Ned awoke to the familiar rocking of the hammock. Six days he’d been aboard Alexandra. Yesterday, when his fever broke and he could think coherently, he informed William of his intent to resign his commision. He had yet to receive a response from the commodore.
He turned his face toward the light streaming in through the gun port. A woman in a pale gown was perched atop the cannon, reading. He had never seen Julia wear one of the white, fluffy mobcaps his mother and sister were so fond of, nor could he imagine her seated in such a casual manner on the enormous piece of artillery.
“Charlotte?” His voice came out rough and raspy.
The figure turned. “You are awake.” She slid down from her perch, set the book on a nearby trunk, and came to stand beside the bed. “How do you feel?”
He frowned. “You are out of uniform.”
Her smile brightened the room. “Aye, sir. I am.”
“Then they know?”
“William and Julia know—and the doctor. And William’s steward. Everyone else believes I am a passenger being taken by William as a favor to an old friend from Barbados to Jamaica.”
“And Midshipman Lott?” Ned looked over at the empty hammock she had spent her first few hours aboard Alexandra in.
She hung her head to the side in an approximation of sorrow. “Poor Mr. Lott did not survive yellow fever. He was buried quietly at sea—well, he would have been if William had agreed to my suggestion.”
“You are well? Fully recovered?”
“I tire easily, and my appetite has not returned. And you? How do you feel?”
“Like a ship capsized in a storm and smashed upon a rocky shore.”
“How did you know?”
The question took him aback. “Know what?”
“About me? And why did you never say anything to me?” Charlotte reached up and started twining the ribbon that hung from the mobcap around her fingers.
Despite feeling he dragged Alexandra’s and Audacious’s anchors up with it, he raised his hand and captured hers. “This, for one. Charles Lott worried the buttons on his coat the same way Charlotte Ransome worries her ribbons.”
She looked down at their joined hands, and he released her.
“I do apologize. I meant no offense.”
“I was not—you did not offend me in the slightest.”
“Your face.”
“My face?”
He closed his eyes a moment, realizing how mad he sounded, speaking in discombobulated bits and pieces. He looked at her before speaking again. “Your face is too beautiful to be a boy’s face. And your eyes. How could I forget having looked into them when we danced at your debut ball?”
Charlotte’s cheeks changed from pale to bright red in an instant.
“How did you manage it, Miss Ransome? You had the book learning; I knew that from questioning you myself. But the physical labor. You could have had little opportunity to test yourself in such a manner.” Drawing together the little strength he possessed, he pushed himself up with his elbows into a more upright position.
“With only Mama and me at home, I had great freedom. If she knew I spent my afternoons, when she thought I was visiting with friends or tucked away in a corner of the garden reading, learning how to tie a rope ladder, and then climbing a tree to hang it from to simulate climbing the shrouds, she would never have let me out of her sight.”
“So you had been planning for a long time to do this?”
“No. I started doing it as a little girl because I wanted to be like my brothers. I continued doing it because I enjoyed the physical exertion.” She helped him adjust the pillow behind his back and then crossed to the small table and poured him a cup of water.
He had not realized how thirsty he was until the liquid touched his lips. “Living in the cockpit, you managed to keep your true self hidden.”
“Yes. With access to the privacy of the roundhouse privy and the need to change one’s clothes only rarely, the boys suspected nothing.”
The question he wanted to ask ever since discovering who Charles Lott was tumbled out. “What do you want that is so important you would not only submit yourself to the demanding life and duties of a midshipman, but that you would continue to do it after you made an enemy of Mr. Kent?”
She shrugged and reached up to toy with the ribbon again. “I had—have my reasons. Looking back, I was being childish and selfish. I fear I created more problems for everyone—you, William, my entire family. But even though I was foolhardy to choose the action I took, I promised something and I will follow through on that promise.”
The ruffled cap slipped off her head, revealing the short, blunt hair he’d become accustomed to seeing on Mr. Lott.
“And you, Captain Cochrane? Why have you told my brother that you desire to resign your commission? The fault is completely mine. I have taken full responsibility.”
For the first time, the voices came back—the echoes of their screams. “No. I should never have agreed to command Audacious. Both times I have been put in command of a vessel, I have made an ill-informed decision that proves my unfitness to be a ship’s captain.”
“The crew of Audacious—most of them—would disagree with you. Particularly those who served under Captain Yates before serving under Captain Parker. Hamilton, Martin, Jamison, and many others sang your praises and hoped you would be confirmed as captain and have Audacious as your posting.”
Ned clamped his back teeth together. He had made a decision he felt benefitted the ship—letting Charlotte continue with her masquerade. But would Commodore Ransome see it that way?
“Captain Cochrane, please allow me to beg your forgiveness. Although I would never have wished either of us ill, it is only because our illness—some might call it an act of Providence—that we were able to leave Audacious with my identity and your reputation intact. I could have ruined the career of one of the best officers in the Royal Navy. For that I deeply apologize, and I hope that one day you might think better of me.”
How could he think better of her than he did now? He loved her. Before he could articulate this, however, the doctor entered.
“Good afternoon, Miss Charlotte. Captain Cochrane, it is good to see you awake and able to make the effort to sit up. Do not overtax him, Miss Charlotte. He needs his rest to regain his strength. We dock in Kingston in four days.” The doctor nodded at both of them and then disappeared into his office.
Ned reached for Charlotte’s hand again. “Charlotte, I lo—”
“Oh, good. You’re awake.” William entered the sick berth with Julia just behind him. “Charlotte, Julia will walk you back to the cabin. I wish to speak with Mr. Cochrane.”
Ned did not miss the implication of William’s use of mister. It was better he have this talk with William, to determine if he had a future that could promise Charlotte anything but poverty, before he spoke to her of his feelings.
He struggled to push himself into even more of an upright position as William stood near the foot of the hammock and clasped his hands behind his back. Dr. Hawthorne stepped out of his office, took one look at William, and then went back into the small room, closing the door behind him.
William waited until the door closed behind Julia and Charlotte before speaking. “I have carefully considered your request regarding your resignation. Your reasons for wishing to be released from service were cogent and logically argued.”
Hollowness consumed Ned, but he tried to keep his face as expressionless as William’s. “Thank you, sir.”
“I will take my leave—I beg your pardon?”
“Your request to resign your position is denied.”
“But…Miss Ransome…”
“You made an error in judgment. I would make myself a liar if I said I always made the correct decisions.” William released a soft sigh. “There are two choices you can make from your mistake, Ned. You can let it take you aback, throw you off course, and sink you, or you can determine a new heading and let what you’ve learned from your mistake guide you.”
William turned and reached to open the door. “The choice is yours. I expect to know your final decision before we make port at Jamaica.” With a quick nod, he left the sick berth.
Ned released the tension in his upper body and melted down into the hammock. The choice was his. He could resign and walk away from the navy and, hopefully, never have to make life-and-death decisions again, or he could stay and face his seeming inability to make the correct choice in the face of danger or disaster.
If he thought of it in other terms, he could quit and have no income—and no prospects of income—to support a wife, or he could stay in the navy, learn how to be a better officer, and expand his prospects for future promotion and means and perhaps someday soon be considered a worthy suitor for…someone.
He stared up at the planks of the deck above and hoped William’s faith that God did indeed listen to and answer prayers was justified. Because, as past and recent history proved, Ned could not trust himself to make the correct decision on his own.
“Where is she?”
Julia looked up from the list of questions she wanted to ask Henry Winchester as soon as she arrived home. “Pardon?”
“Charlotte. She is supposed to stay in the cabin with you.” William clapped his hat down onto his desk.
Despite Julia’s best efforts, the young woman had slipped away on three occasions since rising from her sickbed two days ago and being instructed to stay in the great cabin. Julia glanced around and sighed. “She was reading on the window seat only a short while ago. I apologize. I became immersed in my work.”
“It is unfair for you to have to serve as her jailer.” He crossed to look over her shoulder at the papers and ledgers spread out before her. “Have you informed her yet?”
“That I suspect the man she has secretly been carrying on a correspondence with and formed an illicit engagement with has stolen more than ten thousand pounds from me? No.” Julia set down her quill, placed her hands on the small of her back, and stretched away the stiffness of hours spent pouring over the ledgers and Jeremiah’s letters. “I still hold on to the hope that she will listen to her brother and give up the idea that she must marry Winchester because she sent him a letter—without the knowledge of her family—stating that she would.”
William’s lips quirked in a half smile. “I have long given up hope that the women in my life will listen to anything I have to say.”
“Some may yet learn.”
Her husband’s forgiveness, and the ease with which he had accepted her apologies and excuses for why she had kept such a secret from him, made her feel at once better and worse—better that the burden of the conspiratorial knowledge no longer stood between them, and worse because she knew she did not deserve such grace, mercy, and love. Both drove her to determine she would never do anything that would risk his good opinion again.
“You did not hear her leave?”
Julia glanced around again, still finding a cabin devoid of Charlotte Ransome. “No, but I can easily guess where she went.” She tucked the letters and lists into the ledger, closed it, and set it down in the top desk drawer. “I shall retrieve her.”
“I will be on the poop deck sending instructions to the other ships. Send Dawling for me when you return.” He retrieved his hat and returned to duty.
Julia took a lantern and went down the companionway just outside of the great cabin. She preferred walking across the deck, in the delicious sunlight, before heading down into the dark, dank gun decks below, but with the heightened security measures William had set in place because of the increased risk of pirate attacks, he had requested she stay off the upper decks as much as possible.
As expected, she found Charlotte in the sick berth, seated across a small table from Ned, playing backgammon with him. He looked up and stood as soon as he saw Julia.
She waved him back down into his chair, though he did not take his seat again. “You are looking well this morning, Captain Cochrane.” Though still gaunt from his illness, emphasized by the way his uniform hung on him, color filled his cheeks and his eyes sparked with life. “I do apologize, but I must interrupt your game. Charlotte, you are needed in the great cabin.”
The set of the young woman’s shoulders and the exasperation around her mouth reminded Julia far too much of herself at the same age, but she attended Julia without protest.
“Mrs. Ransome, before you go, might I have a private word with Miss Ransome?” Ned’s gray eyes pled with her.
“Of course you may.” Charlotte’s countenance glowed in the dim light.
Julia clamped her teeth together and gave them a tight smile. That they loved each other was obvious. But she despaired of any hope for their future together.
“I shall await you outside, Charlotte.” Julia looked between the two of them once again before exiting the sick berth.
Charlotte turned to put the game away, trying to control the fluttering in her belly. She should not have come down here, should not have spent so much time with Ned alone already. Coming to care for him even more deeply would only make it harder when she had to part with him in three days’ time.
Her heart leapt when his hand closed over hers, stopping her from returning the game pieces to their holder.
“Miss Ransome…Charlotte…”
She turned and looked into his face, and her heart was utterly and completely lost. In this moment, there was no angry older brother, no fiancé waiting in Jamaica. There was only Charlotte and Ned. “Yes, Ned?”
“I will never be able to offer you wealth or a grand home or titles and land. But what I have, I wish to offer to you: I offer you my heart. It is fully yours, if you want it. Will you marry me?”
Happiness crashed against her with more force than a storm surge—only to rush out again as quickly and leave a void of despair.
Ned must have seen the change in her expression, as his own changed to reflect it. He released her hand. “I knew better than to hope you might return my affection. I beg your forgiveness if I have caused you any pain or inconvenience.”
She grabbed his hand to keep him from turning away from her. “No, you do not understand. I want to marry you. I do.” Her heart ached at the joy that flickered back to life in his beautiful eyes. “But I cannot.”
“If it is a matter of money, I am willing to wait if you are. I plan to tell the commodore I no longer wish to resign my commission. I will work, long and hard, to accumulate enough money so that I can provide a comfortable life for you.”
She smiled to stave off the tears that wished to flow. “It is not money that is the problem—there is the legacy my brothers have set aside for me. I know ten thousand pounds is not a vast fortune, but it is enough for a comfortable life—”
“If it is your brother, I will work just as long and hard to earn his approval and blessing, no matter how long it takes.”
“Nay, it is not William or any of my family who stands in my way of accepting your proposal—”
“Then I do not understand—”
She touched her fingertips to his lips. If he continued to provide arguments in favor of the match, she might never say what needed saying. “Ned, I cannot marry you because I am already engaged. That is why I became a midshipman. To travel to Jamaica and get married.”
“Engaged?” Ned staggered back and sank onto his chair. “Engaged? But why, then, were you traveling illicitly?”
Charlotte crossed her arms, her stomach aching. “Because my family did not know. I intended to tell them after Henry and I were married. I never expected…” She looked at him and hot tears burned down her cheeks. “I never expected I would fall in love with someone else along the way.”
Ned raised his eyes to meet hers, and then he stood and took her hands in his. “If you do not love him, you cannot marry him. Your family has not approved the match. Therefore, you cannot be held legally bound to him.”
Though it was the last thing she wanted to do, Charlotte pulled her hands free and stepped back from him. “But I am bound to him by a promise. And I would not be someone worthy of your love if I were to break my word to him. I have not seen him in almost two years.” She swallowed and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “I know now that I never truly loved him. But if he loves me and still wants me, I will stay true to my promise and marry him.”
“Even if it means you will be trapped in a marriage with someone you do not love for the remainder of your life?” Ned seemed to fold in on himself as the strength of Charlotte’s resolve registered in his mind.
“Aye. Because that is the honorable thing to do.” Even though it would break her heart.