And then the trap door closed, condemning him to the darkness, and I was standing on the deck, blinking in the pale evening light, shivering and shivering, and wondering if I would ever see him alive again.
Chapter Ten
In which I meet Captain Hoseason and hatch a plan for escape.
It was cold on the deck, and there was a fresh breeze rattling the rigging, although the gale that had battered us earlier had blown itself out. As far as I could see, our ship was alone on the ocean. It was my bad luck that the recently signed peace treaty had lifted the requirement for merchant ships to sail in convoy, protected by a naval vessel.
Night was falling and the moon was full, illuminating the islands to the west. The brig was rounding the north-west point of the Isle of Skye. I could see the outline of the wickedly sharp Coullin Mountains against the deep blue of the twilight. Applecross lay beyond, across the Inner Sound, and I felt such a sudden and sharp bite of homesickness that for a moment tears closed my throat. But my escort had no patience and had a hand on my arm, beckoning me to follow him.
The Captain’s cabin was warm and lit by a couple of lamps that swung from an overhead beam. After the dark horrors of the hold it looked calm and welcoming, but I knew that I was not among friends here. This was the man who had taken my uncle’s commission to get rid of me. He was seated at a desk, writing, and did not look up when I entered, which was no doubt intended to make me feel insignificant, but only succeeded in making me feel annoyed.
Whilst he was rude enough to ignore me, I studied him; he was tall, dark and sober-looking, studious and self-possessed, far from the image of a pirate brigand involved in kidnap and deceit. Eventually he looked up and his eyes, dark and deep-set, rested on me for a moment. I looked back at him directly. Although I remembered Neil telling me to be careful, I was damned if I would be servile.
‘Thank you, Ransome,’ the Captain said. ‘Pray fetch Mr Riach.’ Then, as the cabin lad scampered off to do his will, he turned to me. ‘Mr Riach is my second officer,’ he explained. ‘Mr Struan, the First Officer, is navigator, and needed on deck at present whilst we sail these treacherous waters.’ He sketched a slight bow. ‘I am Captain Hoseason, Miss Balfour.’
It seemed remarkable to me that he was treating this as though it were some sort of social occasion and he expected me to curtsey in return. I gave him a cool look instead.
‘Treacherous waters, indeed,’ I said coldly. I held out my bound wrists. ‘I’ll thank you to remove these ropes.’
He hesitated a moment, before taking a dirk from his belt and cutting through the ties. The rush of feeling as the blood returned was sharp enough to drag a gasp from me, and he poured a measure from the brandy bottle on his desk, holding the glass out to me. I took it reluctantly. I have never liked brandy, and I did not want to take anything from him, but I did need it now.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘Take a seat, Miss Balfour,’ Captain Hoseason said, waving me towards a battered leather armchair that was lashed to the floor. ‘In a moment Mr Riach will escort you to his cabin, which is yours for the duration of your voyage. Ransome will bring you hot water to wash…’ His gaze lingered on me—and no doubt I was rather dirty and smelly by now. ‘And hot food as well.’
‘That all sounds delightful, Captain,’ I said, ‘and I thank you for it. But…my voyage to where, precisely?’ By now I was fuming at the Captain’s suggestion that I was an honoured guest on this journey rather than a prisoner who had spent the last several hours trussed up in the hold. I imagined he had locked me up to try and break my spirit, so that I would accept whatever fate was intended for me. The thought made me angry.
Captain Hoseason smiled, though his eyes were cold. I understood then that he was a ruthless man, a man who would take an unsavoury commission simply for the money and that no appeals to his sentiment would work because he had no sentiment. I straightened instinctively, recognising him as an adversary. I did not sit, for that would have placed me a great deal lower than he was, and I had no desire to look up at him like an adoring puppy gazing on its master.
‘We are headed for Hispaniola,’ he said. ‘It is my intention to put you ashore there, Miss Balfour.’
I did not like the sound of that. Being abandoned, alone, unprotected and with no money in a foreign land was a terrifying prospect when I was eighteen years old and had travelled no further than Edinburgh in my life. By the exercise of the greatest self-control I kept absolutely quiet. I think Captain Hoseason had expected me to protest, to beg him to spare me, but I did not, and after a moment he resumed.
‘Your uncle wished your fate to be rather more conclusive, Miss Balfour, but I am a generous man and would not wish to have such a matter on my conscience…’ He shrugged. ‘I decided you might fare better in the colonies. There is a gentleman there I know who is looking for a young wife.’ His gaze lingered on me in a way that made my skin crawl. ‘He is willing to pay well, so it will benefit both of us for you to arrive unharmed, in good health and strength…All will be well with you, and your uncle need never know.’
The nausea rose in my throat. So I was a slave, then, in all but name. I was to be sold off like a virginal sacrifice to some rich colonial to warm his bed and meet his every whim. It was vile.
‘I see,’ I said. I did see too; I saw that he had taken my uncle’s money to kill me and then cheated him. I saw that there was no point in begging for clemency when there was none to be had.
‘And Mr Sinclair?’ I asked. ‘Where does his journey take him?’
Somehow I did not think they would be taking Neil all the way to the Caribbean.
‘He goes straight to the bottom of the sea,’ Captain Hoseason said, and I could not suppress a wince.
‘You have a fondness for the gentleman?’ the Captain asked.
‘He is my cousin,’ I said.
The Captain raised his brows. ‘Is he so? I never heard that the Balfours and the Sinclairs were related.’
‘My aunt is his mother’s cousin thrice removed,’ I said.
‘That may be the case,’ Captain Hoseason said, ‘but his journey still takes him directly to the bottom of the sea. We wait only to be well clear of land.’ His tone hardened. ‘I want to run no risk of Mr Sinclair being picked up by another ship or managing to reach the shore.’
It was as I had feared. The smugglers had paid well for Neil to be murdered, and this time Captain Hoseason had no scruples because his own survival depended on it.
‘You know, of course,’ I said, ‘that Mr Sinclair’s uncle is a rich man, who will pay well for his heir to be restored to him—twice, maybe four times the money you were given to kill him?’
The Captain looked pained at my bluntness. ‘I had thought of it,’ he admitted after a moment—of course he had, for he was motivated by nothing if not money. ‘But sadly it would not serve. I could not trust Mr Sinclair to hold his tongue. He is a Navy man, and they would hunt me down to avenge one of their own. There are too many reasons why he has to go, and soon.’
There was a knock at the door and Mr Riach, the second officer, appeared. He was tall and he had startlingly bright green eyes, a tangle of fair hair and a long, thin, melancholy face. I put his age at about thirty years. He looked like a gentleman but I doubted he could be, being one of Captain Hoseason’s crew. As he stood swaying in the doorway I also realised that he was drunk. The smell of rum hung about him like a cloak.
The Captain did not look pleased. ‘Been at the stores again, Mr Riach?’ he said.
Mr Riach bowed rather insolently, I thought. ‘There are precious few privileges aboard this old tub, Captain, and even fewer when you take payment for murder and the rest of us do not have a share.’
I sighed. For a moment there I had hoped the second officer was a man of principle, but it seemed that he did not object to murder as such, only that he had been cheated of a share in the spoils.
‘It adds insult to injury,’ Mr Riach continued, ‘that I have
to give up my cabin for the duration of the voyage as well.’
‘For which I thank you,’ Captain Hoseason said quickly, ‘as I am sure Miss Balfour does, too. And let us have no talk of murder, Mr Riach. You will show Miss Balfour to her cabin, if you please. Miss Balfour—’ he turned to me ‘—you may have the run of the ship, for there is nowhere for you to go and no way to escape.’
‘The men don’t like it,’ Mr Riach said, shooting me a dark look from those melancholy eyes. ‘They say having a woman aboard brings bad luck. They say it is worse than having a P-I-G—’ he spelled it out ‘—on the ship.’
The Captain snapped his fingers. ‘Superstitious fools, the lot of them. Nevertheless, Miss Balfour—’ once again he turned to me with exemplary courtesy ‘—it might be worth staying out of the way of my sailors. I could not guarantee your safety if they decided to toss you over the side.’
‘Thank you for the warning, Captain,’ I said, nose in the air. ‘If there are books to read, and if I may walk on the deck when it is quiet, then I shall be very content.’
He looked at me as though he could not quite understand my attitude. ‘You seem mighty calm, Miss Balfour, for one who has been kidnapped aboard ship and is being taken from all that is familiar. Why is that?’
‘You have met my uncle, Captain,’ I said. ‘Do you think that life at Glen Clair was preferable to forging a future in a new land? In all likelihood the man has done me a favour.’
I did not believe it, of course, and I am not sure the Captain believed me, but Mr Riach gave a snort of sardonic laughter.
‘Miss Balfour has a point, Captain,’ he said. ‘That old miser must be hell to live with.’
The captain looked sour. Matters were not working out quite as he wanted, I suppose. He had a drunken second officer who was pressing for a share in his profits, he had a restless crew who did not want a woman aboard and he had a prisoner who was not behaving in the manner he felt a prisoner ought. He was probably thinking that he had not been paid enough for this. I hoped he was not thinking it best to despatch me to the bottom with Neil and have done with it, for I had every intention of using my time and my liberty to plan an escape.
The Captain shrugged. ‘You will wish to inspect your new quarters, Miss Balfour. Mr Riach will escort you. Riach, send Ransome for hot water and food to be served to Miss Balfour in her cabin.’
‘I know what befits a lady better than you, Captain,’ Mr Riach said huffily, standing aside to permit me to precede him from the cabin.
On the way to my new quarters I asked Mr Riach some artless questions about the ship. I learned that she was nineteen years old, was seventy-seven foot long with a beam of twenty-four foot and a depth of twelve, and that she was not a bad piece of work. Mr Riach had sailed with the Captain on three previous voyages, and on this trip they were carrying all manner of mixed goods. The crew numbered fifteen men. It was this last piece of information that interested me the most, and I filed it away in my mind for future reference. Fifteen men was a great many to overpower if Neil and I were to be free, but I was optimistic that I would think of a way of managing it.
You will have seen the flaw in my reasoning, I expect: the flaw that I am sorry to say did not leap out and strike me when it should have. If by some miracle I could overpower sufficient of the crew to set Neil free, and if he were to despatch the rest, there would be no possible way that he and I could sail the ship between us. Yes, I admit it—it never even occurred to me.
Anyway, by the time that we reached Mr Riach’s cabin, which I could see had been hastily tidied against my arrival, Mr Riach and I were on fair terms.
‘There is nothing but sea blankets for the bunk, Miss Balfour,’ he said apologetically. ‘I am afraid you will find them rather rough.’
‘I am extremely grateful, Mr Riach,’ I said truthfully, ‘and make no complaint. I am sorry to evict you from your own quarters.’
He shrugged and looked a little uncomfortable. ‘The Captain does as he wishes,’ he said, ‘and the berths in the roundhouse are not so bad.’
The cabin boy, Ransome, brought my food then, and water to wash in, so Mr Riach excused himself and I sat down at the tiny table to eat. The thick chicken broth was better than anything I had eaten at Glen Clair, but I could not be comfortable thinking of Neil down in the hold beneath me, shackled so cruelly to the bulkhead.
When Ransome came back to collect my dishes I asked him how long it would be until we were in open water. He looked doubtful—I think the Captain had told him not to answer any of my questions—then muttered something about two days at the most, depending on the weather, and scuttled off.
So there it was. There were no more than two days until we were free of the coast and the Captain was free to send Neil to a watery grave.
I did not sleep well that night.
The following day there was a strong westerly blowing, penning us close to land and setting Captain Hoseason in a very bad mood indeed. A Navy cutter had been sighted to the north, and he was like a cat on hot coals at the thought of it pursuing us. I confess I could understand his difficulty. If the Cormorant was boarded I could not see how he might easily explain away an unwilling female passenger and a Navy captain tied up in the hold. But as matters turned out the cutter disappeared, the crew breathed a little more easily and Neil took a step closer to his doom.
After my breakfast of porridge and a hard ship’s roll, I took a turn about the decks. I had washed and pressed my clothes and made myself look as respectable as possible, even going to the extent of borrowing a thick coat from Mr Riach’s tiny wardrobe to muffle myself against the wind and make me appear as shapeless and unfeminine as I could.
I had already observed that the crew were orderly and polite, if not particularly well drilled in seamanship, and despite what Mr Riach had said they did not seem disposed to dislike me. They touched their forelocks most respectfully when I passed, some even lending a hand to steady me when the swell of the waves had me clinging to a rope or handrail to avoid falling. Although I had been seasick on ships in the past I now found that I was not the least affected by the motion of the swell, and I think that that too commanded the respect of the crew, who must have expected me to cower in my cabin or behave like a helpless female. Perhaps I had too much to think about to have time to spare for sickness. At any rate, my mind was fully occupied, running backwards and forwards over the opportunities to free Neil and to escape.
These were, admittedly, very limited. In fact they were practically non-existent, but I did not want to be defeatist. There were fifteen men crewing the ship and I had no weapon to use against them. In my wanderings I had discovered that all the firearms and cutlasses, along with the best part of the food, were stored in the roundhouse, a cabin occupied for the most part by at least two sailors, one of whom was always an officer. There was not the slightest chance of my slipping in there unnoticed and lifting a dirk from one of the lockers. And even if I did I still had to overpower the man who guarded the trap door down to the hold. It was a problem.
I ate my lunch alone in my cabin, staring through the tiny porthole at the land slipping along rapidly to the east. The wind had turned to the north and the brig was cutting along at a rare pace now. I could feel the seconds of Neil’s life ticking down inexorably and the panic tightened inside me. Once we were beyond the Outer Hebrides I knew we would turn westward into the Atlantic Ocean, and then there would be nothing between us and America and nothing between Neil and death.
I felt so helpless and so angry, and so many other emotions that I did not want to explore. If I was going to lose Neil I could not bear to open up all those feelings and acknowledge how I really felt about him. So I told myself that I barely knew him. I told myself that he was a handsome rogue—arrogant, devil-may-care, charming and dangerous—and that dangerous scoundrels had a habit of coming to a bad end. But I knew now in my heart of hearts that he also had honour and principle and courage, and I could not simply dismiss him nor my fee
lings for him.
I loved him.
I loved him for all those qualities that I had told myself I deplored. I loved his honour and his bravery but I also loved his arrogance and his charm. I also knew that this was not the time to sit around idly reflecting on my feelings for Neil Sinclair.
I am the only ally you have…
I felt hopeless, frustrated, impotent as though I had already failed him. I paced the little cabin, trying to think of a way to help Neil and trying to find something—anything—that I could use as a weapon. There was not even a mirror that I could break to use a shard of glass as a knife. But that was probably a good thing, for not only was I superstitious enough to wish to avoid the seven years of bad luck, I also had no real wish to see how bedraggled I was looking. It was probably vain of me even to be thinking of such a thing at a time like that, but, well, if that was vanity then I stand condemned.
By the time the sun was setting I reckoned we were west of the Isle of Barra and heading out into the open sea. Mr Struan, the first officer and navigator, was a man of few words and did not answer me when I slipped into the roundhouse after dinner and asked our location. The Captain was there as well, but he spared me barely a glance. The two of them were whispering together and seemed anxious about something, and I quickly heard from the other sailors—who had forgotten that they were not supposed to talk to me—that the wind was dropping and there was the chance of fog. Sure enough, by the time darkness came down the wind had fallen to no more than a whisper, and gradually, like little white wraiths, the threads of mist rose from the sea and wrapped themselves around us until the stars vanished and there was neither sight nor sound but a thick white blanket and the muffled slap of the waves on the hull.
The Captain’s expression grew longer and gloomier, and Mr Riach looked ever more mournful and started talking about the vicious reefs of the Western Isles and how we might drift to our doom. Mr Struan still said nothing, but looked annoyed at this slight on his navigation skills.
Kidnapped: His Innocent Mistress Page 11