Historical Romance Boxed Set

by Brenda Novak

  Smedley scowled. “I’m not touching his pecker. What do you think I am, a bloody sodomite?”

  Jack’s face reddened. “All right. A naked lady, then, on ‘is chest.”

  That Smedley rubbed his chin as though considering this latest proposition caused Jeannette to redouble her efforts. Regardless of the hands that held her back, she had to break free.

  “Let me go, bloody swine.” She cringed to hear herself, but she had to be Jean and not Jeannette to survive.

  “Hold him fast,” Smedley said.

  Chapter 12

  Jeannette cried out as four tar-blackened hands pinned her against the wall.

  Smedley hunched over to examine the corked bottles that contained the colored inks and tapped his needle thoughtfully on the blue.

  “So what’s it going to be?” the others asked, their rum-soured breath bathing Jeannette’s face as they crowded closer.

  “Hold him steady, I said, or it won’t look like anything at all,” Smedley replied with more than a little self-importance.

  “A naked woman,” one man insisted.

  Smedley shook his head. “I’m thinking an English flag might be nice, you know, to remind Frenchy here where his loyalties lie, just in case he ever wonders.”

  “Then make it as big as life,” Jack said with a snicker. “So no one else can mistake ‘is loyalties either. We’ll be doin’ ‘im a bloody favor, makin’ him one of our own.”

  “Aye,” Smedley said. “But something as big as all that would take hours. And I’m working for free, remember? I’ll do a small flag on his arm.”

  Gripped tight, Jeannette winced as the first prick of the needle drew a bright red drop of blood, which Smedley wiped away with his stained rag. The pain grew worse with each jab, but the tattoer worked quickly, only bothering to glance up when Jeannette’s struggles caused him to miss his mark.

  “He’s wriggling,” he snapped to the men restraining her. Then he bowed back over her tender flesh.

  Staring at the bottles of ink that would soon permanently mark her body, Jeannette refused to lie meekly beneath their hands. She could not return to her parents with a tattoo on her arm, be it an English flag or a French one.

  Booted feet moved on the deck above and Jeannette cried out; she could never gain her freedom on her own. “Help me! Please!”

  A callused hand clamped over her mouth, but the sailor who silenced her was too late. Someone had heard, and they were coming. Jeannette’s heart raced faster in hope, then skidded and bumped when she realized who had answered her plea.

  Lieutenant Cunnington’s heels tapped on each step as he descended the stairs. Dressed impeccably, as always, he stood tall, his cologne reaching Jeannette long before he came level with her.

  When the others pulled back and saluted, Jeannette wanted to run. But she could not. She was encircled by half-drunken sailors, and Cunnington blocked her escape up the stairs. She could only attempt an awkward salute of her own.

  “Having fun, lads?”

  “Aye, Lieutenant. Didn’t mean no harm, though.” Smedley’s glance flicked toward his mates.

  The others averted their eyes.

  “Beaner? Don’t you have this watch?” the lieutenant asked.

  “No, sir. I ‘ave the next one.”

  “Which begins in a matter of minutes.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Carpenters have much to do in a day.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Perhaps you are not taking your work seriously enough. At this rate you will all miss muster.”

  Jeannette felt no relief at Cunnington’s words. If he sent the sailors scurrying to their respective duties, she might avoid a tattoo, but she wasn’t sure she’d be able to escape the first lieutenant. Would he manufacture a charge against her? Take his hatred out on her another way?

  “I was just leavin’ when the boys decided to rile this lad,” Beaner explained. “I lingered ter watch.”

  There was a quiver in Beaner’s voice. Jeannette could almost hear him wonder if he would soon find himself at the receiving end of the mate’s whip.

  “Indeed.” The first lieutenant’s gaze switched back to Jeannette. His glacial smile and the memory of his voice through Treynor’s door made her wish she could sink into the deck.

  She’d escaped his wrath once; she doubted she could do so again.

  “Am I to understand the lad opposes such an initiation into your ranks?” He spoke to Beaner, but his eyes never left Jeannette.

  “Aye, sir.”

  “There is nothing quite so annoying as a boy who resists those in authority. Wouldn’t you say, Mr. Beaner?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Jeannette stared beyond Cunnington. How far would she get if she made a dash for it?

  Her chances didn’t look good….

  “I was just going about my duty, m’sieu,” she said. “Lieutenant Treynor is expecting me in his cabin. He will not be pleased if—”

  “Do I care if Lieutenant Treynor is pleased?”

  The others made no sound.

  “I would not know, sir,” Jeannette replied. “I am only trying to do as I have been told.”

  “So eager to please,” Cunnington mused. “Where is the lad who tried to run away? Working for Lieutenant Treynor must suit you better than working for the Hawkers, eh?”

  Jeannette wasn’t sure how to respond. “Well enough, m’sieu.”

  “Well, now.” The way he considered those around her caused the sailors to stir uncomfortably. “I doubt Lieutenant Treynor will miss a few minutes more of your time. Smedley here is quick with his needle, I hear.”

  The tattoo artist blinked, and the others shifted, their change in posture revealing both surprise and relief.

  “I will hurry, sir,” Smedley promised.

  “Hurry to do what, Mr. Smedley?”

  Treynor’s voice descended from above. When Jeannette saw him coming down the stairs, she nearly collapsed in relief. The chiseled planes of his face were hard, his eyes alight with an inner glow. But she knew he wouldn’t let them hurt her. At least she hoped he wouldn’t.

  “I heard my name,” he explained when Cunnington scowled up at him. “Did you need me?”

  “Hardly.”

  Only a slight flaring of Treynor’s nostrils revealed his surprise, or his impatience, at finding her outside his cabin. “I thought you were polishing my boots, lad?”

  Jeannette wondered if he had already been back to his room and had come looking for her, or whether he’d truly happened upon them as he made it appear.

  Smedley, Beaner, and the others looked uneasy in the face of yet another officer’s anger. They eyed the companionway as if they’d lost all taste for tattooing the new French boy and desired only to flee the presence of their two senior officers.

  Cunnington, however, seemed reluctant to let them change course. “You arrived at an opportune time. Your new servant’s about to receive his first tattoo. Perhaps you would like to watch.”

  “Unfortunately, I have work to do.” Treynor’s voice was soft and even, not overtly disrespectful, yet ripe with censure. “As does Jean.”

  “When we are finished, Lieutenant.” Cunnington stepped between them. “I see no harm in letting the men have some fun now and then, which, I believe, is something I have heard you say upon occasion.”

  Treynor bowed slightly. “Indeed, sir, but not at the expense of duty. If I am not mistaken, many of these men should be making ready to appear on deck for the next watch. Perhaps another time would be better for this?”

  Cunnington’s face beamed scarlet, making Jeannette fear Treynor had pushed him too far. She sent a worried glance to where he was standing a step or two above Cunnington, but he simply motioned for her to precede him up the companionway.

  Reclaiming her lamp and straightening her clothes, Jeannette started to obey, but Cunnington raised a hand to bar her passage. “How dare you,” he said to Treynor. “I am in charge here.”

&n
bsp; “I apologize if I have offended you, sir,” Treynor said. “I merely meant to suggest a course of action more compatible with the orders I have received from the captain.”

  Cunnington’s colorless lips pressed tightly to his teeth. “Which are?”

  “To see to the smooth running of the ship, of course. It is still my watch, for the next few minutes. However, should you wish to discuss my actions or my orders—” his eyes darted pointedly to the men who watched “—it might be wise to do so in the privacy of my cabin. Or yours.”

  Reminded of the spectacle they were making in front of the others, Cunnington seemed to waver. He obviously wanted to pull rank on Treynor, but he didn’t want to risk looking like a fool for playing out such a weak hand. The men should be about their work, not tormenting the newest lad on board. Treynor had the right of it, and from the look on Cunnington’s face, he knew it.

  Still, for a moment, Jeannette expected pride to push him beyond wisdom or care.

  “Attend to your tasks,” he said to the sailors. “Now. And if any of you are so much as a minute late for muster, you will pay with your hides.”

  Jeannette breathed a mental sigh of relief as Beaner, Jack, and the others mumbled an “Aye, aye, sir,” and scattered. She tried to circumvent the first lieutenant and disappear herself, but Cunnington caught her arm.

  “Watch yourself, Jean Vicard.” He regarded Treynor as though daring him to intervene, but Treynor said nothing. “Someday you will get what you deserve.”

  “A tattoo?” Jeannette asked innocently.

  Treynor coughed into his hand, and Cunnington’s eyes narrowed into slits. “A tattoo will be the least of your worries.”

  * * *

  Struggling to keep a tight leash on his temper, Treynor led Jeannette up the companionway without speaking. He wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled, but he doubted it would teach her anything.

  “What are we doing?” she asked when they passed his cabin without stopping.

  He gave her a withering glare. “Keeping you out of trouble. Since you won’t stay put, I have decided to keep track of you another way.”

  “Which means…”

  “You will work—something I doubt you have tried in your short, pampered life.”

  “I was about to thank you for coming to my aid, but—”

  “If you had listened to me, my interference would not have been necessary. What do you do, sit and plot ways to get one of us flogged? Or are you looking for another turn over my knee?”

  “Certainly not—”

  Treynor whirled to face her. “Then why didn’t you do as you were told and stay in my cabin?”

  Her eyebrows drew down over her startling eyes. “I …I …had something to take care of.”

  They were almost out on deck in the cold, winter air where one had to shout to be heard. The singsong voices of the crew rose to Treynor’s ears, relaying messages from stern to bow and back again as the wind whined through the rigging far above, so much a part of his life he scarcely noticed it.

  “Such as?”

  She propped her hands on her hips. “I am not at liberty to say.”

  He studied her for a moment, waiting for her reasoning, knowing he probably wouldn’t agree with it, anyway. “Suit yourself,” he said when she glared back at him, her chin set at a defiant angle.

  With a slight nod, he strode across the deck, pausing only long enough to tap the shoulder of a man who was busy hammering oakum into the cracks of the deck. “Teach this lad how to caulk and then put him to good use, Simon,” he said, indicating Jeannette.

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  A stout man with a paunch that rolled well over his belt, Simon was a quiet sort who kept to his own business. Treynor had known him for years. The man didn’t gamble or drink too much, and he religiously sent his wages home to his wife and children, something most sailors were not wont to do. Jeannette would be safe with him. Better yet, she’d be busy until dark and then too tired to cause him any more headaches.

  Jeannette stayed next to Simon, but Treynor could feel her gaze trailing after him as he continued on to the wheel. He felt guilty for abandoning her to rub elbows with the crew. They were a crude lot, and hammering oakum was a tedious, grueling task. But she was the one who refused to listen, and he was determined to teach her a lesson.

  The sooner she learned to obey him, the safer they both would be.

  * * *

  “That lad, Jean Vicard. Something isn’t right about him.” Lieutenant Cunnington stood with the captain at the helm, watching the boy clumsily wield a hammer as he pounded oakum into the deck.

  Captain Cruikshank eyed him before looking out over the sailors moving about the forecastle. “Could the problem be that he is Treynor’s servant and not yours, Mr. Cunnington?”

  Cunnington hid the flare of anger sparked by the captain’s pointed question. Keeping his voice neutral, he marked Treynor’s presence across the deck, where the other lieutenant was talking to a marine sentry. “Vicard was supposed to go to Bosun Hawker, if I remember correctly.”

  The captain’s bushy eyebrows rose. “Are you questioning my decision, Lieutenant?”

  Cunnington squinted out to sea. “No, sir.”

  “Mr. Treynor earned the lad’s services when he took his stripes. Hawker agreed.”

  “Yes, sir. But why did Mr. Treynor sacrifice himself for a French deserter?”

  The captain chuckled. “After serving with Treynor for more than four years, you don’t know? Vicard might be French, but he is only a boy, and Treynor is an unusual man. He refuses to patronize the rich and often sacrifices himself for the weak. As strange as that may seem to you, Treynor has done such things ever since I have known him.”

  “Perhaps being a bastard has taught him more empathy than is good for an officer.”

  “Some might fault him there.” The captain clasped his hands behind his back and rocked up on the balls of his feet. “But it seems to work for him. The men go to great lengths to obey him. An officer could do worse.”

  Cunnington stiffened, wondering if the captain’s words held hidden censure.

  A glance at the older man’s weathered face revealed nothing. Still, a fresh wave of hatred for Treynor washed over him. How could Cunnington, the son of a viscount, born to the nobility, distinguish himself in the shadow of such a paragon? The captain’s voice never held the same respect for him as it did for Treynor.

  “He seems to be particularly protective of his new servant. More so than the situation warrants,” Cunnington pressed.

  “How so, Mr. Cunnington? Treynor could have the lad in his cabin darning his socks, if he wanted. Yet it looks to me as though Vicard is helping with tasks that benefit us all. Is that not the lad there?”

  “Aye.”

  The master approached and the captain turned away to discuss their navigation plans. When finished, he looked back. “Are we done?”

  Cunnington remembered how Treynor had interfered in the tattooing incident and taken his servant with him. But he hardly wanted to share the details of that encounter with the captain. Any recounting would paint Treynor as properly justified and mindful of his duty. Yet Cunnington sensed something more in the second lieutenant’s behavior—a marked attention to Vicard that went so far as to interrupt the man’s usual focus.

  “I suppose,” Cunnington said.

  Cruikshank chuckled. “I suggest you spend your time on more worthy pursuits than pondering Mr. Treynor’s actions. He is not the enemy, you know. I will be in my cabin,” he said and lumbered away.

  As Simon chastened the young Vicard, Cunnington wondered again what it was that bothered him about the French lad. Something in the way the boy moved. And there was a subtle difference in Treynor’s manner when he approached his new servant …

  Cunnington couldn’t put a finger on it now.

  But he would figure it out eventually.

  * * *

  Large blisters on Jeannette’s hands made it i
mpossible to grip the handle of the hammer with any real conviction. She’d been pounding oakum into the cracks of the deck for hours, breaking only long enough to eat a breakfast of what Simon called “burgoo.” As far as Jeannette could tell, it was simply a concoction of poor oatmeal and bad ship’s water, but she’d been hungry and eager for anything to fortify her strength.

  She saw Lieutenant Treynor occasionally, walking past her with the captain, calling to the men aloft, or checking the ship’s compass. His watch was over, but he didn’t seem inclined to go below where she’d no longer be plagued by the sight of him.

  Cunnington had met with the captain at six bells, or eleven o’clock, part of his daily routine from what Jeannette could gather from the taciturn Simon. The first lieutenant was so preoccupied she doubted he’d take further notice of her, for the morning. Had Treynor been less angry, he could have let her return to his cabin. Instead, she was bloodying her hands by trying to swing a hammer.

  Remembering the spanking Treynor had given her made her resentment grow. He was such a contradiction. He behaved like a gentleman sometimes and a rake at others. He was hard and unyielding, yet he would take the stripes for a lad and help a runaway woman he didn’t even like. Jeannette didn’t know whether she wanted to slap him …or kiss him.

  Slap him, she decided. His arrogance irked her.

  “Don’t give out on me.” Simon watched her with a wary eye. “The bosun’s mates will start ye right enough.”

  Jeannette had collapsed in an exhausted heap while Simon’s hammer rang loudly in her ears. Renewing her efforts to help him with the caulking, before the bosun’s mates lashed her with one of the short, hard ropes they carried for just that purpose, she cursed Treynor under her breath for his roughness with her, for abandoning her to Simon, and for confusing everything she once thought she admired in a man.

  “I hate him,” she grumbled to herself.

  “Who?” Simon asked, overhearing.

  Jeannette hesitated. “Treynor,” she admitted at last, enjoying the vitriolic bent of her own words.