located the galley mid-ship, the great boiler sitting on its platform of bricks, the cook looming out of the savoury steam, ladle in hand, meat cleaver stuck in his straining belt like a cutlass. ‘You want any vittles, you’ll wait to the morning.’
‘I am Mr Stanier, navigator, and you will find food for my servant and me. Now.’
The man stared back, then nodded. ‘Aye, sir.’
‘And as we’re in port, I assume you’ll have had fresh provisions loaded. I’ll have meat, bread, butter, cheese, fruit, ale. What’s your name?’
‘Street, sir.’
‘Then get a move on, Street.’ He looked at Clemence. ‘Wake up, boy. Find a tray, platters. Look lively.’
Clemence staggered back to the cabin under the weight of a tray laden with enough food, in her opinion, for six, and dumped it on to the table that ran down the centre of their cabin. Stanier stood, stooping to look out of the porthole, while she set out the food and his platter, poured ale and then went to perch on the edge of the smaller bunk bed, built to follow the curve of the ship’s side.
What was he staring at? She tried to retrieve some sense of direction and decided he was looking out at the wreckage of old Port Royal, although what there was to see there on a moonless night—
‘Why aren’t you eating?’ He had turned and was frowning at her.
‘I ate before…before I left.’
‘Well, eat more, you are skin and bones.’ She opened her mouth. ‘That’s an order. Get over here, sit down and eat.’
‘This isn’t the navy,’ Clemence said, then bit her lip and did as she was told.
‘No, that is true enough.’ Stanier grinned, the first sign of any real amusement she had seen from him. It was not, now she came to think about it, a very warm smile. It exposed a set of excellent teeth and crinkled the skin at the corners of his eyes attractively enough, but the blue eyes were watchful. ‘What’s happened to sir?’
‘Sorry, sir.’ She slid on to the three-legged stool and tried to recall how her young male friends had behaved at table. Like a flock of gannets, mostly. ‘I haven’t got a knife, sir. Sorry.’
‘Have you got a handkerchief?’ Stanier enquired, then did smile, quite genuinely, when Clemence shook her head in puzzlement. With an effort she kept her mouth closed. When he smiled, he looked…She hauled some air down into her lungs and tried not to gawp like a complete looby. Thankfully he had his back to her, rummaging in one of the canvas kit bags piled in the corner of the cabin. He turned back, holding out a clasp knife and a spotted handkerchief. ‘There.’
‘Thank you.’ She tucked the handkerchief in the neck of her shirt as a bib and unfolded the knife, trying not to imagine sitting next to him at a dinner party, both of them in evening dress, flirting a little. And then walking out on to the terrace and perhaps flirting a little more…Which was ridiculous. She never flirted, she had never wanted to.
‘You should carry that knife all the time. Can you use it?’ Stanier speared a thick slice of boiled mutton, laid it on a slab of bread and attacked it with concentration.
‘On a man? Er…no.’ Clemence thought about Lewis. ‘But I probably could if I was frightened enough.’
‘Good,’ he said, swallowing and reaching for his ale. ‘Go on, eat.’
‘I thought I’d wait for you, sir. You’re hungry.’ He was eating like a man half-starved.
‘I am. First food for forty-eight hours.’ Stanier cut a wedge of cheese and pushed the rest towards her.
‘Why, sir?’ Clemence cut some and discovered that she could find a corner still to fill.
‘Pockets to let,’ he said frankly. ‘If this hadn’t come along, I’d have been forced to do an honest day’s work.’
‘Well, this certainly isn’t one,’ Clemence snapped before she could think.
‘Indeed?’ In the swaying lantern light the blue eyes were watchful over the rim of the horn beaker. ‘You’re very judgmental, young Clem.’
‘Pirates killed my father, took his ship.’ She ducked her head, tried to sound young and sullen. It wasn’t hard.
‘I see. And you ended up with Uncle who knocked you around, eh?’ He leaned across the table and put his fingers under her chin, tilting her face up so he could see the bruises. ‘Heard the expression about frying pans and fires, Clem?’
‘Yessir.’ She resisted the impulse to lean her aching face into his warm, calloused hand. It was only that she was tired and frightened and anxious and wanted someone to hold her, tell her it was all going to be all right. But of course it wasn’t going to be all right and this man was not the one to turn to for comfort, either. Something stirred inside her, the faint hope that there might be someone, somewhere, she could trust one day. She was getting tired—beyond tired—and maudlin. All she could rely on was herself.
Stanier seemed to have stopped eating, at last.
‘I’ll take these plates back.’
‘No, you won’t. You’re not wandering about this ship at night until you know your way around.’ He took the tray from her. ‘Look in that bag there, you’ll find sheets.’
It was a fussy pirate who carried his clean linen with him, Clemence thought, stumbling sleepily across to open the bag. But sure enough, clean sheets there were, even if they were threadbare and darned. She covered the lumpy paliasses, flapped another sheet over the top, rolled up blankets for pillows and then shut herself into the odorous little cubicle. If she did nothing else tomorrow, she was going to find a scrubbing brush and attack this.
But privacy, even smelly privacy, would perhaps save her. She couldn’t imagine how she would have survived otherwise in a ship full of men. Clemence managed to wedge open the porthole to let in the smell of the sea, then emerged. Water and washing would have to wait; all she wanted now was sleep and to wake up to find this had all been an unpleasant dream.
Could she get into bed, or would Stanier want her to do anything else? She was dithering when he came back in. ‘I am not, thank God,’ he remarked, ‘expected to stand watch tonight. Bed, young Clem.’ He regarded Clemence critically. ‘No soap, no toothbrush, no clean linen, either. I’ll have to see what we can find you in the morning. I don’t imagine going to bed unwashed and in his shirt ever troubled a boy, though.’
‘No, sir.’ Clemence thought longingly of her deep tub, of Castile soap and frangipani flowers floating in the cool water. Of a clean bed and deep pillows and smiling, soft-footed servants holding out a drifting nightgown of snowy lawn.
Stanier sat down on the edge of his bunk and shed his coat, then his waistcoat and began to unbutton his shirt. The air seemed to vanish from her lungs. He was going to strip off here and now and…He stood up and she bent to pull off her shoes as though someone had tugged a string.
She risked a peek up through her fringe. He was still standing there, she could see his feet. There wasn’t anything else she could take off while he was there…Belt. Yes, she could unbuckle that. Out of the corner of her eye she could see him heeling off
