Almost a Scandal (36 page)

If his hands had not been at her hips, holding her up, she would have slid down the wall. She would have lain splayed on the gun deck, open and unresisting. Anything for him to continue, anything for this feeling of incipient pleasure.

And then he turned his head and set his teeth delicately against her. Heat and tight bliss burst under her skin and she was spinning, unraveling like a line cut free of entanglements. Free and flying away within herself. And with him. Still with him.

His hand was on her, moving within her, as he stood and gathered her to him, spent and unprotesting. She felt the blunt velvet probe of his body against hers, and then he was within her, and the emptiness she hadn’t even felt was banished anew in a fresh resurgence of pleasure as he rocked into her. The pleasure was still pulsing through her body in small waves that lapped at the very edges of her being, but with each surge of his body into hers the waves grew stronger, until they were crashing and breaking across her skin.

And he held her tight against him and begged against her ear, “Don’t let go,” and light burst inside her at the same moment as his climax roared through his body and into her.

And she didn’t let go. She couldn’t. And she never would.

Chapter Twenty-one

Col fell asleep sitting on his cabin floor, slumped against the side of the hull, with Sally Kent still wrapped tightly in his arms. And he continued to hold her, continued to breathe in her scent, and continued to marvel at his insane good fortune in loving her, until the last possible moment. Until they had no choice but to separate, slowly, poignantly, and carefully, and get on with the coming day. And the coming battle.

Dawn brought Admiral Nelson’s battle fleet hard upon the horizon to the southwest, making all sail to bear down upon the enemy, who sailed on steadily to the south before
Audacious.
The wind had moved up a point to west by north, but was still light. At the current rate of speed, it would be hours yet before the fleets made contact.

And still his arms ached with the loss of her.

She came on deck before the watch was called, and he could do nothing but look at her. Look at the barely veiled warmth in her fine gray eyes. Look at the spiced cream of her skin and the full perfection of her bitten, chapped lips. Marvel at the vivid ginger of her beautiful hair.

Look but not touch. And perhaps never again touch.

He forced himself to speak evenly, though his chest felt tight, as if one of his ribs were already broken. “I’ve assigned you to work with Jellicoe at the signals again, as both the squadron leader Captain Blackwood and the admiral are prodigious signal makers, and will expect timely responses and confirmations from Captain McAlden. So you’ll have your hands full.”

But mostly, he assigned her to work on the quarterdeck simply because he wanted her near.

She frowned at the signal locker, as if she knew, just as she had that first evening she had come aboard, that the task he assigned her was nothing more than busywork, designed to keep her safe and out of harm’s way. “Mr. Colyear, I assure you”—she lowered her voice to speak privately—“that I can take care of myself. I know what I’m doing—”

“Kent.” Col lowered his voice as well, the better to convey his urgency. “You have
no
idea. This battle is going to be beyond all notions of care and skill. This battle will be nothing short of chaos. This will be two entire fleets of the biggest warships in the entire world hammering each other into utter oblivion.”

He forced himself to look away from her gamin face. Forced himself to check the weather gauge and the set of his sails. “Nothing but fate will decide what happens today. Nothing but fate will decide who lives and who dies. If you’re in such a bleeding hurry to go to your death, let me assure you, a ball can find you as easily on the quarterdeck as in the foretop.”

But on the quarterdeck, she would be closer to him, and he could do as she asked last night. On the quarterdeck, he could keep her from the surgeon and from discovery.

She seemed to understand. She nodded, and said, “Yes, sir,” and moved to her station, immediately setting to work, reading the first signal of the morning, which had been relayed down the line of frigates stretching from the enemy to the British.

“Signal from the
Euryalus,
sir.” She was reciting off signal numbers to Jellicoe, who jotted them down on the slate.

Captain McAlden appeared as if summoned, and took her report. “Mr. Kent?”

“Frigates join north of battle fleet.”

The captain took a long moment to study the disposition of the enemy fleet, strung out in a long line moving slowly along the coast, the speed of the wind, the slow descent of the British fleet, and the readiness of his ship before he made his decision.

“We’ll clear the ship for action, after we’ve piped the hammocks up, and the men down to breakfast, Mr. Colyear. But handsomely, quietly, as we move offshore to join the squadron. We’ll keep our gunports closed. I don’t want to alarm the enemy in any way that might induce them to run.”

Col gave the necessary orders, and the routine of the ship continued uninterrupted. But for him, every minute of every hour stretched out abominably.

He knew his place. He knew his job. The ship was his to sail, his to maneuver, his to make right so Captain McAlden and the gunners could blast the French to splinters. He couldn’t look at the guns, or the destruction. He needed to keep his eyes on the topmen, and keep them working until they were needed elsewhere. The tasks at his hand demanded a single-minded focus that left no room for doubts. Or searching out the masthead for her form. Or worrying about her.

Despite his strong words to Kent, doubts assailed him. Was he wrong to keep her on deck? Might she be better off aloft?

The answer that whispered across his brain was that the French liked to aim high, to dismast their enemy’s ships in the hope that they could no longer sail. Such a tactic might work on the open sea, in a battle between a corvette and frigate, but this battle would be unlike any that had gone before.

The Nelson Touch, their admiral called it. What it would be was an out-and-out brawl, with each ship engaging the enemy on their own, firing at will, not a neat line of battle in which the two fleets would keep their distances and lob cannon fire across the intervening sea.

There would be no distance. There would be no safety. It would not matter where in the ship one stood. All would be in harm’s way, under enemy fire. It would be utter, unmitigated carnage.

“All right, Mr. Colyear.” The captain was eager to join the fight. “Give me all the speed you can from the set of your sails. Let us join up with the fleet.”

Col was at the trumpet calmly giving orders in the same steady voice he used every day, willing the men to put their faith in their superior skills and trust that those skills would out.

They set a course southwest by south, but Col was forced to lessen his rate of speed so he didn’t outstrip the enemy fleet and give them a chance to turn their heels back for Cadiz. Yet he was glad of the necessary distraction of keeping their rate of speed through the water low. It gave him a challenge, and the men work to fill the long hours of anticipation.

Which clearly the captain felt as well. He was pacing along the weather rail, studying the enemy fleet and no doubt thinking up his strategy for each and every scenario that entered his mind. From time to time he would look over
Audacious
as if he could see what he wanted done in the way of preparations.

“Captain, sir? I’d like to get started—”

“Excellent, Mr. Colyear. You may clear for action.”

Col turned to the waist and called to the men, “Clear for action, gentlemen.”

A wave of excitement, just like the rolling swell beneath the decks, lifted the people. A grim, manic industry gripped them all, and the men, especially the younger men, flew to their duty.

The ship became a new place. The whole of the deck, from one end of the bows to the other, had been cleared of every obstacle save the huge guns, and the gunports of both sides of the hull were open in the flat morning light. All the bulkheads and screen walls were removed and stowed, as well as all the furniture and belongings of both the men and the officers. What furniture that could not be stowed below the waterline was normally put off in the ship’s boats, but Col could envision the confused melee of disabled ships and potential prizes, and wanted to have every boat they could man available if the need should arise, so he ordered the dunnage stowed as tightly as possible.

“Make it so,” he told the flustered stewards when they objected. “Find the damned room somewhere else, if you don’t want to have to pitch them overboard. The boats will not be put off.”

Col hoped his own emotions were more tempered. It was not his first battle, and it was the duty of every officer to set a steady, confident example for the men. He had long since learned to channel the strange mixture of dread and euphoria into something useful, something as hard and precise as a blade, cutting away everything that was not important. But he had never had to think of anyone but himself—he had never been tempted to
allow
himself to think of anyone else.

But there she was, close to hand on the deck, all but dancing with excitement and anticipation as she strove for patience in the tedious working of the signals with Jellicoe. He took pity on her.

“Mr. Kent. Get chains up to brace the yards on all the tops and then rig up the netting.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” She fell to her tasks with alacrity, gathering the topmen of her division to shift lengths of chain out of the lockers where they were stowed belowdecks, and haul them aloft, where they were placed to secure the yardarms and prevent them from falling should the rigging that tied them to the mast be shot away in the fighting.

Below the yards, they rigged slack netting, both as an obstacle to potential enemy boarders and to prevent anything shot away from above, spar, rigging, or men, from falling on the men working the guns. Col could see she also had the foresight to chain rig most of the netting, too. He could just hear her explanation.

“For what good would it be if it were shot away as well?”

When that was done, she made for the flag locker on the quarterdeck to pull out more British flags. “May I rig a few more flags, sir? My father always made sure to have several flying, lashed to different masts during a battle, so that if one spar should fall, it could not be said that he had struck his colors.”

“Well done, Kent. See that they’re hung fore and aft as well. The smoke from the guns will be thick and we’ll want to be as easily identifiable as possible. I have no fear of the French, but I should hate to have an English broadside shot into us by accident.”

She smiled, as he hoped she would. But he did not have time to dwell in the warmth of that admiration. They were coming up to the squadron of five frigates running just north of the weather column of the admiral’s fleet, which was arrayed in two long columns, like two arrows poised to fly straight for the heart of the enemy’s fleet.

It was difficult for both Captain McAlden and Col to ease themselves into a position behind Captain Blackwood’s
Euryalus,
but not because
Audacious
was a poor sailor. Rather because she was such a fine sailor, they had to lessen their rate of speed, and ease the trim of their sails to let others have pride of place.

But second in the small line of frigates or not,
Audacious
would be ready.

“Stand to your guns. Load and run out.”

There was a strange hush, a grim, ferocious quiet, as the men complied. Behind him, Col heard Kent let out what sounded like an oath.

“Mr. Kent?”

“Signal from
Euryalus,
sir. Frigates are not to engage.” She kept her eye to the glass. “New signal going up. Attend line of battle ships to assist as needed.”

They both looked to Captain McAlden to gauge his reaction. But he was too cool a man to let himself be seen to cavil at any order, no matter how repugnant. “Stand to.”

The relief that flooded Col’s chest was not cowardice. He would not allow it to be. It was something else. Something deeper and more important. Something that had everything to do with his feelings for Sally Kent.

“If you please, sir.” Will Jellicoe was pointing south to the weather column of the battle fleet. “Signal from the the admiral as well.”

Col and Kent shifted their glasses to the
Victory,
leading the northernmost column steadily toward the French line.

“‘England expects every man will do his duty,’” Kent read.

Captain McAlden, perhaps because his reaction to the last signal was fresh in his heart, was nonplussed. “I had expected something rather more stirring from Nelson. But let us call the men to hear it. Have the people gather in the waist.”

Col called out the order and the bo’sun’s pipes roused the men to gather. The topmen hung down from the yards, their focus for the instant on the deck rather than on the gathered fleets. In the waist the gun crews were, almost to a man, stripped to the waist, with handkerchiefs tied either about their loins or around their heads and over their ears to buffer the coming cannon roar, with brawny arms folded over their chests, looking pale and stern, and mortal. The very best of England.

Captain McAlden stood at the foremost edge of the quarterdeck. “Your admiral sends the following message: ‘England expects every man will do his duty.’”

There were some stirring cheers, but more typical of
Audacious
was the bo’sun, Mr. Robinson’s, growl.

“Lay us alongside any of ’em, sir, and we’ll give ’em a double shot of our duty.”

“Thank you, Mr. Robinson. For your benefit, I propose to do exactly that. We will be more than dutiful. We will be
Audacious.
”

“Huzzah!” The raucous cry was taken up and repeated three times.

“Another signal,” Will Jellicoe called. “Number sixteen.”

“Close action, sir.” Kent passed the order to Captain McAlden.