A Different Sort of Perfect (26 page)

And she never spoke the man's name. Not once, in all
that account, did she use anything beyond masculine pronouns,
general terms, and a dreamy, still-desperate expression. Or was she
distracted? Difficult to say.

Of course, she was tired, too; no one had slept
deeply since the storm had struck, not with that sound and fury
surrounding the frigate. The hanging chair seemed rumpled, and
perhaps she'd rested there, rather than in her appointed place.
Keeping herself handy in case of need? It wasn't as if Hennessy
couldn't feed the staff, although her willingness was touching.

Somewhere during their voyage, he'd become fond of
her — as well as lecherous, he had to admit. Her imprecise
description concerned him. It sounded as if she barely knew the
man, and if so, how could she possibly be in love with him?

Finally her words died away, as if she could find
nothing else to say. He'd finished his dinner, warmed his hands
with coffee and his belly with toasted cheese, and it was time for
him to return to duty. But Abbot held the deck with both mids to
second him, and the smells of coffee, wine, meat, and somewhat
frowzy female combined in a pleasant, home-like manner. He'd never
dawdled nor shirked his duty before, not even as a sea-green
midshipman. Surely the world owed him a few minutes now.

One last mouthful, and she drained her wineglass. Her
throat lengthened as she leaned back her head and rippled as she
swallowed, a slow, languorous movement like a stretching cat, and
her eyes again drifted closed. If nothing else, describing her
Frenchman had soothed her, or perhaps that credit should go to the
Bordeaux. She set the glass on the table and sat still, the ship's
gymnastics rocking her relaxed body and thrown-back head, breath
after deep breath lifting her breasts before lowering them. The
lantern's light made her translucent skin glow antique gold, like
the satin on the cabin furniture. If he stretched out his
fingers—

He was in danger. Grave danger. And she wasn't safe,
either.

"I believe the storm's lessening." Her voice equaled
her movements, lazy and content. It jolted him. Never mind that
nothing could happen, aboard a ship one hundred forty-five feet
long and thirty-six feet nine inches abeam, that wasn't instantly
gossiped about from stem post to stern. They were alone, man to
woman, with his baser instincts aroused, and nothing good could
come of it.

No matter how exhausted he was.

He rose. The chair scraped across the deckboards, too
loud as the storm drew breath. "I must return to the deck."

Her eyelids fluttered, opened. Those eyes, dark and
more liquid than the swelling sea, captured him, held him. Blast
the unknown and indecipherable Frenchman. If he leaned over her
now—

He cleared his throat and felt like the fool he was.
"Pray excuse me."

* * * *

Captain Fleming fled.

The silence had felt so comfortable, so intimate and
natural. Soothing. As if she'd been cosseted in a soft blanket, in
a warmed bed, in goose-down pillows.

And he'd fled. He'd risen, excused himself, and
fled.

Dratted, frustrating man.

Clara swiped his glass, tossed off his last swallow
of that wonderful, wonderful wine, and let
Topaze
's roll
carry her away to bed. Hennessy caught the decanter before it
toppled over the fiddle to the deck, but even through the storm's
tiring tantrum, the crystal tinkle of a shattering glass was
clear.

It was the stillness that woke her.

The first red edge of dawn christened the sea through
the now open gunport. But no holystones rumbled overhead, no water
rustled along the ship's side, and the sleeping cabin didn't tilt
around her, the hanging cot not even gently swaying but hanging
indeed, straight and steady. They were becalmed, the storm over.
Good; they'd have time and a level deck for refitting. Surely some
rope had broken and something had been carried away during the
preceding madness.

Clara threw aside the bedclothes and sat up,
wriggling her bare feet on the cool, damp boards and stretching her
arms up into the cot's lines. Below decks a pounding began, mallets
on wood in an uneven rhythm. The carpenter and his mates, starting
on something. Had the storm opened a seam, cracking the ship like
an eggshell? Not likely;
Topaze
was a well-founded,
weatherly ship, no matter how wet. But something needed repairing,
that was clear.

She dressed quickly, twisted her hair into a simple
knot, and ran on deck, eager with a tingling anticipation as the
sun pushed its bottom rim over the distant, invisible African
horizon. The hard slanting light turned the ocean metallic gold
around the
Topaze,
a still surface reflecting the sun's
squashed-orange shape and adding sharp, jagged edges. The stillness
extended, it seemed to the ends of the earth, except — she leaned
over the starboard quarterdeck rail for a clearer view — except due
south, more than a league beyond the figurehead's face. There the
storm still loomed, a black tantrum crawling along and hiding the
path ahead, opaque to her peering. Was that a flash of lightning,
somewhere deep beneath those impenetrable clouds? It was impossible
to say.

But the storm's passing left
Topaze
in peace.
And for all its solid-seeming bulk, the storm moved faster than the
frigate at her finest, leaving no chance they'd run into it again
no matter they traveled the same pathway. Clara sucked in as much
clean salt air as her lungs could hold. The morning sun warmed her
back, the calm stretched around her, widening like an expanding
gondola balloon, and the peace within her stretched to fill it.

Overhead, the storm stays'l had vanished. Only the
maincourse and a jib were set and they hung limp, a lone breath of
air rattling the sailcloth. The masts, yards, and rigging were
alive with reefers knotting and splicing. In the foretop, David
Mayne nodded and smiled to her, his hands never pausing; on the
fo'c'sle, Jeremiah Wake touched grave, gnarled fingers to his
greying curls and bowed his head in greeting.

One sailor, wearing dirty old trousers and a ragged
Guernsey frock, standing on the maintop as if balancing on the
mast, waved and swung himself onto the backstay, sliding down more
like a monkey than a civilized Christian being. Golden curls shone
in the unforgiving morning light. The sailors at each level glanced
at him in passing but didn't pause in their work, and then he
thumped onto the quarterdeck, not a yard away, doffing his sennit
hat.

"Lady Clara."

She bobbed a not-quite-serious curtsey. "Good
morning, Captain Fleming. How goes the reefing?"

"The preventer backstays all held and the masts all
stayed standing." A silly smile creased his patrician face and he
rested one hand on the wooden taffrail. "A few more hours, and she
should be — well, not good as new, but good as possible without the
assistance of a well-founded dockyard and a crew of skilled
workers."

It was impossible not to smile with him. No matter
how well she remembered their mutual fire and the presence of the
invisibly interested crew all around. "And the wind? Shall it
oblige us, do you think?"

His smile twisted into something rueful. It still
looked silly, out of place, and most unusual, rather as if he had a
pain and sought to hide it. But a growing intensity in his eyes,
behind the silliness, made her shiver. "There's no guarantee, of
course, and we have had the most extraordinary weather south of the
Line this cruise." One hand snaked out and scratched the backstay
he'd just slid down. "But I've never known the southeast trades to
remain obstinate for long."

"What on earth are you doing?"

His fingers froze. "I beg your pardon?"

"To the backstay, sir?"

Fleming yanked his hand away and clasped it behind
his back. Then he laughed, self-conscious and in full awareness of
being caught. "It's another sailor's superstition, I'm afraid.
Scratch a backstay and whistle for a wind. The old-time
fo'castlemen swear it never fails."

"And you? Does it work for you?"

His smile died. He eyed her, at first with soft
puzzlement crowding out the intensity, then with a growing
wariness. "Well, it generally brings up a wind of some sort. But
not always the one I'd intended."

He couldn't possibly mean her, could he? The little
shiver returned, bringing tingles to her arms, as if she'd felt a
chill. Clara turned back to the starboard rail and leaned over the
ocean's mirror. Her face stared back, her expression unreadable,
guarded, confused. A gentle ripple shuddered across the reflection,
a cat's paw of wind sighing past, and again something flickered,
surly and distant, in the heart of the receding storm.

"Is that lightning, do you think?"

He leaned on the rail behind her, peering over her
head. Their arms touched; he made an abrupt withdrawal, as a
gentleman should. So why did she feel that wistful pang?

"Where away?"

"Dead ahead." Awkward choice of words, considering.
"See? There it is again, light flickering into darkness. But the
light isn't really all that bright and I don't hear any thunder."
She was afraid to say it, afraid to sound silly. But the flickers
seemed more crimson than white, as if the raging storm had cut
itself with its fury and now it bled into the sea.

"Quiet on deck!" Fleming yelled, in a voice
calculated to reach the jibboom and foretop. The muttering,
clacking, and rustling all ceased. But the hammering below
continued. Staunton vanished down the fore hatchway with a flick of
blue tailcoats and a moment later silence reigned. It was a strange
sort of silence, no longer calming but electric, waiting for the
next flash. Clara shivered again, more chilled than ever. Beside
her, Fleming leaned far out over the still water, a vertical line
between his eyes and the tails of his eyebrows tightly drawn down.
Nobody seemed to breathe.

Heartbeats later the flicker came again, clearer this
time, perhaps nearer and closer to the storm's outer edge. And
reddish, definitely reddish. The distant rumble reached them long
seconds later. Fleming straightened.

"That's cannon fire."

Cannon fire.

The boyish delight he'd felt at his ship's survival
blew apart and died away. Fleming leaned further over the railing,
peering around the halo of Lady Clara's hair and straining to
pierce the receding storm's secret heart. The crimson flickered
again, not in the same place but off to the right and somewhat
lower, and this time it traveled not left to right but right to
left. Two ships, one larger than the other, firing broadside to
broadside. Fighting for their lives.

It could be anything — a slave ship hindered by the
storm and brought deservedly to bay, a whaler desperate to hang
onto its catch against a privateer, an Indiaman that sailed ahead
of the announced schedule. But a cold certainty settled in the pit
of Fleming's stomach. The ship on the right seemed remarkably low,
more like a sloop or brig than a proper ship, and its flickers were
smaller and sharper-sounding, as if from four- or eight-pounders.
Not every vessel of such modest size would put up a serious fight
if set upon by a more massive enemy, but the little one buried in
the sea-level clouds ahead fought like a tiger brought to bay.

It could only be Lamble and the
Flirt.
Higher
gunports in the other ship meant a frigate, most likely French,
possibly Spanish. The only such ship he knew of in the area was
Armide.

He could be wrong. But his guts said otherwise.

The storm was moving faster than the embattled ships
and would soon pass beyond them; he'd know more, and more
certainly, when that revealing event took place. Until the
capricious trade winds resumed their duty, he had no chance of
joining the fray. In the meantime, he had a battered frigate to
prepare for combat, so it could be ripped to shreds again.

"Mr. Abbot?"

"Aye, sir?"

"How fast can our reefers go?"

The hands cheered, a savage snarl of voices. The
clattering and banging resumed, redoubled. Abbot's response, no
matter how correct nor possibly clever, drowned beneath the surge
of noise.

And there was Lady Clara, standing against the
quarterdeck railing. The morning sunlight blazed down, hard and
pitiless as the flickering cannon fire flashing across the still
ocean. She stood motionless, contained and reserved, controlled
rather than brave. His heart thudded once, painfully loud, then
settled back into its usual steady rhythm. Perhaps a bit faster
than normal.

"What can I do?" she asked.

His mind formed the words, "Get below," and his mouth
opened to say them. But his voice had more sense and refused to
cooperate. If he ordered her to safety, how likely was she to obey?
She'd obeyed every order he'd given her during the entire cruise.
But their relationship had changed somewhere among the Atlantic
swells, changed from the distance between a captain and a crew
member to something more. Closer to friendship? Impossible to say.
But the change meant he'd only be able to wield his authority once.
Then he could expect questions. Or anger.

Or, if he insisted upon acting the captain and forced
her behavior, their relationship would change again.

Not a step he was yet willing to take.

"For now, take notes." He unsnapped the repeater's
chain from his waistcoat and handed the pocket watch to her. "Keep
track of events and the exact times they happen. Begin with our
sighting the cannon fire, about one minute ago."

Her granite control eased and she nodded. "I'll need
supplies." She turned, ran down the after hatchway, and her topknot
vanished below.