Deborah Hale - The Bonny Bride

“Just give me a minute, will ye?” Jenny begged. “Before today I’ve never been more than twenty miles from home. This is my first time on a boat.”

“Very well.” Harris tried not to let it come out as a sigh. “One minute.”

Some intuition told him to keep his eyes off her, but they refused to obey.

Untying the ribbons of her bonnet, Jenny slipped it off. Deftly she extracted several pins from her hair. It fell to her waist in rippling chestnut waves, while shorter wisps curled softly around her face. Turning into the wind, she closed her eyes as the fresh breeze billowed her hair out behind her. She looked like the carved figurehead of St. Bride on the prow of the barque—magically, gloriously come to life.

Harris did not doubt his ability to protect Jenny Lennox from any other man aboard. But was he capable of protecting his own heart from being painfully ravished by her?

“Miss Lennox?” Harris called. Getting no answer, he pounded on her cabin door more insistently. “Jenny!”

As he’d predicted, a nasty gale had blown up when the St. Bride rounded the treacherous north coast of Ulster. If she’d been crossing the Atlantic in the other direction, with holds full of heavy New Brunswick timber, it would not have been so bad. As it was, running against the wind, lightly laden with mercantile goods, the barque bobbed helplessly in the heavy seas.

Beneath Harris’s feet, the deck gave a sudden violent roll, sending him crashing against the door of Jenny’s cabin. The flimsy deal boards gave way before him. He lurched into the cabin, barking his shin on something sharp and solid before sprawling onto the floor. Behind him, the cabin door banged open and shut in time to the shifting pitch of the vessel, admitting fleeting flashes of lamplight from the passage. Between those flickers, the small chamber was impenetrably dark.

Where could Jenny Lennox have gone? Harris wondered as he rubbed his smarting shin. She had agreed not to leave her cabin without him. Women, he grumbled under his breath. Making all sorts of glib promises to get their way. Then they went ahead and did as they pleased, without so much as a by-your-leave.

A low, anguished moan sounded near Harris’s right ear. Flailing out in the direction of the sound, his hand made solid contact with the clammy flesh of Jenny’s face.

“Miss Lennox, what are ye doing lying here in the dark?”

“Dying,” came a weak, raspy reply.

Beneath the pervading odors of salt water and wet wood, Harris smelled the sour stench of vomit. Masked by the darkness, he allowed himself a wry smile at Jenny’s expense. Apparently, beauty was not proof against the mundane rigors of seasickness.

He let his hand linger on her cheek. “Ye’re not going to die.”

“I want to.” The words came up on her rising gorge.

Harris dodged out of the way as Jenny leaned over the edge of her berth. For several seconds she gagged agonizingly, but with little result. When she sank back onto the pillow again, Harris bent over her. He had to lean close, to make himself heard above the thunder of waves crashing against the hull and the high, fitful whine of the wind.

“If ye can feel that bad and still make a joke, I expect ye’ll pull through,” he said gently. “Rest, now. I’ll go fetch Dr. Chisholm’s cure for ocean belly.”

“I don’t care,” Jenny whimpered. “Do what ye like with me.”

Harris almost laughed. Ye’ve no idea what I’d like to do with ye, lass, he thought to himself. If ye did, ye’d never have made me such a tempting offer, no matter how poorly ye felt. Leaning so close to Jenny, he could feel the warmth emanating from her body.

He must be daft to even entertain such fancies, Harris rebuked himself as he reluctantly pulled away from her. Minding his tender shin, he felt his way toward the door with ginger steps. Once the gale subsided, he’d have to do something about that broken latch. In the meantime, the damp air below decks had swollen the wood enough to make the door stick shut when he pulled it to.

He staggered back down the companionway a while later, lantern in hand and a book under his arm. A firm nudge from his shoulder was all it took to push Jenny’s door open again. Harris held the lantern high as he entered the cabin. He was not anxious to injure himself further, nor to pitch face-first onto the slimy floorboards.

Jenny shrank from the light, pulling a blanket over her head. “Put it out. It’s not so bad when I can’t see everything in the cabin rocking and swaying.”

Harris took his bearings. Somehow, Jenny’s brass-bound trunk had worked itself out from under her berth. It must have been the culprit responsible for his bruised shin. He cast the trunk a baleful glare and pushed it up beside the head of the berth.

“I need the light for a minute,” he told Jenny. “Then I’ll put it out.”

Her head still covered with the blanket, she did not respond. Harris hung the lantern from a hook driven into one of the ceiling beams. He found a heavy stoneware jug of water and tipped a splash of it onto his handkerchief. Securing an enamel basin against future need, he extinguished the lamp. Then he felt his way back to Jenny’s trunk, and sat down on it.

“Why don’t ye go away and leave me to die in peace?” Jenny moaned. She must have thrown off the blanket, for her words were no longer muffled.

“All part of the bargain.” Harris found her face and swiped his wet handkerchief across her forehead. “I promised yer father I’d see ye safe to Miramichi.”

Fumbling in his coat pocket, he produced a small flask. Supporting Jenny’s shoulders with one arm, he held it to her lips. “Take a sip of this. If ye can keep a bit of it down, it’ll help ye sleep. I ken that’s as much as we can do for ye tonight—let ye sleep until the storm’s past.”

She sat bolt upright, spitting a fine spray of whisky into his face. “What is that stuff? It tastes foul!”

“Fouler than what’s in yer mouth already?” Harris growled, mopping his face with the handkerchief. “For yer information, this is the finest single malt whisky—good for a variety of medicinal purposes, including the treatment of seasickness. Now drink it!”

Reluctantly she obliged. Harris could almost hear her grimace at the taste of the liquor.

“Lie back, and let that settle a minute before we try another drop.”

“I’ll never keep it down. It’s burning all the way!”

“Aye,” he replied dryly. “It’ll light a fire in yer belly, too. Now, while we’re waiting for the whisky to do its work, ye need something to keep yer mind off how miserable ye feel. If ye’d let me light the lantern again, I brought a book I could read to ye.”

“What’s the book?” she asked.

Harris thought he heard a note of longing in her voice.

“One of my favorites—Walter Scott’s Rob Roy.”

“Oh.”

Never had he heard so wistful a sound as that brief word.

“It’s no use,” Jenny said finally. “I couldn’t bear the light. Rob Roy—it sounds a brave story. What’s it about?”

“Take another drink of the whisky first.”

She submitted with a sigh of resignation. Though she gasped as the whisky went down, she did not spew it back up again. Harris took it as a sign his prescription was working after all.

Hunching forward, he brought his mouth close to Jenny’s ear so he would not have to shout above the storm. Harris began to relate the story of Frank Osbaldistone and his adventures with the outlawed Rob Roy McGregor. Now and then, he lapsed into Scott’s dramatic prose, reciting whole passages from memory. At regular intervals, he paused to prop Jenny up and administer another dose of whisky.