“That was what you were contemplating, wasn’t it?”
She looked full into his eyes. “Not really. It was just that I couldn’t bear the idea of returning one more time to that hideous little room. By the end of this week I’m not even going to be able to afford that. I expect that then I’ll swallow any ideas I might have had about what life should be — must be — and take a position as a governess or a teacher slowly starving in genteel poverty at a second-rate finishing school.”
They sat down to supper, and it must have been the better part of twenty minutes before she realized in a fluster of embarrassment that she had devoured nearly all of the chicken while he cut up an apple and watched her.
“Don’t be upset,” he said. “I had my supper long since.” He poured another glass of champagne for both of them. “It does my heart good to see a woman eat as if she enjoyed it instead of mincing about with her food. You were hungry, weren’t you?”
She nodded, smiling sheepishly. “Unhappy love affairs are easy on the food bills. I haven’t felt so hungry in months.”
“It was the brandy and the champagne that did it — relaxed you, if you like. You should have tried having a drink before your supper. Good for sleeping, too.”
“I wouldn’t have dared. I’d never have stopped.”
Again his eyebrows rose. “Is it like that with you then? You don’t act it.”
She smiled faintly. “No, not really. The only time I ever overindulged, I became deathly ill. My stomach would never allow me to be a drunkard even if I wanted to be.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “I’m glad of that. I’d hate to have set you upon a path of evil.”
When she could eat no more, Roger brought in coffee for both of them.
“Would you prefer tea?”
“Oh no, I haven’t had coffee since before — since before my father had his stroke. I like tea, but there is nothing quite like the aroma of coffee, is there?”
“That will be all, Roger. For God’s sake get yourself to bed — she won’t eat me. I could perfectly well have done all of this myself, you know.”
“Yes sir,” Roger replied. “Goodnight, captain.” He gave her a steely glance as if to remind her of his earlier admonition.
“Captain, is it?” she asked when Roger had gone, the familiar warm brown taste of the coffee sweet in her mouth. “Are you in the military service?”
He laughed harshly. “No, but I was. Do you mind if I smoke? I was one of the boys in blue. I’d have done a damn sight more for my country if I’d stayed and helped in my father’s shipyard, but I had to get away.”
“Now it’s my turn to surmise. Are you married?”
He shook his head.
“But you were married, weren’t you?”
He nodded, his expression noncommittal as he pulled on his cigar, blowing out with a sigh an aromatic cloud of blue smoke.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Why do you assume that? She might have run off with a drummer, you know.”
“Not from you. You aren’t the type to be jilted.” She gave him a brief grin that made him know suddenly how she must have looked when she was happy.
“Aren’t I, though? The only woman I ever loved jilted me to marry money. However, yes, my wife is dead.”
“Why did you marry her then, if you didn’t love her?” She knew she was probably going too far, but the meal and the alcohol combined to make her reckless.
He looked at her warily for a moment, and she thought he wouldn’t answer. “That’s a fair question,” he said surprisingly at last. “I married her so that she could get on a ship.”
It was her turn to raise her eyebrows.
“That does seem odd, said like that.” He looked unseeing into some middle distance between them. “You have to realize how it was with me then. Arabella and I grew up together, and it never occurred to me I would marry anyone else. She was the daughter of a Jewish ship chandler when she wanted desperately to be the daughter of a gentleman, I didn’t realize how desperately. I thought I knew every thought she had ever had, and it turned out that I didn’t know even a part of them.” He looked at his cigar thoughtfully. “When she left me to worm her way into the kind of society she was so anxious to enter, I couldn’t believe it at first.”
She had a vision of that agonized boy breaking his heart and stopped herself from interrupting.
“I went to England and France a few years later to learn what I could of steamships and to get some commissions for ships for our yard. I always had a gift for talking people into things, and I was headed back on a new steamer I’d helped build, with a pocketful of commissions to boot, mostly for small vessels, when the ship stopped at Queenstown to pick up Irish emigrants for New York. One of them was Dorrie.”
He held up his brandy glass, gazing into its firelit depths with eyes almost exactly the same color. She knew suddenly of what he reminded her: a lion, a seemingly good-natured friendly beast that could nevertheless kill with a swipe of its powerful paw. For all his outward cheerfulness, there was both sadness and a tethered violence that she could only instinctively sense. She watched him with intense interest as he told her about his Dorrie and how he had met her.
“To make a long story short, I married her.”
“What happened then?” she asked intently, almost incapable of comprehending this casual venture into matrimony when marriage had been so crucial for herself.
“We, well, lived together for some years, even had a boy, Shannon.” He was silent again, as if not knowing how to go on.
“How did she die, if you can bear talking about it?”
“I killed her.” His voice was flat. “I killed her and I killed the children as certainly as if I had taken an ax to them.”
“Oh, surely not! What happened?”
“We were on our way back to Ireland, and there was a collision with another ship … They were never found.”
“And you blame yourself for that?”
“I blame myself for their being on the ship to begin with. If I hadn’t been such a self-righteous ass — ah, the hell with it. It’s past and done. Never marry except for love, my dear.”
“How long ago was it?”
“Nearly ten years now. It seems impossible it was that long ago.”
“So then you joined the army. Why not the navy?”
“Why not indeed? I think I had the idea that I would be better off dead, and you don’t die on blockade duty, which is mostly what the navy did. By the time I saw that dying wasn’t romantic or glorious, it was too late to change my mind.
“I began a corporal and ended a captain, mostly through sheer attrition. Roger was in my company, and the day he was hit, a nasty head wound that broke his skull, I dragged him in. Men with far less serious wounds died right and left, but somehow even one of those charnel houses known as hospitals couldn’t kill him. It left him not quite right, though. He has spells when he needs looking after.” He shrugged. “So I look after him when he needs it, and he in turn looks after me. I never asked him to, but I think it makes him feel better.” He was silent.
“It makes me ashamed I thought my sordid troubles were so important,” she said slowly at last.
He shook his head. “Love is never sordid as long as it is freely given. It’s not loving that is the sin.”
“You can say that and mean it, even after what happened?” she asked.
The tawny eyes regarded her steadily in a silence suddenly so provocative that she instinctively stiffened, disappointed at what she knew he now had in mind after all. He exuded an aura of confidence and power that all but destroyed her will to resist, but she stared back at him, seemingly calm, daring him to move. For a moment so brief that afterward she thought she might have imagined it, there flickered across his face a look of anguish so intense that she gave a surprised quick intake of breath. Unexpectedly then, he smiled.
“Sorry,” he said, taking it for granted that they both knew wh
at had happened — or rather, not happened. “It’s just that you seem so real.”
“What a strange thing to say, that I seem so real. I’m a fallen woman, after all; why shouldn’t you have a try?”
He touched her briefly on the cheek and smiled again. “You’re a woman, my dear, not a fallen woman. I’ve always held that a man who makes love to his employee is a cad, and we can’t have me being a cad, now can we?”
“But I’m no employee of yours.”
“I thought you wanted a position as a secretary.”
“I do, but —”
He cut her off. “No buts. This evening and the circumstances of our meeting will not be mentioned again. I’ll probably be gone in the morning by the time you’re up; I’ve an early train to catch. I’ll leave an advance on your salary with Roger. Rent yourself a decent place to live and buy clothes suitable for an office if you need them. I’ll expect you at work the day after tomorrow at eight. Roger will show you where.”
“But —”
“I said no buts, remember?”
“But I don’t even know your name,” she managed to get out finally.
Delighted, he laughed. “You don’t, do you? You know as much about me as anyone else in the world, and you don’t even know my name. Nor I yours, for that matter.”
“It’s Katharine, with a K and an a. Katharine Howard.”
“Ah, sweet Kate.”
“I’ve always loathed being called Kate. It puts me in mind of The Taming of the Shrew.”
“As well it might. However, I shall take my employer’s privilege and call you Kate nonetheless. What do others call you?”
“Kathy.”
“Better The Taming of the Shrew then Wuthering Heights. My name is J. Christian Hand. It even sounds like an employer’s name, don’t you think?”
“What’s the J for?”
“Judgment. Judgment Christian Hand was what my religiously overzealous mother named me before she passed on to her reward.”
“I shall report as requested at eight on Wednesday, Mr. Hand. I hope that I shall measure up to your expectations.”
“When we are alone, for God’s sake call me Christian. All of that Mr. Hand business makes me uncomfortable.” Her eyes sparkled with amusement. “When we are alone, I shall call you Judge.”
Chapter II
“Dammit, Kate, where’s that list of mess equipment Hoskins sent us for pricing?”
“Cummings has it. You told him to get bids and have them for you by the end of the week, don’t you remember?”
Christian grinned at her. “Obviously I didn’t remember or I wouldn’t have asked you. Jesus, Kate, what did I ever do without you?”
There was a knock on the door and Sam stuck his head in. “Thomas Wilding’s here — do you want to see him now?”
“Don’t stand there, Sam — send him in.”
Kate had heard much about the good doctor and looked up with curiosity to see a lean, dark man with a bitter twist to his mouth enter and shake hands with Christian. They looked into each other’s eyes and grinned happily. Wilding turned to her. “Starting a harem, Christian?”
Christian laughed. “If I do, you can be house physician. This is Katharine Howard. She’s my secretary.”
“I was going to ask you what happened to dear little Clarice. Still going to marry her?”
“My second ship will be named after her. We’ve only got a few more months to go before she joins the Circe as the second in the Blue Hand fleet. As a matter of fact, Clarice and her mother are sailing over with us when we leave next week for the Circe’s launching.”
Katharine was following this exchange with unconcealed astonishment. She had been working for the Blue Hand Line for a year now but had never heard of Clarice or that Christian was engaged. What had he said? Something about never having loved again. That must have changed now.
“By the way, Kate, this time I want you to come to England with us. There’ll be a mountain of work to be done in fitting out the ship, and I could use a woman’s point of view.”
England! Her face split in a broad smile. “What about your, er, fiancée? Won’t she want a say in it?”
He laughed. “Clarice won’t want to be bothered. She’s got enough social engagements lined up already to keep her there all through spring. Anyway, her mother chooses all of her clothes. I haven’t the faintest idea if she has any taste or not.” He didn’t sound as if he cared, either, Katharine noted.
“You must admit, though,” Thomas Wilding said, laughing, “that she’s terribly decorative. Do as well on the interior of that ship and she’ll be the toast of the Atlantic. However, I didn’t come here to discuss Clarice. Eakins and Johnson of London are furnishing the surgical instruments, but I have a list of dispensary items that are cheaper and at least as good this side of the water.” He handed Christian a list. “I took the liberty of getting price estimates on all of them.”
“Bless you, Thomas. By the way, I’m not free for lunch today. Clarice and I are dining with Benjamin Fine. He wants to reserve judgment on investing in a second ship, and I want to try to commit him now. Why don’t you take Kate to lunch and get acquainted? I’d say ask Sam, too, but I know that you don’t care for each other.”
The doctor looked Kate over slowly and openly, then gravely offered her his arm. “Shall we, my dear?” he mocked.
“Charmed, I’m sure,” she replied dryly.
They dined at Carleton’s, a small restaurant not far from the Common. Kate regarded her luncheon companion with interest.
“Tell me, Dr. Wilding, how did you get into the shipping business?”
He looked startled. “You mean Christian hasn’t told you anything about me?”
“Beyond that you are to be the Circe’s surgeon, no.”
“I’m surprised that Sam hasn’t filled you in.”
“You don’t like him, do you?”
He gave a wintry smile. “Let’s say we’ve agreed to disagree.”
“Seriously, what don’t you like about him?” She watched him intently. Her loyalties were with Christian and the line, and if a key figure proved to have something lacking … For Sam Drury was a key figure. Not only was he their official attorney, but he had made himself indispensable in any number of ways. He claimed he was guarding his investment.
“I don’t know. If it ever came to a showdown between us, Christian would have to take Sam’s side. It’s easy enough to find ship’s doctors, but it would be impossible to fill Sam’s shoes. I’m a crusty old curmudgeon and awfully hard to get along with, let’s leave it at that.”
“I was asking about your career on ships.”
“I wouldn’t be on ships if it weren’t for Christian. We met when I was a young surgeon in a military hospital in Washington during the war. You know Roger, of course? Well, I was the one who patched him up. You’ve no idea how terrible those hospitals were. Dark, dirty, crowded, stinking. By the time they got to us they had either already been butchered by some barber up the line or else had begun to rot so that you were forced to amputate. Those that weren’t infected when they came soon got that way. The nurses, if you could call them that, were ladies who volunteered because they thought it would be romantic to soothe the fevered brows of our brave boys.” He grimaced. “There were only a few tough ones who were worth a hill of beans. The others either left as voluntarily as they came or else became sick and had to be nursed themselves.”
“It must have been a terrible experience.”
“The only thing that kept me going, that kept any of us going, was seeing the genuine love one man can have for another. There were those who though barely on their feet themselves were tireless at doing things for sick friends. Ours was an enlisted men’s hospital, and it was damned seldom we saw any officers who took the time on leave to see any of their men. That’s where Christian came in. He took one look at what was going on and sent a telegram canceling his planned visit home to Massachusetts.
“The entire
three weeks he came in every day and sat with Roger. He brought him cards and other games, soothed him when he raved, teased and joked with him and the men in the beds nearby, changed dressings, carried water, did whatever he saw needed doing. He even raised hell with the powers that be about hospital conditions, and we were actually assigned two nurses with some experience, though that didn’t last long. He and I got to be friends — misery loves company, you know — and I cried on his shoulder any number of times.” He had been toying with his fork, but now he looked up at her. “He is the finest man I have ever known.”
Kate wondered how things would be different if Christian had shown the same compassion for his wife.
“I had started drinking heavily in those days. It was the only way you could stand it. Day after day, all day long, we mutilated human beings, and when we weren’t mutilating them we were torturing them. There wasn’t a man there who didn’t dread having his dressings changed, and some of them would start to scream when I walked in the door. In short, by the time Christian found me again five years ago, I was a plain garden-variety drunk.”
“You don’t seem to be anymore.” She indicated his glass of wine that he hadn’t yet finished.
“He’s got a golden tongue, that one, and he made me see that the ability to alleviate suffering is a God-given gift that shouldn’t be thrown away. ‘And you have never seen suffering, my boy,’ he told me with a laugh, ‘until you’ve seen someone really seasick.’
“I was about to turn him down; after all, my idea of being a doctor wasn’t playing nursemaid to the seasick rich. But then he told me what had happened on the Medea when the passengers were cut to pieces in a storm, about how his father had always had trouble with the stump of his arm because there was no surgeon on the ship where he lost it. He told me about the cholera and the typhus and the typhoid that often rage in the steerage, and the babies that must be delivered, accidents to crewmen patched up, would-be suicides rescued. All in all, it sounded like a lively general practice, and I took him up on it. I started on one of the packets his father built, and I’ve been at it ever since. That’s why I’ve never seen you; I’ve been doctoring for the last two years on the Diadem. He’s never said a word since about my drinking. As you can see, I have no difficulties with it now, though there are some who won’t forget.”
Kings of the Sea Page 30