Page 39 of Across the Star-Kissed Sea (Proper Romance Regency #1)

May

M y heart thundered in my ears as I stood before Captain Peyton’s desk. I’d left Lewis with the beginnings of hope for a new future for our family. He’d been humble and sorry, though he hadn’t said it clearly. It had seemed he wanted to mend things.

He couldn’t have squandered that moment.

The captain sat back in his chair, kneading his brow. “I didn’t expect this sort of trouble from someone you recommended, Miss Byam.”

I swallowed with difficulty. I’d supported his story when Captain Peyton and Mr. Jackson had asked.

Perhaps had even sung a few praises of his talent.

I hadn’t known then how he’d suffered as much as the rest of us the last six years.

He’d had good intentions when we had talked earlier.

Had our conversation made him feel the burden of responsibility too heavily again, turning him to drink?

“You can hardly blame her,” Mrs. Peyton said from the window. “She was only trying to help her brother.”

I wanted to dissolve into the floor. None of it made sense.

I glanced back at Elias, who stood a little behind me, face strained.

I wished I could feel the reassurance that should have come from the knowledge that Elias was at my side.

Instead, I felt only cold as I tried to make sense of the events of the day.

The captain shook his head after a moment. “I don’t blame her. He chose to get drunk in the middle of the day. But what a fix we find ourselves in.”

Drunk. He’d been completely lucid when he’d spoken to me. How could he have managed so quickly? There must have been a mistake.

A knock sounded on the door. “Enter,” the captain said wearily, the usual easiness in his tone completely gone.

Catterick walked in, brows lowered in a stony scowl. He made the motion of grabbing the brim of his hat in salute, though he didn’t wear one belowdecks. “Sir.”

“How is Mr. Hallyburton?”

“Dr. étienne says his nose is certainly broken, but everything else is simply bruising. He does not think it will impede Mr. Hallyburton’s duties after a little rest.”

Thank heavens. It lessened the sickness in my stomach a tiny bit. Could that mean mercy for Lewis?

Captain Peyton leaned forward, placing his elbows on the desk. “That is fortunate.” He rubbed his hands together, looking everywhere but at the other four people in the room.

Catterick shifted. “Mrs. Hallyburton ...”

“Is crying for blood, I know it,” the captain said.

Blood. My mouth went dry. I’d held a slew of things against Lewis the last six years, but none that made me wish him physical injury or worse. Surely that was an overreaction to what he’d done.

The ghost of a dry smile flitted across the captain’s lips and was gone in an instant. “I’ve no doubt she’d take your place with a little too much enjoyment.”

I stood rigid, not daring to think about what the comment implied. Lewis had broken many rules. More than Captain Peyton knew. By the laws that governed the navy, he should be punished.

Captain Peyton rose slowly. “Rig up a grating, Catterick. We’ll pipe all hands in the morning.”

“Aye, sir. How many?”

A grating meant only one thing. Uncle Byam and Charlie had talked about it as being the thing they liked least in their position as boatswain and boatswain’s mate—tying up a shipmate and delivering a lashing at the captain’s word.

My limbs shook. Charlie had told me all the gory details of the floggings he’d witnessed.

Captain Peyton wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t do that to Lewis.

“Twenty-five.”

Twenty-five lashings! I gaped. For a drunken mishap?

Catterick saluted again and retreated from the great cabin.

The captain turned away from the door, toward his wife, who waited solemnly with hands clasped in front of her belly.

Captain Peyton fussed with the black stock around his neck.

“It has to be done. If I don’t make an example of him, we both know what could happen,” he muttered. “There’s no helping it.”

“No helping what?” I cried, my voice frantic.

Bile rose to the back of my throat. His word was the law aboard this ship.

If he didn’t want to flog my brother, he didn’t have to.

The twinkle-eyed smile Lewis had given me earlier was not the expression of someone intent on harming or endangering others.

“I’ll excuse you from the proceedings, Miss Byam,” the captain said. “You do not need to watch.”

“How noble of you,” I muttered, still caught up in my troubled musings.

He sighed and turned to face me. “We have an order that must be kept in the service. If that order is not upheld, the navy will fall into disarray one ship at a time.”

I’d seen prints of drawings made of floggings. Men tied up with all their shipmates watching while they were whipped with the cat o’ nine tails. Now the image in my head had Lewis in place of the nameless criminal.

“But why so severe a punishment?” I shot forward, slapping my hands onto his desk. “Twenty-five? It does not fit his crime. He wasn’t successful lighting the pipe. Nothing happened. Why are you punishing him as though something did?”

Captain Peyton’s gaze grew distant. “If something had happened, there would be nothing left of him to punish.”

“I thought the magazines were—”

“What is more,” the captain said, riding over my protest, “lighting his pipe was not his only crime. Many a captain would have had him flogged strictly for drunkenness.”

Lewis with his back covered in bloody stripes filled my waking eye. I tried to breathe. He didn’t deserve this. He might not have been the best brother, but he was the only one I had. He was a Byam. We Byams looked out for each other. I couldn’t let them do this.

“Most serious is striking an officer.”

I threw up my hands. “étienne said Hallyburton will be right as rain after a little rest.” The burning anger in my core spilled out in surges I couldn’t hold back. Lewis and I were turning a page. Making things right. He’d promised, hadn’t he?

Captain Peyton settled his hands on the desk, a warning glinting in his eyes. “Perhaps you should pay a visit to the sick bay and see my boatswain’s battered face for yourself.”

“Hallyburton will heal.” I folded my arms. “Much faster than Lewis will under the lash.” A little voice in the back of my head told me I should have more compassion on the boatswain, but where was everyone’s compassion for Lewis?

Nowhere to be found. Someone had to care.

It wasn’t his fault our father had turned out to be a criminal, leaving him with too immense a burden for an eighteen-year-old boy.

It had pushed him to this. Before this morning, I’d rarely thought on the responsibility laid on his shoulders, so caught up was I in my own struggles to survive.

Upper crust Captain Peyton wouldn’t be sympathetic to a poor boy’s plight.

“That does not change the fact that he struck a superior,” Captain Peyton said louder.

“Hallyburton is a warrant officer, not a gentleman,” I shot back. “If the navy sees the two as different, why is the punishment the same?”

The captain groaned, glancing at his wife as though for help. “Your loyalty is commendable, if ill placed.”

Hope snapped, cord by cord, like ship’s lines breaking in a gale.

Life had done this to me time and again, pulling things away just when I thought I was on the verge of happiness.

All I could do was stand firm against life’s pounding.

I clenched my fists, my whole body tight as an anchor cable.

I was wrong about Peyton. I thought him an understanding and fair captain, but he was just like every other haughty man of the gentry brought up to be a tyrant on the seas.

“This is unjust!” My eyes stung. “You only want to look the part of a strong captain. This is to maintain your reputation. And you’re willing to let my brother suffer for your ego. ” I dug my nails into my palms.

“May.” Elias’s soothing voice in my ear did nothing to cool the torrent within me. He tried to take my arm, but I brushed him off.

Captain Peyton’s chiseled jaw went taut. “If someone had done the same to your uncle, Captain Woodall would have acted in like manner.”

“Would he?” I scoffed. “I’ve heard he was nothing but a coward.”

“Byam,” Mrs. Peyton hissed, “that is enough.” I’d never seen such venom in her usually serene expression.

She’d never commanded me so forcefully before, like scolding a disobedient puppy.

So she agreed with this abuse. It shouldn’t have surprised me.

She was raised in the navy. People in this world were deadened to its brutality.

They thought only of advancement and prizes.

The old, familiar fury toward the Woodalls that had once resided inside me burst into life again and blurred my senses until it was all I knew.

“Cowardly enough that he wouldn’t let a capable woman on board to work with her husband and son,” I said.

She was going to kick me off the Marianne to find my own way back to England.

I didn’t care. The year of anger and grief at Charlie’s and my uncle’s deaths billowed to the surface, mingling with the indignation at Lewis’s punishment.

This family was responsible. I’d made myself swallow it, thought it would be for the better, but clearly, I’d been a fool. They cared only for themselves.

“There is nothing further to discuss,” Captain Peyton growled. “You will not insult my family because yours has decided to ignore the laws and will, therefore, suffer the consequences. I do not understand why you would stand up for someone who does so little to support you.”

How dare he. He didn’t know anything about my life. He’d done nothing to help my family. This captain saw only his advancement in danger if he didn’t exert his dominance over his men. “The same reason you protect your wife and child,” I spat. “Because he’s my family.”

The captain froze, brow creasing. “Child?”