First Time with a Highlander

by Gwyn Cready

  “I suppose. The nature of ship life in my time involves desserts in the shape of dolphins, drinks with umbrellas, and Garth Brooks tribute bands.”

  She pinched her face. “You paint a picture of a verra strange place.”

  “Says the woman who bought a three-headed snake from the hunchback in front of the Blinded Maiden.” He gazed at her contemplatively. “May I say the stubble and thick brows are not my favorite part of your look.”

  “Och. Nor the awkward, tight breeks,” she said, digging at her waist.

  “Funny,” he said, “I’m having no trouble with that feature. What do you think Edward’s cargo is?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s odd it wasn’t in the hold, at least not marked as such. If it’s small enough to be put somewhere else, then it would have to have a more concentrated value, like gold or jewels.”

  “What if it was gold? What would he be doing with gold?”

  She rolled her eyes. “What do Englishman usually do with gold?”

  “That’s a bit slanderous.”

  “You’re not English.”

  “I’m half-English.”

  “Are ye?” Her face fell. “Ah, but you’re half-Highlander,” she said, brightening. “That drowns out everything else. It’s like dropping a bit of spoiled mutton into a bubbling kettle of bilberry custard. You might know it’s there, but it’s simply not going to make a difference.”

  He leaned back. “Bilberry custard, eh?”

  “Dinna get too lost in the praise. Bilberries make me costive.”

  He pushed the notebook aside, suddenly sober. “You’re certain the captain didn’t harm you?”

  She flushed. He had a maddening propensity to annoy and attract simultaneously, and she was having trouble choosing which emotion to respond to first. “’Tis kind of you to worry. A bruised ego was the worst of it.” She waited for a jest about other bruised parts.

  Gerard watched her, chin on his fist. “I didn’t know what I was going to do when you were climbing over the rail and I saw you being hauled back,” he said. “There was an implicit threat of violence in the man. And the gangplank was being pulled up.” His voice grew husky. “I can honestly say, I’ve never been quite so worried. And when I walked in here…”

  He seemed to search the top of Thistlebrook’s desk for the words that would explain the extent of his horror but found none. A weighty guilt came to rest on Serafina. She had not expected to become entangled in the life of the man she’d called with Undine’s magic, nor he in hers. The spell was to have produced a bland, nameless replica of Edward to do her bidding, not this flesh-and-blood man with wry asides and complicated shoulders and expectations about her well-being that she would have to wrestle with. The realization made her uncomfortable and a bit resentful.

  “Why did you leave me in the spire?” he asked.

  Her face grew warm. “The ship came into sight. You had once again expressed your frustration with my calling you here. I chose to allow you to avoid further entanglements.”

  He traced the edge of the ink pot. “Yet here I am.”

  She swallowed hard. “Thank you.”

  “Did you enjoy our lovemaking?”

  She gritted her teeth. A fool she might be to have given in to her desire, but if he made a jest about it, he would wear the contents of that ink pot. “You know I did.”

  “Enough to do it again?”

  “Mr. Innes, I realize you are not of this time, but that is not something a gentleman asks a lady.”

  “I make no claim to ‘gentleman.’”

  “And I make no claim to ‘lady,’ but you must see being asked such a question serves only to remind me of my status.”

  “What status? You’re over twenty-one, aren’t you? In my time, men and women don’t worry about the thing we did. It was lovely. There’s no shame.”

  “Mr. Innes, how many women have you taken to your bed? A dozen? Two?”

  In his eyes was the sizable distance between her guess and the truth.

  “More?” she said, incredulous. “Fifty? A hundred?”

  When he didn’t reply, she sat back, stunned. “Was there any chance—any chance at all—when you mounted those stairs that you were nae going to bed me?”

  The muscle in his jaw flexed, and he summoned a weak smile. “There was no chance after you first called me out of my hotel room that I wasn’t going to at least try.”

  Her thoughts went to the awkward coupling on that carriage seat and the anger she’d felt when she discovered Edward’s outpourings of love to be but the tools of a practiced seducer.

  “If you’re honest,” she said, “which I know you to be, for you have answered every question I’ve ever asked you, what are the chances, based on your experience, that you would have failed in your attempt?”

  His gaze, sad but steady, did not falter. “Zero—or near to it.”

  She inhaled, refashioning the moments in the spire, his joy upon seeing the great expanse of blue, his awe at her knowledge of sailing, that unrepentant kiss. How different they seemed in another, harsher light.

  “I’m not like Edward,” he said. “I don’t want to take anything from you. I like you very much.”

  “You have been verra kind to help me as much as ye have. And I take responsibility for the things I do. I just didna know until now exactly what I was doing. Friends?” She extended her hand.

  “Yes.” He clasped it reluctantly.

  Duchamps’s call of “Stuns’ls aloft” echoed in the captain’s quarters as a line of demarcation settled permanently between the brief past they’d shared as lovers and the present they’d share as something else.

  “Well then,” Gerard said, trying to manage the ungainly silence, “I suppose we best get back to our work. Time is money, aye?” he added, slipping back into his dreadful accent.

  She shook her head, confused. “Your Scots accent is so lovely. How can your English accent be so poor?”

  “I’ll have you know I was the finest King Arthur in the history of the Hotchkiss School.”

  She smiled. “Oh, I’ll bet you were.”

  “‘Gerry Innes brings a childlike charm as well as decidedly masculine sense of intrigue to a role he makes his own.’” He began to sing a song of Camelot in a voice that carried halfway to Leith.

  She laughed. “I had no idea King Arthur sang. And you are quite right. Your singing accent is far less jarring. Perhaps if you were to sing instead of speak?”

  “Ha ha.” His face filled with a faraway grin. “The ‘decidedly masculine sense of intrigue’ got me through a lot of lean years, let me tell you.”

  Odd, she thought. I would have guessed it was the childlike charm.

  A knock made her jump.

  “Duchamps, sir.”

  “You’re not ready,” she whispered furiously to Gerard. “Send him away.”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Send him away. You don’t have the faintest idea what the men do who work this ship. And we might not like Thistlebrook, but he was right when he said that men will not live under the command of a man they think will get them killed.”

  “I don’t need to know how to run the ship because I know how to do something far more important.”

  “Do ye? And what might that be?”

  “Watch and learn. Enter!”

  Duchamps opened the door, hat in hand, and saluted. “The captain is in the spare cabin with guards at the door.” He gave Serafina a nervous smile.

  “Thank you,” Gerard said. “What’s your name?”

  “Lieutenant Duchamps, sir.”

  “Thank you, Duchamps. Unfortunate business. I was just questioning young Harris here about it for the report. By the way, I have decided to make him my man Friday.”

  “Your what, sir?”

  “Um, aide-de-
camp?”

  “On a ship?”

  Duchamps shook his head, evident anxiety growing, and a fleeting image of them being dropped over the side of the ship in chains went through Serafina’s head.

  “Batman? Admin? Secretary?”

  At “secretary,” Duchamps relaxed. “A secretary. Aye, sir. If I can be of any assistance to you, Mr. Harris, please let me know. I’m assuming you would like him to be placed in the cabin next to yours.”

  Gerard blinked. “Yes.”

  “Nae,” said Serafina.

  Duchamps said to Serafina, “You can of course sleep in the wardroom with the warrant officers.”

  Gerard gave her a look that suggested he had only been trying to save her from a fate worse than death but that if she chose to expose herself to half the seafaring barbarians in Europe as she dressed for dinner that it was certainly her choice, not his.

  She sighed. “The cabin will be verra nice. Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  “I am glad to be of service. I came to see you about our course, sir. Shall I continue it? I thought I should ask in light of the, er, unpleasantness.”

  “No,” Gerard said. “We need to set sail for a location that is eighteen degrees latitude, fifty-six degrees longitude. If you please.”

  Duchamps frowned. “Brazil, sir?”

  Serafina, whose back was to the lieutenant, realized Gerard’s mistake and cleared her throat loudly.

  “On second thought,” Gerard amended, “make that eighteen degrees longitude and fifty-six degrees latitude. I was just testing you, Lieutenant. Brazil would be ridiculous, of course. Well done.”

  “Thank you, sir. By the shore route? Or Dutch road?”

  “Oh, I think we both know which way makes more sense.” Gerard caught Serafina’s eye and waggled his brows.

  “I don’t, sir,” Duchamps said, stone-faced. “The shore allows us to avoid privateers, but the Dutch road is faster.”

  “Lieutenant, my management style has always been to empower my team to make decisions on their own. I’m here to advise, coach, and help you build on ideas. If you need me, I’m here. Otherwise, you may conduct the business of running this ship as you see fit.”

  Duchamps shifted. “So, the path that goes by the Dutch road?”

  Serafina tapped the desk theatrically, waiting for Gerard to make his decision.

  He templed his fingers and gazed at a spot just beyond his lieutenant’s head.

  Duchamps fingered his brim. “Sir? The Dutch road path?”

  Exasperated, Serafina opened her lips and formed the word “aye.”

  “No,” Gerard said with an imperious wave of his hand. “The shore route.”

  “The shore route?” Duchamps’s eyes widened.

  “That was one of the choices, was it not?”

  “Oh, aye, sir. It just surprised me to hear you say it. I will make it so.” Duchamps bowed and left.

  Serafina said, “Och, that was a verra poor idea.”

  Gerard crossed his arms and turned, captain-like, to gaze out the stern windows. “I’ll live with my decision.”

  “Let’s hope the rest of us will be as lucky.”

  Twenty

  “I told you,” she whispered, “the Dutch road is not the place to be doing something you dinna want anyone to see.”

  Gerard wished the “something” she referred to was more like the effort they’d collaborated on that morning at the top of St. Giles, rather than sailing a ship through waves like bucking broncos while sixty pairs of eyes watched him rake the sail-filled horizon with a spyglass.

  His stomach was in his throat, the quarterdeck was anywhere but under his feet, and his new secretary stood so close to him, he didn’t know where to look or what to say without betraying his feelings.

  He abandoned the glass for an instant to steal a glance at her. Even wrapped in the guise of a man, her salt water–fueled joy made his heart ache for her. His grandmother, who had adamantly refused to board his father’s thirty-nine-foot Philip Rhoades sailboat, used to say Scots were not made to have water under their feet. But his grandmother had never met Serafina. Nor was there much chance she would either. Besides living three centuries away, Serafina had made it very clear her relationship with Gerard was no longer the sort that had even the slightest chance of leading to gin and tonics on the Innes family terrace.

  It was funny how sad losing an option could seem even though one had never seriously considered it while it was at hand.

  You have her friendship, at least, which is probably more than you deserve.

  He believed—truly—that he esteemed women and treated them with respect. He had close friends who were women and had developed and promoted a number of women at the agency. But he had never been forced to step back and consider what his extended series of one-night stands might look like to a woman like Serafina.

  Is it possible to be a man who respects women and one who collects them?

  He had always chosen to look at his behavior as his way of ensuring no obstacle stood between him and the unencumbered life he wanted to lead. But now, for the very first time, he saw his behavior itself as the obstacle—a fifty-foot-tall curtain wall keeping him from a prize he very dearly wanted.

  “Are you keeping watch?” asked Serafina, who had caught him looking at her. “The men expect their captain to be focused on identifying potential adversaries.” She wrote something in the notebook she’d brought along to look the part of a secretary.

  He returned to the glass. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for. Are the triangle sails the good ones or the bad ones?”

  “For the love of Saint Margaret,” she murmured. “We don’t need you to actually identify them, Mr. Innes. The barrel man will spot them long before even a capable captain could. We just need you to look as if you might. Think of yourself as a symbol, like the mermaid carved onto the ship’s prow. The more believable the execution, the more luck it augurs.”

  Gerard made a wounded noise. “I think I have more to offer than a carving.”

  “More than a carving? Oh, my dear captain, that carving is the first thing other sailors see on a ship. ’Tis the ship’s envoy to the world—the shining signal that communicates friend or foe, French or Prussian, marine or merchant. What could be more important?”

  “Wow,” he said, “you really should write copy.”

  “I think I’m beginning to understand what you do. It has a strong relationship to lying, doesn’t it?”

  “What’s a barrel man?”

  She pointed up, and Gerard leaned back as far as his neck would allow. An enormous barrel hung lashed to a point not far from the top of the mast. It had to be thirty feet above them.

  “A crow’s nest.” His cocked hat fell and he caught it the instant before it reached the deck. “That’s what they call it in my time.”

  She nodded appreciatively. “I suppose it does look like one hanging in the tallest branches of the ship. Uh-oh, sailors. Time to be a symbol again.”

  He returned the glass to his eye as a crew of men carrying ropes passed by. The ships he could see, which numbered close to a dozen, did not seem to be doing anything worthy of notice.

  “Oh, dear,” she said. “This is why I didn’t want us to take the Dutch road. Can you see the yellow sloop? The one that is fore-and-aft rigged?”

  Yellow he could work with. He drew the glass from ship to ship. None were exactly yellow. “Do you mean the one with the skinny blue flag at the top?”

  She tapped his arm, and he realized she was looking in the opposite direction.

  “Ah.” The ship was tiny compared to the one they were on—closer to the sea and with only a single mast. It was a bit smaller than his grandfather’s sailboat. “What about it?”

  “I don’t like the look of it.”

  He looked again. “Yellow not
your color?”

  “I look dreadful in yellow, but that’s not the reason. It’s been exactly the same distance behind us since it first appeared half an hour ago.”

  “Seems like a good safety rule.”

  “But that rig can outsail this one as easily as I snap my fingers,” she said. “So, why isn’t it?”

  “Because it’s following us?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  Gerard snapped the glass closed. “But is it following you or the cargo?”

  “Don’t forget Thistlebrook. He’s an option. He seems to have a problem or two of his own.”

  “To say the least.”

  “’Twould be best, I think, not to confide in Duchamps.”

  Gerard started. “You suspect Duchamps?”

  Several sailors turned, and he added stentoriously, “I’ll have to thank him in that case. The jam was excellent.”

  Serafina coughed. “Such cunning. Why didn’t you tell me you’ve worked in intelligence before? Aye, Duchamps is on my list. Anyone on this ship could be part of whatever the captain is doing and, therefore, none too glad to see us—well, you, specifically. We need to be verra cautious. Oh, tell the master to move the ship two points closer to the wind.”

  “Huh?” He turned to find himself looking directly at Ginty, the ship’s master.

  “Orders, sir?”

  “Oh, aye. Move her two points closer to the wind.”

  Ginty raised an impressed brow. “I will.”

  Gerard leaned back on his elbows on the railing and watched the master pass Gerard’s order on to Duchamps as well as the master’s thoughts on how best to set the sails. Duchamps shouted the orders to the men on the yardarms overhead.

  “So the master is essentially Scotty,” Gerard said, working it out in his head. “‘I’m tryin’, Captain. But she’s not respondin’.’”