Burning Bright (15 page)

She poured herself a cup, stirred in a lump of sugar, sipped, and closed her eyes. With the burnt-chocolate smell of the coffee, the spicy scent of the sausage and the faint hot-water smell of the hard-boiled eggs in their shells (Dolph either couldn’t do soft-boiled or was being spiteful again) she could almost imagine herself at home. Though at home she could not have heard the rush of the tide against the stone walls of the harbor, nor the cawing cry of seabirds diving past the open window.

“Good morning,” Ramsay said, and Elinor quickly opened her eyes. “Ready to go ashore today?”

“May I?”

He took an egg and began peeling it. “Of course.” The shell fell away in small shards, pitting the smooth surface with its reluctance to let go.

Elinor peeled an egg of her own. Hers was more cooperative. “I thought it might be unfair to ask someone to give up his time in town, since I understand there is little there to interest me.”

“Not unless you like getting drunk and—that is, the pleasures of Santa Cruz are tailored to seamen, it’s true,” Ramsay said with one of his wry smiles. “And I’ll take you myself. I can’t say I’m interested in the pleasures of Santa Cruz either.”

“Would that not interfere with your duties?”

Ramsay shrugged and flicked eggshell off his fingers. “I’ve already called upon the port admiral, and I can afford to take an hour or so. Arthur—Lieutenant Beaumont—isn’t interested in going ashore at all. Something about not wanting to run into anyone he might owe money to. He’s perfectly capable of handling any emergencies that might arise.”

The door banged open, but instead of Dolph, Midshipman Hervey entered, breathless, carrying a knobby sack and a couple of parcels. “Mail for you, sir, and some things for Miss Pembroke,” he said, giving the sack to Ramsay.

“The mail’s late today,” Ramsay said.

“I apologize, sir, I had to wait at the Admiralty, and then there was the bookseller’s.” Hervey handed two packages tied with string, one soft, one rectangular and hard, to Elinor, who immediately began tearing the wrapper from the latter. “Mr. Hervey, do not say you have found it?” she exclaimed.

“It’s not as if it’s that old, Miss Pembroke,” Hervey said. “I can’t believe you’ve never read
The Romance of the Forest
. It’s really quite good.”

“My mother disapproves of my reading novels. She prefers a good moral tale. I believe we own everything Hannah More ever wrote.” Three volumes fell from the wrapper into her lap. “Thank you so much, Mr. Hervey.”

“I believe I owe you, since you were so kind as to give me that other book. Didn’t think I’d like it at first—it’s not as exciting as anything Mrs. Radcliffe writes, but I came to like it immensely.”

“I admit to being occasionally disconcerted to read my own name on those pages, but I promise you that did not influence my enjoyment of it! I wonder that the author signs herself only ‘A Lady.’
Sense and Sensibility
is something any author could be proud of, and it’s not as if it is improper for a woman to write novels.”

“She might be shy of publicity. I hope she writes more of ‘em. I was near on the edge of my chair when Elinor found out Edward was engaged to that bottle-head Lucy.”

“Please use language more fitting to a member of His Majesty’s Navy, Mr. Hervey,” Ramsay said, but the amusement in his voice tempered the rebuke.

“I beg your pardon, sir. Miss Pembroke, you’ll have to tell me how you like
The Romance of the Forest
. It’s one of my favorites.”

“I’m certain I will enjoy it, Mr. Hervey,” Elinor said. Hervey smiled at her again and bumped into Dolph as he left, nearly causing the steward to drop the silver serving dish he carried. Dolph muttered at his retreating back and set the dish in front of Ramsay, ignoring Elinor completely. Ramsay raised an eyebrow at Dolph and gave the dish a push. “I believe I’ve told you to serve Miss Pembroke first,” he said.

Dolph looked at Elinor, who smiled at him, thinking,
You are the most unpleasant person I have ever met,
wishing she were an Extraordinary Speaker to send that thought into his unwilling brain. He picked up the dish and brought it to Elinor’s side of the table, setting it down with a little more force than before, and dropped a smallish beefsteak on her plate. “Thank you, Dolph,” Elinor said sweetly, and was rewarded by seeing his face, now turned away from Ramsay, twist into a scowl. He served Ramsay a considerably larger piece of meat and stomped out of the room.

Ramsay turned in his seat to watch him go, shrugged, and applied himself to his food. “I had no idea Mr. Hervey was so interested in literature,” he said. “You’ve certainly brought out a side of him we’ve never seen.”

Elinor brought a forkful of tender meat to her lips. It was amazing how well Ramsay ate. “I enjoy discussing books. I rarely have—had—the opportunity at home. But you seem not to have time to read, though you have a surprising collection,” she added, indicating the cupboard under the window. Aside from suppers with his officers, Ramsay never sat still for longer than the half-hour he spared himself for meals, and sometimes he did not even grant himself that much leisure.

“Surprising how?”

“Ah—that is—” She had made the comment without thinking, and now blurted out, “I did not think a man like you would be so interested in poetry.”

Ramsay’s eyebrows lifted almost to his hairline. “A man like me? And what kind of man am I, Miss Pembroke?”

Elinor wished the floor would open and drop her into the gunroom below, onto the table to disrupt the officers’ breakfast. It would be far less embarrassing than this. “I meant only…oh…you are a…a man of action, I think, and not…contemplative…and…”

He laughed. “Don’t tie yourself into knots, Miss Pembroke, I take your meaning. I think there’s a regrettable attitude about poetry, that it’s the province solely of wan and wispy young men or women of extreme sensibility. I blame Wordsworth, with all his talk of buttercups and daffodils.”

“I hardly think that is fair to Mr. Wordsworth. Some of his writing is quite serious and non-floral.”

Ramsay laughed and waved his hand dismissively. “I should have known better than to make sweeping exaggerations to someone as well-read as you. I admit to having strong preferences in my literature. ‘The Tyger,’ for example, which surely
you
must be familiar with.”

“I am afraid I do not know that one. It is not by Wordsworth, I know.”

“No, a fellow named William Blake. Listen.” He leaned back in his seat and laced his fingers together on the table top before him, then began speaking, his voice now lower and more intense.

“Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?”

The poet’s words sent a thrill through Elinor, eerie and marvelous. “I think Mr. Blake must have known more than a few Scorchers,” she said. “I feel my talent is much like his tiger, fierce and terrible and beautiful all at once.”

“Nothing wan or wispy about that poem, is there, Miss Pembroke?”

“Not at all, Captain. Am I making unwarranted assumptions again when I suggest you must also like
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
?”

“Hah! Coleridge must have gone to sea once. ‘
Water, water every where, Nor any drop to drink.’
We were becalmed three years ago off the coast of Panama and came close to dying of thirst, and I had to stop a couple of men from drinking the seawater. No, it is his ‘Kubla Khan’ that appeals to me, the contrasts, the ambiguity.”

“I do not know that poem.”

“It hasn’t been published yet. I was lucky enough to attend a reading several years ago. I wonder that you know his poetry at all, if your mother was so scandalized by novels—she would definitely not approve of Coleridge.”

“No, but she believes your friend Mr. Wordsworth to be representative of all poets, and I doubt it has ever occurred to her that a poet might write about the leprous Nightmare Life-in-Death who makes men’s blood run cold.” The words left her lips before it occurred to
her
that perhaps “leprous Nightmare Life-in-Death” was not a phrase a young woman ought to know, and she blushed, but Ramsay merely looked amused.

“Never fear, Miss Pembroke, I’m not scandalized,” he said. “You don’t seem to be afraid of what people think of you.”

He had to be thinking of that night in the music room. “I simply act, sometimes, before I have thought out the consequences.”

“It didn’t seem that way in the Admiralty. You seemed to have considered all the possibilities when you approached Lord Melville.”

“Not all. I—” She stopped, unable to tell him the truth. She hadn’t considered how her leaving would hurt Selina. She hadn’t realized she did care, at least a little, about what people would think of her when she returned to society if they knew she had been alone and unaccompanied on a ship full of sailors. “I didn’t realize the living conditions would be so confined,” she continued. “Not that I have any complaints, Captain, I merely intend to illustrate what I did not know to anticipate.”

Ramsay had his elbow on the table, his chin propped on his hand, and was regarding her in a way that told her he knew she hadn’t been completely honest with him. He teased apart a bit of egg with his fork, idly, stabbing with the tines at each piece. “Do you have regrets?”

“No.” It was abrupt, too abrupt, but she had a sudden fear that if she admitted any of her worries, he might tell Hervey to take her back on his next trip, and she was
not
going back. “No,” she said more casually, and gestured at the window. “Not when I have such an extraordinary view. I have never seen anything so beautiful.”

“Where we’re going, such sights are commonplace. If the West Indies were not so hazardous to the health, it would be impossible to prevent a mass emigration there. Though it’s very hot in the summer. I wish these pirates followed the practices of their forebears and went north during the hottest months. We could cruise off Newfoundland and enjoy the breeze.”

“I think you cannot mean you wish the pirates success in any way.”

He laughed, a short, abrupt sound. “No, but as we’re to chase after them whatever they do, I’d rather not swelter under the Caribbean sun. The Navy hasn’t authorized cooler uniforms for tropical conditions.”

“I sympathize completely, Captain.”

He regarded her, his eyes narrowed in thought. “I imagine you do. We should see about getting you some kind of parasol. That bonnet seems insufficient protection.”

“Please don’t put yourself to any extra trouble on my account, sir.”

“Miss Pembroke, you need to learn to accept gallant gestures in the spirit they’re offered,” he said, straight-faced but with that merry twinkle in his eye that said he was teasing her.

“I’m afraid I’m not accustomed to them, so you must make allowances for my ingratitude,” she replied with a smile.

“You’re not? You surprise me, Miss Pembroke.” He pushed his chair back, leaving Elinor groping for a response to a statement she didn’t understand. “We’ll go in an hour or so, before the heat becomes too much, if that’s agreeable to you.”

“Of course, Captain,” Elinor said. “Will you send someone to tell me when the boat is ready?”

He smiled, that crooked tooth peeking out once more. “Oh, we won’t be using the boat. Not when we can take a more… direct approach.”

Elinor sucked in a breath. “But, Captain—”

“Come now, Miss Pembroke, I can’t believe the lady who bearded the First Lord in his chilly, dark den is afraid to try something new!” He smiled more widely. “I promise I won’t drop you,” he added, and shut the door behind himself.

Elinor’s face warmed. Flying. Or being Moved, which amounted to the same thing.
I must put on a clean shift
, she thought, then stuffed her fist in her mouth to keep from laughing at herself. Of course Ramsay wouldn’t expose her to embarrassment. But…
flying
…

She left the table before Dolph could enter to clear it and went up to the forecastle, adjusting her bonnet against the bright sun that was such a contrast to the dimly lit main deck. The sailors made way for Elinor as she made her way forward, touching their foreheads as if they were the brims of their nonexistent hats and avoiding her eyes. She was still uncertain, more than a week after the capture of the
Joyeux
, whether this was from fear or from awe, but she stayed well away from their territory nonetheless, remembering stripes of blood on a naked back. She stayed away from the gunroom, too, after her one visit, which had been an awkward, silent thing in which she could feel the discomfort of the officers like an ashy film over her skin.

Now she smiled and nodded, walking nimbly around coils of rope and dodging a group of men who, in response to a shouted command, swarmed up the rigging of the mizzen sails like so many squirrels. She was never going to understand their language, all that “Stretch out those tops’l halliards!” and “Clear that hawse!” Nor would she learn the difference between “hull up” and “hull down,” but she could tell the topgallant from the mainsail and knew the difference between starboard and larboard. She was a beautiful ship,
Athena
was, and now that she no longer stank of fresh paint Elinor found it quite pleasant to stand at the bow as close as she could come to the figurehead, which was indeed the goddess Athena, and let the wind wash over her and through her as if it were trying to carry her away.

“Mr. Bolton,” she said when she had reached her usual spot, “good morning.”

Bolton paused in running his fingers over the place where two paler boards fitted between the planks of the darker, sun-weathered deck. “Mornin’ to you, missie,” he said. Bolton himself was as sun-weathered as the ship, his bald head permanently sunburned and marked with a constellation of brown freckles, but he looked much healthier than he had when she’d met him, vomiting into a bucket and complaining of stomach pains. He stood and stretched with a great popping of joints. “You’ll be goin’ ashore, belike?”