The Companion (6 page)

That was one part of the mystery of Ian Rufford. But it was more than his scars or the fact that someone had held him prisoner. It was the contained horror, the determination that opposed it, and his starts of cynicism and sincerity that provoked thought. She wanted to know more. Indeed, her outburst of pique at his dismissal of her had been her most spirited engagement with another since Monsieur L’Bareaux had refused her.

It had been unseemly to converse with this stranger so freely. She skipped ahead to considering what possible excuse she could invent to engage him. Hmmmm. He seemed to have knowledge of Kivala and the desert. Perhaps he could confirm her theory that the city her father had dreamed of finding was indeed there. She and her father thought it lay south of the mountains of the Rif. It would be a hollow victory, since she would never see the city herself, but just to know . . .

He might be on deck even now. She threw back her quilt, shrugged off her night shift, and rinsed herself from her basin, then dressed with more care than she had in some time. The smell of grilled kidneys and greasy eggs filled her nostrils. Nothing had ever smelled so good.

The passengers were berthed in the refurbished quarters
used by the midshipmen and minor officers when the frigate had sailed for His Majesty’s Navy. There was a small common room onto which the cabins opened. The whole was forward of the foremast, as opposed to the Captain’s quarters under the quarterdeck aft and the merchantman’s current officers’ quarters on the deck below that. On her way through the common room she was caught up short by the sound of low moaning. Guiltily she remembered her other fellow traveler. “Mrs. Pargutter?” she called, rapping gently at the cabin door. “Are you well?”

“My dear, I am wretched,” came the fainting reply.

Beth stuck her head in to see her erstwhile companion holding a handkerchief reeking of vinaigrette to her mouth, the little silver-chased holder box clasped to her breast.

“Can I do anything for you, ma’am?” Beth inquired. “Call Jenny perhaps?”

“Only make them stop cooking. The smell will be the death of me!”

“Oh, dear. Well, I can certainly try.” Beth doubted she could stop the crew from eating.

She swung open the door to the outer deck, a strange expectancy lodging in her throat.
You are excited about being at sea; that is all
, she told herself severely. At any rate, he had been most provoking, rude and self-involved. Arrogant. It was not he who excited her by any means.

The merchantman was under sail, many sails in fact, with an air of exhilaration about her. Beth had felt it on other ships. It came from a sailor’s joy in fair weather and a rising wind. They came alive with the animation of their ship, reveling in the almost animal grace of the frigate. Steel blue swells laced with white pushed their charge along the sea. Out beyond the tangle of tarred rigging, five others of their convoy and the graceful naval sloop sailed. Even from here she could see the sloop’s gun ports, her sides checkered black and white in imitation of Nelson’s colors. Beth’s gaze swept the deck around her in vain for the figure she sought. Bales and common crates littered the deck. Three sheep and a goat were tethered aft. Crated fowl emitted periodic
squawks. The hope she refused to acknowledge died in her breast. Sailors scurried about in answer to shouts from the master on the quarterdeck and the bo’sun in the waist.

These were working men, including the officers who were no doubt eating the eggs and bacon, kidneys, and mutton she could smell. She could no more ask them to forgo the hearty breakfast of their occupation than she could return to Tripoli. It was the passengers’ lot to adjust, rather than the sailors’, even if that lot included smelling mutton chops and greasy eggs when you were not quite well. Mrs. Pargutter would have to deal with her problem on her own. What Beth
could
do was procure a draught from the ship’s surgeon to comfort that lady’s stomach.

In the bowels of the lower deck, called the orlop, she found Dr. Granger. She had not counted on the pickled state that characterized both the man and the anatomical specimens sloshing in jars around his cabin. The surgeon was bleary and leering, quite distasteful as well as ineffectual, and this at only one bell past the change of watch in the morning. One must hope the ship’s crew did not require anything that might tax their medical man. Still a draught was not beyond his powers. Escaping into the light and wind of the upper decks, she delivered the paregoric to Mrs. Pargutter and refreshed that lady’s vinaigrette while the patient moaned her misery. Beth wondered if it was possible for her escort to be seasick all the way to London.

The day was long. Books in her tiny, tidy cabin lined with wood and brass, and her own thoughts, were her only companions. Busy as the ship was, she did not belong to it. She was an outsider here, her role a precursor of the life that was like to await her in England and an echo of her estrangement years ago in the Crofts School for Girls.

How she longed for life in the busy, purposeful present of her father’s expeditions, always the hope of the next discovery to indulge her curiosity for things strange and rare. Her conversation had been with men who had ideas and opinions
and who listened to hers in return. What use, what purpose, would she have now? Her mind darted across the possibility that she would simply drift into . . . into what? Madness? Or would she become some useless female curiosity, pointed out as a hopeless antidote if she dared to walk in the park?

She took tea alone in the great stern cabin volunteered by the Captain for her comfort. The view out the great sloping windows slowly shaded as she stared at two barques from the convoy riding lightly ahead. The sea turned almost amethyst. The sun must have set.

She still had choices. She vowed to engage with the world at every turn, though she was sure she would not fit that world. Better an antidote despised for her boring talk of archaeology and geology than a madwoman locked in some asylum. Rising purposefully, she strode onto the deck, determined to sit with Mrs. Pargutter, whether that lady would or no.

But there, just coming up into the short Mediterranean twilight, was the most intriguing of her fellow passengers. The breadth of him filled the doorway. He seemed to exude power, energy . . . what should she call it? He was very, very male. Even the busy sailors felt his presence, though he was behind them, and gave way.

He looked about himself. She saw him place the position of the other vessels in the fading light and the sloop that guarded them. Then he cast his eyes about the deck. After they moved over her, they came back and rested on her in speculation. Beth was used to the eyes of personable men moving over her. She was not used to them returning. She felt her color rise. Would that her brown complexion did not show her confusion.

He moved purposefully in her direction and bowed, most correctly. He wore a black coat and buff breeches. His boots shone, though he must have tended them himself, since he had come on board without even a servant. He was clean shaven, his hair tied back neatly, no fobs or seals or rings. “Miss . . . Rochewell.” He had to search for her name. Not surprising.

“Mr. . . . Mr. Rufford.” Her own hesitancy was not because she did not recall his name.

He glanced to the sea again. “All is well, I hope? The convoy skims along prosperously?”

“Why, yes. How not?”

“Oh, I expect we shall hit calm seas sooner or later and wallow in our own filth for a week. Or . . .” here his deep voice grew harder, “we might even see an enemy sail.”

“What enemy? Napoléon is vanquished these three years, the American war long ended.”

His smile was not humorous. “We might always catch sight of a local corsair.”

Beth chuckled, dismissing his fears. “We have a sloop of the Royal Navy for protection. No pirate would dare to come within a league of us.”

“True, if the sloop’s Captain fights true. I have known them to run shy when there were only merchantmen involved.” The bitterness in his voice was back.

“Who is more competent than the King’s Navy? They rule the water.”

He did not contradict her. He simply looked at the merchantmen shushing through the sea around them, silent with their distance, the placement of HMS the sloop, then cast his eyes to the rigging and swept the deck and its occupants. Sailors were putting out lanterns in the rigging. Lamps flickered on the boats around them as well, a small, warm constellation.

He seemed disinclined to continue conversation. Beth racked her brain for a way to engage him. “You have been in your cabin all the day, sir. Does the voyage not agree with you?”

He fixed her with his steady gaze. “Night is more congenial to one of my temperament.”

“Ahh.” The silence stretched. The crew moved about on tasks unknowable, oblivious. “Do you dine with the Captain? I am afraid you must be famished, having missed your dinner.”

He nodded and picked out his watch. It was two hours to supper. “We have some time before we eat,” he remarked, looking conscious, as if he considered making a proposal.

Beth mustered her courage. “I saw a chessboard in the stern cabin.”

“Do you play?” he asked, curious.

“A little.”

“Why do I think you are a Trojan horse, Miss Rochewell?”

“Because no one who really plays chess only ‘a little’ would admit it?”

A tiny smile played about his lips. “Just so. Let us repair to the stern cabin. I wonder if you can give me a brisk game.”

She could, for she had played with her father for all those long equatorial evenings. But she began with a conservative opening. Boldness was for later. She could not help but notice that he wore some spicy scent, cinnamon and something more elusive. It did not fit with his austerity.

They played in silence. Beth wondered how she would broach any subject at all with her mysterious partner. Her eyes were drawn to the way his coat bulged over his biceps as he put his elbows on the table. He laid his cleft chin on his clasped hands, eyes on the board. Finally he glanced to her face. “You know the classic game. Are you capable of more?”

He moved his knight in a rogue attack, too early by far, on her queen, three—no, four moves out. She stared, sorting through the sequences engendered by each possible counterattack. Conservative play said she should block with her knight. But if she attacked with her rook she not only blocked but also set up a sequence that, if he complied, might weigh the balance in her favor. The flurry of taken pieces might distract him. She reached for the crenellated ivory.

Play accelerated. Both collected their downed opponents. The rush of play unfolded as each pursued a strategy that must collide, Beth knew.

There! He had allowed her queen the avenue required.

She moved.

He sucked in a breath, stopped. Seconds stretched. The climax loomed. One possibility . . .

He moved his king.

“Stalemate,” she said, letting go her pent-up breath. “You have robbed me.”

“But I could not win.”

“No,” she agreed, letting it be known she had expected that.

“So . . .” He pushed back from the table, glancing one final time at the board as if to retrieve some other outcome. “This voyage will allow scope for a rematch?”

“If you like.” She let her tone say, “If you dare.”

Behind him, Redding, the loblolly boy who had served her tea, looked in on them. “Miss Rochewell, Mr. Rufford, may I get you some lemon scrub, perhaps, before dinner?”

“Wine for me, I think, and Madeira for the lady,” Mr. Rufford responded.

Redding ducked his head and disappeared.

“I am surprised you did not order ratafia for me,” Beth observed, too sweetly.

He looked surprised. “You wanted wine? Madeira survives shipping in far better countenance than any claret.”

“Perhaps I wanted to choose for myself.” She scooped the pieces into their box.

He lounged back in his chair. “You are a strange creature, Miss Rochewell.”

“I have no doubt of that.” She was very well aware that she was not attractive. Was that what he meant by
strange
? She felt herself flushing as she put the box away. Behind her there was silence. But she could feel the physical presence of him. She glanced behind her and saw him flushing in return.

“My apologies,” he said in that sensuous baritone of his as he looked away. “I, of all people, have no right to call another strange.”

What could he mean? “Well,” she managed. “Perhaps we have our strangeness in common as well as our humanity.”

He looked up at her with a longing she found painful. “Perhaps not,” he whispered. He rose, as though he might flee.

Luckily or unluckily, Redding returned with the wine.
“Sorry, miss, Mr. Rufford, these particul’r bottles wa’n’t easy to come by, if you get my meaning.”

Rufford’s scruples apparently would not allow him to abandon her publicly. He sat on the edge of his chair while Redding poured. By the time Redding bowed out, Rufford had recovered his composure and Beth had decided that the mystery of Mr. Rufford was deeper than she had supposed.

He raised his glass. “To England, Miss Rochewell, and a quick voyage.”

“To England,” she returned, with rather less enthusiasm. She sat opposite him.

“Where do you call home in England?”

Beth watched his valiant effort at nonchalance, fascinated. Light from the swinging lamp moved across his form. What was it about him that was so . . . attractive? It was the way his body moved inside his clothes, perhaps. Or the thick column of his throat. The cleft chin? Maybe. The eyes, of course, the curling hair. She felt his presence almost viscerally, somewhere deep inside her. He seemed more physical than anyone she had ever known and . . . male, as Monsieur L’Bareaux or the camel drivers never had.

He raised his brows and she realized that he was waiting for some answer. What had he asked? Oh yes. “I . . . I don’t call anywhere in England home. I am bound for my aunt’s house in London. And that will surprise her immensely, so I can only hope my letter arrives before I do, so she may pretend a welcome.”