Page 27 of Pride of Duty

But Willa was not like a medical book he could categorize and shelve. Her resistance to being unceremoniously saddled with a husband, her resistance to being returned to her rightful place as a young woman, her resistance to conceiving a child - all of that he could understand.

But the woman he now held on his lap sobbed like she’d been deserted and betrayed, not like she’d been carefully pleasured for the last hour and a half. Unlike another part of his body which throbbed accusingly at the bare bottom of the sobbing woman. He wanted to continue to comfort Willa, but if he did not assuage his coarser self, there would be an unfortunate accident.

He planted a warm kiss on Willa’s tear-streamed face before quickly moving back to the safer side of the blanket. After attending to his own needs, alone and in the dark, he moved to their shared basin of water. He wet a flannel cloth and took it to Willa before returning to his side of the marital battlefield.

He crooked one arm to prop up the back of his head and stared into the darkness above his bunk. His mind darted from one inconsequential thought to another. Did they have enough packets of medicine to keep up with the demand for treatment of the pox during the long passage to and from St. Helena? Why did the long-legged, delectable Willa still give out occasional little hiccuped sobs on her side of the blanket? What had his father been thinking when he had him forcibly removed from his squadron to this ill-gotten posting?

“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 Idoknow 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 theArethusa.

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 lowlike 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.

TheArethusahad 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.