Page 1 of Unforeseen Affairs (The Sedleys #6)

It was his birthday, though a bittersweet one.

It had been just over a year now, Sir Colin Gearing realized. A year during which he’d remained on dry land, with no command to his name, whiling away his days on half-pay and playing cards week after week like some hateful waster.

The thought hit him square in the gut, catching him completely unaware, like the fist of a burly boatswain checking a drunk and disorderly deck crew member.

It wasn’t that he’d forgotten it to be his birthday; after all, just last evening he’d noted that the following day would be the twenty-third of March, and would therefore bring the usual good wishes: a gruff nod from his father over breakfast—which was more than he’d expect on a typical day—to go along with several birthday letters from cousins and friends.

Then this morning, Mama had ambushed him on his way out the door for luncheon at the Army and Navy Club, clutching at his sleeve as she tearfully recounted the circumstances of his birth.

Colin knew the story perhaps better than a young man ought to, but he’d smiled all the same, and dutifully received her kiss upon his cheek.

Yet it wasn’t until this moment, as he raised a glass along with his two closest friends in his family’s small and tidy snug of a library, that Colin recalled the same day one year ago.

A day he had spent alone in this very room, panicked and fearful, having only just refused his next posting.

The bookshelves had spun cruelly about him then, in a grotesque mockery of the rolling and swaying one became accustomed to while living at sea.

He had shut his eyes and lain back on the couch, trying with all the force of his will to rid himself of the sensation.

It hadn’t worked. Indeed, it was nearly a full month before he’d felt sure enough of his state to venture beyond his doorstep.

“Speech! Words of wisdom, please,” Kettlewell called out, hoisting his glass higher.

Colin felt the telltale tightening at the top of his skull. He looked down at the untouched wine in his glass. Not now, he silently prayed. Dear God, not now .

It had been such a lovely day so far.

He glanced across the room at the handsome floor globe sitting in its lacquered wooden frame.

“Hang that!” cried Beaky, already sloshed from luncheon. “Something good-humored—to raise our spirits, if you will!”

Colin managed to smile weakly at his friends.

They’d been midshipmen together, the three of them, and were now all officers in the Royal Navy, experienced and respected.

So rarely were they all three together anymore; in fact, Kettlewell would be put to sea in only a handful of days, first lieutenant aboard a frigate bound for Constantinople.

Colin would give his eyeteeth to be in Kettlewell’s boots. He looked back to the globe. So many countries, so much ocean.

“How about a toast, then?” Kettlewell suggested merrily.

“Yes,” Colin agreed, wanting to push forward, past his maudlin, envious thoughts. “Raise your glasses.” He lifted his untouched madeira and spoke in a clear, commanding voice. “Our ships at sea.”

“What?” Beaky exclaimed with a derisive snort. “You’re a man grown, twenty-five years of age! I think we can do better than that!”

Colin took a deep breath. So far he felt sturdy, his head clear. He pressed on.

“Alright then.”

He crossed to the center of the library, so as to put the globe out of his vision. He instead looked out beyond the flung-open library doors to the wide, empty hallway, at the end of which hung a tall portrait of Admiral Alexander Gearing in full uniform.

Colin knew that his own visage, ginger-pated and decorated, would one day grace these halls, staring sternly out at future generations of naval men.

At least, such a thing had once seemed inevitable. Now, though, he wondered if he’d ever even pass lieutenant. He cleared his throat and steeled himself.

“Gentlemen, a toast,” Colin said, gesturing with his glass in the direction of his ancestor. “To cunt and gunpowder. A sailor’s two best friends.”

Beaky and Kettlewell both cheered.

There. He’d done it. Perhaps now he’d be able to join his friends in their revelry without worry. Already a small smile had found its way to his lips, an earnest one this time, and Colin finally took a sip.

And nearly spat it out.

Out in the hall, between the open doorway and the portrait of his most storied forebear, stood a young lady.

One whom he’d just toasted, in a roundabout way, in the most obscene manner imaginable.

She was handsome, with tidy black hair, garbed in a blouse with a black bow at the collar and a plain gray skirt. She stood still, her arms crossed with an aloof air about her, seemingly unaffected by the vulgarity of his words.

Perhaps she didn’t hear , Colin thought desperately as embarrassment began to engulf him. For she hadn’t been there just moments earlier, when he’d walked across the room. Or had she? She couldn’t have just materialized out of thin air. No, she must have only just arrived .

Slowly she tilted her head, taking in the sight of Beaky and Kettlewell as they chortled and drank, blissfully unaware of their silent observer. Then she looked back to Colin and unfolded her arms as a small, smug grin touched her lips.

Shame washed over him. She had heard.

He was frozen. He racked his brain for the proper thing to do, the best way to mitigate his blunder and put the girl at ease. But she left as suddenly as she had appeared, disappearing like a specter.

A hard slap on his shoulder brought him back to his senses.

“I forgot to tell you, about this proper bit of frock,” Beaky said unsteadily, his spirits high as he turned Colin away from the door. “I first saw her in an old piazza not long after we were in harbor—”

“Just a…” Colin cut him off, craning his neck to keep his eyes upon the open doorway. “Just a tick, I’ve, er, got to…”

He broke away and set his wine down on a small end table, sloshing it over the rim as he did so. Beaky was always far too generous with his pours.

“Got to what?” Kettlewell asked.

“To… inquire about something,” Colin said hurriedly. “I’ll be right back.”

Beaky said something which caused another eruption of laughter between him and Kettlewell, but Colin wasn’t listening. He rushed out into the hall in the direction the young woman had gone.

Hopefully he could catch her, and do his best to make amends.

He moved swiftly, taking care to keep his footsteps light even as he hastened with long strides, not wishing to alarm her.

Colin rounded the corner, and nearly leaped out of his boots.

She stood in the middle of the hallway, facing him, as if she’d been waiting in ambush.

Her arms were once again crossed and she bore a flat, unimpressed look on her face.

Irritatingly, Colin noticed, she stood equal to him in height, easily looking him in the eye.

Hers were dark—impossibly so, as if they were either all pupil or none at all.

He took a step back.

“Forgive me. I did not know you were there, Miss…” He felt his face grow hot.

Her gaze did not waver. Colin found it unsettling.

He hoped she would speak and end this uncomfortable silence, and allow him to beg for her forgiveness.

He was the hero of the HMS Iapyx , which didn’t mean much to him, but it did to seemingly everyone else.

And people talked; if word got back to his mother that he’d spoken so boorishly in front of a lady…

“If you did not know I was here, I wonder why you gave chase,” she finally said, declining to supply him with her name.

“Gave chase?”

She turned away from him.

“I could hear you rushing down the hall,” she said as she began to walk away. “Despite the pains you took.”

Colin decided that this was already the strangest encounter he’d ever had with a woman. And it had only been a few seconds. He followed, drawing up alongside her.

“One moment, please, miss,” he said, baffled. “You haven’t given me your name.”

“You haven’t given me yours,” was her blithe reply.

“Sir Colin Gearing,” he said with a slight bow, somewhat more awkwardly than he would like.

“Yes, I know,” she said, still staring straight ahead. “Everyone knows.”

At that he very nearly guffawed, but he had already appeared so coarse and unmannered that he dared not.

Of course everyone knew him. He was Sir Colin Gearing, the young lieutenant who, five years ago, had somehow managed to capture not one, but two privateer vessels off the coast of the Canary Islands, while every senior officer on board the Iapyx was laid low by a bad bit of lamb ragout. And all at the tender age of twenty.

The country had gone mad for the outlandish tale.

The captain of the Iapyx had joined the lieutenants for supper in the wardroom on that fateful evening.

But Lieutenant Gearing, who an hour earlier had messed on biscuits and cheese with a handful of seamen, was too full to partake in the main course.

That stroke of luck not only spared him from the watery bowels and violent vomiting that incapacitated every officer above him for nigh on two days, it left him as the most senior able-bodied man on board during the encounter with the privateer vessels, which he managed to navigate so effectively that he had surprised even himself.

Shortly after their return home, Lieutenant Gearing became Sir Colin.

“Colin Gearing,” she echoed, as if reading his mind. “ Sir Colin.”

Yes, he had been knighted, much to his discomfort. True, the holds of the privateer ships had been chock-a-block with spoils, but now he was forever tied to a foul bit of stew, which to him felt quite arbitrary and more than a little embarrassing.