Violet

Chapter Thirteen

THE MASSIVE POWER Of THE lSABELLE's STARBOARD GUNS exploded in a noise more terrifying than Tamsyn could ever have imagined. The broadside raked the length of the French ship, and she saw rigging flung loose and a great hole appearing above the waterline as the smoke cleared. Screams filled the air, and then there was another massive bellow as the French returned the broadside. Tamsyn stared in horror down into the waist of the ship, where a cannon ball had exploded, sending up a shower of deadly splinters into the nearby gun crews. Then she was running down the gangway, unhooking her skirt as she did so, leaping into the confusion.

The lieutenants at the guns were bellowing their orders to the gun crews, struggling to make themselves heard above the screams of the wounded. The Isabelle's starboard guns fired again, and she swung slowly round to bring her port guns into play while the starboard rushed to reload.

A powder monkey hurtled past Tamsyn, his arms full of the lethal cartridges of gunpowder that had to be brought from the handling chambers, where they were kept well away from the guns until needed. A flying splinter lodged into his cheek, and he dropped his precarious load to the deck.

A bosun's mate raced for him, swinging his rope's end, screaming like a banshee. The lad curled, sobbing, on the deck, blood pouring from his eye. Tamsyn bent, gathered up his cartridges, and ran for the nearest gun, handing the gunpowder to the fifth crewman, whose face was already blackened with smoke. The lieutenant in charge of the gun cast her one astonished glance and then forgot all about the unorthodox powder monkey, giving the order to tilt the gun so they could fire a round of chain shot into the enemy rigging.

Tamsyn, grimly recognizing that she had a useful part to play, ran back, down into the bowels of the ship, along the narrow gangways, scrambling down the steep companionways leading from deck to deck, into the handling chamber, where she loaded up with more cartridges and repeated her journey.

The noise was so deafening now, it was as if it lived in her head. She couldn't separate its different components, but sometimes the screams became discrete sounds. One minute a man was standing upright beside her; the next he was writhing at her feet, both legs vanished in a crushed tangle of flesh and sinew, and the sounds of his agony pierced her through and through.

She dropped to her knees beside him, helpless and yet unable to abandon him in such hideous pain, but someone said roughly, “For God's sake, get that bleedin' shot to number-six gun,” and she was up and running, closing her nose to the nauseating stench of burning pitch from the surgeon's cockpit as he amputated with the speed of a butcher, cauterizing each stump with the pitch before moving on to the next victim.

Her foot slipped in a pool of blood as she delivered her load, and she grabbed wildly, catching the skirt of the lieutenant's coat. He stared at her, then clipped, “Sand!”

She understood and ran for the barrel of sand in the corner, flinging it over the deck in great handfuls to soak up the blood. Again and again the guns spoke, and she dodged and whirled and ducked as she ran. Whenever she had a chance to look over at the French ship, it seemed to have lost more spars and rigging, and yet they fought on, her guns bringing a devastating sweep of death and ghastly injury to the Isabelle's crew.

Hugo Lattimer closed his mind to the destructive havoc in the waist of his ship. “Mr. Connaught, boarding nets.” He looked for the colonel and saw him with the marines, now ranged along the rail. He'd armed himself with a musket and was picking men off the French ship's rigging, the giant Gabriel at his side.

“Colonel, are you coming aboard her?” Hugo called. Julian saw the boarding nets swinging across the narrowing space between the two hulls and drew his sword with a flourish. “My pleasure, Captain.” He leaped down to the quarterdeck, Gabriel still beside him. In the press of battle he hadn't given a thought to Tamsyn. Now he glanced around the shambles of the quarterdeck.

“Are you looking for me?” Tamsyn spoke, breathless, behind him.

He whirled round, then stared at her. Her clothes were bloody, she was black from head to toe, her eyes huge violet pools in the filth, her teeth startling as she offered a weary smile. “They've stopped firing the guns, so I'm not needed down there anymore.”

“What in the devil's name have you been doing?” he demanded.

“Running gunpowder for the gun crews,” she said matter-of-factly. “What did you think I was doing?”

Julian shook his head. “I don't know what I thought, but I should have known you'd be in the thick of it.” Of course Tamsyn would be where she could be most useful. She'd give not a thought for her personal safety in such a situation. He had a sudden urge to brush the matted hair from her brow, to wipe away a streak of someone's blood from her cheek. To share with her the satisfaction of a battle well fought.

“The surgeon could use your help,” Captain Lattimer said brusquely to Tamsyn, breaking the intensity of the moment, allowing Julian to step back from the precipice. As far as Hugo was concerned, his passenger was behaving like a member of his crew; it seemed only logical to treat her as one.

He drew his sword. “Come, gentlemen.”

Tamsyn watched a little enviously as the boarding party surged across the netting, swords in their hands. She understood hand-to-hand fighting much better than this mass slaughter by cannon. It wasn't as wholesale as the storming of Badajos, but it was a dreadful business, nevertheless.

And there was work to be done among the wounded now that the fires of destruction had ceased. Resolutely, she returned to the waist of the ship.

Julian leaped onto the deck of the Delphine. The Isabelle's men were engaged in fierce hand-to-hand fighting amidships, and he could see Hugo Lattimer cutting a swath through them, heading for the quarterdeck, where the French officers were to be found.

Some angel's hand was on the colonel's shoulder, and he spun around just as a wild-eyed officer leaped at him from the forecastle. He parried, danced backward, lunged, but his opponent was a skilled swordsman, and he realized with a mixture of exultation and dread that he had a fight on his hands.

Gabriel, meanwhile, was beating back a group of sailors armed with knives and spars. The giant's broadsword flashed in the sunlight as he sliced and slashed, bellowing his terrifying war cry, driving his opponents into a corner of the deck, where they cast down their weapons and surrendered on the wise assumption that the battle was lost anyway and there was no point inviting further injury.

Gabriel, having secured his section of the fight, glanced around and saw the colonel still engaged with the French lieutenant. Julian was hard-pressed, but his mouth was twisted in a grimace of determination, and then his opponent slipped in a pool of blood and went down on one knee.

Julian dropped his point and stood aside as the man came to his feet again. The two men looked at each other; then the lieutenant shrugged and bowed, handing his sword, hilt first, to the English colonel.

Julian touched the sword in ceremonial ritual, then gestured courteously that his opponent should keep it. The man bowed and sheathed his weapon, and the two looked around, no longer enemies, simply battle-weary warriors.

On the quarterdeck Hugo Lattimer was accepting the surrender of the Delphine's captain with the same courtesy, insisting that he keep his sword. One didn't humiliate an enemy who'd fought bravely, and one could never be sure in the fluctuating fortunes of war when the situation would be reversed.

Julian made his way to the quarterdeck. Hugo greeted him with a tired smile. “Colonel St. Simon, may I make you known to Monsieur le Capitaine Delors?”

The two shook hands, and the captain introduced the rest of his officers. It was all very courteous and civilized, as if the murderous mayhem of the last hour had never taken place. Except for the smell of blood and the continuing groans and screams of the wounded, and the broken spars and ripped rigging littering the bloodstained decks.

“I'll put a prize crew aboard her under Will Connaught,” Hugo said. “Together with our wounded. He can sail her back to Lisbon with a bit of make and mend.” He couldn't conceal his satisfaction as he looked around the captured vessel. It had been a good day's work. The French frigate was a fat prize and would bring him a much-needed injection of funds, and the Isabelle's crew would have their share, which would ensure a jubilant ship for the rest of the voyage.

Julian left him making these dispositions and returned to the Isabelle, swinging himself across the boarding nets. “Knows what he's doing, that Captain Lattimer,” Gabriel observed, landing beside him on the deck. “Where's the bairn?”

“Still in the thick of something, I imagine.” They made their way to the waist of the ship, where order miraculously was emerging out of chaos. Tamsyn was kneeling beside a wounded man waiting his turn for the surgeon's attentions. He'd lost a finger and seemed relatively unperturbed, his chief lament being that the wound wasn't enough to send him home.

“Is it over?” Tamsyn looked up as Julian and Gabriel crossed the deck.

“So it would seem.” Julian scrutinized her blackened countenance. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” She stood up, stretching wearily. “I don't know how, though. I don't know how anyone could survive in that inferno. It was horrible. Worse than anything I've ever been in.”

Julian made no reply. There was no disputing her statement, but they were both soldiers, and battle horrors were intrinsic to the life.

“Josefa's helping the surgeon,” Tamsyn said to Gabriel. “He says she's a lot more skilled than his assistants.” She turned toward the cockpit, caught her foot in a coil of rope, and fell headlong on the deck.

She must be exhausted, Julian thought, reaching down a hand to helpher to her feet. When she didn't immediately take it, he bent over her and lifted her to her feet, hiding his concern, stating briskly, “You're done in, girl.”

Tamsyn didn't seem to hear him. She was staring down at her thigh, where a jagged splinter stuck out through a rent in her britches. Blood was seeping out of her flesh where the splinter was lodged. “Look! I'm cut. It's bleeding.” She raised her eyes, and he saw they were filled with a sick horror, her face suddenly deathly white beneath the grime.

“Colonel, catch her!” The sharp, urgent command came from Gabriel, standing behind him.

Tamsyn swayed, her knees buckling. Just in time Julian moved, catching the slight figure as she crumpled to the deck. “What the hell…?” He stared down at her, unconscious in his arms, then looked incredulously at Gabriel. “She must have fallen on a splinter, but it doesn't look bad.”

“It's the blood,” Gabriel said matter-of-factly. “Always sends her off like that.”

“But she's already covered in blood,” Julian said in disbelief.

“Aye, but it's not hers,” Gabriel explained. “The bairn can't abide being cut. As a baby she'd scream the house down for a pinprick… anything more than that, she'd be beside herself. The baron tried everything to get her out of it, but he gave up in the end.”

“Dear God,” Julian muttered. Of all the absurdities.

She rode like a cossack, fought like a mountain lion, didn't flinch from discomfort and deprivation, but she fainted dead away at a pinprick. He thought of Cornichet's knife and wondered in amazement what it must have cost her to face up to the mere prospect without breaking.

“We'd best get this splinter out quickly,” he said.

“It's going to bleed a lot more then than it is now.”

“I'll get Josefa.”

Julian carried Tamsyn into the day cabin, and her eyelids fluttered open as he laid her down on one of the cushioned lockers.

“What happened? Oh, God, my leg. It's got that thing in it!” Her voice rose on a frantic note.

“We're going to take it out,” he said calmly. “It's just a splinter. You must have fallen on it when you tripped.”

“But it's sticking out of me! All my blood's coming out!”

“Tamsyn, don't be absurd!” It was so ridiculous he wanted to laugh, but her distress was acute and definitely not feigned. He pulled his dirk from his belt and cut the leather of her britches away from the wound. “Now, don't look,” he instructed when she wailed in horror at the sight of the splinter and the blood that was now flowing strongly.

“I hear you need my services.” The surgeon sounded amazingly cheerful as he came into the cabin, still in his bloodstained apron, accompanied by Josefa and Gabriel. “Oh, my, that's a big one,” he said with the same cheeriness. “Soon have it out.”

“No!” Tamsyn screeched. “I'll do it.” She struggled to sit up, reaching for her thigh.

“No, you won't! Now, stop being so silly!” Julian sat down behind her, lifting her head onto his lap, holding her shoulders steadily. “Keep still. It'll be over in a minute. “

Josefa bustled over, taking her nurseling's hands, chafing them, crooning softly to her, as the surgeon deftly pulled the splinter clear. Blood spurted; Tamsyn groaned and fainted again.

“Good God, what's going on?” Captain Lattimer entered his cabin to find it filled with people not generally welcomed into his private quarters.

“We're having a little trouble,” Julian said, a chuckle in his voice. He shook his head in renewed disbelief, maintaining his hold on Tamsyn's shoulders. “This absurd girl is behaving like a milk-and-water miss because she has a splinter in her leg.”

“Good God!” Hugo said again. “After what she was doing during the battle! According to Lieutenant Godfrey nothing slowed her down.”

“There's none so strange as folks,” Samuel declared in his Yorkshire burr, bringing a bowl of hot water to the surgeon. “I'll fetch ye a roll of bandage.”

Tamsyn came round again as the surgeon was washing the wound. She gazed up into Julian's face. “Has it stopped?”

Her face was deathly pale, her expression as fearful and vulnerable as a terrified child's. All the resilience, the dominance of her personality, had vanished as she looked to him for reassurance and comfort with a trustfulness that he couldn't possibly have destroyed.

He smiled and brushed her hair away from her forehead as he'd wanted to do earlier. “It's almost stopped. The surgeon's going to bind it up, and you'll be as good as new in a day or two.”

“It wasn't too deep, Miss Tamsyn,” the surgeon said, shaking a dusting of basilicon powder over the wound. “There should be no danger of infection.” He wound gauze and bandages around her thigh, and the patient lay very still, her color returning slowly. “It'll probably ache, though. Would you like some laudanum?”

“I don't mind it hurting,” Tamsyn said. “I just don't like it bleeding.”

“Well, it'll stop soon enough.” The surgeon dusted off his hands and stood up. “I recommend you don't do too much running around for a day or two, though. Let it heal up first.”

“I am sorry,” Tamsyn said in a small voice. “Did I behave very badly?” She asked the question of Julian, her embarrassment and anxiety clear in her eyes.

If he'd wanted revenge, now was the perfect opportunity. But he 'couldn't take it. She was trusting him to help her with the same simplicity with which she offered him her body, invited him to join in her love games.

“'Unexpectedly,' is the word I would have chosen.”

He hitched her up until she was sitting on his lap, leaning against his chest. “But we're all entitled to our foibles.”

“I feel very peculiar,” Tamsyn declared, settling naturally against him. “All weak and shaky.”

“You could do with a bath, like as not,” Samuel suggested. “And some 'ot milk and rum.”

“See to the hot water, then, Samuel,” Hugo said.

“Set it up in here, there's more room. And take what you need from my supplies. We'll leave the lass and her woman to themselves.” Having nobly relinquished his sanctum, he turned to go back to work, and it was only when he reached the quarterdeck that he realized that while everyone else had followed him, the colonel had remained behind.

He raised an eyebrow, regarding the closed door to his cabin, where a marine sentry had taken up his customary post now that the ship's routine was in a fair way to being restored. Interesting, he thought, but for some reason not surprising. He turned to his second lieutenant, who'd taken over from Will Connaught, now commanding the prize crew on the Delphine.

“We'll splice the mainbrace, Mr. Denny. The crew have earned it.”

A ragged cheer went up when the order was given, and Hugo nodded to himself, well satisfied. At the moment he had a happy ship.

In the day cabin Tamsyn remained in Julian's comforting embrace, while Samuel heated up rainwater from a scuttlebutt on deck and filled a hip bath. The baron used to hold her in much the same way on similar occasions, and it felt both natural and reassuring. She was still embarrassed by what she knew must have been a ridiculous display, although she couldn't remember much of what she'd said-only the horrible panic that overwhelmed her at the thought of her flesh tearing.

She knew it was irrational, but she could no more control it than she could part the waters of the Atlantic.

Josefa bustled around the cabin, ordering Samuel about in voluble Spanish, commands that he basically ignored, going about his business in his own way.

Once he'd left them, Julian heard himself instructing the Spanish woman, “Bring a nightgown and robe, Josefa, and then you may leave us.” He hadn't intended to say anything of the sort. He'd intended to deposit his burden on the cushions and leave her in the competent hands of her nurse. Nevertheless, that was what he said.

Josefa looked as if she didn't care for this instruction, but the colonel's air of authority was intimidating, and her nurseling offered no objection. In fact, Tamsyn's eyes were closed, and it looked as if she was dozing.

“Ay de mi,” Josefa muttered in customary fashion, and hurried next door to fetch the required items, placing them carefully over a chair. Then she stood irresolute for a minute before hurrying out with an expressive shrug.

“I'm going to cut these britches off you,” Julian said matter-of-factly. Rational thought told him he was mad to continue along this path, but Tamsyn had so completely relinquished control over herself to him that it seemed natural to complete the task. Both natural, enjoyable, and utterly compelling.

She was as light and fragile as a leaf in the circle of his arms. The vibrant sexuality he found impossible to resist had vanished, but it was replaced with this soft vulnerability that he found equally irresistible.

He eased her onto the cushion beside him and pulled off her boots.

“I can undress myself,” Tamsyn said, sounding stronger. “I've stopped being silly.”

“Good. But you might as well let me do it now I've started. You don't want to jolt the wound.”

A little shudder rippled through her, and she immediately lay still as he stripped off her stockings and sliced through the britches with his dirk, peeling them away from her. She felt very sleepy, on the brink of some warm, dark, beckoning chasm, and his hands on her body were infinitely soothing as he removed the last of her clothes. In the back of her mind swam the half formed thought that she was wasting an opportunity here. For some reason, St. Simon had softened toward her, but she couldn't seem to do anything about it except yield to his ministrations. The dark thought of pregnancy writhed to the forefront of her mind, but she couldn't concentrate on it, and it slithered away.

She lay back in the hot water, her injured thigh propped on the side of the hip bath, while his hands moved over her with a matter-of-fact familiarity more suited to a nursemaid than a lover. She smiled dreamily at the thought, wished again that she could summon the willpower to pursue greater intimacies, then decided she was enjoying this too much to change it even if she could.

“What are you smiling at?” Julian reached for the towel, aware that he'd been fooling himself There was nothing platonic about what he'd been doing to her body, and his own as a result was on fire.

“No reason.” Tamsyn regarded him through half-closed eyes, seeing the tension on his face, the tautness of his mouth. She could think of only one reason, and some of her languor dissipated. “I feel very weak,” she said. “I don't think I can stand.”

Julian swore under his breath, but he'd started this and he had to finish it. He lifted her out of the bath, holding her wet body against him, and she nestled her head into his shoulder with a little murmur of pleasure. Was she doing it deliberately? The suspicion grew.

Firmly, he sat her on the locker again and wrapped the towel around her. “You can dry yourself sitting down. I'll do your legs and feet.”

Oh, well, Tamsyn thought, it had been a good try.

She rubbed herself dry as best she could, and Julian handed her the nightgown, hiding his relief as her body disappeared under the folds of lawn. He handed her the wrapper.

“Put this on too; then you can put your legs up and rest against the cushions,” he directed, in what he hoped was the neutral and efficient tone of a nurse. “I'll see how Samuel's doing with that hot milk.”

Tamsyn made herself comfortable. She felt a lot better, but still rather shaky and slightly queasy. She closed her eyes and suddenly opened them again, holding her breath as she listened to her body. The dull cramping ache in the base of her belly was faint but unmistakable. Had the bad bleeding set off the good? Please don't let the cramp go away! The prayer went round and round in her head, blocking out everything else. Please let it get worse.

Samuel came in with a tray bearing a glass of steaming hot milk. He set it down on the table and laced it liberally with rum from one of the array of bottles the captain kept in a locker. “That'll settle ye, lass,” he declared.

Julian had helped himself to a glass of Hugo's claret and now sat down at the table, watching Tamsyn as she sipped her milk in preoccupied silence. She looked as soft and innocent as a kitten in her white nightgown and wrapper and that silky silver hair. But he knew a damn sight better. He'd allowed himself to be fooled, and his body was letting him know it in no uncertain fashion.

Tamsyn put down her glass and said suddenly, “I need the quarter gallery.” She swung her legs off the locker with a vigor that belied her earlier weakness, then grabbed the side of the table with a muttered, “Ouch,” as her leg throbbed painfully.

With a grim set to his mouth Julian lifted her and carried her into the next-door cabin, setting her down at the door to the privy.

“Thank you. You don't need to wait, Josefa will help me back.” She smiled sweetly.

“I'm going on deck,” he said abruptly. “Stay off that leg.” He left her, going swiftly up to the quarterdeck, hoping the air would cool his brain and his overheated blood.

Tamsyn, when she emerged from the quarter gallery, realized she'd never fully understood what relief was before. Her heart sang with it as she asked Josefa to find the required items in her baggage. Never again… never, ever again would she tempt providence.

Wrapping the robe securely around her, she hobbled back to the Captain's cabin and ensconced herself under the windows again, looking out at the sweeping expanse of sea, stretching to a gray horizon. She allowed her body to relax, welcoming the fierce cramping, honeyed relief dancing in her veins.

Julian came into the cabin after half an hour to fetch his boat cloak. The wind was getting up, and they seemed to have left the warmth of Portugal far behind. “How are you?” It was a distant, politely neutral inquiry.

“Wonderful,” she said with a fervency that startled him. “I have my monthly terms,” she said. “I was late and I was afraid…”

“I've been waiting for you to say something,” he said flatly.

“Well it's all right,” Tamsyn responded with a rueful smile, pushing her hair away from her forehead. “And we won't take any risks in future.”

The colonel's mouth tightened, and his eyes were steel-bright, sword-sharp as he came over to her. “Understand this, Tamsyn. There will be no future. I'll fulfil this damn contract because I must, but that's as far as it goes. Is that clear?”

Tamsyn turned her head away from the piercing blue glare, gazing out of the window at the now gray and heaving sea. “If you say so, milord colonel.”