The last thing Effie expected to see was Lord Rivenhall waist deep in her trench making impressively short work of the wall she had been battling for hours. He’d dispensed with his coat, which gave her an unencumbered view of his broad back and shoulders as he swung the pickaxe with brutal precision. Each time he bent over to toss her more rocks, she was rewarded with the ever-so-slightly scandalous sight of his breeches pulled taut over his muscular thighs and bottom. And he had quite the bottom. She had been surreptitiously admiring it over the top of the wheelbarrow for a good twenty minutes already and was still not the least bit over it.
‘Did they teach you how to use a pickaxe in the navy?’
‘There is not much call for digging on board a ship.’
‘I suppose, as a captain, you mostly stood around giving orders?’
‘You have never been on board a ship, have you, Miss Not-a-clue? Because if you had, you would realise what an entirely stupid thing that was to say. The term “all hands on deck” came about for a reason—because there are not enough hands on board to do all of the things that are needed. There are few idle hours. Even when one is the Captain.’
‘I read there were eight hundred and twenty crew members aboard the Victory at Trafalgar. Eight hundred and twenty-one if you include Nelson himself. Whichever way you look at it, that is a lot of hands. One thousand, six hundred and forty-two of them.’
He smiled and rolled his eyes. ‘Well, that was the Victory and that was at Trafalgar. If we are going to talk statistics, I should tell you the Victory is a first-rate, one-hundred-and-four-gun warship and needs significantly more crew than my humble fifth-class thirty-eight-gun frigate could hold just to fire them.’
‘You did not have a crew of eight hundred, then?’
‘If only...’ He swung the axe back again, the soft linen of his shirt straining most intriguingly against his biceps. ‘The Artemis was crewed by two hundred and eighty-three. Which only gave me a paltry five hundred and sixty-five individual hands to do all the work.’
‘Surely you mean five hundred and sixty-six?’ Why had she corrected him, when correcting people always rubbed them up the wrong way.
‘No. I meant five hundred and sixty-five, because Plumstead, the bosun, lost an arm at the Battle of the Nile and had a hook which he used with impressive precision.’ He slanted her an amused glance. ‘Which takes the total tally up to two hundred and sixty-seven hands if you include me...standing around and giving orders.’
‘You enjoyed that, didn’t you?’
‘Immensely.’
‘Do you miss it?’
His eyes clouded and he nodded. ‘Every single day. Or at least I miss the sea rather than the navy. The freedom of sailing into that vast expanse of sky and sea to far-flung places.’
‘I’ve read that sailors—’ She clamped her jaws shut, realising in the nick of time what she was curious about was probably inappropriate even though he had paused and was clearly waiting for her to finish. ‘Never mind.’
‘Ask your question. You know you want to.’
‘It’s not the sort of question a lady is supposed to ask a gentleman.’
He made a great show of looking every which way before he turned to her, those dark eyes alight with mirth for once rather than annoyance. ‘As there is nobody here to hear it, ask it anyway.’
‘I was wondering if you had a girl in every port?’
He paused, his mouth opened as if to speak then he clamped it shut again. ‘Well, I wasn’t expecting that... You say the damnedest things.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘My fault. I did encourage you to ask it.’ She thought he would leave it at that, but he surprised her. ‘I suppose the honest answer is not every port.’ She could tell by his expression he was recalling one of two of them now and that made her even more curious about him. And those girls. Except she knew that really would be wrong to ask, so instead changed tack.
‘Your ship was called the Artemis? Goddess of the hunt.’
‘I always thought it was a fitting name.’ He sighed, remembering, then swung the pickaxe again. ‘She was fast, manoeuvred swiftly and was more than a match for any other vessel foolish enough to take her on or try to outrun her.’
‘Was?’
He paused and shook his head wistfully, his dark eyes sad for a moment before he turned away. ‘She was dismantled after we returned from America. They told me the fire damage was too great to repair. Better to start afresh.’ Then the pickaxe came down with such force he sent rocks flying everywhere as she realised she had inadvertently struck a raw nerve.
‘You never got to say goodbye.’
‘I was probably being given the last rites when the decision was made.’ More stones flew as he aimed the blade again. ‘I think I received them so many times in the first month I could probably recite them.’
Something which didn’t bear thinking about. ‘Is that how you were wounded? The fire?’
He nodded curtly, then, jaw clenched, directed all his focus to the task in hand. Obviously hurting. She wanted to comfort him, but didn’t know how to. In the end, she decided the best course of action was not to ask a single one of the many questions she desperately wanted to ask. Instead, she did her damnedest to load the wheelbarrow as quickly as he was dismantling the wall, wishing she knew what to say to make him feel better.
After ten tense, silent minutes, he threw the pickaxe to the ground and kicked the loose stones in the bottom of the trench. ‘For pity’s sake! I can hear the blasted questions whirring in your mind like a cog, Miss None-of-your-blasted-business!’
‘I’m sorry. I know it’s none of my business—and I have no intention of prying.’
‘Good.’
‘And actually, in my case, if I am being pedantic, questions spin in wildly like a top more than whir like a cog.’ And so many unanswered questions gave her a headache. ‘I cannot stop them.’
‘Then ask the damn things, woman, and let’s be done with the inevitable inquisition before that big brain of yours explodes!’ He started to pace within the narrow confines of the trench, both hands fisted, his expression furious. But for some reason she knew it was at circumstance rather than at her specifically. When she remained quiet, he stopped pacing and glared hands on hips, daring her to speak.
‘As you say, it is none of my business.’
‘I’d rather you heard it from me rather than Eleanor. Or, heaven help me, idle and misinformed gossip from people with nothing better to do than speculate and fabricate their own answers when none is forthcoming. That used to drive me mad on board ship. Rumours... Panics... Fairy tales... If you are going to dig on my land and make friends with my interfering sister, Miss No-peace-for-the-wicked, then you might as well know the sorry truth.’
‘All right... How did it happen?’
‘We were part of the blockade anchored outside New York tasked with preventing cargo entering or leaving the harbour. A stupid waste of time, if you ask me, and a foolhardy gamble with the lives of sailors when all the aggrieved parties would have been better off sitting around a table and hashing it out like adults instead of playing silly games to maintain the stalemate for two years. But what would I know about such things?’ The sarcasm was accompanied by a frustrated shake of the head. ‘I was only there—in the thick of it—at the mercy of the whims of the government and the Admiralty three thousand miles away!’
‘It must have been hard fighting a war you didn’t agree with.’
‘It wasn’t a war. Wars have rules, tactics, battles... Obvious enemies and a clearly defined cause to be fighting for. There wasn’t much evidence of any of that from where I was anchored. We were fifteen ships in total and it had been a quiet week. Too quiet. It lulled us all into a false sense of security. That annoys me the most because I was lulled, too. Privateers attacked in the dead of night when I was asleep. The first I knew, we were already dodging cannon fire. By the time I got on deck, the ship was on fire. We tried to fight it as best we could, alongside fighting them as well, but the wind sent it spreading to the sails on the mizzenmast. I knew if the mainsail went up then we were done for—a sitting duck—so I climbed the mast to cut it down and managed to set myself on fire in the process.’
‘Did it...hurt?’ A stupid question, but one which had plagued her since her first glimpse of the scars on his cheek.
‘Enough that I wished for death to take me immediately. And perhaps it would have if I hadn’t stupidly thrown myself into the sea in order to stop it.’ Thank goodness. Effie couldn’t imagine how awful it must have been. The pain and fear. ‘And very near drowned wrapped in the sail to boot. I think they pumped a good gallon of brine out of my lungs when they fished me out. Although thankfully I have no memory of that.’
But as he recalled it, she saw the horror in his eyes and realised he clearly remembered both the burning and the drowning, and despite the warm sun on her skin she shivered at the thought.
‘Does it still hurt?’
He shook his head. ‘But I do not feel like my skin fits any more, if that makes sense. Too tight. Numb in places. Oversensitive in others. It isn’t mine.’ Anger again—but tinged with something else. Frustration? Sadness? ‘It isn’t me.’
It isn’t me. A strange and upsetting statement which threw up new questions. Questions she knew he wouldn’t answer despite giving her permission to ask them. His sister had said something similar when she had assured Effie he wasn’t himself. He was clearly lost. Languishing in some strange limbo he was struggling to find his way out of. She understood. After Rupert’s death, when she had been forced to resign herself to the fact she would never have any of the things the female part of her craved—like children, or real intimacy with another human being who accepted her exactly as she was—she had had to do a great deal of soul searching to claw her way out of that pit of despair.
Purpose had been her salvation then and was still the only thing which blurred the constant sense of loneliness and otherness she had felt from her earliest memories. Feelings which had intensified as her age had increased and all hope of living any sort of normal life beside someone who wanted her there gradually eroded away with each rejection or daily reminder of exactly how peculiar she was.
Dark days and hopelessness sucked all the joy out of your soul and she suspected Lord Rivenhall’s weren’t over yet.
‘How much of you was burned?’ An intensely personal question, but she needed to know. Needed to understand the full ordeal he had been through and perhaps through that him, too. The real him beneath all the bluster and anger. The man whose outer wounds had healed, but who still had a long way to go to be mended.
‘In fractions, inches or just body parts? Because if it’s fractions, then one physician put it at an eighth. How he came to that figure I do not know. You would have to ask him. The scars run from here...’ He pointed angrily at his left ear. ‘To here.’ He jabbed himself in the ribs. ‘Largely thanks to the supremely combustible properties of the fine wool in my dashing blue and white captain’s coat. At its longest point it is eighteen and a quarter inches. Another helpful physician gave me that hideous number because he felt the urge to measure it. He thought it remarkable. My case remarkable. Because I wasn’t expected to survive the night, let alone the six-week sailing home. But survive I did, more’s the pity, as I wouldn’t wish that first year of recovery on anyone.’
‘Why?’
‘It was agonising. I spent most of it in a delirious stupor thanks to all the laudanum they forced into me. It was as if I was trapped in a never-ending nightmare involving the fire and the water...’ His eyes were bleak now. The anger gone from his voice and replaced by something else. ‘Hell on Earth. Then I had to suffer another three months of a different kind of hell as Eleanor weaned me off the stuff after the worst of the wounds had healed over.’
‘By then your ship was gone.’
‘It was. And my crew and my illustrious naval career with it.’ He couldn’t disguise the sadness in his dark eyes. ‘Alongside my father, who died of pneumonia that winter—not that I was compos mentis enough to understand that, let alone grieve for him when he passed. We were never close and even less so after I defied him to go to sea, but still...’ He had lost so much. Been through so much. None of it his fault yet he would carry the scars of it for ever. Was it any wonder he was angry at the world?
‘Then, of course, I was bullied into six long months of exercise because my muscles had wasted away.’
‘Eleanor again?’
He smiled wryly. ‘She wanted me to live. I wasn’t so keen.’
‘And now?’ The thought he still might wish for death broke her heart.
‘And now... I am here.’ He shrugged. ‘Trying to find the wood for the trees. Except my sister doesn’t think I am capable of doing that by myself.’ He bent to retrieve the pickaxe and leant on the handle. ‘She thinks I need to rejoin the world.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I try not to think. Like you, I find my thoughts exhausting.’
‘Digging helps. Although it is physically impossible to dig all day and, once I stop, off those thoughts go again.’ Effie drew a spiral on her temple with her index finger. ‘Spinning wildly. I have to keep myself constantly occupied or they send me mad.’
‘I’ve been counting things. Patterns, forks, clouds...’ He sighed. ‘It is not a particularly effective method of keeping them at bay. I’ve been thinking for some time I need another method.’
‘If you find a way which works all of the time, please pass it on.’ They had something in common. Something real and tangible in common. Something few others would understand and that warmed her. ‘I find the nights the worst...’
‘When your body is crying out for sleep and your mind isn’t done playing with you?’
‘You, too?’
He smiled in response and something peculiar happened as she smiled back at him. For the first time in her life she felt a true connection with another human being, although she couldn’t put her finger on exactly why that was, other than to feel unjudged and able to be completely herself for a change rather than pretending to be the diluted version she always strove to be in the company of others. Even with her father, dear understanding Rupert and Lord Richard—the three closest relationships of her life—Effie had often guarded her words. Yet with this strange, changeable, complicated man whom she barely knew, but felt she did, she already realised she did not need to do that. More bizarrely, for the first time, her over-active mind was quiet. Calm.
Content.
‘Digging might well be a distraction, but it’s thirsty work, Miss Nettlesome. I don’t suppose you brought any water with you?’
‘I did better than that.’ She stood and brushed the dust off her breeches. ‘I brought lunch. It’s in my satchel and I am happy to share it with you seeing that you have practically demolished that pesky wall for me.’
‘Then don’t dither, Miss Nithercott. Bring it hither from thither before I wither.’
‘My name seems to bring you much amusement, my lord.’
‘It is such a dreadful name, I feel the near-constant urge to change it.’
‘Agreed. It is dreadful. Rare nowadays—but I am not surprised it is dying out. I should imagine all the other Nithercotts were only too happy to abandon it as soon as an opportunity presented itself. The grooms as well as the brides. Unfortunately, my first name is no better so I am doomed on both counts. Euphemia.’ She pulled a face as she tugged the food parcel from her bag. ‘Euphemia Nithercott... I’ve always hated it. Such a convoluted, tongue-twisting mouthful. No name should require seven whole syllables. Two would be ideal. Perhaps three at a push. Something innocuous which would help me to blend into the background—or at least try to.’ Until she opened her mouth, of course. ‘Like Jane Smith or Anne White. Two instantly forgettable names consisting of two perfectly bland syllables.’
‘Try living with eight.’ He used both his hands to push himself to sit on the edge of the trench. ‘Maximillian Aldersley. The ink runs out on the quill before I can finish my signature, which always makes it look untidy.’
They had that in common, too. ‘Eight is greedy—but Max is nice.’ She lowered herself to sit beside him so they could share the food. ‘That one syllable suits you.’ And now she was sitting much too close. They were almost shoulder to shoulder. She could feel the heat of his body through the soft linen of her shirt. Smell the same comforting aroma of his shaving soap as she had when he had solicitously wrapped her in his coat the other night. Just as it had then, something about it unnerved her and called to her at the same time.
‘Then I give you leave to call me Max. Especially as my lord doesn’t seem to fit any better than my damned skin just yet. It’s too new. Too formal.’
‘Whereas Captain is so very informal.’
‘I do not recall asking you to call me Captain, Miss Nit-picker.’ He tore off a crust of bread and nudged her playfully with his elbow. Something she was pretty certain no one had ever done before. ‘This is the part where you give me leave to call you Euphemia instead...’
‘It’s Effie.’
‘Effie...’ The way he said it, his deep voice lingering softly over the vowels as if testing the sound of it, sent shivers up her spine. ‘I like it.’