The Duke

by Katharine Ashe

  Standing now in the hotel foyer, filthy and unsteady, Amarantha flipped the calling card over and learned the name of the man with whom she had survived the most terrifying hours of her life: Lieutenant Gabriel Hume, Royal Navy.

  She cast the card into the hearth. She was shortly to be wed to the Reverend Paul Garland. It was everything she wanted. There was no place in that scenario for the acquaintance of a naval officer. More importantly, there was no place in her soul for the agitated excitement that had filled her when his hand entwined with hers and the big, hard strength of him became an anchor to her during those endless hours.

  Resolved to forget about that night entirely—and him—in the morning she set off with an objecting Mrs. Jennings for the hospital.

  “You are a good girl, my lady,” Mr. Meriwether said. “But your young reverend will be unhappy with both of us if I allow you to help me here.”

  Mrs. Jennings had obviously told the surgeon about her. With an odd, papery disappointment coating her enthusiasm, she engaged a guide and walked with her companion to the mission.

  The storm had damaged the church and the modest house attached to it in which Paul lived, the house that was to be her castle after their wedding. Men were clearing the debris.

  “There is nothing for a woman to do here, dear lady,” Paul said with grateful eyes. “Continue assisting Mr. Meriwether. In condescending to do God’s work among the poor there, already you are showing my parishioners an exemplary model of Christian femininity.”

  Amarantha suspected that exemplary Christian femininity did not include spending the night with a sailor and never telling a soul of it.

  Returning to the makeshift hospital, Amarantha found three more volunteers taking Mr. Meriwether’s orders, all of them from other churches, two brown-skinned. Their tasks were many: fresh water to be fetched and boiled, linens to be collected for the washerwomen, instruments to be cleaned, and bandages to be changed. When the others weren’t looking, Amarantha took the hand of a weeping patient and held it snugly, confidently, as a naval officer had held hers for hours, helping her find courage within the depths of her fear.

  The following day the surgeon’s nurse, Eliza, arrived. A woman of about sixty, she had a dark brown complexion and spoke with the accent of the island. Yet, unlike so many others aboard ship and in town, Amarantha could entirely understand Eliza’s English. With a breath of profound relief, she went from patient to patient with her, taking instruction on how best to help.

  “I am grateful for your patience with me, Eliza, despite my mistakes.”

  “I was your age when I tended my first patient.”

  “Did Mr. Meriwether teach you all of this?”

  Eliza chuckled. “No. My mother taught me healing, and the patients themselves, and their families. Listen to them as you listen to me. In time you will learn too.”

  That evening she returned to the hotel exhausted, wrote to Emily, and collapsed onto her bed. Her fingernails were torn, her hands raw, and her hair a halo of untamable frizz, and the hotel laundress had to apply bleach to her gown and linens.

  Yet in the morning she awoke with renewed energy. She had never felt so useful.

  The quays seemed particularly busy, and at the hospital she heard that ships laden with supplies from other islands had begun arriving and unloading tools, timber, and laborers. Among the arrivals was a naval vessel, Theia, which limped in with one of its masts broken, sails torn, and half its crew lost in the hurricane, including every officer except the surgeon and second lieutenant.

  The night of the storm, wrapped in darkness, her companion in the cellar had told her of the Theia and its second lieutenant, who was his cousin. Hearing the news of the officer’s survival now, Amarantha felt a pang of regret that she would never have the opportunity to tell Lieutenant Hume how glad she was for him.

  Each time she remembered his big hand around hers, his hard shoulder against which she had slept, his rumbling brogue, and the shadows in his beautifully dark brown eyes, an agitated little dance of nerves started up in her stomach.

  Never seeing him again was for the best.

  She heard him before she saw him.

  “Good day, Mr. Meriwether,” he said not five yards away, and she jerked her head around.

  Smartly dressed in naval blues and whites, and attended by another officer and a half a dozen sailors, he stood straight and tall, surveying the sea of pallets as the surgeon approached him.

  “How may I help you, Captain?”

  Captain?

  “I present to you Theia’s surgeon, Mr. Boyle. He an’ these men are at your disposal till Theia sails.”

  “At my disposal?”

  “His Grace the governor has requested it. Put my men to work, sir.”

  “This is a godsend! We are in need of a roof over these patients’ heads.”

  “You’ll have your roof by fortnight’s end.”

  “Thank you, Captain. And may I congratulate you on your new command?”

  He nodded curtly then gave his men orders.

  Forcing herself from paralysis, Amarantha finished wrapping linen about her patient’s hand. Her heartbeats were far too quick. She kept her head down and face averted, and when she heard Mr. Meriwether bid the captain goodbye, she said two silent prayers of gratitude: first for the sailors Captain Hume had lent to build the roof, and second for his leaving. He had not noticed her, and now he would not, for surely he would not return. His ship’s refurbishment would be his first priority.

  Walking to the hotel later, Mrs. Jennings was all praise for the navy. But the following day, when new acquaintances called for a cozy gossip, the praise turned to shock.

  “Captain Hume’s reputation is nothing short of scandalous,” one woman said in hushed tones.

  “Scandalous?”

  “Oh, yes.” The silk flowers on the gossip’s bonnet jiggled as she whispered, “He and Lieutenant Brock are known carousers and libertines.”

  Mrs. Jennings gasped. “But with such a reputation, however did he win a command?”

  “His skill and bravery are not to be doubted,” the gossip said with another knowing tick of her head. “But I suspect that his noble rank has done him no harm.”

  “His noble rank?”

  “He is the son of a duke. Second son only, of course, and Loch Irvine is a Scottish title. Nothing to compare to your charge’s lineage,” she added with a glance at Amarantha, and discovered both Amarantha’s and her daughter’s eyes on her.

  “What is a libertine, Mama?” the gossip’s daughter said.

  “Good heavens.” The woman’s cheeks colored. “It is not for a gently bred girl to know such things, or to eavesdrop on her elders’ conversation. Forgive me, my lady,” she said to Amarantha.

  But after their callers departed, Amarantha asked her companion the same question.

  “You must forget you ever heard the word,” Mrs. Jennings said firmly.

  “If I am to be the wife of a man responsible for the eternal souls of other men, I must at least know what names to put to the earthly sins that bedevil them.”

  Mrs. Jennings’s lips pinched.

  “Consider this,” Amarantha said. “If you do not tell me what a libertine is, I shall be obliged to ask it of one of the other volunteers at the hospital.”

  As though she sucked on a lemon, Mrs. Jennings told her.

  “If Captain Hume returns to the sick-house,” her companion concluded, “you must remain as far from him as possible.”

  This warning seemed wise to Amarantha. Given her ridiculously quick pulse when he was near, she had little doubt that a weak woman could easily be caught by the lures of such a man.

  Two days later, as she carried a heavy pot of water, she discovered him blocking her path between pallets.

  “Allow me.” Without awaiting her response, he took the pot. His hands brushed hers and the madness of nerves that Amarantha had been pushing away for days returned in a wild rush.

  “Where
to?” He had a deep voice, which seemed a bit hoarse now.

  “There.” Her tongue could manage no more syllables. She went ahead of him, stomach tight and cheeks hot. As he set down the pot she knew this fever must be her punishment for seeking comfort from him that night—from mortal man. Only now did it occur to her that throughout that entire night she had not said a single prayer.

  Not the ideal behavior for a woman betrothed to a man of the cloth.

  The captain bowed. “Ma’am.”

  She nodded. “Shark Bait.”

  His smile was roguish, as appealing as the rest of him, and as confident as he had every right to be. It horrified her. She horrified herself. Only a sennight into her life as a missionary, and already she had sins to confess.

  “How may I be o’ service to you, lass?” he said in the rumble that had soothed her terror through an endless night.

  “I have no authority here.” She attempted an attitude of crisp dismissal. “You have spoken with Mr. Meriwether. You must already know which task most requires attention.”

  “Aye,” he said, his gaze dipping to her lips. “An’ I mean to give it my most devoted care.”

  It was too difficult meeting those dark eyes that seemed to see inside of her to where she was still trembling from the storm—and from waking lodged against his side. Instead, she took up a tray of surgical instruments and said, “You are too forward, sir.”

  “I’m a sailor, lass. When I see a thing I want, ’tis only forward I can go.”

  “I am not a thing. I am a woman.”

  He was no longer smiling, rather studying her face, slowly: the curves of her lips, the angle of her cheek, consuming each lash across the inches. Finally he looked into her eyes.

  A thousand spaces hollowed out beneath Amarantha’s ribs. She had never seen it before, never felt it, but some instinct in her recognized it in his eyes: animal desire—thick and hot and powerful.

  She made herself speak.

  “You are doing God’s work here, and I commend you on your devotion to seeing to the comforts of others.”

  “Lass.” The brogue caressed. “We both know God’s got naught to do with the reason I’ve come here.”

  It was alarming and shocking and pleasurable to feel his dark gaze on her. Too pleasurable. It could not continue.

  “I am engaged to be married. To the Reverend Paul Garland.”

  With the hint of a half smile, he said, “No’ for long.”

  He strode with nonchalance from the hospital as the surgical instruments in her hands made soft, tinny music dancing upon the tray.

  The following day he came again.

  “There are no pots of water to carry at this time, Shark Bait.”

  “Give me another task,” he said, smiling a bit.

  Obviously he required a set down firmer than a statement of her disinterest.

  “That man must be turned,” she said, nodding toward a patient.

  “Turned?”

  “To prevent bedsores,” she added, repeating as though she were an expert a lesson which Eliza had taught her only that morning.

  Without comment, the naval commander went to the cot and, with careful strength, performed the task. From the distance, she heard him speak quietly to the patient, and the man’s responding chuckle.

  She could hardly breathe.

  Returning to her, and standing just a bit too close, the captain bent his head.

  “I’ve sewn wounds an’ swabbed decks after battles since I was thirteen, lass.”

  “Then what can I do to frighten you away?” she said, outrageously.

  Now he smiled fully.

  “Give it your best.” Upon that, he departed.

  That night she folded her hands, clamped her eyes shut against the image of him, and prayed that he would not return the following day.

  He did not.

  The day after that he did. And regularly thereafter, performing every task she required of him, and not only in the hospital. Upon Mr. Meriwether’s request, he went to the nearby church to summon the vicar to a dying patient’s bedside. When Amarantha was obliged to do an errand he escorted her through the busy streets, and then carried whatever packages she gathered.

  No one seemed to think this remarkable. The hurricane had turned the world upside down, and everyone worked to put it to rights. And, quite simply, people deferred to him. He was the youngest naval commanding officer anybody had ever heard of.

  “How do you come to captain a naval ship at such a young age?” she asked as she finalized a purchase of timber the surgeon had made, with which the Theia’s crewmen would build cots for patients.

  “’Tis a modest command, lass.”

  “How modest?”

  “Fifty-six guns.”

  “Even I know that there is considerably more to captaining a naval ship than the ability to count its cannons, Shark Bait. Everyone says your promotion is impressive.”

  “Everyone?” He studied her so singularly sometimes, as though he cared about the words she said as well as the thoughts she did not speak.

  Except for her father, no men ever listened to her. Her suitors in England had seemed most interested in telling her about their carriages or the poetry they had written. When Paul asked for her thoughts on a matter, it seemed he liked to hear his thoughts supported, which she did; he knew much more about everything than she did, and as her husband, he said, it would be his duty and joy to shape her mind.

  Aside from their disagreement about backgammon, the captain seemed disinterested in convincing her of his opinions on anything. But this probing into her head with his gaze made her feel always at the edge of a cliff.

  “The other volunteers have said it,” she replied honestly. “Even Mr. Meriwether remarked on it.”

  “War an’ mishap have thinned the Atlantic o’ good men. Lad,” he said to the lumber seller’s boy who waited beside the cart piled high with planks. “Assist her”—he gestured toward a woman burdened with packages nearby—“an’ you’ll have a coin.”

  The boy scampered off and the captain in the Royal Navy, son of a duke, took up the cart handles and pushed the load toward the hospital.

  “Thinned?” she said, walking at his side.

  “Tragedy was the mistress o’ my command, lass.”

  Amarantha doubted this simple explanation. He had a brusqueness of manner with merchants, planters, and seamen alike that distracted from his youth. There was no fluidity to him, no sophisticated charm that could be credited for his easy command over other men. He was tall, powerful, and physically formidable, despite the hollows of his cheeks and lean waist. His speech was often abrupt. Occasionally he was awkward, surprising others with unexpected questions, or departing a place suddenly. This only seemed to lend to his authority: it was clear that his manners arose not from a desire to please, rather from utter confidence.

  Sometimes when he arrived at the hospital especially late in the morning, his eyes were red and his movements unusually deliberate. On these occasions the women gathered at the washbasin whispered of his scandalous habits.

  On a morning Eliza was to take medicine to a sick patient at home, Mr. Meriwether unexpectedly required her assistance in surgery. Amarantha volunteered for the errand.

  “It is a lengthy walk,” Eliza warned.

  “I have barely been beyond town yet. I welcome the opportunity to explore.”

  “You cannot go alone.”

  “Captain Hume must escort her,” Mrs. Jennings said from where she sat folding clean linens, the only chore she would perform. “He is, after all, of noble blood, and a gentleman.”

  He was not, however, a predictable gentleman. As they walked the narrow road, Amarantha’s boots got trapped. Drawing her feet from the sucking mud, she investigated the path. It promised even greater peril ahead.

  “I must return with a horse and cart, if an idle horse and cart can be found.”

  “Afraid to wet your feet?” he said.

  “To rui
n my only boots. The cobbler is sufficiently occupied supplying shoes to those who lost everything in the storm. But I have slippers at the hotel.” She inched toward the mud.

  “I’ll carry you across.”

  She laughed. “It seems you have something in common with my sister. She enjoys teasing me too.”

  “I’m no’ teasing.”

  Butterflies alighted under her ribs.

  “You would carry me? As though I were a helpless invalid?”

  “A princess.”

  “Oh, then absolutely not.”

  “Absolutely?”

  “It would not be allowed!” she said with mock archness. “That is, I don’t know any princesses personally, but it is my understanding that they are obliged to live by any number of rules, and I’m certain one of those rules must be that they cannot be carried by a lowly sailor, not even to save their boots.”

  “I see,” he said, smiling. “Only by Prince Charming, I assume.”

  “Of course.” She laughed again and felt positively light enough to fly over the mud. He had a manner of looking at her with his entire attention, as though she were the only soul in the world. It made her unsteady.

  Dragging her gaze away, she took a renewed step toward the mud, prepared to sink to her ankles and ruin the hem of her gown as well.

  He came to her side.

  “You’ll wear these.” He proffered his boots. His trousers were rolled above his ankles.

  Amarantha knew it was wrong to stare but she did anyway. She had never seen a gentleman’s bare calves. The muscles were starkly defined. The sight of them did things to her insides: hot, wicked things that made her face flame and her throat grow dry.

  “Oh—But—I cannot,” she burbled.

  “Yet you will.”

  The boots were enormous and she swam in them with each footstep, holding her skirts aloft from the mud.

  “In some cities,” he said, strolling along comfortably despite his bare feet, “’tis all the rage for women to wear men’s oversize shoes an’ toddle about like children new to walking.”