Louise Allen - The Piratical Miss Ravenhurst

‘Sorry, sir.’ He was hauling at whatever it was now and it rose up suddenly, landed on the deck and showered them all with water. ‘That bucket, sir. Seemed the easiest way to clean it.’

It was, certainly, a very clean bucket. Angry, for no reason he could determine, Nathan narrowed his eyes at the flushed, bruised face that met his gaze with a look of eager willingness that was surely false. Nathan had dealt with dumb insolence often enough to recognise it now.

‘Look at the state of you, boy. I’ll not have a servant that looks like a swine-herd.’

‘I’ll go and change, sir.’

The boy was angry, he realised with a jolt. Angry with him. Was he still brooding on Nathan’s role on a pirate ship? Well, he was going to have to accept it, pretty damned quickly.

‘Go,’ he said with a jerk of his head, not realising until Clem and the bucket had vanished that the boy had nothing to change into. But that was not his problem—navigating this ship to place it in the best possible position for some fat merchantman to sail right into its jaws was. That was his job.

When he came down to the cabin over an hour later he was hit by light, air and the tang of salt water and lye soap. The cabin was spotless, the inner door standing open on to what had been a fetid little cubby hole and was now clean and dimly lit with the light from the open porthole.

A water tub stood on the floor, his mirror and shaving tackle were on the shelf, a towel dangled from a nail and a cloth was draped decorously over the bucket.

Clem was sitting at the table with a large bodkin, some twine and a pile of newspapers. ‘What are you doing now?’ Nathan demanded.

In response, Clem lifted his hand. Neat squares of newspaper were threaded onto the twine. ‘For the privy,’ he said concisely. ‘I found the newspaper by the galley range.’

‘My God.’ Nathan stared round a cabin that would have done a post captain proud. ‘You’ll make someone a wonderful wife, Clem.’

As soon as he said it he could have bitten his tongue out. The boy went scarlet, his expression horrified. ‘Damn it, I was teasing, I don’t mean…I don’t mean what I was warning you about last night. The other men, if they see this, will just think you’re a good servant.’

‘Well, I did it for me, too,’ Clem retorted. ‘I’ve got to live here as well. I don’t enjoy cleaning,’ he added with a grimace.

‘No. And you aren’t used to it, either, are you?’ Nathan spun a chair round and straddled it, arms along the back as he studied the flushed and indignant face opposite him. ‘When you are angry, that lilting local accent vanishes completely. You’ve been educated, haven’t you, Clem? You’re from quite a respectable family.’

‘I—’ There was no point in lying about it. Clemence bent her head, letting her hair fall over her face, and mumbled, ‘Yes. I went to school in Spanish Town. My father was a merchant, just in a small way.’

‘So the loss of your ship was a blow? Financially, I mean?’

She nodded, her mind working frantically to sort out a story that was as close to the truth as she could make it. Fewer risks of slipping up later, that way. ‘My uncle took everything that was left. He claims he’s looking after it, as my guardian.’ Indignation made her voice shake. ‘I didn’t feel safe any more, so I got a berth on the Raven Princess , in secret. Only she sailed early.’

‘Couldn’t you have gone to the Governor?’ Stanier asked.

‘The Governor?You have no idea, have you? No idea at all what it’s like being a—’ She stopped, appalled at what she had almost said.

‘A what, Clem?’ He was watching her like a hawk, she realised, risking a glance up through the fringe of ragged hair.

‘A small merchant’s son. Someone with no influence. Sir,’ she added, somewhat belatedly.

‘I think we can drop the sir , in here at least. My name is Nathan.’ Clemence nodded, not trusting herself to speak yet, not after that near-disaster. ‘So, we know about you now. What do you make of me, Clem?’

Make of him? What should she say? That he was probably the most disturbingly male creature she had ever come across? That she probably owed him her life, but that she could not trust him one inch? That she admired his style, but despised his morals?

‘I think,’ she said slowly, returning with care to her island lilt, ‘that you are a gentleman and I know that you were once in the navy, if what McTiernan said yesterday evening in the tavern is true. And it would seem to fit with your character.’

The unthinking natural arrogance of command, for one thing. But she couldn’t put it like that. ‘You are used to giving orders, your kit is very good quality, even if it is quite worn. There’s a broad arrow stamped on some of the instrument cases, so they were government issue once.’

Stanier—Nathan—nodded. ‘You’re right, Clem.’ Something inside her warmed at the praise, despite the pride that was telling her she wanted nothing from him, least of all his good opinion. ‘Yes, I’m the younger son of a gentleman and, yes, I was in the navy.’

‘What happened?’ Intrigued now, she shook back her hair and sat up straighter, watching his face. Something shadowed, dark, moved behind those blue eyes and the lines at the corners of his mouth tightened.

‘I was given the opportunity to resign.’

‘Oh.’ There really wasn’t any tactful way of asking. ‘Why?’

‘A little private enterprise here, a little bloodyminded insubordination there, a duel.’

‘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?’

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.’