Page 40 of Across the Star-Kissed Sea (Proper Romance Regency #1)
I couldn’t stop it. My mind, dizzy with the deluge of emotions, pushed me forward like a ship with too many sails set in a strong breeze.
The pain in my heart wanted retribution.
I willingly set my sights on disaster, jabbing a finger in Mrs. Peyton’s direction.
“Look at her. You think she grew that belly from ship’s biscuits?
She’s been hiding it from you since we left Portsmouth. ”
Mrs. Peyton shrank back, face pale. Elias’s hand wrapped firmly around my arm.
His shock at my betrayal radiated from his touch.
It jolted me, cracking the rage that had mounted within.
Why had I said that? Fool. My quarrel was with her unfeeling husband, not with her. She wasn’t having Lewis whipped.
Captain Peyton dropped his arms to his sides. “Georgana?”
She breathed heavily, chewing on her lip. She took a step back, then another, until the bulwark stopped her retreat.
“What does she mean?” Peyton asked. He didn’t sound angry, but he also did not sound joyful, as a soon-to-be father should on discovering his wife was with child.
“We should go,” Elias said quietly. I couldn’t hear much of anything in his tone, and I dared not look at his face. I didn’t want to see the disappointment. He thought Lewis deserved this. That made him just like them.
With a jerk, I pulled my arm from Elias’s grasp and flew from the captain’s quarters.
I kept my head down, not wanting to see anyone on the ship.
Emptiness opened up inside me, gaping and raw.
I didn’t know what or who could fill it.
I darted into my cabin and slammed the door, sinking against the wood.
Only one person came to mind who I wanted just then.
Not Lewis, not Mama, not Charlie. Not even Elias.
I couldn’t make sense of it. What I wanted more than anything else was to be safely wrapped in the strong arms and hear the soothing voice of my papa—the person whose actions had turned my life upside down in horrible, unalterable ways.
I hugged myself tightly in the darkness as the tears fell.
Elias
“May?” I knocked again, but heard no movement.
How I wanted to push back the canvas covering the barred window to see if she was all right.
Instead, I trudged to my own cabin door.
The -officers eating at the gun room table were silent, but they watched me from the corners of their eyes.
No doubt they’d heard May’s shouting in the captain’s cabin.
The whole ship would know of it in half an hour if they hadn’t heard it with their own ears.
I let myself into my cabin and lit the lantern, then sat cross-legged beside the crack in the wall between our cabins.
What a disaster. I raked a hand through my hair, hardly knowing what to make of what had just happened.
May said things she didn’t always mean when she got this angry—I’d seen it firsthand—but I never would have expected her to tell Captain Peyton the truth about his wife without Mrs. Peyton’s permission.
“May, please,” I said.
No response. Had she not come to her cabin? I could have sworn I’d heard the door slam. Perhaps she’d crept down to the orlop to try to speak with her brother.
“I do not wish to discuss it,” she finally said. Her voice was thick and tight.
I nodded, then remembered she couldn’t see.
How did I respond to that? She wanted me to leave her be, but I couldn’t.
“I’m worried,” I said. The Peytons weren’t unreasonable people.
In fact, they were some of the most tolerant and good-natured people I’d met in the service.
But May had crossed many lines that should not have been crossed.
Enough that most members of the ton would have let her go without a moment’s hesitation.
What would she do if that happened? What would I do?
“I’m not.” That stubbornness that had kept a barrier between us in the early days of the voyage had sneaked into her tone.
“You cannot say things like that and keep your employment.” Perhaps I could talk to the Peytons. Emotions were high throughout the ship. It didn’t excuse her, but it could convince them to grant some leniency.
“Yes, that is what you members of the gentry are taught. You demand respect from your servants, or you find others who will not speak their minds.”
I pulled back from the partition. What was she saying?
She’d rarely brought up our difference in class.
I likely had less wealth than her father had, even before he’d started stealing from the rope yard.
I did not see us as so very different, especially here on the Marianne . Clearly, she still did.
“This was beyond a difference of opinion,” I pointed out.
If they did end her employment, she’d have to wait in Vis until a ship came to the island and could take her to Malta.
Then she’d have to find passage back to Portsmouth.
It would be a long and unprotected journey.
My heart faltered at the thought. “You greatly hurt Mrs. Peyton.”
“She should have told him weeks ago.” A hint of regret tainted her excuse.
I opened my mouth but couldn’t find the words.
I tried to remind myself that May was speaking from a place of hurt.
“How can you say that? Where is your loyalty?” She was one of the most loyal people I knew.
Someone who would keep her word no matter the consequence.
At least, I’d thought that was who she was.
“My loyalty?” Her words seemed closer to the partition. “My loyalty is to my family, not some officer who couldn’t care if I lived or died. Just like his father-in-law.”
She hadn’t noticed the strain of sorrow on Captain Peyton’s face. The turmoil inside him at the thought of having to flog one of his crew. The pain when he’d made clear her brother’s fate. Captain Peyton was a man who cared about those in his command. He included her among that number.
“Mrs. Peyton brought you here because she trusted you.” May wasn’t listening. I should hold my tongue until morning. Or tomorrow evening when the flogging was over and tempers had cooled.
“She brought me here because she needed someone’s help while she lied to her own husband.”
I dropped my forehead to my palm. How did I get out of this? “That wasn’t your information to tell.”
“I didn’t ask for her confidence.”
I ground my teeth. I needed some jasmine tea and quiet.
Every line she spoke pummeled me as hard as one of her brother’s strikes on the boatswain.
She was better than speaking so ill of her employers when she knew the truth, but she’d latched onto the pain and wouldn’t let go.
“Can you hear what you are saying?” I asked.
Silence. I waited and, after a moment, heard shuffling.
She must have given up. I tore at my cravat, but my yanking tightened the knot.
Bothersome cloth. I didn’t want her to give up; I wanted her to see the argument from another side.
To think of how Mrs. Peyton must have felt being called out in front of her husband.
May was blinded to anything but her and her brother’s suffering.
“I thought you were my friend,” she muttered.
The words bit into me like a boatswain’s lash.
The accusation in her voice made my heart quake.
She’d said it so low, with so much finality, it was as if I’d made her brother break the rules and made Captain Peyton punish him myself.
I’d simply stood there with her, aching at every word spoken, knowing how much it would crush her.
She loved Lewis, despite his faults. It couldn’t have been easy to listen to his sentence.
I’d wanted to embrace her and ensure she didn’t feel alone. But that meant nothing to her.
She was throwing my efforts back in my face, finishing her strike with a stinging friend .
Was that all we were in her eyes? She knew me better than that.
Surely she had to know the strength of my feelings for her.
I’d do anything to take this away, but she didn’t want that.
She simply wanted someone who agreed that Captain Peyton was the devil himself and Lewis did not deserve a flogging.
I slumped against the bulwark, my strength suddenly gone.
You’ve done it again, Elias. Chosen someone you care for far more than she could ever care for you. Are you ready to give up yet? Or are you set on this unending cycle of misery?
I closed my eyes but could not block out the deriding voices whirling in my brain. We’d all been terribly misled by those around us. The captain. His wife. May. Me. What was the use in trying if everyone we loved somehow failed us in the end?