‘Yes, much, much better, thank you. I found some birch-bark powder in your medical kit and that helped my headache, and the bliss of being clean, I cannot describe.’ She gave a complicated little wriggle of sensual satisfaction, causing his loins to tighten painfully, and smiled. ‘It is horrible being dirty; I don’t know why it is so difficult to get boys to wash. Surely no one is willingly dirty?’
Nathan found he was not up to discussing any subject touching Clemence and the removal of clothes. She followed his eyes to the tub of dirty water, perhaps assuming his silence was irritation. ‘Sorry, I was just trying to work out how to empty it.’
‘I’ll use the empty bucket and bail it out through the porthole.’ He tossed his waistcoat on to the bunk and rolled up his sleeves. ‘You’ve been very thrifty with the water.’
She was looking at his bare forearms. Nathan watched his own muscles bunch as he hefted the bucket and found, to his inner amusement, that he was endeavouring to make as light work of the task as possible. Poseur, he mocked himself. Showing off like a cock with a new hen. He remembered the frisson of pleasure when he had sensed Julietta’s eyes on him in his uniform, the temptation to swagger to impress her.
‘There isn’t much space in the tub,’ Clemence pointed out, jerking him back to the present. ‘And there’ll be even less room for you.’
Nathan chucked a pail full of water out of the porthole, his mind distractingly full of the image of Clemence curled up in the tub. ‘You’ll have to scrub my back, then, if I can’t reach,’ he said, half-joking.
‘I suppose I could,’ she said doubtfully. ‘With my eyes closed, of course. Have you a back brush?’
‘No. I was teasing you.’ She smiled at him, unexpectedly, and he found himself grinning back. ‘Are you usually this calm about things, Clem? I would have thought you fully justified if you were throwing hysterics by now.’
‘It wouldn’t do any good, would it?’ she pointed out, folding discarded clothes with a housewifely air that contrasted ludicrously with her appearance.
‘I wish my father was alive and I was at home with him, or, if that cannot happen, I wish my uncle and cousin were the men Papa believed them to be. Or, worst come to worst, I wish I had stowed away on a nice merchantman and was now having tea in the captain’s wife’s cabin. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride and having hysterics would not be pleasant for you.’
‘That’s considerate of you.’ Nathan poured clean water into the tub and began to unbutton his shirt.
‘It is in my interests not to alienate you,’ Clemence pointed out, all of a sudden as cool and sharp as fresh lemonade. She sat down on her bunk, curled her legs under her and faced the wall.
‘What’s the matter?’ Nathan asked, his fingers stilling on the horn buttons.
‘I do not want to have to go into the privy cupboard while you have your bath.’
‘Oh. Yes, of course.’ He would have stripped off without a second thought, Nathan realised; he was so focused on not pulling her into his arms that he was forgetting all the other ways he could shock or alarm her.
The shock of the cold water as he crouched down was a blessed relief for a moment, then the absence of the nagging tension in his groin was replaced by the sobering reality of protecting a young woman on the Sea Scorpion. Clemence would be safer in a dockside brothel—at least she could climb out of a window.
Nathan shook his head in admiration as he scrubbed soap into his torso. Out of a window overhanging the sea, up creepers, along a roof, stealing a horse…Now that was a woman with courage and brains. He had been brought up to regard the ideal woman as frail, clinging and charmingly reliant upon a man’s every word. And he had found himself one who apparently embodied all of those attributes combined with the exotic looks of half-Greek parentage. The only fault his mother would have found with her—at first—was her lack of money.
They had all been well-dowered young ladies, the candidates for his hand that his mother had paraded before him. She always managed to completely ignore the fact that, however worthy her late husband’s breeding might be, he had gambled all the money away and that their elder son had to manage a household with the parsimony of a miser. The need for Nathan to marry money was not spelled out, but he was always aware that if he did not, then he could expect to exist upon what the navy provided.
So, the daughters of well-off squires, the granddaughters of merchants, the youngest child of younger sons of the minor aristocracy were all considered—provided they brought money with them. And, while most of them seemed pleased at the thought of a tall naval officer with a baron for a brother, Nathan had found the entire process distasteful. His mother, he was well aware, had made a suitable match to a man she despised. His brother Daniel had wed the sour-faced youngest daughter of an earl because of her breeding and her dowry—substantial, Nathan had always assumed, because of the need to get her off her family’s hands. Neither gave him any desire to marry for money.
So he had married for love. More fool he.
Now, of course, any of those well-dowered damsels would flee screaming if they found themselves alone with him. Nathan grimaced and stood up, slopping water everywhere, and began to wash his hair. Too much to hope that Clemence had left him any fresh water, he reached for the jug and found it half-full.
‘Admirable woman,’ he said, pouring it in a luxurious stream over his head. ‘All this fresh water left.’
‘I don’t need much now my hair is short,’ she said, her shoulders still firmly turned away from him.
‘Was it very long?’ Nathan stepped out, splashed through the puddles and found a linen towel.
‘To my waist,’ she said with a sigh. ‘My only beauty.’
‘Your what?’ Nathan balanced, one foot wrapped in the towel as he dried his toes, and stared at the back of her head and the damp mop of hair that, when dry, was all the colours of pulled taffy. ‘That I cannot believe.’
‘I am not fishing for compliments,’ Clemence said, apparently resigned to her looks. ‘I know I am too tall, too slim and my face has too many angles. My papa used to say that I was as flat as a kipper in front, but I’ve never seen a kipper, so I don’t know.’
Nathan swallowed. This was more information than he felt able to cope with, even after a cold bath. The memory of her body moulding into his came back. Even with her bosom bound, he knew perfectly well that kippers were not that shape.
‘You’ve lived on Jamaica all your life, then?’ he asked, pulling on his loosest trousers and snatching at an innocuous topic of conversation.
‘Yes. Papa and Mama came out here just after they were married. Papa was a younger son, like you.’ She sighed. ‘Mama died ten years ago of the yellow fever.’