Page 2 of Unforeseen Affairs
Perhaps she didn’t hear, Colin thought desperately as embarrassment began to engulf him. For she hadn’t been there just moments earlier, when he’d walked across the room. Or had she? She couldn’t have just materialized out of thin air.No, she must have only just arrived.
Slowly she tilted her head, taking in the sight of Beaky and Kettlewell as they chortled and drank, blissfully unaware of their silent observer. Then she looked back to Colin and unfolded her arms as a small, smug grin touched her lips.
Shame washed over him. Shehadheard.
He was frozen. He racked his brain for the proper thing to do, the best way to mitigate his blunder and put the girl at ease. But she left as suddenly as she had appeared, disappearing like a specter.
A hard slap on his shoulder brought him back to his senses.
“I forgot to tell you, about this proper bit of frock,” Beaky said unsteadily, his spirits high as he turned Colin away from the door. “I first saw her in an oldpiazzanot long after we were in harbor—”
“Just a…” Colin cut him off, craning his neck to keep his eyes upon the open doorway. “Just a tick, I’ve, er, got to…”
He broke away and set his wine down on a small end table, sloshing it over the rim as he did so. Beaky was always far too generous with his pours.
“Got to what?” Kettlewell asked.
“To… inquire about something,” Colin said hurriedly. “I’ll be right back.”
Beaky said something which caused another eruption of laughter between him and Kettlewell, but Colin wasn’t listening.He rushed out into the hall in the direction the young woman had gone.
Hopefully he could catch her, and do his best to make amends.
He moved swiftly, taking care to keep his footsteps light even as he hastened with long strides, not wishing to alarm her.
Colin rounded the corner, and nearly leaped out of his boots.
She stood in the middle of the hallway, facing him, as if she’d been waiting in ambush. Her arms were once again crossed and she bore a flat, unimpressed look on her face. Irritatingly, Colin noticed, she stood equal to him in height, easily looking him in the eye. Hers were dark—impossibly so, as if they were either all pupil or none at all.
He took a step back.
“Forgive me. I did not know you were there, Miss…” He felt his face grow hot.
Her gaze did not waver. Colin found it unsettling. He hoped she would speak and end this uncomfortable silence, and allow him to beg for her forgiveness. He was the hero of the HMSIapyx, which didn’t mean much to him, but it did to seemingly everyone else. And people talked; if word got back to his mother that he’d spoken so boorishly in front of a lady…
“If you did not know I was here, I wonder why you gave chase,” she finally said, declining to supply him with her name.
“Gave chase?”
She turned away from him.
“I could hear you rushing down the hall,” she said as she began to walk away. “Despite the pains you took.”
Colin decided that this was already the strangest encounter he’d ever had with a woman. And it had only been a few seconds. He followed, drawing up alongside her.
“One moment, please, miss,” he said, baffled. “You haven’t given me your name.”
“You haven’t given me yours,” was her blithe reply.
“Sir Colin Gearing,” he said with a slight bow, somewhat more awkwardly than he would like.
“Yes, I know,” she said, still staring straight ahead. “Everyone knows.”
At that he very nearly guffawed, but he had already appeared so coarse and unmannered that he dared not.
Of course everyone knew him. He was Sir Colin Gearing, the young lieutenant who, five years ago, had somehow managed to capture not one, but two privateer vessels off the coast of the Canary Islands, while every senior officer on board theIapyxwas laid low by a bad bit of lamb ragout. And all at the tender age of twenty.
The country had gone mad for the outlandish tale. The captain of theIapyxhad joined the lieutenants for supper in the wardroom on that fateful evening. But Lieutenant Gearing, who an hour earlier had messed on biscuits and cheese with a handful of seamen, was too full to partake in the main course. That stroke of luck not only spared him from the watery bowels and violent vomiting that incapacitated every officer above him for nigh on two days, it left him as the most senior able-bodied man on board during the encounter with the privateer vessels, which he managed to navigate so effectively that he had surprised even himself. Shortly after their return home, Lieutenant Gearing became Sir Colin.
