‘And I have put something in your bag,’ Emma said with a watery smile. ‘Goodness knows what happens about Christmas celebrations on board. Now, are you sure you have everything?’
‘I went out yesterday,’ her uncle assured her, patting his wife on the shoulder and obviously worried that she would burst into tears. ‘You’ve got a nice compartment in the roundhouse below the poop deck, just as I was promised. That will be much quieter and the odours and noise will be less than in the Great Cabin below. It is all ladies in there as well, and you will be dining at the captain’s table in the cuddy with the select passengers.’
‘But those wretched canvas partitions,’ his wife protested. ‘I would feel happier if she was in a cabin with bulkheads.’
It had been a subject for discussion and worry for weeks. ‘The partitions give better ventilation,’ Dita said. ‘I felt perfectly secure on the outward passage, but that was in a compartment forward of the Great Cabin and it was so very stuffy.’ And revoltingly smelly by the time they had been at sea for a month.
‘And all your furniture is in place and secured,’ her uncle continued. All made it sound as though she was occupying a suite. The box bed that was bolted to the deck was a fixture, but passengers were expected to supply anything else they needed for their comfort in the little square of space they could call their own. Dita had a new coir mattress and feather pillow, her bed linen and towels, an ingenious dressing chest that could support a washbasin or her writing slope and an upright chair. Her trunk would have to act as both wardrobe and table and her smaller bags must be squashed under the bunk.
‘And there are necessaries for the passengers’ and officers’ use on this ship,’ Lord Webb added. Which was a mercy and an improvement on a slop bucket or the horrors of the heads—essentially holes giving on to the sea below—that had been the only options on the outward passage.
‘I shall be wonderfully comfortable,’ Dita assured them. ‘Look, they want us to go down to the boats now.’
Plunging into the scrimmage of passengers, porters, beggars, sailors and screaming children was better than dragging out this parting any longer, even if her stomach was in knots at the thought of getting into the boat that was ferrying passengers to the ship. It hurt to part with two people who had been understanding and kindly beyond her expectations or deserts, and she feared she would cling and weep and upset her aunt in a moment.
‘I love you both. I’ve written, it is with the Christmas presents. I must go.’ Her uncle took her arm and made sure the porter was with them, then, leaving her aunt sniffing into her handkerchief, he shouldered his way to the uneven steps leading down into the fast-running brown water.
‘Hold tight to me! Mind how you go, my dear.’ The jostling was worse on the steps, her foot slipped on slime and she clutched wildly for support as the narrow boat swung away and the water yawned before her.
‘Lady Perdita! Your hand, ma’am.’ It was Alistair, standing on the thwarts. ‘I have her, sir.’ He caught her hand, steadied her, then handed her back to one of the Chatterton twins who was standing behind him.
‘Sit here, Lady Perdita.’ This twin was Callum, she decided, smiling thanks at him and trying to catch her breath while her uncle and Alistair organised her few items of hand baggage and saw them stowed under the plank she was perched on. ‘An unpleasant scrum up there, is it not?’
‘Yes.’ She swallowed hard, nodded, managed a smile and a wave for her uncle as the boat was pushed off. Alistair came and sat opposite her. ‘Thank you. I am the most terrible coward about water. The big ship is all right. It is just when I am close to it like this.’ She was gabbling, she could hear herself.
‘What gave you a fear of it?’ Alistair asked. He held her gaze and she realised he was trying to distract her from the fact that they were in an open boat very low in the water. ‘I imagine it must have been quite a fright to alarm someone of your spirit.’
‘Why, thank you.’ Goodness, he was being positively kind to her. Dita smiled and felt the panic subside a little.
‘Presumably you got into some ridiculous scrape,’ he added and the smile froze as the old guilt washed through her.
Without meaning, to she gabbled the whole story. ‘I was walking on the beach with my governess when I was eight and a big wave caught me, rolled me out over the pebbles and down, deep.’ She could still close her eyes and see the underneath of the wave, the green tunnel-shape above her, trapping her with no air, beating her down on to the stones and the rocks. ‘Miss Richards went in after me and she managed to drag me to the beach. Then the next wave took her. She nearly drowned and I couldn’t help her—my leg was broken. The poor woman caught pneumonia and almost died.’
‘Of course you couldn’t have helped,’ Callum said firmly. ‘You were a child and injured.’
‘But Lord Lyndon is correct—I had disobeyed her and was walking too close to the water. It was my fault.’ No one had beaten her for her bad behaviour, for Miss Richards had told no one. But the guilt over her childish defiance had never gone away and the fear of the sea at close quarters had never left her.
‘It has not prevented you from taking risks,’ Alistair said dispassionately.
‘Lyndon.’ Chatterton’s tone held a warning.
Alistair raised one eyebrow, unintimidated. ‘Lady Perdita prizes frankness, I think.’
‘It is certainly better than hypocrisy,’ she snapped. ‘And, no, it did not stop me taking risks, only, after that, I tried to be certain they were my risks alone.’
‘My leg is much better.’ Alistair delivered the apparent non sequitur in a conversational tone.
‘I cannot allow for persons equally as reckless as I am,’ Dita said sweetly. ‘I am so glad you are suffering no serious consequences for your dangerous riding.’
‘We’re here,’ Chatterton said with the air of a man who wished he was anywhere rather than in the middle of a polite aristocratic squabble.
‘And they are lowering a bo’sun’s chair for the ladies,’ said Alistair, getting to his feet. ‘Here! You! This lady first.’
‘What? No! I mean I can wait!’ Dita found herself ruthlessly bundled into the box-like seat on the end of a rope and then she was swung up in the air, dangled sickeningly over the water and landed with a thump on the deck.
‘Oh! The wretched—’
‘Ma’am? Fast is the best way to come up, in my opinion, no time to think about it.’ A polite young man was at her elbow. ‘Lady Perdita? I’m Tompkins, one of the lieutenants. Lord Webb asked me to look out for you. We met at the reception, ma’am.’
‘Mr Tompkins.’ Dita swallowed and her stomach returned to its normal position. ‘Of course, I remember you.’
‘Shall I show you to your cabin, ma’am?’
‘Just a moment. I wish to thank the gentleman who assisted me just now.’
The ladies and children continued to be hoisted on board with the chair. Most of them screamed all the way up. At least I did not scream, she thought, catching at the shreds of her dignity. What had she been thinking of, to blurt out that childhood nightmare to the men? Surely she had more control than that? But the tossing open boat had frightened her, fretting at nerves already raw with the sadness of departure and the apprehension of what was to come in England. And so her courage had failed her.
Dita gritted her teeth and waited until the men began to come up the rope ladder that had been lowered over the side, then she walked across to Alistair where he stood with Callum Chatterton.
‘Thank you very much for your help, gentlemen,’ she said with a warm smile for Callum. ‘Lord