Avoiding Captain Fleming was unadulterated cowardice; she knew it, but the thought of facing him made her quail deep inside. Why, she wasn't certain. They'd enjoyed an open, steady relationship since her first full day aboard, and while it had ended with a flash of temper on his part, followed by the stiffest reserve of which he seemed capable, she hadn't come aboard Topaze seeking his friendship. It shouldn't matter if she lost something she hadn't sought.
Speaking with him, speaking of Phillippe, and perhaps being asked to explain his despicable behavior — just the thought drove her back into cowardice.
She could retire to her little sleeping cabin; it would smell of burnt gunpowder and the gunport would be open to the sea, but the hanging cot would be back in its usual place and she could lie swinging to the breeze, cooling her tropic-heated skin and overactive thoughts. But when she considered doing so, her body refused to leave the window seat and something told her that even if she convinced it to rise, her feet would mutiny next, leaving her in the great cabin without the option of pretending she could move.
She could go above to the quarterdeck and observe the repairs made to their own dear Topaze. But with Mr. Abbot commanding the Armide — and she hadn't seen him return — likely Topaze's officer of the watch was the officer she wasn't certain she wanted to see. Previously it had taken Lieutenant Rosslyn a week to recover from his seasickness.
It was maddening. But none of her choices were good ones. Sooner or later, of course, she'd have to speak with him; she had her job as captain's clerk to perform, after all. But before any conversation with Captain Fleming could move forward, she'd first have to speak, really speak, with Phillippe.
And the one thing of which she was absolutely certain was, she had no desire whatsoever to speak with Phillippe.
Phillippe. Saying his name, picturing him in her mind, had previously reduced her to reveling in his dashing glory and dreaming of its reflection upon her. She'd yearned for him, yearned shamelessly for him to touch her hand, left home to find him. Left everything and everyone she loved on a desperate, wanton search for the husband she'd chosen and needed.
Outwardly he hadn't changed. The uniform was somewhat different from the one he'd worn during the Amiens peace, but his hair, profile, forehead, cheekbones, skin tone, all were the same. His voice. His touch. The fascinating shock his hand delivered to hers, the one that traveled straight to her quivering knees.
Had he changed inside? Or had she never truly known him at all?
Love was supposed to be immortal, an ever-fixed mark, so high and steady that a wandering navigator could apply a sextant to it and find his precise latitude. Love could withstand the most fearsome storm and shrug off any change discovered in the beloved.
So why did she cringe from any future possibility of Phillippe's touch? Why didn't she proclaim their love to the crosstrees? Why had she so thoroughly washed the hand he'd clasped?
The glorious colors intensified beyond the larboard stern windows, darkened, faded, and finally collapsed beneath the onrushing tropical night. Clara waited as the stars came out, prickling the luminous blue-black sky with thousands upon thousands of brilliant shot holes, as if the sun's rays peaked through each one. She waited until her eyes would remain open no longer, until she saw the stars through her closed eyelids.
But he never came below decks. Never came to see her.
* * * *
They met at breakfast, of course.
Captain Fleming's eyes, normally the same blue-grey as the gentle Atlantic rollers, were shot through with painful-looking red streaks and bracketed with swollen skin. He still wore the stained Guernsey frock and ragged old trousers that he'd worn during the refitting and the battle.
"Forgive me for not dressing more appropriately," he said as he joined her at the table. Exhaustion roughened his voice; he sounded like a rumbling hay wagon on a paved road.
"Have you been to bed at all?"
He shook his head and rubbed a hand over his bristly chin. "Not since before the storm. But with your permission, I intend to remedy that situation as soon as our repast is complete. Lieutenant Rosslyn has forced himself erect and while he's not in the best shape, he's at least no longer comatose."
"By all means." She passed him the bacon and served him another egg.
He didn't look up, just as she hadn't looked up the day before, when he'd entered the great cabin while she'd copied out her notes. His hands moved mechanically, cutting the chop, raising his coffee mug. His shoulders drooped as if the weight of the epaulettes were too much to bear.
Her worries and inexplicably hurt feelings melted away. She'd wanted to be dignified, to explain she'd need to speak with Phillippe before she could chart her course forward. So concerned with her own petty little nothings, she'd utterly forgotten his more serious and very real problems. Her immaturity humiliated her. She couldn't conceive of putting her desires before his physical needs. Not now that she'd seen his bloodshot eyes.
"Is there anything I can do to help?"
He glanced up, surprise clearing his weariness. For a moment his gaze sharpened to its usual cutting edge and he examined her in return, eyebrows drawn together into a gull-winged knot. She held herself still and allowed his assessment. Hopefully he'd read her sincerity as clearly as she read his exhaustion.
A tired smile flickered across his face, softening his expression. "If you could gather the information for the log today, I would be able to sleep with a clear conscience."
Of course; with Mr. Abbot aboard the Armide, there was no one on Topaze to keep a record of the frigate's day-to-day operations. She couldn't keep a watch, not even as a midshipman, but the administrative functions of a first officer hardly required years of seamanship. Staunton's indoctrination and lessons should serve.
"Certainly, Captain. With pleasure."
He nodded but didn't speak again, and she let him finish his breakfast and retire in peace.
Clara grabbed her book and inkhorn before climbing the aft ladder to the quarterdeck. A huge disk of peaceful sea surrounded the three ships, the horizon farther away than ever and always receding into the distance ahead. A quarter mile behind the taffrail sailed Armide and presumably Flirt; not a scrap of the brig's canvas showed through the French frigate's massive courses. On Armide's forestay flew the French tricolor with the red ensign above it, signifying her capture, and the flags aimed their thin edges of flapping cloth at her. The wind was perhaps a degree or two off dead astern, going in the same direction as the three ships and traveling at the same speed. All the sails set were drumhead taut and well bellied, illustrating their movement through the water; but it felt as if the wind barely breathed across the ship and they all danced in place. Nothing stirred the day's strengthening heat, floating above the deck and keeping pace.
She made notes of the date and time, the frigate's course and speed, the sails set and the weather. The position she'd fill in later, after the noon observation. On Armide's fo'c'sle, Mr. Abbot waved, one tired lifting of his hand, and she waved back. He spoke with an older midshipman, like Chandler a master's mate, someone she didn't know. Without thinking, she approached Staunton, standing in the watch officer's position.
"Who's that with Mr. Abbot?"
At her first step toward him, Staunton's expression, usually so open and cheerful, stiffened into cautious lines. He glanced over his shoulder toward Armide and didn't turn back around. "I don't know his name, but he's from the Flirt. Armide struck to both of us, so we supplied the commander and crew to sail her to Plymouth, and Captain Lamble sent over some of his older midshipmen and mates."
His words carried no understandable meaning; all she recognized was his demeanor. Staunton, reserved? Preposterous. Clara opened her mouth to ask him what was the matter. But her mouth closed before she managed to produce a single word.
Of course Staunton was reserved. Everyone had observed her reaction to Phillippe, his reaction to her, even if no one had overheard Captain Fleming's indiscreet
question. And a closer examination of the crew on deck showed more than one sailor turning too quickly aside, as if avoiding her eye.
It wasn't just Staunton. The entire crew must be waiting for her to declare her position.
Oh, how she yearned to go below and hide in her little cabin. But she had a job to do and that option was no longer open. She'd have to tolerate their sideways glances, Staunton's reserve.
And they'd simply have to tolerate her.
Chapter Thirty-One
Clara folded the unfinished sheet of floral trellis lace back into her canvas bag. She'd made two half-flowers, her stitches as uneven and untidy as ever. But it now seemed a quixotic task, making a clumsy bit of lace for a wedding ceremony that would never be. Should never be. So she shoved it out of sight and instead dug out the boring old sedge-stitch wrap; that at least she could do competently.
But her fingers refused to stay busy and she found herself staring at the Armide, still sailing a cable's length astern. The awning kept the worst of the heat from her little outdoor office on the poop deck, but the wind hadn't varied from the southeast, it seemed to be barely moving across the frigate's beam, and the temperature was just shy of unbearable. It had been fun during the outbound journey, withstanding the scorching heat. On this leg of the journey, all the fun had leaked from the tropical sun. She didn't feel the same blistering excitement now, only miserable heat.
The little three-ship squadron had made excellent time past the invisible East African coast in the weeks since the battle, logging one hundred and fifty miles each day and removing a fair-sized chunk from the distance between them and Plymouth. Within a day or two, they'd plow back into the doldrums. Captain Lamble had said the equatorial region of calm had been narrowing even as Topaze weathered it, and the Flirt had only needed days rather than a week to slog through. Hopefully that was true and they'd get past it again swiftly. In this mood, she didn't think she could bear sitting through another week of Topaze rolling her guts out.
This mood. She scoffed at herself. That was inaccurate and unfair. It wasn't merely her mood; it was the intolerable tension aboard the ship, spreading for'ard and aloft from the great cabin, down to the wardroom and mids' quarters, and keeping the entire crew on edge. Everyone was polite and kind, certainly correct, even Staunton, even Chandler; she suspected Mr. Rosslyn, the acting first lieutenant, of lecturing the midshipmen on the decorum he expected to see from them during Phillippe's time aboard. Staunton's reserve had continued and Chandler had shown her gruff but good manners, little even of silent judgment, and she had nothing concrete of which she could complain.
Distant. It was the best word to describe her current relationship with the officers and crew. She'd heard not a single witty remark, no silly comments, and no jesting at all. She'd been treated as a well-bred guest aboard.
Not as a member of the crew.
And just the thought of the lower-deck sailors who had treated her so kindly, now so thoughtful and silent, made her close her eyes and yearn for some way out of her predicament. Every time she looked out over the fo'c'sle, glanced up into the sails and rigging, went below deck, she felt their stares. Never open, never with disdain nor judgment, but with — she couldn't deny it — with compassion. And reserve; always reserve. It was as if everyone watched her to see what she'd do next, and hoped she'd make the proper choice, whatever that was. Her floating village hadn't kicked her out, hadn't convicted her, but they'd definitely placed her on probation.
And the captain…
The grooves between his cheeks and lips had deepened and lengthened, as if his lips were less inclined to smile than to thin and roll together. During breakfast, when she could not decently avoid him, he often fixed a brooding, quizzical stare upon her, with a vertical groove between his eyebrows and their outer edges clamping down, like a displeased horse's ears. She could not at those moments meet his gaze, could not arouse and maintain a worthwhile conversational topic; and so the breakfast table became lonely in another and unexpected manner.
He could only consider her an abject, dismal failure. And when in his presence, not only could she not think of a single reason that might convince him otherwise, she found her own opinion of herself rather in sympathy with his.
Boots clumped across the quarterdeck, heavy and quick, and Clara returned to her crochet without looking up. She still had difficulty bringing herself to speak with him, but lately Phillippe had taken to standing at the taffrail — her taffrail, she couldn't help considering it — and watching Armide, his ship, now the property of His Majesty's Royal Navy, as it sailed in line between Topaze and Flirt. Yesterday he had convinced her to discuss the weather, hot and brassy, the ocean's surface gleaming like molten metal in the tropical sun. Doubtless today he'd attempt to take their conversation further.
The footsteps stopped beside her. Large hands, soft as her own and fleshy, wrapped around the taffrail, knuckles whitening as he leaned and they took his weight. Waves whispered along Topaze's side, her timbers creaked and popped, and on the Armide, two cables' length astern, a rope dangled from the stern-most starboard gunport, trailing along through the South Atlantic water.
"Flirt surrendered. Why did you continue to fire?"
She didn't say that. She could not have said that, she could not have opened her mouth and allowed such bold, accusing words to escape. But when she glanced up into his bitter smile, it proved her wrong.
"Little Clara, bien-aimée, so much a woman and yet at heart still a child." He turned and leaned back against the taffrail, glancing up at the spanker, at Topaze's courses and tops'ls, with the same professional, assessing stare she'd seen from Captain Lamble. "War isn't just pretty uniforms, marching and sailing, stirring music and splendid rows of tents with red-coated soldiers standing beside them."
His words hammered at her, and the heat suffusing her face had nothing to do with the African sun. He'd understood her much, much more thoroughly than she'd understood him.
Understood her, yes. And cynically used her naïveté to lure her in. He'd seen her in the assembly rooms and wanted her for his own, like his château and vineyard, perhaps asked Diana's older brother for details and to introduce them, and then he'd used her infatuation to attach her to him. Perhaps he'd grown to love her, over time.
Perhaps. But his comments did not inspire much hope in her heart.
His voice continued, words echoing in her thoughts as if from a great distance. "War, little Clara, is staying alive, and making certain you stay alive by ensuring your enemy does not." He gently took her hand, again clasping it between both of his own. The bitterness faded from his smile, leaving the tenderness she remembered. "But you are very much a woman, mademoiselle. Your business is with life, not death. You know nothing of war, and I prefer it should remain so. I still intend to win you, you know."
Anger exploded through her, hotter than the doldrums, and she yanked her hand from his. "I have experienced war firsthand, under your direct tutelage. No one can say I know nothing of the subject." She whirled away; sitting below was vastly preferable to breathing the same air as he. But no, that wasn't the message she meant him to have. "I never really knew you, did I?"
He laughed. He actually laughed. "Désolée, mademoiselle." He reached again for her hand. "Désolée."
She backed out of his reach. "Tell me, Captain Levasseur — who shall protect the world once you've won, once everyone else has surrendered and you've continued to fire into them?"
He glared at her, all tenderness and familiarity whisked aside by the southeast trades. Her heart pounded. Something in his expression… Captain Fleming would never—
Shocked to her core by Phillippe and by her own thought, Clara left him standing. Her supplies were on the writing desk in the great cabin, and the log needed fair-copying. The captain's clerk had a job to complete.
* * * *
Their mealtimes had drifted apart, with Lady Clara content to take hers in her cabin, or as a sandwich on the poop, leaving Flem
ing with a hollow sensation inside that no amount of Hennessy's country cooking could fill. She erected other defenses between them, as well, bringing the log book for him to sign without a word, listening to his clipped instructions without meeting his eyes, avoiding the great cabin during the hours when he might have need of it. So when he found her there, fair-copying her notes from Titus Ferry's book into the log, forming each copperplate letter with deep attention, Fleming paused in the doorway. He shouldn't interrupt her work. But he'd had so few opportunities to speak with her; when one offered it shouldn't be wasted.
And yet, what could he say? This new awkwardness between them was despicable. A humorous comment would break the ice, but his brain refused to cooperate there. Discussing the weather would be asinine; it hadn't changed in days and wasn't about to.
Finally he cleared his throat. A compliment would serve, surely. "Your hand is beautiful."
But instead of smiling, she stiffened. Her gaze touched her hand — her actual, physical hand — then rose to stare at him, eyes wide.
Blast it. He couldn't even get a compliment right. "I mean your penmanship."
Lady Clara glanced down and sighed, setting the pen aside. Her smile was small, tight, unhappy. "You were right, you know. Captain Levasseur is the man for whom I searched."
Topaze creaked and swayed around him, a timber popping, the ocean rippling alongside. On deck, Lieutenant Rosslyn bawled at someone to look alive, there. Loudest of all, though, was the slow rush of blood pounding in Fleming's ears. "As a ship's captain, I have the authority to perform a binding marriage ceremony." It was the hardest thing he'd ever had to say. But he couldn't allow his honor to take second place, not even to hers.
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