“Well, I'm no lady, as you never tire of telling me,” Tamsyn said cheerfully, putting one booted foot on a spare chair, resting her arm on her knee. “Good morning, Captain. Are we to voyage in your ship?”
Hugo blinked at the diminutive figure with her vibrant violet eyes and the short shining cap of silvery hair. She was wearing a riding habit, the skirt hiked up by her inelegant stance to reveal leather britches. Not if I can avoid it, lass. It was a silent declaration as he thought of the havoc such an astonishingly unconventional creature could cause among the crew.
“In the name of grace, take your foot off there,” Julian said, sharply pulling the chair out from under her foot. “Sit down, if you must.”
Tamsyn put her bottom where her foot had been and smiled warmly at the captain. “Don't mind the colonel. He's as cross as two sticks this morning. I expect it's the heat. My name's Tamsyn.” She held out her hand in a friendly manner.
Bemused, Hugo took it. “Tamsyn what? Doesn't she have a surname? “Delighted, Miss Tamsyn, he murmured.
“I promise we won't be in the least a nuisance on your ship,” Tamsyn continued blithely. “Josefa and I can share a sleeping space. We're perfectly accustomed to discomfort and cramped spaces, you should know. And you'll find Gabriel a very useful person to have around… won't he, Colonel?”
“Quite possibly,” Julian snapped, se recovering from the implication that he was suffering from heat stroke. “Where is he?”
“Concluding the deals we made with the merchants,” she said. “I told you we'll be two chests lighter for the rest of the journey. We've sold all the bole of cloth and the smaller casket of jewels. That leaves just the gold and the two bigger caskets. You'll have room to store such things, Captain?”.
“Hell and the devil,” Hugo muttered, developing the unshakable conviction that he was as firmly caught as a fish on a hook. “You'd better show me what you've got.”
“Come upstairs, then.” Tamsyn pushed back her chair, getting energetically to her feet. “You can meet Josefa at the same time. She's standing guard at the moment.”
Hugo sent a glance of despairing incomprehension toward the colonel, who was looking grimmer than ever. “I had hoped to ease you into this more gentle,” he said. “But there's no such thing as gentle, with Violette around. She has about as much finesse as a stampeding herd of elephants.”
“Violette?” Captain Lattimer's bemusement was running amok. “I understood the lass to say her name was Tamsyn.”
“Yes,” Julian said. “I'll explain the situation to you in full.” He turned to Tamsyn. “Would you make yourself scarce for half an hour… if it isn't too much to ask? When Gabriel returns, ask him to join us here.”
“Are you going to tell the captain everything? Because if so, I'm sure I ought to be here.” Tamsyn's brows drew together in a somewhat aggrieved frown. “It is my plan, after all, and I could surely explain better how-”
“No,” Julian said flatly. “I will apprise Captain Lattimer of the facts in my own words. He and I speak a language that you do not. Now, be off.”
Tamsyn, very put out, nibbled her lip. This was her enterprise; surely she should be present at strategy discussions. Then it occurred to her that while the cross-country journey had been conducted according to her wishes, from now on she would be a guest of His Majesty’s navy, under the escort of the army. She didn't know anything about such travel, and she certainly didn't have the right to make decisions or even offer an opinion. And Colonel, Lord Julian St. Simon wasn't going to lose the opportunity to let her know it, however public the arena.
It was a galling thought. Without saying anything else, she turned and trailed forlornly from the taproom.
Julian watched her crestfallen departure. It was surprising that such a fiery individual could be cast down by a sharp snub. Well, she'd better get used to it. He turned back to his visibly confused companion. “Let me fill you in, Lattimer.”
Tamsyn lay listening to the rhythmic scrape of a holystone on the quarterdeck a few inches above her face. Judging by the heavy rasping, they were also using one of the massive lumps of granite studded with nails that they called bears. It was close to dawn, a faint graying light seeping through the small window in the captain's sleeping quarters.
She stretched and turned onto her side, the hanging box bed swinging with her movements. It was like being in a permanently rocking cradle, very soothing combined with the gentle motion of the frigate on the presently smooth Atlantic waters. Josefa, in her own box across the small space, muttered as she came out of sleep.
Then the peace of early morning was shattered by a loud shrilling of whistles as the bosuns woke the watch presently sleeping belowdecks. Feet pounded on the decks, voices bellowed down the companionways, “Tumble up… tumble up!” And the racing feet sounded like roll after roll of thunder as the men scrambled on deck with their rolled hammocks to stow them in the nets along the frigate's sides.
After three days at sea Tamsyn had become accustomed to the noise of this morning ritual. Josefa, however, continued to grumble at being awoken with such violence. Now she sat up, grabbing the wooden sides of her cradle as it swung wildly with her movements.
“Ay de mi,” she sighed as she did every morning, contemplating manoeuvring her ample frame out of the cot and onto the shifting timbers of the cabin floor.
“Buenos dias, Josefa.” Tamsyn sat up, her own slight body barely creating a stir in the supporting ropes.
There was a loud bang at the door, and the man Samuel's voice came through the oak. “Hot water, missus.”
“Gracias, senor.” Josefa shuffled to the door, drawing her shawls modestly around her. She opened it a crack met Samuel's grinning face, seized the copper jug, and dragged it inside. Josefa didn't hold with sea travel and she didn't trust sailors.
Tamsyn was sitting up, hugging her knees, a slight frown drawing her delicate arched eyebrows together. “It's Monday, isn't it, Josefa?”
“So I believe,” Josefa said, pouring water into a bowl.
“The last Monday in April.” A little sinking feeling settled in her belly. Cornichet's ambush had been on March 28. Her monthly bleeding had almost ended; she remembered how she'd sat huddled in his cabin with the rope around her neck ironically thanking heaven for small mercies.
But in that case it should have started again five days ago. She touched her breasts, feeling for telltale soreness. Nothing. It had been a risk, those three glorious encounters. The first occasion there'd been no time in the swirling conflagration of ecstasy to think of consequences. The other times she hadn't wanted to spoil the rhythm and spontaneity to consider practicalities. She'd never had that problem before, but Lord St. Simon was no ordinary lover.
She'd persuaded herself that the time in her cycle was relatively safe. The village women held to the lore that pregnancy tended to coincide with coupling in the middle of the woman's cycle. It sounded a haphazard lore to Tamsyn, but she'd chosen to believe it.
“Damnation!” she muttered under her breath. Grimly, she swung herself out of the box and disappeared into the quarter-gallery opening off the sleeping cabin, in the faint hope that a visit to the privy would reveal what she knew hadn't happened.
It was a forlorn hope, as she'd known it would be, and she returned to the cabin, pulling her nightgown over her head. Maybe it would start today. She wasn't always reliably regular, and five days wasn't that late. She sponged her body vigorously, as if she could bully it into behaving properly, then dressed in the britches and ridding habit that allowed her some freedom of movement without breaking the colonel's sartorial rules.