Quintspinner (25 page)

“Look! It’s her ‘fussy dance’, Da’. Do you see that?” William laughed at the doeling’s display. She stomped her delicate front hooves in a furious rhythm on the deck and punctuated the maneuver with a series of short snorts that sounded for all the world like a human sneezing. “Rain squall’ll be coming up shortly, then,” he remarked and checked the skies for telltale cloud masses developing anywhere along the horizon. “I’ll tell the captain.”

“Ya-a,” his father replied as he scooped the small animal up, and set her up on the top of a large crate. Gerta loved to be on high surfaces and had climbed nearly every available solid surface on the ship.

William watched his father as the man produced a simple boar-hair brush from his waistband satchel and began to groom his young charge, patiently brushing the tangles out of her silky coal black coat until it shone. Such tenderness was in direct contrast to the gruff demeanor Da’ showed toward crew members.

In her friskiness, Gerta attempted to rear up and butt her head against Da’s stomach. John Robert instantly grabbed the goat’s legs and flipped her onto her side, pinning her firmly to the crate top with one hand.

“Na-ah-agh!” he admonished her and waved the index finger of his other hand back and forth. The kid lay still, her eyes locked onto John Robert’s hand. Slowly, he lifted his other hand from her chest and she jerked her head and neck up as though attempting to right herself.

“Na-ah-agh!” he repeated with another wave of his finger. Gerta lay back, perfectly still except for the impatient flicking of her tiny tail. His father grinned at William and then returned his attention to the goat.

“Wah-ap!” he commanded and curled his fingers into the palm of his hand. In a flash, the she-goat was back on her feet, calmly rubbing her head against his leg, as if to assure her keeper that she bid him no ill will at all for his discipline he had inflicted upon her. William gawked in amazement, stunned by a revelation.

Hand signals. Of course!
It was the very answer William had been searching for.

The crowding aboard presented the happy opportunity for sailors to observe their female passengers more frequently and from a much closer vantage point than normally would have occurred. Encouraged by Captain Crowell, Smith began to pick up skills in navigation, and a lesson in learning how to use a backstaff provided William and Smith with the ideal cover. Holding the instrument up to shoulder level they took turns staring at the horizon through its slits. It was perfect luck that Tess and Cassie Willoughby often stood at the railing directly in the sightline between the backstaff and the ocean’s distant edge. Navigation practice took on a whole new level of concentration at such times.

“Gawd, she’s a beauty,” Smith murmured under his breath. “Have ya’ ever seen such beauty all in one place? What I wouldn’t give to be able to touch her skin an’ hair, just once.”

“It’d be the last thing you touched,” William countered good-naturedly. “Haven’t you seen the doctor’s collection of sharp–very sharp–cutting tools?”

“Just a wish, me boy, just a wish.” Smith feigned looking at the horizon again.

“Didn’t you hear? She’s engaged.”

Smith lowered the backstaff and cocked a questioning eyebrow. “Just who are ya’ talkin’ about?”

“Well, Tess, of course. She’s beautiful alright but above anything either of us will ever amount to in life. On shore, the likes of us would never even be allowed in the same room as her.”

“’Taint the engaged one what stirs me,” Smith asserted and raised the backstaff again. “An’ I’ll look all I like. Just ‘cause I’m poor don’t mean I’m blind.”

“Mr. Smith!” Captain Crowell’s unmistakable voice rang out.

Smith snapped to attention. “Sir!”

“It is impressive to see you so diligently studying new found navigational skills. But perhaps it is time to change duties for awhile, lest you … strain your eyes.” Captain Crowell allowed a small smile to show. “And Mr. Taylor, I feel it would be in the best interest of all aboard to release some building tensions between the two crews. What think you if we were to have some song and dance tonight?”

“Yessir!” William replied stiffly.

“You have retained possession of your instrument?”

“I have, Sir!”

“Gather any who have musical abilities. From both sides. I shall have the event announced.” The captain was about to turn away, when he added, “I myself am fond of the way the sun looks as it sets upon the horizon. But it is best not to stare too long at any one spot, lest one were to get burned.”

No crew member from the
Mary Jane would
respond to William’s inquiry as to the availability of a fiddler among them, the
Argus’s
man having been one of the casualties. Their superstitious fear of his webbed digits was obvious. Few even acknowledged him.

Fine. It’ll be just me and the drum then. And there’ll be all the more rum for those of us having a bit of fun.
The crew’s apparent resentment of their new brethren from the
Argus
frustrated William. He stomped away from the men manning the afternoon watch.
Don’t you realize we were along to offer protection to you, you useless buggering arse-lickin’ sods?
He stopped in his tracks.
We? Gawd. I’m even thinking like a tar now.

Edward Graham was not a patient man. There had been no event in his life so far for which he had been content to sit back and wait for it to happen. It was best to aggressively pursue what a man wanted in life. Waiting was a tactic of the cowardly, a tactic of those who were unsure of their goals, uncertain of themselves.

Edward was none of those. His ambitions were strong, scarcely hidden. He was a royal courtier to the Prince of Wales, who was, in turn, the man next in line to be King of the British Empire! And Edward intended to be First Advisor and the most valued consult to the royal position when that happened.

His plans had been coming along nicely, almost too good to be true, when Prince George had heard tell of a seer. Men of Parliament and of the court spoke of her. An old woman with powers of uncanny prophesy. Edward had been instructed to seek her out; and he had dutifully, if reluctantly, done so, armed with a list of inquiries from the Prince. Edward had been sent on such visits more and more frequently, and on several occasions the Prince had even acted on the old bat’s advice, taking it over Edward’s. Jealousy did not befit him, he knew–she was a commoner after all, a mere beggar–but he could not tame the rising urge to rid his world of the Crone each time her advice proved worthy and true.

However, her reassurances to the Prince on the appointment of Lord Chamberlain as godfather to the Prince’s son had gone badly. Being banished by the King from the royal residence and forbidden to take the children–their own children!–with them to Leicester House was nearly unbearable to Prince George and his wife, Catherine. An intolerable outcome to them perhaps, but to Edward it was a stroke of extremely good luck.

He had nearly pissed himself in giddy anticipation when the Prince had ordered Edward to sever all ties with the Crone. It had been Edward’s own idea to return to her miserable abode to exact retribution. The blame, after all, fell squarely on her shoulders. And besides, he had, by then, noticed her ring.

If she, upon hearing about her great misjudgment, could have been bullied into handing it over to him, well then, he would have had no intention of delivering it to anyone. He had been passed over on several occasions, his own council having been shamefully ignored in favor of that ragamuffin’s, his ego sorely wounded each time.

The ring should have been his. It was the least he was owed. Who could have known the old hag would have been willing to put up such a fight to prevent him from having it? And then to have been attacked from behind and to have had to leave empty-handed with nothing but a serious head wound to show for his visit! He should have known that such unsavory quarters might be harboring thugs.

Thank God Charles Willoughby was a skilled doctor who also knew the value of discretion, especially within royal circles. He had asked only a minimal amount of questions regarding Edward’s acquisition of the wound, and had not pressed for any further details. It had been the result of Edward’s well-placed suggestion that the doctor had been offered the tempting position as the chief physician in the West Indies. The placement would seem like a gift from Edward, and yet it would relocate the doctor, along with his knowledge of the few details of Edward’s attack, far from the ears of any court spies. Edward considered it to be a prudent suggestion. Just in case.

He had despaired of ever seeing the ring again. There had been a slight chance that it would surface again sometime in the future, a bobble on the hand of somebody’s mistress or adorning the finger of an imported, politically-placed wife perhaps, but he doubted it. He had thought it was lost to him. And then! To have been assigned by the King himself to sail upon this wretched vessel, chosen to be the royal representative overseeing the ongoing rebuilding of Port Royal in Jamaica–why, it was as though he too, were being banished. The fact that Prince George had given his word to Edward that he would be sent for and returned to England just as soon as possible, had done nothing to lessen his despondency.

The night he had taken supper with the captain and the officers, however, was the night that he was catapulted back up to the very top of his world. He could not believe his eyes. The doctor’s daughter. She wore the ring.
The very one!

And now she was officially going to be his. She was young, well-educated, lovely to look at, and, her father had confidentially assured him, a virgin. Edward was delighted. She was the perfect package. She was his. Along with her ring. Soon to be
his
ring.

Edward paced impatiently on the open deck. The damned sun was getting hot and he longed to retreat into the shade of his cabin, but dared not, in case Tess should emerge from hers and he would miss her appearance. Prickly sweat tickled him along his hairline before rolling down his neck and soaking into his fine ruffled shirt.

How long is it going to take for her to wake up this time?
He’d begun to look forward to their daily strolls around the deck together. And she was keeping him waiting longer than usual this time.

He’d kept his annoyance hidden from the doctor, that his betrothed had been drugged with an obviously large dose of laudanum in her celebratory glass of brandy, and that her daily drinks had continued to be laced with more of the same. Edward had wanted Tess to be awake, alert. The doctor had explained that in view of the fact that Tess and Edward had not met prior to the engagement, and had not had a chance to exchange even polite conversation, she would be understandably caught off guard by her engagement to him. The doctor had wanted her to receive and accept the news with a tranquil state of mind, easily produced by the tonic.

Edward had given some thought to this. Perhaps the doctor was right. Perhaps, if she were not so anxious, she would agree to marry him on the ship. He saw no advantage to waiting for a wedding blessing on land. Besides, he was keen to bed his new wife. To explore her lithe body with his own. To teach her things of pleasure. To feel her warm, firm flesh yielding under his hands…. He felt his own flesh firming as he thought of her.

His impatience was growing. In fact he was sure that the captain could and would perform the ceremony on board that very day, if the doctor were willing to have it so. Edward would do what he could to make it so.