An Officer but No Gentleman

  An Officer

  But

  No Gentleman

  M. Donice Byrd

  Copyright © 2012 M. Donice Nelms

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN 10: 1491060549

  ISBN-13: 978-1491060544

  DEDICATION

  To Nancy for all the help with No Unspoken Promises,

  And to my family.

  PROLOG

  1805

  Following his companions’ lead, Charlie pulled a passing wench into his lap. What else could he do? Had his father or he known ahead of time the crew had decided he was long overdue for his first woman, he would not have gone ashore with the rowdy sailors. By their standards, to be nineteen years old and green was unacceptable. As the recently promoted second mate, he was not likely to get their respect when they thought of him as nothing more than a fledgling boy. The time had come for Charlie to prove his manhood, so he slid his hand over the wench’s round hip and gave her a pinch on her upper thigh. She gave a yelp more of surprise than pain and slapped playfully at his hand. The others at the table let out a roaring laugh of approval. Perhaps this would not be so difficult after all.

  The woman fingered the high collar of Charlie’s black broadcloth coat and the white cambric stock around his neck. Her smile was definitely lusty though he suspected she cast that same smile on every tar who had extra coin in his pocket which might come her way.

  “Never had me a cap’n before,” she mewed cattishly, slipping her arm around Charlie’s shoulder, bringing her breasts startlingly close to his face.

  Sitting directly across from Charlie, Morty Ness slammed his tankard down on the table. A wide grin creased his fellow American’s rugged face as his amber eyes lit up under a shock of unruly flaxen hair. “That’s all right,” he bellowed, drunkenly. “He ain’t never had a woman before.”

  The rowdy men took delight in Charlie’s discomfiture.

  “Have ye ever seen a lad turn that shade of red before,” Hugh asked taking pleasure in rolling the R’s, emphasizing his Scottish brogue.

  “He hasn’t been that close to a teat since he was suckling on his mama’s.”

  “Ah, come now,” Morty said. “We all know Captain Sinclair suckled Charlie.”

  Michel Dupre began choking on his ale, making Morty slap him on the back.

  “Well, that explains a lot,” Hugh said between chortles.

  Charlie knew his face burned red under his dark tan, but pretended he had not heard the men. “I’m not captain, yet,” he said to the Aussie wench, knowing she was not as addle-brained as she wanted him believe. Then he added for the benefit of the others, “I hope you’re not contrary to being bedded by the second mate.”

  After casting a wide smile at the woman he hoped looked lustier than he felt, Charlie grinned like a fool at his companions. “This may be a night none of us will forget, by George, except you, Morty. You’re already so skunked; I doubt you remember your name, much less why we’re here.” Then, like a banty rooster, Charlie crowed to the wench, “I hope you’re ready for an experience the likes of which you’ll tell your grandchildren when you’re old and feeble. In fact, you’ll give me a second go-round free just for the sheer pleasure of it.”

  “Not likely, that, you little braggart,” she scoffed tartly.

  She climbed off his lap and led him by the hand to a small room upstairs. When he noticed she was content to leave the door unlocked, he slid the bolt home; distrusting his drunken shipmates not to see for themselves the act was accomplished.

  Charlie turned and found the woman sitting on the edge of the bed divesting herself of her high-heeled shoes. Once the first shoe was off, she gave her foot a massaging squeeze.

  “Too tight,” she explained when she noticed Charlie watching. “Get to shuckin’, sailor. I ain’t got all night.”

  Charlie put a coin on the table. “This is what you usually get?”

  She nodded and he placed two more on the first. A moue puckered her mouth as she eyed the money speculatively.

  “I ain’t supposed to stay up here for that long while the tavern’s open. The other girls get testy if they have to cover for me for too long. Maybe you’d like to come back up after we close,” she offered hopefully, her eyes darting to the money.

  Sitting down at the foot of the bed, Charlie shook his head.

  “Lay on your back.”

  “Good-night! Ain’t you in a hurry all the sudden? Can’t a girl a least take off her drawers first?”

  “I was going to rub your feet for you.”

  “Oh.”

  She complied and Charlie pressed his thumbs into the bottom of her feet and slowly rotated them in wide, massaging circles. When an unexpected low moan of pleasure escaped her lips, Charlie hoped Hugh or Michel was standing outside the door.

  After a few minutes, what he was doing dawned on the woman. “You had no intention of bedding me.”

  As he continued to rub her feet, he shook his head, quirking an amused eyebrow. “No, but I’ll still give you the money on the table if you don’t say anything to my friends.”

  “For that much, Cap’n, I’ll tell them I did give you an extra for nothin’. I’m a good actress. I’ll have ‘em believing Don Juan was a school boy compared to you.”

  “No! Whatever you do, don’t do that. They might believe you tonight, but tomorrow when they’re sober, they’ll smell the lie. If you have to say anything at all, just say….” Charlie stared at the feet in his hands trying to remember every conversation he heard from jack about their first times. “Tell them I was quick. They’d believe that. What man wasn’t his first time?"

  “Whatever you say.” She shrugged, and then a grimace crossed her countenance. “You’re not one of those…?”

  “I assure you, my desires lie with the opposite sex,” Charlie said truthfully. “It’s just that there is this girl in our homeport….” Charlie looked her in the eye and tried to gauge her reaction.

  “Where’s your home?”

  “Charleston.”

  “You’re American?”

  He nodded. “She promised to marry me when I became first mate. In return, I promised I would not risk bringing home a disease. I didn’t mean to imply that you aren’t clean,” he added quickly, hoping not to offend her when he needed her on his side to get away with the farce. “It’s just I promised I wouldn’t risk it.”

  “Then why not tell that to them instead of wasting your money?”

  “I’m afraid they would begin to think I was making excuses to hide something. At nineteen, I’m supposed to have had a dozen women at least. They wouldn’t understand my vow to a wholesome girl.”

  She smiled sweetly at Charlie and he knew she had believed him. “You don’t look nineteen.”

  He rubbed his finger along his smooth jaw. “I know,” he said easily. “I’m sure that’s why this day has not happened before tonight. Do you think it’s been long enough? I have a feeling my friends are eager for my report.”

  The woman thanked him for the foot massage as she squeezed her feet back into the too small shoes. It was hardly the intimate act for which they had come upstairs, but he thought it was a small gesture to get her on his side in this sham. The knowledge he would someday be captain of their ship and needed the respect of the ship’s crew, made him perpetuate the lie. Once his father, the ship’s captain, learned of this escapade, Charlie knew he’d be banned from fraternize with the crew. Charlie was a newly appointed officer now and would lose most of his friendships because of it. John Sinclair was a my-word-is-law, by-the-book type of captain. He, himself, would not dine with his only child because he didn’t want the crew to think he favored Charlie. The only way Charlie had been sho
wn preferential treatment had been that Charlie had shared his father’s cabin until he had been promoted and received his own cabin.

  A tugging at his stock brought Charlie back to the present. “You can’t go back out there like that,” the wench said. “Do you see any mirrors in here?”

  “Thanks, you’re a sweetheart.”

  Charlie unfastened the plain white stock and opened his collar leaving the points down. After he stuffed the stock in his pocket, the buckle end carelessly hanging out, he relocated the stickpin haphazardly in the frill of his shirt. She suggested he remove his coat and waistcoat and descend with them over his arm, but that was something Charlie would never do. His father had ingrained in him who he was and who he would someday be, too deeply for him to shed his officers’ garb in front of jack—jack being any or all common sailors. As the captain’s son, one day he would be captain himself.

  An ironic smile touched Charlie’s lips. The clothes make the man, after all.

  When Charlie and the wench returned to the smoky taproom, he found his shipmates subdued compared to their high spirits when he had left them. The barmaids had returned to their duties leaving Hugh and Michel with cold laps. Neither seemed to notice nor care as a man Charlie had not seen before had joined them. The men, deep in conversation, did not see Charlie approach.

  “Get me a tankard of ale, love,” Charlie said to the buxom woman as they neared. A moment later, she was gone.

  Morty was the first to see Charlie. He let out a howl and lifted his tankard. “A toast to our second mate: A man among men!”

  All but the newcomer joined in the revelry as Charlie slipped into the empty chair between Hugh and Michel he vacated earlier. Charlie accepted their good-natured gibes in the manner in which they were intended and laughed as loud as or louder than anyone.

  “This is your second?” the stranger asked incredulously. “Not much of a blower I’d guess.”

  “Why Charlie here could wipe up the floor with anyone in this room, including me,” the brawny American said with his usual brass as he doffed his pipe.

  The man snorted derisively. “He’s just a boy.”

  “Not any more, eh, Charlie?” Morty laughed, raising his tankard in the air as if toasting the loss of innocence.

  A wide smile grew on Charlie’s countenance. “Not by a long shot,” he rejoined enjoying his own private joke.

  “Braggart,” a female voice said from behind him. As she reached around him to put the pewter mug on the table, she nodded her head sideways at Charlie and said to Michel, “I suppose he’s tellin’ you I did give it to him free. Ain’t likely, that.” Straightening, she set her hands on his shoulders and slowly began lowering them down his chest. Charlie put his hands on hers ceasing her progress. “But you’re welcome to pay anytime, Cap’n. Quickest money I ever made.”

  Hoots of laughter rose at Charlie’s expense, but he was not the least bit upset. The wench had convinced his shipmates he had bedded her.

  “Imagine that,” Hugh said still chuckling. “The wench didna even faint at the sight of those scars ye willna let the heartiest of yer mates see.”

  The table grew suddenly quiet at Hugh’s mistimed remark. His face turned as red as his beard as he glanced around at the scathing glares from Morty and Michel. Feeling self-conscious, Charlie began fixing his high collar and replacing his stock.

  “Scars?” the wench breathed and Charlie knew she no longer believed the story about the girl back home.

  “I didn’t take off my shirt,” Charlie said soberly.

  He pressed a coin into the woman’s hand sending her on her way. When he returned his attention to the others at the table, his shipmates all had their heads down as if there was something of great interest in their ale. The stranger looked around bemused; waiting for an explanation, but Charlie wasn’t going to give one and knew no one else would unless he left.

  They had all seen the angry burn on Charlie’s arm, so it was easy to imagine what the rest of Charlie looked like. His father brought him to sea after their house burned down and he lived aboard the Arcadia ever since.

  Everyone assumed the reason he never took off his shirt and shared his father’s cabin until recently, was because he was sensitive about his scars.

  “Is this a tavern or a tomb?” Charlie asked jovially, clapping Hugh on the shoulder.

  The Scot sighed, as a grin spread across his freckled countenance. He had been with the crew for two years and was one of Charlie’s closest friends.

  “I don’t believe you’ve met Lionel Byron.”

  The Aussie duck took a hold of Charlie’s proffered hand and grasped it painfully tight. As Charlie looked into his coal black eyes, he sensed the older man’s amusement. He knew he intended it to be a test of his physical strength. Charlie schooled his expression and held his gaze until the taller man released his grip.

  “I hear you need a new first mate.”

  “Aye, our Mr. Rosemead met with an unfortunate end shortly after we left China. Doc Kirk did what he could, but it was all for naught.”

  “I was just asking what kind of master the Arcadia has. He must be pretty soft if you’re the blower.”

  On any ship, the second mate was always the blower—the man in charge of the discipline and who administered the blows of the whip. Charlie had only one voyage under his belt as the second mate and had not had to flog anyone yet. However, he knew eventually he would.

  Charlie looked Lionel Byron in the eye. “He’s a hard master, the captain is. And he runs a tight ship,” the junior officer said, hoping the Australian would be reluctant to work under a strict captain.

  “Aye, that’s the scuttlebutt going around the docks.”

  “He’s the ship’s owner so there’s nobody to sack him if he works the crew to death,” he lied to the astonishment of his friends. “I wonder if that’s why Mr. Rosemead offed himself like that.” Charlie would have said just about anything to keep the man in front of him from applying for the job.

  Michel cleared his throat to keep from chuckling as he raised his mug to his lips. Hugh was shaking his head while Morty contentedly smoked his pipe.

  “If you want the job, I can get you an interview.”

  “Aye,” he answered undisturbed by Charlie’s tale.

  “Do you have experience as mate?”

  “Three years. Why? Were you hoping for the job?”

  Charlie shook his head. “My time will come, but not yet. I’ve only just become second mate.”

  “He could be mate,” Morty said, drunkenly. “Charlie’s been training to become ship’s master since he wore swaddling clothes. I bet he already knows everything the captain does.”

  Lionel Byron eyed Charlie speculatively. “Are you related to the captain?”

  “He got me out of the orphanage when I was six. I’ve been with him ever since.” It was basically true. After the fire, Charlie was sent to a local orphanage until his father returned from sea. “He treats me like a son.”

  1

  1808

  Pressing back into the leather wing chair, Charlie propped his booted feet on the desk built into the corner of his quarters. He took a draw on his cigar as he eyed the woman sprawled drunkenly in his bunk. From the outside looking in, this was the epitome of his life: the woman, the brandy, the cigar, and the second mate’s quarters. At twenty-two any man should have loved this life. Absently, Charlie stroked the lapel of his burgundy dressing robe, feeling the cool flawless plane of the silk beneath his calloused fingers. It was all an act, he thought, as the calluses on his fingers snagged the silk. It had been three years since he became second mate and he found himself in a no man’s land between the crew and the senior officers. He was not allowed to socialize with his friends in the crew and although he spent time with his father on Sundays, it was not enough to fill his need for social interaction. Bringing women back to his cabin, even if they only talked, was an attempt to show some sort of normalcy. Charlie did it because he thought the me
n expected it of the second mate.

  Annoying his father was just an added bonus.

  Charlie drew on the cheroot again and watched the smoke curl through the air as he exhaled. His life was so much simpler as a child. Now as an adult, he questioned his life. This life was chosen for him when his father brought him aboard after the fire and he didn’t know how to get out of it.

  Charlie emptied the brandy snifter, but held the empty glass mindlessly. He wished the alcohol would make it all go away. He tried that route more times than he cared to think about, but getting drunk just left him hung over and emptier than before.

  A fix was beyond his reach.

  Charlie lived the majority of his life at sea. He loved the sea, the travel, the sway of the boat on the water. But when he thought about someday being the captain of the ship for the rest of his life, it seemed more like a prison. He thought about his father’s life and his isolation and knew he wanted something more. Most captains balanced work and home, but the ship was John Sinclair’s home since the fire. Charlie felt shackled by his circumstances. How could he live on shore when all he knew of land were the docks, warehouses and taverns?

  A rap sounded at the heavy wooden door.

  “Enter!”

  Short and concise the way an order should be given.

  Through the haze of gray cigar smoke, Charlie watched as the captain entered.

  John Sinclair’s weathered brow furrowed at the sight that greeted him. When he spied the sleeping form sprawled across the Charlie’s bunk, his face contorted into a deep scowl.

  Charlie, amused by his reaction, grinned roguishly, placed the cigar between his teeth and poured more brandy in his glass. He hadn’t intended to have another, but seeing his father’s disappointment in him made him want to antagonize him further.

  “May I offer you one, Captain?” Charlie asked, emboldened by the brandy.

  “So, I’m to deal with the devil-may-care son tonight?” he asked closing the door. “I’m glad your mother’s not here to see this. She wanted you gently reared as befits your station. I don’t doubt she’s rolling over in her grave at this moment.”