The Piratical Miss Ravenhurst

by Louise Allen

  Comprehension of what Eliza intended swept over her, propelling her out of bed despite her headache and her shaky limbs. ‘Oh, thank you! I’ll do my best to repay you, just as soon as I can.’

  ‘That’s all right, miss.’ The other woman smiled. ‘Eliza here’s done me no end of favours these last few weeks, with my children being so sick. Don’t you worry about me none.’ She was shedding her clothing down to her shift as she spoke, and after a hasty wash Clemence dressed herself.

  Skirts and stays and stockings felt very strange after days in trousers. She wrapped her head in the turban while Eliza tied up Susan on the bed, pushing a handkerchief carefully into her mouth as a gag. ‘You start thrashing around and kicking in ten minutes,’ she said. ‘Look odd if you don’t. Pretend we hit you on the head.’

  With the bundle of clothes on her shoulder, Clemence walked past the dozing guard, down the long shady corridor and out into the sunshine. The ground beneath her feet seemed to shift uneasily. ‘I haven’t got my land legs back yet,’ she said, holding on to Eliza’s arm. ‘How are we going to get inland to the King’s House?’

  ‘No need.’ The maid guided her around a pothole. ‘He’s down for the trials, wants to preside over the hangings, so they say. Here we are.’

  Gaining admission to the Governor’s town residence dressed as a washerwoman was not easy until the disturbance Clemence was creating brought out Mr Turpin, the Governor’s confidential secretary.

  ‘Miss Ravenhurst! We thought you were dead!’ He stood staring at her over his spectacles as though he had seen a ghost. ‘Come in, come in, the Governor will be most happy and relieved to see you.’

  He ushered them into a reception room and went out, only to return a few minutes later. ‘Well, this is providential,’ he said mysteriously, opening a door and showing Clemence through. It closed sharply behind her, leaving Eliza on the other side. The Governor stood up from behind his desk, as did two gentlemen who had been sitting with him.

  ‘Clemence,’ said her uncle’s reproachful voice. ‘You poor misguided child, thank God you are safe.’

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘No!’ The shock was like a blow. All that had happened, all the danger and for nothing. She was back in this man’s power. Clemence turned to the Governor, desperate to find the right words. ‘They are trying to take my inheritance, force me to marry—don’t let them—’

  ‘My dear Miss Ravenhurst, please.’ The Governor held up his hands. ‘No hysterics, I beseech you. Your poor uncle has been with me time and again since your disappearance and a more concerned relative you could not hope to see. I am sincerely sorry that you have chosen to distress him so.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The shame of it, your Excellency,’ Uncle Joshua lamented. ‘You may well understand that we gave out that she was dead rather than admit that the poor, wanton creature had run off with a lover.’

  ‘I did not! I ran away from you.’ Clemence stabbed a finger at the Naismiths. ‘And I was captured by pirates—’

  ‘Dear Heaven! The abandoned female in boy’s clothing taken on the Sea Scorpion. Thank God your poor father was spared this news.’ The Governor regarded her with horrified fascination.

  ‘The shame!’ Uncle Joshua moaned. ‘I had no idea she had sunk so low. We will take her home. Even now, Lewis may do the noble thing for the sake of the family name and wed her.’

  ‘No!’ Clemence made a break for the door, but her cousin was before her, scooping her up in his arms. He was stronger than she would ever have guessed, or perhaps she was weaker. Kicking and fighting, Clemence found herself being carried through the house and out of the back door.

  The yard was full of men, marines in their scarlet, some naval officers and, chained together in the middle, a huddle of familiar figures. Street, Gerritty the Irish sail-maker, half a dozen of the hands. Next to the cook, a bandage around his head, his shirt in bloodstained tatters, was Nathan.

  Nathan had seen her, thank God, for she had no idea whether to shout his name would make things better or worse. Almost sick with relief that he was alive, Clemence began to struggle as hard as she could manage, creating as much disturbance as she could. When it came to the reckoning, no one was ever going to say she had gone with the Naismiths willingly, but when she craned back over Lewis’s shoulder, no one had moved to help her.

  They were all staring, guards and prisoners alike, and as the turban fell off her cropped head she saw the recognition on the men’s faces. Nathan, his eyes blazing, mouthed something. I’ll come for you—is that what he had said? But how could he? The very fact that he was there with the captives showed his gamble of turning informer had not paid off and her desperate hope that he was still a naval officer had been just wishful thinking.

  The yard gate slammed behind them, the big carriage was standing waiting. Lewis flung her into the carriage and climbed in after her before she could reach the handle and get out the other side. ‘Sit still or I’ll tie your hands,’ he snapped.

  ‘You can’t get away with this.’

  Her uncle settled himself comfortably opposite them, folded his hands across his belly and beamed at her. ‘You have behaved like a mad whore in front of the Governor, his confidential secretary and an assortment of naval officers. Really, Clemence, I could not have hoped for better. No one will now question your seclusion at Raven’s Hold and all will honour Lewis for his selfless sacrifice for the family name when he eventually weds you.

  ‘Of course,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘we’ll need to make certain you aren’t breeding a pirate brat first.’

  Clemence opened her mouth in furious denial and then shut it again. If she did not tell them she was still a virgin, then that would keep Lewis from her bed for a few weeks, at least. It wouldn’t be much of a reprieve. Marie Luce, like all the female staff, would know her cycle as well as she did herself, but if she was not free within two weeks she could abandon hope.

  No, never that. She would never give up, even if they hanged Nathan, even if Lewis forced himself on her; one day she was going to bring them to justice.

  Clemence gave a little sigh and slumped into a feigned faint. She had to think, to shut their hateful faces out of her mind. But all that filled it was the image of Nathan, battered, bloody, chained. I love you, I love you. She reached out with her will, trying to touch his consciousness, but nothing came back to her, there was no feeling of connection. She had lost him.

  To her surprise, the Naismiths took her to her own room. Her thoughts must have shown on her face, for Lewis strode across and turned the key in the doors to the balcony.

  ‘The trellis and the climbers will be gone by nightfall,’ he informed her, putting the key into his pocket. ‘Then you may take the air again.’

  ‘You aren’t worried that I might throw myself over in truth?’ Clemence enquired bitterly from the chair where the coachman had deposited her.

  ‘That would be a tragedy, of course. And we would be subject to society’s reproaches for not having understood just how demented you had become,’ her uncle agreed. ‘But our grief would be assuaged by our thankfulness that you had made a will in our favour, weeks before this madness came upon you.’

  ‘I made no will,’ Clemence said slowly, cold fingers running up and down her spine.

  ‘You sign so many papers, my dear.’ Joshua went to give the balcony doors a precautionary shake. ‘And you have such a nice, clear signature.’ He ran his eye over her, his mouth compressing in irritation. ‘Now, turn yourself into something resembling a gentlewoman.’ He turned to Marie Luce, who had slipped in behind them and was waiting silently, hands folded. ‘How long before we can be certain she’s not breeding?’

  ‘Best say four weeks, master, to be certain sure. She’ll look like a lady again by then.’

  ‘See to it.’ Joshua stalked out, Lewis at his heels, already discussing business matters, already dismissing her as yet another tiresome problem solved.

  Ignoring Marie Luce, Clemence
got to her feet and walked to stand in front of the long pier glass. The woman that stared back at her looked as though she had escaped from Bedlam, filthy, tattered, sunburned, her hair a ragged thatch, her eyes wild. The bruises on her face had gone, only to be replaced by a fresh crop of scrapes, and there were scratches all over her hands and arms.

  No one was going to take her seriously while she looked like this, Clemence realised. She had no idea how she was going to escape, but when she did, she was going to be Miss Ravenhurst, granddaughter of the Duke of Allington, and someone was going to have to take her very seriously indeed.

  ‘Fetch me hot water, creams, someone who can dress hair,’ she said to Marie Luce, who stood watching her with an expression of smug insolence on her face. ‘Or do you want me to tell Mr Lewis that you are jealous and do not want to help me look like a lady again?’

  That at least wiped the smile off the woman’s face, but it was a petty victory. It did not give her the key to the door or news of Nathan, yet defiance made her feel stronger, kept the lethally sapping despair at bay.

  Clemence made herself bathe, used every one of the aids to beauty a young lady was permitted, had her ragged hair transformed into a smart, if eccentric, crop and forced down a large supper while behind the shutters there was the noise of men tearing down the trellis and the climbers, her staircase to freedom.

  Then, alone at last, she sat straightening hairpins and trying to recall everything she had ever read in sensation novels about picking locks, ready for the small hours when she could try to open the door. It shouldn’t be hard, she comforted herself. In such a hot climate internal doors and their locks were lightweight and the household relied for security on external watchmen and bars on the windows.

  Raven’s Hold had fallen silent by degrees until all she could hear was the chirp of crickets, distant dogs barking and the sea below. Clemence knelt down, took her strongest hairpin and began to probe the lock.

  The thud from the balcony was so sudden in the silence that the pin jerked in her hand, scoring a deep scratch into the polished wood. Clemence scrambled to her feet as, with a rending noise, something was forced into the lock and the double doors burst open to reveal a tall figure.

  He stepped into the room, his eyes fixed on her, and for a blank moment she stared back. ‘Nathan?’

  ‘Clemence?’ He sounded even more stunned than she felt. ‘My God, you look—’ He broke off. ‘You look like a lady.’

  ‘And you look like a gentleman,’ she replied, finding her feet rooted to the ground with shock. A somewhat dishevelled one as a result of whatever acrobatics it had taken to arrive on her balcony, it was true, but a gentleman none the less with cropped hair, clean shaven, in fresh linen and well-cut breeches. ‘You’re free,’ she added, inanely. ‘I thought they were going to hang you.’

  She still could not move, half-convinced he was an illusion, but he recovered from his shock sooner than she and came across the room to take her in his arms and she knew he was no phantom. She hugged him tightly, then remembered, as her hands felt the strapping beneath his shirt, that he was hurt.

  ‘Nathan, your back, I’m sorry…’

  ‘Shh.’ He pulled her back against him and she let him hold her, her hands sliding down to rest at his waist. ‘It will all be well now.’

  It seemed, resting her head against his chest, that it might be, because he was alive and here.

  ‘What were you doing?’ he asked.

  ‘Picking the lock so I could get out and rescue you,’ she admitted. ‘It sounds very easy in Minerva Press novels.’

  ‘I see.’ He was shaking somewhat; she had the lowering suspicion that he was laughing, but she had no intention of letting go to find out. ‘And having picked the lock, how did the rest of the plan go?’

  ‘I wasn’t wasting time planning. I needed to get away from them first, then I could think. Find my maid Eliza, that was the first step.’

  ‘She’s waiting for you.’

  That did bring her out of her daze. ‘Eliza? How?’

  ‘Let’s get out of here—there’s too much to tell you.’ He hunkered down and studied the lock.

  ‘But how did you get in here?’ Clemence ran to the balcony. There was a grappling hook biting into the carved stone and a rope dangled down into the darkness. ‘Who is on the other end of that rope?’ she asked, coming back into the room, all too aware of Lewis’s room and his open windows.

  ‘Street, one bemused midshipman and the crew of the frigate Orion’s jolly boat.’

  ‘Street!’ He merely nodded, his concentration on the lock. ‘And you are navy? Truly?’

  The door clicked open and Nathan got to his feet. ‘Captain Nathan Stanier, at your service, Miss Clemence.’ The relief took the strength out of her legs. Clemence sat down with a bump on the nearest chest. ‘Come on, we haven’t got time for sitting about.’ He snuffed all but one candle and took that to the balcony, shielding it and uncovering it with his hand before blowing it out. ‘Right, now we’ve got to get to that cove quarter of a mile along to the east and I think we can relax.’

  Clemence pulled herself together and pushed the questions that were clamouring for answers to the back of her mind. ‘This way. If we go out of the dining-room windows on to the veranda and then along to the kitchen yard, we’ll miss the watchman at the gate.’

  Nathan followed her, soft-footed on the wide polished boards as she led him through the rooms, as familiar as the palm of her own hand in the darkness. The loose window latch opened easily and then they were out into the fragrant, sound-filled night.

  Old One-Eye gave a soft wuff of greeting as he scented her and came padding across, the links of his chain rattling. ‘Damn,’ Nathan murmured beside her and she saw his hand go to his knife.

  ‘No!’ she hissed back. ‘And I’m taking him with me; he’s old, I’m not leaving him with them.’

  ‘We can’t take a geriatric guard dog in a jolly boat,’ Nathan protested as she fumbled for the catch on the dog’s heavy studded collar, but she just tugged One-Eye towards the gate and he followed, muttering. She thought she heard totty-headed woman, but she couldn’t swear to it, and anyway, he sounded amused.

  The cove was a favourite picnic spot and Clemence did not need the occasional flash of a shielded lantern ahead to follow the path through the brush and down the cliff path to the beach. One-Eye, who seemed to take this unorthodox walk in his stride, growled low in his throat as figures appeared out of the darkness and the shape of the beached boat became clear.

  ‘Quiet, One-Eye. Friends,’ Clemence ordered, although as one of the silhouettes turned into the unmistakable bulk of Street, she was not so sure.

  ‘You all right, Clem?’ he asked, his voice grumbling out of the darkness.

  ‘Yes, thank you. But what are you doing here?’

  ‘Joined the navy, haven’t I?’ he said. ‘Mr Stanier said I’d got a choice, that or the gallows, seeing as how I looked after you.’

  ‘Better get in the boat, sir.’ A young man, she assumed the bemused midshipman of Nathan’s description, was edging them towards the water. ‘Er, are we taking the hound, ma’am?’ What he thought of being sent out with a pirate ship’s cook on a clandestine mission on English soil, to rescue a woman and an elderly dog, she could not imagine.

  ‘Certainly we are.’

  Only one sailor was bitten, and the midshipman drenched, getting the very reluctant animal into the boat, and Nathan’s shoulders against hers were rigid with what she could only assume was suppressed laughter, but they were at sea at last.

  ‘Where are we going? To the Governor?’

  Clemence let herself lean into Nathan’s side and he put his arm around her, no doubt an action harmful to naval discipline, but he did not appear to care.

  ‘No. I fear his mind is unlikely to be elastic on the subject of young women who run away from their guardians. I’m quite certain we can convince him in time, but tonight I think you rest, then we can assemble our case
and I’ll deal with him tomorrow with you safely out of the way.’

  ‘Very well.’ It was sensible, although her fantasy of confronting Uncle Joshua in front of the island’s Council, finger pointing dramatically at the miscreant, was too satisfying to easily give up.

  ‘Captain Melville has a house in Kingston that we’ve been using as a base. We’ll go there—no one knows that the navy is the tenant.’

  ‘Spying,’ Clemence murmured, almost asleep. ‘I knew you were a shady character.’

  She woke up as Nathan handed her out of the boat to Street, who seemed more than a little put about to have an armful of young woman who sounded like the boy Clem, but who was clad in fine lawns and silk ribbons. Clemence found herself bundled back into Nathan’s arms with unseemly haste.

  ‘I can walk,’ she protested, wide awake.

  ‘Quicker like this.’ Nathan strode off, with Street and the dog at his heels, leaving the boat party to row back out to where she assumed the frigate must be anchored. They were in the streets of middling houses in the west end of town, dwellings hanging on to respectability by their fingernails, an area where the shabby-genteel residents kept themselves to themselves.

  Nathan turned into a passageway, then into a yard. The back door opened with alacrity and there was Eliza. ‘Oh, Miss Clemence! He’s got you safe. Oh, thank you, sir!’ She flung the door wide and ushered them in. ‘And One-Eye. Who’s a good dog, then?’ She made a fuss of the hound, who leaned panting against her leg before turning to glower at Street, lurking uncomfortably in the doorway. ‘And you, you great lummox—what are you doing here?’

  ‘Bodyguard,’ he growled.

  Nathan set Clemence on her feet. ‘Eliza, you’ll show Miss Clemence to her room.’ He looked at her. ‘You’ll want to sleep.’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep a wink,’ Clemence said. ‘Not until I find out what has happened. And, Eliza, you should get to bed.’

  ‘I’ll just show you your room, Miss Clemence,’ the maid began.