Velvet (28 page)

“Inspired.” Gabrielle sat on the deck, leaning her back against the rail.

“No utensils, I’m afraid. We’ll have to drink from the bottle and use my pocket knife for cutting.” Nathaniel produced the knife as he handed the cognac to Gabrielle. He cut a V into the golden raised crust of the pie.

Jake listened to the sounds of the picnic. He could smell the food and the nose-tingling aroma of the cognac. He was cold and hungry. His father’s voice sounded quite different from normal—gay, lighthearted, full of laughter. Gabby spoke with her mouth full, choked, Papa patted her on the back, and they both laughed. It didn’t sound as if they could ever be cross. Jake half rose from his cramped crouch, but his nerve failed him and he shrank back again.

“We’re rounding the Needles.” Nathaniel stood up and reached a hand down to pull Gabrielle to her feet. “Vicious, aren’t they?”

The water boiled around the row of jagged rocks obtruding from the tip of the Isle of Wight. Gabrielle shivered and drew her cloak tighter around her shoulders. The moon had disappeared again and the beacon in the lighthouse glowed strong in the darkness. The mournful clanging of the warning bell carried across the water.

“I’ve never made this crossing,” she said. “I’ve always
crossed from Dover to Calais and vice versa. It seems a lot less wild.”

They were leaving the Isle of Wight and the sheltered Solent behind. The wind blew stronger now and the sea had lost its docile quality, stretching ahead and around in a rolling expanse of white-capped surges. The fishing boat seemed to ride the waves with ease, Gabrielle noted with some relief, running a mental check over the state of her stomach. It occurred to her that a greedy supper had perhaps been unwise.

“Let’s go below,” Nathaniel said. “It’s getting chilly and it’s late. We should try to snatch a couple of hours sleep.”

“That cot’s very narrow,” Gabrielle demurred, but allowed herself to be urged toward the companionway.

“You can have it, I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“That’ll be horribly uncomfortable.”

“I’ve been more so,” he said. “In general, I can sleep anywhere.”

Jake listened to their voices fading away as they disappeared below. Despite his fear of discovery, he’d found their proximity comforting. His clothes were damp with the sea spray and he could taste salt on his lips, mingling with the salt of his tears. Unutterable loneliness washed over him between the dark, unfriendly sea and the cloud-thick sky.

In his wretched self-absorption he didn’t hear the footsteps until they were upon him. “What the ’ell ’ave we ’ere!”

The violent exclamation brought a cry of terror from the child, who shrank back against the railing. A man towered over him, huge in his britches and sailor’s jersey, very like Jake’s own. Hands reached down and seized the boy beneath his armpits and hauled him ungently into the air.

“You know what we do wi’ stowaways?” the rough voice demanded. “We make ’em swim fer shore.”

For a second Jake was held dangling over the railing
and his shrill scream split the night air.
“Gabby … Gabby!”
He yelled the one name that meant salvation at the top of his lungs.

“What on earth is that racket?” Nathaniel, in the process of helping Gabrielle pull off her boots, dropped her foot abruptly and turned to the companionway. He stuck his head through the hatch. “What’s going on?”

“Beggin’ yer pardon, sir, but we’ve got ourselves a stowaway.” The sailor held up the kicking, screaming child.

“Gabby!” Jake shrieked again. “I want Gabby.”

“Dear God in heaven,” Nathaniel whispered. “Joke!”

“You know the lad, sir?”

“My son,” Nathaniel said quietly. “Give him to me.”

“I want Gabby,” Jake continued to bellow in pure hysteria, and suddenly she was there, pushing Nathaniel aside as she squeezed through the narrow hatch.

“Jake.” She held out her arms and, as the sailor set the boy on his feet, he ran sobbing to her.

“All right,” she said, stroking his head. “It’s all right. I’ve got you. It’s all right.”

Nathaniel stood, watching. It seemed as if this had nothing to do with him, but it was
his
son. Gabrielle had known the child only a few weeks, and it was as if his father didn’t exist.

She was curved over the child, her body in a graceful arc of comfort, her hair escaping from its pins, falling forward, blending with his son’s fair curls. And it came to him that even if she
had
used the child in her scheming, the warmth and closeness between them was genuine. Gabrielle loved his son.

“I’m right sorry, sir,” the sailor was saying, pulling on his earlobe. “I don’t know ’ow ’e could ’ave got aboard.”

“Well have to turn back,” Nathaniel instructed. “Immediately.”

“Can’t do that, sir. Tide and wind are runnin’ agin us. Well never make it back round the Needles.”

Nathaniel produced a string of barnyard oaths that impressed even the two fishermen. Jake’s sobs had faded to heaving gulps, but his head remained buried in Gabrieile’s skirts.

“Get below,” Nathaniel commanded harshly with a brusque gesture to Gabrielle.

“Come along, Jake.” She chivvied the child ahead of her to the companionway, climbed down first, and then lifted him down after her.

Nathaniel jumped the short flight, his face taut with anger. “Come here!” He snapped his fingers at his son, who still clung to Gabrieile’s leg, his face buried in her skirt.

Jake’s wails increased in volume, but he made no move to obey.

Nathaniel’s breath hissed through his teeth as he struggled with his anger. “Gabrielle, let him go. I want you to go on deck, please,” he said, his voice now flat and without emotion.

Gabrielle looked down at the fair, curly head pressing against her thigh. She looked up at Nathaniel, then, with calm resolution, bent and picked up Jake.

“You have every right to scold him,” she said to Nathaniel. “He needs to understand how much trouble he’s caused. But hold him while you do it.”

She thrust the child at his father, and Nathaniel in reflex action put out his arms. He found himself holding the boy tightly against his chest. They both looked so astonished at this novel position that, despite the dire circumstances, Gabrielle was hard pressed to keep a straight face as she left them alone.

“Hell and the devil,” Nathaniel muttered, examining his son’s white face held so close to his own. “Just what in the name of goodness did you think you were doing?”

Jake’s face crumpled and his mouth opened on a round O in preparation for a fresh wail.

“Don’t start bawling again,” Nathaniel said sharply. “At this point, my friend, you have nothing to cry about. I can’t guarantee that happy state of affairs will continue, but I suggest you reserve your tears for when they might do you some good.”

Jake’s mouth snapped shut, and he held himself rigid in his father’s arms, his brown eyes fixed unwaveringly on Nathaniel.

“How did you manage to get here?” Nathaniel demanded after a moment’s contemplation of the ramifications of this disastrous arrival. “I want to know exactly how you did it.” He shifted the child in his arms and then sat on the cot, holding him somewhat awkwardly on his knee.

Jake stumbled through his narrative, his voice still thick with tears that he effortfully controlled.

“Good God,” Nathaniel murmured at story’s end. This was the child who chose to draw pictures in the gravel rather than climb trees, who screamed in terror on the back of a pony bigger than a Shetland, who seemed incapable of opening his mouth beyond a monosyllabic answer to a direct question. Jake’s courage and ingenuity in this instance astonished his father. That however, didn’t alter the seriousness of the situation.

“How do you think Nurse and Miss Primmer are going to feel in the morning, when they go to the nursery and you’re not there?”

Jake didn’t reply, but the tears now tracked slowly and soundlessly down his cheeks.

“You didn’t think about that, did you? They’re going to be worried out of their minds wondering what’s happened to you.”

“You’re sending Primmy away,” Jake whispered, gulping. “And I want to be with Gabby.”

“Yes, well, I can see your point,” Nathaniel muttered. “It seems to run in the family.” He leaned back against the bulkhead, holding the child lightly, rather surprised at his own sense of humor in the face of this catastrophe.

A shiver suddenly shook the small body and Nathaniel became aware of the child’s damp clothing, the hair clinging to his forehead from the sea spray, it was also long past midnight.

“You’d better go to bed,” he said, standing up with the child. “There’s nothing to be done about this for the moment.” He set Jake on his feet and pulled the damp jersey over his head, “You’d better get out of those trousers too.”

He stood, frowning, as the child obediently fumbled with the buttons of his nankeen britches. “Here, let me do it.” Bending, he swiftly divested the boy of the garment, then wrapped him securely in the blanket from the cot.

“Warmer now?”

Jake nodded, huddling into the coarse wool. He was too shocked and overwhelmed by the events of the night to be aware of the novelty of his father’s attentions. Nathaniel picked him up and deposited him on the cot and he curled onto his side, snug in the folds of the blanket.

Nathaniel stood looking down at him for a minute, his frown more one of puzzlement than anger. Then he turned and went back on deck.

Gabrielle stood at the deck rail, wrapped in her cloak against the rising wind. “Well?” she asked as he came to stand beside her.

“I put him to bed. I’m afraid he’s usurped the cot.”

“That’s all right. I’m not tired anyway. Is he all right?”

“Cold and wet and exhausted, I think.”

“Hardly surprising.” She paused for a minute, then said hesitantly, “Did you punish him?”

Nathaniel shook his head. “It’d be both superfluous and pointless in the circumstances, don’t you think?”

“Oh, yes,” she agreed, “I just wasn’t sure how you would feel.”

“I could wish you hadn’t bewitched my son,” he said, staring moodily over the rail at the dark, heaving mass of the sea.

“That’s hardly fair,” Gabrielle protested, but without anger. She could well understand Nathaniel’s present dismay.

“Isn’t it?” He turned to look at her, and that piercing, troubling intensity was in his gaze again.

“I don’t know what you mean,” She sounded puzzled and uneasy.

Nathaniel pulled himself up sharply. He shook his head, passing a hand wearily over his eyes. “I don’t mean anything, really. I was just lashing out. Sorry.”

Gabrielle nodded her comprehension. “What are you going to do with him?”

“I don’t have much choice,” Nathaniel said flatly. “He’ll have to come with us.”

“Can’t you simply turn back with him when we reach Cherbourg?”

Nathaniel shook his head. “The boat’s not going back immediately. Dan, the skipper, is an enterprising fellow. He’ll potter down the Brittany coast and sail back probably from St. Malo in a week or two, laden to the gunwales with barrels of brandy and any other contraband that comes his way.”

“But won’t it be dangerous for Jake in Paris?”

“Yes,” he said. “But there’s a particular safe house where he won’t cause any undue remark. On the journey, he can travel with you, protected by your
laissez passer
. No one’s going to be interested in a child.”

“Maybe we can make it all a game for him,” Gabrielle said thoughtfully. “It might not be so alarming for him.”

“I don’t see what you mean.”

“Well, he’s very imaginative. He plays games in his head all the time. I think it’s common with only children. He creates very elaborate scenarios, too, very detailed and precise. He’s described some of them to me. They’re very impressive. He’s a bright little lad.”

Nathaniel didn’t look impressed at the thought of his son’s fantasy life. “I don’t see that it makes much difference whether he sees it as a game or not. The sooner we get to Paris, the sooner I can hide him properly, so we’ll be traveling day and night.”

The assertion of a spymaster rather than a father, Gabrielle reflected. Nathaniel obviously had no conception of what it would be like to travel bumpy roads without respite in the company of a six-year-old. However, she said only, “Let’s go below. The wind’s getting up.”

There was nothing but the floor to sit on in the bare cabin with its swinging lantern and bolted-down table. Gabrielle noticed with a faint grimace that someone
had thoughtfully provided a slop pail in the corner for whatever relief the Curfew’s passengers might need. There was no possibility of privacy. Not for the first time she reflected that the world had been arranged to suit men.

Nathaniel put his arm around her, and she rested her head on his shoulder as the boat creaked around them and the lantern threw its menacing shadows.

She had been dozing for half an hour, when the motion of the boat changed dramatically. The pail slid across the floor, crashing against the far bulkhead. Her stomach dipped and she groaned.

“I’m going to have to go on deck in the fresh air,” she whispered. Jake suddenly wailed, sat up with his eyes still shut, and clutched his stomach.