Mistress Below Deck

by Helen Dickson

  ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘I would like to say I want recompense for a cargo of rum and sugar you stole from me, but it is as nothing compared to the compensation you owe to the families of the men who perished on one of my ships—the Night Hawk—when it was fired in Kingston Harbour four years back. The lengths you went to to prevent the ship collecting the cargo you coveted for yourself was nothing short of murder. Men who were asleep on board didn’t stand a chance of saving themselves.’

  Purple veins stood out on Matthew’s forehead, his eyes protruding from their sockets as he glowered up at the other man. ‘That was not my doing,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I swear it. Jack—Jack Mason—’

  ‘I know Jack Mason. Captain Jack Mason, the master of the Dolphin—your vessel, I believe.’

  ‘Aye—and Mason, renegade that he is, made off with it and left me to rot on Antigua.’

  ‘Perhaps like everyone else he thought you were dead—myself included. Had I known you had survived the shooting, I would have been here sooner.’

  ‘Mason’s the one you should be looking for, not me. I had nothing to do with what happened to your ship.’

  ‘I am looking for him, only I’m having a little difficulty in tracking him down. But I shall—be assured of that. You were there that night. You saw what happened. As owner of the Dolphin, who had command of his own crew, I hold you responsible. Believe me, Golding, I am no respecter of your standing in society and I would gladly see you ruined and your house razed to the ground for what you have done, so do not think for one minute that my threat is idly voiced.’

  Matthew’s usually florid features had become chalk white and his breathing shallow and rapid, as he felt the ghosts of the past begin to claw at him with savage fingers. ‘What is it you want from me?’

  ‘I’ve told you. Compensation for dead men. It’s a matter of human decency. Compensation for their families and for those men who were badly burned, some blinded, some with life-limiting injuries, men who will never work again, who are unable to support their wives and children.’

  Appalled by what she was hearing, Rowena stared at him. ‘What are you saying?’ she cried. ‘That my father killed those men?’ The look he gave her said it all. ‘But that’s outrageous.’ She looked at her father. ‘Tell me it’s not true. Tell me he’s lying.’

  ‘Rowena, I did not do what he accuses me of. I may not always have done what I should, but at least I have no man’s death on my conscience.’

  ‘But you were there. You sailed on the Dolphin to the West Indies. I would like to know the truth of it.’

  ‘Damn you, Rowena. You think your father a killer, do you? I was there, I admit that, but I was nowhere near the Night Hawk when the fire started.’

  Rowena believed him. She knew what Jack Mason was capable of—she hadn’t forgotten his attack on her before he had sailed for the West Indies. She directed her hard gaze on Tobias Searle, icy fire smouldering in the green of her eyes. ‘You speak of compensation for the families of those men who died. What of my father? Does he not warrant compensation from you, sir, for shooting him in the back like a coward and leaving him a cripple?’

  ‘And that’s what he told you, is it?’ He looked contemptuously at Matthew with a lopsided smile. ‘You have been living under a misconception. I am not a man who would shoot another in the back. God knows I wanted to shoot you; had I done so, I would not have maimed you—I would have killed you. As I recall, you were the worse for drink on the night I ran you to ground on Antigua. I doubt you can remember much of what happened. But that is not what I am here for. The debt, Golding. I do not intend remaining in Falmouth overlong, so it must be paid within the week.’

  ‘And it is thanks to you making me a cripple—despite what you say to the contrary—and unable to conduct my business as I would like, that I lack the wherewithal to pay,’ Matthew said, refusing to believe Searle innocent of shooting him.

  Slowly, distinctly, the younger man said, ‘I have heard you soon won’t have a pittance to your name. Do you think I don’t know you have money lenders and creditors hounding you—and I don’t doubt you have even used your daughters’ dowries to put towards paying them?’ His smile was sarcastic. ‘They are like sacrificial lambs to your ambitions, are they not, Golding? However, after meeting your eldest daughter—’ he turned his head, his gaze leisurely sweeping over Rowena appraisingly ‘—I’m somewhat surprised there have been no takers. She would make the most charming companion. Perhaps I should make a bid for her myself.’ Tis obvious she doesn’t take after you.’

  Matthew clenched his hands into tight fists. ‘Keep yourself away from my house and your filthy hands off my daughter. She’ll have nothing to do with the likes of you.’

  Undaunted, Tobias smiled blandly into Rowena’s rage-filled eyes. ‘I am tempted to try to change her mind—if she would allow it. It would be interesting to see what might come of it.’

  Her chilled contempt met him face to face. ‘Why? To try to thwart my father? Do not even think of adding me to your long string of conquests.’

  He smiled with wry humour. ‘Conquest? You mistake me, Rowena. Don’t be too hasty. I might be prepared to be—generous.’

  ‘Generous? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Aye,’ Matthew said, clearly bemused, ‘explain yourself.’

  ‘I am not usually an impulsive man, but in exchange for your daughter’s hand in marriage, I would be prepared to reduce your debt to me.’

  ‘Why, you arrogant, pompous oaf!’ Rowena gasped. ‘Your callousness disgusts me. I would marry the ugliest, oldest man on earth rather than have anything to do with you.’

  ‘Never!’ Matthew railed over his daughter’s surprised gasp. ‘I won’t have a daughter of mine married to the likes of you. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep away from her.’

  Tobias considered Matthew with open mockery. ‘Why not ask Rowena what her pleasure might be?’

  ‘I’d kill you before I’d see her take up with you. So be warned.’

  Tobias laughed derisively. ‘I’d be careful with my threats if I were you, Golding. The last time you threatened someone, he put you where you are now. I don’t think I have anything to worry about.’ He looked at Rowena, who was glaring at him with eyes burning with indignation. ‘Do not concern yourself, Rowena. I mean you no harm.’

  ‘My name is Miss Golding to you,’ she retorted, twin spots of colour growing on her cheeks. ‘Take your offers and endearments and inflict them on some other willing ear.’

  ‘And this Mr Whelan you mistook me for—is he someone your father hopes to saddle you with? Rich, is he? Rich enough to get him out of his mess?’

  ‘That is none of your business. One way or another the debt will be paid in full. I promise you that. Now will you please leave. As I said, you are not welcome in this house.’

  The muscles flexed in his cheek, giving evidence of his constrained anger. ‘I don’t intend staying any longer than necessary. I find merely being in this house with the man who murdered members of my crew extremely distasteful.’

  He took a step closer to his adversary, his eyes merciless in their intensity, and his next words were uttered slowly, like uncoiling whips. ‘But heed me and heed me well, Golding. Were it just a matter of the cargo you stole from me by burning my ship, I might have seen fit to cancel your debt in view of your unfortunate disability—and if you had agreed to my offer to marry your daughter. But since my offer has been rejected, you will pay in full for what you did to those men. I swear, if you try to evade your obligation, I will crush you out of existence. There will be a scandal, but it would be worth the scandal to see you go under. You have a ship for sale—the Rowena Jane. I might have a buyer to put your way, which will go some way to settling your debt.’

  Rowena stepped forward, her hands clenched in the folds of her dress. She felt sick and more than a little afraid of this new threat to their future security, but her anger and indignation were much stro
nger. Pride warred with the years of resentment she had harboured against her father’s weakness to succumb to his disability, which had seen his once-thriving business slip into a decline, but he was still her father and the ties of blood and duty bound them irrevocably. Loyalty and anger rose like a phoenix out of the ashes of her resentment towards this stranger who had tricked his way into her home.

  ‘I think you’ve said quite enough,’ she said, seething, incensed that this man wasn’t who she thought he was.

  What a fool she had been, what an absolute idiot. For one mad, irrational moment, when he had arrived, she had been so relieved and happy to find him young and handsome—her suitor, she had thought—that she could scarcely speak. She had let herself hope. No sunshine had ever felt so warm, been so bright, dancing on her face as she had looked at him. Wrapped in that magic circle of enchantment, she had wondered what it was about him that was so in tune with her, with the flesh, the bone and muscle of Rowena Golding. Now her eyes took on a steely hardness.

  ‘I hate you for this. I’ll hate you till the day I die.’

  ‘You do right to hate him,’ Matthew seconded. ‘Now get out of my house.’

  Tobias looked at Rowena. Her face was as white as a sheet, and the young woman to whom it belonged was trembling like a flower ravaged in the wind. He nodded slowly. ‘I’m sure you do hate me, Miss Golding, and I can’t say that I blame you, but when you consider what your father intends for you and your sister, then I would reserve a large measure of what you feel for him.’

  After he gave her a curt bow, Rowena watched him stride to the door, where he paused and glanced back over his shoulder. His gaze rested on her, those sharp blue eyes burning with something other than anger, something she could not quite lay a finger to.

  Chapter Two

  Tobias Searle went out and Rowena stood listening to his footsteps cross the hall. A door opened and closed and then there was silence. A stone had settled where her heart had been, and cold fury and an overwhelming disappointment dwelled where just a short time ago there had been hope.

  ‘What are we to do?’ she asked quietly, deeply concerned by Mr Searle’s visit, her resentment still running high. Her father rubbed his forehead with his fingers.

  ‘This is Jack Mason’s doing,’ he mumbled. ‘The man’s a damned menace.’

  ‘Mr Searle accuses you of setting light to his vessel. What really happened? Where were you?’

  ‘Ashore—at the offices of a merchant I’d traded with before, negotiating the purchase of a return cargo.’

  ‘And Jack Mason was on the Dolphin?’

  He nodded. ‘Due to bad weather we were blown off course and failed to pick up our intended cargo in Kingston. I wasn’t unduly concerned about the cargo we would be taking back because there were always plenty to choose from, but when we put in there was an unusually large number of merchantmen. On a suggestion from the merchant and a letter of introduction, I intended going on to Barbados to pick up a cargo of rum and sugar, but Mason was anxious to leave for home.

  ‘I wasn’t on board when the fire on the Night Hawk started and it didn’t occur to me until we were loaded with the cargo meant for the Night Hawk and had left Kingston that he’d been behind it. Under cover of darkness and away from the eyes of the harbour officials, he fired it, knowing there were men on board.’

  ‘Why did you go to the West Indies on that voyage? You’d only just returned from Gibraltar with the Rowena Jane.’

  ‘A lot of money would be changing hands on the voyage to the Indies. I felt it might be better if I were to carry out the negotiations. I didn’t entirely trust Mason and would have got rid of him before sailing, but it was too late to find another captain.’

  ‘When you found out what he’d done, why didn’t you turn back to Jamaica and hand him over to the officials there? Surely that would have been the right thing to do.’

  ‘Had I done that, I’d have had a mutiny on my hands. The crew weren’t for going back to a place where they might have been thrown into gaol. Besides, most of them were behind Mason that night.’

  ‘And how did you come to be shot?’

  ‘At a quayside tavern.’

  ‘Was that where Mr Searle found you?’ He nodded. ‘What happened to his crew was a terrible thing and Jack Mason should have been punished. You can hardly blame Mr Searle for seeking justice and compensation for those who were maimed, but I cannot condone his method of exacting revenge—if that’s what it was,’ she said, feeling a stirring of doubt since his denial.

  Rowena knew the rest, of how the Rowena Jane had put in at Antigua and found its owner alive but a cripple. Deeply affected by this latest turn of events, she spun on her heel and stalked to the door.

  ‘Now where are you off to?’

  ‘To see what has happened to Mr Whelan. You are right, Father. For me to marry well is the only way out of this mess. I’ll get Tobias Searle off our backs if it’s the last thing I do.’

  Unfortunately Mr Whelan didn’t arrive. According to Jane, who had watching from the window, he had been waylaid by the detestable Mr Searle as he approached the house; after they had spoken together, Mr Whelan had walked away.

  * * *

  Rowena galloped along Falmouth Haven. As she reached higher ground, her dogs, two faithful companions she had reared from pups, raced ahead. They were young and fresh and relieved to be out of the stables, their sleek black shapes pouring over the ground and slipping in and out of the rocks.

  The wind ruffled her hair, tugging it loose from the ribbon. Away from the town she dismounted and left her horse free to nibble the short grass. Sitting on the grey-veined rocks, she clasped her arms around her drawn-up knees, one of the dogs settling beside her. The air was sweet, smelling of the spiky bushes of gorse and tasting of the sea.

  Her gaze did a sweep of Falmouth’s deep harbour beyond the quay. Being the most westerly mail-packet station, with ships stopping on their passage to the Mediterranean, the West Indies and North America and requiring provisions, Falmouth, with its flourishing and increasing trade, was a prosperous, bustling harbour town, full of rich merchants.

  As a merchant trader, her father’s prosperity had always been inextricably linked to the sea, but like every other trader he was always acutely conscious of the dangers that lay just beyond the horizon. Pirate vessels were a constant threat, and because of it he nearly always sailed in convoy with other merchantmen.

  Rowena remembered a time when all over the southern coast, a veritable flotilla of traders and merchants had hoisted their sails and pushed their vessels into the troubled waters of the north Atlantic on trading voyages to Spain, Portugal and the colonies of North America. The hazards of such daring oceanic voyages were considerable, and tempests, hidden reefs and Barbary pirates had taken a grim toll over the previous century.

  Her gaze travelled to where the Rowena Jane was moored. She was saddened by the thought that her father had put it in the hands of a broker. Her eyes moved on to a sloop anchored out in the bay. She looked sleek and fast with tall, raking masts pointing to the sky and its sails neatly furled. A pennant—a bold, bright gold ‘S’ entwined with the letter ‘T’ against a background of bright crimson—flew from its masthead. She stood tall and serene, like a proud queen. A figurehead of a woman graced the head of the ship and the name Cymbeline was carved into the stern.

  She now knew the vessel belonged to Tobias Searle. It was his flagship, just one of many that he owned, and could outgun and outrun most of those who tried to take her.

  Looking inland, she let her eyes dwell on the skeletal, blackened ruins of Tregowan Hall rising high above the trees in distance. Fire had gutted part of the hall ten years ago, its owner, Lord Julius Tregowan, and his wife having perished in the blaze. The Tregowan estate was a prosperous one with vast productive acres. The quiet rural communities in this part of Cornwall flourished on rumours about the family that had lived and died in the great house. Lord Tregowan’s heir, who employed a baili
ff to administer the working of the estate, remained a mystery. Some said he lived in Bristol and had never been to Tregowan Hall to look over his inheritance. Whether he eventually came to Cornwall remained to be seen, and meant nothing to her anyway.

  Her thoughts far away, she did not seem to hear his approach until the dogs bristled and growled low in their throats. Turning her head, she looked up, shielding her eyes against the sun’s brightness. A man astride a horse was looking down at her. Her eyes and brain recognised his presence, but her emotions were slow to follow.

  ‘You!’ she said, surprised to see Mr Searle.

  Mocking blue eyes gazed back at her. ‘Aye, Rowena,’ Tobias said, swinging his powerful frame out of the saddle, his boots sounding sharp against the rocks. ‘My apologies. I didn’t mean to startle you.’

  Removing his hat, the intruder looked down at her, his face grave, though Rowena noticed one eyebrow was raised in that whimsical way he had and his lips were inclined to curl in a smile. What was he doing up here? she had time to wonder, since he was a long way from his ship.

  His gaze swept the landscape, settling for just a moment on the skeletal chimneys of Tregowan Hall, before coming to rest on the young woman who made no attempt to get up. He was surprised to see that she wore a jacket and breeches and black riding boots more suitable to a male than a female. She lounged indolently against the rock at her back, one of her dogs beside her, her long slender legs stretched out in front of her and crossed at the ankles. She was as healthy and thoughtless as a young animal, sleek, graceful and high-spirited as a thoroughbred, and dangerous when crossed.

  There was also a subdued strength and subtleness that gave her an easy, almost naïve elegance she was totally unaware of. The sun shone directly on the glossy cape of her deep brown hair, which had escaped the restriction of the red ribbon. Few women were fortunate enough to have been blessed with such captivating looks. Her eyes were as clear and steady and calm as the waters he had seen lapping a stretch of tropical sand and were the same exquisite mixture of turquoise, sapphire and green, their colour depending on the light and her mood. In fact, Rowena Golding was blessed with everything she would need to guarantee her future happiness.