The French Admiral (50 page)

“Do your parents rest well, miss?” Alan asked.

“They sleep soundly, thank you for asking, Mister Lewrie,” she replied. “Um, this afternoon, Mister Lewrie, did I do something to disturb you?”

“I cannot think of anything, Mistress Chiswick.” Alan frowned as though sifting his memory.

“When we went below, you answered my smile with such a look of complete . . . disinterest . . . that I feared I had inadvertently angered you in some way,” she said with a haste that was out of character for the studied girl Alan had learned she was in their short acquaintance.

“I was on watch, after all.” Alan shrugged in dismissal. “Our sailing master had already cautioned me to be attentive to my duties, and Captain Treghues was present as well. He's the one made me an acting mate, and I am still on sufferance to keep the rating.”

“I see,” she said, a slight line still creasing her forehead. “And you can do nothing to hurt your career in the Navy. You must love it, then, in spite of what you said before dinner.”

“Actually, I detest it like the Plague,” Alan confessed, screwing his mouth into a wry grin. “It was not my idea to enter the Navy, but I have become competent at this life, and it's most likely the only career I shall have.”

“I had not gained that impression,” she said. “Not the competent part, I assure you. You seemed most competent, in all things, when we sailed today. And competent at organizing our entrance into this ship, in everything. Surely, it's not that awful for you, is it?”

“I have come to accept it,” Alan replied stiffly.

“I am sorry, I did not know that they could press-gang people as midshipmen,” she said, attempting a smile as wry as his. “I had heard the food was bad and all, but . . . well, I'll not pry into a private concern of yours if it is bothersome to you to speak of it.”

“I suppose you could call it press-ganged,” Alan told her. “My family . . . look, I'm a second son, not in line to inherit, and there wasn't much to go around even then, not enough to keep me as a gentleman at home in London. And I was only an adopted son at that, without the blessing of the family name.”

That sounds innocent enough, he decided. If she knew my real background, she'd go screaming for the ladders.

“And what did your father do?”

“Not much of anything.” Alan grimaced. “He was knighted for something in the last war on Gibraltar—Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby. We lived in St. James, at the mercy of his creditors, most of the time. Had land and rents in Kent, nothing big, though, far as I know.”

“But the Navy is a respectable career for a gentleman,” she pressed, shifting a half step towards him. “Your captain was kindly disposed to you when we asked of you at supper. He said you were, how did he say it . . . shaping quite well as an officer-to-be.”

“He did?” Alan marveled. Which only goes to prove that he's as barking mad as a pack of wolves, he thought.

“Oh, yes, he did. Though I am afraid he seemed a little put out that you were such a prominent topic,” she whispered hesitantly.

“Oh?” Alan marveled some more, quite happy to hear that Treghues had been put out, and that he had been talked of.

“He said you came aboard after you had fought a duel for a girl's honor, the daughter of an admiral?” Her voice had a shiver of dread.

“The admiral's niece,” Alan said, preening a little. “He has not seemed enamored of me, for that and a few other reasons.”

“Did you hurt your foe?”

“I killed him,” Alan informed her. “That's where I got this,” he went on, lightly touching his left cheek which still bore the faint horizontal scar that Lieutenant Wyndham of the Twelfth Foot had administered.

“Because he ruined your beauty?” Caroline chuckled waggishly.

“No, that was a by-blow,” Alan said, unable to credit a woman who could jape about something like that. “Excuse me, but I must return to the helmsmen. I have spent too long aft.”

“Have I angered you again?” she asked.

“No, you haven't,” Alan said. “And if you can stand the wind, I would be delighted to converse with you further, but I cannot skylark back here. I've the ship to run, and don't want the captain to catch me.”

“Then I would be delighted to join you,” she said, slipping her arm between his for support as they walked forward. “Your captain is a bit stiff, isn't he?”

“Absolutely rigid,” Alan snickered softly, leaning his head near her so the hands would not hear him make complaint of a captain.

“Dining with him was like having a traveling evangel making free with your hospitality when he's out riding the circuit in the backcountry,” Caroline whispered. “I was quite relieved when we retired.”

“I am sorry you had such a poor time.”

“Are you?” she wondered aloud, one eyebrow lifted.

“Yes, for your sake,” Alan rejoined.

“Ah, now I see why you treated me so coldly,” she said, dragging him to a stop before they reached the wheel.

“Nothing of the kind,” he assured her, damning himself for looking so obvious. “It was fear of seeming slack on watch.”

“From someone my brothers said fears nothing?” she teased. “From what little I know of you, Mister Lewrie, I could not imagine there is anything in this life you fear.”

“I hide it damn well, just like everyone else does.”

“Such language in the presence of an impressionable young lady!” she gasped in mock distress. “Where will it all end? Tsk, tsk.”

“My ar . . .” he began to say, but stopped himself before he could utter his favorite expression. Even joshing with a girl had its limits, especially if he truly nettled her and it was reported.

“My arse on a bandbox?” She blushed, as though she had stepped over her own line and was abashed at her own daring. “Remember, Mister Lewrie, I have two rowdy brothers and have lived in the country around ordinary yeomen farmers all of my life. Could I have been allowed to speak freely when vexed, I might use the phrase myself, instead of just thinking it. I hope I have not shocked you, instead.”

“Not a bit of it,” Alan replied, grinning widely. “Let there be perfect freedom between us, Mistress Chiswick.”

“Then please call me Caroline.”

“Caroline, I shall. Could you wait here for a moment, though? I really must see to the helm and the ship for a moment.”

“Show me what you must see, I pray.”

At her injunction he led her down the deck from the weather rail to the binnacle box before the wheel to speak to the quartermaster.

“Evening, Tate.”

“Ev'nin', sir. Ev'nin,' miss,” the helmsman said, almost swallowing his quid of tobacco at the miraculous appearance of a pretty young lady on the deck. His assisting quartermaster's mate, Weems as bosun of the watch, and one of the ship's boys drifted closer to ogle her, the boy gazing up in snot-nosed wonder, earning a smoothing of his unruly hair from her gloved hand that turned him into an adoring worshiper.

“How's her head?” Alan inquired.

“Sou'-sou'-west, 'alf south, sir,” Tate answered.

Three bells chimed from up forward.

“Mister Weems, I'd admire another cast of the log,” Alan ordered. “Turn the glass, boy.”

“Aye, zur,” the boy replied, fumbling with the half-hour glass on the binnacle, never tearing his eyes away from the pretty lady in the faint light from the compass box lanterns.

“How's the helm, Tate? Any problem with those bronze guns aft, or do we need to shift some stores to lighten the bows?”

“Ah, seems harright, Mister Lewrie.” Tate turned to spit into the kid, and flushed with embarrassment. “Sorry, miss.”

“We grew tobacco in the Carolinas, Mister Tate.” She smiled. “In the backcountry where I was a girl, even the women wouldn't turn their nose up to a chew now and then. My granny smoked a pipe,” she coyly confided.

“An' me own, too, miss.” Tate, marveling at himself for daring to even open his mouth in the presence of an officer of the watch, grinned foolishly.

Alan looked up to check the set of the sails that shone like pale blue ghosts in the moonlight. There was nothing to complain of in their angle to the winds, and the commissioning pendant stood out in a lazy whip like a black worm on the sky, pointing perfectly abeam towards shore. The yard braces seemed taut enough to leave alone as well.

“So this is how you steer the ship,” Caroline said.

“Yes, with this wheel. Though it's not always this easy. Sometimes it takes four or more men to manage the wheel when the sea and the wind kick up. When you want to go left, you put the helm to starboard.”

“That sounds backwards,” she said, shaking her head in confusion.

“Turning the wheel left turns the rudder so that its leading edge faces right, so it is backwards, in a way. You'd say helm alee to make her head up more into the wind.”

“You sailors are a contrary lot.” She laughed gently. “And you have to keep adjusting it as Tate is doing?”

“Yuss, miss,” Tate said, playing a spoke or two to either side as he spoke. “Back an' forth, hever sa gentle like.”

“A wave will push her bows off course,” Alan explained. “You watch the compass bowl, the wind pendants, and the luff of the sails and the way the wind strikes them, the way the sea is coming at you and, on a clear night such as this, a star or constellation, as well.”

“It seems so complicated.”

“Try it,” Alan urged. Before she could demur she was behind the wheel to the weather side, hands on two spokes, with Tate off to the lee side to lend his strength just in case and Alan at her side with his hands atop hers.

“It is harder to turn than I thought,” she said after a few minutes of effort, as Alan bubbled happily on about what a proper luff looked like. They let her steer by herself, letting her get the feel of it. A bow wave thudded gently and creamed down their larboard side, and the helm fell off, but she corrected, almost grunting with the effort to add a spoke or two to windward. She gave Alan a puff and a smile, but her hazel eyes were gleaming like golden nuggets in the binnacle lights.

“Gentlemen, I thank you for sparing the time for such a weakling to learn a thing or two, but you'd best take your ship back before I run it on the rocks or something,” she finally said, and suffered to be led away from the wheel to the nettings over the waist up forward.

“Did you enjoy that?” Alan asked, standing by her.

“Aye, I did, thank you.” She smiled. “Much more than the lecture I received today from Captain Treghues. What a strange man your captain is, so enamored of his own voice at one moment and so somber the next.”

“He has his moods,” Alan replied cryptically, noting that was perhaps the five hundredth time he had heard that said in
Desperate.

“After months of this at a stretch, I can imagine that it could grow wearisome, but being at sea can be fun, too, can't it, Alan?” she enthused, leaning forward over the waist and the gun deck. “The ocean is beautiful tonight with the moon on it. Like a blanket made of jewels.”

“Yes, it is pretty tonight,” Alan admitted as he half froze next to her. “There are many pretty days, and it can be exciting and fun, sometimes. But the sea's a chimera. She can seem peaceful one minute and try to kill you the next. You always have to be on your guard.”

“The sea sounds much like life itself in that regard.”

“Such sagacity from one so young,” he chided her. “And such a cynical outlook. Chary as a burned child. Where will it end, tsk tsk?”

“Had I grown up in London with nothing more distressing in my life than balls and the theatre, it might seem so,” she replied, stiffening. He turned to study her face in the moonlight, and saw that the serious mien was upon her once more.

“I am sorry to have raised such a frown from you in the middle of your enjoyment, Caroline,” he said. “I've spoiled it for you; if I have, I regret it.”

“You've spoiled nothing, Alan,” she said, patting the back of his hand that rested on the railing. “You gave me back my brothers, got us aboard a ship and away from retribution of our Rebels, brought joy to my parents, and have provided me with a few precious moments of diversion. God knows I have needed some. You are pleasant company.”

“And so are you, Caroline. Very easy to be with,” he told her, realizing that it was so. There was no formality with her, as there was with many young women, no call for stilted triteness that passed for decent conversation. “I shall be sorry to reach Charleston tomorrow.”

“And you shall go back to the Indies from there?” she said in a softer voice.

“Yes. This Admiral de Grasse still has a French fleet of nearly thirty sail. He'll not rest on his laurels until we've met him once more and beaten him.”

“I shall pray God for your safety every moment,” she promised. “But I expect there are more than a few young ladies who are already doing the same thing, eh?”