Lieutenant Colonel in the Royal Marines,’ she murmured, and Hugh could hear the embarrassment in her voice again.
‘I can’t help that,’ he told her, and was rewarded with another chuckle. ‘I’ve swabbed a deck or two in my earlier days.’ He wasn’t going to tell her how unpleasant that had been, cleaning up a gun deck after a battle. Nothing in her cabin could ever compare with that, but he wasn’t going to enlighten her further.
He was prepared to stay with her in his cabin until she felt easy, but she went to sleep almost before he finished tucking his blanket around her. He looked down at her, smelling of vinegar now, but as tidy as he could make her, in his clumsy way. He looked closer. There was something missing. He gave her a slight shake.
‘Miss Brandon, where are your spectacles?’
She opened her eyes, and he saw nothing but remorse. ‘I … I fear they landed in that basin by the cot, when I vomited.’
She started to laugh then, which must have hurt because her hand went to her throat. ‘Don’t look so stunned, Colonel,’ she told him. ‘I am quizzing you. They’re in my trunk, next to my hair brush.’
He grinned at her, relieved that she could make a joke. ‘I’ll get you for that.’
‘You and who …?’ she began, then drifted to sleep.
He stood there another long moment, watching her sleep, dumbfounded by her resiliency, and not totally sure what had just happened. ‘I’d have looked for them in that foul basin, I hope you know,’ he whispered, then left his cabin.
He spent the next hour cleaning Miss Brandon’s cabin. Before Private Leonard went off duty and was replaced by another sentry, he swore him to utter secrecy on what had passed this evening.
‘Sir, I would never say anything,’ the Private assured him. ‘She’s a brave little trooper, isn’t she?’
Hugh would have spent the night in her cot, except that it was wet with vinegar and he didn’t relish the notion. He could put his greatcoat on the floor in his cabin and not disturb Miss Brandon at all. He put her nightgown to soak in the bucket with sea water, and poured in the remaining vinegar. He found his way to the orlop deck, where the surgeon, eyes bleary, was staring at a forefinger avulsion that gave Hugh the shivers.
‘He caught it on a pump, if you can imagine,’ the surgeon murmured. He patted the seaman who belonged to the finger. ‘Steady, lad, steady. It looks worse than it is, as most things do.’
While the seaman stared at his own finger, Hugh took the surgeon aside and explained what had happened to Miss Brandon.
‘Poor little lady,’ the surgeon said. ‘I hope you were gentle with her, Colonel.’
‘I did my best.’
The surgeon shook his head. ‘Only two days out, and already this voyage is more than she bargained for, I’m certain. All’s well that ends. Give her some porridge tomorrow morning and a ship’s biscuit, along with fortified wine, and all the water she will drink. That should take care of the dehydration.’
Hugh walked thoughtfully back to his deck, after looking in on the unconscious foretopman, with the surgeon’s mate sitting beside him. A howl from the orlop told him the surgeon had taken care of the avulsion. Give me Miss Brandon and her troublesome seasickness any day, he thought with a shudder.
Counting on his rank to mean something to one of the captain’s young gentlemen, he asked for and received a blanket and returned to his cabin. He looked down at her, asleep in his gently swaying cot. Poor little you. The surgeon was right; you didn’t bargain on this, he thought.
Surprisingly content with his lot, Hugh spread his overcoat and pulled the blanket over him. He woke up once in the night to check on her, but she was breathing deeply, with a small sigh on the exhalation of breath that he found childlike and endearing. Feeling charitable, he smiled down at her, and returned to his rest on the deck.
A fierce and nagging thirst woke Polly at sunrise, rather than the noise of a ship that she had feared last night would sink at any minute. She stared at the deck beams overhead, wondering where she was, then closed her eyes in total mortification when she remembered. Maybe if I keep my eyes closed, the entire world will move back four days. I will remain in Torquay with my sister Nana and none of what I know happened will have taken place, she told herself.
No such luck. She smelled of vinegar because she had been doused in it, then pulled from her nightgown and—horror of horrors—been set right by a Royal Marine of mature years who would probably rather have eaten ground glass than done any of the duties her care had required.
If she could not forget what had happened, perhaps Lieutenant Colonel Junot had transferred during the night to another vessel, one sailing to Australia. Failing that, hopefully he had suffered amnesia and remembered nothing past his tenth birthday. No such luck. She could hear someone snoring softly, so she rose up carefully on her elbow and peered over the edge of the sleeping cot.
There lay her saviour, a mature man—not a Midshipman—with curly dark hair going a bit grey at the temples, a straight nose, and chiselled lips that had caught her attention a few days ago, when she was still a reasonable being. He lay on his back and looked surprisingly comfortable, as though he had slept in worse places. He had removed his shoes, unbuttoned his dark trousers, and unhooked his uniform tunic, so a wildly informal checked shirt showed through. The gilt gorget was still clasped around his neck, which made her smile in spite of her mortification, because he looked incongruously authoritative.
He opened his eyes suddenly and he smiled at her, because she must have looked even funnier, peering at him over the edge of the sleeping cot like a child in a strange house.
‘Good morning, Miss Brandon. See? You’re alive.’
If he had meant to put her at her ease, he had succeeded, even as he lay there all stretched out. He yawned, then sat up, his blanket around him again.
‘Would you like some water?’ he asked.
She nodded, then carefully sat up, which only made her lie down again, because the room was revolving.
He was on his feet in an instant, turning his back to her to button his trousers, then stretching his arm up to grasp the deck beam as he assessed her. ‘Dizzy?’
She nodded, and wished she hadn’t. ‘Now the ship is spinning,’ she groaned.
‘It will stop.’ He brought her a drink in a battered silver cup that looked as if it had been through a campaign or two. His free arm went behind her back and gently lifted her up just enough to pour some water down her sorely tried throat. ‘Being as dried out as you are plays merry hell with body humours, Miss Brandon. You need to eat something.’
‘Never again,’ she told him firmly. ‘I have sworn off food for ever.’
‘Take a chance,’ he teased. ‘You might be surprised how gratifying it is to swallow food, rather than wear it. Another sip now. That’s a good girl. Let me lay you down again.’
After he did so, he tucked the blanket up to her chin again. ‘You’ll do, Brandon,’ he told her in a gruff voice, and she knew that not a kinder man inhabited the entire universe, no matter if he was a Marine and fearsome. ‘Go back to sleep.’
