Burning Bright (16 page)

“I will.”

“ ‘Tes best you not go to Santa Cruz, missie, it ain’t a place for a young lady.” Bolton squinted and looked up into the cloudless sky. “Don’t much like cities, cold and crowded as they be. Open air and sun, ‘tes what every man needs.”

Elinor followed his gaze but saw nothing. “I intend to visit the shore,” she said. “It looks so much different from the sea at Brighton. We went only once, and it was so cold and rocky… I did not realize the seashore could look so inviting.”

Bolton nodded. “ ‘Tes a grand thing the sea is, wi’ moods like a weather-cock, deadly as you like when she isn’t smilin’ at ye.” He picked absently at a rough patch on the bow rail with the air of a man dissatisfied with the job he’d done and continued to watch the sky. “Yon,” he said, straightening and pointing aft.

Elinor leaned out over the bow rail with her hand on the rigging and looked where he pointed. A distant speck no bigger than a pinprick seemed to hover in the sky on the larboard side of the ship, but as they watched, it grew and resolved first into an oblong shape, then into the figure of a man, dropping out of the sky to skim across the waves faster than a hawk stooping to its prey. Ramsay, minus his coat and hat, swept past them, curved around the bow and up again in a graceful arc, hovered briefly at the apex of the curve, then darted past the masts and rigging toward the stern and out of their sight.

“Fair makes my gut quiver, watching ‘imself flittin’ about,” Bolton said. “ ‘Tesn’t natural.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Elinor said, laughing. “If it were, then everyone could do it.”

“ ‘Tesn’t natural,” Bolton repeated. “But ‘tes a beautiful thing else.”

“Not like fire, then?” Elinor teased.

“Fire’s got its own beauty. And any man c’n spark a flame, missie. Scorchers need no match nor flint, ‘tes so. But no man c’n fly however he sets his mind to ‘t, ‘cept he’s got the talent.”

“I think you’re simply accustomed to Scorchers.”

“ ‘Tes true my daughter’s like to have given me a fondness for ‘em. Nigh to leavin’ the academy, she is, and her mum ‘n me be reet proud o’ her.”

“You should be. I would have liked to join a fire brigade, if I’d been allowed.”

“So you joined the Navy instead?” Bolton sounded amused. “ ‘Tes true you ain’t stopped by not bein’ allowed things.”

“I had not thought of myself in quite that way, but I suppose I agree with you.” Elinor straightened her sleeves and wished she dared put on her gown with the shorter sleeves. There was no one here to care what she looked like, and it would not be so bad to let the sun turn her brown, but she pictured herself returning to London… it seemed she did care more for the opinions of her social class than she imagined. Besides, if Ramsay and his officers could endure the sun in their heavy, blue undress coats, she could bear her muslin gown with the long sleeves.

“Miss Pembroke! I say, Miss Pembroke!”

Elinor closed her lips on a word she’d heard the bo’sun’s mate say, put on a polite smile, and turned to watch the awkward, black-clad figure of Stephen Selkirk cross the deck toward her. How he managed to move in such a way as to interfere with the path of every sailor on the forecastle was a mystery to her, especially since he hopped and pivoted in an effort
not
to do so.

Bolton spat over the side, then said, “Excuse me, missie, got things t’ do,” and went well out of Selkirk’s path past the bowsprit to clamber up the foremast rigging. He made no attempt to disguise the fact that he was fleeing.

“Miss Pembroke,” the chaplain said, breathing a little heavily, “I’m told we will be permitted shore leave this afternoon. I’m quite looking forward to it, aren’t you?” His thick, dirty-blond hair was tied back at the nape of his neck with a black ribbon, but some of it was slipping free to hang limp around his face.

“Indeed, Mr. Selkirk, I—”

“Such a glorious day for it too. Not too hot, not too cold.”

“Yes, I can—”

“I wonder, Miss Pembroke, if you would allow me to accompany you ashore? It would be improper for you to wander the city unescorted.”

More improper than being confined with three hundred men, unescorted?
“I thank you, Mr. Selkirk, but I already—”

“Then that’s settled. I look forward to it—”

“
Mr. Selkirk,
” Elinor said, feeling desperate, “I already have an escort but thank you so much for your concern it truly is unnecessary.” She drew in a deep breath.

Selkirk looked surprised. “You should have said so, Miss Pembroke. I’m not one to impose on others.”

“I apologize, sir, for the miscommunication.”

He waved his hand. “No matter. Would you care to walk with me? I find a stroll along the deck most bracing in the mornings. And we might continue the conversation we were having yesterday, I hope? About the nature of divinity as expressed in the natural world?”

“I should be pleased to do so,” Elinor said, finding it difficult to maintain her smile. She took Selkirk’s offered arm and tried to keep up as he dragged her along, wandering drunkenly among the tarry ropes and seeming unconcerned that he was making sailors step out of his way. The first time she had accepted his arm, she had felt awkward, terribly conscious that the contact would allow him to perceive her emotions. It would have felt intrusive even if she hadn’t feared hurting
his
feelings with her mild dislike of him. But Selkirk had simply patted her arm and said, “Of course a lady of such great sensibility as you are would feel distaste for the setting in which you find yourself,” and had never once since then realized how irritated he made her.

Had she encountered him at home, Selkirk would have been a mild annoyance, someone to be endured for an hour or two at a supper or a dance. Here, in the confines of
Athena
, he was both unavoidable and insufferable. His sermons displayed genuine piety, but his air of inviting confidences, of being permanently on the verge of solving problems one either did not have or did not want solved, made him someone Elinor wished she could avoid. But upon learning she was from Hertfordshire, and that they shared some mutual acquaintances, he had decided to make her the recipient of his friendly overtures, and she was too polite to reject him.

Besides,
she told herself, barely regaining her balance after tripping over a bucket her companion had accidentally kicked into her path,
imagine how awkward it would be, meeting one another over the supper table almost every night, having snubbed him openly.
She clutched his arm a little tighter and he smiled down at her; she managed to smile in return.
But oh, how pleasant not to be the subject of his attention.

In which there is Flying, a new friend, and an unexpected attack

ou have only to relax,” Ramsay said, “to not resist.”

“You cannot Move someone who fights you?”

“It’s more difficult, sometimes impossible, if they’re strong-willed enough. But you aren’t going to fight, are you?”

Elinor cast a skeptical eye on the captain, impeccably turned out as if they were going to a dance rather than the seashore some half a mile away. “Could not Mr. Hervey transport me?”

“Mr. Hervey is already on leave ashore. Come, Miss Pembroke, you have demonstrated your talent for all of us. Let me do the same for you.”

“But I saw you Fly this—aah!”

She felt the faintest pressure on her entire lower body, an invisible cushion that flexed when she moved, and then her feet left the deck and she hovered a few inches in the air. She flailed a little before realizing that, counter to her expectations, she did not feel awkward or unbalanced. She kicked her feet, but remained perfectly stationary. “Oh,” she said.

“Back, the rest of you, it’s not like you’ve never seen this before,” Ramsay commanded, and the men who had been openly gaping pretended to return to work. “Are you afraid of heights?”

“Not to my knowledge.” She was floating higher now, drifting toward the rail, and despite her words her heart was hammering. Suppose he dropped her? Suppose he lost control of both of them and they plummeted into the ocean? Suppose—

“Slowly at first, I think,” Ramsay said, and then he was beside her, both legs drawn up as if he were sitting on a chair. Then she was over the rail and floating some twenty feet above the waves, and she gave another involuntary cry, remembering the bo’sun’s chair—but she felt as secure, this time, as if she were seated on the sofa in the great cabin. More secure, even, since that sofa moved with the waves all the time, and had once flung her off during some rough weather.

The breeze, with its salt spray, threaded through her hair and caressed her cheeks and hands. She looked down at the waves beneath her, said “No!” and snatched at her shoe, then watched it fall away from her reaching fingers toward the white-capped crests. It came to an abrupt halt about three feet above the waves, then reversed its course until Ramsay plucked it out of the air and returned it to her with a bow made comical by his position in midair.

“Thank you,” Elinor said, and squatted to put it on, only realizing when she was straightening again that she had not given one thought to the empty space beneath her. “This is…rather invigorating, actually,” she said.

Ramsay smiled, the barest twist of his lips. “I think so. It’s like swimming, except far, far better, of course.”

“You can swim?”

“More or less. I think I actually Fly through the water more than swim, but as long as it keeps me from drowning, I don’t care what it is. Care to go a little faster?”

“I think so.”

The breeze became a wind, and then she was flying, skimming above the waves. This close to shore, they resolved themselves into long lines topped with white that curled and crashed against the dark gold of the beach ahead. She threw back her head and laughed with delight. No wonder Ramsay went Flying every day. If she had his talent, she might never come down to earth. It was almost as wonderful as letting the fire loose.

As she thought that, she registered the nearness of the shore, how the dark gold of the wet sand became the paler gold of the upper beach, and beyond that were numberless trees of varieties she had never seen before. The wind brought their green, wet fragrance to her nose, and she breathed it in and thought,
They would blaze high enough to wake the volcano
, and a chill passed over her. That she could even consider such an indulgence—

“Start walking,” Ramsay said, coming back to Fly close beside her. “It will keep you from falling over when you land.”

She obediently began moving her legs as they descended toward the beach, gradually losing speed, and then she was trotting along the wet sand, her feet making shallow dimples in the ground, and she came to a stop and tried not to breathe heavily as the earth reasserted its grasp on her. The land rocked beneath her as if it were
Athena’
s deck; she balanced carefully on the balls of her feet and prayed she would not fall over. “Captain Ramsay, I believe you were showing off,” she said when she had composed herself.

Ramsay was still hovering two inches above the sand. “Possibly. But you have to admit it’s a wondrous thing.”

“It is.” Elinor kicked the wet sand and a clump flew an inch or so before settling back to earth. “And this is a marvelous place.”