Almost a Lady (4 page)

“Maybe it had for a minute,” she admitted. “There’s been rather a lot to think about since I recovered consciousness.”

“Yes, of course,” he agreed solemnly. “And who’s to say what effect that bump on the head could have had on your memory.”

It was too absurd. Meg laughed. “You know perfectly well it had no effect at all. I was so busy concentrating on my own present ills I forgot the world’s altogether.”

“Pax?” he asked again with a lift of his eyebrows and a slight questioning lilt in his voice.

“I suppose so,” Meg said. “I can see little to be gained from open hostilities.”

“Then come and enjoy the sunshine on deck.” He opened the cabin door in invitation. “I know for a fact that we have some excellent bread, cheese, and salami in the stores, and a particularly fine burgundy. There’s nothing to do until the wind gets up except eat, drink, and get to know each other.”

Meg had no intention of getting to know this man. He was too damnably attractive and she was all too susceptible to attractive men in unconventional situations. Every instinct told her that dropping her guard would be dangerous here.

“I’m quite happy with my reading, thank you,” she said, with a gesture towards her book on the bench behind her. “I don’t often have the opportunity to read for a long time undisturbed.”

Cosimo looked at her, a frown in his eyes. “Are you always this stubborn?”

Meg flushed with annoyance. “I fail to see what’s stubborn about preferring my own company to yours, sir.”

His well-shaped eyebrows lifted again at this tart rejoinder. “Since you haven’t spent any time in my company, I don’t know how you could possibly be sure you won’t enjoy it.”

Meg’s flush deepened. He was making her feel like a difficult child, when she was making a perfectly reasonable request to be left to her own devices. “This is a pointless conversation,” she said, turning back to the window and her book. “If you have business in this cabin, then please get on with it. If you don’t, I would ask you to leave me in peace.”

He shrugged. “Please yourself. I’ll tell Biggins to bring you some luncheon.”

“G’bye . . . g’bye . . .” Gus chanted as the door closed behind the captain. He hopped off his perch and over to the window seat. He flew up onto the cushion beside Meg and began to preen himself, muttering incomprehensibly as he did so.

“Don’t think I find your company flattering,” Meg said to him. He looked up from his grooming and she could have sworn one bright, beady eye winked at her.

Chapter   3

C
osimo was annoyed and that very fact increased his irritation. He was very rarely put out but Miss Meg Barratt had needled him. He made his way to the galley, where he knew he’d find Biggins. A pot of coffee bubbled fragrantly on the range and the cook was chopping up a large slab of beef for a stew. Biggins was sitting companionably at the table with a mug of coffee, whittling on a piece of ivory. Both men stopped what they were doing when the captain loomed in the narrow doorway.

“Anything I can get you, sir?” Biggins asked, wondering why his usually equable captain had such a frown on his face.

“Yes, take some bread and cheese into my cabin for Miss Barratt, will you, and then bring me some on deck. A carafe of the burgundy too.” He turned to leave, saying acidly over his shoulder, “And make sure you knock loudly and get the lady’s permission before you open the cabin door. She’s rather sensitive on the issue of her privacy.”

“Didn’t sound too happy, did he?” the cook observed after a discreet minute as he fetched a wheel of cheddar from a shelf. “Something’s put him out.”

“It’s that Miss Barratt, I’ll lay odds,” Biggins stated, filling a carafe of red wine from a barrel. “Summat’s not right there.”

“We
was
expecting a lady passenger,” the cook pointed out, slicing cheese deftly before attacking a loaf of barley bread.

“Aye, but not this one,” the other man stated with a significant nod. “I heard captain and the surgeon talking last night. Right mystery it is, Silas.”

“Well, if you ask me, everything’s a mystery when you sail with the captain,” Silas stated. “You got any idea where we’re goin’ this time?”

Biggins shook his head. “Course not. No one does. It’s just like always.”

“Well, he pays well,” Silas said with a shrug.

Cosimo returned to the deck, where the wind had done nothing useful in his absence and the tantalizingly distant outline of land was barely visible. He leaned on the railing and stared down at the flat surface of the sea. His present mood puzzled him. There was no denying that Meg Barratt had somehow got under his skin. Her stubborn refusal to respond to what he had fondly thought were his own rather charming attempts at gaining her confidence had definitely irritated him. Which was unusual. Ordinarily minor miscalculations of that kind ran off him like water off an oiled hide. He simply returned to the assault with fresh ammunition and new tactics.

He swung away from the railing with an air of resolution. There was nothing so special about Miss Barratt that she couldn’t be won over by some technique or another. He would try again. He hastened back to the galley, where Biggins was just setting a shiny red apple on a tray with the bread and cheese.

“I’ll take that,” Cosimo said, lifting the tray from the table. He frowned at it. “Wine,” he said. “A glass of burgundy.”

“Aye, sir.” Biggins, with a raised eyebrow in the direction of the interested cook, hurriedly poured a glass from the decanter he’d already filled and set it on the tray. “Anything else, Captain?”

“There was a salami,” Cosimo said. “A particularly tasty one, I recall. Cut a few slices, will you, Silas?”

“Aye, sir.” Silas lifted the fat, glistening sausage from its hook above his head. “’Tis a very toothsome one, I grant you, sir. Those Frenchies know what they’re doing when it comes to sausage.”

“And a good few other things,” Cosimo remarked, thinking of their spectacular success at war over the last couple of years. Austria, Rome, Switzerland . . . all had fallen to Napoleon. What the little Corsican lacked in true blue French blood, he certainly made up for in his ambitions for France, not to mention for himself. Which brought his reflections full circle. Napoleon was the object of his present journey, and if he was to adapt a now ruined plan that had seemed as near to foolproof as such plans could be, then he needed to take this tray of food to Miss Meg Barratt.

He hefted the tray on the palm of his hand in the manner of an experienced waiter and made his way down the corridor to his cabin. He knocked loudly three times. Gus cackled an invitation and he heard Meg say, “Oh, do be quiet, you infuriating bird.”

The door was opened by Meg, who gestured wordlessly that he should come in. “I’ve brought you luncheon as promised,” he said cheerfully. “I still think you’d prefer to eat it on deck, but you are your own mistress.”

“That’s nice to know,” she said. “I wish someone would tell this bird that.”

“Oh, you can’t tell Gus anything,” Cosimo declared, setting the tray on the table. “I’m surprised you don’t find him a kindred spirit.”

Meg gasped at the effrontery of this and then she laughed. This wretched man made her laugh. Very few people could do that. Oh, she had a disgraceful tendency to discover things to laugh
at
on occasion, but very few people could totally engage her sense of humor. It was a trait she and Arabella shared and fostered in each other.

“You have a very engaging laugh, as I’m sure you’ve been told many times by many men,” Cosimo observed, feeling the return of his own good humor.

The amusement froze in her eyes and her laughter died. “Thank you for the tray, Captain,” she said in a dry and neutral tone.

Cosimo cursed himself. This lady was not one to respond to lightly given compliments. She would see impudence where another woman would see flirtation. Or would she? He regarded her thoughtfully. “What’s your opinion of flirtation, Miss Barratt?”

The question so surprised her that for a moment she was unable to respond. Then she said smartly, “In the right place and at the right time, I have no objection to it. But I don’t care for clumsiness on any occasion.” On which note, she sat down at the table and began to slice the apple as if her companion was no longer there.

Cosimo recognized that he was bested and swept her an elaborate bow. “I accept my congé, ma’am.” He left the cabin but was unable to prevent himself from closing the door with the hint of a slam.

Meg smiled to herself before she realized that she was contemplating further such engagements with Captain Cosimo and the amusement they would afford. She had already resolved that there would be no temptations in this strange and troublesome situation, however attractive they might be. For a minute there her resolution had faltered.

She sipped her wine and absently passed a slice of apple to Gus, who was sitting expectantly beside her plate.

“Thankee . . . thankee,” he said, tossing the fruit into the air before catching it in his beak.

“You grow oddly endearing,” Meg observed, offering him another piece. She caught herself wondering if that could be true of the bird’s owner and mentally slapped her wrist. The problem was that she enjoyed the game of flirtation far too much. In the last few months in London she’d had ample opportunity to indulge herself with a variety of totally unsuitable but utterly engaging men, who had no more interest in a serious relationship than she did. And now she found herself trapped on a ship with a man who bid fair to be the most engaging of any of her former playmates, and also the most unsuitable.

What was he? Not an ordinary ship’s captain, that was obvious. He was the captain of a sloop-of-war for one thing, and such vessels didn’t ply the seas in harmless pursuits. Certainly not in wartime. But he wasn’t a naval captain either and this was not a ship of the British navy. No one wore a uniform for a start. It was a private ship. And its captain played the charmer with that delightful smile and the engaging glint in his eye, but she’d seen beneath that surface to a much harder core in their argument over the door key. There had been nothing charming, seductive, or even ordinarily pleasant about his manner and countenance then. No, she had no doubt that this Cosimo was a man to be reckoned with. And whatever he was doing . . . he and his ship . . . was rather more complicated than a pleasure trip.

She took a sip of her wine and then rose from the table. Curious she went over to the chart table. She had no experience with naval charts and they revealed nothing to her. She could see the Channel Islands and the coast of France. A few notations had been made on a sheet of paper beside the charts but they made no sense to her. Presumably he’d told her the truth about sailing to Sark. But what kind of business would a sloop-of-war have on such a tiny, insignificant speck of land?

Curiosity now thoroughly aroused, Meg began to explore the cabin. She examined the books on the shelves. Volumes on seamanship and naval history for the most part, but also, surprisingly, a few books on ornithology. The captain of the
Mary Rose
was interested in birds, apparently. He didn’t seem much for fiction, which didn’t surprise her. There was a Latin dictionary, however, which did surprise her since there weren’t any classical volumes to accompany it, a Bible, and a copy of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary. She picked the latter out of the shelf and leafed through it. Scattered throughout were odd little marks in the margins beside certain entries.

A loud knock at the door made her jump guiltily. It was Cosimo’s knock, she was growing accustomed to its particular rhythm. She shoved the book back on the shelf and went to open the door. Somehow the act of opening it herself gave the illusion of control.

“I trust you enjoyed your luncheon,” he said as he stepped past her into the cabin.

“Yes, thank you,” she responded with the same formality.

“You’ll have to excuse me, I wish to change my shirt.” He opened one of the drawers in the bulwark and began sorting through the contents.

Meg resumed her seat on the cushioned bench beneath the window and picked up her book.

Gus, who seemed to have been asleep for the last half hour, took his head out from under his wing and flew onto his perch. “Lovely day,” he declared, somewhat irrelevantly Meg thought as she studiously turned her eyes to her book, trying to ignore the man who was calmly stripping to his waist in the middle of the cabin.

She couldn’t quite manage it, however. Her gaze slid away from the printed page. He had his back to her as he shrugged out of his shirt. A long, lean, well-muscled back, just a light dusting of reddish hair against the spine. Slim waist.

No, this was not a sensible activity. She forced her eyes back to the page. Arabella had once said quite objectively that Meg’s attitude to men was rather masculine. She viewed them in much the same way men viewed women, starting with an unabashed assessment of their physical attributes. There was some truth in the observation, Meg was forced to admit. She, who had enthusiastically given her virginity to a Venetian gondolier who resembled Michelangelo’s
David,
tended to abstain from considered reflection on the wisdom of satisfying lust. But that was in situations where she was in control. Here, while she was not afraid of anything, she was not in control of anything. Except her own reactions. She turned a page with a crisp crackle.

“Biggins should have replaced the water in the jugs,” Cosimo declared from the head in the tone of voice of one commenting on the lack of sedan chairs on a rainy afternoon. Meg made no response. She didn’t want to know what he was doing in there. If he was underlining the fact that they were sharing this intimate space, then he’d certainly succeeded.

Cosimo reappeared, buttoning a crisp white shirt. He shook out the sleeves and fastened the buttons at the cuff. “Ring the bell for Biggins if you need anything.”

“When do you think the wind will pick up?”

“By evening . . . it’ll be too late to make harbor though. We’ll have to stand out to sea until daylight.”

Meg remembered the rocky outcrops around the island indicated on the chart. “It’s too dangerous to navigate in the dark?”

“Most of these coastlines are,” he said. “Brittany is the very devil, and some of the Channel Islands are no different.”

“Why are you going to Sark? What about Jersey, or Guernsey, aren’t they bigger?”

He had paused by the bookshelf and was adjusting the position of the volume of Dr. Johnson’s dictionary that Meg had thrust back. He turned, his hand still on the spine of the book. A smile curved his mouth and a glimmer of knowing amusement sparked in his eye. “Curious, Miss Meg?”

“Is it surprising?” she snapped back.

“No more surprising than your sangfroid,” he said. “I’d expect a woman in your situation to exhibit some signs of dismay. Instead you’re as challenging as a fox terrier.” His eyes narrowed a little. “Who are you, Miss Meg Barratt?”

“Who are you, Captain Cosimo?” she returned. “Answer me and I’ll answer you.”

“I, my dear ma’am, am the captain of a sloop sailing to the island of Sark,” he told her with a hint of laughter in his voice.

Meg shook her head, ignoring the invitation of that laugh. “Not the right answer, Captain.”

His bow was pure satire. He left her with her book and her empty tray and empty water jugs in the head. And outside the sun was shining. She could feel its warmth striking the back of her neck as she sat on the window seat. Her legs were twitching. She watched her right foot kick out seemingly of its own volition. Then her left.

Gus hopped to the closed door. “G’bye,” he said. It was an order, not a statement.