She refused to look away; it would feel like a defeat, although she knew not why. And between their test of wills something ignited deep within her, a tiny miniature flame that sizzled as hot as his stare, burning her from the inside out until her face felt as flushed as his. His fire produced hers, calling it from her innermost soul. But while the flames burned her, hotter than glowing coals, they didn't consume her, instead feeding themselves from his blazing stare. No matter the scalding heat, she would not, would not look away.
Topaze jerked, the entire deck swooping higher. A pause while Captain Fleming blinked back his fire, then the frigate crashed down with an almighty, timber-cracking smash. Men scattered. And Clara found herself blinking as well, as Captain Fleming's spirited playfulness, his heat and passion, all fell away. His face firmed, jaw jutting. He touched his scraper, jerked his gaze away — the effort required was obvious — and hurried to the stern chasers, tugging on the ungiving ropes one by one.
Hennessy, his mate, and the coffee cups had all vanished. Chandler clambered over the davits, double-checking lashings, and Lieutenant Rosslyn yanked on the lines restraining the starboard six-pounders. In the swinging light of the stern lantern, his face already seemed bloated and pale, the truest weather gauge aboard.
Clara slipped through the scrambling sailors, down the aft ladder, past the Marine sentry still faithful at his post, and closed her cabin door behind her. Topaze rolled again and smashed into another wave, even harder; she'd best let the sailors concentrate on managing the frigate.
And release their captain, as well. Considering the startling strength of the pot they'd stirred between them, as strong as the swell and the storm brooding without — considering that strength, nothing less than time alone would allow her to return the world to the way it should be. She needed to get away from his burning eyes and her own fiery response.
But the fire refused to release her, and even the gentle rocking of the hanging cot, as it negated the jolts and slams of the storm-tossed frigate, didn't help her sleep that night. And no amount of concentration could bring forward Phillippe's image. Whenever she closed her eyes, the face that awaited her boasted patrician lines and gull-winged brows, and eyes of pale molten flames.
Which all made a horrible sort of sense. But not one she cared to consider.
Chapter Twenty-Two
A deep breath, so humid it felt like inhaling water, as if she had gills. Her heart pounded as hard as the waves breaking over Topaze's waist, and the crash of water on the upper deck shook the frigate to her wooden knees. The massive storm had well and truly struck. Clara had listened to the crashing and booming in the great cabin for an hour, indulging in confused thoughts of Phillippe and Captain Fleming, Captain Fleming and Phillippe, as the deck rolled and pitched in a mad frenzy and the hanging cot swung like a hammock. Behind her overactive thoughts, she'd tried to picture the plunging sea, what soft, fluid water would have to become to create such sounds. But her imagination had proven insufficient to the task.
Almost no light penetrated below deck. Only the upper steps of the aft ladder made a pale blur in the darkness, and Morrow, the Marine standing guard outside the captain's cabin, only a few feet away, might as well have been a ghost. Hopefully, there would be enough light; she only wanted a glimpse.
Morrow cleared his throat. "'Tis a nasty night out there, me lady. Not a fit night for man nor beast."
"You're very kind, Morrow. One glance, that's all, and then I'll tuck myself away again." Another deep breath, and Clara eased up the aft ladder, step by cautious step through the raging gloom. Another step. She lifted her hand, and finally she could see it in front of her face.
Literally.
One more step. Clara peered above the deck into the storm.
Air and water slammed into the back of her head and shoved her chest into the hatchway's edge. The wind's ululation became a full-throated shriek, like some rampaging predator scenting her blood and screaming for it. Topaze seemed to twist around her. The ladder turned about, and instead of standing on the step, Clara flailed for footing, for balance, for anything. She hung in space, unsupported, unable to fall. Panic exploded through her.
Then Topaze twisted again, crashed down into the belly of the wave, and there was the hatchway, right where it was supposed to be. Clara grabbed the coaming and held on.
There was no telling where sea ended and sky began. They were so thoroughly mixed, the gloom so intense, she would need gills if she were to remain on deck. And there didn't seem to be any clear direction to the mayhem, with the ship crisscrossed by flying water torn from the storm — from waves or rain could not be determined.
Topaze shuddered in the wave's trough. Next her bow would rise, pulling Clara's weight behind her and trying again to throw her down the hatch. If she intended to look around, see what could be seen in the half-daylight, now was the time. Clara twisted on the ladder and faced the ship's weather side.
A wall of water towered over her, over the rail, over the yard, and still it rose higher. Her heart stopped mid-beat, her breath caught in her chest, and she craned her neck back, watching the wave tower ever higher. At the mizzen-masthead it began to lean toward Topaze, and then the gale smashed through it like a fist through a wall.
She had time to gasp. Then the torn water slammed into the upper deck, making the hollow booming noise she'd listened to for the last hour. A moment later the wave itself crashed onto the quarterdeck and over her.
The blow shoved her back onto the hatchway's edge again, a sharp knock on her shoulder blades, and the water's weight held her there as the wave collapsed. Water roared down in truly Biblical proportions, a seemingly never-ending waterfall across her face. She squeezed her eyes closed, fought against breathing, forced her face to the side, and tightened her fingers around the coaming's wooden planks. Her chest threatened to burst and still it poured down. Her throat closed and her body's demand for air tried to consume her. She clenched her teeth and resisted.
Then, like a pump gone dry, the waterfall stopped. Seawater streamed across the deckboards past her face. Topaze began to roll the other way, and the liquid sheet changed course, back toward her. Clara didn't wait for the South Atlantic to change its mind again. She scrabbled backward down the aft ladder to the gun deck below.
Let the sailors handle the storm. Her own nautical education had not yet progressed to such an ambitious level.
Her sweet little blue sailor dress was wetter than it was possible to be, and she wasn't in much better condition. The grey sarsnet would be dry, though, and a towel hung beside her washbasin.
As she closed the cabin door behind her, what sounded suspiciously like a snigger came from Morrow's previously silent corner, in front of the captain's cabin. But he wouldn't dare, would he?
* * * *
The storm raged on.
The weather decks shattered into a wild, wet, windy chaos. Topaze twisted and seesawed through wicked cross-currents, seawater dashing across the bows and over the rails and through the hatchways and seams into the ship's belly, the wind blasting and screaming among the rigging. There'd been no sighting of the sun, just variations in the shades of gloom surrounding the ship, and while Fleming's instincts thought it had been a full day since Lady Clara had poked her head above the deck, he couldn't be certain.
He'd called for sail-trimmers hours ago, when it had become clear they'd have to reduce sail voluntarily or the storm god would reduce them himself, breaking a mast or two along the way. The yardmen had inched out along the footropes high above the deck and gathered the whipsawing sails into their arms handful by handful, one set of rope-haulers easing off the halyards while the other hauled the clewlines, rain pounding into their squeezed-shut eyes and waves breaking over them again and again. Each wave roared higher than the last, a landscape of maddened liquid mountains slashed apart by the howling wind, and what should have taken minutes required hours.
A waister fell down the fore hatchway and was carried to the
infirmary with a bloody head. An experienced fo'c'sleman, able to hand, reef, and steer under normal circumstances, was driven against a bow chaser by a rogue wave, snapping his arm above and below and bending it like a W.
Rosslyn had long since collapsed below, greener than the water crashing over the Topaze. The remaining able-bodied officers and mids lived on deck, monitoring the masts, spars, rigging, and the single scrap of storm-sail they'd left aloft on the foretop.
No, it wasn't the worst weather he'd endured in his years at sea.
But it was awfully close.
* * * *
Clara's hair and blue sailor dress were reduced to sodden messes, so she wore her ink-stained grey sarsnet, which was at least drier although nothing now truly qualified as dry. Water dripped and poured below deck, streaming in miniature waves across the cabins with Topaze's gyrations, and her fingers and toes shriveled from the constant wetness. The clacking of the pumps formed a constant, rhythmical backdrop to the shrieking and crashing of wind and waves. A part of her, in the back of her mind, kept expecting the discomfort to be a nagging irritation, but she found she bore it without much thought. This was simply the way the world was, for this stretch of time, and with nothing to be done about it, she accepted it.
The galley fires had been extinguished long ago. So she and Hennessy set up an impromptu buffet in the great cabin, relatively drier than the wardroom buried in Topaze's deeper recesses. They sorted china, separating the good from the expendable, and then made sandwiches and warmed chops, cheese, soup, and coffee for the officers, mids, and warrant officers. Of more concern than the discomfort was the nagging suspicion that perhaps Captain Fleming had come to regard her as a sort of de facto hostess or even wife, rather like Captain Lamble's insinuations and her own horrible suspicions. Galling, infuriating men, both of them; it had to be something in the sea air that made naval captains as a group so utterly aggravating.
Of course, considering their mutual heat on the quarterdeck after their dance, she'd begun to suspect that the naval captains weren't the only ones who'd come to consider her in that light. Which was even more infuriating.
As well as the warrant officers, Mr. Abbot had ducked below earlier, grabbing a handful of meat and bread and throwing back a mug of coffee at a speed that had to have singed his throat, before mumbling something polite and clattering back up the aft ladder. Staunton, who followed in the first lieutenant's footsteps, permitted himself a few moments to breathe on the surface of his ham and bean soup, warmed over Hennessy's spirit stove, which was balanced on gimbals. Finally, the midshipman tilted up his battered tin mug and drained it. "Must admit, I've never seen anything like this storm."
"Mr. Bruce said the same." She swapped him a ready cup of hot tea for the empty mug, which she dropped into a basin of captured rainwater. Cleaning dishes would be a snap for Hennessy's mate. "And Mr. Abbot compared it to the typhoons of the Pacific."
Actually, Mr. Abbot had surprised her by using the old Shakespearean term hurricano. She'd suspected him of a certain level of education, despite his feline writing. She hadn't suspected him of such close familiarity with King Lear and Troilus and Cressida. Once again, she'd underestimated the level of culture hidden beneath the first lieutenant's soldierly exterior.
Staunton's grin vanished. The unease that spread across his tired face aroused an answering flicker within her, a flicker that solidified when he rolled his lips together. He drained the tea in one long drink, swallow after swallow, the cup lifting until it blocked half his face. Then he handed it back with a contented sigh.
"Nothing can possibly be wrong with the world after such a lovely cuppa," he said. "Thanks, Lady Clara." Suddenly, he shoved back his chair and ducked underneath the dining table. His back wriggled to and fro, as if he wrestled with something intractable, then he straightened, one sodden Hessian boot in his hand. He flipped it over.
Pouring what looked like a bucketful of water onto the great cabin's woven sailcloth rug.
The ship and crew might be in some danger. But Staunton remained a mischievous brat, and therefore all was, indeed, well with the world.
No matter how the ocean and wind behaved.
He glanced at her sideways. "Suppose I should have taken that outside."
She shrugged and lifted the lid on the teapot. She'd emptied it into Staunton's cup. Of course, she could always heat more water, but somehow, tea didn't seem to answer her thirst. "Not worth the effort, Mr. Staunton, unless you take the rest of the water outside, as well."
His grin returned, and he ducked back beneath the table.
Captain Fleming pushed into the great cabin as Staunton vanished above. He seemed older, more tired, stronger, as if raw determination could carry him and his ship through the storm. Chandler followed him inside, and they peeled off dripping oilcloth boat cloaks and hung them on the hooks behind the door. Hennessy reached for clean mugs and the soup ladle, glancing at her and then the roast beef with his eyebrows lifted.
Oh, good; something she could do for Chandler to show her appreciation of his improved manners. In front of the captain, no less. She wasn't the most experienced at carving a roast, but the meat didn't need to be beautiful, only edible. She grabbed the serving knife and fork, their flat surfaces gleaming wickedly in the swaying lantern's light, and stabbed the roast until the fork's tines bumped against the pewter plate. If she leaned against it, that would hold the meat in place while she carved.
"I must convince that young man to find himself a different career." Captain Fleming snapped open a napkin and mopped at his face, the white linen crinkling against his nose.
But a proper thin slice was impossible while she bent over the table. Clara straightened, settled the knife against the beef, and sawed. The serrated edge rasped into the beef, still thicker than she'd planned. Distracted, she answered without thinking. "I agree, Captain. Mr. Staunton is far too young for the service he gives."
Chandler choked on his tea. No, not on it; into it.
Blister him. What had she said?
Captain Fleming's grave expression didn't change. But one of those swooping eyebrows bent in the middle and arched down on the ends, a gull's wing folding in air, and his eyes above the napkin gleamed. "Forgive me for giving you the wrong impression, Lady Clara. Mr. Staunton is a natural-born sailor. The young man to whom I referred is Lieutenant Rosslyn, him of the weak stomach and good intentions."
Of course; she should have thought of that herself. She sawed again, and a thick, lopsided slab of beef flopped onto the plate with Topaze's roll. Lately she'd noticed a sort of sideways skip with every third or fourth plunge of the deck beneath her feet, and she'd have to be careful that skip didn't throw off her next slice. The one she'd cut, or butchered, actually, wouldn't half cover the bread and mustard.
And best if she didn't answer that comment; anything she said would get back to Mr. Rosslyn before he staggered from the infirmary, if they all survived. She positioned the knife — thinner this time, and straighter — and sawed. "Now, Mr. Abbot called this a hurricano, and Mr. Bruce and Mr. Staunton both said they'd never seen such a storm. But surely your experience at sea is greater than theirs, Captain Fleming. How would you rate our little blow?"
Chandler choked again. She flashed him a triumphant smile. No one would be able to claim she'd been overawed by the weather.
"Well, it's true that most of Mr. Bruce's forty years at sea were spent in home waters."
Her smile slipped. So did the knife, thumping off the roast onto the pewter, throwing the slice of beef aside. Clearly she could either talk or slice, but not both at once. She repositioned the knife and fork, and tried again.
Captain Fleming folded the napkin across his lap, although the idea of protecting his sodden clothing from food stains seemed laughable. "It's also true that this storm is worse than most anything I've seen in the Atlantic. But I still hold that Pacific typhoons contain more power. And honestly, this is similar to the average weather you'd see down in the Ro
aring Forties, south of the Cape, the Horn, or Australia, should our hunt take us to such distant oceans. The Raging Fifties and Screaming Sixties, even farther south, are much worse."
She couldn't have heard that properly. While the characteristic teasing gleam had faded from his eyes, chased away quickly by his tiredness, the idea of a storm, or rather normal weather, that was "far worse" than this simply beggared her imagination.
Clara sawed with the knife and Topaze dived sideways, as if throwing herself into a wave's trough. The deck gave a lee lurch, pitching across, up, down, across again. Timbers groaned. The plates leaped and slid along the tablecloth, pewter bumping against the raised fiddles, and Hennessy dived for the cut-glass decanter.
The knife and fork handles, gripped in her white-knuckled hands, thumped onto the tablecloth, and Clara let them go, grabbing for balance. Another lee lurch, perfectly timed, dishes, bodies, hanging oilcloths, the great cabin itself, everything diving and spinning.
And the downward pressure of her hands threw the roast airborne.
It took the fork with it, an ungainly chunk of dried, salted, roasted beef, nursed all the long distance from Plymouth Sound, perfect for sandwiches and slowly whittled down as their journey had progressed. Cutting an astonishing parabola over the dining table, it sailed with a certain mesmerizing grace past the captain's jerked-back head, the fork handle first up then rolling down in an echo of the frigate's travails, tumbling end over end and falling as it went, until it landed with a wet-sounding splat.
A Different Sort of Perfect Page 18