My Saving Grace

by Harmon, Danelle

Her anger softened.

  She had overcome past humiliations by not taking herself so seriously, and finding ways to laugh at herself when all was said and done. Because if you were the one laughing at yourself, it rather dulled the urge for others to do so instead.

  Really, was this any different?

  She looked around for Captain Lord. He had retreated to the rail some distance away, a remote, lonely figure who was gazing out over the water. Grace made her excuses and went to him.

  “Captain Lord.” She offered a smile, allowing her eyes to sparkle with forgiveness.

  “Lady Grace.” He slanted her a look she couldn’t quite interpret. “I thought you were cross with me.”

  “I am.” She joined him at the rail and looked down at the gray water so far below. “But being cross isn’t my normal state of mind. A waste of energy to be angry at someone, really, though I did feel quite foolish, being the only one who didn’t know your rank or who you really were when everyone else, it seems, did.” She smiled when she saw him beginning to frown. “But I forgive you.”

  “Forgiveness accepted.”

  “But of course, that means that for me to forgive you, you probably should have given me an apology first. Otherwise the forgiveness doesn’t really count.”

  “That is a very bizarre and confounded way of looking at the matter, Lady Grace.”

  “Is it?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “It makes perfect sense to me. I have forgiven you for not apologizing to me as well as deceiving me.”

  “And I apologize to you, for the fact that I have no idea what you’re talking about or how to interpret it.”

  “You are forgiven.”

  Del looked down and over at her, at her earnest face with its dark brows, its pert little nose and innocent mouth, and in that moment he saw the humor in those big blue eyes and realized she was playing with him.

  He wasn’t quite sure how to respond. He opened his mouth but nothing came out, and he felt suddenly rather witless as well as useless here on Ponsonby’s ship as a passenger, with his admiral’s flag flying from Ponsonby’s command instead of his own. Where he had no role, really, except to help this beautiful, self-deprecating and helplessly funny young woman find a way to catch the eye of this ship’s commander.

  The idea of her succeeding brought him sudden pain.

  I can’t wait to get to Norfolk.

  To get away from them both.

  Ironic, wasn’t it. He a naval captain, a senior officer whose home was largely the sea. He, a man who’d been all but raised on ships.

  He a man who couldn’t wait to get back on land where his current insignificance, at least, would have an excuse.

  And he himself would have a respite from a task which was growing increasingly difficult, increasingly painful, and increasingly hard to assist toward its imagined outcome.

  “Well, I’ll leave you to your musings,” she said, her eyes dancing. “But I hope we can continue my education as a mariner-in-training while we’re aboard ship.”

  He inclined his head. “It would be an honor, Lady Grace.”

  She gave him a smile that completely melted him. Then she moved off, heading back to his admiral’s family and never knowing that his eyes— and his heart— followed her.

  * * *

  Grace had never seen, let alone been on a warship. She stayed largely out of the way as Captain Ponsonby issued a barrage of commands that resulted in things she didn’t know much about. Sailors going to the great contraption that turned round and round and brought the anchor up. Sailors going up the tapering crosshatched ropes that led up the masts, moving out along the yards (she knew they were yards because Ned himself came over to tell her) to release whatever it was called that held the sails furled. So many terms! So much to remember! Sailors bustling to and fro, Uncle Gray standing quietly near Captain Ponsonby but doing nothing to interfere with the business of running the ship, his two daughters squealing with excitement, Ned offering a running commentary about what was happening that had Grace thoroughly confused, in part because she was listening to none of it and instead, watching the figure she’d left behind at the rail.

  Captain Lord kept himself apart, seemingly uninterested in the way Captain Ponsonby conducted the business of getting his own ship underway, his thoughts his own as he gazed out over the gray and misty harbor.

  Grace found her eye drawn to him, her mind pondering what he was thinking about, and then wondering why she was thinking about Delmore Lord instead of watching Sheldon Ponsonby who was in all his glory, when suddenly a sailor up in the bows yelled, “Anchors aweigh!” The ship lurched and swayed, a sensation that immediately transferred itself to her stomach.

  Oh, no.

  Some of the smaller sails were down and drawing, and one of the bigger ones on the foremast as well. Grace had no idea what they were called despite the fact she must have asked Ned three times, and despite her resolution to learn as much about the working of the ship as possible she suddenly didn’t care so much about any of it.

  I don’t feel well.

  She took a deep breath of the damp salt air and let it out. Polly had come up from below and was sitting in a chair near Lady Falconer, who had an excited, squealing twin on each knee. Her maid was looking toward the waist of the ship, where Captain Lord’s manservant had busied himself with the ship’s company; he glanced up, caught Polly’s eye, and raised his hat to her. Polly blushed prettily. They were starting to make way now. Grace couldn’t yet feel any motion, but when she cast her gaze toward the shoreline, or a distant vessel against that shoreline, she could see the movement.

  A shadow fell over her and she turned to find Captain Lord there.

  “What do you think?” she asked, trying to get her mind off her suddenly queasy stomach. “Is Captain Ponsonby doing a good job of getting his ship underway?”

  “Unless he hits something or goes aground, I cannot fault him.”

  “This is all rather exciting. I hope I’m teachable when it comes to the names of the many parts and practices of a ship. My memory is already overwhelmed. And I’m confused.”

  “About what?”

  “Lots of things. To start with, why do the sails on that mast— what is it called?”

  “The mainmast.”

  “Right, the mainmast. Why do those sails look different from the one aboard our little boat back at the lake?”

  “These are square-rigged. The one on our boat was fore-and-aft rigged. Different setup.”

  “These look far more complicated.”

  “Same principle,” he said.

  Behind him, she could see Captain Ponsonby near the wheel, standing with the admiral and talking. Unbidden, Grace’s gaze went back to Captain Lord.

  He really is rather a handsome man.

  Now, where did that thought come from?

  The ship was picking up speed now, the massive warship that the man beside her supposedly commanded, growing larger as they headed toward it. She saw a look of fond longing move briefly over his face.

  They would be passing it soon. As they approached, it grew and grew until it dwarfed the ship that she stood on. There were plenty of people aboard it, too. She could see moving figures and people waving wildly as they sailed past, could hear a great roaring cheer coming from it.

  She glanced at Sir Graham on the quarterdeck. He raised his hat to them, and then Grace jumped as a gun fired a salute from the massive warship, echoing over the water in a cloud of smoke and rolling thunder.

  The Falconer twins, restrained by Polly as their mother went to say something to her husband, squealed with excitement.

  It seemed to take forever to sail past the great warship. The parting mists had still not found the top of its lofty masts, and Grace felt small and insignificant as they moved past the many rows of open gun ports and looked up, up, up to see the figures waving from the decks so high above them. She turned her head to look at Delmore Lord. It wasn’t hard to imagine him command
ing such a mighty vessel, and it occurred to her for the second time in as many minutes, that he must cut a fine figure indeed in his naval uniform.

  As fine as Captain Ponsonby.

  Maybe finer...

  And then they were past HMS Orion and into the outer reaches of the harbor, and the long rolling swells coming in from the English Channel found them.

  “Captain Ponzy! Fire the guns!” shrieked little Anne Falconer.

  He, still in conversation with the admiral on the quarterdeck, didn’t hear the children but Delmore Lord did. He looked pained.

  “Captain Lord! Make him fire the guns!” howled her twin, Mary.

  “Yes, we want to hear them go boom!”

  “Please, Captain Lord!”

  Delmore Lord smiled, then, something he did not seem wont to do, and knelt down to the children’s level. “This is not my ship, girls,” he said quietly. “But perhaps once we get out in open sea, Captain Ponsonby will fire the guns.”

  “Won’t sound as good as Orion’s,” Ned put in.

  “I want to hear them now!”

  Lady Falconer was returning, no doubt intending to take control of the situation, but Grace was no longer paying attention to the rising drama. The deck beneath her feet was moving up and down and tilted somewhat to her left, and she was beginning to feel dizzy. She turned her back on the Falconers and went to the rail and there, dug her fingers into the smooth wood, sucking deep breaths into her lungs and fighting down a rising sense of panic.

  She shut her eyes. That made it worse.

  Oh, dear God.

  A presence at her shoulder once again. She looked up, expecting Captain Lord, but no, of all people it was him.

  Captain Ponsonby.

  “Lady Grace.” His blinding white smile reached all the way up to his eyes and made them crinkle. “My admiral tells me you’ve never been aboard a ship before. Would you like a turn around the decks with me?”

  Grace could only stare at him. This was the moment she’d been waiting for. The moment she had dreamed of, the moment when this very man finally made room in his own world for her.

  She opened her mouth to reply—

  And vomited the lunch he had so praised all over his clean white breeches, his shiny black shoes, and their perfectly shined buckles.

  20

  He leaped backwards as though he’d been struck.

  “Ohhhh,” she cried in abject humiliation, wiping helplessly at her mouth, feeling another wave of nausea already rising in her throat as Captain Ponsonby went green, muttered a hasty “I beg your pardon,” and retreated. Through a spinning dizziness she watched him flee for the comparative safety of his quarterdeck, leaving her all alone in her misery.

  The tears came. Her head swam and her knees grew weak and droplets of sweat popped out on her forehead as she fought another coming wave.

  “Lady Grace.”

  She looked up through her tears and there was Captain Lord. He reached into the pocket of his tailcoat and extracted a clean white handkerchief and was just about to hand it to her when she clapped a hand over her mouth and ran to the rail, clenching her teeth against the rising vomit, her senses swimming.

  She felt his hand upon her own where it rested upon the smooth wood. His tall presence beside her was soothing and she, dizzy and ill, found herself leaning into it.

  “I don’t want to be sick,” she choked out, the tears rolling down her face. “I want to be able to do this.”

  The hand he’d laid over her own moved to her back, strong, reassuring. He leaned down to her. “Let it come out,” he murmured for her ears alone. “You’ll feel better.”

  “Yes, and you’ll bolt, too, won’t you?”

  “No.”

  And here it came. Her head swimming, the contents of her stomach came barreling out of her mouth and nostrils with as much force as she suspected the nearby cannon would spew when called to war, and she shut her eyes, unwilling and unable to watch the wind take it and send it down and out over the sea.

  Captain Lord was rubbing her back.

  “I can’t believe I’m seasick,” she choked out, swiping at her tears, her sweating face. “My uncle is an admiral. I thought I had seafarer’s blood.”

  “You may have seafarer’s blood, but you have a landlubber’s stomach,” he said kindly. “Though did you know, Lady Grace, that even the great Lord Nelson suffered from seasickness?”

  “Did he really?”

  Another wave of nausea hit her and miserably, she retched over the side. And there was Captain Lord again, the handkerchief in his hand, and he was tenderly wiping her chin, the corner of her mouth, unflinching, patient and caring when the man of her dreams had fled in horror and disgust.

  Something lurched in her heart.

  Her tears became something more and took on a different meaning. One of guilt and gratitude and realization. Of grief, even, as she mourned her idea of what she’d thought Ponsonby to be versus what he actually was.

  “I need to go below,” she said weakly. “I wish to lie down.”

  “You may feel better if you stay up here in the fresh air. But if you wish to go to your cabin, I’ll take you.”

  She nodded, and clutched his arm when he offered it. The muscles beneath were rock-hard and strong and she clung to him, hanging her head, unable to look toward the quarterdeck where Captain Ponsonby was no doubt trying to clean his shoes. Together, they headed toward the hatch, Grace moaning in misery and struggling to stay on her feet, the motion of the ship sending her repeatedly stumbling and falling into the solid strength of the man who walked beside her, the man who gallantly adjusted his pace to accommodate her own, the man who uncomplainingly allowed her to lean heavily on him as they slowly made their way to the hatch.

  “Del? Is Grace all right?”

  Aunt Maeve’s voice. Aunt Maeve the pirate queen, who had probably never been seasick a day in her life.

  “A little mal de mer, nothing more. I’m taking her to her cabin.”

  “She’ll feel better topside, you know.”

  “I just want to lie down,” Grace moaned, grateful for his hard strength.

  Somehow, he got her down the hatch and into the soothing gloom below decks and immediately, Grace knew both he and her aunt were correct. Down here in the close confines of the ship, the motion was worse. And the smells... bilge and unwashed bodies, vinegar and salt and a host of other odors, some of them noxious, some of them not, none of them doing a thing to alleviate her misery. She stumbled and almost fell and it was then that Captain Lord, without warning, without permission, scooped her up in his strong arms. She was too sick to protest, too weak to care, and lay nestled against his chest as he carried her past several small cabins and then, finally, to what amounted to little more than a cubbyhole.

  Her cabin, which some junior officer must have given up for her comfort.

  Inside was a narrow bunk built against the curve of the hull, a tiny writing desk, and her trunk which someone had already brought aboard. Grace looked at it all and her world swam dizzyingly, and she turned her sweating face against Captain Lord’s chest once again.

  “I want to die,” she mumbled, into the clean white linen of his shirt.

  “I know.”

  “I vomited all over him. Over his clothes. His shoes.”

  “You’ve laughed about your other disasters. And someday you’ll laugh about this one, too.”

  “Will I?”

  “You will.”

  “I’ve never felt so wretched in my entire life.”

  “Not even when he found the hair in his soup?”

  She heard the humor in his voice, and managed to respond with a wan smile. “Well, I think this is worse.”

  “And so it is. But you’ll persevere. You’re resilient and strong.”

  With gentle tenderness he lowered her to the bunk, removed her shoes, and drew the light blanket that was folded at the foot of the bed, up over her body. She curled in misery on the thin mattress, moaning
.

  “Would you like me to stay with you, Lady Grace?”

  Grace shut her eyes against the rolling of the ship, the spinning in her head, the nausea and the sweating and the absolute horror of it all. She nodded in a little helpless gesture, grateful for his presence, too sick to wonder or care why Lady Falconer hadn’t come down here to be with her or why she hadn’t sent Polly. She heard Captain Lord draw the chair close to the bed and as she lay there clenched in a ball of misery, dizziness led to sleep and his hand came out to rest on her shoulder in wordless comfort.

  She never knew.

  But he, sitting there in the gloom beside her, the girl’s slim arm clammy beneath his fingers, her tears of embarrassment still wet upon her cheeks, was keenly aware of her. Of the softness of her breathing. Of the tangled beauty of her hair. Of the sweetness of her cheek and the tilt of her nose, and the dark sweep of her long, long lashes lying against her pale skin.

  A fierce and violent wave of protectiveness suddenly overcame him.

  She would be wasted on Ponsonby, whose intolerance for hairs in his soup and puke on his shoes was an embarrassment to manliness in general and chivalry in particular.

  But he had pledged to help the girl net that undeserving lout, and he was a man of his word.

  He looked wistfully upon her sleeping form and leaned his head against the bulkhead that separated this cabin from the next.

  He could not have her, as her heart belonged to another.

  But he could gaze upon her beauty until either Lady Falconer or Polly arrived, and he could dream.

  He hoped that she, in her slumbers, was doing the same.

  * * *

  Lady Falconer did not arrive, nor did she send Polly to rescue Del from any whispers of scandal that might’ve resulted from his actions in taking Grace below, let alone remaining there. Not that anyone on board the frigate would have cared, really. Ponsonby was more interested in showing off the smartness of his command to Sir Graham, Polly and Mr. Lord’s manservant were making eyes at each other, and Maeve had her hands full with her children.