The MacGalloways: Books #1-3

Chapter 9

9

D uring the sweltering days, Isabella settled into a routine of dressing in the morning and breaking her fast with a cup of tea and a bowl of porridge with Maribel and Duncan on the deck. The lad had mustered up a couple of half-barrels for them to sit upon while they enjoyed looking out at sea. With a bit of a breeze, it surely was far more comfortable to be on deck, but it was no place for working on the tablets.

After breakfast, she usually headed back to her cabin and tolerated the heat while Maribel tended to her duties. Today, however, Maribel stayed while Duncan paid a visit.

“The cap’n taught me a shanty and a hornpipe.”

“Is that so?” Isabella asked. “Do you sing and dance at the same time?”

The lad thumped his chest. “Aye, ’tis no’ so difficult.”

“Forgive me, I should have known.” Isabella gestured to the floor. “Well then, I think we need a demonstration. What say you, Maribel?”

The lady’s maid clasped her hands together. “Oh, yes, I’d love to see your performance.”

Isabella patted the bed, indicating for Maribel to join her while Duncan removed his cap and bowed deeply. “For your particular enjoyment, ‘Whisky-O.’”

The two ladies clapped while the boy crossed his arms and kicked up his heels. “ Whisky-O, Johnny-O, rise her up from down below. ”

Isabella tapped the rhythm on the bed while Duncan made quite a show of fancy footwork.

“ Now whisky gave me a broken nose, and whisky made me pawn me clothes! ”

Patting her chest, she nudged Maribel. “Such a topic for a child.”

“Mind you, he’s exposed to a wealth of adult conversation below decks,” Maribel whispered behind her hand.

Isabella gaped. How did the lady’s maid know what the boy overheard when below decks?

Duncan kicked his feet high while hopping from one to the other. “ Now whisky is the life of man, whisky from that old tin can. ”

The lad stamped his feet and tapped his heels, and by the uproar coming from beyond the main door, the entire crew was doing the same. Isabella sprang to her feet. “What is happening out there?”

The lad stopped and thrust his fists into his hips. “I reckon they all heard me and are dancing a hornpipe.”

Outside, angry voices rose with a great deal of shouting. “No, something has gone awry,” Isabella said, taking a step toward the door.

“Nay, Cap’n MacGalloway sent me in here to entertain you two ladies.” Duncan tugged her arm, urging her to resume her seat. “I reckon it is best to ignore whatever?—”

Refusing to listen to another word, Isabella twisted her arm from the lad’s grip and hastened outside.

The deck was alive with sailors shouting and thrusting their fists into the air.

Duncan tugged Isabella’s hand. “You’d best go back inside, miss.”

She rose onto her toes, shifting her head from side to side. “What is happening?”

A sudden hush swelled across the deck, followed by the sound of a whip hissing through the air. A bellowing yelp of pain startled her as if she’d been struck.

The men roared like a mob of crazed patrons at a Roman coliseum.

Isabella pushed through the crowd, finding a man tied to the mast with stripes of blood across his back and the captain wielding a vile cat-o’-nine-tails. Captain MacGalloway’s arm swung back to deliver another strike.

She marched forward. “Stop this insanity at once!”

Mr. MacLean moved into her path, his arms crossed over his chest, his expression deadly serious. “Ye’d best go back to your cabin, miss.”

“Go back to my cabin and allow this barbarism to continue? I cannot believe what my eyes have beheld, and you”—she thrust her finger at the captain—“you sent a boy to keep the sensible ladies from venturing out here to witness this atrocity!”

Captain MacGalloway’s icy stare shifted her way as he ran the knotted tails of the whip through his fist. “Woman, you may be a guest aboard my ship, but you are not the lord high magistrate, and you have absolutely no business poking your nose where it does not belong.”

“Keel-haul the bastard!” shouted a sailor from the ranks.

“Who kens what else he’s filched! Mind your sporrans, laddies!”

“Mine’s guarding me loins for a reason!”

The captain again ran the cat-o’-nine-tails through his hand. “I advise you not to further question my absolute authority aboard this ship and suggest that you and your lady’s maid retire to your cabins.” He nodded to Mr. Erskine. “Take the ladies aft and see to it that they remain in their berths.”

Isabella clutched her fists to her midriff while the men parted, making a pathway for her departure. When the whip struck behind her, she jolted even before the pitiful soul tied to the mast shrieked.

“You should not have gone out there, miss,” whispered Mr. Erskine. “You as well, Maribel.”

The lady’s maid stopped inside the corridor and grasped the boatswain’s hands. “I thought there might be a reason for Duncan to try so desperately to distract us.”

Isabella could have blown steam out her nose. “How dare Captain MacGalloway speak to me as if I were a complete idiot?”

“Dunna mind the cap’n, miss. He barks at everyone, especially when someone has been stealin’.”

Isabella wrung her hands. What could she do to help him? “That poor man. What did he steal? A ship’s biscuit?”

“He was caught with his fingers in Cookie’s effects—took two gold sovereigns, he did.”

“Who would steal from Cookie?” she asked, still trying to come to grips with what she had just witnessed.

“Clyde Briggs, that’s who. This is his first voyage with us.”

“And his last, I would presume,” said Maribel.

Isabella paced the corridor. “But whipping a man seems so barbaric. Why not throw him in the brig, for heaven’s sake?”

“Och, he’ll spend the rest of the voyage in the brig for certain.” Mr. Erskine gave Maribel a wink before he turned to Isabella. “I’ll tell ye true, if the cap’n dinna issue a few lashes, the men would have been hankering for vengeance. ’Tis always best to discipline thieves and the like quickly, lest the fellas take it upon themselves to do it.”

Stopping, Isabella shuddered as another round of shouting came from the deck. “I take it the punishment would be worse if left to the men?”

“Ye’re no’ wrong there. Clyde most likely wouldna have survived if the men had their way.” The boatswain bowed to Isabella, then took Maribel’s hand and kissed it. “If ye ladies dunna mind, I’ll return to my post.”

Maribel clasped her fingers over her heart and smiled with an enormous sigh. “Thank you for explaining, Gowan. We’re so very grateful.”

After the boatswain took his leave, Isabella pulled her lady’s maid into her cabin. “You have a fondness for Mr. Erskine.”

Maribel blushed scarlet. “Oh heavens, does it show?”

“Show?” Isabella flipped open her fan and cooled her face. “You practically swooned into his arms.”

“I say I wouldn’t mind too terribly if I did swoon into his arms.”

“Goodness.” Isabella turned the fan toward her lady’s maid. Obviously, Maribel was far more in need of fresh air. “I also noticed that you are referring to him in the familiar. How often have you crossed paths with the boatswain?”

“Dunno.” Maribel tittered with a giggle. “A few times. Often enough to give him leave to call me Maribel.”

“You aren’t going below decks, are you?”

“Oh, no. Only…”

Isabella pulled the maid into her cabin and shut the door. “Tell me.”

“’Tis nothing, really. When you go inside to work on your tablets, he sometimes accompanies me on a stroll about the upper deck. It is so awfully stuffy being cooped up inside all the time.”

Well, a stroll on the deck wasn’t anything to balk about. Isabella had done enough strolling on the deck with the captain, and no one seemed to find it out of the ordinary. “As long as Mr. Erskine is acting as a gentleman, I see absolutely nothing wrong with befriending him.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you!” Maribel drew Isabella’s fingers to her lips and kissed them. “He’s ever so kind, and I do adore listening to his Scottish accent.”

As her heart fluttered, Isabella reflected back to the tall captain who had also lulled her with his charming brogue. “The Scots do have a delightful way with words, do they not?”

Gibb pushed through the outer door and headed for his cabin. Three strides in, he stopped outside Miss Harcourt’s door and clenched his fist around the cat-o’-nine-tails’ handle. The bloody bleeding heart had come close to inciting a mutiny. Either that or she’d come close to having her arse thrown overboard—possibly by Cookie, who rarely ever lifted a finger to harm anyone.

The woman was too soft—definitely not made for a life at sea. If he had let Clyde Briggs go without a good lashing, the men would have rioted for certain. There was nary a soul aboard the Prosperity who would tolerate a light-fingered mate, and if Gibb hadn’t locked the thief in the brig, Briggs would have been dirked in the back before morn.

He stood for a moment, too angry to confront Miss Harcourt. Growling under his breath, he proceeded into his cabin, stowed his whip, and poured himself a dram of whisky. After a reviving drink, Gibb moved to the windows and stared out at the ship’s wake, the gentle rolling of the sea foam cooling the fire in his chest.

Of all the duties a captain must face, he detested issuing punishment the most. He didn’t ever take on a sailor without a recommendation. Most of the men aboard had served with him in the navy. Mr. Briggs had come aboard with a letter of recommendation from a captain Gibb once met in Edinburgh.

Gibb didn’t expect another captain to be deceitful, especially a Scot. But then again, Gibb was unfamiliar with the man’s signature. Perhaps the letter had been forged.

He threw back his drink and poured himself another. He might have been raised in the fantasy world known only by the aristocracy, but he was no dupe. Aye, his nursery had been in an enormous castle on the northern tip of Scotland. Every spring of his youth he’d hunted with his brothers at the Dunscaby lodge in the mountains—a castle with its own loch fed by mountain snows. He’d spent countless hours at Newhailes, dubbed the “wee cottage” by his da, where he’d learned to be a gentleman. He’d even spent a few years at St. Andrews University before acquiring his naval commission. But that was where his fantastical life of a nobleman had ended.

War had a way of making men hard—depriving them of sleep for the rest of their days as well. Gibb had fought his share of sea battles, and it turned out to be a damn good thing he was an ace with a bow and a musket, as well as bloody accurate with a pistol. Give him a sword and he’d fight like a man possessed. Though he hadn’t been able to save Duncan’s da.

That mistake was one that would plague him with night terrors for the rest of his days. As Gibb closed his eyes, he saw the cutlass make its deadly blow as if it had happened yesterday. At least he’d made certain the French bastard who took Farley Lamont’s life never drew another breath.

But that didn’t make up for the loss of a good man. A better man than Gibb himself—a father who, only one month prior, had lost his wife to consumption, leaving wee Duncan an orphan.

A rap came at the door.

“Enter,” he barked, not bothering to turn around. Most likely, Archie had come to report that Clyde had been securely locked in the brig.

The door creaked open rather slowly for Archie. “I’ve come to apologize.”

Gibb gulped. He had not expected Miss Harcourt to pay a visit. He’d been harsh with the lass and didn’t want to face her now, not when his gut was twisted in knots. Without turning, he remained where he stood, watching the wake. No footsteps approached. The latch did not engage.

“You should not have intervened,” he said, then took a sip, the liquid burning a pathway through his gullet and warming him all the way down to the soles of his feet.

“Mr. Erskine was kind enough to explain what happened and why.”

“But you disagree?” Gibb asked, his tone as fiery as his tot of whisky.

“I believe that any sort of corporal punishment is a form of barbarism.”

Gibb tightened his grasp on his glass. If she thought him a rogue, then so be it. “Perhaps it is, but when we weigh anchor and sail away from civil society, the brutality of a life at sea turns some into thieves, as the case happened to be this day. There is much to endure for a sailor, cut off from all the comforts of home for months. They live in cramped conditions and daily face the dangers of the sea—not only the weather, but it is perilous simply to walk the decks when the sails are shifting. I’ve seen a rope snap and kill a man. I’ve seen men fall from the rigging to their deaths.”

Gibb turned and faced the woman standing in the doorway like a queen, listening to his explanation, though he did not need to give her one. “Tars are hard-drinking brigands. But I’ll back my men any day, at any time. The sailors aboard this ship work tirelessly through sickness, through the cold and the wet. They fight the weather just to stay alive, only to fall into their hammocks exhausted. Most of them have come from the gutters of our cities, knowing nothing of our polite society—of our comfortable coaches, rococo fainting couches, and proper manners.”

Miss Harcourt raised her chin. “But they appreciate justice.”

“In their own way. They understand that I will tolerate no subversion and will treat every man fairly as long as he gives me a day’s honest labor and does everything in his power to prove his loyalty.”

“And for that, you are their master and commander.”

Gibb tipped up his chin. Was she judging him? He cared not, for her opinion held no water in this matter. “I am,” he said without an iota of remorse, for if he ever questioned himself, his crew would do the same.

The lady stood motionless for a moment, her lips quivering as if she had a great deal to say but was at a loss to put it into words. After a sharp inhalation, she said, “Since you surrendered your naval commission, have you engaged in battle?”

“Against pirates, aye. That is why I sail with twelve guns. Believe me, I’d rather have barrels of MacGalloway whisky in place of them—there is no finer currency in all of Christendom.”

She curtsied. “Forgive me for my intrusion. I will leave you to your duties.”

He stood like a dolt while she took her leave, quietly closing the door. Dammit, Gibb hadn’t even accepted her apology. He’d just held forth, giving her a litany of all the reasons it was necessary to maintain order aboard his bloody ship.

Blast the woman, anyway. She wasn’t his to care for, aside from his promise to safely ferry her across the Atlantic. Once he delivered Miss Harcourt into the arms of her betrothed, Gibb planned to forget she’d ever set foot on the Prosperity . For the love of God, Gibb had sworn an oath to himself never to lose his heart, and he stood by his word, especially when it came to women who were promised in marriage.