The Forbidden Orchid Read online

  Alex interrupted before I could reply. “She doesn’t have to answer any of your questions. We married. I brought her onto the ship, and she’s under my protection. You have no right to question her.”

  “What does the captain say about this?”

  “I wasn’t aware that I had to inform you about what my father knows and doesn’t know.”

  “Your father.” Holst sneered. “What a jest that is.” He looked me up and down. “Why is she dressed as a sailor, then?”

  “Because she had to,” I said, before Alex could reply. I took a step forward, my shoulders square. I heard one of the older sailors laugh. “Perhaps if you weren’t so superstitious, I might take my place along my husband’s side dressed as a woman should be. As you can see, I’ve been aboard the ship since we departed, and no harm has come to us. So your bias against females is unfounded.”

  I hadn’t noticed that Mr. Jakes, the captain’s steward, had left the proceedings, but now I saw him coming out of the Liverpool House. He held the door open, and the captain appeared in the doorway. He caught sight of us all standing round, and made his way toward us with a thunderous expression.

  “What is all of this?” he shouted. “Mr. Holst, Mr. Balashov! If the initiation is over, then put these men back to work.”

  Holst knuckled his forehead in salute. “Aye, sir,” he replied, and then he turned to the crowd. “All right, you men. What are you gawking at? Get this deck cleaned up!”

  The men set to their work, and Holst turned back to the waiting captain. “Mr. Balashov and his wife can tell you the tale, sir.” And then he touched his forehead again and left.

  The captain looked sidelong at me and then at Alex. “Your wife, Alex?”

  Alex nodded.

  The captain sighed. “In my cabin, Alex. Now.”

  “Trust me, Elodie,” Alex whispered in my ear, his breath raising goose bumps on my neck. He placed his hand on my shoulder. “I promise you. There’s nothing to fear.”

  I WAITED IN ALEX’S CABIN, PACING ITS SHORT LENGTH BACK AND forth, six strides each way, gnawing at my nails. Kukla watched me from her perch on the bunk, her chin resting atop her paws. Marriage was the only way my reputation, and indeed my safety on board the ship, could be secured. An elopement was scandalous, but it was far better than being caught in a boy’s bed with no promise of marriage. But married to Alex?

  My imagination leapt to our wedding night. And it was a completely different picture from my nuptials with Deacon Wainwright. There would be no night clothing. No gentle knock on the door seeking my invitation. After so many weeks of lying chaste, side by side, Alex and I would be hungry to touch one another.

  The door opened and I whirled around, my face burning. Alex stepped in the room. The captain remained at the door, his cap in his hands.

  “Best to see your father now, lass,” the captain said. He didn’t appear to be angry; instead sadness and grief marked his weathered features. Alex held out his hand and gave me a reassuring smile. I put mine in his; he squeezed my fingers and we went off to face my father together.

  We found Papa sitting in the saloon reading. He had gained a little weight since I’d seen him last, and his beard was growing in. He had lost the look of an invalid, and there was color once again in his face. He looked up from his book when we came in. Seeing the captain and Alex accompanied by a bedraggled sailor, he most likely assumed the business didn’t involve him, so he returned his attention to his studies.

  He didn’t recognize me. And indeed, he didn’t lift his head again until I spoke.

  “Papa,” I said.

  Hearing my voice, he looked up, confusion clouding his eyes. His finger stilled, marking his place on the page.

  “It’s Elodie.”

  Papa stood up, his chair screeching on the wooden floor. “Elodie? What the devil . . . ?”

  “I found your daughter dressed as a sailor,” the captain said. “She was taking part in the initiation ceremonies.”

  He cocked his head, incredulous. “Did I hear you correctly, sir?”

  “She and Alex say they are married. He smuggled her aboard the ship. He says they plan to make a life together.”

  Papa stared at me. I had never seen him at a loss for words. His mind could not comprehend the situation, and I did not blame him. Here I was, in the middle of the ocean, tossed up upon his ship, weeks after it left England, like a mermaid from the deeps, taking the altered form of his daughter, and claiming marriage to a boy she hardly knew. It must have felt a dream to him. This situation was indeed dreamlike to me. More of a waking nightmare, truth be told.

  “Did you say married?” I saw my father’s telltale sign of frustration, his fingers clenching and unclenching into fists at his side.

  I was embarrassed, humiliated to be standing in front of my father so, to be the cause of tension and strife to him. Of course I knew this reckoning day would come soon enough; I simply wasn’t prepared for it to happen at this time, and in this fashion. I certainly hadn’t planned on standing in front of my father wearing trousers and with pitch smeared on my face. I had hoped to meet him on the dock in China and explain what had happened, calmly and clearly.

  “How did you find a priest or a justice of the peace to do so?” Papa asked, his face tight with anger. “A fleet marriage is no longer possible; this is not the eighteenth century where an imprisoned minister will marry you for a few pennies.”

  “We pledged ourselves to one another,” Alex said. “There was no time—”

  Papa stared at him, agog. “So you aren’t married? It just grows worse and worse.”

  “Alex and I are married in our hearts to each other, Papa,” I said.

  “You are not married!” Papa shouted, and I flinched and stepped back, bumping into the captain. “Do you hear me? You are not some working-class girl from the slums of London who can claim marriage without anyone caring to know the truth! You are not twenty-one, and I do not give my permission.”

  “Papa!” I said, but he held his hand up, interrupting me.

  “You will remain apart until we return to England. You will stay with missionaries in Foochow until I return from the expedition, and then we will go back to England. I will not let this folly stand if I can help it. Alex, you will cease your attention to my daughter. You’ll let my daughter have your quarters. You can sleep in the masthead for all I care.”

  Mercifully, the captain spoke up; he was the voice of reason amidst this hotbed of emotion. I could see why he had become a captain, as he seemed quite skilled at keeping his head in terrible situations. “If you make them stay apart now, Hugh, the men will talk all the more,” the captain said. “They will say they are not truly married, that your daughter is merely Alex’s plaything. The two must remain together, for your daughter’s sake.”

  “What is wrong with your men, Captain?” Papa roared. “Can you not control them? Are they like biddies at washday?”

  “You forget, sir, that I must make note of this in my captain’s log, as well. I have no choice. It is the law that I do so. What do you wish me to write? That your daughter was found in a boy’s bed or that Alex secreted his wife aboard?”

  “Wife!” My father spat. He began to stomp around the saloon. “I can’t believe you would do such a thing, Elodie,” he bellowed. “To lie with a man you’re not bound to. How could you do this? How could you?”

  The captain raised his hands. “Come, sir, quiet yourself. We need not give the men more stories to chew over.”

  Papa rounded on Alex, grabbed his jacket in his fists and backed him against the wall. Kukla barked and threw herself against my father, gripping his pant leg in her teeth, growling, and pulling it this way and that. I dragged the little dog away, gathered her into my arms, but she continued to lunge at my father, her hackles raised, snarling and snapping.

  “Have you gotten my daughter
in the family way?” Papa roared. “Is this why she’s here on the ship? Tell me true and it will go better for you! What false promises did you make to her?” He shook Alex. “Well, what do you have to say for yourself?”

  Alex let my father hold him against the wall, let him release his wrath on him, all the while saying nothing, merely looking at him as though waiting for him to spend his anger. Finally Alex spoke, “There is no child. We love one another, and we’ve pledged to be together.”

  “Love? You love each other? If you loved her, then you wouldn’t have let her on board this ship! You knew what peril she faced, and yet you allowed it. You let her get swept up in that barbarous line-crossing farce. Look at her! Tar on her face, her hair cut like a man’s. If you had affection for her, she would not stand before me in this state.” Papa grabbed another handful of Alex’s jacket and banged him against the wall once more. “Do not speak to me of love, you pup, you orphan, because you have no knowledge of it.”

  The captain stood up. “Sir, I beg you,” he said. “Hugh, this is not the way. It is not the boy’s fault he is without family.”

  I couldn’t stand by and let Alex take the blame. It wasn’t fair. “Papa, stop!” I said. “Let him go! None of this is true. We didn’t pledge ourselves. We aren’t married. Alex said we were married to protect me from the men.” I set Kukla down and she slunk away, terrified by all the shouting.

  Papa let go of Alex’s jacket. “Then what are you doing on the ship?” He glared at me. “And tell me true, Elodie. No more lies.”

  I started to say that Papa needed help, but I glanced at the captain. I didn’t want him to know of Papa’s weakness. Papa would have hated me for that. And indeed, he would be angry to know that I thought he was weak. “I didn’t want you to travel alone. So I stowed away, and then Alex found me . . . and he helped me.” I went on, telling Papa of the false Mrs. Pringle, the orchid thief with the hook for a hand, how Alex had found me in the hold. Papa’s face was turning to stone as he listened, his eyes like chips of marble. I began to babble, stuttering out the remaining details of the story.

  He turned to Alex. “Mr. Balashov, I take umbrage with your morals. That you could agree to this detestable scheme makes you very suspect. Very suspect, indeed.”

  “Elodie knows her own mind, sir,” Alex said. “I would not dare to show her disrespect by imposing my own decisions upon her.”

  Papa shot a glance at Alex as though daring him to contradict him. “But it was all right to ruin her by allowing her into your bed?”

  “You are right, sir,” Alex said. “I am to blame and I will stand by Elodie. No need to say more.” He grabbed my hand, and we left the saloon, Kukla trailing behind us. We made a sorry little family.

  As Alex shut the saloon door behind him, we could see, up ahead, the cook and Jakes the steward standing in the doorway of the galley eavesdropping, possibly hearing every word that was said. The steward Jakes was grinning, like the cat that had gotten the canary.

  Too stunned and heartbroken to speak, I let Alex lead me past them and into his room. I was suddenly shy of Alex.

  “I’ll leave you to dress.” His voice sounded formal, not like the Alex I knew at all. “I’ll be back in a little while with something to remove the tar from your face.”

  He left, pulling the door behind him.

  I had never seen my father so angry. Even when he was stripping the green wallpaper from the walls that one sorry Christmas, his anger had not matched this. I doubted he would ever forgive me.

  NINETEEN

  An hour later, Alex returned carrying a bottle and some rags. I sat on the edge of the bunk dressed in my own clothing. My sturdy tartan gown was only slightly crumpled from its time in the canvas bag, and bedecked with a few spots of mildew. I’d done the best I could with my hair, bundling what was left of it into a bun at the nape of my neck and securing it with the few hairpins I had.

  Alex held the bottle up and smiled. “Oil of turpentine. It will remove the tar from your face.”

  “The captain appeared very upset before,” I said.

  “The captain worries about me; worries that he’s my only family, so I think he’s relieved I have a wife, however ill-gotten. He wanted to know why I didn’t come to him immediately to tell him about you. I told him you feared the wrath of your father. And that we didn’t think it all through.”

  He sat beside me and began applying the bottle’s contents to my face. His touch was gentle as he passed the rag over my cheeks. “These scratches from the barrel stave will heal soon, myshka. The same was done to me when I was a griffin. They don’t last. I was in the saloon with the captain and your father and I forgot that sometimes they put the griffins in the ’tween deck. Of course I was too late. I’m so sorry. I should have let you stay in my quarters.” He shook his head.

  I closed my fingers on Alex’s hand. “Alex, you don’t have to do any of this,” I said. “You don’t have to marry me.”

  For a moment I thought I saw a flash of emotion in his eyes—hurt maybe, or something more. Disappointment? He looked away a moment, and then when he glanced back that emotion had gone. Or had I only imagined it?

  “Elodie, I have no family. The captain and Kukla are all I have. Kukla means everything to me, and what you did was the greatest kindness. My name is not much, but it’s enough to save you, and I’ll do this to help you. I won’t . . . press you for more, I promise. We can be married in Foochow, and I’ll return on the Osprey. People understand that sailors are at sea a good deal of the time, so they will not wonder where your husband is. I’m sure your father will see sense and allow you to accompany him.”

  “But—”

  “You’re my friend, myshka. And there are worse things than being married to your friend.” He returned to removing the tar from my cheeks.

  Friend. Alex wanted to be my friend. I was embarrassed by my wedding night fancies. Stupid girl, now you’re acting like Violetta sighing over one of her books. What did I think? That Alex would say he wanted to marry me because he could not live without me? He wanted to marry me because he owed me a favor and wanted to repay it. Nothing would change. He would return to the Osprey and carry on. I might never see him again.

  Alex must have sensed the kind of girl I was—steady Elodie who handled each day with responsibility and practicality. There was no place in my life for either love nor romance, and the sooner I grasped that the better.

  “Thank you,” I said, as though I were accepting a gift from an uncle. “I do appreciate your kindness.”

  THAT EVENING I WALKED THE DECK BEFORE DINNER, BONNET KNOTted under my chin, my dress sweeping the deck. It felt strange to wear a skirt once more. My legs felt both free and encumbered. I had to teach myself to walk again, kicking the skirt slightly away from me so as not to tread on the front. My torso felt strange in the corset. I was used to slumping in my sailor’s shirt instead of remaining upright all the time, but in truth I was glad of the corset once more, glad of its ability to help me stand straight and tall, and I needed to stand tall as I passed through a gauntlet made from the sailors’ scrutiny.

  Most of the men had behaved respectfully toward me, knuckling their foreheads and wishing me a good evening. But some of them smirked or muttered under their breaths as I passed. The apprentices didn’t dare to look at me, but kept their eyes on their work, pretending I didn’t exist. Only Robin raised a hand in greeting, but then he returned to his task of coiling rope.

  I had been most afraid of Mr. Holst’s reaction and had hoped he’d be elsewhere when I walked the deck. He had been standing over two apprentices as they worked, the handle of his whip tucked into his belt. He said nothing to me, but I felt his accusing eyes following me around the deck as I strode.

  The captain, the officers, and my father ate their evening meal in the saloon as befitted their station, and I joined them, as I would for the remainder of the voyage.r />
  The men stood when I came in. All of the officers, including Alex, were there.

  Alex held out the chair next to him, and I sat down. There was much scraping of chairs and clearing of throats as everyone sat down, focusing their gaze on the plates in front of them. No one spoke a word. No one dared to look at my father or me.

  The door opened, and the captain’s steward arrived bearing before him a tray topped with a large pottery bowl. I could see steam rising away from it and smell the enticing scent of onions and gravy. When the lobscouse was ladled before me, I nearly fell on it. I hadn’t tasted anything hot or substantial for weeks. Alex could only bring me ship’s biscuit, tinned tongue or corned beef—which I keyed open and ate cold from the can—cheese, and the odd apple or slice of cabbage. Hot food was certainly out of the question, as heating it in the galley would have raised impossible-to-answer questions. I had to force myself to attend to the stew and eat small bites when what I really wanted to do was to pick up the dish and eat from it like a wild woman, tear the fresh bread and sop up the gravy, shovel it all into my mouth and ask for more.

  Papa picked at his meal, refusing to look at me.

  After dinner, I found a place on the ship where I could sit by myself and watch the sun go down. The freedom to gaze out at the sea after so long in hiding felt heavenly. I must have sat there for an hour or so when I sensed someone behind me.

  “Am I disturbing you?” It was Alex.

  “No.” I moved over to make a place for him.

  Alex sat down and stared out into the water, saying nothing for a long while. When I could stand our awkward silence no longer, Alex spoke: “Holst is demanding I be punished for smuggling you on board.”

  “What? But your father knows I stowed away.”

  “Yes, but the men don’t. And it’s against the maritime laws to smuggle someone aboard a ship. My father cannot overlook it or make an exemption for me; the men would lose respect for him, they would begin to do what they want. So I have to be punished.”