by Eris Adderly
Hannah looked down again at the items he’d brought and, feeling resigned and in all honesty quite soiled after the events of the last day, took up the rag and began to make her hasty ablutions. The sooner she was done the sooner she might rid herself of this loitering carpenter.
Dipping into the water, she scrubbed the rag in rough strokes over her hands and arms where they were exposed below the sleeves of the dress. Her neck and shoulders she cleansed of the film of perspiration, as well as her face. She cast a dubious eye at George, wanting to move her efforts to her legs, but held back, uncomfortable with him standing there, watching.
“Did you want some help out of your garment, Madam?” He made the offer without a hint of the sneering innuendo she’d come to expect of the men aboard this ship.
“I think I’ve had enough pairs of eyes on me for one day already, Mr George. Besides, it was a fair effort to get into this dress one time today as it is—I’d like to avoid having to do it twice, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Let me assure you, Mrs Collingwood,” the carpenter said with a low chuckle, “you’ve nothing under those skirts that holds any interest for me.”
His comment struck a chord with her and, looking back up at him, she saw on his face the familiar indifference to her form that graced the expression of her late husband whenever he came upon her in a state of undress. Hannah knew then, or at least she suspected, why Blackburn chose this man and not some other to supervise her in this task—George would not be any sort of threat to the captain’s claim on her.
His “claim” on you. Do you hear yourself, Hannah?
Secure in her knowledge that the carpenter would be making no inappropriate advances, she hiked the hem of her skirts up over her knees and set about scrubbing herself with a will. She did still turn away from him, though, when she moved to wash away the evidence of lust—hers and the captain’s both, she was ashamed to admit—from between her thighs. Modesty would have prevented her from cleansing that private area in front of even another woman.
Hannah finished with wiping down any other areas of skin she could get to without having to take off her dress and, folding her legs beneath her once more, draped the rag over the side of the bucket and sat back to indicate she’d done all the bathing she intended to do.
Mr George’s fingers tapped at his lips in thought as he shifted his weight to his other leg, his eyes focused in the air somewhere above Hannah’s head. “You know,” he said slowly, as if speaking his thoughts while they still formed in his mind, “I don’t know as I’ve seen the captain bother about a woman as much as he has you.” He flicked his odd-eyed gaze back down to meet hers. “Why do you think that is? He’s normally such a practical man.”
“I’m certain I don’t know at all, Mr George.” She led him away from this line of conversation with a curt reply, not wanting to follow where it led. Her head swam, however, with the possibility he’d introduced that she might be more than a convenient warm place for the man who’d left her reeling a short time ago.
George took her hint that she wished to sidestep this notion altogether, and he crossed the room to retrieve the bucket without broaching the matter further. Turning again for the door, he paused with his free hand on the latch to give her a knowing hint of a smile.
“Madam.” He dismissed himself with a brief nod and what she thought might have been a bit of private laughter under his breath.
The doors shut behind him and left Hannah alone to sift through the shattered pieces of her day.
Edmund Blackburn, that knave. She was not certain what sort of things pirates got up to all day, when they had time between drinking and thieving, but she wondered if testing the emotional fortitude of widows was one of them.
She’d slid from the captain’s lap a mess of tears, overwhelmed by the entire set of circumstances leading up to that point. From him bringing her back into the stateroom, to her body’s final shuddering forfeit of any claims she still had to respectability, the disparate events were a great swirling confusing ocean, intent on drowning her just to see her undone.
The man was nothing but trouble, she thought. Hannah had known that obeying his demands for her to sit on his lap would come to no good end. And so it had.
What could she say of herself, behaving like that? She’d put up only the barest token of resistance to the press of his hands at her hips, his kiss …
Something clenched and fluttered in her belly as she remembered accepting the insistent strokes of his tongue into her mouth. The way he spoke to her, his voice thick with desire as he tasted her throat …
Stop it, Hannah admonished herself. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. These thoughts will get you nowhere.
But surely mere thoughts could not be so bad to entertain. For example, the thought of the captain sliding inside her, filling her up … She’d only just finished washing away the reminder of her wanton surrender from between her thighs, when now, she noticed, that warm, damp feeling returned to taunt her once again. The throbbing in her core was becoming an all too familiar sensation, now.
A memory floated up to the surface of her unladylike reverie, from a time years before when she’d been at a formal dinner with her father and several of his colleagues. As usual for Hannah, during these endless functions, nervous energy drew her tight like a bowstring. Without thought, she’d taken up her irritating habit of bouncing her crossed legs under the dining table, impatient for the meal to end so she might retire again to her own pursuits.
On this day, however, her jouncing seemed to catch at her intimate areas in just such a way that before she knew what was happening, an alarming series of sensations burst up from between her thighs. She’d had to pretend that she’d almost choked on a mouthful of wine in order to play off the startled gasp that had ripped from her throat in front of the long table full of old men. Looking back now, the way some of them had strenuously ignored her for the remainder of the meal, she doubted how successful she’d been at concealing the nature of her outburst.
It had been a singular incident, and one she’d written off as a peculiarity. At least until just under an hour ago.
That was what had caused her to burst into tears as the captain had let her go from his lap. Hannah knew in that moment exactly what the sensations she’d stumbled upon years ago at that dinner truly were. Her horror lay in the fact that it was Edmund Blackburn, scoundrel and pirate, who had given them to her.
His insistent pushing and working within her had severed some last tie she’d had to sanity, and her release found her inhaling infinity in great gulping breaths. To further her self-loathing at this surrender, Hannah realised she wasn’t entirely certain whether the experience hadn’t been spurred toward the finish even harder by the presence and observing eye of the crew member the captain had invited to watch her humiliation.
Hannah Collingwood was lost in this conflicting storm of what was right and what was pleasurable, and she could not, at this very moment, see any path to safety.
* * * *
She fussed about the stateroom late the next morning, bored and listless. The captain hadn’t gone so far as to lock her in there, but he’d made a point of informing her that if she left to wander the decks, he or Mr Till might not be on hand straight away to keep her out of trouble with the rest of the crew. This warning had so far proved as effective as any bolt or latch.
Hannah did want to seek out the cook, wherever he was, and find out what had become of Brigit. She hadn’t seen the woman in two days now, and felt some manner of responsibility for her fate, as it was her employment of the maid that had brought the poor girl into this situation. It was her hope that Brigit’s troubles extended only to having to help with the meals and the cleaning, and not to have to undergo the sort of trials and humiliations that had faced Hannah.
Her mind tried to stay on practical matters and away from memories of male hands on her that would make her heart race again.
How long, she wondered, would it be before h
er father or uncle decided that something was amiss and began their attempts to track her down? The journey from Bristol to Boston would have taken six weeks at the least, and probably longer. She’d overheard that navigator—Osbourne, was his name?—mentioning something about Nassau when he’d given his report to the captain, the latter’s hard flesh lodged firmly between her thighs at the time.
My goodness, woman! Can you think of nothing else?
Nassau, it seemed, was the next port The Devil’s Luck intended to make, and Hannah had no idea how much longer than her original trip it would take for them to arrive there. And once they’d made it, how did she think she would manage to get word to her father, if she could find a way off the ship at all?
Her pacing in the stateroom was going to wear a rut in the planks of the deck, if she kept on this way. But who could sit still under these circumstances?
Richard Symes, her one doting parent, would not imagine anything to be amiss until in all likelihood it would be far too late to help. A rueful smile nudged at her lips as she thought about the man who wanted nothing but good things for her.
Hannah had never known her mother. Nora Symes had left this world the day she brought Hannah into it. A painting of her hung over one of the fireplaces in her father’s house, and Hannah would stare at it as she matured; fascinated at the way her and her mother looked almost alike. She would sometimes catch her father gazing at her with a look of regret in his eyes, doubtless remembering his lovely Nora. The man had never bothered to remarry.
It had been just the two of them as Hannah grew up, aside from the few servants and the like who helped keep the house in order. She had no siblings and no close cousins—at least none that lived near enough to visit with any regularity. Because of this and, she suspected, because of her close resemblance to her late mother, Richard Symes had allowed her license to pursue nearly any interest that struck her fancy without trying to corral her the way she’d seen done by the families of her peers.
Left to her own devices, Hannah found her love in books and papers. A woman alone was not able to travel on a whim and experience the world directly, but the words from men of every land and time in history could take her many places, at least in some sense. Her father didn’t limit her areas of study, either, and gave her full access to anything in his extensive library. And with his connections at Parliament, he was able to bring home many new texts for her insatiable perusal.
In fact, at one point upon her eager pleading, he even hired a tutor to help her with the languages she wished to learn. Rarely was a father of their status so permissive, but Hannah remained grateful to this day that he’d let her find her happiness where she would. When his colleagues would join him at the house, they were always astonished that Symes should have such a well-read and articulate daughter. He was even the subject of any number of good-natured jests about how she would have served him better as a son. None of them knew how much those comments pleased Hannah.
And if I’d been born a man, I certainly wouldn’t be in this predicament now. Bloody surgeons. Surgeons and pirates.
She left off her endless pacing and leaned against the edge of the sleeping berth, letting out an audible sigh.
After Ashley had died, she’d returned to live with her father for sheer want of company. It was an odd situation. Because of her late husband’s preferences, Hannah had not exactly loved him in the way expected of the typical wife. She wore the black of mourning for the socially required year, but in truth, Ashley Collingwood had been somewhere between a friend and business partner to her. She did miss his presence about their house, but only in the way a person misses something they’ve grown accustomed to, and not with the grievous ache of what she supposed a new widow ought to feel.
Her father had seen her though, mooning about the halls of his house. She’d filled her time again with study, as she’d done before the marriage, but now some sense of purpose had been taken from her. As the wife of Mr Collingwood, there had at least been a household to manage, and keeping affairs organised had been a way for her to feel useful. Richard Symes had seen that his daughter needed something more to fill her days, and that was how she’d found herself at the port, waiting to board The Mourning Dove, for all the good it had done her.
The Symes household had received a letter, addressed to her father, and coming from the Colonies of all places. He and Hannah were shocked to find it was from her uncle Bertrand, and moreover that he’d been living in Boston these past ten years. The last time they’d heard anything from the man he’d been hired on at a monastery in Kingston, Jamaica to do translation work and handle other correspondence for the monks.
There had been complete silence from the man for the last decade, and none of the letters her father had sent ever returned, nor did they receive replies. It had been profoundly sad, but the two of them had assumed her uncle had lost his life somehow, and her father had shown no little grief over the loss of his beloved brother.
The letter from Boston was suspiciously lacking in details as to just how Bertrand Symes had come to live there, and why he’d left Jamaica at all. The most he would say was that he was now running a brewery with a partner, and that he was very glad to be able to write the two of them at last. What had spurred her to action, though, was her uncle’s mention that he’d suffered a broken arm in a fall, and was now having a bit of trouble getting things accomplished.
Hannah had immediately leapt upon the idea that she should go to her uncle in the Colonies and be of whatever assistance he needed until he was fully recovered, and after for perhaps an indefinite amount of time. She’d reasoned with her father that this could be a singular opportunity for her to start a new life, in a new place—a world full of sights and experiences she’d never seen.
It had taken her several weeks to convince him, as he didn’t care for the idea of being left alone there in Bristol, but as she pressed him he’d come to see that this was an opportunity to provide her some relief from the listlessness she’d slipped into in the preceding months. The man knew her well, and his only desire was for her happiness. This chance at a different life, he was sure, would deliver that to his dear daughter Hannah, and he’d finally agreed to her request to travel.
Perhaps she’d been selfish in her petition to leave for Boston. Perhaps she should have remained with her father, found some way to make herself useful in return for how generous and thoughtful he’d been all those years. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. A shaky foundation to build anything on, as she was well aware. And speculation was pointless, now.
Perhaps you’d better find a way to survive on this ship, Hannah.
Ah yes, and there was another unstable foundation: the sea. And upon it, two perplexing, troublesome men.
* * * *
Having grown weary at last of spending so much time alone with her thoughts, Hannah had just screwed up the courage to peruse the spines of the books that stood on a modest single shelf on the port wall of the stateroom. Her fingers had just begun to trace out the titles, her head cocked to read them vertically, when the captain entered through the double doors.
“A reader of books, are you, Mrs Collingwood?” he asked as she turned her face toward him, her fingers still on the books. The mocking tone in his voice irritated her.
“As a matter of fact, I am, Captain Blackburn.” Very typical of him, she noted, to assume she had no interest in things of that nature. She didn’t know why it bothered her so much for men to assume of her what was often the case with women.
Why do you care what he thinks of you at all? The man makes your pulse flutter a time or two and suddenly you worry about his opinions? Ridiculous.
“No need to bristle, Madam,” he said as he took a seat in the same chair he’d occupied the previous day during that sordid affair with the navigator. “It was merely a curiosity, what with you handling my things just now.” The amused expression had not left his face, though, as he stretched his legs to rest his feet on the table.
; Hannah withdrew her fingers from the books and folded her hands at her waist, staring at him now. She held out the unreasonable hope that he would manage to keep his hands, and everything else for that matter, to himself today.
Is that what you want, Hannah? For him to leave you be?
She would have stamped her foot at the thought had she been alone. Instead, she settled for a clenched jaw and an exhalation of air through her nostrils.
“So what sort of things do you read, Mrs Collingwood?” He tried again to nudge some conversation out of her, lacing his fingers behind his head, the picture of ease. She was unsure of just what he was about, taking this new, more polite tack with her. Was he trying to disarm her? It all seemed very suspicious. She didn’t want to irritate him, however, so she decided to play along, for now.
“Oh, all manner of scholarly works, I should think. Histories, philosophy, classical works, the sciences … Really anything that came into my father’s library.” She’d almost said ‘anatomy’ as well, but thought it wise to hold that one back, imagining the way he was likely to pull the conversation upon hearing that subject.
“Hmm …” A look of contemplation replaced the earlier mischief on his face. “Your father”—here he seemed to search for the words he wanted—“must be very indulgent with you. To allow you to study such things.” His arms had moved to cross over his chest now, as he eyed her, preparing to glean what he could from her response. Hannah didn’t know if she cared for the direction his questions were taking.
“I suppose he must,” she said, attempting to be conservative with her words.
“If he loves you so much, why would he send you off to … Boston, was it? Does he not want his daughter with him in Bristol?”