The Gold Seekers (14 page)

Australian waters for two years. My ship’s company are all volunteers, and a number of them have connections with the colony.”

Evidently deciding that he had said enough, Captain Lucas adopted a more placatory tone. “Ah, I see,” he conceded. “I had not realized that your instructions came from the Admiralty. A wise precaution on Their Lordships’ part, in view of the nature of the colony. I—” He caught his breath, and a second paroxysm of coughing prevented further speech. It was so violent that he had to clutch the edge of the table in order to remain upright, gesturing with his free hand to his mouth.

Red summoned the gun room steward and sent him scurrying for brandy. Then, taking Lucas by the arm, he assisted him to a chair. The steward returned with dispatch, and Red took the brandy glass from the tray the man proffered and set it down by Lucas’s hand.

“Drink this, sir,” he invited. “That’s an unpleasant cough you have, and no mistake.”

Lucas did not answer, but he accepted the invitation, sipping the strong, neat spirit appreciatively. Red seized the opportunity to excuse himself. After donning his thick watch coat, he took his cap from its hook on the gun room bulkhead and ascended to the deck through the after hatchway. A swift glance aloft showed him that the corvette was still running briskly before the steady northwesterly wind. In these latitudes the wind seemed always to be steady, so that for hours—and even days—on end there was no necessity to take in or reset sail. Keppel, Red recalled gratefully, had taught him this, and for all of Captain Benjamin Lucas’s objections, Red intended to carry on until he sighted the Prince Edward Islands.

True, it was cold; already the rigging was ice-encrusted, with the watch on deck, heavily muffled against the prevailing chill, hacking at the frozen shrouds to clear them, their breath misting about their heads as they worked. Timothy Broome was on watch. He drew himself up as he saw his commander emerge from the hatchway and, making to retreat to the lee side of the deck, was halted by Red’s raised hand.

Tim was twenty-three; short and muscular like his father, he, too, had inherited their grandmother’s red hair and— from what Red had heard of her from his parents—also her courage and stoicism. They had never previously served together and, until Tim had joined the Galah, had met infrequently. It had come as a surprise, Red remembered, when he had been told by his father that young Tim had elected to desert the family sheep farm and enroll in the Naval College, with a view to following his own example and making a career in the Royal Navy. There were two other sons— younger than Tim—to work the vast holding on the Murray River, so his family had raised no objection, and Tim appeared to have no regrets concerning his choice of a career. By an odd coincidence he, too, had served under Captain Keppel and had been one of the Maeander’s midshipmen when Keppel had visited Hobart and Sydney, as well as China and Sarawak, two years earlier. He had, however, been transferred to the survey ship Rattlesnake following the death of her captain and had thus been back in England when the Rattlesnake paid off and the Galah was fitting out.

Looking at him now, Red was glad that his young cousin had been available. Tim was an excellent first lieutenant, and — He smiled to himself, recalling one of Captain Lucas’s disparaging remarks on the subject of naval discipline. Like all of Henry Keppel’s proteges, Tim knew how to run a happy and efficient ship, without the floggings Lucas appeared to consider indispensable, even when the ship’s company were eager volunteers.

Tim made his formal report with commendable brevity, and then, a worried frown creasing his smooth young brow, he gestured to two figures standing together by the taffrail. Both were as heavily muffled as the seamen of the watch, and for a moment Red failed to identify them; but when he did so, a whistle of dismay escaped his lips.

“Oh, for heaven’s sweet sake, is that Mrs. Lucas? And Francis with her, damn it?”

“Yes, sir, I’m afraid it is,” Tim confirmed. “And I wasn’t sure what I ought to do about them. But I knew Captain Lucas was with you in the gun room, and … well, when

the cat’s away. Dora said she had to have a breath of air and—”

“Dora, Mr. Broome?” Red exclaimed sharply.

His first lieutenant flushed. “She told us to call her that, sir. I’m sorry—it just slipped out.”

“Better keep a guard on your tongue,” Red cautioned. “Such familiarity with the wife of a superior officer is liable to be misunderstood. All right, carry on. I’ll deal with Mr. De Lancey.”

He had intended simply to order Francis De Lancey below, but as he strode across to the couple, he glimpsed the after hatch cover being lifted. Guessing that Captain Lucas had come in search of his wife, he quickened his pace and said crisply, “Up to the mainmast head with you, Mr. De Lancey—look lively!”

“The—the mainmast head, sir?” De Lancey echoed, his mouth agape.

“That was what I said,” Red snapped. “Cut along, lad!”

Dora Lucas had turned, startled, at the sound of his voice, but she grasped the situation as swiftly as he had. Young De Lancey went reluctantly to obey the unexpected order, his booted feet slipping on the ice-covered shrouds, and, ignoring his predicament, Dora turned to Red with a coquettish smile. Despite the assault of the wind, and although her small face was pinched with cold, she still contrived to look singularly beautiful. She tucked her arm beneath Red’s, urging him in the direction of the hatchway and continuing to smile up at him with beguiling innocence.

Seemingly oblivious of the temperature on the open deck, Captain Lucas had not waited to put on a coat, and he was coughing thickly when he emerged from the hatch, clinging to the coaming and unable to find the strength to close the cover behind him.

To Red’s relief, his wife ran to him at once, her arms outheld and her face the picture of frightened concern.

“Oh, my dearest, you shouldn’t have come on deck!” she exclaimed. “You will make your chest worse, you know you will. And I would not have been long, truly. I just came up for a breath of fresh air and—” She turned to indicate Red, her very blue eyes pleading with him not to deny her claim. “The captain was kind enough to offer me his escort. I—”

Lucas, when he could control his coughing, replied ungraciously. He flashed Red a glance in which suspicion was mingled with puzzlement, and then, evidently deciding that there was nothing to be gained by remaining on deck any longer, he bade Dora go below, his tone brusque, and himself followed her without another word. Tim Broome hastened up to close the hatch cover, and jerking his head up toward the mainmast head, where Francis De Lancey was now uncomfortably huddled, he asked with a hint of a smile, “How long do you wish Mr. De Lancey to, er, to remain on lookout, sir?”

Red did not echo his smile. “Let him stay there till the watch changes. The master is your relief, is he not? Tell Mr. De Lancey to report to me then, as soon as he’s back on deck.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” the first lieutenant acknowledged formally. After a moment’s hesitation he added, “I thought you carried off a deuced awkward situation pretty well, sir, if I may be permitted to say so.”

“You may not,” Red retorted irritably. “Be damned to you, Mr. Broome!” In truth, he thought ruefully, all he had done was to arouse Captain Lucas’s suspicions on his own account, and with close on to three months of their passage still to be completed, that was not the outcome he desired. Francis De Lancey was a witless young idiot and should have had more sense than to go looking for trouble. But perhaps another twenty minutes at the masthead would cool his ardor… . Red sighed. He waited only to check the log and the course he had set, then went below, where back in the gun room he drank two cups of scalding coffee with the Galah’s elderly sailing master, Fergus Macrae, who like himself was an exponent of the great-circle sailing theory and well versed in the advantages to be gained from its practice.

In consequence, Red was in a less irritable mood than he had been earlier, and when Francis De Lancey, shivering and with chattering teeth, reported to him, Red made him drink coffee laced with rum and then dispatched him to his cabin to change his clothing. But when the young lieutenant re

turned, he kept him standing, subjecting him to a silent scrutiny that clearly had the effect of unnerving him.

The boy was just twenty-one, and he had been commissioned only on appointment to the Galah, all his previous sea service having been as a midshipman, most of it in ships of the line, where he had been too junior to be entrusted with the command of a watch. He was a slim, nice-looking young man, with his mother’s fair coloring and round features and his father’s height. His sister, Magdalen, Judge De Lancey’s only daughter, was deeply attached to him, Red knew; that had been one of the reasons why he had gone to considerable trouble to have the boy appointed to his ship.

Red had courted Magdalen De Lancey when she had been in England, eighteen months before, but it had been a brief and hurried courtship, cut short when his shore leave had ended. In the hope that their friendship might be renewed on more favorable terms upon his return to Sydney, he had endeavored to please her by arranging to bring her adored young brother back with him. That end would not be achieved if he permitted Francis to get himself into a scrape with Dora Lucas, so … Red eyed the boy sternly.

“Captain Lucas has complained to me concerning the attention you appear to be paying to his wife, Mr. De Lancey,” he accused. “He has informed me that your attentions are unwelcome. He—”

“They’re not unwelcome,” Francis interrupted indignantly. “I assure you they’re not, sir. Dora is miserable. Captain Lucas treats her quite abominably. You’ve seen it for yourself, sir, and heard the way he addresses her. I wouldn’t talk to a dog, sir, the way he talks to her—and in public, too. Privately, she says—”

Red cut him short. “I wish to hear no more, Mr. De Lancey,” he said angrily. “Captain Lucas is a post captain, and he’s my superior officer, as well as yours. He and Mrs. Lucas are passengers on board this ship, and I expect my officers to treat them as such, with proper respect.”

“But, sir,” Francis De Lancey protested, his sense of outrage outweighing discretion, “Dora Lucas is—sir, she’s barely eighteen, a—a defenseless child, and he’s an old man. And a cruel bully, with no consideration for her feelings. He struck her this morning, sir—struck her across the face with his fist. That was what she was telling me when we met on deck, and I know it was true because her mouth was badly bruised. You must have noticed it when you spoke to her, sir?”

Red shook his head. “I did not. But even if I had, it is no affair of mine and certainly none of yours, Mr. De Lancey.” This was worse, much worse than he had expected, Red thought. Francis’s chivalrous instincts would land him in serious trouble if he were allowed to indulge them during what remained of the voyage. Dora Lucas was not blameless, of course. It was evident that she had made a strong play for the boy’s sympathy, regardless of the consequences; but her husband would have to deal with her—he could not. Francis was his concern; the lad could not be permitted to put his whole career in jeopardy, and he would be doing so if he aroused Lucas’s jealousy by appearing to be a serious threat to his marriage.

“For the Lord’s sake, Francis,” he said, changing tack and adopting a less accusing tone, “you must control your personal feelings, whatever they are. This young woman is married to Captain Lucas—she chose to marry him, even though he is so much older than she is.”

“But she goes in mortal terror of him, sir,” Francis persisted wretchedly. “She did not know what he was like until she married him. Truly, sir, Captain Lucas does treat her abominably. I—I can’t stand by and watch what he’s doing to her without—without lifting a finger to help her. She’s begged for my help, sir. Nothing drastic—Dora wouldn’t ask that of me. All she wants is to talk to me occasionally, to—to confide in me. Surely that’s not too much to ask of me, is it, sir?”

Red was tempted to tell him that it was a damned sight too much in the circumstances, but he restrained the impulse and tried once more to reason with the boy. For Magdalen’s sake, he thought, he must make the young idiot understand in what a hopeless position he was placing himself. Lucas would not spare him if things got out of hand. But his arguments fell on deaf ears.

“I—sir, I love her,” Francis asserted. “I can’t help myself.

I’ve fallen in love with her. And she—sir, Dora feels the same way about me, I swear she does!”

For God’s sake, Red thought, now thoroughly alarmed, Captain Lucas’s complaint had not been as lacking in substance as he had supposed when the man had made it. Had he himself been blind, in that he had noticed nothing alarming until Lucas had drawn his attention to it? For how long could Dora Lucas have been meeting Francis in secret without his being the wiser? Tim, as his first lieutenant, would surely have given him warning, if he had been aware of what had been going on. On board a ship of the Galah’s size, little happened without most of the ship’s company’s being aware of it, and—oh, the devil take it! Clandestine meetings between an officer and one of the passengers would not, could not have gone unobserved—least of all when the passenger was female and the wife of an officer of Lucas’s rank.

Red asked the question, controlling his longing to shout it, and Francis De Lancey hung his head, scarlet beneath the tan of his cheeks. “We’ve only been meeting alone the past few days, sir. But of course I’ve seen Dora, watched her, and —and talked to her in company. I—sir, I loved her almost from the first moment I set eyes on her. But I said nothing, not until she—she came to me. On deck it was, sir. I’d had the middle watch, and Mr. Broome relieved me. The captain was asleep, and that was the first time. A week after we left Rio. I’d been ashore with them, sir, and—oh, I suppose she sensed my feelings for her then. And she told me how unhappy she was.”

Red frowned. “Where have you been meeting?” He hesitated, uncertain what to believe. “Not on deck, surely? You would have been seen.”

Francis De Lancey’s color deepened and spread. Reluctantly he shook his head. “No, sir. In—in my cabin. I— nothing improper took place, sir, I give you my word. Dora only wanted to talk. We were discreet, sir.”