Page 41 of Across the Star-Kissed Sea (Proper Romance Regency #1)

May

I stood near the quarterdeck at the front of all the crew, hands folded and shoulders square.

I’d locked up the tears that had flowed freely the night before.

They wouldn’t see me cry. I’d stand and watch their brutality, and I wouldn’t give them the pleasure of seeing me go to pieces.

Life had already broken me. There was nothing left for them to break.

Elias tried to catch my eye across the deck.

I shot him a warning look before quickly pulling my gaze away.

Much as I had fooled myself into thinking our little fairy tale could work, our lives were too different.

The world didn’t look kindly on children of convicts.

The only thing we children of criminals could do was respond in like manner.

Elias could go back to his world of drinking tea in the garden and strolling to cozy chapels on Sunday mornings. That life was not my destiny.

When the company was assembled, all crew and officers formally dressed, a hush fell over the deck. They looked ready to welcome an admiral aboard rather than witness a flogging. One more oddity of this strange navy world.

Mrs. Peyton stood a little behind her husband, a more obvious gap between them than usual.

She kept her eyes on the wood planks at her feet, worrying one corner of her mouth, while he stood stiffly, resignation on his face.

When he looked at her, she turned her head quickly.

At the start of our voyage, they’d been so happy, the captain unable to hide his adoration and Mrs. Peyton bashful but charmed by his attention.

They seemed an entirely different couple now.

My stomach soured so fast I nearly vomited on the deck.

The clouds of fury cleared from my head on a harsh breeze of realization.

It had been easy to swallow down my guilt last night as worry for Lewis had overwhelmed every other thought.

Elias had been right. Whether I had asked for this confidence or not, I’d had no right to tell the captain.

My defenses faltered. I’d caused their rift.

Though in my mind I wanted to be satisfied with the discord, a pang rattled my heart.

The captain called for Lewis to be brought up from his confinement below, but I barely heard.

I’d failed her. My posture slackened. I’d been the only person she could confide in on this ship, and despite giving my word, I’d failed her.

I covered my mouth with my hand. I was practically a traitor who deserved to be flogged as much as my brother.

Two seamen escorted Lewis to the grate set against the quarterdeck like a sinister garden trellis.

Lewis kept his head lowered, with his face impassive.

They made him remove his shirt, revealing crisscrossing scars along the length of his back.

I breathed in sharply. This was not his first time being disciplined in this awful manner.

If it had happened before, how had he not learned his lesson?

I groaned within, pulling my eyes away. Lewis never learned. And I’d stood up for him, screaming at Captain Peyton on his own ship about the injustice.

I closed my eyes as my stomach roiled worse than it had in the gale we’d hit last month. Lewis had almost killed an entire ship’s crew with his stupidity. Then he’d attacked an officer trying to stop him. Lewis knew the punishment for something like that. He had lived this life for years.

“Are you well, Miss Byam?”

I startled at Fitz’s voice beside me. “Oh. Yes. I am well.” He raised a brow, and I looked quickly away. Captain Peyton called for Lewis to be secured. His hands were tied to the upper corners of the grate. My brother didn’t fight them.

I found the Hallyburtons, expecting a look of glee on the wife’s face.

She only stared at Lewis with unveiled hatred.

The boatswain looked like he’d taken an anchor to the face, his nose, eyelids, and cheekbones a mass of ugly, purple bruising.

He handed a bag to Catterick, who pulled a nine-tailed whip out of it.

Each length of rope had a hefty knot at the end. The deck started to spin.

“Lewis Byam Jr., former carpenter’s mate, has been found guilty of drunkenness, endangering the ship, and striking a superior officer,” Captain Peyton said quietly.

The only movement in the gathering was the faint swell that gently rocked the Marianne ’s deck.

“Is there any who objects to the punishment of twenty-five lashes?”

Twenty-five. I fell back a step on shaking legs. The number still seemed too great. But would he learn if it were fifty? A hundred?

No one said anything. They’d seen this before. If a member of the crew could not be trusted, he was a threat not only to their success but also to their very lives. Lewis had shown he couldn’t be trusted. Just like our father. And with a ragged breath, I realized I had shown the same.

The captain nodded gravely.

“No, I’m not well,” I whispered, unsure if Fitz heard.

I’d wanted to stand here, strong and unmoving as an oak tree, not letting them see me cry or beg.

Showing them what I was made of. But the captain, his wife, and Elias had already seen what I was made of last night, and it wasn’t strength.

They’d seen me lash out in the greatest weakness, not as a young woman as unbending as iron but rather as a little girl still unhinged from the revelation that her beloved papa was a lying, thieving scoundrel.

A child who’d let herself be fooled by someone she loved. Again.

“Be done with it, Mr. Catterick,” the captain said.

The whip cut through the air with a menacing whir, and I turned on my heel.

I darted between the unyielding shoulders of a forest of stocky seamen who hardly spared me a glance.

Lewis’s shout echoed across the deck. I launched myself down the ladders into the belly of the ship, his cries of pain mingled with those of my own heart.

Elias

The sound of wood scraping wood brought my head up from my Bible. Men’s voices carried from the cabin beside me. I stood quickly, snapping the book closed. The noise came from May’s cabin. Why were there men in her cabin?

I crossed to my door in one stride and threw it open.

Captain Peyton hadn’t seemed as upset with May after last night’s outburst as I had expected.

He’d seemed too absorbed with what she’d revealed about Mrs. Peyton.

Perhaps he’d kept in a deeper anger toward May than I had thought.

Or he’d wanted to deal with her after getting her brother’s punishment out of the way.

Two seamen carried her trunk out of the cabin and toward the hatchway.

“What ... ?” I glanced around the gun room, but the few officers gathered seemed to be paying attention to maps and charts rather than the movement of a trunk.

May stepped out of her cabin, arms wrapped tightly around her middle. She wore her thin coat and carried her bonnet. Behind her, the cabin lay emptier than I’d ever seen it.

“What are they doing?” I asked, taking her by the arms.

She would not meet my gaze. “Taking my trunk above.”

I pulled her back into the relative privacy of her cabin.

“Have they dismissed you?” How could Peyton do that?

Leave a young woman to her own resources on a remote island in a war-disturbed sea, where she couldn’t speak the language and knew no one?

Had the pressures of responsibility to the navy and family muddled his senses?

Peyton had been one of the fairest and most understanding officers I’d met in all my years connected with the Royal Navy.

May pursed her lips and shook her head. “They should have, but they haven’t.”

“Then, why are they clearing out your cabin?” No more whispered conversations through cracks in the wall.

No more greeting her each morning outside our cabins, trying to hide my grin at the glow I felt on seeing her.

I didn’t think things would return to how they’d been very quickly, but I’d hoped every moment that they would eventually.

“The captain sent someone ashore to procure a house for his wife near the docks,” she said, voice flat. “We are to take possession of it by evening.”

He was sending them ashore. Permanently, by the sound of it. A headache suddenly sprang up, and I released her to rub my forehead.

“I think it will be a better situation for all, Mr. Doswell.”

I dared to hope there was a lie behind her steady words and formal address.

“I don’t want you to go,” I blurted. “I’ll .

.. I’ll miss your company.” The fire in her indigo eyes.

The way she almost smiled every time she saw me.

The way just having her near made me feel like I could face anything the world had in store.

She shook her head. “I was foolish. I let myself think that because we shared a cabin wall, we were equals. But we aren’t. We come from two different worlds.”

“Marriages between classes are more frequent than Society likes to admit,” I said.

Her eyes widened at the word marriage . We’d never brought up that idea before, but surely she knew where I stood.

I wanted to see her face each morning, not just for the duration of our voyage but for as many days as God granted us on this earth.

I wanted to be the arms that comforted her in the storms of life, and I wanted to hold to her grounding strength when I felt I couldn’t go on.

“It isn’t simply money.” A heavy breath escaped her.

“Our lives are too different. We are too different. You deserve a sweet-tempered, accomplished lady who can make your home a haven. Someone your parish will love and admire for her thoughtfulness and grace. Someone trustworthy.” She squeezed herself tighter.

“You cannot marry a convict’s daughter.”

Her family’s actions had nothing to do with us.