“Why, down from the bottle, sir,” the servant said honestly.

“Fuck all.” Dance could not even bother to curb his language in the captain’s cabin. It was no wonder the ship was in such a state of disrepair if the captain spent so much time drinking each night that he could not climb to the quarterdeck of his own vessel. “How long is he likely to sleep?”

“Couldn’t say, sir. It were a powerful lot of gin.”

Gin. Not even a gentleman’s drink like brandy or claret to add some distinction to his intoxication. “How long has he been like this?”

“Started to drink bad Tuesday last, when you come aboard and started the work, sir.”

Another feeling like the douse from a pail of icy water hit Dance, but this time he would defend himself. “He was drunk before I got here.”

Manning acknowledged the truth of Dance’s assertion. “Well, I suppose he has been at the drink regular like for a while now.”

“Years?” Dance gave the steward his barest stare in the hopes that the poor little man’s loyalty to his captain was no match to a blunt question from a superior officer.

It wasn’t. “Yes.”

Fuck all. After such an honest answer, there wasn’t much else to say. What a bloody fix. The damn drunkard should have been relieved of his command, or retired to a desk in the dockyard long ago. To someplace where he wouldn’t be an embarrassment to the navy. Somewhere where men’s, and now women’s, lives didn’t depend upon him.

But to even suggest such a thing was to flirt with mutiny and treason. The devil would take him then.

“Why do you not keep the drink from him? Why have you not thrown the whole store of it overboard as any sane man ought?”

This time the man shook his head adamantly. “Not my place, sir. I only does for him as he likes.”

Dance could feel the exasperation boiling out of him. “Do you not see that it is your duty for the sake of the whole ship to keep him away from spirits?” Dance was appalled that so many people would seem to stand idly by, and let the man drink himself to death.

“Tried it once, sir, under advice from Mr. Reed, who was surgeon a while back, we did.” Manning shook his head sorrowfully. “Mr. Reed poured every drop we could find overboard once, and quick as a whore, the cap’n had another out from somewhere only he knows. Cap’n has his ways, an’ he can’t stop now, sir, even if he tried. Gets the shakes something fierce if’n he doesn’t have it. Can’t go back on an ebb tide.”

No, there was no going back for any of them, damn it all to hell. Orders were orders, not suggestions. “Rouse him out and brace him up as well as you can, because I must speak to him.”

Manning looked unhappy, but did as he was bid. “Captain Muckross, sir?” Manning rapped softly upon the batten door to the sleeping cabin. “Captain? You are needed, sir.”

“What?” came a groggy voice from inside. “Who’s there?”

“Manning, sir. Lieutenant Dance is here to see you, sir.”

“What, what?” The sound of fumbling came from the interior.

Before the man could do himself a harm, Manning threw open the door, only to find his captain befuddled and stark raving naked, clutching the back of a chair.

It would have been comical were it not so tragic.

Manning had to catch the man from falling when he wrenched away from the bright light flooding the cabin. “Steady on there, sir.”

Manning got the captain into the chair, where the old man sat with no hint of consciousness of his naked state, and instead focused his bleary eyes on Dance. “Who the hell are you? You’re not Manning.”

“No, sir. I’m Dance. I’m your first lieutenant. And I am in need of your guidance.” Though what kind of guidance a grumpy, naked, confused old man could give him was entirely debatable.

“Get me Manning.”

“I’m here, sir.” The long-suffering servant cast a dark look at Dance, who took the hint, and moved to the other side of the stern cabin to give both the servant and captain some privacy to dress. But he’d be damned if he’d leave for politeness’ sake—the old man would be out again in no time, and they’d get no answer. “Manning, when you’re done, please fetch coffee for the captain.”

“Don’t like it, sir. Only takes tea.”

“Then brew a bloody pot of tea, Manning. Hot and as strong as you can make it. Immediately.” Though Dance feared there was not enough tea in all the gardens of Assam to make Captain Muckross conscious of his duties.

It was very nearly an hour—a full bloody turn of the glass during which time the tide was cresting and beginning its run—for the old man to be made presentable and awake enough to sit at his table, take tea, and receive Dance. But when Manning returned with a steaming pot and poured out a weak mixture—which the captain sucked down thankfully enough—Dance caught the unmistakable astringent whiff of gin billowing from the steaming pot.

Fuck all. Could they not get so much as even a pot of tea into the man without the addition of the gin? At the rate the old man was pouring the happy brew down his gullet, it was a wonder he didn’t drop dead in his tracks at any moment.

Whatever the concoction, it had the desired effect of reviving the man sufficiently for Dance’s purposes. “Goddamn it. What do you want?”

“I’ve come to ask after the ship’s books, sir. Mr. Givens seems to have absconded in the night, and I am concerned that he has taken funds belonging to the ship, sir.”

“The devil you say.” But the captain wasn’t really attending him. The mad old man’s attention had already strayed to the scene outside the stern gallery—the flat calm of Portsmouth’s gray harbor. “Why is there a boat out my window?”

It was Miss Burke’s little pinnace, hanging on the stern davits, all battened down with her fitted tarpaulin snugly lashed. Just like its mistress. “That is the equipment of the delegation of scientists from the Royal Society, sir.” Dance made sure to keep his voice slow and his tone even, and keep his impatience on a tight leash. “The naturalists we are transporting to the South Seas, sir.”

“Transporting? I’ll have no bloody convicts upon my ship, sir. I tell you that.”

Dance prayed for patience, and tried to choose his words more carefully. “Not convicts, sir. Scientists from the Royal Philosophical Society.”

“Royal Philosophical Society.” The captain’s poor opinion of the society was evident in his tone—an opinion prevalent among professional naval men, and one to which Dance himself had lately subscribed. Until, of course, their livelihood had become his own. “Bunch of men with too much time and too little occupation amusing themselves with being important.”

“And not just men, sir,” Manning cut in meaningfully.

So Manning was another one of the superstitious fishwives. Dance would have to see to it that they were all too busy with real work—from which there was more than plenty to choose—to have time to complain about a lady scientist. She might be the unknowing bane of his existence, but he would not allow them to make her theirs.

But for better or worse, Captain Muckross did not take the servant’s meaning. “Sober-suited Quakers and preachers, the lot of them.”

“Yes, sir.” Dance tried to steer the conversation back to his purpose, and impress some small aspect of reality on the old man. “I wanted to inquire after the books before we proceed to sea, sir, which we are scheduled to do, as you know, this morning, in order to take advantage of the harvest moon last night. We’ll not get such a favorable tide for proceeding down Channel anytime soon.”

The captain’s face remained slack and blank, as if he had no knowledge of time or tide. Dance felt as if he were bailing water in a typhoon. He didn’t mind carrying out the damn orders—he never had, no matter how impossible they seemed—provided he was given the orders in the first place, and provided those orders were the product of a sane mind, but he resented the hell out of not knowing and guessing at what he was supposed to do. Common sense—aim for the South Pacific—could only carry him so far.

“But in advance of that, I have no idea of the ship’s accounts, sir, as Mr. Givens seems to have taken not only the money I sent with him to the dockyard for cordage, but the account rolls as well. I have no way of telling without the ship’s books, sir.”

At the rate the captain’s hands had begun to shake with the palsy typical of the afflicted inebriate, Dance doubted the man could hold a thought, much less pen. “Who normally handles your correspondence? Have you no clerk?”

The idea seemed to give the poor man a great deal of pause before he could supply a name. “Givens. There’s the man. Takes care of things.”

Of course. “Givens is gone, sir. Jumped ship last night. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time trying to find the ship’s books, as there does not seem to be a complete muster roll, nor any accounting of what moneys
Tenacious
has to her credit. My thinking is that Givens either took them, or destroyed them.”

“How should I know?” the old man asked again.

Dance felt his irritability slip its leash. “Because you are the captain, sir. And it is your duty and your responsibility to know.” It was damnable how the old man was bleary one moment, and clear the next. “Who is going to know if you don’t?”

“I told you. Givens.”

Dance could barely enunciate the words for the way he was gritting his teeth. “Givens. Is. Gone. Sir.”

“I don’t know why you’re shouting at me, sirrah. You’re the one who let him go. You should have stopped him.”

“Yes, sir.” There was no point in debating the semantics of blame with Captain Muckross. And if the captain couldn’t consistently remember that Givens was gone, the chances that he would remember Dance admitting the purser’s disappearance was his fault were slim.

“There is no need for you to have those books, Lieutenant.” Muckross’s tone was emphatic. So emphatic, it was as if the clouds that hid the captain had parted, and Dance could see the man he had once been, and might yet be, if he would put his mind to it.

But as quickly as the clouds had drifted apart, they drifted back together. “Books. Funds.” Muckross’s fragile attention had already shifted, his gaze becoming unfocused and weary. “Why are you asking me all of these questions?”

Dance wanted to grind his teeth in frustration. “We are set to sail, sir. And we need to be at the ready.”

The captain met Dance’s eyes honestly. “Well, I don’t know, man. I just don’t know.”

Fuck all.

That made at least two of them.

Chapter Six

The world was a strange and interesting place, full of strange and interesting and very different people. Who seemed to sleep in chairs.

Jane had been jolted awake in the predawn hours by the sharp sound of a chair clattering over onto the deck just outside her door. She had clambered out of her hanging cot in time to spy the chair—with the lieutenant’s coat over the back—on the floor, and see the lieutenant bounding out of the wardroom. And when she stuck her head outside her cabin, she could hear him engaging in a loud conversation—or was it an argument?—with several men on the other side of the wardroom door.

The mention of her name sent her retreating into her cabin to dress herself in her practical buff colored wool gown so that she might meet any challenge to her presence aboard head-on—and at least properly clothed despite the early hour. What could not be avoided ought not be put off, even until breakfast. She had always found it best to tackle unpleasant chores straightaway, before they could become problems.

But when she finally came out into the dim wardroom, what could not be avoided was the strange and interesting sight of the lieutenant in his bare shirtsleeves, divesting himself of the rest of his clothes. He had come back from whatever unpleasant chores had interrupted his—and her—sleep, and was now about to shave himself in preparation for the coming day.

“Oh, my.” Heat blossomed under her skin and raced across her chest. Jane hardly knew where to look—a glance around at the closed doors of the other cabins told her it was full early for anyone else of their party to have awoken.

Jane would have retreated into her cabin to allow the man his privacy, had not the lieutenant’s voice stopped her.

“Morning, Miss Burke. I trust you slept well.” There was something knowing in the lieutenant’s tone—he had been right outside her door—some slow insolence, that worked its way under her skin like a splinter, needling her into responding, no matter his scandalous state of undress.

And hadn’t she just reminded herself that what could not be avoided ought not be put off? The lieutenant clearly did not want to be avoided, and if he thought he could intimidate her into leaving the expedition by the sight of his shirtsleeves, she should take this earliest opportunity to disabuse him of that notion.