Regency High Society Vol 2: Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch. Miranda JarrettЧитать онлайн книгу.
stared at him in disbelief. “If this is your idea of good luck, than I’d hate to see bad. Where’s the captain?”
“In his cabin, with orders not to be disturbed. He always retires after breakfast, you know.”
“I didn’t know and I don’t care,” said Jeremiah curtly. “Send one of the men for him directly.”
“What, and waste this chance to seize the glory ourselves?” cried Hart, his plump chin quivering with anticipation. “The cannonades, Mr. Sparhawk, the cannonades! I’ll send Johnson below for the powder and balls, and then we’ll—”
“Shove the damn things over the side for all the good they’ll do you.” Jeremiah looked back at the French ship, her sails now clearly visible without the glass. At last the sloop’s lookout had spotted the frigate, and at his excited cry the rest of the sloop’s crew had swarmed up the rigging to look for themselves. “A frigate that size carries at least thirty-six guns, each one capable of firing twice as far as your little brass popguns. You wouldn’t even have a chance to aim before they’d blown you clear from the water.”
He would have tempered his words if he’d seen Caro beside him, but instead of being shocked or frightened, she only nodded, her eyes bright with excitement. “Then we’d be fools to pick a fight, Jeremiah. Wouldn’t it be better if we outran them?”
He glanced up at the sails, gauging the wind, and shook his head. “With their size and all the extra canvas they can set, they’d have us by sunset. Besides, if we run, we’ll just be giving them the excuse to fire on us anyway.”
“Look here, you’re only a passenger,” protested Hart. “You’re not even English. You’ve no right to be giving orders to anyone aboard this sloop.”
“And neither are you, you smug little jackass,” snapped Bertle as he stumped up the companionway, still buttoning his breeches. “What’s all this yammering about a Frenchman?”
“There, south-southwest,” said Jeremiah, his patience fast disappearing. “I’d guess from the way they’re chasing us that Bonaparte’s declared war, and we’re set to be that frigate’s first prize. Start thinking fast, Bertle. My wife and I have no wish to risk our lives because of your indecision.”
Hart elbowed his way forward. “I told them we’d fight it out, sir,” he said eagerly. “I told them—”
Bertle cuffed the mate sharply, enough to send the younger man staggering to one side. “You could have told them you knew as much as a keg of salt horse and it would’ve amounted to the same thing. Use the brains God gave you, boy, and learn to keep your mouth shut when you can’t.”
“What other papers do you carry?” demanded Jeremiah. “Dutch, maybe, or Swedish? Anything to fool them with when we’re boarded?”
Bertle glared at Jeremiah as he pulled out a red bandanna and noisily blew his nose. “That’s a low Yankee trick, bad as sailing under false colors, and I won’t countenance it.”
With his hands folded across his chest, Jeremiah looked down at the other captain. “You’d rather lose your ship and cargo?”
Bertle’s mouth worked as he tried to come up with another, more respectable possibility.
“If we’re going to try to fool them,” said Caro, and all three men turned to look at her, “shouldn’t we take down our flag? They might not have seen it yet, you know. The way the wind was blowing I couldn’t make out theirs for the longest time, and they’d be looking into the sun to see us, too.”
“Strike the king’s flag, ma’am?” exclaimed Hart with horror. “To a Frenchman, ma’am?”
Bertle grunted. “Do what the lady says, Hart, and don’t make a great show of it. Fray the line so it looks like we lost our colors in a blow. And mind, we’re not so much striking to the bloody French as protecting what’s ours.”
Caro grinned, and for the first time in weeks Jeremiah saw a flicker of her former impishness. “Then give it to me for safekeeping, Captain Bertle. No galant gentilehomme would dare search a lady’s belongings.”
Clearly uncomfortable with her French, Bertle only grumbled some sort of halfhearted reply.
“You’re registered out of Portsmouth, aren’t you?” asked Jeremiah, and Bertle nodded. “Then we’ll change your papers just enough to make ‘em pass for American. There’s a Portsmouth in Rhode Island, too, far up at the northern end of Aquidneck. We’ll make that the Raleigh’s home port, and pray the French won’t know the difference between an American and an English crew.”
“They’ll never guess if you pretend you’re the captain, Jeremiah!” cried Caro gleefully. “All the rest of us can keep quiet while you speak for us. No one, not even a Frenchman, would ever mistake you for English!”
Jeremiah smiled at her, delighted that she’d suggested it before he’d had to volunteer. Given the circumstances, he was willing to overlook how the compliment was more than a bit backhanded.
But it was no compliment at all to Bertle. “Are you daft, woman? You expect me to turn over my pretty little Raleigh to some Yankee by-blow so he can play at being a captain?”
Caro drew herself up straight, her blue eyes snapping with indignation. “He is no by-blow, Captain Bertle, and he is my husband, and I’ll thank you not to insult either of us any further,” she said tartly. “As for his capability to sail your silly little boat, why, he’s been a captain himself for years and years, and he sails ships so fine as to make this one look like no more than a peapod!”
Jeremiah lay his hand on her shoulder. “Steady, my dear, don’t go overboard.”
“It’s all true, Jeremiah, and I won’t have him say otherwise.” She rested her hand on top of his with what she hoped would seem like wifely loyalty. “In America, Captain Bertle, my husband owns a half-dozen trading vessels in his own name, and holds shares in goodness knows how many others. If he is a passenger in your precious Raleigh, and not the master of a sloop—a finer, better sloop—of his own, why then, it’s because he so chooses, not because he is incapable!”
Bertle’s mouth worked furiously. “I’ve only your word that says so, ma’am. Even if the whole braggart tale’s true, it still don’t change the fact of him being a Yankee.”
“No, it doesn’t,” agreed Jeremiah. “Nor does it change how that French frigate’s bearing down on us.”
“Damnation, Sparhawk!” sputtered Bertle. “What in blazes do you expect of me?”
“It’s your decision, Bertle,” continued Jeremiah relentlessly. He knew what destruction a warning shot from a frigate could bring, even if the others didn’t. “We Americans aren’t at war with anyone just now. My wife and I wouldn’t be touched. You and your crew could lose your ship and your freedom, but we’d be merely inconvenienced. Your choice, Captain.”
“May the devil himself take your choices, Sparhawk!” Bertle slammed his fist down on the railing. “I’m sorry I ever let the pair of you thieving rogues on board!”
But later that afternoon, when the frigate’s longboat bobbed alongside the Raleigh, it was Jeremiah who stood waiting as the captain to receive the French lieutenant. On Jeremiah’s arm was Caro, and behind him, barely silenced by necessity, stood Bertle and Hart. As the Frenchmen began to climb from their boat up the side, Jeremiah took one final glance at Bertle and the rest of the sour-faced crew and sent a last, urgent prayer to heaven that the lot of them would behave. He wouldn’t lay a penny that they could.
“You’ll do splendidly,” whispered Caro as she slipped her hand from his arm and instead twined her fingers into his, something she hadn’t done since the first night. “However could you not?”
From the restless way her fingers moved, Jeremiah wasn’t