“Dr. MacCloud?” The small voice from the other side of the blanket was so soft, he at first thought he might have imagined the sound.
“I’m sorry, but the doctor does not see patients after midnight.” Cullen smiled to himself in the dark, mentally daring her to call him by his Christian name.
“Cullen?”
“Yes?”
“Can you forgive me?”
“For what?”
The silence on the other side of the cabin lengthened.
“For crying like a silly girl.”
“Willa, you are not a girl. You’re a full-grown, warm and beautiful woman, and certainly not silly. I don’t know that I’ve ever observed you doing anything silly. Come to think of it, I don’t reckon you’re capable of acting silly.”
Another long silence pulsed in the darkness.
Cullen finally had begun to slide into sleep when Willa’s small, insistent voice rose again.
“Did you…did you do the same things to her you did to me?”
Cullen sat up so suddenly, he thumped his head against the bulkhead. “Christ, Willa. Stop fashin’ yerself over somethin’ that happened four years ago. It’s over.”
“But Ariadne doesn’t act like it’s over.”
“It’s over when I say it’s over. And I say it’s over when a woman shoots me and leaves me for dead. Why does no one believe me?”
“Why would an elegant woman like her shoot a man?”
“Because she’s a spy.”
“Surely not now?”
“She was a spy then, and I’d bet my next payout she’s still a spy. The sooner she and that Frenchie friend of hers leave the ship, the easier I’ll breathe.”
“Why would a Royal Navy ship transport French spies?”
“I don’t know, nor do I want to know. What I do know is nothing good can come of that woman on this ship.”
Willa smoothed her hands down the skirt of her sensible, gray woolen work dress. She’d been forming pills for hours out of the mercury salt powder they used to treat venereal diseases. She stood, stretched her back, and looked over at her husband who bent his head to the surgeon’s log they kept for the ship. It was his job. His pay depended on careful notations on the health of each of the three hundred crew members on the Arethusa.
His spectacles had slipped down his nose, and she was tempted to straighten them, if only to see the shade of green his eyes became when he was annoyed. His ginger hair was starting to curl down over his collar and needed a trim. Her stomach fluttered low like a frantic moth at the thought of sifting her fingers through his hair and snipping the unruly ends. She ended the thought as quickly as it formed. A walk on the top deck and some fresh, salt air would clear her head. Depending on the wind, she might catch a glimpse of “Lizard” point, the last bit of England she’d see for two years.
“Dr. MacCloud, I’m going above to enjoy a bit of fresh air before we leave the channel.”
“Mmmm.” Cullen barely looked up from the surgeon’s log, but gave her a brief wave of acknowledgement.
The Arethusa had slipped her lines and risen with the outgoing tide after midnight on the middle watch while they still slept. She’d felt the pull of the gentle swells as they’d made their way out of Portsmouth’s Royal Navy basin and then through Spithead into the wide English Channel leading to the Atlantic Ocean.
They would sail over five thousand miles to a place so remote between Africa and South America, that only an expert navigator could bring them to the tiny island that served as a remote prison for Napoleon. Royal Navy ships regularly patrolled the St. Helena Station to deter any further attempts to liberate the man who had terrorized Europe for years.
Since Willa had grown up prowling the decks of Royal Navy ships, she had no difficulty adjusting to the rolling motion beneath her feet. When a rogue swell in the channel caused an abrupt drop, though, she wasn’t prepared for the French passenger, Monsieur Duvall, lunging for her in the passageway to the upper deck.
The man threw a protective arm around her and gave her waist a tight squeeze. “Mon dieu, that was a near thing.”
“What was a near thing?” She pushed hard away from his grasp. “Until you adjust to the pitching of the ship, perhaps you should hang on to something safer than my person, like a hand hold.” She pointed to a loop of rope attached to the bulkhead.
“A thousand apologies, Madame MacCloud. I did not mean to offend.”
The exaggerated look of chagrin on his face made Willa want to laugh, but she managed to maintain what she hoped would pass for an expression of feminine embarrassment. It was damned difficult to remember who she was now and how she’d be expected to react. Her father had never explained how she should go on in the world after he was gone. Sometimes, she wondered if he’d convinced himself over the years that she really was a boy.
At that moment, the Frenchman’s partner, Ariadne, joined them. The movement of the ship did not seem to affect her progress in the least. This woman must have spent a great deal of time at sea.
“If it isn’t the newly minted Mrs. MacCloud.” She tipped her head toward Willa in the midst of clouds of an expensive scent emanating from her, belying the simple woolen dress she wore. Gone were the expensive gown, hat and jewelry she’d worn the day she arrived aboard the ship. Her only nod to fashion was a light paisley shawl she wore around her shoulders, fastened with a simple gold metal pin. “If you’re going to walk the deck, please join us. It’s so much more pleasant above than trapped in our small cabins.”
The last thing Willa wanted to do was spend her bit of free time with the
