The Runaway Bride, page 12
She explained about Henry, and about Lady Covington and Maria.
‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘Seasickness can be the very devil and there is little can be done for it. I have a cordial which will ease their thirst, if nothing else.’ He frowned. ‘Perhaps I will step along later to discover if there is anything I can do to help make her ladyship more comfortable.’
Some imp of mischief was urging Consuelo to encourage him; how disillusioned he would be to find her so hagridden! She blushed for such base thoughts and said quickly: ‘I should not, if I were you. I believe she would not care to have you see her looking less than her best!’
Nick regarded her somewhat quizzically. ‘That is a very perceptive remark for one so young.’
‘Not at all.’ She sat up very straight. ‘I am a woman, also ‒ and know how it must be, though I doubt I should care so very much in a like situation.’
He seemed amused.
Consuelo’s shoulders drooped a fraction. ‘Mr Fletcher says I must not visit Enrique for the same reason!’ She sighed heavily.
‘Poor little Consuelo! So you are the sole survivor.’ The boat pitched and rolled back with a slow pendulum swing. He kept his balance with an ease she could not but admire, and sketched her a bow. ‘Then will you do me the honour of taking breakfast with your captain, señorita? Or are you also feeling queasy?’
Her mouth curved upwards enchantingly. ‘I should be pleased to do so, señor. Perhaps it betrays in me a disgraceful lack of sensibility, but to own the truth, I am excessively hungry!’
Nick laughed aloud. ‘Good girl! We’ll make a sailor of you yet!’ He called for his steward, gave orders and then came back to sit opposite her, watching her as the steward cleared away the used dishes. ‘I fear I cannot vouch for the quality of the food. This kind of weather sets all the pots and pans crashing in the galley and makes our cook confoundedly bad-tempered!’
‘We are a great trouble to you, I think,’ she said shyly as she struggled her way through thick unladylike slices of bread and appalling coffee, black and bitter, which she laced heavily with sugar.
Nick denied the suggestion with suitable gallantry.
‘But we are occupying your cabin, are we not ‒ Lady Covington and I?’ she insisted. ‘There was a book of yours on the chest of drawers.’
‘That isn’t any problem. I can sleep anywhere.’
A tiny frown puckered her brow. ‘But … Enrique is sharing Mr Fletcher’s cabin, so where are you sleeping?’ He lifted an eyebrow which suggested that the question might be considered impertinent, and she blushed. ‘Perhaps I should not have asked.’
‘My dear child, there is no mystery.’ He indicated with his head. ‘I have a hammock slung in the chart room.’
Consuelo stared. ‘That is surely impossible? It is little more than a cubbyhole!’
‘You don’t need a drawing room to sling a hammock,’ he said dryly and stood up, thus effectively putting an end to the conversation. ‘And now, señorita, I must leave you. I fear you are in for a rather wearisome time on your own, but you are welcome to make use of my books, or ‒’
‘Can I come up on deck?’
Nick frowned. ‘I think not. With conditions as they are, it’s no place for a lady.’
‘Oh, please!’ she coaxed. ‘I should not mind the rough weather, and I promise not to be in anyone’s way.’
Nick looked into the eager shining face ‒ and lifted his shoulders in acquiescence. ‘You won’t enjoy it much,’ he warned.
But Consuelo soon proved him wrong. She enjoyed the whole experience enormously. Wrapped in her cloak, which was soon soaked by the pillars of spray that rose and scoured the deck incessantly, she clung to the rail and listened to the wind screaming defiance at the clear blue sky, shrieking through the rigging and dying every now and then to a sibilant muttering. She watched the crew staggering like drunken men as the schooner pitched and wallowed in the fractious waves. And when Mr Fletcher came to ask if she was all right, she could only laugh and nod, the words drowned in wind and spray.
Later in the morning she went below to see how the invalids fared. She found Maria utterly exhausted, scarcely able any longer to keep going.
‘This is absurd,’ she said imperiously, chivvying the maid across to her own bed. ‘You will lie down here and try to sleep. No, I insist! You cannot possibly be comfortable on that makeshift bed on the floor. See, you are to drink some of this good cordial which Captain Bannion has provided … there is plenty for both you and Lady Covington.’
She took some cordial across to Verena, who had watched the affecting scene with acute displeasure. ‘You will ruin that idle girl,’ she told Consuelo as she raised her up so that she might drink. ‘They are all alike, believe me. If one does not deal firmly with them from the first ‒’
‘Maria is not idle, but very sick ‒ more so than you, I think!’ Consuelo would not have believed she could speak so coldly to Lady Covington, who was shaken momentarily out of her self-pity to stare. ‘Is there anything that I may get for you?’
Verena Covington moved restively. ‘I want nothing but solid ground beneath my feet ‒ if I do not die in the meantime!’ she added, a shade theatrically, and in a lower voice: ‘I must have been mad to come!’
Consuelo was tempted to agree with her, and to say that she was well-served for attempting to use the situation for her own ends, but the impertinence of such a remark vied too strongly with her upbringing to find utterance, and a glance at the ravaged face brought sudden sympathy.
‘You will feel differently,’ she said more kindly, ‘when the rough weather abates and you are able to take some fresh air.’
Her charity went for the most part unheeded, however, Verena being much too obsessed with her condition to recognize such commiseration as being prompted by anything other than a total lack of sensibility.
‘You are fortunate to remain unafflicted by the frailty which strikes down the rest of us,’ she snapped.
‘Oh, I am having a splendid time! Captain Bannion is looking after me very well.’ Consuelo turned to the door without seeing the look on Lady Covington’s face.
She was heartily glad to leave the rank, stifling atmosphere of the cabin behind her, and it was with a growing sense of freedom that she scrambled up the companionway once more.
Mr Fletcher saluted her from the tiny poop as, buffeted by the wind, she made her way crab-like along the deck to where Captain Bannion stood braced against a stanchion squinting into some kind of instrument.
He heard rather than saw her, and said without pausing in what he was doing: ‘So you haven’t yet tired of being at the mercy of the elements?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘How is Lady Covington?’
‘Better, I believe, though she does not think it herself.’
She thought he chuckled, though it was difficult to be sure with most of his face obscured.
‘Very perspicacious! Let us hope that she is permitted to sustain her recovery.’ He gestured with his head to where a bank of cloud, sulphurous and menacing, stretched across the horizon before them.
‘A storm?’ Consuelo felt a faint flutter of apprehension. A storm on land was one thing, but at sea …?
‘We’ll be lucky to miss it,’ he mused, not giving her his whole attention. She studied the instrument with some curiosity.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, emboldened by his amiability over breakfast and since.
‘Preparing to measure the altitude of the sun.’ He glanced down at her, grinning at her air of puzzlement. ‘A nautical day runs from noon to noon,’ he explained. ‘And noon is determined with the aid of this sextant by the moment when the sun reaches its zenith. See ‒’ He glanced calculatingly at the sun, then looked into the eyepiece of the instrument, quickly adjusted a clamp on the arm and put it into Consuelo’s hands. ‘Now … find the horizon ‒ and the sun, and bring them together.’
She took the sextant eagerly, squinting down the eyepiece with bated breath. At first she could see nothing and then the horizon came into view, but it was dipping and wavering all over the place.
‘Oh, no!’ she cried, staggering as the ship lurched. ‘It won’t stay still … and I cannot find the sun at all!’
He laughed and pulled her in front of him, made a quick adjustment once more and wrapped his arms tightly about her to hold her steady. ‘Take your time,’ he said. ‘Now do you see the sun?’
Its image whirled and danced into view in the tiny mirror, and she squeaked with excitement.
‘Carefully now ‒ wait until it just touches the horizon and then tighten the clamp.’
She concentrated fiercely, and then with an exultant cry she screwed the clamp tight and held the sextant up to him. He read off the altitude and chuckled softly.
‘Have I not done it correctly?’ she wailed, lifting to him a face glowing and vividly alive.
‘Not quite. But you can’t expect to be proficient so soon.’ Still smiling, he glanced quickly at the sun and Consuelo watched the strong bosses of his face as he put the sextant to his eye, completely engrossed in what he was doing. She was suddenly very much aware of his close proximity and wondered if she should move, but remained where she was ‒ a little breathless, for fear of disturbing him.
He seemed to be taking an unconscionable time, moving the arm along the scale, waiting ‒ then, all at once, he screwed the clamp firmly and called: ‘Time!’
Mr Fletcher, waiting on the poop above them with his timepiece in his hand, re-set it and struck the ship’s bell eight times. There came an instant scuffling as the men on watch changed over.
‘Do you do this every day?’ she asked, entranced by the romantic concept of it all.
‘Every day,’ he said, resetting his own watch, and looking down at her as though he was surprised to find her there.
‘You are a little like God, I think,’ she giggled. ‘You say it is noon ‒ and behold, it is noon!’
‘Oh, we haven’t finished yet.’ He offered a hand invitingly and without hesitation she put hers into it, her fingers curling confidently around his.
Together they went below to the chart room where he wound and set the ship’s chronometer. A second one was tucked away in a special compartment, resting on carefully balanced gimbals. This, he told her, showed the time at Greenwich and never varied more than a fraction of a second in a day. She watched as he compared the two, noted the difference, set down the sextant’s reading and proceeded to plot their course.
He explained it all to her as he went along, but at the end she shook her head in helpless confusion.
‘It is much too difficult, but quite enthralling ‒ and I am very pleased that you showed me, for I have never enjoyed anything half so well!’
He stood up.
‘I am remiss. It’s high time you got out of that wet cloak before you take a chill. I’ll see if cook can be persuaded to produce some drinkable coffee ‒’ his eyebrow lifted quizzically ‘‒ perhaps we should even dose you with a wee tot.’
‘Tot?’
‘Rum,’ he explained, grinning. ‘Just to be sure.’
‘Ugh!’ Consuelo pulled a face. ‘No ‒ I thank you!’
She didn’t want the moment to end, but could think of nothing to detain him. As they passed through the doorway leading from the chart room to the main cabin, the ship heaved, throwing her hard against his chest. His arms closed round her for protection and remained there as, with laughter subsiding, their eyes met ‒ and held. His were very brilliant, very blue ‒ and there was something in their depths which induced in her a sweet suffocating sensation; there was a weakness in her limbs so that she would have fallen had he not been holding her so tightly.
‘Consuelo?’ he murmured softly, half-wonderingly.
‘Señor?’
His head was bent very close. He was about to kiss her, she knew ‒ and in a corner of her mind she wondered why she had never felt remotely like this when Enrique had kissed her. Her heart was fluttering right up in her throat now, and she was beginning to tremble. She closed her eyes …
Chapter Eleven
‘Consuelo?’
It was a different voice, sharp, familiar ‒ coming from a long way off. She wanted it to go away again so that she might explore to the full all these wonderful new sensations that were coursing through her.
But Captain Bannion was already releasing her, setting her firmly on her feet and striding away to assist Lady Covington who stood swaying just within the doorway of the main cabin. Valiantly she took a step and clung to the sideboard for support, looking incredibly lovely, incredibly frail in a white floating peignoir, her fair hair cascading around a face filled with pale vulnerable shadows, its only colour the pouting mouth beguilingly touched with pink.
He reached her side and she leaned heavily upon him as he guided her towards the settee. ‘I feel so stupidly weak!’ she sighed in answer to his terse inquiry, her voice no more than a thread of that initial sharp utterance. ‘But I felt I could no longer neglect my responsibility towards dear Consuelo. I do hope the child has not usurped too much of your valuable time?’
Nick did not reply, could not reply, he was so full of impotent rage. Granite-faced, he made her comfortable, fetching a blanket when she prettily complained of feeling a draught and tucking it about her with hands that shook slightly from a suppressed urge to wrap themselves around her elegant neck. Then he pleaded a necessity to return to his duties.
‘Of course.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘We would not dream of keeping you from them!’
Consuelo was still standing where he had left her. There was a curious blankness in her eyes and he saw that she was trembling visibly now. He silently cursed himself for frightening her and was obliged to fight down an overwhelming urge to snatch her up in his arms and carry her for ever out of reach of her father, of Don Miguel ‒ and most of all, of Henry Linton. But, he reminded himself, Consuelo was in love with her ‘Enrique’.
So he avoided her eyes and said harshly as he left: ‘For heaven’s sake, do go and get out of that sodden cloak, or we shall have another invalid on our hands!’
She went on standing there for several minutes after he had gone, attempting to take herself in hand. A torrent of conflicting emotions bewildered and threatened to engulf her. More than anything she was hurt by Captain Bannion’s sudden change of manner towards her. Hampered by a painful lack of experience she could find but one explanation ‒ she had misunderstood him, and was at once terrified lest she had given herself away. How foolish he would think her should he ever guess with what wild inaccuracy she had interpreted those few brief moments of intimacy.
Yet surely she could not have been so mistaken? She recalled his silence when Lady Covington had implied she had been a nuisance, the swiftness with which he had hurried to her side ‒ and jealousy, an emotion until now quite foreign to her nature, washed over her in waves.
Verena Covington watched her with narrowed eyes. The chit was displaying all the symptoms of emotional shock. So she had not imagined Consuelo’s growing interest in Nick Bannion and his in her. Her own ardour was fast withering, its roots too shallow to withstand the exigences of this intolerable voyage. But with egoistical petty-mindedness she declined to relinquish the role she had designated for herself to a mere untried slip of a girl.
‘Gracious!’ she exclaimed with a faint derisive laugh. ‘What a little urchin you do look, my dear! One really wonders what Captain Bannion must have thought of you!’
Consuelo winced, but from somewhere pride came to her rescue. ‘I am sure you are right,’ she said quietly. ‘Forgive me, I must go to tidy myself and put my cloak to dry.’
It was pride that made her return presently to sit with Lady Covington, determined to behave as though nothing had happened. There was a jug of coffee on the table, and cups set on damp mats to stop them from sliding about; also some rather solid-looking biscuits.
‘Can I pour you some coffee?’ she asked in a deliberately bright voice.
Verena pulled a face. ‘I think not. I was asking the steward about Henry,’ she said casually. ‘It appears he may be contemplating joining us before long. You will like that, won’t you?’
Consuelo’s reply was indistinct, half-submerged in her cup. She was glad of the coffee’s bitterness which was only marginally less so than at breakfast ‒ its very acridity took her mind off even more bitter thoughts.
After a while, little attempt was made on either side to talk. Lady Covington, though much recovered, seemed disinclined to exert herself and fell to dozing, and Consuelo, left to her own unhappy thoughts, soon found her own eyelids beginning to flutter.
She was woken from an oppressive dream, in which Captain Bannion was giving her away in marriage with inexorable formality to Don Miguel, by a violent explosion of sound which seemed to set the schooner juddering down to its very bowels.
In the nearby sleeping cabin Maria shrieked in terror and Consuelo was jerked to her feet, heart pounding, to find herself in near-darkness which in that same instant exploded into eye-searing brilliance to show Lady Covington cowering in her corner, her whimpered ‘Oh, God! Oh, God!’ cut off by a clap of thunder immediately overhead which seemed to be tearing the heavens asunder.
Without even pausing to fetch her cloak Consuelo rushed up on deck ‒ and there checked.
‘En nombre de Dios!’ she breathed, instinctively crossing herself.
It was like the end of the world.
The sky ahead glowed like a giant cauldron spewing out clouds of molten metal that rolled and trickled towards the fiery rim of the horizon, whilst behind and all about them the towering cumulus was being rent into black tattered rags by the lightning which pulsed and flickered and forked incessantly to the accompanying tumult of crashing thunder.
Consuelo clung to the rail staring in awe at the heaving, leaden sea where a wave of frightening size seemed to be bearing down on them. She heard Captain Bannion yelling to the crew to ‘Wear ship! All hands wear ship!’ as he struggled to master the wheel.
