King of the Sea

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

She screwed up her face and took an aimless step or two, feeling around her for something solid. He realized she was too blinded by the light to see where he had pointed; he took her gently by the elbow and guided her into the little arbour of safety. The touch of her arm was electric. An impulse within him to drop her like a hot coal fought with an equally powerful urge to hang on to her as long as he could forever, if possible.

The bosun stared at him in amazed disbelief before recollecting himself and jumping to his orders.

"We're carrying too much sail for this wind, Miss O'Dee," Troy explained. "We're going to take some of it in and just make sure the tarpaulins are well secured over the cargo hatches."

The place he had chosen for her was so well sheltered that he hardly needed to raise his voice - nor to draw so close to her as he now did. The air around her had a special, vibrant quality that captiva ted him.

She, for the moment, had no voice to raise, being too astonished to learn that the great Captain Troy actually knew her name.

"Nothing to be alarmed at," he added, "but the

sea's getting up and she's a new ship a bit of an unknown. Best to play safe, don't you know." Go, he told himself. What good can you do here?

"You know my name," she said at last.

"I make it my business to know as many passen gers' names as possible, young lady," he replied; it was more than half true, anyway. But then, feeling it sounded a little impersonal, even ungallant, he add ed, "Yours, to be sure, was one of the first." Then he could have bitten his tongue off. What was the point of saying such things? What good could ever come of these i***t notions that now hovered at the rim of his mind?.

But far below this superficial annoyance a great calm had descended upon him. The strengthening daylight was yet weak enough to blur those lines that were peculiarly hers and leave a blank into which his memory could paint those features once so dear.

She smiled demurely at his chivalrous compliment and retreated into the fastness of her self-sufficiency that unreachable femininity which still had powers to drive him distracted. She rearranged her shawl. For a moment the line of her breast was firm against the darks of shadows beyond; his hand stretched out in fancy and touched her there. He closed his eyes in shame but, like his earlier annoyance, it was a most superficial burden; inwardly he exulted once again.

He followed her gaze out to sea, aft toward the plume of smoke off the starboard quarter. "A steamship," he told her. "A merchantman like us, with a thousand tons more in ballast to steady her. I

expect you'd rather be aboard her at this moment." She faced him then and smiled. "Begod, Captain Troy, by no means."

Her smile the sweetness and pain of it succeeded where conscience and dignity had failed. It drove him from her. "Let the forr' ard steward know if the sea comes down the ventilators," he said in parting. "We'll plug them with hessian, but there's no sense in suffocating till then."

Teresa O'Dee followed him with her eyes. Though he no longer struck fear into her, as he had done when he was just a name, a remote, gruff figure on the bridge, she could understand even more why the men spoke of him in such awe and why scarce two minutes had elapsed between his turning out the watch below and the taking in of sails by that selfsame crew.

She watched them now as they finished their work, all looking as if they'd been alert for hours; and a great feeling of confidence surged through her. It was plain from his orders that they expected a storm, and a severe one at that, but the smooth and busy seamanship in progress all around her left no room for alarm. And it was all because of him, she realized. He was making all this happen. No matter what the storm might hurl at them, he would bring them safely through of that she was utterly confident. There was some quality within him mightier than the mighty Atlantic Ocean itself.

And among all the passengers, he had taken care to learn her name first!

When the Captain was well clear, the Bosun came forward again, with the First Mate at his side. She shrank back as the light of the lantern fell upon her in the nook where she sheltered. "Captain Troy said I could," she began defensively, but the Bosun cut her off with a laugh, not unfriendly.

"That's all right, miss. You stay there as long as you like. Well now, Mr McLennan," he said to the mate, "you've seen Troy's daughter. What d'you say?"

The man peered intently at Teresa, as if she were a specimen in a case. "Nothing like the girl," he said at last.

"Then the mystery thickens, eh!" The lantern vanished, and the two men with it, leaving her world newly darkened ways than one. and in more

Troy's daughter! The Captain had a daughter! Her euphoria shrank to one small point. Well, what else had she expected?

Nothing. Only hoped. Not even hoped. Daydreamed.

The single small point of her happiness began to swell once more as a new thought struck her: If Troy's daughter were old enough to resemble her (or not, as it now turned out), then the Captain might well be a widower!

She stayed on deck an hour or more, waiting for the chill of the strengthening wind to drive her back below; it was a bleak choice, between the bitter blast on deck and the nauseating stench of the female dormitory. If only she'd known what it was going to be like, she'd have begged or borrowed the extra and travelled second, instead. What with women who smoked pipes, women who chewed tobacco and spat their quid where it pleased them, and women who had never heard of soap and water, it was purgatory for a well-brought-up young woman down there. The only compensation was that the reek from the men's dormitory, on the other side of the iron grille, was even worse.

There were six cabins for second-class and no firsts. But as they were all at the back end of the boat, separated from the steerage by the bridge, they might as well have been on the far side of the moon as far as Teresa was concerned. One of the ladies there might want a companion or a maid or something, or they might have a child with the measles who'd need nursing anything to get out of this purgatory. 1 Frank Kelly, one of the seamen, who seemed a bit soft on her, said only four cabins were taken. She wondered would they let an empty one go a bit cheaper now the voyage was half over? She should have asked Captain Troy when she had the chance.

Dreams! It was all dreams. Going to America was a dream. Who said life there would be any better than it had been in King's County? Well, to be honest now, it couldn't be worse. It was her father's dreams had left her without a penny and brought her this low in the world. Still, fair dues to him, if he'd succeeded, they'd be living like pigs in clover. You couldn't say the dream was wrong, only the man who dreamed it. Her thoughts strayed back to Captain Troy.

There was a man to strike passion in your heart! One minute you'd be looking at the sea, filled with the fear of it; next moment you'd see him on deck and the fear would just fly out of you. That wasn't just her idea. Frank Kelly said the same. He said that sailors talk of lucky ships and unlucky ships, but the only luck a ship needed was a good captain and that made phoenix the luckiest vessel afloat.

Was he a widower, she wondered? And why did he look at her in that special way, as if he, too, was soft on her? There was something there, you'd be a fool not to see it. All those times when the weather had been better and she'd been promenading up here on the deck, round and round the hatch combings, and she'd look up at the bridge, very casual, and catch his eyes upon her. The men must have noticed it, too, else why would they wonder was she like his daughter?

Thoughts of Captain Troy's daughter brought a brief pang of envy. Ships' masters were rich and lived in fine houses in the country; their wives had their own gigs and did nothing only go to At Homes and balls, and they wore long gloves always, five or six pairs a day, Mary Quirke said. She could see the Captain's daughter now. Arabella, her name would be, and they lived in a grand villa on the edge of one of those cathedral towns like Barset. What time was that in England? Mid-morning, probably. So Miss Arabella would be off in her gig, all wrapped up against the winter wind with her hands sunk snug in her muff, and a haybox of soup for the deserving poor at her feet. Perhaps her mother would be the Honourable something or other from a titled family and the deserving poor would be their ancient retainers. Lætitia. The Honourable Lætitia Troy. She'd be deceased, of course, which was why young Arabella, who looked nothing like her, Teresa, was doing the charitable round.

On second thoughts, she didn't envy the daughter at all. When it came to matters of solace, of comforting the loneliness of a poor widower man, the unattached spinster had the daughter bet hollow. With that thought kindling at the cockles of her heart, Teresa O'Dee withstood the raging blasta full ten minutes longer than she might otherwise have done - which was why she was still on deck when the Captain sent for her.

APTAIN Troy GOT A good fix on Venus before the dawn effaced her, with the sky closing in, it might be the last they'd get before landfall. A few swift calculations, automatic to him by now, put them at just over 29° W by just under 49°N, or almost exactly halfway to Newfoundland. From now on it would be dead reckoning all the way.

The nonautomatic part of his mind was still appalled at the way he was behaving over Miss O'Dee. He could not understand it. No man living had greater cause to philander, nor better opportunity, either, and yet during all the years of his marriage he had resisted those siren calls - only he knew at what cost to his nerve and self-esteem.

"Oh, Francis, darling, it's not as if you've been away for years. Only a month weeks. But surely you can restrain your animal lusts oh, very well, six