Nick’s tall bulk appeared at the railing. “What’s amiss?”
“Nicky!” Miss Parnell called out.
Alistair looked down in surprise. Only Nick’s sisters got away with calling him by that pet name, and they usually received a growl in response.
“Charlie? That you?” He motioned his first mate over. “Hell’s bells,” Nick muttered. “Lower the gang board!”
She wobbled for a step or two, but limped up the board as soon as it was secure. Nick met her at the gangway and swept her up in a hug that lifted her right off her feet.
Alistair tamped down a sudden flare of jealousy. He’d known that Nick and Steven were acquainted, so it stood to reason that Miss Parnell was also acquainted with his roguish friend. But just how well were they acquainted? They were still unabashedly embracing, in full view of the crew. To make matters worse, Jonesy and a few other crew members had gathered close, offering words of welcome and pats to her shoulder.
Just as Alistair was ready to throttle his friend, Nick set Miss Parnell back on her feet and held her at arm’s length, and the crew stepped back.
“What’re you doing here, Charlie? Where’s Steven? What’s wrong?”
“Nice to see you, too, Nick,” Alistair muttered.
Nick finally looked beyond Miss Parnell. “What the devil?”
Alistair caught Miss Parnell’s gaze. “For someone who wouldn’t ask questions, he’s certainly got a lot of them.”
She rested one hand on the railing for support. “Much as I’ve missed you, Nicky, I need your help.”
“That much I’d guessed, lass.” He ran a hand through his black hair. “What do you need? Money? Transportation? An alibi?”
Alistair shook his head. “Bandages. Brandy. And some privacy.” He pointed at Miss Parnell with his chin.
“Charlie?” Nick swept her with his gaze, and walked in a tight circle around her. “What have you got yourself into this time?”
“’Tis just a scratch.”
He gestured for Jonesy to hold the lantern closer, and Nick touched her skirt in back. “That’s a bloody big scratch on your a—”
“A scratch that’s still bleeding.” Alistair strode forward. “Can we go below already?”
Nick held out his arm to assist her, but Alistair picked her up again and strode for the aft hatchway, Miss Parnell voicing a protest the whole way.
He set her on her feet inside the captain’s cabin, but kept an arm around her to steady her.
Nick quickly lit the lantern over the table in the center of the small space. “We dropped Norton off at Southampton this morning on our way in so he could visit his mum, but I can send one of the crew to fetch another surgeon.”
Miss Parnell shook her hand. “A surgeon won’t be necessary. I’m sure it’s just a scratch. I can take care of it myself, given some bandages and a little privacy.”
Nick harrumphed. “Well, I’ll at least send someone to fetch Steven. Is he at home?”
“No! I mean, that won’t be necessary, either. No need to bother him. And he’s not home, so don’t send anyone—you’ll just frighten Aunt Hermione.”
Nick narrowed his eyes, and Alistair kept his mouth shut.
Jonesy arrived seconds later, carrying cloth bundles and a basin of steaming water. “Bandages and a sewing kit, Cap’n.”
Another crewman arrived with lengths of fabric, and more men filled the narrow passageway behind, trying to catch a glimpse of the proceedings. Nick ushered in the men with supplies and slid the door shut on the gawkers.
Alistair swept his gaze over the cabin, which was dominated by a bunk, a drop-leaf desk, and two chairs set at the table in the center. Five people in the cramped quarters seemed three too many.
Nick took the cloths and shook them out, revealing a silk dressing gown in scarlet and another in sky blue. He held them up to Miss Parnell. “Too long,” he said, and tossed the red one back to Jonesy. “Blue’s always been your color, sweetings,” he said, draping it over her shoulder. “All right, everyone out. Hand me your dress when you get it off, Charlie, and Jonesy will work his magic on the bloodstains.”
Alistair pointed at the silk draped over the first mate’s shoulder. “Dare I ask how you came to possess such feminine attire on board?”
“Not in front of the children.” Nick clapped his hands over the ears of a crewman who looked old enough to be his father and pushed him out the door. He gestured for Jonesy to step out, then followed.
Alistair was the last to leave. “Do you need any help?” he asked.
Miss Parnell untied her bonnet and tossed it on the table. “I’m sure I can manage just fine, thank you.”
“I’ll wait out in the hall, then.” He pointed over his shoulder. “Call if you need anything. Anything at all.”
She made shooing motions.
Reluctantly, he shut the door.
Nick glanced around to make sure they were alone in the passageway, and slapped his hand on Alistair’s shoulder. “So, how did Charlie get the scratch?”
It was not his place to divulge any of her secrets. “We were unwanted guests at an impromptu gathering.” He leaned closer to the cabin door, listening for any sounds of movement. Or distress.
Nick nodded, and stroked his gold earring. Before he could continue to ask awkward questions, they heard a muffled thud from inside the cabin and a not-so-muffled curse in a foreign language. Nick cocked his head, listening. “Portuguese. That’s my girl,” he said with obvious pride. “Taught her that one myself.”
“Your girl?”
“Oh, don’t get your drawers in a twist.” He gave Alistair a considering stare. “Just what are you doing with Charlie?”
Nick would find out soon enough anyway. “We are betrothed.”
“You? And Charlie?” He glanced between Alistair and the closed door. “I didn’t know you two had even met.”
Another thud came from inside the cabin. Alistair waited a few seconds but heard no curse.
He opened the door a crack and poked his nose in. Miss Parnell was on the floor in a puddle of gray velvet, not so much as a single blond curl visible amidst the tangle of fabric.
“Do you require assistance?”
“Apparently,” came the disgusted reply.
He stepped in, shut the door in Nick’s face, and tried to find an edge of the fabric. He found what seemed to be the bottom of the skirt and tugged upward.
“Stop! My hair’s caught on the buttons.”
“Forgive me. I’ve never acted as a lady’s maid before.” Alistair knelt beside her. First he had to find her hair amidst the mass of velvet, then work the silky strands free of the buttons. Almost a quarter of her skirt was damp with blood, making the already heavy fabric especially weighty. He heaved the mess toward the door, where it landed with a soggy thwap.
Once freed, Miss Parnell tried to sit up, but grimaced in pain and went back to lying on her side, arms wrapped around her drawn-up knees. Her hair was a tangled mess, nothing of her neat chignon remaining, with curls spilling about her shoulders in a golden cloud. She had kicked off her shoes, leaving her covered only by her black stockings and once-white shift. The crimson stain spread obscenely from her left hip down to the back of her knee.
Presented with unmistakable evidence of his failure to protect her, Alistair sucked in a steadying breath. “The shift has to come off, too.”
“I know.” Her voice was tight with pain and embarrassment.
He rubbed his hands together and tried for a brusque tone, hoping that would ease her discomfiture. “Right, then. Sooner begun, sooner we’re done.” He pulled the blankets down to the foot of the bunk and turned back the sheets. Once more he knelt beside Miss Parnell. “Relax, and let me do all the work.”
She nodded.
He grasped her under the arms and carried her to the bunk, setting her on her feet where she could lean against the wall for support, her back to him. “I’m going to pull your shift over your head, and then while you
get into the bunk facedown, I’ll get the bandages and such. All right?”
Her face went even paler than before, and she was biting her bottom lip.
He rested his hands on her shoulders, gave her upper arms a reassuring squeeze, and leaned close to whisper. “I’d promise not to peek, but it would make things even more awkward if I can’t see what I’m doing.”
She didn’t laugh at his jest, but at least looked a little less grim. “Just hurry up and do it already.”
“Your wish is my command.”
It was only as he bent down to grasp the bottom hem of her shift did he remember she was not wearing stays. Once he removed her shift, nothing would hide her from his gaze. Nothing but her stockings, which offered little protection for her modesty.
Waiting was only going to make it more difficult. For both of them.
He swallowed hard, grabbed the bottom hem, and tugged it up and over her head.
He tried not to look at her intriguing freckles, sprinkled across her shoulders, back, legs, and other areas no man should see before her wedding night.
He balled up the shift and tossed it onto the dress, and turned his back to retrieve the bundle of bandages from the table. He waited a few seconds after he heard the creak of wood as she got on the bunk, to give her a chance to settle, before dropping to his knees beside the bunk.
Crimson smears stained the creamy skin of her back, across her backside, and spread in a rivulet down her left thigh. Some of the blood had already dried, while more oozed from the torn flesh, a deep gash as long as his index finger running at a forty-five degree angle, halfway down her left cheek.
He’d had only one task to perform tonight, to protect her. He clenched his fists.
He forced a cheery tone into his voice. “Well, the good news is, the bullet grazed you. We don’t have to dig it out.”
“Thank God for small mercies.” Her voice was muffled by the pillow that she grasped with both arms. Gooseflesh had risen on her skin, and there was a fine tremor shaking her body that had nothing to do with embarrassment.
He needed to hurry, get her covered, get her warm. But he’d never personally tended to anything worse than a nosebleed or a cut from shaving himself. What to do first?
Warm. Covered up. Right.
He wrung out a cloth in the hot water and washed her with one hand, immediately drying her with a towel in the other. He draped the blue dressing gown over her back as soon as it was clean, doing his damnedest not to linger over her smooth, soft skin.
Blood had dripped onto her left stocking, so he untied the garter and slid her stocking down her shapely calf and off her delicate foot. It seemed almost sacrilegious to wad up the black silk, but it was the only way to toss it onto the pile of velvet and cotton near the door.
With the blood cleaned off her thigh, he arranged the sheet to cover her legs and right side and then adjusted the dressing down, so her only exposed flesh was the wound itself and immediately around it, an area smaller than the palm of his hand. He pressed a clean cloth to it, to stop the bleeding, which had already slowed considerably.
Miss Parnell had remained quiet while he worked, her eyes closed as though she wasn’t in a mortifying situation if she couldn’t see it, but now she looked at him over her silk-covered shoulder. “Thank you.”
A hundred replies raced through his mind, from the serious to the sublime. “Your freckles are safe with me,” he finally said.
That must have been the correct response, as she gave a tiny answering smile.
The cabin door slid open and Nick entered, neatly stepping over the pile of clothing without jostling the tray he carried. “Candied plums, brandy, cheese and bread.” He set the tray on the table and lit the lanterns in the gimbals beside his desk and the bunk, tripling the light in the small cabin. “Get her to eat something sweet first, then a little cheese and bread.”
“She can hear you just fine,” Miss Parnell ground out. “No need to speak about her in the third person. And I don’t want any sweets.”
“You were shaking and you’re still pale, Charlie. Trust me, you need to eat.” He poured a small glass of brandy and held it up in one hand, a brown bottle and spoon in the other. “Pick your poison. Laudanum or brandy?”
“Is that the good stuff, or rotgut?”
Nick looked affronted. “My best brandy, smuggled straight from France.”
She gave a resigned nod. “That should help ease the sting.”
Nick knelt on the floor at the head of the bunk with the glass. “Here you go, drink up.”
Alistair picked through the medical supplies while Miss Parnell downed a few swallows of brandy.
She coughed and pushed the glass away. “No more.”
Nick shrugged and tossed back the rest of the glass. Alistair considered asking for a shot for himself, but he needed to keep his head clear and his wits about him. Nick refilled the glass and brought it to him.
“No, thank you.”
“It’s not for you, you dolt.” Nick pointed at the open wound, where Alistair still had his hand pressed. “That would be an especially nasty place to develop an infection. Have to make sure it’s clean.” He knelt beside Alistair and peeled back the bloody cloth, seemingly unperturbed by the deep gash marring her perfect skin. “Afraid it needs stitches, Charlie.”
Miss Parnell groaned.
“I’ll just get—”
“You’re not going to touch me, Nicky.”
“What? Why not?”
She stared at Alistair. “Can you do the stitches?”
He gulped. “I made do without a valet while at school, and sewed on my own buttons.”
“Close enough. Please get on with it. I’m still cold.”
He nodded, and held a needle to the lantern flame.
“Really, Charlie, you know I’ve had a lot more experience at stitching up flesh than Alistair here.”
“Yes, I do know. I’ve seen the jagged scar on Steven’s arm. Pardon me for not wanting similar handiwork on my arse.”
Nick harrumphed and folded his arms.
Alistair threaded the needle.
“That’s not fair. We were at sea during a storm. I can’t help it if the ship was being tossed about on the waves. Would you rather he’d bled to death?”
“Steven loves his scars. Thinks they’re very manly.” She turned back to Alistair. “Are your buttons neat?”
Wordlessly, he removed his coat and held it out for her inspection, featuring the section where he’d sewn three buttons back on.
“Divine. Get out, Nicky.”
“But—”
“I love you dearly, Nicky, but if you don’t get out right now, I may have to hurt you.”
He sputtered one more protest.
Alistair rolled up his shirtsleeves. “You heard the lady. Go.”
“I still have my knife, Nicky.”
He heaved a long-suffering sigh. “I suppose having your fiancé do this is best.” Nick scooped up the soiled clothing, but lingered near the door.
Alistair was ready to reach for Miss Parnell’s knife himself. “Will you leave already?” He needed to get this over with before he lost his nerve, or did something unforgivable.
Nick stepped out but stuck his head back in. “Make sure she eats something before you let her pass out,” he said before closing the door.
As if Alistair had any control over what she did.
“Finally.” She turned her gaze back on him. “One more thing before you use the needle.” She licked her bottom lip. “I think I need a little more Dutch courage.”
“Of course, Miss Parnell.” Alistair refilled the brandy glass and brought it to her. “Anything else?”
“Formality seems a bit silly under the circumstances. You should probably call me Charlotte.”
“Not Charlie?”
“I’m going to strangle the next person who calls me Charlie.”
He smiled. “Then we have much in common, since I have often felt the urge to strang
le Nick.” He helped her rise up so she could drink. “You should address me as Alistair, then.”
She coughed, but didn’t let him take away the glass until she had downed all the brandy in it. “I’m ready, Alistair. Let’s get this over with.”
He made sure he had all the supplies close at hand. Looking at the assortment of instruments and bandages and powders reminded him of two years ago, when a surgeon had treated his father after a duel. Intrigued by the science of treating the wound, a gash on the arm from a pistol ball, Alistair had bombarded the surgeon with questions. He’d never expected to actually put the knowledge into practice.
He worked as quickly and smoothly as he could. His stomach clenched in sympathetic pain with every strained gasp and muffled yelp, but Charlotte did not ask him to stop. Nor did she ease her white-knuckled grip on the pillow.
By the time he finished, her face was as white as the pillowcase, her breathing ragged. His wasn’t much smoother. He pressed a square of folded cloth over the neat row of ten stitches, a long strip of cotton in his other hand, and pondered how best to apply it.
“I need you to rise up a little so I can wrap this around you.” He guided her with his hands on her hips, and did his best not to let his touch on her silky skin cross over to a caress. With enough clearance between her and the mattress to slide his hand beneath her, he wrapped the strip around her twice to hold the bandage in place and tied it off. She slumped down to the mattress, shaking and pale.
“The worst is over, Charlotte.” He draped the dressing gown down the length of her back and helped her work her arms into the sleeves.
“For tonight, at any rate.”
“How’s that?”
She pushed up to her knees, closed the gown around herself and tied the sash with shaking hands. “For the next fortnight at least, every time I try to sit down, I will be forcibly reminded of my failure tonight.” She gave a slow shake of her head.
“A setback, certainly, but not a failure.” He was the only one who had failed tonight.
She put her hands on her hips. “How do you figure that? Not only did I not get the snuffbox, I’m no longer certain who does possess it. Did the smoking man find it before Toussaint interrupted him, or is it still hidden in Toussaint’s study?”
Shirley Kerr Page 14