Page 31 of Miss Whittier Makes a List
“That is none of your business, and don’t call me that!”
“Well, may I call you Hannah? Seems to me we have progressed to that stage.”
“We have not!”she declared.Then she softened the blow by adding.“But since you have already been doing so, you might as well continue.”
“And it is my desire to hear Daniel on your lips,”he said.
“You want Mr. Futtrell to stand on the quarterdeck and yell‘Ship’s discipline’?”she asked, unable to keep back the good humor that bubbled up in her.“I do not, sir.”
He laughed.“Very well! Call me Captain Spark.”
She stod up to leave and he rose, too, walking her to the door.“Really, these are paltry objections, my dear. I would have thought someone with your brains could do better.”
“Of course I can,”she said crisply, her hand on the knob.“You are an Englishman and much too old for me.”
He leaned his hand against the door as she tried to turn the handle.“Those are weighty objections, Hannah,”he agreed.“I’ll always be an Englishman, but I assure you that no partof me is decrepit.Let me repeat a previous demonstration and add something more.”
Before she could stop him, he took her face in his hands and kissed her. His lips were as warm as she remembered from their first meeting on the deck of theMolly Claridge.The ship yawed them and she grabbed him around the waist to stay on her feet. He pulled her closer until their bodies touched, murmuring something in her ear that made no sense. As she tried to regain her balance, he took her earlobe in his teeth, then ran his tongue inside her ear. The shivers that raced down her back made her moan a little, but only a very little. She wished he would stop, but when he did, she felt absurd tears tickling her eyelids. She wondered how her fingers could ever dig so into his back, and she hoped she had not scratched him.
He released her then, and turned away to the chart table.“Go to bed, Hannah,”he said, his voice a bitdazed,“and don’t try to improve on perfection.”
She hurried from the cabin, her face flaming, grateful for the darkness of the companionway. The solitude of her cabin was a blessed relief, she decided as she closed the door behind her, and then sighed with exasperation. Captain Spark’s boat cloak was still draped over the hammock.“I willnot return it tonight!”she said out loud.“I would have to be crazy!”
She climbed the gun and crawled into her hammock, wrapping the cloak tightly about her, and gradually sinking into sleep. There is so much to worry about, she thought, her eyes hey as she listened to the endless clanking of the pumps forward. We are sinking, theAzoresare still so far away, the French are lurking somewhere, and I have to memorize a dratted document. She snuggled deeper into the cloak, which smelled of mildew, like everything else on board, and Captain Spark. Thank goodness I do not love him,or this voyage could become a real trial. And thank goodness Mama warned me about sailors.
She brought him coffee at first light, setting it as usual on the quarterdeck and assuming her customary position on the rung of the ladder. Hecrouched beside her as usual, his eyes weary, and sipped the coffee as he watched her face.“I was wishing you would come on deck sooner,”he said when he finished and handed back the mug.
“Ican bring your coffee sooner, if you wish,”she replied.
He smiled.“Iam not so sure I want coffee as much as I need conversation. It would keep me awake better, I think.”He looked at the riggings, and then back at the jury-rigged mizzenmast.“Another night has passed, Lady Amber, and we are still afloat and somewhat closer to theAzores.”
“Will we make it,do you think?”she asked.
He shrugged.“If you do not sight any French vessels, if the wind freshens, if the men can keep the pumps going. I don’t hold out an optimistic report.”He touched her shoulder then.“But don’t worry, I’ll see you into one of the little boats.”
“I wasn’t worried,”she said as she got up to leave.“I don’t know why I should trust you, but I do.”
T="+0">t hoaptain merely smiled andresumed his position on the quarterdeck, his eyes on the ocean. She went below deck again, retrieved Spark’s boat cloak, and placed it on the quarterdeck before climbing the riggings for another day of watching. He nodded to her and wrapped himself in it.“Smells of almond extract now,”he commented.
“Oh, I am sorry,”she said.“Then thee should—you should—not give a girl a gift of scent.”
“I will give you flowers inLondon,”he replied, his eyes on the sails.“And diamonds, when you will let me. And children, drat them, and an estate with a view of the ocean.”
“Sir, that willnot happen,”she replied, shy again and wishing he would not speak of such intimate matters.
“Oh, we shall see, Hannah,”was all he would say.
TheDissuademoved sluggishly through the mid-Atlantic, weighed down by water in the hold, where the pumps clanked. Mr. Futtrell sent his crew aloft to raise as much sail as they dared, knowing that too much canvas crowded in the upper yards would sink them as surely as theoceanthat lapped back and forth in the hold. When he was finally satisfied with the allotment of canvas, he sent the men below deck to the pumps again.
The shift in the hold changed every two hours, when the men, wet from the waist down, would come on deck and throw themselves down to sleep. Adam, his face drawn with exhaustion, climbed the rigging once to bring her some ship’s biscuit and a flask of moldy water. They sat together in silence, for the most part, shoulders touching, staring out at the water.
“Hannah, tell me something,”he askedinally.“Does thee love Captain Spark?”
She brushed off the crumbs from hershirt.“Thee is absurd! Of course not.”
“He cares for thee.”It was a simple sentence, delivered with Adam’s usual lack of dramatics.“I see him watching thee.”
Hannah put the telescope to her eye again and scanned the ocean.“He cares for thee.”Adam’s words so quietly spoken drilled into her brain.“Thee knows it is absurd, Adam,”she said as she watched.
