19

A gaudy dress and gentle air may slightly touch the heart, but ’tis innocence and modesty that polishes the dart.

Robert Burns

A disgruntled meow sounded outside his closed door.

Ignoring it, Magnus tied his stock, securing it with a buckle at the back of his neck, then shrugged on his borrowed dress coat. Glad he was that he’d always tended to his own dressing. Though he missed his manservant, he missed Nonesuch more. There were no dogs aboard, just cats to keep the rats at bay. These shipboard felines were canny creatures, sensitive to weather. The Bonaventure had a black cat that occupied the captain’s quarters, growing skittish and nervy before a storm, so the cabin boy said.

He felt nearly as skittish, just as wary of a storm below deck, if only an emotional one, as he headed into this third supper at the captain’s table. Given a hearty greeting by the officers when he arrived a bit before eight o’clock, he knew the women were not far behind.

Would Lark come? What of the bairn?

Mrs. Ravenhill, the Bond Street thief, entered first, sumptuous in silk brocade. The captain greeted her as the other women followed, none in brown serge but bedecked in their finest, whether begged, borrowed, or mayhap stolen. A clearly reluctant Lark brought up the rear. She hovered in the open doorway, looking like a kelpie she was so slender. And in that unusual gown, a tad peacockish, jarringly unlike the Lark he knew. He swallowed down a strangled protest.

Wheest! Could ye not look so douce?

Clad in dark blue silk, her waist tied with a white sash, she wore a necklace of what looked to be coral about her slender throat. She made a discreet sweep of the room, lingering longest on him, as Mrs. Ravenhill managed introductions. To Magnus’s knowledge, no one here knew of his and Lark’s tie. He’d not end the ruse now.

Wine was promptly served, a coveted collection from the Canary Islands. He stood beside a bookcase while the ship’s surgeon maneuvered to stand by Lark across the room. Having declared his intent the previous evening, Blackburn now moved in.

Blackburn and Lark had been together on deck in the plant cabin, perusing greenery, watering, and scribbling in a journal. Magnus’s prayers that the surgeon’s interest in her was merely work related resurfaced. But Blackburn’s bald-faced statement the previous night removed all doubt.

I first fixed my fancy on Miss MacDougall the moment the rivet was knocked from her irons.

Something rare and disagreeable twisted inside him, settling in his gut like a rancid meal.

“I’ve been wanting to meet the laird,” Mrs. Ravenhill was saying, diverting Magnus’s attention from Blackburn. “I’ve met a few London noblemen but few Scottish ones.”

Vivacious, witty, and pretty in a hard sort of way, Mrs. Ravenhill sipped her wine with a gloved hand. She extended the other for him to kiss. He uttered something in Gaelic about it being his pleasure, to which she laughed uncomprehendingly.

“You must become acquainted with Miss MacDougall, as bonny a lass as ever set sail, aye?” she said in her lighthearted way.

Lark moved toward him then, the ship’s surgeon not far behind. “The pleasure is mine,” Magnus said in English. When she stood across from him, he said in Gaelic, “Pretend ye’ve ne’er set eyes on me.” Being a Lowlander, Blackburn would not understand their Gaelic.

She touched the coral beads at her throat a bit self-consciously and bent her knees in a curtsy. “Pleased to meet ye, sir.” In Gaelic, she murmured, “I feared ye’d stayed behind in Glasgow with Osbourne.”

He smiled politely, even stiffly, as if they’d simply exchanged pleasantries.

“How delightful!” Mrs. Ravenhill exclaimed at their unintelligible exchange. “Your native language must be quite a boon to you, especially when you chance upon a fellow Scot.”

“Indeed,” Magnus said. He uttered a few final words in Gaelic, meant for Lark alone. “Play coy, aye? For yer own protection. And as the evening progresses, act as if yer besotted with me though we’ve just met.”

At this, her wide-eyed surprise gave way to an amused, agreeable smile, and she took her place between Magnus and Surgeon Blackburn at table.

Lark placed her serviette in her lap, awaiting the first course as the captain told a story of once being marooned in the Caribbean. Whatever these men of the sea were made of, they were not dull.

Her joy and relief at sitting to Magnus’s right cast a golden glow over the evening. Any fretting over Larkin was pushed to the back of her mind, at least briefly.

Play coy . . . act besotted.

So he wanted her to pretend? Why? She dared not ask him outright, not even in Gaelic. Something more was afoot, truly. And that was why Magnus’s quiet words came cloaked in a veiled warning. The long glittering table with its polished candelabra and china did seem a lure, all the convict women playing dress-up, herself included. But to what end?

In English, Magnus said offhandedly, “Tell me about yer bairn. I’m unused to seeing ye without him.”

She smiled around a sip from her goblet. “Larkin’s a wee braw lad who has completely won my heart. He’s not above six months, his aunt said, God rest her.”

“An orphan but for you,” Blackburn said, leaning in.

She looked down at the steam rising from a bowl of consommé set before her. “Sadly so.”

“Nay, happily,” Magnus returned, his gaze intense in the shimmering haze of candlelight. “Yer a born mother. He seems very content.”

“’Tis a God-made circumstance,” she said with conviction. “Mayhap a baby is less trouble than a husband.”

Both men chuckled and returned to their supper, allowing her a look at the women interwoven with the officers about the finely laid table.

Something was afoot. Something more than dinner and dancing. She hardly needed Magnus to tell her so. Beyond the finely lacquered ceiling of the dining room came the trill of a fiddle on the quarterdeck above.

“D’ye dance, yer lairdship?” She nearly smiled at the silly question when she well knew the answer.

“Betimes,” Magnus said. “And ye, Miss MacDougall? I’ve heard it said Quakers disdain such amusements.”

“Some do. But a jig and a reel are hard to resist.” She looked to her right. “And ye, Surgeon Blackburn?”

“Depending on the partner, aye. I’ll be glad to lead out with you. After the captain and his lady, of course.”

The pairing was no surprise. Of all the women on board, Mrs. Ravenhill was first lady of the ship, every bit as much as James Moodie was its captain. In their short acquaintance, Mrs. Ravenhill had not missed a step, polished as the paste gems winking on her flawless bosom. Despite her whispered-about reputation, she was amiable. Interesting. As lovely as she was shrewd. Lark tried to look past the fact that the woman’s silks and laces might be stolen or that her renowned brother was a highwayman who’d escaped when she’d been caught.

“Yer gown reminds me of midsummer,” Magnus told her between courses, eyes down. “Scotia’s bluebells.”

“Oh aye,” she murmured. Could he hear the lament in her voice? “Where I once lived, there was a wee loch rimmed with them like blue lace.”

“Yer a Highland lass then?”

“Nay, the western isles.” Fearful of steering too near the truth, she changed course. “Where are ye bound for, sir?”

“The West Indies.”

“Not Virginia Colony?”

“Nay.” Magnus toyed with his meat, looking as dangerously close to despair as she felt. And then he righted himself, stabbing a bite of beef and chewing resolutely.

She stifled her own dismay, lowering her eyes with a sweep of her lashes in the surgeon’s direction. “And ye, Surgeon Blackburn? Where are ye bound for next?”

“I’m unsure. I may well shun the sea. Try my hand at farming in the colonies.”

“Oh? Surely the plant cabin is a fine start.” She set down her fork and took a bracing sip of wine. Its sourness nearly made her sputter.

The ship’s surgeon leaned in, so close the lace of her upraised sleeve draped across his own coat sleeve. “Are you all right, Miss MacDougall?”

“Not to worry.” She smiled. “The fare is bountiful. Delicious. I’m simply unused to such rich food after . . .” She hated to even mention the tolbooth as it stirred so many dark memories.

“I’m glad to hear you’re not indisposed. Though I’d be happy to attend you should the need arise . . . no matter the hour.”

Lark sensed Magnus’s resistance at the surgeon’s words. She knew him too well to miss such. It lay about him like a winter cloak, cold and forbidding. Could Surgeon Blackburn sense it too?

Magnus forked a last bite of beef, as aggravated by Lark as the lieutenant. Did she have to be so charming? So attentive? Surgeon Blackburn was thoroughly besotted. Did she not see how he kept looking at her? He was ignoring the woman to his right, who seemed not to mind, absorbed as she was in the clutches of another fawning officer. As for the attentive doctor, his Lowland Scots aggravated like a burr.

By meal’s end, the captain had consumed such a quantity of spirits Magnus doubted he could stand without listing, much less climb the ladder to the quarterdeck, where music now wafted on a warm southwest wind.

But up they all went.

Newly bereaved widowers did not dance, did they?

Aye, they did, if only to prevent any ill-trickit doings on board. Yet Surgeon Blackburn soon claimed Lark for a reel while Magnus was left to look on, standing with the two fiddlers on the small platform in front of the foremast, where the halyard and ropes were secured.

The open sea was so vast. His gaze swept skyward where stars winked like angelic candles overhead, breaking up the blackness, moonlight falling to the deck’s sand-scattered surface.

Did the surgeon have to be so able a dancer? So attentive? Magnus was cast back to the tenants’ ball when Lark had danced in Isla’s stead, her surefootedness and grace winning admiring glances both then and now. Once he’d been her laird but no longer. His responsibility for her, his protective reach, had ended. Though indentured, she was perhaps freer than she’d ever been, now well beyond his and Kerrera’s keeping.

He looked to his shoe buckles, grappling with their new standing. What if she was fond of Blackburn? She could do worse. Yet a lonesome life in some coastal town with a husband at sea who was free to take a female mate whenever he pleased . . . Lark deserved better. For all they knew, Blackburn already had a wife. But what sort of future awaited her with Larkin? She was now tied to the bairn in inexplicable ways. How would she fulfill her indenture chasing after a lad not her own?

“Are ye not going to dance?” Scarlet-cheeked, Lark stood to his right, her Gaelic coming in winded, indignant bursts as a jig was stepped.

He fisted his hands behind his back. “In truth, I have no heart for dancing.”

“How can I act the besotted miss if ye willna play along?” Her high spirits fell away. “Yer in mourning. Missing Kerrera. As I am.”

“Dinna look so aflocht. We’ve only just met.”

She sighed and forced a smile at the same time, eyes on the circling dancers. “Is it true what ye said? About the West Indies?”

“I’m now a prisoner of the Crown, ye ken. Not even Osbourne could change that. I go where I’m told, at least two years hence.”

“But my laird ye’ll always be,” she answered softly but firmly. “No matter where we are, nor how much time passes. Nor what the Crown says.”

His voice gentled. “And ye’ll always be my Lark.”

Her poignant expression told him she’d heard his Gaelic despite the rousing music, despite her not looking at him. He said no more, facing into the wind as the night wore on and she partnered with every officer present, including the captain.

Should he warn her? Tell her the officers’ intent?

Indecision warred inside him. He was not used to asking questions but providing answers. And though he knew Lark, he did not know where her heart would lead her in the face of their ever-shifting circumstances.