by Erin Satie
“What do you mean, ‘further’?”
“I’m not sure,” said Cordelia. “A strict school? Marriage to a man who believes in harsh discipline? I believe they’re contemplating some punishment which I do not choose to accept.”
“I understand your anger… but don’t you think you’re taking this a bit far?”
“Yes,” Cordelia answered without hesitation. “Yes, I am.”
“Oh.” Bonny relaxed. “Good. That’s a relief.”
“But this is the hand we’re dealt, isn’t it?” Cordelia continued. “Either we are compliant or we are ruined. There is no middle road.”
“It’s not right,” Bonny agreed in a small voice. Then, more firmly, “But that doesn’t mean you should leave your family.”
“On the contrary,” Cordelia returned. “That’s why I must leave my family.”
“You love your parents.”
“I do love them, but they’re wrong,” said Cordelia. “And I’d rather make my own mistakes than theirs.”
I’d rather make my own mistakes than theirs.
“I like that,” said Bonny.
Cordelia snorted. “You would.”
“Hey!” Bonny swatted at Cordelia. “Were you hoping to stay with us? Or do you need help to leave?”
“The one accomplishes the other,” Cordelia replied. “I couldn’t take a local train because I would have been noticed and followed. My parents won’t let me go without a fight. I need help reaching a more distant station where I’m not known. Will you help?”
Bonny hesitated. If she helped Cordelia, her family would suffer for it. They’d distanced themselves from Bonny, but they’d still be tainted by any scandals that involved her.
She loved her family. So much. But Cordelia had stood by her when she needed a friend, and Bonny would do the same. No matter the cost.
“Come inside,” said Bonny. “Follow me upstairs… I’ll find you a room, and Loel has just returned from London. We were preparing a very modest feast. You can join us.”
Chapter 18
Bonny saw Cordelia settled and accompanied her back downstairs, where she heard voices in the vestibule—both male. She followed them to their source and found Loel at the front door she’d never seen anyone use before, speaking comfortably with a tall, rangy stranger. He wore a fine suit that had obviously seen better days and carried a large carpetbag.
The stranger glanced past Loel, whose back was turned to her, and froze, his jaw dropping.
“I was about to ask who that is,” murmured Cordelia, “but clearly he’s never seen you before.”
Bonny scowled at her friend.
“Don’t pull faces. I’m right, aren’t I?” Cordelia hooked her elbow around Bonny’s. “Come on, let’s find out.”
“Let me introduce everyone,” said Loel. “Jacob, please meet my wife and her friend, Miss Cordelia Kelly. Ladies, Mr. Jacob Benjamin is a good friend from my days at sea. He’s a naturalist and occasional orchid collector—he’s the source, for example, of the Odontoglossum crispum.”
Mr. Benjamin cocked an eyebrow. “You make it sound like the crispum is still alive.”
“Last I saw it.” Loel tipped his head to Bonny. “Unless something’s changed while I was gone.”
“Something has changed,” said Bonny. “It’s budding.”
“Budding? How?” Jacob glanced between Bonny and Loel, eyes wide and brows flat—the perfect mix of curiosity and skepticism. “I had another living specimen that I sold, and it died within a week.”
“I believe my wife’s singing did the trick,” answered Loel.
Bonny wrinkled her nose at him. “Don’t tease.”
Loel leaned back in his chair, palms raised in an expression of innocence. “What do you mean, tease? I honestly can’t think of a better explanation.”
“If you collect orchids, Mr. Benjamin, you must travel a great deal,” said Cordelia.
“South America, North America, Africa. I’m bound for the Malay Peninsula in a few days… I go wherever there are beetles to be found. Collecting orchids helps to fund my excursions, but at heart I’m a naturalist—as Loel says—and an entomologist in particular. I study insects.”
Bonny wrinkled her nose. “Insects?”
“You’ve done yourself a disservice if you dismiss them,” said Mr. Benjamin. “You will find all the wonders of nature in the phylum Insecta—marvels of beauty, industry, and intelligence. Insects deserve respect and study as much as any of the greater apes or felines. More, even.”
Bonny had no idea how to respond. As far as she was concerned, the less time she spent thinking about insects the better.
Cordelia came to the rescue. “I’m willing to be convinced.”
“And he’ll make a valiant attempt—but not just now. You’ve been traveling, and so have I. Why don’t we sit down? Eat something?” Loel offered Cordelia his arm. “If that’s acceptable?”
Bonny removed the protective sheets from the dining room table and chairs while Loel fetched the London delicacies. Bonny doubted that their makeshift hospitality would upset Mr. Benjamin, a world traveler, but Cordelia was used to more comfortable accommodations.
Not that the provisions were lacking. Bonny had never eaten caviar before but discovered that she liked the look of it—black jewels on pillows of white cream—better than the fishy flavor. The eggs popped and oozed when she chewed, which complemented the fizzy frothy sweetness of the champagne.
“And to think,” said Mr. Benjamin, “all this time you let me believe that you’d given up on high living.”
“It’s not our usual fare, I assure you.”
“So what’s the occasion?” asked Mr. Benjamin.
“We sold a painting.” Bonny glanced at Cordelia. “Bowl of Cherries.”
The candied chestnut Cordelia had brought halfway to her mouth dropped from between her fingers. “No! You sold it?” Her furious glare traveled from her plate to Bonny. “For food?”
“Not for food!” Bonny exclaimed. “For… actually, I don’t know exactly what for.”
“A hydraulic ram,” Loel supplied. “A kind of machine that will pump water to the roof of the greenhouse—an improvement for the nursery.”
“Oh, that’s brilliant,” murmured Mr. Benjamin.
Loel tipped his chin in Bonny’s direction. “Her idea.”
Mr. Benjamin raised his glass. “My compliments—and a toast. To your insight, Lady Loel.”
“No,” said Cordelia. “You don’t understand. Bowl of Cherries wasn’t any painting. It was—”
“My decision.” Bonny interrupted. She caught Cordelia’s eyes and held them. “It was my idea, my suggestion.”
“But, Bonny, you talked about it all the time. You used it to measure your moods—all your days were rotten or ripe, butterfly days or still water days.”
“Everyone here has had cause to give up something precious,” said Bonny. “I sold my painting; you left your family. Mr. Benjamin is about to travel to the Far East.”
“But why?” Cordelia demanded.
“To start something new,” answered Bonny.
Cordelia’s glare melted. Her shoulders relaxed. She smiled ruefully and picked up a glass. “To burning bridges?”
Goose flesh prickled at the back of Bonny’s neck, along her arms. She took the stem of her own glass between her fingers. “To burning bridges.”
“May they light our way,” agreed Mr. Benjamin, clinking Cordelia’s glass to his own.
Loel toasted with the others, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Bonny—who ducked her chin and looked away, a flush rising to her cheeks. She’d said the painting was valuable, but she hadn’t said a word about its sentimental value. Now that it was gone, sold at her request and the proceeds spent, he discovered that it had meaning to her.
Now that he’d assembled all the puzzle pieces, they fit neatly together: She’d decided to sell Bowl of Cherries after her disastrous trip into town. She’d held fast to the idea throu
gh her confession and his anger. Why? Because she’d intended to punish herself.
If he’d understood, he wouldn’t have done as she asked. He would have shown her more patience and more kindness… which, come to think of it, explained why she’d been so cagey and manipulative that morning in the greenhouse. She hadn’t wanted patience or kindness. A woman aiming to punish herself wouldn’t think she deserved either.
Miss Kelly interrupted his thoughts. She had a sharp, clear voice, hard to ignore and not entirely agreeable. “You sailed together?”
Loel nodded.
“Aboard the Incitatus,” Jacob added.
“The Incitatus?” Miss Kelly glanced between them, eyes narrowing. She had pretty, clear blue eyes and perpetually looked as though she were staring down the sights of a loaded pistol. “Where have I heard that name before?”
Loel suppressed a groan. “You must read the papers.”
Miss Kelly nodded, lips curving ever so slightly. She exuded a sort of bullish torpor that announced, as clear as anything, that while she hadn’t come to start a fight… she’d absolutely finish one.
He did not understand Bonny’s friendship with this woman at all. They couldn’t have been more different.
“You read the newspaper?” exclaimed Jacob, altogether too pleased by this discovery.
“Yes,” answered Miss Kelly. “I do.”
“I don’t meet many women who read the newspaper. I’m all admiration, of course.”
Miss Kelly relaxed a bit and asked, “So what happened aboard the Incitatus? Something eventful if it made the papers.”
“The ship was embroiled in a scheme to defraud an insurance company,” said Loel. “Jacob, why don’t you show everyone your lucky beetle?”
It was the wrong thing to say. Jacob was highly distractible; mention anything related to insects and he could start on a tangent that lasted hours… but he wasn’t stupid.
“You really haven’t told your wife what happened?” asked Jacob.
“It’s not a pleasant story.”
Jacob interrupted. “You sound like you’re ashamed.”
Not exactly. “Of course I’m not ashamed.”
“Then tell them what happened.”
Loel slouched in his chair. “Why don’t you? You’re the better storyteller.”
“If you like.” Jacob sounded mildly offended, but he quickly set it aside as he turned to the two women. He sat taller, spoke in a deeper voice; he really was an excellent storyteller. Which was probably why his lecture tours were so successful. “The Incitatus set sail from Valparaiso, bound for Malacca. I was on the hunt for beetles and Loel here, for orchids. We’d never met before, but we had one thing in common—and it’s still true for one of us, at least”—Jacob gave the caviar a significant look—“which is that we couldn’t afford to be choosy about our transportation. A berth on a ship sailing halfway across the world comes dear even if it’s a leaky bucket that smells like the Thames on a hot summer day.”
Bonny interrupted, “The Thames…?”
“Like human waste,” said Loel, succinctly.
Bonny and Miss Kelly manifested identical expressions of horror.
“The Incitatus was seaworthy. Old, certainly nearing the end of her life, but fully capable of completing her journey to Malacca. And her captain, Robert Royce, had an excellent reputation. He was a big man with a great booming voice and just enough gray in his hair to make you feel quite secure on a floating matchstick. ‘Here,’ I thought when I saw him, ‘here stands a man who has sailed around the world ten times, and his wealth of experience will get me around it at least once.’”
“As you would imagine, many sailors dream of becoming captains,” Jacob continued, “but what do captains dream of? I’ll tell you. They dream of owning their own ship. The difficulty is that in order to acquire a ship of his own, he must become wealthy. But how does a sea captain become wealthy? It’s not impossible, but—as is so often the case—he must choose between fair means and foul, between safety and speed. Unfortunately for us, Captain Royce had chosen the latter.
“He had, in fact, entered into an agreement with the owner of the Incitatus to sink the ship en route to Malacca. The Incitatus was well insured and for his part in this nefarious plan, Captain Royce would receive a share of the proceeds. Marine insurers are wise to such schemes and investigate claims thoroughly. They can be hard to fool—which is why Captain Royce planned to sink the ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, several months’ journey from the nearest port.
“It seemed a foolproof scheme, and no doubt many men of indifferent morals would give it a try, but for one small flaw: sinking a fully manned ship in the middle of a watery desert where you may sit in the crow’s nest with a spyglass and monitor the horizon from sunup to sundown without sighting another vessel, not just for a day at a time but for a week or even a fortnight, entails a tremendous loss of life. Counting passengers and crew, the Incitatus sheltered more than three hundred souls.”
“Dear God,” murmured Miss Kelly.
Jacob caught her gimlet glance and nodded sharply. “An affront to yours and to mine,” he said. “And Captain Royce would have carried through with this plan if it weren’t for Loel. He looked like a disreputable adventurer, but it only takes a short time in his company to realize he’s an educated man—”
“So are you,” Miss Kelly objected.
“So I am,” Jacob agreed dryly. “But it was Loel’s presence aboard the Incitatus that alarmed Captain Royce, not mine.”
“Captain Royce decided to take Loel into his confidence. He explained that he intended to set the Incitatus on fire in the dark of night, with only a picked group of allies awake to witness the crime. Once the blaze caught, Royce and the lucky few would escape into a longboat, stocked in advance with provisions of food and water. As for the rest of us…”
“My choices were to join Royce’s conspiracy or die.” Loel couldn’t recollect that conversation without feeling as though he’d gone back in time. An echo of the fear that had seized him then vibrated through his body even now, making his knees weak, his bowels soft.
Royce had taken a friendly tone, as though he were explaining an embarrassing problem to a friend, but Loel had seen the truth in his watchful eyes. “Royce never said as much, but he didn’t have to. Only the conspirators could survive, because only fear of a hangman’s noose could guarantee a secret on that scale.”
“What did you do?”
“At first? Nothing.” Loel paused. “Royce was clever. I guessed that he’d chosen seven other conspirators—he’d need eight to man the longboat, including himself—but I didn’t know who those seven were. Men he trusted, obviously… but as Jacob said, he’d built an excellent reputation. His officers served him loyally. How could I guess which ones he’d spared, which he’d been ready to sacrifice?”
“You’re saying that anyone with the authority to stop Royce was—as likely as not—in on the scheme,” said Miss Kelly.
“Exactly,” said Loel.
“But you stopped him,” said Bonny. “If you’re both here and both alive, you must have.”
“I played along with Royce until he revealed that he’d decided to set the boatswain’s store on fire when we were about a week’s hard rowing from Easter Island,” said Loel. “It’s small, enclosed, frequently empty, and stocked with flammable materials like rope and tar.”
“Try to picture the rope, especially,” Jacob interjected. “Thick around as a man’s arm, coiled in spools taller than I am—”
“We do live in a port town, Mr. Benjamin.” Miss Kelly interrupted.
Loel picked up the story. “I was relatively certain that Jacob wouldn’t be among Royce’s seven, so I took him into my confidence. It’s a good thing I did too, because I wouldn’t have succeeded alone. It was Jacob who—on the very night that Royce planned to set the fire—identified the conspirators.”
“The quartermaster contrived to have a triple ration of rum distributed t
o everyone aboard at mess,” said Jacob, picking up where Loel had left off. “That convinced me that he numbered among the conspirators. I encouraged Loel to pay attention to which of the other officers drank, and how. I suspected the guilty would reveal themselves by taking their liquor too eagerly or not at all.”
“The conspirators drank quickly,” Loel said. “And without enjoyment.”
“By the time the second dogwatch was over, and all the eating done, we were near certain that the boatswain and the first mate were innocent,” said Jacob. “But we approached cautiously. We told them to lie in wait in the boatswain’s store, to be ready for any mischief, but didn’t speak a word of the captain’s involvement.”
“And then we waited,” said Loel. “As near to hand as we dared, in case of trouble.”
“Which arrived presently,” Jacob said. “When Captain Royce was discovered, he held fast to his scheme—better to sink with his ship and hope his family profited, than to be discovered and tried for his crimes. He tried to set the boatswain’s store ablaze.
“But the boatswain had taken precautions. He moved the tar and oakum into the hold, denying the fire its most dangerous fuel, and stored wool blankets soaked in seawater among the supplies.”
“Royce had killed several of the sailors on watch, to prevent them from raising the alarm—so quietly that we didn’t realize until the next day—but between Loel and me, we roused a handful of passengers who’d never sailed with Royce before. Working together, we were able to capture all eight of the conspirators and consign them to the brig.”
“You saved everyone?” Bonny exclaimed. “But… that’s wonderful!”
“Not everyone,” Loel said. “All eight of the conspirators were tried and hung when we reached Malacca.”
“Which is only right,” Miss Kelly declared fiercely. “They deserved to die for what they’d planned.”
Loel sighed. She was right. He knew it. But he’d attended the hanging. He had watched eight nooses make corpses of eight living men, and he had known that he was responsible. He’d done the right thing. Hundreds of lives had been saved at the cost of eight.