Almost a Scandal (17 page)

But she did. So she turned and leaned her back against the rail next to him.

“Well, Kent. Up until this afternoon, you were doing a pretty fair job of keeping yourself scarce.”

She peered up at him, trying to read his expression in the waning light. “I thought I was meant to.”

There was a twitch of his lip, a tug at the corner of his mouth, which stood in place for agreement. “You were. You do realize I’m going to have to masthead you again, or be seen as favoring you? You can’t go about poisoning people, no matter how much they may deserve it. But I reckon another spate of punishment will only serve to burnish your growing reputation.”

“Ah.” There didn’t seem anything more to add that wouldn’t seem vain.

Before them stretched the full length of the ship, and from their vantage point, with the sun setting almost at the point of the bowsprit, with all the symmetry of the hull leading to that one molten point, Sally thought she had never seen anything more beautiful.

“It makes it worth it, a sight like that.”

“Does it?” Mr. Colyear did not seem as affected by the sublime poetry of the sight, but still his voice retained its humor. “Worth the risk of attempted poisoning, or the larger risk of coming on board?”

She tried to answer in the same vein. “As it would be pure vanity at this point to take any credit for the first, it will have to be the second.”

“Damn your quick eyes, Kent.” He spoke on an exhalation, but his tone was gathering heat. “I would think if you felt staying aboard such a great goal, you would take greater care in ensuring you are able to do so. What in hell were you thinking, provoking a fight with Gamage in front of the rest of the crew?”

Trust Mr. Colyear to finally get serious. But she wasn’t feeling the least bit apologetic. Still, she kept her tone light. “I suppose I was thinking he deserved it. And I’d had enough.”

“Enough? Enough to make you go home, and quit this godforsaken—” He bit off his words, as if they left the bad taste of too much pepper in his mouth. “Enough to make you do as you ought?”

If it was indignation he wanted, she would match him blow for blow. “No, enough of Gamage’s abuse. Poor Worth whimpers in his sleep out of fear of the man. That shouldn’t happen to a dog.”

“They weren’t whimpering tonight, were they?”

“No,” she agreed with infinite satisfaction, “they were not.”

He drew in a deep breath. “I comprehend your vehemence, Kent, but you do yourself and certainly Worth no good when you engage in a pissing fight like that in front of the people. Those boys need to learn to handle themselves just as well as you do.”

She turned to face him, determined to make her case with him, man to man. “Is it too much to hope they might be allowed to learn to handle themselves without having their faces smashed into the walls, or their possessions stolen from them? It seemed too much to hope that you, and Captain McAlden, would give them justice. If you had, I wouldn’t have to resort to such … skulduggery as occurred this afternoon.”

But the heated reply she expected never came. He didn’t turn and engage with her in her ire. He remained stretched back, with his elbows upon the rail, looking at her as if she were a curiosity behind a glass case. “Such an intriguing combination of the naïve and the bloodthirsty you are, Kent.”

She didn’t know how to react to the lightly teasing tone in his voice. She decided upon bluster. “Tell me, Mr. Colyear, would you have tolerated such predations in the gunroom? Would you put up with Lieutenant Rudge, for instance, stealing your belongings?”

“No, I would not tolerate, nor put up with it, and, although you did not ask, yes, I would do something appropriate to the scale of the offense, without unnecessarily involving my captain, or anyone else so wholly unconcerned with it.”

She all but threw her hands in the air in frustration. “That
was
what I was doing.”

“No.” He was all seriousness now. But he sounded, perhaps, a little weary. “What you were doing on deck today was giving way to your feelings, to the impulse of the moment.”

“Am I not entitled to my feelings? For they were just.” It offended her sense of right and wrong that he could not see it. And it hurt her, as well, to think Mr. Colyear, Col, of all people, couldn’t see such injustice.

“I don’t dispute the justness of your feelings, Kent. Only your manner of acting so impulsively upon them. You say you want to be an officer, and by God, if you don’t have the makings of it. But you’ve got to think. You can’t try to fight every one of those boys’ battles for them. They need to test their own mettle, because if they don’t overcome their fear of Gamage, God knows how they are to overcome their fear of the French.”

He looked out over the ship and she was spared the continued force of those eyes for the moment. But still, he went on. “I know you meant well, Mr. Kent. And no doubt Mr. Gamage deserved his comeuppance. But I would … be pleased if you would trust me to know what goes on in my ship. Then, I could trust you as well. As it stands…”

All the bluster and argument blew out of her lungs at the simple sincerity of his tone. No one had ever called her trustworthiness into doubt. Indeed, she had long thought of herself as everything trustworthy, everything honest and loyal.

But he was right. She hadn’t trusted him, and now he could not trust her. “What a bind I seem to have put us in.”

“But you can put us out, Kent. You can pull us out. Just trust me.”

She wanted to. She wanted to trust him and rely upon him. She wanted to lay her head down upon his chest and know that it would all be all right, that everything would work out as she hoped. But it wasn’t that simple.

“I hope I’m not boasting, but your father would not have recommended me, nor would Captain McAlden have accepted and promoted me if I did not know my business. And although I will admit to a great deal of failure with Gamage, I will find a way to get through to him, to solve all our problems in his regard. I promise you.”

“Do you promise you’ll look out for the midshipmen? Especially Jellicoe and Worth? I just can’t watch Worth be bullied and do nothing.”

“They’re not babies, Kent. They need to learn to stand on their own two feet.”

“Yes, but—”

“Yes, but. We both want the same thing, Kent. We just have different ways, different philosophies, on how to go about it. But until you pass your exams and get yourself promoted first lieutenant, you’ll have to learn to accept and obey my orders. Graciously.”

Sally drew in a long breath. “Oh, well,
that
may be taking it a bit too far—
graciously.
Could you settle for merely
promptly,
or
skillfully
?”

“Certainly. There is more than one way to splice a line, Kent.”

“Do you mean I must work harder to gain the stronger hand on Mr. Gamage?”

The wind carried away the better part of Col’s laugh. “I hope you don’t mean physically. You’re tall, but not even were you to attain your father’s height, would I recommend you take Gamage on again. He must outweigh you by something close to eight stone.” He scanned her up and down. “You Kents are a lanky, lathy lot. Do have a care, Kent.”

He sent another long sideways look her way, and just like that, the deck seemed to shift under her feet and tilt her toward Mr. Colyear. When he looked at her like that—as if he liked what he saw—she felt curiously light and happy. Untethered. She felt warm and melting, like buttered toast ready to be served up to him for breakfast. “I am looking after myself, sir.”

“Are you? That certainly didn’t look like you’re looking after yourself. It looked to me like you were deliberately courting his ire.”

Sally felt the last knot of worry ebbing out of her like the tide. Mr. Colyear not only
saw
everything, he
understood
everything he saw. “Well, I was. I would much rather have Mr. Gamage direct his enmity at me than Ian Worth or Will Jellicoe.”

“Ah.” He tipped his head up as if he were studying the set of the mizzen royal. Or the rigging. Or anything that wasn’t her, so studiously did he not look at her. “I should have realized. Such an intriguing combination of the bloodthirsty and the naïve, the lion and the lamb.”

“I’m not completely sure of what you mean, but I’m not entirely bloodthirsty. I was concerned for him this evening—Mr. Gamage—when he wolfed most of the pepper down in one bite. Poor bastard. I did feel a little sorry for him. A very little bit.”

She was rewarded for her efforts at levity by the return of his smile. “It does you credit, but you waste your time, Mr. Kent. He certainly wouldn’t feel sorry for you.”

“I know. He’s just not clever enough for the job, is he? He’ll never be. No matter what you do to try and help him, he’ll never be near as clever and quick and skilled as you are. He can’t see things the way you do—you see a frayed line and you know that if it isn’t mended a hoist could give way and a spar could fall and people could be injured. You can probably reckon the exact moment when it would give way. Gamage would only see it as an onerous chore to be avoided or as an opportunity to blame trouble on somebody else. He may try, but it just comes out all wrong.”

“Are you trying to butter me up, Mr. Kent?” But he smiled again, a wide, full-bodied smile, and she was glad—glad she had done what she did, and taken the risk. Glad down to the toes of her too-big feet that she was the one to put that marvelous smile there, upon his face. Glad that he was happy in her presence. And she knew she would dare just about anything to make him smile at her like that again.

“But it’s not idle flattery, Mr. Colyear. You know as well as I, you’re cleverer than any four men put together. That’s why you’re first, even though you’re a decade younger than Mr. Rudge and two decades younger than Mr. Charlton.”

“Three,” he corrected wryly.

“Three, then.” She couldn’t keep the smile from splitting her face. She could even hear it in her voice. “It’s no wonder no one can keep up with you.”

“You seem to manage it.”

Something warmer than a blush crept under her skin. “Now you flatter me. I’ve been mostly at sea since I was a child until the last two years. I have the benefit of a family who talks of nothing but trimming sails and running tides as if it were normal dinner conversation. I’ve helped at least three of my older brothers study to pass for lieutenant, reading them passage after passage of Robinson’s
Elements of Navigation
.”

“Then make a study of Gamage, and see if you can figure out the way his tides run. Only do so very carefully.”

“Devil take me.” There was her solution. A course of study. The idea had merit. It had more than merit. It had possibility. She could see it as plainly as she had once seen that book of navigation before her face. “I shall make a study out of him. If only he will let me.”

She turned to Col and put out her hand. “Thank you, Mr. Colyear. You’ve given me my solution.”

“Have I?” His voice was still full of his wry amusement, but he looked at her hand for a very long time before he took it.

His hand entirely covered hers, almost engulfed it, and she felt the span of his bones set against hers. His fingers were strong, and his grip firm, but he did not crush her as he might have done. Instead his hand buoyed hers up, holding it safe and secure.

The press of his palm against hers sent a low heat, a vibration, like the touch of a tuning fork, shaking its way inside her, growing stronger and stronger until she was sure it would rattle her apart. But she didn’t want it to end. And she did not let go.

Neither did he. “What am I going to do with you, Kent?”

“I don’t know,” she said stupidly, because she didn’t know what she wanted him to do with her. She didn’t have the experience to articulate the hopes and fears careering around inside her. She only knew she wanted more of the melting heat that warmed her from the inside to continue. “Just let me be, I suppose.”

“Oh, Kent.” He smiled, even as he shook his head. That rueful, begrudging little smile at the corner of his mouth. “Surely your clever little mind has figured out by now, I can’t possibly let you be.”

Everything else stopped. The ship stopped moving beneath her, and she felt that she was the one tilting, swinging off center, as if she were aloft, and the wind had blown the air clean out of her lungs, and she couldn’t draw breath. He was looking at her in that minutely considering way of his, and for the first time in weeks, she felt dirty and disheveled.

Such a ridiculous vanity, when all she really wanted was to serve and to sail. That was what she wanted, wasn’t it?

“Mr. Colyear,” she said, for want of anything more intelligent to say, and because she simply wanted to say his name.

“One of these days, Kent, I’m going to want to hear you call me Col.”

Oh, she wanted to call him Col. Out loud instead of in the privacy of her head. And she was going to tell him so. She was leaning toward him, toward the heat and the certainty of him. Toward the possibilities he brought to mind.

This time, he was the one who stepped back. “But this is neither the time, nor, God help me, the place. Find your berth, Kent. Before I’m tempted to find it for you.”

And then he strode away, into the enveloping dark.

Chapter Eleven

For once, Sally did not rise at the very crack of dawn. She had slept in, which for her still meant rising before six bells of the morning watch in the thinning light of the northern hemisphere’s autumn.

Firstly, with Gamage removed from the cockpit to the sick bay, there had been a pleasant lack of snoring during the night. Before that, when she had returned to her berth from her unsettling but somehow lovely interview with Mr. Colyear, Gamage’s projected absence from the cockpit had eventuated something of a rather raucous victory celebration, during which a vast deal of too much watered wine, and whatever else could be bribed, bartered, or brought to hand, had been consumed.

And secondly, in the course of trying to teach Will Jellicoe how to juggle, she had attempted the feat with wine bottles, but only succeeded in giving herself a stinging bruise along her right cheekbone.