The Monsoon (20 page)

“Get you back to your bed!” he snarled.

“This is not your business.” Guy backed away at the venom in his father’s voice.

“Tell no one of what you have seen here tonight, for if you do I will flay the skin from your back.” Guy backed slowly and reluctantly up the ladder, and Hal turned into the magazine.

Caroline had pulled the gown over her head and now it covered her to her ankles. She stood before him, hanging her head. The thick curls and ringlets fell forward and covered her face. She looked like a little girl, young and innocent. Which she has, as the devil is witness, proven she is not, Hal thought grimly, and looked at his son, who was hopping on one leg trying to get his other into his breeches.

There was no longer any trace of his usual cockiness or braggadocio.

He hauled his breeches up to his waist and buckled his belt, then stood abjectly beside the girl, neither of them able to meet Hal’s stern gaze.

“Mistress Caroline,” Hal ordered, “you will go this very instant to your cabin.”

“Yes, Captain,” she whispered.

“I can only say that I am disgusted by your behaviour.

I never expected anything of the like from a lady of your breeding.” He felt vaguely ridiculous as he said it. As though the lower classes are the only ones who should make the beast with two backs, he mocked himself silently, and searched for some pronouncement less famous.

“What will your father make of it when I tell him?” he demanded.

She looked up at him with real terror dissolving her prettiness.

“You won’t tell him?” Suddenly, embarrassingly, she fell at his feet, and hugged his knees.

“Please don’t tell him, Captain. I will do anything, only please don’t tell him.”

“Get up, girl.” Hal lifted her to her feet, his anger fading. It took an effort to fan the flames.

“Go to your cabin, and stay there until I send for you.”

“You won’t tell my father?” she pleaded. Tears were streaming down her face now.

“I make you no promise on that,” he said.

“You richly deserve the horse-whip that I know he will take to you.” He led her out, and pushed her towards her cabin. She fled up the ladder and he heard her door open and close softly.

Hal turned back to Tom and tried to glare at him, but felt the flames of indignation subside. Despite himself he journeyed back over the years, to another boy and girl in a dark ship’s cabin in these southern seas. He had been Tom’s age, and the Dutch girl five years his senior when she had carried him over the threshold into manhood.

She had possessed golden hair and the face of an innocent angel, but the body of a wanton and the nature of a she devil He blinked as he brought his mind back from twenty-five years ago, and found Tom still standing contritely before him.

“Miss Beatty is a passenger on this ship, and therefore in my care,” he said.

“You have shamed yourself and me.”

“I am sorry, Father.”

“I don’t think you are.” Hal studied his face, and saw him struggling with the truth.

“I mean, I’m sorry I shamed you.” Tom qualified himself “But as nobody but us knows of it, then your shame need never be made public, sir.” Hal had to stop himself gasping at his son’s err -rontery, but then he followed the quick-witted logic.

“You are a barbarian, sir, “he said gravely, and thought, As I was as every red-blooded young buck is at your age.

“I shall try to improve myself,” Tom promised.

Hal stared at him. He would never have dared address his own father in that fashion. He had been terrified of his father. This boy was not terrified of him, respected and admired him, perhaps, loved him, certainly, but felt no terror when they stood face to face like this. Have I failed in my duty? Should I have made him fear me? he wondered. No, I am glad of it. I have made him a man.

“Father, I will readily accept whatever punishment you see fit to lay on me. But if you tell Caroline’s family of this, you will bring disgrace upon her and ruin her life.” Tom spoke up with barely a tremor in his voice.

“She does not deserve that from us.”

“I agree with you,” Hal admitted reluctantly.

“Do I have your undertaking never to try to be alone with the girl again while she is on this ship?”

“I

promise you that.” Tom raised his right hand.

“I swear it to you.

“Then we shall not speak of it again, and I will say nothing to Mr. Beatty.”

“Thank you, sir.” Hal felt rewarded when he saw the expression in his son’s eyes, then had to cough to clear the constriction in his throat. He cast around swiftly for some way to avoid having to pursue the subject.

“How did you get into the magazine?”

“I borrowed the key from your desk,” Tom answered straight.

“Borrowed?” Hal demanded.

“Yes, sir. I would have returned it when I was finished with it.”

“You have no further need of it now, that I assure you,” Hal told him grimly. Tom went obediently to the doorway, reached up to the niche and brought down the key.

“Lock the door,” Hal ordered, and when Tom had done so, “Give it to me.” Tom placed it in his hand.

“I think that is more than enough for one night,” Hal said.

“Go to your mattress now.”

“Goodnight, Father, and I truly am sorry that I have caused you distress.”

” Hal watched him disappear up the ladder, then grinned ruefully. Perhaps I could have conducted that little skirmish with more aplomb, he thought, but the devil tell me how.

Guy waited expectantly for the uproar that must follow his disclosure of the sinful pair. He expected Caroline to be castigated by her father, perhaps beaten like a scullery-maid caught stealing, reviled by her mother and sisters, become such an outcast that she would have only him to turn to for comfort.

In his imaginings, she came to him and begged his forgiveness for having betrayed the pure, honest love he held for her. She threw herself on his mercy, and promised that if he forgave her she would try for the rest of her life make amends to him. The thought of it warmed him.

and made up for the terrible suffering he had endured since the night when he had first followed Tom down to the lower deck and discovered the filth in which he was engaged.

Then he hoped that his father might haul Tom before the ship’s company and order him placed on the triangle and publicly flogged, though in his heart he knew that this was too much to hope for. But at least he might force Tom to apologize to Mr. and Mrs. Beatty and forbid him ever again to speak to Caroline or any other member of the family.

Tom would become the ship’s pariah. Perhaps his father might have him removed from the Seraph when they reached Good Hope, even sent back to England in disgrace to suffer the tyranny of Black Billy at High Weald.

He waited eagerly for some or all of these things to happen. His chagrin deepened as each day passed as though nothing earth-shattering had occurred, as if his emotional turmoil and suffering were of no consequence.

It was true that for several days thereafter Caroline was quiet and withdrawn, starting whenever she heard footsteps outside the cabin where they laboured together over their books, looking terrified when she heard her father’s voice booming out from the deck above, never glancing in Tom’s direction but keeping her eyes on her books. Guy noticed, with some small satisfaction, that if Tom came on deck when she was there with her mother and sisters, she immediately made some excuse and went down to her own little cabin, staying there alone for hours.

This lasted less than a week, then she rapidly recovered her old poise and appealing manners. The roses bloomed once more in her cheeks, she laughed and joked with Master Walsh, and sang as prettily in the duets with Dorian during the musical recitals. For some time Guy refused to take part in these evenings, pleading ill-health, and he lay miserably on his pallet on the gundeck listening to the faint sounds of music and laughter from the deck below. In the end he allowed Master Walsh to persuade him to return with his cittern, although his expression and when while he played were heroically tragic.

for Tom, he showed precious little remorse for his treachery and deceit. True, for a while he made no effort to talk to Caroline or even catch her attention, but this was nothing new. It was one of his perfidious ways. Then, during one of their lessons, Guy intercepted an exchange between the pair.

Caroline dropped her chalk to the deck and before Guy could retrieve it for her she had stooped and groped for it under the table.

The ship rolled and the chalk skittered across the deck towards Tom, who scooped it up and, with a mock-gallant bow, handed it to her, at the same time taking the opportunity to peer down her decolletage.

Caroline, with dancing eyes, turned so that Master Walsh could not see her face and stuck out her tongue at Tom. It was not a childlike gesture, but suggestive and inviting, fraught with sexual undertones.

Tom acknowledged it with a leer and a wink that made Caroline blush prettily, and struck Guy like a blow in the face from a clenched fist.

He brooded on it for the rest on that day, but could think of only one way in which to try to show Caroline how much she had hurt him, how she had destroyed his trust in her and shattered his life. He moved his seat without permission in the classroom. The following day, without explanation, he left the bench beside Caroline and went to the low, uncomfortable stool in the corner furthest from her.

This tactic had unforeseen and undesirable results.

Master Walsh took in the rearrangement of his classroom at a glance, then looked across at Guy.

“Why have you moved?”

“I am more comfortable here,” Guy replied sullenly, without looking at him or Caroline.

“In that case,” Walsh looked across at Tom, “I think it would be better if Tom moved over beside Mistress Caroline. There I can better keep him under my eye.” Tom needed no second invitation, and for the rest of the morning Guy was forced to witness the play between the two. While frowning at his slate, Tom surreptitiously moved one of his great clodhoppers under the table to touch her elegant satin slipper.

Caroline smiled secretly to herself, as though at something she had just read, but made no move to withdraw her foot.

Then, a little later, Tom wrote something on his slate and, when Walsh was busy marking Dorian’s arithmetic, held it so that she could read it. Caroline glanced at what he had written then flushed and tossed her curls as if in annoyance, but her eyes danced. Then she scribbled on her own slate and let Tom read it. He grinned like the lout Guy knew he was.

Guy was consumed with jealous rage, but he was helpless. He was forced to watch them flirting, teasing each other, and his hatred boiled up until he felt he could no longer contain it. He was haunted by the images of the terrible things he had witnessed in the magazine.

His father’s bulk had screened from him most of the horror of that night, and the light had been poor, but the gleam of her white skin and the tantalizing roundness and soft shapes of her body flashed before him again, until he hated her but at the same time ached with longing for her. Then he saw again his brother, and the unspeakable act he was committing, degrading that perfect pure and lovely form.

He was like a pig, like a filthy boar guzzling and snorting at the trough. He tried to find the most extreme words in his lexicon to portray the depth of his revulsion, but they fell short of his true feelings. I hate him, he thought fiercely, and then, I will kill him.

He felt a stab of guilt at the thought, but almost immediately that evaporated to be replaced by a savage joy.

Yes. I will kill him. It was the only way now open to him.

Guy watched for his opportunity. At noon the next day he was strolling with Mr. Beatty up and down the forecastle while the officers of the watch, including his father and Tom, made the sunpshot with their backstaffs.

Mr. Beatty was explaining to him in detail how the affairs of the Company were administered in the Orient.

“We have two factories on the Carnatic coast, do you know where that is, Courtney?”

“Yes, sir.” Guy had studied the huge pile of books and documents that Mr. Beatty had given him to read.

“The Carnatic is that stretch of country in southeast India, between Eastern Ghats and the Coromandel Coast. It is one of the richest trading areas in the Orient,” he recited dutifully.

Mr. Beatty nodded.

“I see you are taking your duties seriously,” he said.

Guy tried to keep his mind on the conversation, but his attention kept wandering to the group on the quarter, deck. He saw them confer over the traverse board at the helm, then Tom scribbled on his slate and showed the result to his father.

“Well done, lad. I’ll mark it so on the chart.” His father’s voice carried even against the wind. The commendation irked Guy and increased his determination to carry through his plan.

His father took a last turn up and down the deck, darting sharp glances at the set of the sails, and the course in the binnacle. He was an imposing figure, tall and broad shouldered, with handsome well-formed features and thick dark hair knotted at the back of his head. Guy felt daunted at the prospect of having to confront him. At last Hal handed over the deck to the officer of the watch and disappeared down the companionway to his own quarters.

“Sir.” Guy turned to Mr. Beatty.

“Will you please excuse me?

There is something of the utmost importance I must discuss with my father.”

“Of course.” Mr. Beatty waved him away.

“I shall be here when you return. We shall continue our conversation then. I find it most diverting.” Guy knocked at the door of the stern cabin, and opened it when his father’s voice called from within, “Enter!” He looked up from the ship’s log, in which he was recording the noon position, with the plume of his pen poised over the page.

“Yes, lad, what is it?”

Guy took a deep breath.

“I want to challenge Tom to a duel.”

Carefully Hal replaced the goose quill in the inkwell, and rubbed his chin reflectively, before he looked up again.