‘A duel?’ Clemence stared. ‘I thought naval officers weren’t allowed to duel.’
‘Correct.’ Nathan’s mouth twisted into a wry smile, but the bleakness behind his eyes spoke of complex emotion.
‘Did you kill him?’
He shook his head and she felt unaccountably relieved. ‘No, I did not.’ It would be a horrible thing to have to live with—but why should she worry about the spiritual health of a King’s officer turned pirate?
‘Then what happened?’
‘You can imagine how well that went down with my family. It was felt that my absence would be the best way of dealing with the situation. So I found employment here and there, legal and perhaps not quite so legal, and ended up in Kingston with no ship and no money.’
‘Why are you telling me all this?’ she asked. Instinct told her that Nathan Stanier was a proud, private man. He could not be enjoying sharing the details of his disgrace and penury with a scrubby youth rescued from the dockside.
‘They say that a man has no secrets from his valet, and you are the nearest to one of those I’m likely to have for a while. You might as well know the worst about me from the outset.’ He got up in a smooth movement that seemed to mask barely controlled emotion. Shame? she wondered. Or just anger at the situation he found himself in?
She could feel herself slipping closer and closer to letting her guard down with him and that, she knew, could be fatal. ‘But I knew the worst about you already,’ she pointed out, hauling herself back from the brink of blurting out who, and what, she was, casting herself onto that broad chest and giving up fighting. ‘I knew you have taken McTiernan’s money and that makes you a pirate. I really can’t think of anything worse. Can you?’
Chapter Four
Nathan spun round on his heel and stared at her. ‘For a bright lad, you’ve a reckless tongue,’ he remarked, his voice mild. His eyes, bleak, belied his tone utterly. ‘Yes, I can think of worse things. Betrayal and treachery for two.’ Then he laughed, sending a shiver down her spine. ‘But you’re right, they don’t get much worse than this crew, I suspect, and now we’re part of it.’
‘Well, I didn’t volunteer,’ Clemence said bitterly.
‘No, and I didn’t save your ungrateful sk
in from that pack of jackals in order to get self-righteous lectures from you either, brat. So keep your lip buttoned, Clem, or I’ll tan your breeches for you.’
She subsided, instantly. Let him think she was terrified of a beating; better that than have him lay hands on her. The vision of herself turned over Nathan Stanier’s knee and that broad palm descending on her upturned buttocks made her go hot and cold all over. There was no way, surely, that he could fail to notice that she was a girl if that happened.
‘I’ll go and get our dinner, shall I?’ she offered, by way of a flag of truce.
‘I’m eating with the captain and Cutler.’ Nathan was shrugging into his coat. Old naval respect for a captain must be engrained, Clemence thought dourly, if he felt he had to tidy himself up for that scum.
‘Will they tell you where we are going?’ she asked. If they docked at a harbour on one of the other islands, surely she could slip ashore?
‘Hunting,’ Nathan said. ‘And not from a harbour, if that’s what you are hoping for. McTiernan’s got a hideaway, and I can show him a shortcut to get to it. Now, enough questions. Are you going to eat properly, if I’m not there to nag you?’
Disarmed by his concern, she smiled. Life was so complicated. It would be much easier if it was black and white, if he was an out-and-out villain, but he wasn’t and liking, gratitude and the disconcerting tingle of desire kept undermining her certainty. ‘Yes, I promise. I’m hungry after all that work.’ Nathan was staring at her. ‘What is it?’
‘That bruise is getting worse,’ he said abruptly. ‘It looks…odd. You’re all right otherwise? You’re not seasick?’
‘In this weather? No. I don’t know what I would be like in a storm, though. My father used to take me on short sea journeys with him. The crews were very good, they’d let me go anywhere, even though I was a—a child,’ she finished hastily.
The moment he was gone, she went to look at her reflection in his shaving mirror. Yes, her face was black, blue and purple on one side and still swollen. Her hair was lank and she plucked at it, wondering whether to wash it. It was horrible like this, but on the other hand it helped her disguise, and that was the most important thing. Clemence fished the bandana out of her back pocket and tied it round her forehead again, pulling it one way, then another for effect.
Then the irony of it struck her. Here she was, prinking and posing in front of a mirror, trying to make herself look as unfeminine and unattractive as possible, when all the time she should be on her way to England, to her aunt Amelia the Duchess of Allington, stepmother to the present duke, who was to give her some town bronze before her come-out next Season. They’d have the letter by now, telling them of her father’s death, of her own ill health.
She should be in the luxury of her own cabin on a large merchantman, practising flirting with the officers and worrying that she did not have pretty enough gowns in her luggage.
A proper young lady in this situation should be in a state of collapse, not scrubbing out privies, swaggering about with a knife and sharing a cabin with an attractive, dangerous, good-for-nothing rogue. Depressingly, this proved she was not a proper young lady. On the other hand, if she was, she would still be in the Naismiths’ power. Better to be a skinny tomboy and alive.
Clemence gave the bandana one last tweak and headed for the galley, her stomach rumbling with genuine hunger as it had not done for weeks.
Street was ladling an unpleasant-looking grey slop into four buckets. Clemence wrinkled her nose, hung back and hoped this was not dinner.
‘There, that’ll do for ’em.’ The cook gestured to the two hands who were waiting. ‘They got water?’
‘Enough,’ one of the men said, spitting on the deck close to Clemence’s feet. ‘Waste of space, the lot of them. Not worth nothing.’