Disquieted enough to take his tacit threat seriously, he hoped, leaving her. He could do her considerable social damage when he returned to London, if he chose. Not that he would, but she could not be sure of that. All the same, he wished he had suggested to Cordelia that she ought to lie down for a while before she rejoined her hostess. The less time they spent together, the better.
Upstairs, changing her gown in a chamber formed from two monk’s cells thrown into one, Cordelia was tempted to plead exhaustion rather than face Lady Millicent again. The governor’s wife clearly did not believe their hastily concocted story. Equally clearly, she was not an amiable woman. But as her reluctant guest, Cordelia would have to see her sooner or later, so she might as well get it over.
Besides, she refused to cry craven. After brigands and pirates, Turkish Janissaries and French Lancers, snowstorms and precipices, she would not let a malicious female daunt her.
Her ladyship’s abigail had brought hot water and taken the blue muslin to be pressed. Despite her uneasiness, Cordelia revelled in the scented soap as she washed her face and hands.
“Do you suppose I could have a bath this evening?” she asked the maid when she returned.
“Well, miss, fresh water’s something of a problem here, but I’ll see what I can do.” Harsh-faced but kindly, the woman helped her into her gown.
Once the ribbons had been a darker blue than the muslin, but they had faded to much the same indeterminate hue. Cordelia regarded her image in the looking glass with despair. Above her dowdy dress, around her uncompromisingly round face, her unruly fair hair curled wildly in every direction.
“Let’s see now what we can do with this,” said the abigail.
“I had to have it all cut off because I was ill, and it’s growing back slowly. Very slowly,” she emphasized, remembering she was supposed to have waited forever for James to fetch her from Sicily after her recovery.
“Such a pretty colour, but I can see it’s got a mind of its own, short as it is. We won’t tame it, not without hot irons and you won’t want to go to the trouble just now. If you’ll let me, miss, I’ll do it up in a knot right on top, give a bit of length to your face, like. And her ladyship has some white ribbon she’ll never miss—”
“Oh no, I would not for the world use Lady Millicent’s ribbon.”
Even without that simple adornment, Cordelia was pleased with the effect of pulling her hair up rather than back. Thanking the maid, she braced herself to go back down to the sitting room.
To her dismay, James was not there.
“He is closeted with my husband,” said Lady Millicent, continuing with a sly smile, “Rest assured, only business could have torn him from your side. Of course, gentlemen invariably cloak a good gossip under the name of business. No doubt James is spinning the tale of your romance.”
Her meaning was as plain as if she had said outright that she did not believe a word of it. She continued in this vein of roguish innuendo while they drank tea and Cordelia decided James had revealed that he was going to marry her only as a matter of honour. Lady Millicent was his cousin, after all. He must have invented the story less to deceive her than to save Cordelia from mortification. It was kind of him. He could not have foreseen that her ladyship would so spitefully tease her about it.
A footman rescued her, coming in to present a visiting card on a silver salver. “Lady Dodd and Miss Dodd have called, my lady. Are you at home?”
“Yes, yes, I shall receive them in the drawing room.” She gave Cordelia a considering look, pursed her lips, and said smoothly, “The Rear-Admiral’s wife and daughter, Miss Courtenay. I’m sure you can have no interest in meeting them. Do, pray, make use of my sitting room.” With languid grace, she glided out.
Cordelia glanced down at her dress and sighed. No doubt she was too dowdy to be presented to the Dodds.
Crossing to the window, she watched a flock of tiny birds cheeping and fluttering among palm-trees, scarlet hibiscus, pink geraniums, and cascades of purple bougainvillea in a cloistered courtyard. Where was James? What business could he have with the Governor of Gibraltar, or had he really abandoned her to his cousin’s tender mercies just for a gossip? She went to look at the book Lady Millicent had been reading when they arrived. It was a French novel,
Le Tombeau Mystérieux
. For want of anything better to do, she sat down and began to read it.
She read a couple of pages and had just realized it was the second volume when James came in.
“Alone?”
“I am not smart enough to meet to Lady Millicent’s callers.”
He frowned. “Did she say so?”
“No, but why else should she not present me?”
James’s mouth tightened, but he said mildly, “That must be it. However, there’s little point in buying new clothes before we reach London. Millicent is not my favourite relative, but she was not...uh...uncivil to you, was she?”
“Not precisely.” Cordelia found she could not tell James of his cousin’s veiled taunts. “I cannot be quite comfortable with her, though.”
“I’m afraid we shall have to stay here. To remove to an inn would be to insult Halsey as well as Millicent, and quite apart from the fact that he’s Governor, he’s not a bad old fellow. Still, we shan’t be here long.”
“Let’s go back to the harbour right now to seek out a ship.”
“Unnecessary. Halsey expects a fast sloop from Malta any day now, on its way home. He will obtain passage on it for us. But let us go out, by all means, to see the sights.”
Over the next few days they explored the Rock thoroughly. They climbed up to the sentry post on the southern summit and gazed across at the coast of Africa. Cordelia shuddered at the sight of that inhospitable shore where they had so nearly become slaves. They walked the galleries carved into the limestone massif to see the great cannon peering out from the shelter of its stony face. James persuaded Cordelia to overcome her distaste for natural caves and they visited the great cavern with its stalactites and stalagmites. Well lit by lanterns and lamps, it was true marvel. They wondered whether the Greek brigands cave might have been still more marvellous had they been able to see it properly.
Near the Queen’s Gate, they fed the Barbary apes. An officer accompanying them had the gold tassel ripped from one of his boots as they stood there watching the golden-brown monkeys. “They always manage to steal something,” he said resignedly. Cordelia clasped her new reticule tighter.
For the most part she succeeded in avoiding Lady Millicent. When obliged to be in her ladyship’s company, she found the covert jibes had little power to hurt. The future deliberately ignored for the present, nothing could spoil the delight of the carefree days spent with James.
At last H.M.S.
Badger
sailed into the harbour and Lord Godwin ordered the sloop’s captain to provide berths for James and Cordelia.
On their last evening the Halseys held a ball in the largest room of the Residence, once the monastery’s chapel. “I fear you must be too tired to attend after all your gallivanting about, Miss Courtenay,” Lady Millicent suggested suavely at dinner.
“Much too tired, ma’am,” she agreed, half relieved, half disappointed.
“But you men are made of sterner stuff,” her ladyship continued to James.
“You flatter me, cousin. We have been trotting too hard; I am quite done in, I vow. Besides, I know nothing more exhausting than doing the pretty to a crowd of strangers, and the
Badger
sails at dawn. We ought both to retire early.”
Roused before daybreak, they took a coche to the harbour. Captain Bristow welcomed them aboard the sloop, a three-master of modest size and a single row of gun-ports, but with speedy lines. The captain was a dark-haired young man in his first command. He confided that “Captain” was merely a courtesy title as his actual rank was Lieutenant-Commander. With the influence of his friends, however, he had high hopes of rising in his profession as long as Boney was there to be fought.
Shyly he offered Cordelia his own cabin.
“You need the space,” muttered his first mate, irritably, as if he had said the same more than once before. A sour-faced, grizzled veteran—doubtless without influential friends, Cordelia thought with a wisp of pity—Lieutenant Duff added after a perceptible pause, “Sir.”
A single glance around the cabin told Cordelia it was as much office as sleeping quarters. “I can see that you work in here, Captain,” she said. “I must not dispossess you.”
“If you are quite certain, Miss Courtenay...” Bristow said uncertainly. She nodded. “Then you shall have Duff’s cabin, ma’am. See to it, please, Mister.”
Duff looked furious. “Aye, aye, Captain,” he said through gritted teeth.
“I’m going up to the bridge. It’s time we set sail.”
“Past time,” the lieutenant grunted in a resentful undertone. To James he said, “You’re in the second mate’s cabin. Sir. He and I will be slinging our hammocks in the fo’c’sle.” Which might have been the deepest pit of Hell to judge by his morose, foreboding expression.
James chose to go up with the captain to watch their departure. Cordelia would have liked to go too, but she felt it only polite to view her quarters. Tiny as the cabin proved, this took but a moment.
“Thank you, Mr. Duff,” she said. “I believe I shall join Mr. Preston now.”
“You won’t want to be flaunt...showing yourself on deck overmuch, miss,” Duff advised venomously. “There’s lots of the men believe it’s unlucky to have a woman on board, and it’s best not to remind ‘em.”
Cordelia had no intention of being confined below all the way to England. “Thank you for the warning, sir,” she said, chin raised. “I shall bear it in mind.” And she went up to see the Rock of Gibraltar silhouetted against a glorious sunrise.
As it gradually shrank astern, James paled and started to fidget. However, the
Badger
cut smoothly through the waves, even beyond the Straits of Gibraltar where they met the great Atlantic rollers, and his queasiness failed to develop into full-blown sickness. Past Cape Trafalgar they sailed, across the Gulf of Cadiz, round Cape St. Vincent and up the Portuguese coast. After a brief stop in Lisbon to deliver and pick up despatches, another in Oporto (where several cases of Port wine came aboard with the despatches), they cleared Cape Finisterre and set out across the Bay of Biscay.
Notorious for its storms, the Bay lived up to its reputation. Beneath a charcoal sky, buffeted by a gale from the northwest, the little ship reeled and plunged as towering waves crashed booming over the deck.
Cordelia heard the furious elements, felt the
Badger
quiver in every timber at their assault. She caught only a glimpse through windows sluiced impartially by the sea and by squalls of torrential rain. Banished below, for observation she had neither desire nor opportunity: both James and Captain Bristow were laid low. Holding basins, wiping clammy foreheads, she scarce had leisure to wonder whether the end of all their adventures was to be a watery grave not five hundred miles from home.
It seemed to go on for ever.
Suddenly a greater shock jolted the ship from bow to stern. The rolling, rocking motion ceased, though the spasmodic shuddering continued.
Bristow struggled to his feet. “We’re aground,” he croaked, his face ghastly. He staggered across the tilted deck to the cabin door. “Get to the boats. Any moment she may go down!”
Chapter 29
The
Badger
reposed upon a sandbank, a hundred yards from shore.
The shore of France.
Driven southeast by the gale, now dying, the sloop had passed the mouth of the Gironde estuary shortly before going aground. The lookout had seen the flash of the Cordouan lighthouse, beaming through a day storm-darkened to near dusk. And now true dusk was falling. In the west, between dark sea and lowering clouds, a band of primrose yellow promised fine weather—too late.
The sandbank broke the force of the waves so that the stretch of water between it and the beach was choppy but not tumultuous, practically a lagoon. The sandy beach stretched north and south to the limits of sight. Inland, dunes merged into marsh and scrubby pine forest: the barrens of Les Landes.
Enemy action from that quarter was unlikely, but nor could they look for help.
“We’ll have to tow her off,” Duff proposed.
“Aargh.” Captain Bristow clung to the rail, bent double, his sickness scarce abated by the lack of motion.
“Now, while the tide’s at its height and before it gets dark.”
“Aargh!”
“She may sink the moment we pull her off, if the keel’s stove in. You’d best go ashore, sir.”
“No,” groaned the unhappy captain. “Duty to go down with ship.”
“We’ll put our passengers ashore, though. They’ll be in the way on deck and it’s not safe below. Don’t want to risk their precious skins.”
“Aaaargh.”
James was in not much better case, and Cordelia’s protests went unheeded. Duff was determined and, with Bristow incapacitated, he was in charge. A petty officer and boat crew rowed James and Cordelia to the beach.
“We’ll be back soon as we see if she’ll float,” he said cheerfully, and they pushed off.
Overhead, seagulls wheeled, screeching. James dropped to the sand and sat with his head in his hands, moaning softly to himself. Standing beside him, wrapped in her Greek cloak, damp from the spray, Cordelia watched the gig bobbing back across the ruffled white-caps. By the time it reached the
Badger
, the rest of the sloop’s boats had been lowered. Sailors straining at the oars, the four cockleshells headed out into the boisterous waves, trailing hawsers. Now and then Cordelia sighted one, like a beetle clambering up a grassy bank, but mostly they were hidden by the mountainous seas.
The
Badger
rocked, jerked, then slid smoothly backwards and floated free.
“Look, I believe she’s all right,” said Cordelia, straining her eyes to peer through the gathering gloom.
James raised his head, gulped, and put it down again. “All right! She’s going up and down like a shuttlecock.”
“At least she doesn’t seem to be going more down than up. They’re pulling her well away from the sandbank, turning her to face seaward. There, it looks as if one of the boats is coming back to fetch us.”