Christmas Belles (15 page)

Trent looked exceedingly uncomfortable to be the recipient
of so much gratitude. He accepted all the thanks in his usual stern fashion.
When the two women had gone, he turned to regard Chloe.

 She feared her chagrin must have showed in her face,
for he asked anxiously, "Did I do something wrong? I heard Emma speaking
of Boxing Day this morning, and I thought it was the proper thing to do—"

"Oh yes, very proper," Chloe said, attempting to
stuff the shillings back into her purse. But a few escaped to roll across the
table and settle near Trent's coffee cup.

As he returned them to her, she saw his eyes light with
comprehension.

"You should have gone ahead and made your gift, Chloe,"
he said.

Chloe affected a shrug. "What would shillings be
compared to pounds?"

"A great deal more when given out of love instead of
duty."

His perception both touched and astonished her. "I
thought you didn't believe in love," she could not help reminding him with
a tiny smile.

"I don't recall ever saying that, ma'am." Despite
his gruff tone, he smiled back at her.

On an impulse, she reached across the table, covering his
hand with her own. "Oh, Will, forget about your stuffy meeting with Mr.
Martin.  Come skating with me instead."

He laughed. "I have never been on skates in my life,
Chloe."

"That doesn't matter. I am sure you could learn easily.
After all, you must be very agile, the way you sailors go climbing about among
all that rigging."

"It has been a good many years since I have been
obliged to do anything like that, my dear. A captain only has to stroll about
the deck, getting fat and lazy while he bellows out orders."

Chloe ran a skeptical and admiring gaze over Trent's lean,
muscular frame. "I can't imagine you ever strolling. The bellowing,
however--"

Trent cut her off firmly. "Besides, I have no
skates."

"Papa's are still about somewhere. I am sure they would
fit you."

Although Trent continued to shake his head and laugh at her
mad proposal, Chloe detected a certain wistfulness in his eyes She did not know
why she continued to press him. Perhaps it was because she was haunted by the
image of a lonely young boy who had spent far too many of his holidays standing
to attention aboard the deck of a ship.

Squeezing his hand, she peered up at him through the
thickness of her lashes. "Oh, please," she said.

"You only want to see me make a great fool of
myself," he grumbled, but Chloe sensed him weakening.

"Very well," he said. "But you must promise not
to laugh at me."

Chloe, concealing a grin of triumph, gave him her most
solemn promise.

The pond that stood just beyond the stables at Windhaven
normally played host to a brood of fat, white ducks and a badger family that
crept out of the woods to drink. But winter had finally rendered the water into
a sheet of ice as smooth as a lady's looking glass.

Bundled up in her best green coat, Chloe glided along, the
wind whipping beneath her bonnet and stinging her cheeks a bright pink. She
whirled about in a circle before turning to check the captain's progress.

Trent smothered an oath as his feet flew out from under him
for the third time. He slid across the frozen surface on the back of his heavy
frieze jacket. Chloe brought her gloved hands up to her mouth to stifle her
merriment.

Sprawled at her feet, Trent glowered up at her. "You
gave me your promise, madam."

"Aye, I did, and I am not laughing." Chloe gasped
on a chuckle. Balancing firmly on the blades of her own skates, she extended
one hand to help him up. "'Tis only you do look a trifle undignified. I
cannot help imagining what your friend Mr. Lathrop might say."

"At your peril, you breathe a word of this to him or
anyone else," Trent said with a mock growl. He regained his footing but
still appeared most unsteady. As he cautiously moved one skate forward, Chloe
clung to his arm, trying to help by giving him a small push.

She panted at the exertion of helping to balance Trent's
large frame "Now I know what you captains must go through when you try to
launch a ship."

After another tentative glide, Trent started slipping again,
but this time, as he went down, he clung to Chloe, taking her with him. He
landed on his back once more, his arms banding about Chloe, causing her to fall
on top of him. With a soft gasp, she raised up a little, trying to shake the
hair from her eyes. "You did that on purpose," she said.

Trent's mouth curved into a mischief-laden smile. "A
good captain always goes down with her ship, my dear."

Chloe tried to be indignant but failed, dimpling at him
instead. Her face was so close to his, she could actually feel the warmth of
his breath against her cheek. She became aware of other things as well, the
frieze jacket that seemed to carry with it the salt tang of the sea, the liquid
silver of his eyes, the solid feel of his body beneath her.

A tingling sensation worked through her veins. Feeling shy
and confused, Chloe made haste to scramble out of his arms. Trent struggled to
a sitting position.

"A wise captain also knows when to strike his
colors," he said. Bending one leg forward, he began to undo the strap of
his skate.

"You cannot give up that easily," Chloe cried.
"Is this the spirit that won Trafalgar?"

He shot her a disgruntled look, but by dint of much coaxing
she got him back on his feet. Trent suddenly thought of a dozen reasons why
they should return to the house, a hundred pressing matters requiring his
attention, but Chloe refuted them all.

It took the better part of the morning and several more
tumbles before he learned to maintain his balance. But Trent was possessed of a
natural athletic grace, and although he grumbled that "this was worse than
acquiring one's sea legs," he was soon keeping pace with Chloe,
threatening to have her clapped in irons if she attempted to twirl him in a
circle.

They linked arms, skating in companionable silence, round
and round the pond, blowing out breathy clouds of steam as they glided forward
in perfect rhythm. The snow-trimmed pines, the hedgerows, and the frost-capped
stables passed by in a blur of white.

"Are you getting cold?" Trent asked, tucking her
arm more snugly beneath his, pressing her hand within his own.

"No, not a bit of it." Chloe tipped her face up to
the cloudy, gray sky, feeling as warm as though she were basking in a flood of
sunlight. "It's a glorious day. I haven't felt this happy since I can
scarce remember."

"Aye," Trent agreed quietly. He was not given to
such rushes of feeling, but he knew what she meant. He was filled with a sense
of contentment as sweet as it was rare.

"You are skating very well now," she said.
"Are you not glad I persuaded you to try it?"

"It's pleasant enough when one remains upright, rather
like sailing before a good strong wind."

Chloe fell silent a moment, then astonished him by asking,
"What is it like, Will, being aboard your ship all the time?"

"Well, Gloriana is a ship of the line with three decks
and eighty-seven cannon—"

"I don't mean that," she said with one of her
delightful trills of laughter, "Tell me what it
feels
like."

Chloe had a habit of asking a man the most confounded
things. If any other lady had posed him such a fool question, he would have
found some curt but polite way to dismiss it. But for Chloe, he caught himself
struggling to oblige her with an answer.

"Well, at times life at sea can be hard, sometimes even
monotonous, but there is always…" His voice trailed away as he began to
consider sights and sounds he had always taken for granted, but he achieved a
kind of wonder as he tried to describe them for Chloe. How fresh the wind blew
out at sea, how it sang through the rigging, how diamond-hard and bright the
stars appeared on a clear night, the way the salt spray could sting one's
cheeks. He spoke of how humble a man often felt surrounded by nothing but sea
and sky, how frightened when the waves turned black and pounded against the
side of the ship, the deck heaving beneath one's feet, how exhilarating that
feeling of riding out a storm, besting it.

"It all sounds prodigiously exciting," Chloe said.
She peeked up at him from beneath the brim of her bonnet and added hesitantly,
"But I fear Mr. Doughty doesn't like sailing as well as you do. He told me
how he came to be on your ship. He didn't want to be impressed into the
navy."

"Few men do," Trent said wryly, a little amused to
hear the burly seaman had made Chloe his confidante. "Would Mr. Doughty
have preferred being hanged for smuggling?"

"No. He is grateful his life was spared. But he misses
his home and his poor gray-haired old mum."

Trent had to choke back a laugh, for Chloe looked so
mournfully serious. The phrase about the "old mum" had to have been
Doughty's own, echoed unconsciously by Chloe. The old rascal certainly had been
pitching it rum to the girl.

"I fear what Doughty misses most is his old free-booting
way of life," Trent said. "A little naval discipline will do him no
harm."

"But to be forced to serve for so many years! That
seems rather harsh for just smuggling a very tiny drop of brandy."

"Aye, just a drop or two. Only five hundred kegs."

"I don't care. I think he has been punished enough. If
he hates being in the navy and wants to go home—"

"Chloe," Trent interrupted. He halted their
progress around the pond long enough to direct an intensely serious look at
her. "It is kind of you to take an interest in Mr. Doughty's welfare, but
you shouldn't encourage him to lament his lot. He might become tempted to do
something that he shouldn't. Desertion is a serious crime."

"Yes, but—"

Trent laid his fingers gently against her lips to silence
her. "You must allow that I know best in matters regarding my own crew.
Your meddling in Doughty's affairs could only bring disaster, Chloe. One should
never attempt to interfere in someone else's life."

"You mean like I tried to do with you and Emma?"

 "Well, yes."

She pulled a face and then sighed. "Perhaps you are
right. I shall make a greater effort not to be so--- so busy." But even as
she made this vow, she looked far from convinced. She lapsed into silence, and
they resumed skating. Trent half feared that his rebuke, even gentle as it was,
might have destroyed the newfound harmony between them.

But Chloe quickly recovered from any chagrin she might have
felt and once more began to pelt him with questions about life in the navy. She
wanted to hear about some of his own exploits, his ambitions, even his dreams.

Trent could not remember ever having been persuaded to talk
so much about himself before, especially to a lady. If Chloe's interest had
appeared at all coy or feigned, he would have stopped at once, feeling like the
greatest fool.

But she halted in front of him, catching up both his hands
in her eagerness to hear more, her eyes alight as she drank in every word. He
found himself confessing to thoughts and aspirations that would have caused his
grandfather, the old admiral, to roll in his watery grave.

"And after working so hard to make a ship seaworthy,
training your crew to perform all the maneuvers to perfection until you and
they are almost at one with the ship, it seems the most damnable folly, the
most senseless waste, merely to become the target for cannon fire. When this
blasted war is over, it has always been my dream to have done with the navy and
..."

"And?" Chloe urged when he hesitated.

"And to outfit my own ship, a three-masted frigate,
with a handpicked crew, to sail all the way around the world, to have the
leisure to really explore some of those faraway places like the West Indies or
Barbados."

"Or Jamaica?" Chloe breathed.

"Perhaps even the Orient."

"Oh," she lamented. "Why is it that men get
to do all the exciting things and have all the adventures?"

Trent laughed. "I have heard of some merchant captains
who take their ladies with them and adorn their cabins with all the comforts of
home."

"Oh, Will. That would be wonderful. I—" The
sparkle in Chloe's eyes dimmed. "I don't suppose Emma would much care for
that."

"No," Trent said slowly, "I don't suppose
that she would."

Chloe suddenly felt very self-conscious. She carefully
disengaged her hands from Trent's grasp.

"It must be very hard to be a sailor's wife," she
said, "when your husband is gone so much of the time at sea."

"I assure you that Emma will always be well cared
for—" Trent began hastily.

"I don't doubt that she will. I never supposed it would
be as difficult for her as it is for Sukey Green, and yet—" Chloe
swallowed. She had told Trent she would stop meddling, but it was a promise she
was finding difficult to keep. "As hard as it has been for Sukey, she once
told me of the one thought that sustains her. No matter how far away her Tom
might be, his heart is always left with her."

Trent gave her a taut smile. "I did not know it was
possible for a man to be so discriminating with his anatomy."

Chloe suppressed a sigh, realizing that Trent did not
understand at all what she was trying to tell him: that no matter how many
comforts he might leave Emma surrounded by, she was always going to be bereft
of one thing—a husband's love.

The wind that whistled across the pond seemed to have gotten
more brisk, and Chloe shivered. When Trent suggested it was time to go back to
the house, she made no protest. The glow that had surrounded their golden
morning together seemed to have vanished as rapidly as if the gray clouds
overhead had blotted out the sun.

Chloe felt peculiarly loath to discuss her outing with the
captain to anyone. Later, when she encountered Emma in the parlor, Chloe
started when her older sister brought up the subject.