Ransome's Quest (37 page)

“Aye, aye, sir.” Dawling knuckled his forehead and disappeared again.

Charlotte glanced between her brothers. “Why send for the surgeon? James, are you certain you are well?”

“I did not call him for either of us.” William sat at the table and motioned for the others to do so as well. “Something happened with Mr. Kent during the night, and the doctor wanted to talk to you, Ned, about it, since the lad is under your command.”

As they waited for the doctor to arrive, Charlotte sat on her hands, swinging her feet, and combing her teeth over her bottom lip. A faint buzzing filled her ears, and William’s, James’s, and Ned’s voices echoed oddly in her head.

Finally, Dawling showed the young doctor in. He nodded at each of them with a tight smile.

“Report, Doctor.”

“Yes, Commodore.” Hawthorne slid his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets and rocked back on his heels. “During the night, Mr. Kent began having a fit—a seizure—due to the pressure the swelling is putting on his brain. I was able to sedate him, but I need to perform the surgery soon if he is to have any chance at surviving.”

Ned stood and paced a tight circle behind the table. “So you are saying there is no chance that he will recover on his own.”

“No, sir.”

“Surgery is the only option?” Ned stopped and rested his hands on the back of Charlotte’s chair.

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well, then. Perform the surgery.”

“Yes, sir.” Hawthorne now turned his attention on William. “Commodore, this is a very tricky procedure. One slip, one mistake, and it will kill him. It would be best done on land, but taking him ashore would jostle him too much and possibly cause another seizure, which could also kill him. Because that is not an option, it would be better done while we are at anchorage here. The water is calm, so there should not be much danger of sudden motion to jostle my hand.”

“How long will the surgery last?”

“Hours, sir. First, I must determine exactly where the swelling inside the skull is. Then, I must bore a hole in the skull—”

William raised a hand and closed his eyes. “Please, Doctor, I do not need to know the details.” He turned to Ned. “Witherington has just begun the painting work to turn
Vengeance
into
Serenity,
which will take several hours to complete also. Have your master carpenter confer with mine, who has already asked to go ashore for wood for repairs. They could go together and save us time.”

“Aye, sir.” Ned’s fingers brushed against Charlotte’s shoulders, sending a shiver of pleasure down her spine.

“Dismissed.”

Ned snapped to attention. The doctor gave a half bow and left. Ned picked his hat up from the table. Charlotte rose to leave with him.

“Charlotte, you will stay.”

With her back to her brother, she looked up into Ned’s beautiful gray eyes.

“I will wait for you in the boat.” He touched her cheek and then exited, closing the cabin door behind him.

Charlotte turned to face her brothers. James, though lounging on the sofa in the corner and looking not the least interested in what was about to happen, was still someone who could be either a help or hindrance to her.

“Please sit, Charlotte.”

“I would rather stand, thank you.” She crossed her arms and held them there despite the burning tightness of the wound.

“Very well.” William clasped his hands behind his back. “You may return to
Audacious
to retrieve your dunnage. You will then immediately report yourself back to this cabin, where you are to remain until we dock in Kingston. Do I make myself clear?”

“No.”

“In what way was I unclear?”

“Oh, your demand was perfectly understandable, but I am not going to do that, William. Despite the fact I am currently dressed like a midshipman, I am not one of your men whom you can order about and expect to obey your every edict.” Her arm hurt too badly to keep them crossed, so she mimicked William’s stance instead.

“No, you are my sister. My sister who has not yet reached the age of majority and is therefore still my responsibility and, in the eyes of the law, unable to make decisions of your own.”

She had been making decisions of her own for years now, though many of them did not turn out quite as well as she expected. But her decision to marry Ned was different. “Then it is a good thing you gave us your blessing, as that negates any objections to the marriage or to Ned and me living as man and wife.”

William stiffened. “Have you…has the marriage been…?” A ruddy flush rose from his neck up into his face.

An answering heat flared in Charlotte’s cheeks. “No. Not yet.”

“Good. Then your reputation can still be salvaged.”

She threw her hands out in front of her. “Why does everyone believe that my marriage to Ned will ruin my reputation?”

“It is the method in which you married that concerns us, not the marriage itself, once it truly takes place.” William glanced over at James, who seemed to be more interested in cleaning under his fingernails with a letter opener than in William and Charlotte’s argument.

“Jean Baptiste is a minister. He led a church in New Orleans for twelve years before he had to sneak out of town one night to keep from being captured and sold into slavery.”

“A minister of what kind of church?”

“A Baptist church, and they even ordained him. So he’s as official as any rector Julia would find to wed us.”

Although, there was that gorgeous fabric Suresh had sent her. She would love to have that made into a gown and stand to publicly vow her love and devotion to Ned.

She knew one way in which she could appeal to William that he would not be able to resist. “Besides, is it not God who is the ultimate authority in such matters, not men? Ned and I made our vows to God”—or was that
before
God?—“and that makes us just as married as you and Julia because we made the same vows you did.”

William gave her an indulgent smile. “It would make Julia and me very happy if you would come aboard
Alexandra,
if you would choose to wait until you can have a real wedding, with your family there to witness it, before you enter into the marriage estate. Julia has her heart set on a wedding in her chapel and then giving you and Ned a fancy wedding breakfast. If you and Ned are known to have…behaved as a married couple before then, Julia is afraid your marriage will be tainted with rumors of impropriety for the rest of your lives. She does not want that for you.”

Charlotte groaned. Of all the contemptible, rotten arguments to use. “All right. I will go back to
Audacious,
get my belongings, and then come back to
Alexandra.
But I do this under
extreme
duress.”

William crossed the room and kissed her forehead. “I knew you would eventually see reason, Charlotte.”

Shaking her head, she left to rejoin her husband. No, she could not think of him as that now. But as soon as she climbed down into the boat, she could tell he read the truth in her expression. He would not talk to her for the entire trip back to
Audacious.

When Charlotte reached the top of the accommodation ladder, Declan stood there, offering her a hand up. Ned, coming up directly behind her, expressed her own astonishment.

“What are you still doing here, Mr. Declan? I thought you were to return to your vessel as soon as we arrived.” Ned started toward the great cabin, as if he did not want to be seen on deck with Charlotte. Not that she blamed him. After he stood up to William and declared he would disobey a direct order if William gave him one, she betrayed him and gave in.

Charlotte trailed along behind Declan and Ned.

“I wanted to make sure I had a chance to say goodbye to you, Cap’n. And to the missus.” Declan winked at her over his shoulder.

Missus…but not yet in the eyes of her family. She bumped into Declan, who had stopped just inside the door to the big cabin. She tried to push him out of the way. Finally, with a laugh, he moved. Another time, another place, she might enjoy his teasing nature, but not today.

He turned around and wrapped his arms around her, lifting her high off the floor. “I’m going to miss you, little missus.
Vengeance
—I guess I should get used to saying
Serenity. Serenity
isn’t going to be the same without you. Everyone thinks so.”

“Thank you, Declan.” She managed to get her arms around him and patted his shoulders. “You can put me down now.”

“Do I have to?”

She caught Ned’s accusatory glance over the giant’s shoulder. “Yes, Declan. You have to.”

He gave her one last squeeze and then set her down.

“Goodbye, Declan. Safe journey.”

“And you as well.”

She left him and Ned to their farewells and went to the sleeping cabin to retrieve her belongings. There wasn’t much, and it was all in her sea chest except for the coat and waistcoat she’d discarded on the floor this morning because one of the sick sailors had missed the bucket and gotten her. She did not want to leave them behind—they were the only spares she had. But she was not going to put them in her sea chest and have everything in it smell like that.

The walls vibrated when the cabin door closed. She went back out into the main room. Ned stood staring out the stern window.

“I am going to go down to the galley to see if Cook has an empty bread sack I can use to pack these soiled things over to
Alexandra
in.” There, she’d said it—not in so many words—but she had admitted that she would be leaving
Audacious
for her brother’s ship.

“Take a farthing with you,” Ned’s voice came out flat and uninterested. “Cook does not like to give anything away he can sell.”

“I don’t have—”

“In the second cubbyhole in the back of the desk. There’s a latch that opens a secret compartment.”

Charlotte found the small stash of coins and took out a farthing. “Ned, I’m sorry. He…he made a compelling argument.”

Ned shook his head but still would not look at her. “Just go and get your sack so that we can get you back over to
Alexandra.
We don’t want your family to think I am debauching you.”

“That’s not what they think.”

He did not reply.

Near tears, Charlotte grabbed the doorknob. It turned, but the door would not budge. She pushed and then pulled. No movement.

“Ned? Did you lock the door when Declan left?”

“No.” He finally turned away from the windows. “Perhaps it is stuck.” But even his greater strength produced no different result. The door was locked, or barred, from the other side. They both pounded on it and called out—for Declan, for the marine guard, for the steward—but no one came.

“I’ll go around and see what the problem is.” He went into the sleeping cabin.

At his banging on the door that connected to the captain’s galley and then to his steward’s cabin, Charlotte looked in on him. He turned, confusion, with a hint of amusement, affixed in his expression. “I do believe someone locked us in.”

Charlotte scooted past him and tried the door. Her neck tingled along her hairline, though she wasn’t certain why. She turned and pressed her back to the door. “Why would anyone do such a thing?”

Ned shrugged and took a step toward her. “No one is answering our calls for help.”

Charlotte took a step toward him. “Ned, I told William I know in my heart that, in the eyes of God, we are most definitely and surely married. I only agreed to go to
Alexandra
because Julia did not want any rumors to get started about…what we might have done…” she swallowed hard…“might do before we have a public church wedding.”

Ned reached over and tucked her hair behind her ears. “But what do those rumors matter if we are already married?”

“They don’t—”

Ned’s kiss stopped her words and her thoughts. Oh, yes. She loved her husband very, very much.

D
awling carried a pillow in from the bed and handed it to Julia, who tucked it under her head. William’s steward stood there a moment, staring at her, but then, with a shake of his burly body, he turned and left the room, muttering.

William pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. “Is lying on the floor really that much more comfortable than the bed or a chair?” For he found sitting on it highly uncomfortable.

She reached her hand up and patted his elbow. “It is the first time in days I have felt that I could breathe almost normally. There is still a sharp catch here”—she touched a spot halfway around to her back—“but it is not nearly as bad as before.”

“And the laudanum?”

“It helped some. I did not dream while I slept.” The shadow of memory passed through her eyes, but she blinked and it vanished.

“You only slept an hour. Perhaps you did not take enough.”

“I told you, half the amount the doctor ordered is fine. I know how it affects me, and I do not want to find myself in such a state that I cannot tell memory from reality.”

So she feared the laudanum would force her to remember what happened on
Sister Elizabeth
. He could not blame her for preferring to live with the pain. He just found it hard to believe that lying flat on her back on the floor could possibly be comfortable.