Night Storm

by Catherine Coulter

  She sighed as she watched one of Boss Lamb’s riggers scamper like a monkey in a forest canopy, hoisting up the yards on the foremast’s halyards.

  It seemed to Genny as if but a moment had passed since her offer of that outrageous wager and Alec’s acceptance, but it was more like two days. She hadn’t seen a hair of him. She knew he’d gone over the Paxton records with her father and toured the sail loft and the Paxton warehouse with Mr. Furring. She wondered where he was this morning.

  She didn’t have long to wonder. She looked up and realized that she now was seeing more than a hair of the baron. She was getting the whole man. She watched him come aboard the Pegasus, speak to each of the men in his path, comment suitably, she supposed, on the progress of the building. He looked like he belonged here, and that made her unaccountably furious.

  Alec saw her glowering at him beneath her ridiculous wool cap, grinned widely in return, and strode over to her, saying without preamble, “What’s the wager?”

  Genny’s chin went up, and she said without pause, “You know full well what it will be.”

  “Do I, now? Well, it’s a foregone conclusion that I shall beat you despite the possible superior speed of the Pegasus—”

  “Bosh. You know very well that the Pegasus has the capability for superior speed. You also know that it’s the ma—the woman in command who will determine the winner.”

  “I know, Genny, I know. All right. If I lose, you will expect me to buy into the shipyard—forty-nine percent, I suspect—but leave all business matters in your white hands, correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Very well. I agree to that. I also agree to the price your father presented to me yesterday. Surprised you, did I? Here’s what I want if I win.” As he spoke his eyes were firmly on Genny’s breasts. He knew it made her furious and he manufactured the most lecherous look he could manage. Then he paused, quite on purpose, knowing that she was expecting the very worst, but still he waited, seemingly now in rapt study of Boss Lamb and his crew of riggers who were swarming over the clipper, stretching tarred hemp lines until the slender masts were held rigidly in place. Boss Lamb was himself chewing his mustache as he swayed back and forth in the lookout’s perch on the fore-topgallant mast, eyeing the set of the masts and feeling the tension in the shrouds. He was a man of few words, one who didn’t seem to have a problem dealing directly with a woman. He called Genny lass, even though he wasn’t remotely Scottish and she wasn’t remotely lasslike. Boss Lamb had eyed Alec with a good deal of speculation, but had said nothing. It turned out, from a remark made by Genny, that Boss Lamb had known James Paxton since they were both boys. Thus, Alec thought, the reason for his loyalty.

  “Well?”

  Alec looked back at her. “It’s amazing how you can make one little word sound so very shrewish. Ah, look, they’ve got the heavy rigging set up on the bowsprit. My uncle used to tell me that you tuned a ship just like a guitar—a little more tension on the starboard topmast shrouds, slack off on the main-topgallant stay, and on and on.”

  “Alec, I will hit you on the head if you don’t stop toying with me.”

  “But it’s so very enjoyable. Toying with you, that is. Why, my hands still curve at the thought of your beautiful breasts filling them and—”

  She growled at him. He suspected her fondest hope would be to have a mallet in her hand and swing at his head with it.

  “But wait, that’s not possible, is it? You were on your back, your arms stretched over your head. A woman’s breasts are not at their fullest at such a time and so—”

  Genny sent her elbow into his ribs as discreetly as she could. He laughed.

  Alec raised a placating hand. “All right. I’ll hold my tongue. Behold a serious man.” He leaned against the highly polished foredeck railing. “What I want when I win are two things. First, I want you—willingly—in my bed. Second, I want fifty-one percent of the shipyard, and that, my dear Mr. Eugene, means control.”

  He delighted in the absolutely disbelieving and furious expressions that winged their way across her face. Were they to his first or second demand? Lord, at that moment he wanted to pull her cap off and kiss her until she was silly and weak. He thought about his several bouts with Oleah the previous night. One would have thought that the girl would have exhausted him. She’d certainly done her best to, but here he was, randy as a mountain goat, for a female dressed like a man, her face scrubbed and shiny under a very weak Baltimore sun, her breeches baggy, and not a hair of her beautiful hair showing from beneath that awful cap of hers.

  He cut off that appalling train of thought in short order, saying, “After I take over, I’ll even contrive to find you a husband so your time will be filled with those things a woman should be doing. You’ll be out of the shipyard business. You’ll be out of all these men’s hair.”

  “No. Never. Another thing, Alec, I don’t want a husband! Ever, do you hear me? And stop making sport of me. I would never, never allow some idiot man to run my life and tell me what to do.”

  “Goodness, all that? My, my, you do feel strongly about some things, don’t you? Listen to me, Mr. Eugene. Your interference with this shipyard will cease, one way or the other.”

  “Interference?” This was a shriek, an impassioned one, and it even made him start. “This is my shipyard, Alec Carrick, and I will run it and you won’t say a word otherwise and—”

  “If it remains your shipyard, it won’t remain. How can you be so blind, Genny? You may have little or no respect for men, but they do run things and it’s best you accept that. You don’t have to agree with it, but you must see that it is the way things are. You can flutter about behind the scenes, but to continue to ape a man you won’t do. Do you understand me?”

  Her hands were fisted at her sides. She felt such frustration, such fury at his pigheadedness, that she wanted to choke on it. She managed to say calmly enough, dismissing him, “We will race as soon as the Pegasus is finished. That will be a week and a half from now.”

  “Do you accept the wager?”

  Genny gave him a long look. She also gave him an exceedingly cold voice to go with the look as she said, “Go to bed with you? You know, I think I just might, Baron. You men seem to think sex is such a marvelous thing—”

  “You should remember; your memory isn’t that short or selective. I did give you a woman’s pleasure. I will give you that every time you’re in bed with me and more, Genny, much, much more.”

  That gave her only momentary pause. “My, my, Baron, you do seem to believe you’re the greatest lover in the civilized world—”

  “And the uncivilized as well, I daresay.”

  She shrugged with dazzling indifference. “Well, why not? I’m a woman, not a silly girl, and I can do precisely as I please. If you wish to brag and posture and proclaim yourself a wonderful lover, who am I to disbelieve you and forgo such an experience? After all, it’s not as if I would have to undergo this experiment more than once—”

  He interrupted her smoothly, “On the contrary, Genny, it is I who will do the undergoing, or performing, if you wish. I, a man, am the one of whom things are expected. A woman by her very, er, nature has but to lie on her back or on her side or come up on her knees—well, you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t really want to know what you mean. As I was saying before you rudely interrupted, I don’t want to do it more than once. It sounds altogether repellent and unnatural.”

  Alec laughed. “You won’t, you know.”

  “Won’t what?”

  “Won’t want me to make love to you just once. You’ll want me again and again, Genny, and if you like, we can have another wager on that. What do you say?”

  “I say that hell is much too pleasant a place for you.”

  “You do that so very well. I applaud you, Mr. Eugene. Yes, I do. I am put soundly in my lowly man’s place. Actually, I’ve changed my mind—”

  “You can’t.”

  “We haven’t shaken hands yet, Mr.
Eugene. As a manaper, you must know that a deal isn’t a deal until hands are duly shaken.”

  “What have you changed your mind about?”

  “I want you in my bed now. Tonight. I don’t want to wait until we return from Nassau.”

  “Ah, there’s Jake—you met him, I believe. He’s one of Mr. Furring’s men from the sail loft, and he’s bringing Hallie with him. I don’t want her on board with all the riggers swarming about. I’ll take her belowdecks to see the captain’s cabin.”

  “She’d rather see where the sailors will live.”

  “I’ll show her everything belowdecks. I need to speak to Jake anyway. Hallie can explore while I do.”

  “When you come back up, Genny, I want an answer.”

  “You will die young, Baron. It’s your fate, and at the hands of a furious woman.”

  “But not at your hands, my girl.”

  It wasn’t at all coincidental, Alec thought. The moment Genny disappeared belowdecks with Hallie, Boss Lamb climbed down from his terrifyingly high perch. It was as if he’d waited to find Alec alone.

  “The masts are the best,” Boss Lamb said, and spat chewing tobacco overboard. “America yields some of the best spruce in the world. Makes the best masts and spars, don’t you know.”

  “I read that you keep the masts in dirty backwater so that worms won’t bore into them.”

  “True enough. Those worms are the bane of our existence. You know, of course, that we cover all the oak planing with pitch, then a layer of felt and then a sheathing of thin white pine. Then the hull below the waterline we encase in copper. That stops those wood-boring worms, thank the good Lord.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Don’t suppose it’s much of my business, but I worry, sir, about what will happen to the shipyard. James Paxton is my friend, his daughter, too.”

  “Yes, Genny told me you’d been a very good friend to them. One of the few men who were willing to work with and for her.”

  Boss Lamb, a very thin individual of late middle years, appeared to chew that over with his tobacco. “Yes, the lass is smart, really smart about some things. You give her a problem with a pump tube or an anchor or a halyard block, and she’ll figure out a solution. But she can’t be bluff and crude and, well, one of the men, if you know what I mean. Even if she could, they’d never accept her. And she isn’t uncaring and unheeding of insults and slurs, and you can bet one of your English quid that’s mostly what she gets. Not just from all the prominent citizens of Baltimore, but also from many of our own men. They look at her like she should be on her back with her legs up and spread. It fair galls them to do what she tells ’em. I can’t see it makes much difference meself. Now, if she hadn’t a brain, that would be different.”

  “The way you put it, it seems hardly fair, does it?” Alec, amazed at his comment, shut his mouth very quickly.

  “No. Not a bit fair, but that’s the way of the world, ain’t it? Poor lass. You gonna buy things here? Take over the day-to-day overseeing?”

  “There will be some kind of deal. The Paxton shipyard won’t go under. We’re in the midst of negotiations.”

  “I feel sorry for the lass.” Boss Lamb spat more tobacco over the side. “She ain’t cut out for prissing about in some man’s house. I can’t see her sitting in her parlor pouring tea for all the mealymouthed females.”

  “Her father didn’t raise her right,” Alec said. Boss Lamb let that observation slide and Alec continued. “Do you really believe no one would buy the Pegasus because Genny built it?”

  “That’s the right of it, sir. Once that old bugger Boynton went under, the word got out that James wasn’t in charge anymore, it was little Genny. That did it, it did. Even now, all your gentlemen sit in their clubs, smoke their cheroots, and make fun of her, the little twit in breeches, I doubt not that they call her. And their wives just add coals to the flames. Jealous matrons, the lot of ’em. All they’re good for is shooting out babies and talking about their infernal gowns.”

  Alec, thinking of Hallie, said, “I’m glad they shoot out babies. The world would soon be an empty place if they didn’t.”

  “Oh, aye, but you know what I mean.”

  “It sounds to me like a case of cutting off one’s nose to spite the face. The clipper is excellently designed and built, after all. Who cares if a troll made it?”

  “True, but that’s the way of it, ain’t it? Everybody got to look down their nose at somebody, and in this case, all the fancy gentlemen got the little lass to look down on and scorn.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right. Don’t worry, Boss, nothing bad will happen, I swear it.”

  Alec didn’t allow himself to question his promise. He would see to it that the Paxton shipyard continued, and continued successfully. He simply wasn’t certain yet just how he would accomplish that, nor was he certain at all what to do with Genny.

  It wasn’t fair that Genny should be scorned and laughed at. Alec frowned at himself. A lot of things weren’t fair in this life, as Boss Lamb had said. What did it matter to him if this was just one in a long series of unfair things? He wasn’t a knight to right the wrongs, especially when he wasn’t so very certain about what was wrong in this case.

  He waited on deck, closely studying all the rigging work. The masts were tall and slender, and not at all perfectly straight up like the masts on other vessels. Her masts were, in fact, more sharply raked than even the masts on other clipper schooners he’d seen. Also, she had a very sharp dead rise, completely unlike his barkentine, whose bottom was nearly flat before rising slowly and gently upward with almost straight sides.

  The Baltimore clipper was a vessel he much admired, and he admired it more by the day. He thought of the yards upon yards of sail being sewn in the sail loft and the yards that were already fitted to the rigging. The Pegasus would be more heavily canvased than his own barkentine, a vessel a third larger than the clipper, and at the same time very lightly stayed. She’d take the wind head-on, and there would be no heavy weights to drag her back and slow her down.

  Unlike his barkentine, the Pegasus didn’t carry clutter all over her decks. They were bare, broad, not far above the waterline. He could imagine in a storm the waves washing easily over the decks with the freeboard so low. But then again, it was speed that was her hallmark, nothing else. A remarkable feat of design, yes indeed.

  Alec came out of his appreciative fog to hear his daughter calling, “Papa! Papa! It’s wonderful and very cool in the sail loft, and all the gentlemen sit around telling stories while they stitch the canvas. They use traiang—”

  “Triangular,” Genny said, laughing.

  “Yes, triangular sail needles and palms.”

  “Palms? Did you bring me a coconut, pumpkin?”

  “Not trees, Papa. They’re pieces of leather and they fit against your hand—you know, Papa, against your palm—and protect you from the sharp needles.”

  “Ah, an excellent idea.” Alec ruffled his daughter’s hair and thanked Jake for taking care of her.

  “She’s a smart little ’un,” Jake said. “Terrible smart. Scares me, it does.”

  “She doesn’t take after her papa,” Genny said under her breath, but not under enough for Alec not to hear.

  Alec didn’t say a word. He looked at Genny. She stared back at him. He finally shrugged, bade his good-byes, and lifted Hallie into his arms.

  “Where are we going, Papa?”

  “Back to the Fountain Inn for a nice lunch with Mrs. Swindel. I think the owner, Mr. Barney, is enamored with you. Me, he could very easily do without.”

  “Oh, Papa, Mrs. Swindel hates everything they serve in the dining room. She’ll say that the carp tastes like dead turnips—”

  “Goodness, how about swordfish, then?”

  “I want to meet Mrs. Swindel,” said Genny.

  “A woman after your own temperament?”

  “Can we have dinner with you, Genny?” Alec’s ingenuous daughter asked.

  “Well, of
course, that would be just fine. You suffer through your dead turnips, then I’ll have Lannie feed you some live spinach.”

  “Yeck.” Hallie hollered and laughed and laughed as her father carried her off the Pegasus.

  Once Alec was on the dock, he turned and said quietly, “I want my answer tonight, Mr. Eugene, otherwise the wager is off. Your time is up.”

  Genny didn’t say a word. She was very aware that Boss Lamb was looking at her, that Jake was standing there, uncertain, and that the lecherous Minter was smirking.

  I am your boss, she wanted to yell at them. I’m not some trollop for you to gawk at. “Oh, damnation,” she said, and tromped belowdecks to the captain’s cabin where she belonged.

  When Genny returned from the shipyard in the late afternoon, Alec, Hallie, and Mrs. Swindel had moved in.

  “Hello,” she said, stretching her hand to the older woman, who was standing on the bottom stair. “You’re Mrs. Swindel.”

  “Aye, that I am. And you’re, well, you’re a young lady, I can tell that much. His lordship said you weren’t quite in the common way, and I do believe he just might be right in this case.”

  And to Genny’s astonishment, Mrs. Swindel took her hand and pumped it heartily.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Won’t you join us for dinner, ma’am?”

  “Certainly not. I’m Hallie’s nanny. It wouldn’t be proper. Besides, I’m dining with Dr. Pruitt.”

  “Ah, I see. Well, I hope everything is all right, Mrs. Swindel. Do ask Moses if there is anything you need.”

  “I asked Gracie, who, if you don’t mind my saying so, miss, is something of a weak-willed shadow. She’s indecisive and told me that Moses knows everything.”

  “Gracie hasn’t been well,” Genny said in automatic defense of a woman who had been with her family since Genny had been seven years old. “She’s planning on leaving soon and living with her sister in Annapolis.”

  “As is proper,” said Eleanor Swindel.

  Poor Gracie, Genny thought, watching Mrs. Swindel sweep away. There went a very decisive woman. She looked up to see Gracie Limmer coming into the entry hall from the dining room. Genny smiled at her. “You’re feeling better?”