An Officer but No Gentleman (23 page)

24

Charlie looked at herself in the mirror in bewilderment.  She didn’t know the person staring back at her.  She wore a beautiful azure blue silk dress.  It was cut empire style with a low neckline that left her shoulders bare.  A swag of white silk trimmed the décolletage extending around the top of her arms giving the illusion of a sleeve. 

Jaxon had hired a lady’s maid to come in and help her prepare for the engagement party.  The woman had tsk-tsked her when she saw the length of Charlie’s hair and offered to cut it á la Josephine, but Charlie refused.  She had not been allowed to wear it long and now that she could, she wanted to let it grow.

Somehow, despite the woman’s complaining
, she had managed to make her hair beautiful, pinning it up into an elegant coif.

And yet Charlie couldn’t manage a smile at her own reflection.

“What’s the matter, Charlie?  Nervous?”

“Aye.  What if they don’t like me?”

“Why wouldn’t they like you?  Mother only invited relatives of ours. Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins and Mabel so you’d have someone other than my siblings there that you know.  They are here to celebrate our happiness and meet you.”

Charlie looked at him through the reflection in the mirror.  He looked so handsome in his double-breasted navy blue dress uniform.  The dark color set off the blue in his eyes.  Just looking at him calmed her.  As long as he was by her side
, she could face anything.

“Everyone is going to want to know how we met.  I don’t know what to tell them.”

“We’ll tell them the truth.  Honestly, Charlie, it’s an amazing story.  Do you realize how many events had to happen for us to meet in the middle of the ocean?  If just one thing had been different, we might have never met.”

“But they are going to find out I used to live my life as a man.  What if they react like Grayson?”

He stepped up behind her and put his hands on her bare shoulders.  “You will be the envy of all the women.  I think many of them wish they could see what it’s like to have the freedom of a man, if only for one day.”  He kissed her neck.  “You might want to leave out the parts about going wenching with your friends and smoking cigars.”

“And starting tavern fights.”

“You never told me you started tavern fights.”

She smiled shyly.  “I used to start them all the time.  Sometimes I just wanted to get my frustrations out.  My father hated it.  The last time, he confined me to my quarters for three days when I wasn’t on duty and threatened to flog me if I did it again.  You saw the big bruise on my back.  I’m not sure what he
used to hit me, I was too focused on taking the knife away from another man to realize this man had picked up something.  Luckily, Morty stepped in and ended the fight.”

She saw him react to the mention of Morty’s name and wished she had just kept her mouth shut.

“Yes, let’s leave that out, too.”

He stood behind her looking at her in the mirror.  It was hard to equate this beautiful woman to the little spitfire that had come aboard his ship.  She looked so different.  It was no wonder she felt insecure.  Her whole world had turned on its ear.  Everything wa
s new to her.  Jaxon wondered if she would feel the same way about him had they not been forced together by circumstance.

“Did I tell you how beautiful you look?  But I think you’re missing something.  Close your eyes.”

Charlie closed her eyes and felt him place something around her neck.

“Open your eyes.”

He had draped a string of pearls around her neck.

“A treasure from the sea for my treasure from the sea.  Don’t cry.”

“If you don’t want me to cry, stop being so nice to me all the time.”

“If we get there and you look like you’ve been crying
, everyone will think you’re not happy,” he teased handing her his handkerchief.

Charlie took a deep breath and slowly blew it out between her lips and forced back the tears.  A wan smile touched her lips. 

“Better?”

His expression said it all.  Jaxon’s brow knitted and his mouth was set in a line.

“The captain’s son was not allowed to cry.”

Jaxon leaned over until his face was next to hers in the mirror.  He wrapped his arms around her waist.  “I’m sorry, baby.  I was just teasing you.  If you want to cry, cry.”

Charlie reached up and laid her hand on his cheek. “I don’t want to cry tonight.  I want to be the fiancée you can be proud of.”

Jaxon’s tight-lipped expression turned further south.  “I don’t understand what you mean by tha
t.  You’re not a possession I’m trying to show off.  I don’t need you to pretend to be someone you’re not to impress anyone.”

“But I’m not like other women.”

“If you mean you don’t know how to cook or throw a party, who cares?  I can hire people to do those things.  But you are the woman I love.  I want to spend the rest of my life with you.  If you wanted to wear trousers or pick up your meat with your knife, I wouldn’t care.”

Jaxon would
have like to have told her when she looked at him, he no longer felt scarred, but somehow saying something so personal was too revealing.  He didn’t want her to have to bear his demons, especially when she was still adjusting to all the changes in her life.

Rather than have the party at her home, Betsy Bloodworthy decided to rent the hotel restaurant and ballroom.  It had just been too much work to do in two weeks, but she knew no one would mind too much.  When they arrived, Charlie sought out Jayne and asked her if she would be her maid of honor.  The wide grin on her face said it all. 

The evening may have started with a meal
, but neither Jaxon nor Charlie could remember afterwards what they had dined on.  Charlie only remembered that the food had just kept coming course after course.  When the dessert course came, Jaxon stood up and extended his hand to Charlie.

“I want to thank everyone for coming tonight on such short notice.  And I’m going to apologize now for not giving you more notice on the wedding in a fortnight.”

A few people whispered among themselves as Jaxon continued.

“Rather than repeat the story of how we met twenty times tonight, I thought I’d just tell everyone together.  It’s a long story that starts more than a decade and a half ago when a little motherless girl goes to sea to live with her father, the captain of a merchant ship.  He dresses her in breeches an
d brings her aboard the ship—as his son….”

25

After dinner
, an octet of musicians began playing from the ballroom drawing the partygoers into the adjoining room.  The ballroom wasn’t very large, but it seemed to accommodate the thirty or forty people there.  Two grand crystal chandeliers were alight with a least twenty kerosene flames that reflected off the highly polished oak parquet floor and wall of windows.  Gold velvet curtains flanked each window with white silk ropes holding the curtains open.  The small orchestra was packed tightly into to one corner of the room leaving the guests as much room as possible.

“That’s the biggest fiddle I’ve ever seen,” Charlie whispered to Jaxon.

“Don’t let them hear you calling them fiddles. They’d be insulted.”

“I didn’t think there was a difference between a violin and a fiddle.”

“I don’t think there is. The difference is in the musicians.”

Charlie nodded.
“Well, they sound beautiful together.”

“I can see if they can play at the ceremony, if you’d like?”

“There will be music at our wedding?  I’ve never been to one before.”

Charlie wasn’t used to being the center of attention, but there could be no doubt everyone there was eager to meet her.  Jaxon was right about the women’s curiosity about living as a man.  They had so many questions and many she would have preferred not to answer and when Jaxon or she could not evade the awkward questions, Jaxon or Jayne would suddenly spot someone she
had
to meet and pulled her away from the women.

“Do you want to dance?” Jaxon asked.

Charlie was undecided.  The kind of dancing done on the ship was not the kind of dancing she now watched with fascination.  These men and women glided effortlessly around the floor.  On the occasions aboard ship when there was a crew member with a fiddle or a concertina, the men danced jigs or occasionally paired off and stomped around in a mock version of what she watched here.

“I’d like to
, but I don’t really know how.  Won’t it bother your leg?”

“Between your messages and the stretching, my leg is feeling pretty good these days,” Jaxon said slapping his thigh lightly.  “Jayne lift your skirt enough that Charlie can see your feet and show her.  This is a waltz.  It’s easy just one, two, three, one, two, three.”

Jayne spared a quick glance around the room before complying.  “One, two, three, one, two, three.  Always start by stepping back with your left foot.”

“Left foot first.  Got it,” Charlie said trying out the steps on her own.

“Good,” he praised.  “Shall we?  We’ll stick to the edges until you feel comfortable.”

Jaxon led her to the dance floor and took her into his arms and gracefully maneuvered her into outskirts of the dancers.  She could barely detect his limp as they glided to the rhythm of the music.

“Stop counting and relax.  Feel the music.”

He held her nearly at arms-length, afraid he might step on her feet if she misstepped.  Soon, he was pulling her closer and leading her in and out of other dancers easily.

“You’re a born dancer,” he whispered into her ear.

“I was just thinking the same thing about you.  You make this easy.”

“I was worried I would be really rusty, but I guess some things you just don’t forget.”

Charlie nodded realizing he probably didn’t dance much with his bad leg.  “Is this the first time you’ve danced since your accident?”

Jaxon’s body tensed momentarily at her choice of words.  He would have liked to have told her that what happened to him was intentional; not an accident, but this was not the place or time.

Suddenly, Charlie stopped dancing.  Jaxon ran into her with enough force that he nearly knocked her over and would have fallen on top of her had he not been able to shift his weight to his good leg.  It took a moment for him to right himself and Charlie with him.

“Are you all right?” they both asked in near unison as most of the others couples danced around them.

“What happened?” Jaxon asked chuckling.  “Did you lose your shoe?”

“Daniel is back,” she said looking into his eyes.  “And Morty is with him.”

Grayson disembarked the hermaphrodite brig with barely a glance behind him.  He hated sailing and was glad to have his feet back on
terra firma
.   It had taken two weeks to sail to Charleston and they had just had two days of weather that had left Grayson feeling sick to his stomach.  With Jaxon’s wedding scheduled for a fortnight from now, he was going to be hard-pressed to get there in time to stop it.  He’d have to find a faster ship for the return trip.

Grayson had his strategy well thought out before he arrived in Charleston.  He was going to proceed with caution.  His first stop would be to the local lawmen and explain what he was doing.  The last thing he needed was to get arrested trying to steal the real Charlie Sinclair’s money.  He didn’t know who this woman was, but he was convinced that she was not Charlie Sinclair.

After that, he would go to the courthouse, talk to every lawyer he could find and see if John Sinclair had a will.  Surely, if John Sinclair had money for someone to inherit, there would be a will.  And if there was a will, wouldn’t John Sinclair confide in his lawyer that his son, Charlie, was actually his daughter.  A lawyer would keep information like that in confidence so there was no reason not to tell him.

Grayson smiled. 

He was not going to leave a stone unturned and when he returned home, he was going to have her arrested.  He would get affidavits from everyone who knew anything.  It was going to kill Jaxon to know that he had been duped, he thought with a slight sneer, but how naïve could his brother be? 

Grayson left the harbor and checked into the first decent looking inn he came to.  He hated the fact that he was going to have to wait until morning to begin his task.  Unless he could find a much faster ship than the one he sailed in on, he was not going to be back in time to stop the wedding.  He told himself it didn’t matter.  That’s why there was such a thing as annulment.  Jaxon was so smitten by this Jezebel, he would probably refuse to believe him
, but Grayson would have his proof in spades.

26

The smile left Jaxon’s lips.  “I guess we should go say hello.”

Jaxon put his arm around her shoulders unconsciously displaying his possessive emotions.  He carefully led her out of the dancers to the doorway where his brother and rival stood.

Morty, tall, flaxen haired, built like the Norse god, Thor, searched the dance floor looking for Charlie.  It wasn’t until they were nearly to him did he recognize Charlie in her new garb and hairstyle.

Suddenly, he lunged forward, embraced her, and swung her in a circle, pulling her out of Jaxon’s grip.  He tried to kiss her
, but she turned her head.

Charlie squealed and giggled.  “Put me down you big oaf.”

Morty set her on her feet, but kept his hands on her waist.

“Charlie, you look beautiful.”

When his eyes traveled downward, pausing at her breasts, Jaxon could take no more.  He shoved him back and stepped between them.

“What the—?”

“Keep your hands off of her!” Jaxon growled.

Morty should have deferred to the captain’s uniform alone
, but Jax wasn’t his captain nor were they at sea.  Morty bowed up.

“Mister, I don’t know who you are….”

“I’m Charlie’s fiancé.  This is our engagement party.”

Morty paled.  He looked more than crestfallen.  He looked like someone had delivered a physical blow.

“Damn it, Jax!  You didn’t have to be so blunt about it,” Charlie said stepping around him to place herself between the men.  She had seen where Jaxon’s temper and jealousy could lead and she wasn’t about to let him hurt Morty.  “And you,” she said to Daniel.  “Why didn’t you warn Morty?"

“And miss this?”  Daniel’s look of smug satisfaction made her want to put the recently healed black eye back on his face.

Charlie ignored him.  At the moment, Morty was her concern.  She reached out to lay her hand on his arm, but he took a step back.

“I-I’m sorry I interrupted your party.”

She could tell he wanted to say more, but he turned on his heel and headed toward the hotel’s street exit.

“Wait, Morty.”

He paused only a second before continuing on. 

When she turned back to Jaxon, there were tears in her eyes.  “You didn’t have to tell him like that.  You know how he feels about me.”

“It’s because I know how he feels; I had to do be firm.  He needs to understand that there is no hope for him.”

“Morty is the closest thing to family I’ve got.  He didn’t deserve that.”

The tears were coming nonstop now and he watched as she fought them back and wiped them away.  He had made her cry in a way he had never wanted.

“Excuse me,” she said and turned to go after Morty.

Jaxon grabbed her arm.  “Charlie if you go….”

“What?  You’re not going to marry me?  What makes you think I want to marry someone who has no regard for other people’s feelings—if not for his sake
, then for mine?  You have to get your temper and your jealousy under control or we
are
done.”

She pulled her arm away to chase after him
, but when she spotted Daniel, she hesitated.  “There is a real streak of cruelty in the men of this family.  I don’t know if I would want to raise my children around that.”

Charlie ran out into the street
, but couldn’t see which way he had gone.  Automatically she turned towards the docks.  He would either head towards a tavern or the ship.  It suddenly occurred to her she didn’t know how he had gotten to Chimerical Cove.  Had he transferred to the corsair then boarded
The Dragon’s Lair
or was the
Arcadia
in port?  Charlie picked up the pace and was nearly running when the wharf came into view.  She couldn’t imagine why she hadn’t caught up with Morty.  She scanned the harbor looking for the familiar outline of the
Arcadia
.  She spotted Jaxon’s Baltimore clipper first, but sitting three slips beyond it was her ship.

“Thank God,” she said aloud as she hurried towards it.

It was a typical pier with sailors of all sorts moving around.  A small group of noisy men were disembarking from one of the ships on their way to a night of merrymaking. 

“Hey, gorgeous, looking for me?” one of them yelled.  Charlie thought about hurling an insult at him
, but she wasn’t dressed for a fight.

“No, honey, but my father
, the sheriff, is.”

Some of the men laughed.  And she heard one of them say something about a better class of whore
, but she kept moving.  She maneuvered past a group of men loading cargo onto their ship.  Those men eyed her as they worked, but didn’t speak.  Rarely were sailors at work allowed to talk. The mate supervising them, yelled at them to get back to work even though none of them had actually stopped.

As Charlie approached her ship, she saw two of her men lingering not far from the ship.  One was sitting on a crate smoking a pipe and the other was telling him a story of some sort.  Both men had been on the larboard watch so she didn’t know either well.  The one on the crate spotted her
, but didn’t seem to recognize her.

“It’s a nice night for a smoke, eh Fanzel?”

“Aye,” he answered.  “Hey, how do you know my name?”

“Mr. Sinclair?” the other man said recognizing Charlie’s voice and turning.  “Uh, Miss Sinclair?”

“Aye.  Has Morty come past here?”

“No, miss.  Not that I’ve seen,” Fanzel answered stiltedly.

Charlie turned up the gangplank and boarded her ship.  She could see the ship was in complete disarray, but didn’t have time to deal with it at the moment.  She had to find Morty.

There weren’t many men aboard, she noticed
, but she greeted each one by name taking a small amount of pleasure in their reaction.

When she saw Benjy, she asked him to bring a ewer of fresh water to her cabin.  Running her fingers through her hair, Charlie began pulling pins out of her coif as she entered her cabin.

Charlie pulled a uniform out of the built-in locker and tossed it on her bunk.  She brushed her hair and tied it back, the way she had worn it for years.  After struggling with the pearls’ clasp, she ended up needing the mirror to get the necklace off.

Benjy brought the water and Charlie scrubbed her face and changed into her uniform, binding her breast as she had always done.  She cursed when she realized her boots were at Jaxon’s townhouse.  Luc
kily, she remembered a pair she had out grown and squeezed her feet in.

Charlie was only mildly surprised to find her money where she had left it.  She pocketed it and left the ship to find Morty.

Charlie made the rounds of the taverns and inns near the wharf and worked her way toward the hotel where the party had been.  Finally, in the fifth taproom she visited, she found him.

“Two ales,” Charlie said to a passing barmaid as she took a seat at Morty’s table.

“What are you doing here?” Morty asked still sounding sober.  “Why aren’t you at your big engagement party with your captain?”

Charlie started to reach for his hand
, but realized, dressed as she was, she couldn’t hold his hand without drawing the wrong kind of attention.

“I couldn’t enjoy my party knowing my best friend in the whole world is miserable because of me.”

He stared into his ale.  “Best friend,” he echoed hollowly.

She would have like to have told him that she had been absolutely smitten with him when he had first come aboard.  But she
was afraid if she told him, it would give hope that she could feel that way again.

“I know that’s not what you wanted to hear and I’m sorry.”  Charlie paused as the barmaid set the drinks if front of them.  She handed the woman a pair of coins.

“My friend here is hungry.  Do you have any grub?”

“Sure thing.  We have chowder or stew.”

“Bring him both.”

“None for you?” the woman asked.

Charlie shook her head.

“How did you know I was hungry?”

“Morty, you’re always hungry,” Charlie said chuckling.

“My muscles need food,” he said flexing his arm and smiling for the first time.  The smile died on his lips.  “Why, Charlie?  Why him and not me?”

“I wish I had some great answer for you, Morty, but honestly I think a lot of it is just because I’ve spent so many years thinking of you as my friend, I just don’t see you any other way.  You’re the big brother I never had,” she explained.  “Remember when you came aboard.  You were so green.  We spent hours practicing your knots.”

“You taught me everything.”

“Then later when I became blower, you were always the first to jump at my orders.”

“Aye, I remember all that.”

“My father always wanted me to be mentally tough and strong so I could lead the men.  I need my husband to be as strong as or stronger than me.  I don’t want to be the one wearing the trousers in the relationship.”

Morty quaffed the remainder of the ale he had been drinking when she arrived and took a long draw of the one she had ordered for him.  Charlie followed suit.

“And you don’t mind his face?”

Charlie would have like to have told him how handsome he was to her and how she barely noticed the scars
, but she knew her friend didn’t want to hear it.

“No.”

The barmaid brought Morty’s food and Charlie ordered another ale for Morty and a double measure of brandy for herself.

“Morty, when you walked out tonight, I went to the waterfront trying to find you.  What the hell happened to my ship?  Everythin
g was dirty and out of place.”

Charlie finished her ale in time to hand the tankard to the barmaid when she brought her brandy and Morty’s next ale.

Morty shoveled in a couple of bites of stew and washed them down with ale before answering.

“When they let me out of the brig, Byron told me we had been attacked by the British and your father was killed.  But he told me you had been taken by the British with the others.  It was after he went below deck that the others filled me in on the truth.  Everyone knew what Byron had done was wrong.  We mutinied against him and hung him from yard for his piracy.  Unfortunately, none of us thought to get his keys before we tossed his body overboard so we couldn’t get into the boatswain’s locker.”

It saddened her to think her men would have to live with the guilt of killing a man on her behalf.  It made her sick to think about so she changed the subject.

“You weren’t fooled by the body they gave you?”

“Not for a second,” Morty said with a proud smile.  “I picked up the body and knew it wasn’t you.  He was a good twenty pounds heavier.  I cut open the shroud and everyone was debating whether it was you or not.  But the corpse was obviously male and that’s when I spilled the beans.  No one believed me either, so I had to cut open the sleeves to show them that there was no scar on his arm.”

“I didn’t think you’d figure it out. I thought the
Arcadia
would be lost to me forever.” 

Morty smiled proudly at her. “W
e just stayed with the corsair ‘cause we knew the privateer would have to come back to get his crew at some point.”

“Thank you, Morty.  You do
n’t know how much it means that you came for me and brought my ship back.”

Charlie took a couple of sips from her brandy and made a face at the taste of the cheap stuff.  She tipped up the glass and swallowed the rest in a couple of burning gulps.

“What do you say we go find some seedy tavern on the docks and go start a fight?”

“Charlie, you’re a girl.”

“I’ve always been a girl,” she said with a roguish grin.

Morty took a drink of his ale.  “You only want to fight when something is upsetting you.”

He knew her well.  “Jaxon and I had a fight.”

“Over me?”

“Aye,” she admitted.  “It’s my fault.  We had a disagreement after we met and I may have led him to believe there was more between us than there really was.”

“You used me to make him jealous?”

“Aye,” she admitted sheepishly. “I didn’t exactly lie.  He asked me if I love you—I just didn’t tell him I love you like a brother.”  Charlie was beginning to feel her alcohol.  “Come on, let’s go find a fight.”  She stood up, placed enough coins on the table to cover everything she hadn’t already paid for and headed out the door not waiting for him to object again.

Morty gulped down his ale and followed, catching up to her quickly.

She walked backwards in front of him and began feigning karate moves in his direction.  When she slowly kicked at his chest, he grabbed her foot and wouldn’t let go.

“Whatcha going to do now?”

Charlie laughed as she hopped backwards.  “Let go.  You know I can get free, but I’d have to hurt you to do it.”