Seasons of War 2-Book Bundle. Cheryl Cooper

me my clothes, Lee.”

      “Your fever has returned and your pulse is weak. Please … stay where you are.”

      James paid him no heed. He stumbled out of his cot and staggered over to his clothing hook where, with trembling hands, he reached for his white breeches and his blue frock coat adorned with shoulder epaulettes and brass-buttoned cuffs.

      “I cannot agree to you leaving your bed in your state.”

      James mopped his brow. “I’ve been too long in my bed, Lee. And I am well aware that I may never regain my strength.”

      “Have you no faith in the abilities of Fly and Mr. Harding?”

      “That is not the point!” he replied, with an edge in his voice; then, more gently, he added, “My men need to see me. If we are to face another battle, it will put their minds at ease to have me walk with them above deck.”

      “That is all well and noble,” said Leander, pulling off his spectacles, “but I believe your men would find greater comfort in knowing your health was being restored with rest. As your doctor, I simply cannot approve of you – ”

      “I will not fight Trevelyan in my bedclothes!” James glared at the doctor for a while until his anger dissipated, then, wearing a look of remorse, he carried his clothes meekly to his desk chair, where he sat down to catch his breath. Slowly he pulled on his breeches, then his Hessian boots, which stood upright on the floor beside him, and finally, his uniform coat.

      Leander tucked his spectacles into his waistcoat pocket. “What evidence do we have that it is Trevelyan’s ship that approaches?”

      James fumbled with his coat buttons, but finding the task exhausting, he shifted his body round to look out through the galleried windows upon the billowing misty-white sea, and fell into a dream-like state. There was something in his aspect that led Leander to wonder if James’s thoughts had travelled home to England. He watched him closely for some time.

      “James, why is it the name Trevelyan strikes such fear in you? Granted, two weeks back, his guns inflicted a fearful lot of damage on us, but surely no more than we inflicted upon him.”

      Beads of sweat ran down James’s sunken cheeks, and his eyes never left the sea. “He has an old score to settle with me and has waited a very long time for his revenge. I feared he would resurface again one day; I just never imagined I’d meet him in the Atlantic and find him commanding, of all things, an American ship called the Serendipity.”

      Leander hoped to hear more, but when James revealed nothing further, he set about collecting his medical chest and made his way to the cabin door. “I will go and question Mr. McGilp for you – see what news there is.” Throwing open the door, he found McGilp already standing there, his fist at his forehead in a salute to his captain.

      “Mr. McGilp!” cried James, rising to his feet. “Can you tell me? Is she British or Yankee?”

      “She’s coming from the nor’east, sir. Still hard to tell with the mists and all.”

      “Bearing down on us?”

      “No, at ease and a piece off yet, sir.”

      “The very minute – the very minute – you can identify her colours, let me know.”

      “Right, sir.”

      Mr. McGilp hurried off just as the sailing master, Mr. Harding, appeared at the door, red-faced and breathless. “Your instructions, sir?” he rasped.

      “Tell Mr. Austen to raise the anchors and unfurl the sails. We must try to harness what wind we can and get to deeper water as soon as possible. Are our repairs nearly complete?”

      “Another day or two would have been preferred, sir, but I think we are sound enough to fight … if need be.”

      “And time … how much time would you say we have, Mr. Harding?”

      “A good two hours, I’d say, sir – that’s if we were to stay put.”

      After James had shut the door on the sailing master’s retreating steps, Leander led him back to his desk chair. Within minutes they could hear the familiar whirl of activity above deck – the call for the hands to weigh anchor and the sound of a fifer piping them to their posts to the tune of “Heart of Oak.” Two hundred men alone were needed to raise the thick cables of the main anchor. Eighty-four men, mostly marines, were necessary to operate the twelve bars of the capstan on the fo’c’sle, and several dozen more would be stationed on the gun deck and orlop to handle and stow the incoming, fishy-smelling cable.

      “While we wait it out, I must stay occupied,” said James, fumbling again with his coat buttons.

      “You’ve eaten nothing today. Could I convince you to take some food?”

      “Perhaps a bowl of soup,” James said. “I will swallow a bit of nourishment for you, Lee, if you would escort Emily here to my cabin.”

      “Emily?”

      “I would like to question her again.” Noticing a mixed expression of interest and alarm on Leander’s face, he added, “You may stay for the interview.”

      “I should like that.”

      “Shall we say … in half an hour?” When Leander nodded his agreement, James sighed. “Right then! Now help me fasten these damned buttons.”

      2:30 p.m.

      (Afternoon Watch, Five Bells)

      EMILY, GUS, AND MAGPIE sat cross-legged on the floor of Emily’s hospital corner reading Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility together. All three knew there had been a sighting, and their anxiety of the unknown was eased somewhat by listening to Austen’s fictional tale. Magpie sat with his back erect, his one almond-shaped eye shining in the shadows, his full youthful attention on the story of the sisters named Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. Gus read, his melodious voice loud enough so that Dr. Braden’s patients could hear his words as they lay in their cots, though it did not escape Emily’s notice that one of his legs was bouncing up and down.

      Prior to their reading, Magpie had recounted in worried whispers the scene he had witnessed on the gun deck, and with this intelligence knocking around in her head, Emily sat nervously, one ear to the story, the other listening for the return of Mrs. Kettle with her laundry.

      Before long, Leander crept into their corner and, with a nod of his head and an incline of his auburn eyebrows, sought permission to listen in. “I have a bit of time to spare before … before I tend to my next task,” he said, as if apologizing for his sudden appearance.

      “Oh, please join us, Doctor,” Emily said, feeling at once safer with him on the wooden stool beside her.

      Gus had barely managed to read a page when Magpie’s hand flew up in the air yet again as if he were a schoolboy sitting at his classroom desk and Gus his schoolmaster. “Excuse me, Mr. Walby, but I need to know why Miss Marianne got so sick.”

      “Magpie, you must stop asking so many questions or we’ll never get through this chapter,” admonished Gus. “We don’t have long, you know.”

      “It’s fine to ask questions, Magpie,” Emily said, smiling at his literary enthusiasm.

      “All right then,” Gus recanted, disliking the thought of displeasing Emily. “While Miss Marianne was staying at the Palmers’ home, she took to rambling around their damp grounds, and got her shoes and stockings all wet. The result was she caught a chill and came down with an infectious fever.”

      Magpie meditated on Gus’s answer. “But I don’t understand, ’cause me shoes and stockins’ are wet all o’ the time and I never gets a ’fectious fever.”

      “What Gus said is true,” added Emily softly, “but you also need to understand that Marianne was spiritually exhausted and came close to dying of a broken heart. You see, she had fallen in love with the handsome Mr. Willoughby,