Almost a Scandal (11 page)

She had to do the very thing he did not expect.

And so, she smiled. “That’s right, Gamage, I’m no gentleman at all.” And then she laughed to show him how patently absurd his threats were.

The laughter caught him off guard. So off guard, he stood up abruptly and promptly lost his balance, thumping directly back down on the bench.

The watching boys erupted into snide laughter at his expense before Gamage shot a murderous look around to silence them into smothering their nervous snickers behind their hands. But she wouldn’t be silent.

“I thank you for your dubious advice, Mr. Gamage, but I do know what’s good for me. And I won’t stand for having my personal property stolen, or being intimidated by the likes of you.”

“The likes of me?” Gamage smiled through his teeth. “And just who in all hell do you think you are, you soft, pretty boy?”

She advanced down the length of the table. “I am Richard Kent, of the Kents of Falmouth, England, and His Majesty’s Royal Navy, and—”

Gamage was faster than she ever would have given him credit for. He shot up and caught her face in one of his big hands, dragging her torso across the table and pinching her cheeks together, hard.

She had no choice but to grab his hands to pry them apart to keep his nails from digging into her skin. But she had been pulled off her feet and could get no purchase, dangling from his hands like an ungainly fish on a line.

“Look at you,” he said with a strange sort of wonder. “Such a pretty, soft sort of boy.” He inspected her face, turning it back and forth with the peculiar detachment of a connoisseur, as if she were an inanimate work of art. Or an animal at a fair. “And it seems Mr. Colyear has discovered he likes pretty, soft boys, for he had you chatting up with him for quite the longest time. Now, what have you and the sly Mr. Colyear been up to?”

It took a very long moment for her to understand Gamage’s insidious implication. “You disgusting pig. Whatever Mr. Colyear had to say to me is none of your business,” she ground out. “Keep your filthy insinuations to yourself.”

Now it was Gamage’s turn to laugh at her. “Filthy? What are you suggesting, pretty little Kent? What could the straitlaced Mr. Colyear have said to you to put you in such a pet?”

“Keep your mouth shut, Gamage.”

He squeezed her face harder so that she was obliged to put up her hands to pry him off her mouth. “
Mister
Gamage to you, you inconsequential, pretty little brat.” He let her go with a shove that pushed her back hard enough to stumble against a sea chest. “Learn some respect for your betters, and perhaps I will keep quiet. Perhaps I can be persuaded to keep from telling the captain what I know about the heretofore impregnable Mr. Colyear. I know how to keep my mouth shut. It only remains to be seen if you know how to keep
your
big, soft, pretty boy’s mouth shut.”

It was, without a doubt, the most humiliating, ridiculous conundrum in which she had ever found herself. She was being blackmailed into letting an overgrown bully boy steal her stores, by his threat to expose her improper relationship to Mr. Colyear. Whom she was trying to convince to keep her identity from the captain. Who, if, or rather when, he learned her true identity would know that Col was not having an unnatural relationship with her—wasn’t even having a natural relationship with her.

What an interesting chat she and the captain would have when he called her to the carpet. It almost gave her a reason to look forward to the interview, if she could rat out the Rat King.

But until that interview came, she owed it to Mr. Colyear to keep his name from being abused with such damaging rumors. She would keep quiet until then.

Gamage’s cold-eyed smile gave her the shivers. “Have you figured it out yet, pretty Kent? Have you worked your way ’round to understanding? It’s just as I said. This is my berth, Kent. And you are all just here on sufferance.”

Chapter Seven

His grandiose, theatrical threat delivered, the Rat King made his exit, scuttling out of the room like the large, ponderous rodent he was, off to find some other bolt-hole.

Well, the man had at least provided her with one reason to look forward to being put off. If she had to face disgrace, devil if she wouldn’t take Gamage down and off with her.

But she hadn’t been put off yet, and she wasn’t going to solve the problem of Gamage by sitting on her arse and feeling hard done by. Her trunk was a mess. Whoever had gone through her things, Gamage, or his “creature” Tunney, had done so in a hurry, with swift, easy predation in mind. Not a thorough job. Not the product of an orderly, efficient brain. She would do well to remember that.

Thankfully, the clever false bottom of her trunk was still intact. Though he’d taken all the food Mrs. Jenkins had preserved in jars, as well as the supply of sherry she’d added for Richard—who never drank anything stronger if he could help it—most of the herbs had been overlooked, hidden in plain sight in their twists of paper. She rummaged around for the other important items. Richard’s violin remained untouched, too easily identifiable to be stolen without instant repercussion.

Worth, who was the only one left with her in the cockpit—Dance seemed to have disappeared—peered over her shoulder. “Did he get everything?”

“Almost.” And she had only herself to blame. Pinky had expressly warned her, but she’d been too sure of herself, too sure that such a thing could never happen under a man such as Captain McAlden. But Gamage had proved her wrong. As a result, she would keep his secret just as assuredly as Pinky seemed to be keeping hers.

“What will you do?” Worth’s red-rimmed eyes looked huge in his face.

“Make the best of it.” She would distribute everything that was left before she had to pack her sea trunk back up. She would have no use for any of it at home in Falmouth, while these poor boys could benefit greatly.

Worth was full of frowning consternation. “Won’t you tell?”

“I don’t think so,” she answered.

When the boy’s small, pale face began to crumple with disappointment, Sally tried to explain. “Hear me out, Mr. Worth. My first instinct
was
to report it to the captain, for I have no doubt that he will not tolerate stealing. But I have no actual evidence that Gamage took my foodstuffs, only that it’s gone. And Gamage has made sure of that. And he seems too canny, too careful of his own survival, to set himself up to be caught. I doubt he’s kept any of it besides my sherry.”

“I don’t understand.” Worth was trying to stave off his tears by swiping his nose on his sleeve. Those white patches on his cuffs would never survive even another fortnight. “Why would he have stolen it if he wasn’t going to keep it?”

“He may have the purser, or someone such as a cook’s mate, under his power, and they stash it for him. Or he may have hidden it elsewhere, hoping I would raise a fuss and hoping— I say!” She moved toward Ian’s sea chest. “See if he’s broken into yours.”

Ian colored. “It wouldn’t be broken into. It’s not locked. He had the key from me the first day.”

“Devil take him. And Will’s as well?”

Ian shrugged, and tried to think of a suitable answer, but his lower lip was wobbling terribly and his eyes were starting to brighten with tears.

“There, now.” She found herself pulling him into a brotherly, or actually sisterly, embrace. “It will be all right. I promise.”

“It won’t be all right. It’s awful. I hate it here. I hate it.” His tears began to flow freely and his voice was breaking with the frustration and fear.

“Hush, now.” Sally took a gentle hold of his hand. “It’s just that it’s all so new. You’ll get used to it.”

“I won’t. I hate it. And I hate climbing up into the sails the most. And I’m never going to do it again. They can’t make me.”

Unfortunately, they could. At the business end of a cane, or worse. But she would do her best to see it never came to that. “You’ll get used to it, I promise. A few more times and you won’t even notice, just the way a young bird gets used to being in the trees. The branches rock and sway but it never bothers him in the least.”

“That’s because he knows how to fly.” But there was at least some laughter accompanying the exasperation in his voice. After another moment, he had recovered enough of his spirits with the hardiness of the young and ignorant to ask, “How do you know so much about everything?”

“I grew up on my father’s ships.”

“Does your father own ships?”

“No.” She laughed. Her brothers, especially Matthew and Dominic, would have been offended to think someone had never heard of her family, much less thought them
merchants
. Sally could just picture their shudders of revulsion at such a thought. “My father and two of my brothers are Royal Navy captains. I come from an old navy family.”

“Oh.” Worth’s face filled with the appropriate amount of awe. “No wonder you had the guts to stand up to Mr. Gamage.”

“Fat lot of good it did me,” she muttered. “But you’re not going to worry about him anymore. I promise. I’ll see to it if it’s the last thing I do—especially if it’s the last thing I do aboard
Audacious
. But in the meantime, Gamage might have thought to hide my stolen goods in your trunk, or Will’s, as he’ll have noted we’re friends.”

“Are we friends?”

“Yes,” she answered staunchly. “We are going to be the best of friends.”

And so Ian let her search through his dunnage to find that while his foodstuffs were also missing, nothing had been added.

But she wasn’t about to let Gamage get the best of them, or of her, without a fight. “I tell you what—let’s see what else Pinky has to say. He always knows what’s going on in a ship.”

They found the old salt near the open galley stove on the gun deck, working hand in hand with the captain’s steward, Edwards, and two gunroom servants, Moreland and the jovial, and aptly named, Punch, the fiddle player of the morning.

“Well, you were right, Pinky. Mr. Gamage has helped himself to our foodstuffs. But we can still come right,” she assured him when he began to shake his head dolefully, showing no pleasure in having been proved right. “He didn’t get everything. And I’ve a few more tricks up my sleeve. What do you think of these?”

She placed her handful of paper twists in his careful, gnarled old hands.

“Fresh spice?”

“As promised.” A healthy dose of bold spice made the usually bland and boiled fare available on navy ships more palatable. And Pinky knew well how to use them to best effect, just as he had done when he had served as her father’s steward.

The other stewards were peering over Pinky’s shoulder to get a glimpse of his treasure. “I also give you leave to barter any of this away as need be—with say Captain McAlden’s good man Edwards, for whatever else we might need. Perhaps a bottle of good claret from time to time, in exchange for helping him improve his dishes for the captain? Or better still, for Punch here, perhaps a new violin to while away the evenings in entertainment, in exchange for some gunroom fare?”

Pinky’s rosy face glowed with schemes and plans. “Ah, young sir. You leave it to your Pinky. We’ll have a fine cruise of it.”

“I trust we will. There, you see, Ian? Pinky and I will do our best to keep you from the millers.”

“What are millers?”

“Rats, young sir,” Pinky supplied helpfully. “So called on account they be dusted in flour from having been getting into the stores.”

“You mean we’re to eat rats?” Poor Worth was horrified. And growing paler and greener by the second.

“Well.” Sally tried to invest as much cheerful nonchalance into her voice as she could. “I never have eaten them before, but I’ve never been a midshipman before. I expect we shall have a great host of new experiences on this cruise. I daresay Mr. Colyear and even Captain McAlden have eaten their share of millers, and they seem no worse for the wear.”

Worth appeared only partially mollified by such hearty sentiments, so Sally changed the subject. “Now, have you somewhere safe, and private,” she asked Pinky, “to keep such things away from Mr. Gamage and anyone else in the purser’s purvey who might be his creature?”

“I know just the way of it. I’ll—”

Sally held up a restraining hand. “Don’t tell me. If I don’t know, I can’t be made to divulge. But there’s more.” She reached into her waistcoat pocket. “I’ve a fishing line for you as well, Pinky. Do you care for fish for dinner, Mr. Worth?”

The boy’s peaked face lit up with the first stirrings of real pleasure she had seen in him. “I care for anything that will taste better than beef boiled to a pudding!”

“You rest your trust in our Pinky. He’ll see to it. And what else?” She turned her eye to the crates forward of the galley. “Do you have the rights to any of that poultry, Pinky? Are there shares of a hen to be found, so we might have eggs?”

Pinky scrunched up his eyes and scratched his bald pate, the very picture of canny calculation. “Might cost a bit, a hen.”

“I’ve a guinea to lay toward her.” She held the coin up between her fingers. “But for that money, I’ll want a whole hen, not just an egg share.”

Pinky caught the golden coin in his palm. “Done, young sir. Done.”

“Good man.” She threw an encouraging arm around Ian’s shoulders. “There, I told you I could make it better. For all of us. Except Mr. Gamage, of course.”

Worth’s eyes went wide with delighted awe. “You’ll share all of that? The food and eggs, and everything?”

“Of course. We’re mess mates, Mr. Worth. But beyond that, I told you we’re friends. And I hope you’ll find I stand by my friends.”

“Thank you.” After the beginning he had endured in the navy, poor Worth seemed to find it astonishing he might have any friends. “I’m much obliged. But how did you know about the trading and shares of a hen? And a fishing line? I wish I’d thought of that.”

“My older brothers have all shipped in the navy before me—and all eaten rats—so I’ve learned from their advice. But what of you, Ian? From whence do you hail?”

In answer to her query, the boy simply muttered, “Gloucestershire.”

Perhaps he came from very low origins, a country parson’s or a tradesman’s son, if he did not want to be forthcoming. “That’s a very beautiful part of the country, I understand.”