More Than You Know (21 page)

Rand ordered most of the men below. The sails were fixed, and any man left on deck was in danger of being swept into the sea. Cutch lashed Rand to the chair at the wheel. It was time for
Cerberus
to ride out the gale, hoping she could stay high in the water and not take this journey on a leeway cant.

Cutch had to raise his voice to be heard. The bitterly cold Antarctic wind flattened the oilskin against his body and kept him upright even as he tried to lean forward. “She'll be fine,” he told his captain. “She's come through it before!"

Rand didn't know if Cutch was speaking of
Cerberus
or Claire. Perhaps he was referring to both. He didn't ask, because he felt he couldn't. “Below, Cutch! You and everyone but the watch!"

Nodding, Cutch waved off the last of the men who weren't tethered to the masts like yard dogs. They struggled to the companionway opening across the treacherous deck, then, one by one, dropped out of sight. The doors were closed behind them to keep out more seawater.

Icy droplets of water clung to Rand's hair at his forehead and nape. The deck ran with foamy water that turned to a thin sheet of ice in places. In an hour the rigging was a great iced spider's web. Rand's fingers ached to the joints with cold. He worked them spasmodically to keep them from stiffening unbearably. He thought they had taken on a bluish cast but he couldn't be sure. The steady spray of water churned up by the sea and the wind all but blinded him.

Men on the first watch shouted their status and reported at regular intervals on the condition of the ship. Occasionally there was work to be done in the icy rigging. As hard as the work was there, it was preferred by many men to remaining on the foamy deck. They would line up on the weather side of the yards and work the nearly frozen canvas free. In this way the wind pressed them hard against the rigging, and not away from it. In contrast, on deck, they could be washed overboard with a moment's inattention.

In her cabin Claire sat on the bed, her back against the wall and her knees drawn toward her chest. The fire in her stove had gone out, and the cold that swept over the ship had finally penetrated her underbelly. Claire had her mantle drawn over her like a blanket, but she still felt the fingers of cold air seep under the material.

Cutch had brought assistance with him to remove the copper tub. He also checked her cabin to make certain that everything that could be secured in fact was. Dr. Stuart, she'd been informed, was already feeling the effects of the high seas and pitching ship, and could offer no companionship. Claire was willing to go to Macauley's cabin to help him through the storm, but Cutch was not encouraging. “You're safer here,” he'd told her. “Where everything is familiar. Someone will come by from time to time to check on you."

In spite of Cutch's promise, no one had come since then. It was not so much that Claire required attention, but that she wanted to know that
they
were safe. Rand would be on deck, she knew. Cutch told her the captain would not be removed from his place at the wheel. He would ride out the storm with
Cerberus,
keeping her bowsprit in his sights.

The ship pitched sideways. Claire's stomach lurched as she was tumbled out of her cocoon. She heard her heavy trunk slide across the floor and slam into the dresser. The chair under the desk tipped sideways and crashed. Claire groped for her headboard and held on, even when
Cerberus
rolled back. She wondered what Cutch would think if he checked on her later and found her curled under the bunk. She would tell him she had gone there in search of her stomach.

The storm—really a succession of gales—lasted for days.
Cerberus
rounded the Horn with her sodden canvas and icy yardarms intact. The seas gave up more water, pressing it into the ship's hull until the pumps jammed. The skies gave up snow. It swept in little eddies across the deck and settled on the eyelashes of every man on the watch. Stiff sails were caught in frozen gaskets and had to be loosened by hand. Men hauled themselves painfully into the rigging to do the work. All their attention had to be for their task, none at all for whether they would survive it.

Claire knew bits and pieces of what was happening above her. Now and again someone would arrive at her door with a plate of cold food—the galley fires no longer burned—and information from topside. She was aware that one of the crew had been swept away during the changing of the watch. If not for a momentary lull, the ship would have sailed on. Even so, Claire understood that making the decision to rescue the man would have been agonizing for Rand. It meant pitting six men in a lifeboat against the high seas to save one. He had to have known the outcome was not guaranteed. A decision that he would have to live with the rest of his life had to be made almost instantaneously. Claire wondered how she would act if given such terrible choices, and she prayed she would never have the opportunity to learn.

Measuring from calm sea to calm sea, it took eight days for
Cerberus
to weather the storms, round the Horn, and move from Atlantic to Pacific. Claire knew as early as day five that she was becoming ill. By then she could discern the different forces that were working on her body. She knew when discomfort was caused by the pitching ship and cold food and when the nausea had nothing to do with either of those things. The icy squall was responsible for only part of Claire's bone-chilling ache. On day six she knew the kind of cold that no amount of blankets could ward off. It was only a matter of time before fever and delirium would follow.

Rand stood at Claire's bedside, looking down on her unnaturally flushed face. He watched Macauley Stuart wring out a compress and lay it over Claire's forehead. “Is that the best you can do?” he asked in a harsh whisper. “Cutch says it's been hours since she could be roused."

"And like to be hours yet,” the doctor informed him calmly. “I'm following the treatment exactly as Miss Bancroft's London physicians prescribed."

"Then you've never treated this yourself."

Macauley looked up from his patient. “No. One doesn't have occasion to see many tropical diseases on the moors,” he said dryly. “I availed myself of the knowledge gleaned by her other doctors. As I understand it, Captain Hamilton, Miss Bancroft's malady has many peculiar characteristics. There
are
no experts. The physician who cared for her on the voyage back to London made copious notes to chart her progress. He turned those over to her godfather, who made a search for doctors to treat her. I believe everyone involved learned as they went. Protocols for this illness do not exist except as they apply to Miss Bancroft."

Rand did not like anything he heard. During the course of the storm he had held fast to the hope that there was always something he could do. In the face of rising seas and powerful winds, there was always some order he could bark out that might alter nature's impact on the ship and the lives of his men and passengers. This was different. He had no knowledge or skills that might alter the course of Claire's illness; he had to rely on someone else, who seemed only marginally more competent.

Rand's response to helplessness was anger. With Macauley Stuart he felt little compunction to temper it. “I hope to hell you know how to follow their instructions,” he said.

Stuart didn't flinch, although his complexion reddened. “I think I can be relied on to do that much."

Rand turned to Cutch, who was standing in the doorway. “I want a man posted outside her cabin to fetch anything the doctor needs and keep the fire going in her stove. If I find it was allowed to go out again, I'll throw the man responsible overboard myself."

Cutch stepped aside to let Rand stalk past him. “I'll post Adams here,” he told Stuart when Rand was gone. “How are you holding up?"

The doctor shrugged. “As long as the sea stays calm I should manage. I regret I couldn't attend Miss Bancroft myself until now."

Cutch didn't reply. Stuart would do more than regret it if his own incapacity resulted in further complications for Claire. Cutch had reported Claire's illness to the doctor as soon as he became aware of it. He had his own regret to reconcile, namely that he had allowed Claire to convince him nothing was wrong with her when his suspicions were first roused. With three quarters of the men seasick at one time or another, all of them veterans of white squalls, it was easy for Cutch to believe that Claire would be similarly affected. He knew now that it wasn't so much that she lied, but that she hadn't told all of the truth.

He had to discover that fact when he learned from one of the crew that Claire was found lying unconscious on the floor of her cabin.
Cerberus
had not yet reached calm waters. Stuart was weak himself from days of sickness and incapacity. Cutch half dragged, half carried the doctor to Claire's cabin to examine her, but it was pitifully clear that Stuart could do little in his state. He had neither the stamina nor the stomach to stay with her. Following his instructions, it was Cutch who nursed her in the beginning and poor Paul Dodd who had to walk across the wave-washed deck to inform the captain.

Alone in his cabin, Rand sat at his desk and filled out the ship's log. In the past eight days he had had little time away from the wheel. He slept intermittently, sometimes while wind and water pounded him in place, other times in his cabin. He had made a point of looking in on Claire twice, but only briefly. She seemed surprised by his visits, as if his need to reassure her was unnecessary. He couldn't be certain if it was because she placed so much trust in his command to see them through the storm, or because she thought they were all better served if he was on deck.

He never explained that he was drawn to her cabin as soon as he dropped into the companionway, that it was his need he served by making certain she was all right. He doubted she would have been flattered if he had explained it to her. It was more likely that he wouldn't have been believed.

On neither of his visits did he touch her. Their lovemaking, more than thirty-six hours in the past when he first saw her again, had already been shaded by a sense of unreality. On the second visit it was even more so.

Rand wished now that he had reached for her. He might have known that she was becoming ill. He knew the texture of her skin, after all. He knew that her lips should have been warm under his mouth. But the opportunity had passed. Twice. He didn't touch her because he needed her to be less real to him, not more. The only way he could ride out the storm was not to think of how much was riding on it.

Rand closed the log book, stood, and stripped out of his clothes. Still damp from his last command on deck, they slapped the floor hard. Rand fell naked on top of his bed and, lulled by the gentle rocking of
Cerberus
on the Pacific calm, was asleep in minutes.

Claire's own sleep was disturbed. Over the next few days, as her illness ran its course, she drifted in and out of consciousness, though no one who sat by her side was certain which state gave rise to the most peculiar statements. To varying degrees they understood some of it. It was not surprising that she spoke of Sir Griffin and her brother. Stickle was mentioned from time to time. Once, when she was particularly agitated, she called out Trenton's name. Most often, however, what Claire whispered were phrases and words peculiar to Solonesia. She spoke of tapu and over and over, like a mantra, of Tiare.

"What does it mean?” Stuart wanted to know when Rand came to relieve him. “Have I mistaken the words? Was she speaking of her brother again?"

"Tipu is her half-brother,” Rand said. “Tapu is a spell ... a curse."

The doctor came to his feet. He stretched and massaged the back of his neck. “And Tiare?"

"I don't know. There's a flower with that name. She could be talking about it."

"It makes no sense."

Rand shrugged. He was anxious for Stuart to be gone but not willing to show it. “Were you able to get her to eat anything?"

"A little broth."

"And her medicine?"

"She spat that back at me."

Rand found he had no patience for that answer. “Go on, Stuart, I'll see that she gets it."

"I wish you more luck than I had,” he said. “It's in my bag."

Once the doctor was gone, Rand pushed the chair he'd occupied aside and sat on the edge of the bed. Three blankets covered Claire up to her shoulders. Someone—Cutch, he suspected—had taken the time to brush her hair and neatly plait it. Tendrils of it lay very darkly against her pale forehead and temples. Her skin was as pale as he remembered from their first brief encounter in her godfather's study. There were violet shadows beneath her eyes and a bluish tinge to her lips. She looked as if she had just been found sleeping on a glacier, yet Rand found her cabin uncomfortably warm.

He rooted in Stuart's bag until he found the bottle of medicine. He did not bother with a spoon. There was no sense in trying to ladle it into Claire's mouth. Instead, Rand uncorked the bottle and held it up to her lips. With his free hand he pressed on either side of her jaw, forcing her mouth open, and tipped some of the medicine into her mouth. Claire tried to grimace and push it back out, but Rand held her firm. She swallowed most of this first dose and all of the second.

Rand put the bottle away. He poked his head into the companionway long enough to hand over Claire's bowl of cold broth. It wasn't long before a warm serving was returned to him. Using the same technique he'd used with the medicine, Rand was able to get most of the liquid down Claire's throat. Satisfied, he gave the bowl back and dismissed the crewman from his post. Rand quietly locked Claire's door and returned to her bed. He pulled off his boots and lifted the blankets. Nudging Claire closer to the wall, Rand stretched out beside her. He placed one arm across her waist; the other rested under his head. She didn't stir as his body heat was added to the warmth of the blankets.