Satisfied she was not at fault, she gathered the dishes to return to Luigi and join the larboard watch mess. Four bells had just been rung, so they would be coming below for the last dogwatch. They’d be much better company.
“Signorina, you no have to bring Luigi dishes. Flynn will collect them.” The cook took them from her, sweat dripping down his temples.
“I know.” She would never again think of her cottage as small. Compared to the galley, her kitchen was a mansion unto itself. In the same compact space as the slop chest, the galley had racks and shelves from floor to ceiling, plus baskets hanging from hooks in the ceiling swaying with each roll of the ship, and the smallest of work surfaces. Standing in the cramped space, Luigi barely had enough room to change his mind. That he managed to prepare food for over a dozen people three times a day amazed her.
She hitched up to sit on a water barrel lashed to the starboard bulkhead, out of the way of those eating. Someone had already dropped the table and benches down, the mess captain had brought the cook pot, and she could practically hear the hum of delight as the crew dug into beans and sauerkraut in addition to the usual stew and ship’s biscuits.
One of the men let out a loud belch.
Harriet studied her fingertips. She was not here to correct their manners. She was intruding in their world. She would not blink, even if someone broke wind.
She wouldn’t, she wouldn’t, she wouldn’t.
She didn’t, but only because she squeezed her eyes shut.
No one else noticed—neither her reaction, nor the fart.
This is what it’s like to spend time in the company of men, she reminded herself. Coarse men who have no interest in protecting or even recognizing she has delicate sensibilities. She would just have to become less delicate if she wanted to spend time with them. Staying alone in the cabin would drive her stark raving mad. Tonight’s bizarre meal had proven she couldn’t rely on Sheffield for company.
“So you’re the Maiden of the Sea,” intoned a cultured voice beside her. Startled by the refined accent, Harriet glanced up to see a grey-templed gent settling on the water cask next to hers. His coat, trousers, and silver-buckled shoes bespoke money, but his hands were work-roughened.
“The Mai—what?”
“That’s what the crew calls you.” He nodded toward the men at the table. “I’m Norton, by the way. Ship’s surgeon and idle hand.” He grasped the fingers of her right hand and raised them for a kiss that landed in the air just above her knuckles. Instead of letting go, he turned her hand over, then exposed her left palm as well. “Mm, just as I thought. Nasty rope burn, but it seems to be healing nicely.” He laid her hands on her lap and gave them a gentle pat, then withdrew a meerschaum pipe and small pouch of tobacco from his coat pocket and began filling the pipe bowl. “We’re all quite impressed. Most misses only have that tenacity, that unwillingness to let go, when they’re hunting matrimonial prey.”
Well, she couldn’t very well marry Percy and provide for Mama and Gabriel if she was fish food at the bottom of the Channel. “You’re the one I saw brought aboard at Southampton. I thought you’d gone ashore again since I haven’t seen you.”
“All part of my master plan.” He winked, his mouth curving up in a sly smile.
“Your hands are not those of an idle man.” She touched one callused knuckle. Several scars dotted the landscape of his sinewy hands.
“Means I don’t have to take a watch like them.” He gestured at the men, now done with their meal, cleaning up. Two set up a checkers board drawn on canvas, another tuned his fiddle. “I can stay in my cabin and read to my heart’s content, and surface only when the need for food and a good smoke drive me from my den.” He tamped the tobacco down. “Or when someone is injured.”
“You didn’t come up on deck when Sheffield and I were fished from the sea.”
“You weren’t injured.”
Fair enough. “You have books?”
He grinned, showing deep creases at the corner of his eyes. “Meet me at my cabin at the end of second dog watch, when you hear them ring the bell eight times.”
“Where is your cabin?”
He rose, stuffing the tobacco pouch back in his pocket. “Two steps from yours, my dear.” He clamped the pipe stem between his teeth, climbed the ladder, and quickly shut the hatch again.
Harriet itched to go up on deck and talk to the surgeon more, but he seemed to need time alone with his pipe. Besides, Sheffield was up there.
She nibbled on a ship’s biscuit, tapped her toes in time to the fiddle music, and eagerly anticipated the end of the second dogwatch.
* * *
Nick noted their location and speed in his logbook and took a final glance around the deck. Winston had settled in for bow watch. Jack had the tiller. The seas were calm, and the wind from the north-northwest.
Jonesy strolled back and forth on the quarterdeck. “All’s well, Cap’n,” he said on his next pass.
Nick nodded. Time to go below. If it was any other passenger sharing his cabin, he might invite them to play a hand of cribbage before he took a catnap prior to his next reckoning at the start of the middle watch. Did Miss Chase play cards? Probably silver loo.
He remembered his cowardly retreat from the cabin at dinner and winced. With any luck she wasn’t speaking to him, which would preclude any need to pretend politeness.
