King of the Sea

Chapter 18

Chapter 18

"Teresa!" he cried - in a tone that could hardly have been more different from the one he had just deployed on her fellow passengers. "Go back for the love of Christ!" Then, forgetting himself entirely, he threw the megaphone aside and leaped toward the companionway down to the afterdeck.

It proved a far greater leap than he expected for Phoenix ran aground at that very moment. He went flying through the air and would have dashed out his brains on the afterdeck if he had not landed against a pile of netting, placed in readiness for helping the passengers abandon ship. Even so it left him stunned, so that when he came to it was to find the mainmast splintered and dangling at the royal stay and the foremast snapped right off and lying across the

bridge. "Mr Rogers!" he shouted, rising uncertainly to his feet.

There was no reply. He stared at the bridge.

He turned and stared at the opening where he had last seen Teresa. "Miss O'Dee?" he called.

There, too, he received no reply.

Distracted half out of his mind he stared at the bridge, and back at the opening, paralyzed with indecision.

G IN WORKS WONDERS on babies of all ages. A single stiff snorter in the private bar of the City Arms, Highbury Corner, soon took the red out of Emma's eyes and put it back where it belonged, on her cheeks. It also loosened her tongue to the point where she could explain, without too much embarrass ment, the precise reason for her dismissal. Lawrence sat facing her, his eyes like brass buttons, wondering if he was actually hearing the words. But the thought mediat struck him with its banality and he asked himself why, indeed, Emma should not explain such things to him in such a matter-of-fact way. They were both adults now - at least, they were both working for a living, even if he wasn't quite being paid for it yet.

His own tot of rum couldn't entirely explain the warm glow that now suffused his body. He felt privileged to be trusted with such feminine mysteries by young Emma. He must show himself worthy of the trust. "It must be jolly beastly," he said solemnly. "We chaps don't know the half of it, do we."

His interest took her by surprise; for a moment she could only nod and smile, blinking rapidly.

Alarmed at her silence, he blurted out, "I expect you wish you were a chap at times like that." Lord, what a fool he felt! Whither had his aplomb fled all of a sudden? If the chaps in the City could see him now! Cheeky, suave young Troy stammering out gibberish with one of his mother's maids! She grinned slyly. "Why? Ever wish you was a gel, then?"

"Not when that can happen." "Forget that! Other times. What about other times?"

She had an extraordinary ability to change the mood between them within the space of two or three words. Her first posing of the question had been arch not really expecting a serious reply. Now, suddenly, she was more philosophical. Her change of tone permitted him a moment of silence. He took advantage of it to stare at her, apparently in abstraction.

She was an attractive young thing, yet he could not decide what made her so. Her face was round and moonish and her nose like a butter bean covered in freckles, which spilled out onto her cheeks. They were not well-behaved freckles, either - not small, neat, and delicately placed - but large blotches that coalesced like brown water drying on parchment. And the ginger of her hair was almost too bright to be real. And yet she had the most captivating greeny blue eyes he'd ever seen - and beautiful cheekbones

that he just ached to reach out and touch.

What would it be like, he wondered, to inhabit that body and look out at the world through those lovely eyes set in that unpromising and yet somehow beautiful face? It couldn't be bad, he decided; certainly he had never seen Emma when she was not being cheerful and vivacious.

"Never thought of it before," he answered. "But meeting you think." well, it's bound to make a fellow

"Oh, does it!"

She was slipping back into her former archness. Anxious to prevent that, he said quickly, "I mean, you're usually so.... you know. I can't tell you what a shock it was to see you in tears out there. You're always so merry and bright. You're a real ray of sunshine in our house, Emma. Honestly you are. "Ah... well." She stared into her glass, half raised it

to her lips and set it down again. "I don't know what

I'm going to do now." "Where's your home. You're from London, aren't you?"

She stared pityingly at him, hinting that people like

him could never understand.

"Not a hope?" he asked.

"I wouldn't put the shame of it on them."

"But you've been unfairly dismissed." She laughed bleakly. "Aren't they all!" He took another sip. "You're not drinking." She nodded absently but left the glass untouched.

"Well," he went on, "knowing my mother, she'll never go back on her decision. And knowing you, you wouldn't return, not if she went down on bended knee."

She stared at him in mild amazement. "You do know me, don't you! And you're right I wouldn't." The spirit deserted her again. "But that doesn't put a roof over my head tonight."

"No brothers or sisters?"

"Same thing."

"Kind auntie and uncle?" She closed her eyes wearily.

Lawrence thought of his own kind auntie and uncle, by courtesy, Aunt Daphne and Uncle Brian. They'd certainly give her a skipper for the night, a heap of blankets on the scullery floor. But his spirit rose in angry rejection of the very idea. Anyway, Aunt Daphne would never let him forget it. She'd be making what Mama always called "those little corkscrew remarks of hers" for years to come about the night Lawrence played Sir Galahad.

His thoughts strayed to the fiver tucked inside his belt, a monstrous scheme popped into his head, fully formed, and made his scalp prickle. "You all right, Master

Lawrence?" she asked anxiously. He drew a deep breath and babbled, "I don't suppose you'd allow. no!"

What? I'm not in a position to refuse much, am I?" He licked his lips nervously and wished he knew

some trick to calm his suddenly pounding heart. "Well, it just so happens ... I mean, I had a bit of luck on a horse at Kempton today." He scrabbled for the banknote and plonked it on the table before her. She stared at it in apparent horror. He reached over and straightened it out, just to fill the silence.

An amused barman watched the transaction; he nudged the barmaid and nodded at the young couple by the window. "Disgustin'," she commented, taking the situation in at once with a practised, if jaundiced, eye.

"I mean, it's not as if it were my money," Lawrence explained eagerly. "Not like something I earned fair and square. Just a flutter and a lucky win."

His nervousness distressed him greatly; he could not help thinking how calm and collected his father would be in circumstances like this.

Emma was mesmerized at the sight of so much money - as much as she would earn in half a year. She wet her lips. "What'd I have to do for it?" she asked warily

"Nothing," he assured her, assuring himself it was, indeed, true. Just to get her inside the gilded cage - that had been as far as his dreams had reached. He hadn't thought of any specific quid pro quo- or, to be more honest, he had not dared let it cross his mind as yet.

"Only I seem to recall a previous offer," she pointed out. She had recovered something of her scattered wits by now and was smiling again, rather provoca tively, he thought.

She took up her tot of gin and placed it on the note, laying a kind of provisional claim to it, which she could now abandon or pursue at leisure.