Kings of the Sea

by Van Every Frost, Joan

  Kate thought she knew now why he and Sam didn’t get on, and she could see both sides. Most people who took to drink never really got over it, especially if they thought they could drink in moderation. It was as if for some it had to be all or nothing at all. She had to hand it to Christian to have the sheer guts to trust Wilding. Now that she had talked to him, however, she was inclined to trust him herself. There was a lack of whining and self-pity about him that boded well for the future.

  She lifted her glass. “To the Circe and the Circe’s surgeon.”

  “I’ll drink to that too,” he said and smiled.

  The first morning out on the Southern Star, Katharine and Christian were sitting on deck in the lee of the grand saloon putting together a master list of what should be done in London before going north to the shipyard. She suddenly looked up and froze. Christian swung around to see what had startled her so and in his turn felt the jolt of mingled shock and dismay. Christian turned away with a low oath, and Katharine thought of pretending to be immersed in their work, but it would be all but impossible to avoid that confrontation. She supposed the woman with Charles was her wealthy rival, or perhaps a successor to her wealthy rival, but a look at Christian’s white set face suddenly led her to an extraordinary surmise. She instinctively put a hand on Christian’s arm. How really droll, one part of her mind remarked, that her lost love and his should have become lovers themselves.

  “What a charming coincidence!” the woman exclaimed. “Christian, you must introduce me to your fiancée, do.”

  “She’s not my fiancée, she’s my secretary,” Christian mumbled.

  “Indeed? How splendid to see such a close relationship between employer and employee.” There was laughter and more than a little malice in Arabella’s voice as she looked pointedly at Katharine’s hand on his arm. Charles was trying to make himself as scarce as it was possible to be while still attached to Arabella’s arm.

  Christian rallied. “How nice to see you looking so well, Arabella. Your escort, I take it, is the young Charles Shipman, am I correct?”

  “You have the advantage of me, sir,” Charles answered at his stuffiest. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  Christian stood. “J. Christian Hand at your service, Mr. Shipman.”

  “Ah, this lady is your secretary, you say?” Charles ventured.

  Katharine couldn’t help it, she saw him in her mind naked and bending over a bare breast — her bare breast. She flushed hotly. “Yes, Charles, I am his secretary,” she said firmly, with the implication that that was all she was.

  Charles gave a knowing smile. “I’m sure you are very efficient, my dear. After all, I have reason to know.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Arabella exclaimed, delighted. “This is the Kathy you were telling me about, isn’t it?” She laughed gaily. “I wouldn’t have missed this for worlds.”

  “If it’s all the same to you,” Christian said then, “Miss Howard and I have a great deal of work to do and precious little time in which to do it. I know you’ll excuse us.”

  “Ah yes,” Arabella said, “you’ve finally made it to your first ship, haven’t you?” Her bantering tone changed and became warm. “The best of luck to you, Christian. You’ve indeed earned it.”

  Kate felt sorry for Christian. Charles’s being nasty had in a funny way made it easy on her, but she was afraid that if he snapped his fingers she might once more go helplessly traipsing after him. God, how she hated him! Christian looked a little as if he were drowning.

  “See you later,” Arabella said airily, and she and Charles continued their walk, Charles talking furiously with her.

  Christian turned to Katharine and gave her a rueful smile. “We’re a pretty pair of boobies, aren’t we now?”

  “I’d still rather be us than they,” she said defiantly, and he laughed and squeezed her arm affectionately.

  It wasn’t until later that he brought up the subject again. “What would she be doing with Shipman?” he mused, half to himself. “He isn’t important, and he doesn’t have any money to speak of.”

  “Perhaps if you had spent years with a man as old as Fotheringay, you’d be glad for the company of a younger one no matter who he was,” she replied, but then was immediately sorry as she saw the look on his face.

  That night she got her first look at Clarice, who had been indisposed until then despite the calmness of the water. Her mother was a grande dame of the old school, complete with monumental bust and a lorgnette, through which she peered disconcertingly at whoever was talking to her. Though she was probably in her forties, she had that ageless quality that would no doubt still be with her when she was eighty. It was impossible to imagine her in her early twenties as was Clarice, a natural honey blonde with skin so fair and delicately colored that she might have walked out of a painting. She had large violet eyes, a short little nose, and a rosebud mouth. She also giggled, and her conversation was apparently limited to the most blatant platitudes. With all those looks, it was only fair that God had shorted her on brains, Katharine thought uncharitably.

  Of course, Katharine didn’t sit with the Portman and Hand menage; after all, she was only a secretary, and employees did not sit down to dine with their employers. She was more than pleased therefore to find that Thomas Wilding was sailing with them, and when she saw that he sat some distance away from Christian and his fiancée, asked if she might join him.

  “But of course,” he said, patting the seat beside him. “Though how you ladies get all of those skirts over the bench without hiking them up to your waists, I’ll never know.”

  “I would have thought you’d be sitting with Mr. Hand’s party,” she ventured a little timidly.

  “You are apparently not aware that physicians have very little more social standing than secretaries. Besides, I’m not all that fond of mindless prattle,” he replied acidly. “I can’t see what he wants with her.”

  As she watched him, Katharine could see that Christian was engaging in what she had come to recognize as his polite smile, generally reserved for would-be investors. “Well, she is very pretty,” she offered.

  “And will look just like her mother by the time she’s thirty-five. However, beggars can’t be choosers.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s marrying into his second and third ships, didn’t you know?”

  “Oh, surely not!”

  He turned and looked at her. “Why not? In his place I would, too. His whole life is aimed at founding a shipping line, and with an ambition like that, unless you have an inherited fortune, you’ve got to find it elsewhere. This is important enough to him to make any sacrifice.”

  At that moment Katharine’s eye lighted on Arabella, who was apparently laughing at a discomfited Charles. Where Clarice was pretty and fresh-looking, Arabella, in her mid-thirties, was downright beautiful. She had also been left a fortune. Yet for differing reasons Katharine couldn’t see Christian marrying either one of them — even though he seemed still to be in love with Arabella.

  “What about Arabella Fotheringay?” she asked. “She’s got looks and money and evidently brains besides.”

  He looked interested. “Who is she?” he asked, and Katharine realized that Christian had never told him about her.

  “Oh, a lady he used to know,” she said vaguely. “That’s her over there.” She pointed.

  “She’s a looker, all right. She isn’t married?”

  “A widow. The widow of a very rich man, what’s more.”

  “Indeed?” He smiled. “This voyage may turn out to be not so dull after all.”

  “How can you talk about it being dull?” Katharine’s eyes sparkled. “Oh, I’m so glad I came!”

  He looked at her with new interest, his face softer, more humorous than she had seen it before. “Why, you really are enjoying yourself, aren’t you?” He smiled straightforwardly for the first time. “You make me feel a thousand years old.”

  “I hope I’m never too old to have fun wat
ching people. I suppose that to you all this luxury is old, Dr. Wilding, but I think having pheasant and champagne for dinner is glorious — I can’t imagine ever getting used to it.”

  He smiled again. “For heaven’s sake, call me Thomas. Perhaps it is you who should marry for money.”

  “Never.” She thought hard for a moment. “The thought of being physically intimate with someone I didn’t love,” she said slowly, “is repulsive to me. I think that Lady Fotheringay must have done that, and while in a way I admire her, in another way the very idea of such an alliance repels me.

  “Was Christian in love with the lady?”

  “I think you’d best ask him that, hadn’t you?”

  “I deserved that. Tell me, Katie, after the inevitable tiresome separation of the sexes after dinner, would you like to take a walk? I’m not an early sleeper, and I’d like very much the pleasure of your company.”

  “I suppose I should be flattered,” she teased good-naturedly. “All right. I really resent having to sleep at all and miss a moment of this trip. Except for the voyage back, it will probably be the only one I’ll ever take.”

  “I doubt it, Katie. I doubt it very much.”

  The voyage was quite a calm one, and after the first day or so there was little talk of seasickness, that dread scourge of cruises by sea. Clarice, however, proved to be peculiarly susceptible even to what gentle motion of the ship there was and spent the greater part of her days in her stateroom, ministered to by her mother. When she did emerge, pale and weak, she was immediately overwhelmed with well-meaning advice on the part of the complacent and the smug who had not become sick or who had long since recovered.

  “Is there really a cure for seasickness?” Katharine asked Thomas.

  He shook his head. “Like so-called cures for hangovers, whatever the victim is taking when the illness leaves is what he will swear by.”

  “But why do some people get sick and some not?”

  He shrugged. “I suppose some of us are made of sterner stuff than others.” She saw he was laughing at her.

  “Well, poor Mr. Hand, if he expected to have a romantic voyage with his fiancée …”

  “Poor Mr. Hand indeed! Look at him, he’s like a cat in a creamery.”

  Sure enough, Christian was sitting in a deck chair literally surrounded by five young ladies who were apparently fastened on his every word. Katharine smiled. What was he telling them? Tales of the sea? The building of ships? Whatever it was, he was obviously enjoying himself immensely. He might suffer from unrequited love, but he certainly didn’t seem to let it bother him for long. His wide mouth quirked humorously as he came to the point of some story, and there was a gust of twittering like the chatter of birds as the girls all laughed in unison. As Katharine watched, she saw Arabella saunter up to him and casually put a hand on his shoulder as she said something good-naturedly to the girls. Christian went absolutely still for a moment as if considering whether to shrug her off sulkily or put his hand on hers. Whatever it was that Arabella had said, the girls trooped off arm in arm. Arabella sat down beside Christian, and soon they were deep in conversation.

  “When the cat’s away, the mice will play, to mix my metaphors,” Thomas observed.

  “You mean Clarice? At the moment I doubt she cares what he does. I stopped by her stateroom today to bring her a beautiful little charm for her bracelet from him. She doesn’t want him seeing her like this, and I must say, I think she was right — she looked positively green. I had to feel sorry for her. At least at the moment she certainly isn’t any prattler, as you so unkindly put it.”

  “Would you like to make a little wager? I’ll bet that before the voyage is over our Lady Fotheringay will have lifted him right away from little Clarice.”

  “You make him sound like a dead mouse fought over by two cats, to carry your analogies further. He may have more character than you think.” For some reason Katharine hated to see Arabella, who had once treated him so badly, have her way.

  “No one has that much character,” Thomas said. “What I think is really amusing is that the damn fool’s paying no attention to the best of the lot.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Not what, whom. You, my dear Katharine, of course.” She looked at him, startled. With those few words he had turned her world around. It was like those pictures in which animals and faces were hidden in stones, clouds, trees. You could look at them for minutes at a time seeing nothing, and then suddenly the hidden shape would leap out at you. Incongruously a vision of Charles lying naked on the bed eating a peach flashed across her mind. Charles then became Christian, and she laughed a little too loudly, flushing. “I’m not even in the running, Thomas, you know that.” She laughed again. “Anyway, I haven’t any money.”

  “More the fool he, as I said.”

  Thomas was looking at her with those disconcerting dark eyes, and with an effort of will she refrained from trying him out with the peach as well. An immense abyss had suddenly after all this time opened at her feet, and just as she had with relief judged herself free of those terrible aching nights that fortunately occurred with decreasing frequency. This voyage seemed to reek with sensuality — were all ocean voyages like that? She could count no less than a dozen shipboard romances that she and Thomas had noted and maliciously commented upon, with a number of possibles besides. She had no doubt that others were conjecturing about Thomas and her, for that matter. Far from minding, she rather liked the idea. Anything to get Christian out of her mind, where he persisted in staying now with alarming stubbornness. Her very thoughts were going out of control, and it frightened her. She had had enough of unrequited love to last her a lifetime.

  One evening as she waited in the shadow of a funnel for Thomas to leave the smoking room, she heard voices approaching. Two figures deep in conversation came toward her and, obviously not seeing her, paused in their walk. She recognized Christian’s voice and felt trapped, for even as they paused, if she made her presence known they would assume she had been eavesdropping all along. She sighed and kept still.

  “But don’t you remember the cave, Christian? I’ve often thought of those days and how lovely they were.”

  “You cold-blooded bitch! You used me then and you want to use me now.” His voice was hoarse, and Katharine could see that Arabella had put her arms around his neck.

  “Don’t be a prude, Christian. What I’m proposing won’t hurt anyone. You’re a very attractive man, you know, and I’m very fond of you. You’ve dreamed of making love to me, I know you have, so I’m really not putting any thoughts into your head that weren’t already there. Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to hold back the way we did in the cave?” Her tone was teasing, her voice husky.

  Christian actually groaned. “No, damn you. For you it would be for fun, but not for me. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had a woman? A penance it’s been, one that has everything and nothing to do with you. If I ever made love to you, I’d never be free of you. Don’t ask it of me, Arabella. If you really care at all for me, don’t ask it.”

  “Silly old bear, you always were melodramatic. You haven’t changed a bit, have you? Don’t you want something to remember when you’re tied for good to that insipid little blond?” Her voice became serious then. “I’m not coming to you under false pretenses, Christian. My fondness could change into something far deeper, you know.”

  There was a silence, and Christian then pulled Arabella hard against him and put his mouth on hers. Katharine, watching, felt a nameless emotion so shattering that it physically hurt her. Hand against her mouth, she slipped away, so shaken that she didn’t care if she was seen. Much to her surprise, not five minutes after she had entered the grand saloon, she saw Christian standing in the doorway looking as stricken as she felt.

  If Arabella had her way with him on that crossing, Katharine was never able to be sure about it, and when the ship docked in London after stopping off at Liverpool, the coolness of their goodbye to each other m
ight or might not have been simulated.

  Chapter III

  She loved London, which was just as well, since she was sent on endless errands into what seemed every corner of it. She had spent only a week at the Compton shipyard before being hustled back to the city. She was glad to leave the yard, for there she had seen yet another Christian, balancing catlike on the metal skeleton of the second ship, Clarice: nimble, deft, confident — thoroughly at home in a man’s demanding world. She didn’t want to know what she felt. Everything had been fine until that lovely and yet disturbing voyage that had stirred up all of the old memories, opened cracks in the protective scar tissue. She wondered if she was only feeling for Christian those emotions which she refused to admit for Charles. She had to face it; Christian was as far out of her sphere as he would have been had she been a serving maid. She wiped the problem from the surface of her mind by plunging into the depths of the sprawling, complex city of London, and if she dreamed, her waking mind at least never remembered.

  Katharine never tired of watching the stream of faces, listening to the unfamiliar cadences that were English yet often incomprehensible. Even the street and district names had a flavor totally unlike any she had ever encountered: Pudding Lane, Threadneedle Street, Cripplegate, Wormwood Scrubs Common. There were not only streets and roads and alleys, but ditches like Shoreditch, mews, lanes, courts, corners, gates, and circuses.

  The people she dealt with in the various firms seemed surprised to see a woman, but they were unfailingly polite. She wondered if it was that she was an American — everyone knew Americans were utterly mad — that made them accept her. She had had no idea how many details there were in the fitting out of a ship: the silverware, the linens, the faucets for the handbasins and bathtubs — yes, real bathtubs — the enameled chamber pots, the material for the cushions in the saloon, engraved dishes, curtains, bedspreads, pillows, printed menus allowing for a seemingly endless combination of dishes, carpeting, wall hangings, hand rails, doorknobs, and a further endless array of trivia. That didn’t even include food and the necessaries for the actual running of the Circe, such as rope, shovels for the stokers, and the like.