The Sea and the Sand

by Christopher Nicole

  Hull frowned at him.

  Toby grinned. ‘Oh, I shall make no attempt to relieve you of your command. But as your senior officer, I am requesting passage on board your ship for this young lady and myself to the United States. I will take full responsibility for my actions, and that will be recorded in the log.’

  Hull hesitated, glancing at Felicity. Her veil was back in place and it was difficult to decide her expression or her mood. ‘It will be difficult,’ he said. ‘I had planned no such accommodation for so long a voyage. Miss Crown is welcome to use my cabin, of course, but we shall be some thirty days at sea, and, well …’

  ‘You fear for propriety,’ Toby agreed, ‘in private matters. But that problem, too, is easily solved. You are master of this ship. As soon as we are beyond the three-mile limit, you can marry us.’

  Felicity gave a gasp.

  Hull’s frown deepened. ‘Is that legal? Truly?’

  ‘If it is not, then the matter can be set right the moment we reach home.’ He turned to Felicity. ‘Will you accept such a form of marriage, as a temporary expedient, Felicity?’

  ‘I … I had expected nothing so sudden,’ she muttered.

  He could understand her hesitation. He had been so preoccupied with what he had to do that he had hardly uttered a word of endearment since leaving Tripoli. But she could hardly change her mind now.

  ‘If you do mean to marry me, Felicity,’ he said gently, ‘then it really were best done immediately. There will be several factions seeking to prevent it. And I do love you, and wish you to be my wife.’

  He heard her inhale. ‘If … if that is what you are sure you wish, Mr McGann, I will willingly marry you here and now, having regard to all the circumstances.’

  *

  ‘And thus,’ Isaac Hull said, ‘by the authority vested in me as master of this vessel, I pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride, Toby.’

  Toby turned to Felicity. It had taken them only an hour to clear the port and glide down the Strait on the ebb tide; Gibraltar was still a mass of lights on the eastern horizon, and lights winked to either side of them on the Spanish and Moroccan coasts, as well. But they were certainly more than three miles from land.

  Carefully he lifted the veil she had continued to wear throughout the ceremony, while the watch below, assembled in the waist, cheered and clapped their hands. He stared into her deep blue eyes, darker than ever in the midnight gloom, so dry, so watchful. And so apprehensive? ‘I love you, Felicity McGann,’ he said.

  She bit her lip. ‘As I shall love you, Toby McGann,’ she promised.

  Holding her hands, he slowly inclined his face towards her. Her eyes shut, and her fingers tightened on his as his lips brushed hers. No more than that, yet it sent thrills racing up and down his spine. And doubts? How many men had known those lips? Or was kissing not a Moorish habit?

  It was not a question he would ever dare ask. ‘We’ll drink a toast,’ Hull declared, and his steward previously briefed, hurried forward with a tray of glasses containing rum. ‘To a long and happy life, for you both.’

  ‘I thank you, Isaac,’ Toby said.

  ‘And I, sir.’ Felicity sipped hers cautiously — she had tasted nothing like it before — and gazed forward at the twinkling lights on the starboard bow. ‘Is that not the open sea? Yet it looks like a city, floating there.’

  ‘It is a British squadron off Cape Trafalgar,’ Hull explained. ‘Watching the Spaniards in Cadiz.’

  ‘Are the British commanded by Lord Nelson?’

  ‘No, Nelson, I learned in Gibraltar, is chasing the French in the West Indies. The commander here is Admiral Collingwood. The Spanish would like to unite with the French, and it is his task to prevent it.’

  ‘He will never let them move,’ Toby said. ‘Now there, Isaac, is a fleet. And a purpose.’ Hull sighed. ‘We will have one to match it one day, perhaps. But do you intend to keep your bride on deck all night?’

  Toby looked at Felicity; her expression was lost in the gloom. But she did not immediately reply, as if she might indeed have preferred to remain on deck all night. Then she seemed to gather herself. ‘I shall retire,’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps you will join me in due course, sir.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes.’

  She went to the companionway, and disappeared from sight. Hull refilled Toby’s glass; if strong liquor was strictly forbidden on board an American warship, and the captain himself had barely allowed the drink to brush his lips, Toby was not actually a member of the crew and had no watch to keep. Besides on this night they had broken so many rules one more hardly seemed to matter.

  ‘She is a most beautiful woman, Toby,’ Hull remarked.

  ‘But no woman is sufficiently beautiful to cost a career,’ Toby mused. ‘Is that what you are thinking?’

  ‘It is what I am thinking, certainly,’ his friend agreed. ‘But every man on this earth thinks for himself — or most certainly should do so.’

  Toby nodded. ‘Then I will go and make my decision irrevocable.’

  ‘A strange way to put it,’ Hull observed.

  ‘Aye,’ Toby agreed. ‘But then it is a strange business.’

  He went down the companionway, paused outside the door of the captain’s cabin, which Hull had insisted they use for the voyage. A strange business. Hull had no idea how strange. How backwards, where he stood here, an anxious virgin, and she lay within … but to think thoughts of that nature would be disastrous.

  Rather should he be reassured that she would know how to welcome him, would not be shocked, or afraid … but did she really want him? How the doubts suddenly clouded his mind, as he recalled her hesitation of an hour before, her suggestion almost of a desire to delay their union.

  Perhaps she had been acting, afraid to appear too eager. All his doubts would be resolved in her arms. If only he knew … But whether she truly wanted him or not, he certainly wanted her. It was more than just the growing sexual urge. It was also the knowledge that she had turned her back on her own family, now depended entirely on him. And surely his desire was all that mattered at this moment. His desire, his love, would overcome all their doubts.

  He knocked.

  ‘The door is unlocked,’ she called.

  He turned the handle, stepped inside, closed the door behind him. There was a single lantern swinging from a deck beam as the ship rolled in the low swell. He could look at the bed, which in this small a ship was no more than a bunk, set against the bulkhead. Felicity was already in it, lying down, the sheet pulled to her throat, her hair, which she had dressed for the visit ashore, now loosed and scattered in dark brown profusion to either side of her head. She looked utterly entrancing.

  ‘I have no nightclothes,’ she said.

  ‘I seldom use a shirt myself,’ he said, ‘in this climate. Should the weather turn cold as we make to the north-west, I will lend you one of mine.’

  He listened to her breathe, perhaps a sigh of relief. He hoped so. His principal task must be to put her at ease. And his passion was now all but overwhelming, as she was so close he could smell her, and as he knew what lay beneath that sheet.

  ‘Would you like me to turn down the light?’ he asked.

  The sheet rose as she inhaled. ‘Perhaps it would be better to leave it on.’

  She gazed at him, eyes enormous, perhaps realising he thought, that her reply had not been what he would have expected. Because she was revealing passion of her own? Or because she had never made love in the dark before? If the phrase ‘made love’ could be applied to a Moorish harem. But if it could not, what other phrase would he choose?

  ‘There was talk,’ she said, seeking to find some pattern of normality between them, ‘of your career being affected by your marriage to me. I would hate to think that.’

  ‘My career is what I choose to make of it,’ he replied. ‘It is nothing for you to concern yourself about at this moment. You are my wife, no matter who may object to it, and I desire you more than I have ever d
esired anything in my life before.’ He bent over the bunk to kiss her mouth again, inhale her breath again. He straightened, as her body had seemed to grow rigid. ‘But I must ask you to be my tutor in love, dear Felicity.’ He removed his jacket.

  Felicity sat up, still holding the sheet to her throat. ‘No,’ she said, almost angrily. ‘That cannot be. It must be as you wish. Your every wish.’

  Toby turned his back on her to finish undressing. ‘My every wish shall be your every wish, my darling girl. I must confess that I lack the experience to know any better.’ He faced her. ‘I seek only to please you.’

  She stared at him, her face stricken, and he knew she was not concerned at his size, although he doubted she had ever seen anything bigger. ‘But … you mean you have never … ?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered.

  He returned to stand beside the bunk. ‘Our roles are reversed,’ he said, refusing to admit the despair which was lapping at his heart and mind. ‘I had thought perhaps that might please you.’

  ‘Please me. Oh God,’ she said again, and turned away from him violently, the sheet forgotten as she lay on her side and stared at the bulkhead.

  Cautiously he sat down. Her buttocks were exposed. The first woman’s buttocks he had ever seen, and surely the most perfectly shaped he would ever see. His hand hovered, and then touched the velvet flesh. She rolled back again, once more moving violently, so that he stood up in alarm. But some of the consternation had left her face. ‘You do want me?’ she asked.

  ‘Want you? God, I have dreamed of no one else for four years.’

  ‘Is that why you kept your virginity?’ Her tone had softened.

  ‘I guess so.’

  She sat up, the sheet now entirely thrown back. Cautiously he lowered himself to sit facing her, take in the seriously lovely face, the swell of the breasts, the pointed nipples, pink against the white, the flat belly through which the shape of her ribs surged as she breathed, the widening of her hips, the … He caught his breath before he could stop himself, taken entirely by surprise.

  ‘Does that disgust you?’ she asked.

  ‘I …’ He licked his lips. He simply could not interpret his emotions. Nothing else had happened to indicate her past, save this.

  ‘I had not expected us to be married so soon,’ she explained. ‘In a month’s time it will have grown out, and no one will ever know it had happened at all.’

  ‘Is that why you hesitated on deck?’

  She sighed. ‘You have been so gallant to me from start to finish, Toby McGann, I was almost glad that I would not be allowed to lie to you. And then I thought … I hoped, that you would know of the Moorish customs, as you have served against them for four years.’ Her voice had become toneless as she watched his expression. ‘It is the usual practice in harems,’ she said. ‘Moorish men prefer their women to be hairless.’

  He gazed at her. She had deliberately precipitated this confrontation. It could have been avoided, at least until morning, and thus until after their union had been consummated, had she asked him to turn down the lantern. But she had not wanted to lie. Her honesty was, no doubt, to be admired. But at this moment he hated it.

  He sucked air into his lungs. There was so much to be admired, to be loved, about this superb woman. The length and shape of her legs, the curve of those buttocks he had just stroked, the touch to which she had responded, the velvet texture of her skin, those nipples he longed to touch … but all were suddenly overlaid by the thought of her being shaved; she could not have carried it out so thoroughly by herself.

  ‘It will grow again,’ she promised, with a touch of desperation. ‘It is already doing so. I only pray you will not find it abrasive.’

  He had never supposed to hear a woman talk so candidly on so delicate a subject. Never hoped? Or feared? With equal desperation he sought to match her mood. ‘Did your master never find it so?’

  She stared at him, eyes enormous. ‘No,’ she said. ‘My master used a different way of sex.’ Her tongue stole out to lick her lips. ‘Would you like me to show you?’

  Again they stared at each other. Yes, he thought, show me, that I may match him. But no, do not show me, for fear the act disgusts me. He did not know what he truly felt, truly wanted. He only knew that he must either take her now, with desperate anxiety, with a mind shut to everything save his sexual urge, or leave this cabin and never return.

  He threw himself upon her, and she spread her legs to receive him. He sought her mouth, and that, too, was opened for him. Their tongues touched, and she kissed him almost savagely, while moving her body beneath his, so that he entered before knowing it, vaguely wondering that it was so easy, that she was so damp and smooth. He was spent, too, before he was ready, while her arms held him tight, and her cheek moved against his. It was only when he raised his head, afterwards, that he realised that the cheek was also wet, with tears.

  *

  ‘Captain McGann! Captain McGann, sir!’ The hired hand hurried up the drive to the timber house. ‘Mistress Elizabeth! Mistress Elizabeth! Master Toby is here.’

  Toby supposed that if he lived to be a hundred and became the senior captain in the United States Navy, Robert the farm hand would still call him Master Toby.

  But he was never going to be the senior captain in the United States Navy. Not now.

  Well, then, there were other things in life, to be sure. He could look around him at the trees and the meadows, listen to the birds, know there were fish in the stream and the Sound. And look down at his wife, seated beside him in the pony-trap.

  ‘It is beautiful,’ she said. ‘Everything I had expected it to be. Will you be happy here, Toby?’

  ‘I always was before.’ He flicked the reins, and the trap moved through the gate.

  She did not even sigh. Nor did she weep, when in bed with him, nowadays. They had been married for four months, and knew each other too well, as they did not know each other at all. Felicity knew only a man who gazed at her, and wanted her, and took her. That she knew he was also a man of gallantry and kindness, of determination, who had sacrificed his career for her, had no relevance to the purely physical relationship they enjoyed. If together they had smashed through the walls of propriety to marry at all, on their wedding night new walls had suddenly sprung up. He had become afraid of her past, simply because he had never taken the trouble properly to consider it, to understand the implications of it … and thus he wanted to shut it out. They could only talk of the future, and the future now lay here in this Long Island valley. Nowhere else.

  And he knew only a beautiful woman. What she thought and felt and wanted, he did not know, dared not attempt to find out. He made love to her with a desperate intensity, which only seemed to grow. She could understand that he had kept himself away from women for too long, and that here was a whole seven years of manhood crying out to be released. She could also appreciate her own beauty; as it had so fascinated Mohammed ben Idris, should it not even more fascinate Toby McGann, who had no harem of willing girls at his beck and call.

  But she also suspected he was driven more than anything to want her because he had burnt his bridges even more thoroughly than she. Yet the very power of his desire, as well as the unchanging orthodoxy of his lovemaking, made her wish to respond. And she dared not. She had chosen total honesty, total revelation, on her wedding night, but that was before she had realised he was a virgin. And then it had been to late to stop herself. Since then she had practised only acquiescence, in his words, his lovemaking, his decisions. She had admired Washington and Philadelphia and New York, and the country in between, because it was his country, and she had become angry at the reactions of his superior officers to his apparently flagrant disobedience of orders, because he had been angry. Where she had studied only to keep herself a separate entity from Mohammed ben Idris, now she studied only to merge her personality into that of her husband — because he was all she had in the world. She did not know if he was aware o
f that or not. He gave no indication either way.

  Did she love him? She did not suppose so, truly and with all her heart. She knew nothing of love, and only the worst of men. She could recognise that he was a far superior man to any she had ever previously met, and valued his courage, his determination, as much as she relied on his strength, so strangely tempered by his manners and his gentleness. She had never a doubt that she was better off as the wife of Toby McGann than in any other circumstance that could possibly be available to her, after her experiences. And while she paid lip service to his bitterness at having been asked to resign his commission, she secretly was glad of it — she knew she could not have borne the long separations that would have been necessary as he took his various ships to sea.

  But love? Love had to be an emotion experienced without the slightest reserve. She dared not lower her mental guard to that extent until she knew how much he still hated and loathed her past, how much he still resented, even if subconsciously, the fact that she had been the cause of his personal catastrophe. He never alluded to either — but he was a very human being. For love, she could only substitute pleasing him, and snatching at odd moments of happiness, and hope for better times.

  But always she had known there was an ordeal awaiting her, which could end even her inadequate contentment at a stroke: her meeting with his family. And for all his apparent confidence and his constant reassurance that she would be welcomed, she knew that he was equally unsure of himself, remembering perhaps the reactions of her family.

  And now the moment had arrived.

  A dog barked, a huge Irish wolfhound which came bounding down the steps to start the hired horse rearing, made Felicity clutch the dashboard anxiously. But Toby controlled both animals simultaneously, the horse with a tightening of the rein, the hound with a single word: ‘Boru!’

  At the sound of his voice, the huge beast panted and wagged its tail.

  ‘Toby!’ There could be no doubting that the man at the top of the steps was the famous Harry McGann. Toby had told her of him, and here was not only the size he had transmitted to his son, the straight black hair and twinkling blue eyes, the huge mouth widening into a welcoming smile — but also the crippled leg which dragged at his side, the effects of a duel.