Windswept (25 page)

Jacob turned a quarter way around so he could clearly see into his first mate’s eyes. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you Willy?”

“A wee bit, Captain.”

Jacob snorted. “Enjoy it while you can, because the truth is I’m glad she’s staying on her side of the ship. And I’m happy to stay on mine. It’s the way I want it. The way it has to be.”

“Right, Captain.”

He peered beyond Will’s purposefully deadpan face just enough to see Nora’s profile from the corner of his eye. She had a book open in her lap and she looked calm and serene and shatteringly lovely. Jacob pressed his hand against the deck rail hard enough to stick a splinter into his palm. It was all he could do not to shout with frustration. How dare she appear so at peace with the world when his insides were coiled tighter than a seaman’s knot?

“Hurt yourself, Jacob?” Will asked.

He pulled the splinter out of his palm and shook his hand to relieve the smarting. “No. I wonder what she’s reading.”

“
Ivanhoe
.”

“How do you know that?”

“She saw it in your cabin and fancied it. Quigley retrieved it for her last night.”

“I might have known.” Temptation got the best of him and he risked a long, deliberate look down the passageway.
Ivanhoe
was nestled cozily among the pleats of Nora’s dress. Her gaze was intent upon its cream colored pages, and her hands rested almost lovingly on its sides.

Jacob winced. He had to snap out of this mood. He was dangerously close to being jealous of a book!

Will nudged him. “Looks like your problem with Nora could be solved, Jacob.”

Following the line of site indicated by Will’s index finger, Jacob spotted a ship in the southeast. It was heading toward them…heading north.

“All right. That’s more like it,” he said.

They both watched as the ship came closer. “It’s a steamer,” Will pointed out.

“I see that. It’s probably a mail packet,” Jacob said without enthusiasm.

“That’s perfect. It means it’s going to several ports, and Key West is surely to be one of them. What luck, eh, Jacob?”

Jacob flashed a look meant to dispel his mate from making any more such ridiculous statements. “We can’t put her on a packet, Will. They don’t carry passengers. Would you want her sailing with only men? Would you have her stop at every watering hole between here and Key West?”

Will scratched his chin. “I guess I wouldn’t.”

The packet steamed by. Nora continued reading.

In the next hour another ship appeared on the horizon. When it was still some distance away, Jacob eliminated it as a possibility for Nora’s transport. “It’s only a two-masted bark,” he said. “She’ll be a week getting back to her family on that bucket.”

Will scratched his chin again. “I guess that’s possible.”

The slow and steady bark sailed by. Nora continued reading.

The third ship of the morning was cast aside as being too small, though Will estimated its length as no more than ten feet less than the
Dover Cloud
’
s
.

“Still,” Jacob said, “there have been times when I’ve wished the
Cloud
had been longer. She’d have handled better in a gale.”

“Aye, Captain.”

A Dutch vessel that from all appearances was totally seaworthy was deemed unsuitable because its crew was, of all things, Dutch. “I can’t put her on a ship where she doesn’t speak the crews’ language,” Jacob declared. “After all, look at all she’s demanded from this crew. She’d be lost if she couldn’t order everyone about.”

The four-masted Dutch barkentine sailed by with grace and speed. Nora looked up from her book, cast a brief, questioning look at Jacob, and shook her head.

It was nearly noon when a schooner that could almost be called the sister ship of the
Dover Cloud
came into view. She was of identical length and width, similarly fitted, and was a ship that both Jacob and Will knew.

“Look there, Jacob,” Will said jubilantly. “It’s the
Sea Hound
from New Orleans."

Jacob squinted into the sun. “Can you be sure?”

“Of course. Look at her house flag. It’s got the black mastiff. It’s the
Sea Hound
for certain.”

Jacob couldn’t deny it. The ship heading right for them was the very one that sailed monthly from New Orleans to trade for pottery and silver trinkets in Venezuela. She always carried a respectable cargo and several passengers, and she usually came within a mile of Key West when she headed into the Gulf of Mexico for home. Her capable captain, Monty Vasquez, was a U.S. born Spaniard who spoke perfect English.

Jacob watched the
Sea Hound
draw closer and tried to ignore a sinking feeling that descended to the pit of his stomach. He looked at Nora and realized she was watching him. Her eyebrows raised dubiously, and her lips slanted in a teasing grin before she finally said, “Is this ship suitable, Captain?”

The only thing worse than seeing the woman go was being made to feel like a fool by her. Jacob suffered both the misery and the indignity at that moment. “Yes, Nora. It’s quite suitable,” he snapped at her. “You may grab a seaman’s bag from my wardrobe and pack it with as many of my clothes as you think you might need. Include any books from my shelves that might entertain you, and all the slices of ham you can eat, and prepare to go home.”

She stood up, slammed the book shut with a crack and sauntered past him toward his cabin. “That’s music to my ears, Captain.”

He turned away from her and barked an order to Will. “Hoist the yellow and blue. Let Vasquez know I want to speak to him.”

The rasp of heavy rope sliding along wood filtered through the small window in Jacob’s cabin. Probably the anchor being lowered, Nora thought, flinging open the door to his wardrobe. Without analyzing her actions, she followed Jacob’s instructions and took a canvas bag from a shelf and then stood in the middle of the room and simply stared at it.

“What in heaven’s name did you get this thing for?” she demanded of herself and flung the bag on the bed. “It’s not as if you truly have anything to pack!”

Then she followed the sack onto the bed, throwing herself into the downy softness of the feather mattress. “I don’t want to go,” she said to the empty room. She fell back against pillows that smelled of pine and sea spray, and Jacob. There was no denying the truth. She wanted to stay on the
Dover Cloud
. But more than that, she wanted Jacob to want her to stay.

I was so sure he was getting used to having me around, she thought. Especially after all that silly ship business.
This one’s too short. This one’s too slow.
I believed he was going to give up his plan of sending me home and let me stay, even insist upon it. But as usual, it was just Jacob being Jacob… impossible to fathom and as unpredictable as Key West weather.

Now she would never know where the
Dover Cloud
was headed. Damnation! What was so special about this place Jacob was going? Why was it such a big secret? Nora had tempted Jacob’s crew with some of Fanny’s best feminine wiles, and not one of the loyal sailors had told her what she wanted to know. Not one had hinted at so much as the country of their destination. Perhaps her execution of Fanny’s talents was pitifully inept, or maybe she was simply not enough like the women these sailors knew. It wasn’t fair. Not to a girl who had only known two places in her whole life…Richmond, Virginia, and Key West, Florida.

No, it definitely wasn’t fair. Not to a girl who had never once in her life known a man like Jacob Proctor. There was so much Nora wanted to discover, and now she probably never would.

The
Dover Cloud
had completely halted its graceful slicing through the ocean and now bobbed gently with the easy swells that cushioned its hull. They were obviously preparing to meet the
Sea Hound
. Nora stood up and placed the seaman’s bag back in Jacob’s wardrobe. She would go home with only what she had when she left.

“Nora, it’s time,” Jacob called through the door. “Would you come on deck?”

With a heavy sigh, she went to meet him.

Another ship, an equal to the
Dover Cloud
in almost every aspect, rested at anchor some hundred yards away. A black mastiff was clearly visible on its forward jib. “Is this the dog that is to carry me home?” she asked smartly.

Jacob smiled. “Yes, it is, and we’re lucky to have found a hound willing to take you.”

She answered his smile with a sweet one of her own. “When it comes to you, Captain, my luck seems never to change.”

Confusion marred his previously confident features for an instant before he shouted across the water to a man on the deck of the
Sea Hound
. “Ahoy, there! Is Captain Vasquez on board?”

“He is!”

“Good. We’re rowing over.” He next issued instructions to his crew. “Lower the boat and let go the ladder.”

Once these two tasks were complete, Jacob waited for Will to go down the ladder first. He followed him, but only descended three rungs before he told Nora to begin climbing down.

She stared at the flimsy webbing of rope that swayed precariously against the side of the ship. A person could easily lose footing just climbing over the edge of the deck and trying to fasten their toes on the first rung. Nora wasn’t anxious to try.

“Well, come on,” Jacob said with impatience. “What are you waiting for?”

She wanted to shout one of the colorful epithets she’d heard at the Key West Harbor, but knew it would do no good. Instead she gritted her teeth in preparation for her task and tried to decide if she should leave her eyes open or closed.

“It’s all right, Miss Nora,” Quigley said from behind her. “I won’t let you fall.”

“Thank you, Thomas. That’s kind of you.” With the cook’s hand on her shoulder, she lifted her leg over the side.

“Not like that,” Jacob shouted at her. “Do something with your skirt. You’ll catch your foot in your dress and fall like a stone that way.”

“What a lovely thought,” she yelled back at him. “Thank you for the encouragement.” But she supposed he was right. She retreated to the deck again, reached under her dress and grabbed the back of her skirt. Bringing the material between her legs, she yanked the hem up to her middle and stuck it into a sash at her waist. Her legs were bare to her thighs, but this was no time for modesty. Common sense was required.

With Quigley’s assistance, she began the process again and this time succeeded in connecting her toe with the first span of the ladder. The twelve or so inches of rope felt hardly more substantial than drapery cord. Her foot depressed instantly into the middle of the rung. Her hands froze on the deck rail. And she felt Jacob’s hand on her ankle.

“Don’t dawdle,” he said. “Do it quickly. It’s easier in the end. Besides, even if you fall, you’ll only land on my head.”

Feeling a burst of courage, she craned her neck to see his face. It was lit with a broad grin. “That sir,” she said, “is the only aspect of this ridiculous endeavor which I find the least bit tempting.”

“As do I, Nora,” he called back.

“Confound you, Jacob…”

“Don’t look down,” he warned, cutting her off. “Just climb. That a girl.”

Somehow she managed to end up in the rowboat between Jacob and Will. She remembered when Jacob’s hands had pressed her thighs through the ballooning material at her hips and finally when their welcome strength had captured her under her arms. And she recalled how those hands lingered there even after she’d regained her equilibrium.

She sat in the middle of the small boat and the two men rowed to the
Sea Hound
. Not surprisingly, going up the other ship’s ladder was every bit as difficult as descending the
Dover Cloud’s.
And when she reached the deck, mussed and dampened with unladylike perspiration, she found herself the object of intense scrutiny by the
Sea Hound’s
crew. They’d probably never seen such an inept sailor in all their days, and it was all they could do not to laugh out loud at her ridiculously uncoordinated efforts. Nora’s face heated with embarrassment.
Thank you, Jacob, for making me feel like an idiot again!

Jacob, too, noticed the beady eyes of the
Sea Hound’s
crew. His flesh heated with building fury while the muscles in his jaw tensed. What was the matter with these scurvy dogs? Hadn’t they ever been close to a pretty woman before? From the looks of them, Jacob thought it quite possible they hadn’t. Scruffy old clothes, a week’s growth of beard, and a strong scent of grog and garlic marked every crewman of the
Sea Hound
. Funny, as many times as Jacob had come in contact with them before, he’d never noticed what a rotting lot they were.

“I want to see Captain Vasquez,” he said.

“That’ll be a mite difficult, Proctor,” one of the men said. “Unless you go to his cabin. He’s got the gout. Been in his quarters this whole trip.”

“What? I asked about him before we rowed over here.”

The ends of the sailor’s mustache curled away from a smattering of brown teeth. “You asked if he was here. And he is. He just ain’t operatin’ in his official capacity.”