Sea Change (20 page)

"Do come and spend the night with us again, Charley," Dusk called out, her sleepy smile dazzling in the sunlight. "Dawn and I would be pleased to entertain you further."

Charley gave the ladies a most elegant bow. "Miss Dawn, Miss Dusk, what I learned last evening will be with me forever. I am a better man for my experience with you!"

The girls laughed and clapped their hands.

"Goodbye, Doctor! Take care of yourself!"

Charley put her hat back on her head and turned to her shipmates. Purcell was staring at her, jaw agape.

Captain Fletcher said nothing, but as they walked back to where their boat waited, he kept looking at Charley with a puzzled expression on his face.

"You spent the night with the twins?" he finally asked.

"Yes."

"Both of them?"

"That is the custom of the house, is it not, Captain?"

"Damn me for a lubber," Purcell muttered to Captain Fletcher. "Who would have thought the boy had it in him?"

"Not me," the captain said, looking at Charley again.

For her part, Charley walked with her head high, a smile on her face. If she were a cock, she'd be crowing. Of course, it was the hens that did all the work, and that reminded her of what the ladies had said about men during their "hen party," and she chuckled to herself.

"What's so funny?" Captain Fletcher growled.

"Just thinking about something that happened last night," Charley said airily.

The men were silent in the boat as they rowed out to the
Fancy.
No one had died during her absence, which made Charley's morning brighter, and she got back into her routine of examinations and dealing with the crew's assorted aches and pains.

Over the midday meal Bryant and Purcell pressed her for details of her experiences at Madame Cornelia's, but Charley again refused to discuss the evening. She noticed that the captain continued to watch her with an expression on his face that was hard to read, and there was still a distance between them that couldn't be ignored.

So she was surprised when he stopped by sick bay that afternoon.

"I have something you need to look at, Doctor."

Charley cocked an eyebrow, waited for him to explain. The captain stood there next to her examining table, looking uncomfortable, and his hand hovered over his flies.

Oh dear. Could the captain have fallen prey to a disease of Venus?

As if reading her mind he said, "No, it's not the pox. I think I have a boil. On my arse."

"Oh! Well, that shouldn't be a problem. Drop your trousers and lie down on the table so I can take a look at it."

"Can't we do this with me standing?"

That raised an image of the discussions of the night before, and Charley saw herself kneeling at a naked David Fletcher's feet while he loomed above her in all his glory. The thought made heat rush through her veins and she remembered the women saying how much men loved that act, and techniques which would make it enjoyable for both of them.

She did not need that image in her head, not when he was here with a medical issue, not when he was dealing with Charles, not Charlotte.

"No, we cannot do this examination with you standing!" She reached for that gruff, no-nonsense doctor voice that she used to good effect with other patients. "Do not be a little baby, Captain Fletcher. Yours is not the first boil--or the first pair of buttocks--I have ever seen!"

"That is what worries me," he muttered, but he started to unbutton his flies. Charley turned away and fetched a lamp to increase the light on the table. When she turned back, Captain Fletcher's trousers were on the floor and he was lying down on his belly, his shirt tails covering his hindquarters.

Charley swallowed and said, "Try to relax, Captain, I need to examine you."

"Just lance the damn thing and let me out of here!" he said harshly. His arms were crossed beneath his head, and he looked away from her to the bulkhead.

"Remember our rule captain. You sail, I doctor. Now let me take a look at you."

And what a view it was. Charley tried to stay detached and clinical as she rolled up his shirt, but the sight before her brought an involuntary sigh to her lips. After seeing countless ugly, scarred, unpleasant sights--and sadly,
Señor
Martinez could never be erased from her memory--the captain's arse was a treat. It was finely muscled and sleek, a shade lighter than the surrounding skin. When his leg moved and flexed those muscles the moisture in her mouth dried up, though she noted with a tiny part of her mind still working that the moisture seemed to have moved south to pool between her legs.

"Is it bad?" her patient asked.

Not hardly!
she almost said aloud, but caught herself.

"You are correct, Captain, there is a boil here, but it is not brought to a head. We can try using warm compresses on it for a few days and see if it drains on its own."

"Warm compresses?" he turned to look at her and frowned.

"Yes. Two or three times a day you could come down here and I would put a warm cloth on the boil to raise the pus and help it drain."

"I am not spending days lying on my belly with my arse in the air for you, Doctor! Lance the damn thing and get it over with!"

"As you wish, Captain. However, you will still need to keep the area clean after I lance it. If you need assistance, you know where to find me."

Charley fetched her scalpel and a warm, wet cloth, and said, "This will sting slightly, and then I need to give it time to drain."

Captain Fletcher uttered a sharp expletive when the knife pierced him, but closed his eyes and lay still beneath Charley's hands. She tried to focus on the purely medical aspects of what she was doing, telling herself there was nothing attractive about a body part draining pus and infection.

It didn't help much.

When she was satisfied she'd done what she could, she said, "Let me put some balm on that to prevent infection. I want to see you again tomorrow to make sure this is healing properly."

Captain Fletcher said nothing, but shifted himself on the table as she smoothed in the healing balm, and she saw sweat on his forehead and grim lines around his mouth.

"Captain, are you in pain?"

"No, you damn sawbones, I am not in pain! Aren't you done yet?"

She couldn't imagine why he was reacting as he was until she told him she was finished and he abruptly sat up.

"Oh." She swallowed and forced her eyes away. "Do not think anything of it, Captain, that can happen to anyone."

"It has never happened to me!" he snarled. "Not with a man touching my--turn around!"

"Yes, Captain," she said, turning her back. She could hear him cursing steadily under his breath while he got dressed, and then without a word of farewell or thanks, he stomped out of sick bay, slamming the door behind him.

Charley let out her breath in a rush.

Black Davy Fletcher at ease was a sight to behold, but seeing him with his equipment erect, that was another sight entirely. A shiver raced over her frame, and she passed her hand across her hot face.

Prior to her evening at the brothel she might have been able to view this more clinically. But after her conversations with the whores she had new directions for her thoughts that were not going to make her job in dealing with the captain any easier.

The next afternoon Captain Fletcher told Mr. Bryant to muster the crew and Charley joined them, standing apart from the ranks of seamen.

When they were all assembled, he looked out over the assortment of Yankee privateers and their British doctor and said, "Men, I have news from home."

He waited for the murmurs to die down.

"I received correspondence on St. Martin that I wish to share with you. Last August, while we were at sea fighting for the rights of sailors and free Americans, the British burned our nation's capitol, Washington City."

Now the mutters from the men were angry as they shifted their feet and looked at one another. The Americans had burned York in Canada, and Great Britain might be justified in saying it's tit for tat to burn the Americans' capitol, but Charley just scratched her ear and wisely refrained from pointing that out.

Plus, Captain Fletcher was still speaking.

"But take heart, men, just as your countrymen did! America cannot be frightened into submission!" He waved a paper. "I have here the account of the battle of Baltimore and the glorious defense of Fort McHenry! The nation still stands strong, boys, and will never bow to tyrants! A cheer for the United States of America, and an extra ration of rum tonight for its gallant heroes!"

The men threw their hats into the air while cheering, "Huzzah for the United States!"

Charley slipped quietly back to sick bay, leaving the Americans to their celebration, and wondering again what would become of a British surgeon held on an American vessel during wartime.

"How is your boil, Captain?"

It seemed an innocuous question, but Captain Fletcher rounded on Charley, his eyes narrowed in the sunlight.

"My arse is none of your affair, Charley Alcott! You won't be seeing me in your sick bay again!"

He stomped off and Purcell looked at his retreating back, then at Charley.

"What is going on with the captain?"

"I do not know, Mr. Purcell," Charley said slowly, watching the stiff figure talking with Mr. Bryant at the helm. "Something is wrong."

"Something between the two of you."

Charley looked at the carpenter.

"You can't keep secrets aboard ship, Doctor."

Can I not?
Charley thought, but she just nodded.

"Whatever it is, the captain and I will work it out."

There was no invitation for the senior crew to join the captain in his cabin, so Charley took her luncheon in the sick bay, eating her lobscouse and flicking weevils out of her biscuit, an automatic action after months at sea. Pirate twined about her ankles, hoping for salvage rights to any food that might get jarred off the desk, and Charley leaned down to absently pet the animal and slip him a bite of what appeared to be beef from her stew.

She was going to have to do something about Captain Fletcher's changed attitude toward her, but first she would need to know what the problem was. It couldn't be issues with her performance of her duties. With no false modesty, Charley knew she was doing at least an adequate job, and had improved the lives of most of the men. Just today she'd fitted Larkin for a truss, having learned on the
Lady Jane
that hernias were common among sailors.

She sighed and pushed the uneaten stew away from her, then at an inquiring "Mrorrr?" put the tin bowl down for the cat, who sniffed at the lobscouse and then deigned to eat it.

"I know it's not a fresh rat, but it's the best I've got," Charley said to him. Pirate was the only creature aboard who could appreciate her purely for herself. She shook her head.

"No self-pity for you, Dr. Alcott," she said aloud. "There is work to be done."

It was a bleak thought though, that something had happened between her and Davy Fletcher. Where before there was camaraderie and companionship, now there was coldness and silence.

She missed her friend. She could never have a full relationship with David Fletcher, the relationship of man with a woman, but she'd come to treasure their friendship and she wanted it back. Without it, there was not enough to keep her aboard this vessel.

She sighed again. She would approach him tonight and pressure him again to release her from her captivity aboard the
Fancy.

When she was finished with luncheon and writing up her notes on Larkin, Charley went up on deck for some relief from the sultry November afternoon. She stood on deck next to Purcell, where she had an excellent view of Captain Fletcher hanging shirtless from a line as he examined some arcane piece of ship's equipment at the stern. He was wearing only his nankeen trousers, plastered to his body by the warm ocean water, with a knife strapped to the muscled calf of his leg. Charley climbed on the rail and leaned out farther, curious to see more of what the captain was doing down there.

"...and then Jeanette says I was the biggest and the best she'd ever had!"

Charley didn't remember slipping and losing her balance, but the next thing she knew she was falling, and then the shock of hitting the water.

It took her an agonizing minute of panic to orient herself, and find the light of day above her. The next minute the light was blotted out as a dark shape swam above.

Shark!

But she felt her collar grabbed and a force pulling her upward, and she bobbed up into the air like a cork, gasping and spitting out water.

It was Captain Fletcher, treading water next to her.

"Can you swim?" he yelled.

Charley's answer wasn't necessary because when he released his hold on her collar she started to sink, and a second later found herself grabbed again.

"Stop fighting me, Charley! I'll haul you in."

He pulled her along behind him and she heard shouts from the deck above them, and someone must have tossed them a line. The captain wrapped it around the two of them and said, "Hold on to me, Doctor," then yelled to the men above to haul them up.

As they rose out of the water like a pair of mullet, Captain Fletcher clutched her closer. Then his body went very still. Charley blinked water out of her eyes and looked at him, his golden eyes inches from her own, the warm umber chest with its dusting of black hair flush against her soaked coat.

She tried to pull back, and of course couldn't, locked as she was in his embrace. He looked puzzled, then all the color leached from his face.

Rough hands grabbed the two of them and hauled them onto the deck of the
Fancy
, to much laughter from the assembled crew.

Charley pushed herself to her feet and stood on deck, wiping water off her face and trying to gain her bearings. Suddenly her arm was clamped by one large fist, the fingers digging into her muscle.

"Come with me, Doctor," Captain Fletcher said, and didn't wait for her to acquiesce as he hauled her along, pausing only to bark out an order to Mr. Purcell.