The Stolen Heart Read online

  She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “The Mate even held that against me. Said I needed to purge myself.”

  His brows shot up. “And did you?”

  “What, vomit just to make him happy? I don’t think so, sir. Some things should be above and beyond the call of duty.”

  He laughed. “I hate to tell you this, but Captain Smith on the Dolphin is so adamant that seasickness is a necessary part of a whaler’s life, that if they're not ill, he gives them ipecac syrup to provoke purging. And then tries to cure the illness with a piece of roast pork tied to a string, coated in molasses, which he makes the boys swallow, and then yanks back up several times.”

  Jared noticed Al’s suddenly while face. He moved over to rub the lad's slender back soothingly.

  “I'm sorry, son. I shouldn't have mentioned it. I know how worried you are about your brother.”

  Flustered by his touch, she avoided his penetrating golden gaze and said quickly, “It is all right, sir. I need to know the truth about what he's facing. What we're both facing if we're to have a career as whalemen. I’ll just go get the boys and some food, and see you soon.”

  She hurried from the cabin and his mesmerizing presence, and reminded herself that Adrian was older than she, and a boy too. He would just have to be a man about it. He had longed to follow in his father's footsteps. Service on the Dolphin would toughen him up, and make him realize it wasn't all fun and adventure at sea. Once they got him transferred aboard the Trident, he would be safe, and be able to learn from Jared. They just had to keep pressing on until they located the other ship.

  As soon as Al had scuttled from the cabin, Jared wanted to kick himself. The poor boy had looked so appalled at his tale of Captain Smith. He would have to think of some good cheerful sea stories instead to tell while they sat together that evening, so he wouldn't worry about his brother so much.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Al went up on deck and gathered the greenhands together for the Sunday evening social. “If you’re not on watch, then the captain's waiting for us all below.”

  “Great,” Bob, the oldest of the greenies at eighteen said.

  “Can’t wait,” enthused Tom Lawrence, a large blond raw-boned farm lad of seventeen.

  “I'm going to go get some hot food first. I’ll be down soon.”

  “Aye, we saw the Mate giving you a hard time. You need to try to change boats, get in the second mate’s with us, Al,” said George, a small ferret-faced lad of sixteen who was superb at his ship-board duties, but always seemed to be hungry and angry.

  “Believe me, I'd like nothing better. But it was the Captain's suggestion for me to get toughened up like a greenhand, rather than just act as a cabin boy, so there's not much I can do about it now.”

  George shrugged. “You're doin' your best. Anyway, go on and get your dinner, lad. We’ll see you in a minute.”

  She smiled at him warmly, glad he was not going through one of his moody phases. He reminded her a lot of her brother Adrian when he was like that.

  She headed to the galley and got a plate of lobscouse, salted beef and biscuit all mashed up into a type of stew, a potato, and some pease porridge. It certainly wasn't very good, though the short, wiry blond Cook did the best he could with what he had to work with.

  But without any way of preserving the food, or securing fresh food until they got to the next port apart from the few animals they carried with them to slaughter as a rare treat, it was the finest they could expect.

  Almira sighed. She had little cause to complain. At least she was eating regularly, three times a day. It was more than she and her family had done toward the end, when her mother had sickened and then died.

  She was convinced it was because her mother had been giving what little there was to the children, and had starved herself nearly to death. A simple chill had taken the poor woman off in the end.

  Or had she died of a broken heart, missing her father? They had always sailed together, from the time they had been married over two decades before, all except that last fateful voyage. Her father had insisted on them remaining behind in order to improve Adrian’s educational and employment prospects, and her own chance of securing a good match to a worthy husband.

  Almira couldn't imagine being married, let alone to a landlubber. But her father had feared she would get herself talked about if she remained on the ship much longer.

  His second mate had also formed an unsuitable attachment to her which her father had disapproved of on the grounds that the man was an incorrigible flirt and liquorous.

  She sighed again. She had not liked the man very much either, but it had seemed unfair that she had had to remain on shore when she had done nothing wrong.

  Now Father was missing, Mother dead, Adrian on a hell ship, and the family completely broken up.

  But she couldn't complain about her own lot in life. Thanks to the wonderful Jared Starbuck she had food, warm clothes, a good berth, and a kind captain. And she was at sea, the best part of all. Sailing from port to port might seem a curious definition of home, but she felt truly alive on board ship.

  Perhaps too alive, she thought to herself, wincing as she moved her stiff arms. The numbness of grief over her parents had gradually been wearing off. There was a future to be faced, with or without them. She couldn't let her sisters down, no matter what fate had befallen her father and Adrian.

  She finished eating the salty supper in order to keep up her strength, then took her pewter plate back to the galley, washed it, and put it back in the cupboard along with the rest of the now dry dishes sitting on the sideboard. Cook gave her a grateful wave, and she smiled and headed below once more.

  When she got back down to the Captain’s main cabin, they were all engaged in play except George, so she joined him at the cribbage board.

  “Winners play winners. Losers play losers to determine placement,” the Captain told her as she sat on the opposite side of the room from him.

  She had to remind herself that she spent enough time with him as it was without having to always sit next to him. Often she simply couldn’t help herself. He was like a lodestone to which she was continuously drawn.

  She won her first two games easily against George and Tom, but found herself matched with the Captain in the next round. She put the red and blue tinged pegs back into the zero holes, and they began.

  He was a very good player, but the cut card, and the two discards from each of their hands forming the extra hand, or ‘crib’, which they alternated between each other, offered just enough luck and chance to make a relatively mundane hand or pair of cards worth so much more.

  She looked at her hand; two aces, a three, a five, a six, and a ten, and discarded the three and six.

  Jared cut the cards, and a nine appeared. She pegged well, earning another seven points, and causing Jared to shake his head.

  When it came time to count, her own hand was calculated as a total of eight points, but the cribbage hand turned out to be worth a great deal more, for Jared had discarded two sixes. “Eighteen points,” she declared with a grin.

  “You do have the Devil’s own luck, sometimes, Al,” he grumbled, and picked up the deck to shuffle again.

  He dealt her three queens and a five, and she happily discarded a two and four. He discarded, and she cut the deck. The fourth queen appeared. She giggled, earning herself a mock frown from the captain.

  "Anyone would think you worked on a riverboat, not a whaler."

  "What is it they say about cards? Lucky at cards, unlucky in love?"

  "Let's hope you have a better fate than that, lad, when the time comes."

  She was fairly sure she did as she looked at his stunningly handsome face, especially his rare golden eyes. But his ample attractions were still not enough to distract her from her game.

  She pegged well, earning another six points, and then showed him her hand.

  “Twenty points,” she announced happily.

  He ground his teeth together, and sighed. "If I didn't deal the cards myself, I would think you were cheating."

  "Never that, sir. It's all luck, and skill," she said with a grin.

  The next hand few hands followed the same pattern, and on the fifth, she pegged out before they even got to the counting phase.

  “Just remind me to never play you for money,” he said with a glum expression.

  “Rematch, then?”

  He shook his dark head ruefully. “No. I think I stand a slightly better chance at the chess board. But only slightly.”

  “Oh, no. I’ll do my problems, and you can play with Tom.”

  “I would rather play with you,” he whispered. “You don’t confuse the pieces and try to eat them.”

  Almira laughed. “That was a bit unkind, sir. He's not that bad and you know it. Besides, we can play any time.”

  “Very well,” he said, leaning forward and pointing at her slate to make it look as though he was discussing the math problem with her. “But I shall hold you to that after they've turned in.”

  So she sat in the corner playing checkers with Bob, while Jared taught chess to the boys who were interested, and a couple of them tried to best each other at various card games.

  Al tried not to win every game of checkers she played. In any case, she found the navigation far more fascinating. She worked her way through the problems and checked them twice, but was proud to see that she had got them right the first time.

  When they grew tired of games, they swapped stories of home. Al and the Captain made sure everyone had a turn and felt confident enough to participate.

  Jared also did not allow them to tease each other, nor did he allow any smutty talk amongst the boys. They would hear enough of that from some of the older men, without encouraging them to think
it was acceptable in front of him or young people generally.

  Jared knew he had been very fortunate in his upbringing, with two devoted women looking after him, his mother and his aunt, who waas his cousin and best friend Dare’s mother. They had been respectable and God-fearing, true, but also warm and loving.

  The two stalwart women had taught him to esteem the female gender in all regards, not just treat them as objects to be enjoyed for a few hours and then discarded.

  He had grown up most circumspectly, but their example had also influenced his decision to have as little to do with women as possible. It was unfair to leave a woman ashore to pine and fret for news for years at a time. To make her raise their children by herself, and take care of all the household chores and business alone for stretches which averaged three to five years.

  He had never even considered the possibility of a woman coming aboard a whaler, and still wondered if Dare’s wife Samantha was not a little mad. Surely it had to be a bit odd for her to enjoy the life as she did. Or to raise little Edward, named after Dare’s father, on board a ship.

  But before he had left Nantucket, he had seen them preparing for yet another journey down to the St. Helena Grounds in the South Atlantic, which were fruitful, but not so far that they could not get down there and back with their greenhand crews in only about six to eight months.

  They trained them, brought aboard some oil, and then took them back as experienced crewmen who could command a much higher share and status on their next voyage. He had even hired one or two of them himself and been most pleased with their contributions and thought they had excellent prospects in the Starbuck fleet.

  St. Helena was nice enough, and lucrative, but Jared had always loved the Pacific Ocean, and the New Zealand Grounds in particular. While he might normally have gone via St. Helena and the Indian Ocean, he had promised Al he would try to get to the bottom of her father’s disappearance.

  For that he had to try to retrace Captain Hussey's route in reverse. By all accounts Jed had been heading for the Horn the last time he had been seen or heard from, and so the west coast of South America would be the best place to start his inquiries.

  As he looked across at Al busily working on her slate with enormous concentration despite the other seven people in the room all making noise, he wondered what had prompted him to take the tiny lad under his wing. What prompted him now when he deliberately sought out his companionship.

  He felt a dreadful pang at the thought. There was a name for men like that. He had met a few of them in his time at sea, and the thought filled him with disgust.

  His father had once said that there were all kinds of love in the world. That some men aboard ship were as devoted as brothers, or had quite parental relationships with their charges.

  He and Dare could not have been closer if they had been actual brothers, and Jared and his own brother Morgan adored each other despite several years' gap in their ages.

  But the thought of him desiring Al in an unnatural way filled him with unease.

  Out of all the lads who had served as cabin boy in the past, why this one? Because of his father? His adorable little sisters? It was all so confusing.

  Maybe he was just getting to the limits of his loneliness, he thought as he took stock of the chessboard while his opponent slowly puzzled out his next move. He loved being with women, when he got a chance with someone relatively respectable at home or in a foreign port.

  But the idea of paid companionship filled him with dread of the tawdriness of the act. Not to mention the possible appalling consequences which plagued sailors who shared women in the brothels. Better to marry than to burn, as the phrase went, but in his case, he had never really even considered it until Dare had married Samantha Chase.

  But she was a rare jewel. Most of the women he had come across had either proven fairly average in intelligence and scruples, or so high above him that they considered him beneath them. He was proud of his wealth, and how it had been made. He considered himself the equal of many of the women who had snubbed him, certainly in terms of education and decent Christian principles.

  He knew he was not perfect, but he did try to live his life according to the Good Book. Most of the women he had met dwelled more in the realm of the Seven Deadly Sins.

  His one failing had been lust, and he had been trying to tamp it down ever since his sap had first started to rise. His main source of experience in his youth had been a warm and willing widowed friend of his mother’s.

  She had not been young or pretty, but there had been something so needy about her that for a time he had been flattered and pleased to oblige. She had taught him things he had never imagined anyone would wish to do, let alone enjoy doing.

  For a time it had been fun, thrillingly forbidden, but she had become more and more immoderate in her demands upon him. He could see now why lust was considered a sin—both of you fell, fell hard, and were quite content to wallow in the mire of sensuality, instead of tread the lofty plains of spirituality.

  Faced with her increasingly lascivious and obsessive behavior, and his own sense of wrongdoing, Jared had finally confessed to his mother what had happened. What had been going on for months.

  He had expected a round scolding, perhaps even ejection from her home like Adam from the Garden of Eden. Yet she had handled things with quiet dignity, and apologized for sending him on so many errands to the woman’s house without thinking of the damage she could have caused.

  Jared was never sure exactly what had been said or done, but he had kept his promise to his mother to sin no more, and never gone back there again.

  The widow moved away shortly thereafter, and he heard later that she had started her own house of ill repute in the next port, and was one of the most dedicated career women there.

  Jared shook his head as he moved the wrong piece and lost his castle. That had been a lucky escape from a most unsuitable woman. But now he was confused about how he felt about his new work colleague. He felt a hypocrite, discouraging anything he saw as a worrisome friendship on board the ship, while still seeking out Al himself.

  But there was just something so soft and vulnerable about the boy. It was like looking at Dare’s son little Edward. He got the same tight feeling of tenderness in his chest whenever he watched Al struggle to perform some particularly difficult chore.

  Was this an unselfish, paternal love? He supposed so. He had loved his mother, his brother Morgan, his aunt, Dare, and had come to love and respect Samantha, and adore Edward.

  But love for a child? The desire to protect and nurture, cherish, in an unselfish way? That had to be far different from the mindless lusting he had experienced with the merry widow. Those rampant fleshly urges had had nothing to do with even liking the other person. Nothing even to do with reason or common sense.

  Lust, desire, it was just a biological fact, like other bodily functions. But one which he could avoid, resist. And one which he refused to let get the better of him. He was a rational being, in control.