The Piratical Miss Ravenhurst

by Louise Allen

  When the liquid was almost gone she trickled brandy into the mug, sighing with relief when he slid back into unconsciousness again. Then she sat down on the deck by his shoulder, rested her head back against its hard edge and settled down to wait.

  Now, with nothing to do but think, it was hard not to slip into complete despair. She was falling in love with Nathan Stanier; she could no longer delude herself that it was gratitude or desire or infatuation. And something was telling her to ignore the evidence of his presence on this ship and trust him with the rest of her life, if he wanted her.

  But now she had broken her word to him and he had been punished, brutally, for her defiance. He might have desired her, he was too much a gentleman to stop protecting her, but he was never, after this, going to love her.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘Clemence?’

  She was awake and twisting round on her knees in an instant. ‘Yes? Nathan, what do you need?’ His forehead was hot and sweaty under her palm, the cloth over his back darkly stained in the lantern light. ‘Something to drink? Try more of this, there’s brandy and water and the bark powder.’

  He sucked greedily and his voice, when he spoke again, was stronger. ‘What’s on my back?’

  ‘A damp cloth. I washed the wounds in salt water, then fresh, and covered them.’

  ‘Good. There’s a jar of salve in my pack. Green salve.’

  Clemence found it, sniffed. ‘It smells very odd.’

  ‘It will help the healing and stop the cloth from sticking.’ He lay still while she lifted the cloth away. ‘How does it look?’ He was by far the calmer of the two of them; she could hardly stop her hands from shaking.

  ‘Um.’ Dreadful. ‘There’s some swelling. It has stopped bleeding.’ More or less. ‘Do I spread the salve on the cloth?’ The thought of having to touch that raw flesh, cause even more pain, made her dizzy.

  ‘Yes.’ There was silence while she worked at the table, trying to spread the evil-smelling stuff as evenly as possible. Then she lifted it by two corners and came back to the bed. ‘Clemence, are you crying?’

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted.

  ‘It stings when you drip.’ Again that impossible hint of a laugh.

  ‘Sorry.’ She laid the cloth back in place, trying to ignore the indrawn hiss of breath. Then she sat down again, close to his head so he did not have to move to see where she was. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘More salt water, good for it.’ He had closed his eyes again.

  ‘I mean I am sorry for this. For breaking my promise, for doing this to you.’ She grabbed one of the cloths and blew her nose, furious with herself for showing her emotions. Nathan did not need tears and self-recrimination. He needed calm and sleep. She dipped a cloth in cold water and began to bathe his forehead.

  ‘You did what you thought was right. You didn’t ask me to get involved.’

  ‘But I knew I could rely on you,’ she admitted. ‘I doubt I’d have had the nerve to do it at all without knowing that.’ He seemed to have forgiven her—she could hardly believe it.

  ‘You trust me, then?’ Nathan’s eyelids parted to reveal a glimmer of deep blue.

  ‘With my life. ’

  He murmured something else that she could not catch. But he had drifted off again.

  At some point she must have dozed and slid down to curl up on the floor, Clemence realised, waking to find herself stiff and cramped. She rolled over and sat up, wincing at the discomfort in her jaw and the aches in her joints, blinking at the light coming in through the porthole. It was morning. The bunk above her was empty. ‘Nathan!’

  ‘Here.’ He came out of the privy cupboard, the sheet swathed round his hips.

  Furious with relief and anxiety, Clemence scrambled to her feet, scolding like a fishwife. ‘What do you think you are doing? How do you expect to get better? Get back to bed this instant!’

  Under his tan he was flushed and he was moving like an old man in the grip of arthritis, but Nathan made it to a chair and sat down. ‘There are some things a man cannot do lying on his front,’ he pointed out, ignoring her tsk! of exasperation. ‘And I need to keep moving.’

  ‘Why?’ Clemence demanded baldly, moving behind him to peer at the cloth.

  ‘Because I need to be on deck and I can’t navigate the ship flat on my stomach.’

  ‘Why have you got to be there? I’ll tell Captain McTiernan that you have a fever—which you have, don’t try and deny it—and are in no fit state to help him harry any shipping tomorrow. It is his fault. If the man wasn’t insane, he wouldn’t flog valuable officers.’

  ‘You’ll explain that to him, will you? And after he picks you up and drops you overboard for insolence, who is going to bandage my back and get me my breakfast?’

  ‘You should be lying down, resting. Please, Nathan.’

  In answer he placed his elbows on the table and leaned forward, letting his forearms take the weight. ‘Like this, I am resting. I need to eat and drink and the fever will go down. If you bandage my back, the salve will work. Believe me, I know what I’m doing.’ He sounded as though he was hanging on to his patience by a thread, but she was too worried to heed that.

  ‘How do you know? You’ve never been flogged before, I’ve seen your back.’

  ‘But I’ve seen men flogged.’

  Clemence backed away and sat down, hard, on his bunk. She found she was shaking her head.

  ‘Please will you bandage my back?’ he asked. ‘And bring me food and help me get back up on deck?’

  ‘Why should I?’ she whispered.

  ‘Because this is painful and I need the help? Because I’ll feel better for eating?’ he suggested. ‘Because if I’m on deck at least we’ll know what is going on? Because if I’m mobile there is some hope of getting those men below out of there?’

  Clemence bit her lip. If he was lying down, he would be resting. Conventional wisdom said that you starved fevers. If he was not navigating, perhaps McTiernan would not make such a good job of hunting his prey.

  ‘Because you trust me?’ Nathan asked softly.

  With my life. But not with head and not with my heart, oh, no. Not with those. ‘Very well.’ Clemence found the spare set of clean linen strips she had made to bind her own chest.

  He sat up gingerly as she approached and raised his arms, making beads of sweat start on his forehead. But he sat still, with an effort she could feel vibrating through her fingers as she wrapped the bandages round, bringing a pass up over each shoulder to keep the strapping in place so she did not have to make them too tight.

  ‘Thank you.’ He leaned back on to his forearms. Clemence went in search of food, coffee and the strangely comforting bulk of Mr Street.

  Nathan set himself to ignore the exhausting pain in his back and thought about Clemence. Tomorrow, if everything went according to plan, he would take the Sea Scorpion into a trap. If he survived the resulting action and if the ship was captured and if he got Clemence off safely—He stopped, contemplating that long list of ifs. Assume all that. Then he would take her back to Jamaica and do something about her uncle and cousin. And then what?

  This adventure would have ruined her, he knew that. It made not a jot of difference whether he seduced her or not, the assumption would be that she was no longer a respectable marital proposition.

  He didn’t give a damn about that. All he knew was that he wanted her, physically and, increasingly, for all sorts of other reasons as well, the overriding one of which was the strong need he felt to protect her. And now marriage was the only thing that would save her from whatever fate awaited the ruined orphan daughters of small merchants within a claustrophobic island community.

  Would she have him? She was as stubborn as a mule. She said that she trusted him, although he doubted that trust was wholehearted—she was too intelligent for that. How was she going to react to the extent of his deception and what he must tell her about his past life? And then, if he persuaded her to say yes, others would most certainly have som
ething to say about such a match. His mother, for one, the rumour-mongers for another. For himself, he didn’t care. He was never going to fall in love again, that was over and done with; marriage to Clemence would do very well. But could she cope with the reality of life with him?

  She was very young, very inexperienced in the hard realities of life away from her comfortable middle-class existence. If she married him, her world would be turned on its head yet again. Would that be better than the alternative? It had to be. Although, looked at from the viewpoint of this cabin, at this moment, he was not much of a catch; his prospects just now appeared negligible.

  Nathan shifted in his seat and swore. The pain was going to be better tomorrow, he knew. Agony though it had been, eight lashes got nowhere near the dreadful damage a prolonged flogging would inflict.

  He was going to have to get up again in a minute and move around. By tomorrow, he had to be at least fit enough to keep on his feet, hold a pistol and look after Clemence or all of this agonising over her future would be pointless.

  Gritting his teeth, he stood and moved to where she had folded his clothes so neatly. It made him smile, the way she attacked the hated task of keeping the cabin clean and tidy and the rueful way she acknowledged that she had been fortunate in the past to have had servants. She didn’t grumble about her changed circumstances, just coerced the dirt and disorder into submission and got on with the next thing. He wanted, Nathan realised, to pamper her and shower her with luxury and that was ridiculous. She would not be the woman he thought she was, if she would find that kind of existence acceptable, even assuming he could afford it.

  No, marriage to him would be hard work and something utterly different from anything Clemence was used to. She was so very young, ten years younger than he. Was he being fair to even think of asking her? Probably not, but that was not going to stop him, if he survived. Fairness didn’t come into it; making the best of a bad situation and doing his duty to look after her was all that mattered.

  He sat down to put on his shirt, relieved to find that he was not as weak as he feared. The widespread damage to his back was painful, but it did not, from that number of lashes, have the deep impact a sword or bullet wound had, shocking the entire system and costing pints of blood. Already the green salve that he had purchased from a herbalist when he had been briefly stationed on Corfu was working its magic. It was going to be a while before he slept on his back though, he thought, pushing his feet into his shoes and standing with caution to buckle his sword belt low on his hips so it did not chafe.

  Clemence found him as he made it to the deck and stood catching his breath. ‘You idiot!’ she hissed, stabbing him in the chest with one very sharp finger. ‘What are you doing? You told me you were resting.’

  ‘You are behaving like a nagging wife,’ he murmured, observing with interest the way she coloured up. Interesting that she should react so. Was it possible that she had been thinking of herself in those terms?

  She dropped her hand and glared, shrugging, a sulky boy again for the onlookers. ‘You’ll bleed on your shirt and I’ll have to wash it again,’ she said.

  ‘Cheeky brat,’ he said with a simulacrum of irritation. ‘Go and get me some food.’ He resisted the temptation to follow her with his eyes as she left, focusing instead on the challenge of negotiating the ladder to the poop deck, with McTiernan waiting at the top of them.

  ‘You’re a hard man, Stanier,’ the captain observed when he joined him at the wheel. ‘Perhaps I should have added a few more lashes.’

  ‘There’s just so much I can take of staring at my cabin walls.’ Nathan almost shrugged, then thought better of it. Exercise was one thing, violently agitating his back muscles, another. He hitched a hip on to the hatch cover. ‘What’s the plan for tomorrow?’

  ‘One of the skiffs has just come in.’ McTiernan jerked his head towards the little craft bobbing alongside. The crew were furling the lateen sail and securing the lines. ‘There’s a nice little merchantman making ready to sail with a most interesting cargo.’ Nathan raised an eyebrow. ‘Chests—and an armed escort at the dockside.’

  ‘Bullion?’

  ‘Could be. All very secretive, the idiots. If they’d taken no precautions, they wouldn’t have stood out.’ Nathan suppressed a grin. Bluff and double bluff. ‘If the winds hold as they are, it will be passing tomorrow before noon. We’ll get the skiffs out and the lugger with a couple of light guns on it to herd it back towards your sand-bar.’ He ran a cold eye down Nathan’s carefully still body. ‘You up to the chase?’

  Nathan contemplated the likely results of saying no. ‘Aye, Captain.’ Down on the deck he could see Clemence balancing his meal in one hand with two tankards gripped in the other and exchanging mild insults with two of the hands. ‘I’ll get some food,’ he observed, concentrating on not wincing as he stood up. She was getting too confident, he worried, then saw her put the food down on a barrel and swing up into the rigging, climbing like a monkey to the first spar, apparently just for the hell of it. No, perhaps she was right. Who would suspect a merchant’s daughter could be capable of scrambling about twenty foot above deck?

  ‘Get down here, Clem!’ Clemence peered down through the lattice of rigging at Nathan’s upturned face. He wasn’t going to let her fuss over him, that was plain. She began to descend, revel in the freedom that climbing gave her. Her muscles were working again, she had an appetite, she felt fit and happy and terrified, all at once, and the source of that happiness was standing eating the cheese she’d brought him, a scowl on his face.

  Nathan was only pretending to be angry, she was almost certain. Sometimes she thought that she was beginning to understand him, could read the expression in his eyes. And then he reacted in a way that surprised her, or the amusement turned to something still and secretive and she realised she didn’t know him at all. And although he knew her lethally dangerous secret, she was convinced that he was confiding in her only what was absolutely unavoidable.

  She dropped to the deck and trotted over. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No, you are not.’ He pushed the food towards her and shifted his position as if getting comfortable.

  Instinctively Clemence followed his gaze around. Yes, there was no one within earshot. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know whether I’ll get another chance to talk to you—McTiernan is planning and we could be on deck all night. Tomorrow there will be a fight. They’ve spotted the ship they want, and very tempting it is, too. We’ll drive it on to the sand-bar and then the plan is to board it.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘But the crew of the merchantman will board us instead and when that happens I want you to get down to the orlop and let those men out. Tell them that the navy is up top and show them the weapon chests on the gun deck—and then get into the cabin and stay there. Do you understand?’

  ‘The navy? How do you know?’ Understanding and an enormous sense of relief flooded through her. ‘You’ve planned this all along, haven’t you? The crippled merchantman…that was a trap that went wrong. You aren’t just an opportunist, seeing if you can find a way to get a reward if the chance arises, are you?’

  ‘No. You’ll do as I say?’

  She ignored the question. ‘Who are you?’

  He met her eyes, his shuttered. ‘Nathan Stanier.’

  ‘You are still in the navy, aren’t you?’ Please say yes, please tell me that I can believe in you.

  ‘I’m working with them. I’ve told you all you need to know.’ He hesitated. ‘If anything happens and I’m…not around, go to Street. He’s the best of a bad bunch.’

  The cold seemed to sink down from the crown of her head to her toes, despite the heat. ‘You mean, if you are killed?’

  ‘It is going to get confused. I might not be in the right place at the right time, that’s all.’

  ‘How can you fight with your back in that state?’ she asked through tight lips.

  ‘I shall endeavour to use a pistol and not engage in any stren
uous hand-to-hand combat,’ Nathan said lightly, as though they were discussing a friendly fencing match and not a pitched battle with murderous pirates.

  ‘Nathan.’ She had to say this now, in this moment of stillness before the storm, or she might never have the opportunity to say it again. Something in her tone reached him, his eyes narrowed on her face. ‘Nathan, I am sorry I did not trust you at first. I do now.’ Somehow, she couldn’t say the other thing, utter the three words that filled her heart. She did not have the courage.

  But he knew there was something behind her sudden admission, even if he did not understand it. He kept his face under control with an effort that was visible to her, but Clemence had no way of telling what emotion he was concealing.

  ‘Clemence, you are very young,’ he began and her heart sank. ‘What you think about me is…confused.’

  ‘I had to start growing up extremely fast the day my father died,’ she countered. ‘I know what I feel. It took me some time to trust you—and you didn’t help!—but I liked you, almost from the start.’

  ‘We have been thrown together, intimately. You have come to rely on me. It is not so very surprising that you think you may—’ He searched for a phrase. ‘That you have come to like me more than is wise,’ he persisted patiently.

  He did guess she felt more than liking for him. A wave of humiliating heat swept over her. Perhaps he even thought she had formed a tendre for him. ‘I didn’t say I liked you too well,’ she said with an attempt at hauteur, but knowing that she was blushing furiously. ‘Goodness, I know you are a rogue, navy or not, and your life must be full of loose women. I’m not such an idiot that I’d think you wanted me, or anything like that.’ Oh, Lord, how did I get into this muddle? ‘You think I’m an annoying brat, even if you do want to kiss me occasionally, but I expect that’s just being male.’ She stopped. ‘I just wanted you to know I do trust you.’