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Excerpt from: A Scandal to Remember
H.M.S. Tenacious,
Portsmouth Harbor, England
November, 1815
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Lieutenant Charles Dance was old enough and smart enough to know that some ideas were bad, right from the start. Some choices were no choice at all, especially when fueled by desperation. And some things were enough to drive a man to drink.
Except that his captain was already drunk, reeling about his cabin, reeking of gin at ten o’clock in the morning.
And they hadn’t even left Portsmouth dock.
“Who in the hell are you?”
“Lieutenant Dance, reporting for duty, sir.”
The old sot of a captain blinked his rheumy eyes at Dance, and stepped curiously sideways, as if they were in high seas and the deck were rising up to meet his foot.
He squinted upward to focus on Dance’s rather tall person. “What are you doin’ here, man?”
Dance ducked his head to step forward under the beams overhead. He never had fit in a damn frigate.
“I’ve been assigned to Tenacious, Captain. I’ve come to be your first lieutenant, sir.” Dance raised his voice slightly, and enunciated his words, in case the man was deaf as well as drunker than a gin whore.
“Damn your eyes. Stand still.”
Not deaf then, but most assuredly a grizzled, grumpy old drunk who showed no signs of recognition or cognizance, much less sobriety.
Dance dug in his old blue uniform coat to produce his written orders, handed to him only that morning. The orders he had been desperate to accept, because he knew damn well he was unlikely to get another posting that seemed such an easy berth.
He had been eight months out of employment, put ashore on half-pay and close rations like most of the fleet.
Eight months of watching his chances of getting a better command dwindle to nothing, while better men—men with more experience, not to mention influence and connections—were deprived of their profession as well.
Now that the navy had won the bloody war and saved Britain from sure invasion, they were all redundant—a drain on a nation ready to forget the past and be pleased with the future.
The trouble was, of course, that after so many years of war, Dance and men like him were unfit for any other gainful profession. Unfit for any other company but their own.
Which might explain why his captain was drunk and alone.
“My orders are to join you for this voyage to the South Seas, sir. An expedition of the Royal Society, is it not? Slated to leave as soon as the ship has finished being made ready?”
Dance had jumped to accept his old friend Will Jellicoe’s suggestion that he take the commission aboard Tenacious. Such a lengthy expedition looked to provide suitable, easy employment for several years, even without the added bonus of a monetary prize from the Duke of Fenmore for safeguarding the expedition of naturalists under the duke’s liberal patronage.
One didn’t turn down a patron like the Duke of Fenmore, even if it meant signing on with a captain who looked as if he ought to have been put to bed with a cannonball years ago.
Dance might have expected that Captain Muckross be old and less than accomplished. Energetic, successful captains were unlikely to be given such an unimportant—by Admiralty standards—commission as a tame expedition of dull naturalists.
But what choice did Dance have? A bad situation was better than no situation at all. He had rather take his chances with a decrepit captain, in a decrepit ship, than sit about in his decrepit lodging house wishing he were anywhere else.
The decrepit old sot of a captain was still trying in vain to focus upon the paper Dance extended toward him, but failed.
Instead, he waved his new lieutenant away with an impatient, ill-coordinated sweep of his arm that nearly toppled him into a chair.
“Well then, what are you gawping about here, boy? Get your bloody arse topside, and leave me in peace. Be about your damn business.”
Dance folded his orders away, and took his arse topside, where there was plenty of damn business to see to.
The evidence of the captain’s mismanagement was everywhere—the ship was a hovel, about as decrepit and ill-kept as a Royal Navy frigate could be, and still be afloat.
Lines were slack and rotting. Hardware and fittings were ill-used, and in bad repair. The entire vessel was filthy and stank like a stale gin mill.
In its present state, Tenacious was nothing better than a floating coffin.
It would take a week of work just to sort out the good from the bad, and replace the most pressing of the vessel’s rotting needs.
And then there was the matter of who might pay for such repairs. Even within the Admiralty, repairs cost hard money. The yards at Portsmouth shipyard only disgorged their stores readily for captains willing and able to pay.
Dance didn’t mind spending other men’s money—the captain’s or the Duke of Fenmore’s, it mattered not—especially if it would keep him from a watery grave.
Because in its present state, the ship would see them all drowned before they reached Salvador de Bahia.
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Coming, June, 2020
Also by Elizabeth Essex
Highland Brides
Mad for Love
Mad About the Marquess
A Fine Madness
Mad, Plaid and Dangerous to Marry
Mad Dogs and Englishwomen (Coming soon!)
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Dartmouth Brides
The Pursuit of Pleasure
A Sense of Sin
The Danger of Desire
The Dartmouth Brides Boxed Set
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The Kent Brothers Chronicles
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
After the Scandal Page 37