Almost a Scandal (13 page)

Damn, but she was all Kent. And she was not through. “But you didn’t tell either, did you, Mr. Colyear? And why is that?”

God help him. Already the tumultuous girl baffled him. “Fuck all if I know.”

His blunt exasperation seemed to set her sails back. But it was a small world, a ship, and privacy was a rare commodity.

“Walk with me, Kent.” He made himself use her surname. Made himself treat her like any other midshipman under his command. But he still moved upwind, to the lee rail, where the silent wind would blow their conversation away from the ship. “I am supremely conscious that I owe a great deal to your family, and I respect them too much to simply cast you to your fate. But that doesn’t make what you’re doing right.”

“It doesn’t make it wrong.”

Damn, but she was a tenacious thing. “Kent. I know you know better. Especially with all your talk of knowing your duty.”

She let out a gusty, exasperated, boyish sigh. She played the part so well it shouldn’t amaze him that no one else was able to see her for who she really was. She displayed no overtly feminine attributes or mannerisms. Or perhaps she did not play a part at all, and the Kent that stood before him was simply who she was—challenging, straightforward, and as useful as a well-honed blade.

The thought was frankly terrifying. Because it was extraordinarily appealing.

“I suppose I do know better. Perhaps I should have spoken to him. Perhaps I should have told him the truth. But I didn’t. Devil take me, but I simply didn’t want to, Mr. Colyear. I want to stay.”

Col could hear the sharp edge of something compelling and deeply felt in her voice. But it was impossible, what she wanted. Although not entirely unheard of. Col recalled reading a pamphlet printed in London of some woman who had served as the captain of the foretop on the
Queen Charlotte
in the prior century. But that woman had been a stranger, a foreigner, with no family to look, or speak, for her. She was not Sally Kent with belligerent brothers and contentious cousins scattered in half the ships of the damn fleet. She was not the only daughter of Captain Alexander Kent. “It’s not possible.”

He turned away, conscious of not staring at her, of not trying to reconcile remembrance with reality. Of not trying to find the golden girl of the orchard hidden beneath the dark brim of her hat.

She turned as well, and copied his posture as he leaned his forearms across the rail to watch the foam of the bow spray rush along the length of the hull. “He adjured me to trust you.”

“Captain McAlden?”

She nodded—a funny little nod where her head tipped back and forth sideways instead of up and down, as if she found the idea just as improbable as he. “Yes. Trust you, he said. He can have little idea of how completely I must trust you to keep my secr—”

“For fuck’s sake, Kent.” He had almost reached out to stop her mouth, but he thought better of the idea. If he touched her again, he would burst into flame. He already felt as if he were smoldering just standing next to her. And lieutenants did not touch midshipmen in such a way. Not if they wanted to keep their commission.

Not if they wanted to keep their captain’s trust. The thought of his disloyalty to his captain was like a rusty blade in his gut, already festering. “I wish to hell you hadn’t told me that.”

“Well, I am going to trust you. And I promise it will be worth it. I won’t let you down. I promise I’m going to be the best midshipman you’ve ever had. You won’t have a lick of bother with me, I swear. If you just let me stay.”

He didn’t doubt she could be the best midshipman
Audacious
had ever had, if the morning’s work was any indication. No, the problem wasn’t going to be with her. It was going to be with him. With keeping his wits about him and his mind on his duty, instead of worrying and watching Sally Kent’s every move.

She left him to his unquiet thoughts for a long time, turning to look away forward, out over the sea to the west, where the long sunset gilded the rippled surface of the water, before she spoke. “If I am to trust you, then I must also be trustworthy. There is something else you should know. Something I did not want to tell you for fear it would influence you to tell the captain.”

Damn their eyes. Wasn’t their situation bad enough already? What more could there possibly be to make it worse? “Let me hear it, Kent.”

“It’s Mr. Gamage, sir. You can’t know what he is, although you ought to.”

How strange that she was so very much like him. How strange that of all people, she was the one who thought only
she
saw everything. “I am neither blind nor stupid, Kent. I know well what he is.”

She pulled back from the rail, her body stiff with indignation. “If Mr. Gamage’s character is already known to you, why is he allowed to continue?”

He could only marvel at the picture she presented. Every inch of her face, her being, vibrated with affronted color at the thought of such purposeful wickedness. “Oh, Kent. So very righteous.”

“Have I no right to be affronted at Mr. Gamage’s tyranny? And petty tyrants the likes of him are always the worst of the lot.”

“And so very sure of yourself, and your point. Things aren’t always as black-and-white as you are apt to think they are, Kent.”

She seemed to lose a small measure of her adamance at the fairness of that remark. Her lovely wide mouth turned down at the corners in wry agreement. But he wasn’t looking or thinking about her mouth, damn his wandering eyes.

“No, you are right. It is ofttimes very gray. See what you can make of this murk.” She turned to face him and her level gray gaze held nothing but steadfast determination now. “I had an unfortunate encounter with Mr. Gamage, the result of which was that Mr. Gamage accused me of being ‘a pretty, soft sort of boy’—exactly the captain’s words to me, you understand—and he furthermore insinuated that it might be put about that you, Mr. Colyear, were seen to be liking pretty, soft sorts of boys.”

Col let out a vividly descriptive, Anglo-Saxon expletive, the likes of which he had not uttered in all the years since he had learned the wonders of profanity at the feet of an Irish gunner while still an infant midshipman, before he settled for something more mundane. “Damn his insolent eyes. No matter at all that you
are
a pretty, soft sort of boy.”

She did not appreciate his rather bleak attempt at humor. “I am not. I’m twice the sailor that Gamage is or ever could be. He is disgusting and vulgar, not to mention a thief. A thief whose influence reaches all the way into the captain’s cabin, for how else did he hear those words?” She shook her head, still outraged. “My father never would have stood for such behavior on his ships.”

“True. I reckon he should have bent you over a cannon for a proper caning for being so stupid.”

“Mr. Colyear!”

It felt good to nettle her. It gave him some semblance of control. God knew he had little enough otherwise. “It is stupid, Kent, for two reasons. One, if you are even half as smart and one quarter the sailor I think you are, you should never have allowed yourself to get into a confrontation with Gamage in the first place. And two, for thinking so little of your commanding officer. Captain McAlden has his reasons for what he chooses to do with his command, and your father would be the first person to remind you of that. It is not our business to question our captain’s orders. No matter what sort of petty tyrant Mr. Gamage is—and I will grant you he is—he is also a trained officer. He has more than his share of flaws and his evils, but he’s still a useful man. Too useful to put off a ship while we are at war.”

She saw the opening, the weak point in his argument, as quick as a gunner sighting down the barrel of a cannon. “Am I not useful enough as well?” She was nothing if not tenacious.

“Damn it, Kent. That’s not the point.”

“But it
is
the point. Someone has to serve, and it might as well be me. I can do it, I know I can. You know I’m as capable as any boy here and more so than some.”

“Bloody hell. That sounds suspiciously like your brother Matthew.” Another, more frightening, thought occurred to him. “Did your brothers put you up to this? Or did you conceive of this lunacy on your own? Does your family know you’re here, in place of—” He broke off, looked around much as she had done, to make sure they were not being overheard. “They do know, don’t they? You will have left some word? Tell me you left word.”

She looked acutely conscious and uncomfortable, wincing up one side of her face and tipping her head to try to ameliorate her fault. “No. They know nothing. At least I assume so.”

God’s balls. The clenched fist in his gut lurched up into his throat. He looked around again for stray ears before he cut his eyes back to her. “Do you mean to tell me that Captain Alexander Kent, the most successful frigate captain of our time, who sees all and hears all, knows nothing of where his only daughter is? How is that possible? Surely such a man would notice when his child went missing.”

She shrugged the importance of the suggestion away. “He may not know I am missing at all. By now, he is bound to be at sea, and
I
have not yet written to tell him. I don’t imagine”—she hesitated again and looked around—“anyone else would have the nerve to write him, either.”

“It occurs to me to ask what became of your … missing Kent relation.”

She passed a hand over her eyes in the first indication of uncertainty or remorse he had seen in her. “I have no idea.”

“Truly?”

“Mr. Colyear, I would not be here if I had had any luck at finding him when he ran away.”

“He ran away?”

She nodded with misery, her mouth set tight with distress. “I did not undertake this as a lark, Mr. Colyear, I assure you. I did so for the honor of my family. I could not have it said that he was too”—she lowered her voice to a whisper, embarrassed that she must reveal his stain on her family’s honor to Col—“cowardly to do his duty.”

“Are you convinced it is cowardice?” Matthew’s letters had left Col with the impression that Richard’s refusal was, in actuality, conviction. Especially as the boy had gone to such extraordinary lengths to avoid serving. Just as extraordinary as the lengths to which his sister had gone
to
serve.

“Does it matter what
I
think?” she asked. “That is how the world,
our
world, the small world of the navy, will see it, no matter his talk of the church and his affinity for dreary sermons.”

Poor girl. She was such a Kent. They could not conceive of a world where any work was preferable to that of the navy. “This life is not for everyone.”

“I know.” She sighed. But the admission did not seem to afford her any relief or pleasure. “It is certainly not the right life for Mr. Gamage.”

He could only agree. “True enough. But after nearly twenty years in the navy there is nothing else he is likely to do. And the navy cannot afford to let a man, even a man with Gamage’s reputation, leave the service while there is a war on. We need every man we can get, however flawed.”

“And am I not also just such a man, however flawed?” She was quick. Damn quick. And clever.

He disallowed himself the obvious answer—that she was not, and he never could regard her as, a
man
. And he would not allow being a woman to be a flaw. But her sex was definitely a problem. His problem. “Is there no one, besides me, who knows that you’re aboard?”

“Jenkins, our manservant at Cliffside, who accompanied”—again the careful hesitation—“us to Portsmouth, and his wife, perhaps. They must have figured it out. But I’m sure my father rejoined his ship at the Nore and set sail before he could receive any communication from them.”

“Damnation. Have you no regard for your personal safety? Or their peace of mind?”

She frowned at him in complete consternation. “Why on earth should I have any more regard than Jellicoe, or Worth? Or you? I know what I’m doing. I assure you, I’m safer here than in a bloody ballroom.”

“Because—” He bit off the answer he had meant to make. He would not debate natural philosophy with this girl. She would not hear it. She hadn’t a drop of dread in her. She was too full of the courage of her convictions and unshakable confidence of youth. She could not conceive of how she might be vulnerable to any injury. Or worse.

But he could conceive of it. He had seen it. More times than he cared to count. And he could also picture what could happen if she should be found out, alone in some private way, by some of the more unscrupulous members of the crew.
Audacious
was a well-run, well-disciplined ship—Captain McAlden’s sterling reputation ensured they had no need to fill their muster roll with gallows bait from the prison hulks—but anything was possible in the midst of several hundred men.

“So you will write your father. And that’s an order, Kent.” Col made his voice firm with command so there would be no misunderstanding. “And then what? It might be months before it reaches him, and months longer still before you may expect a reply.”

She looked away, out over the darkening sea. “What else am I to do?”

He could hear the wistfulness in her voice, the yearning for absolute impossibilities. “You could go back and confess all to the captain, and he would see you put off quietly, with no one the wiser, before we leave the loom of the land or are posted elsewhere. Or he might let you stay aboard until some duty recalls us to England. I don’t know.” Col found himself scraping off his cocked hat and raking his fingers through his hair. “But the point being, it is the captain’s decision, not mine. And not yours.”

“Or I could just stay and do the work, as I have done.” She was as stubborn as the day was long. She was entirely convinced that she was right, and that she could do the job of midshipman without coming to any grief.

“Please, sir.” She lowered the tone of her voice to show him she would beg if she had to. “Please.”

He could not keep himself from reacting to the soft plea in her voice. It made him look at the wide, apricot flesh of her mouth as she crushed her lower lip beneath her teeth to quell her anxiety. It made him want to do other things with her lips. It made him want to do the unthinkable and keep her with him, no matter the enormous risks. No matter the dangerous cost.