Lucien Roper tightened his arms around her again, stilling her trembling, reminding her that she was someone, even if she could not remember who.
And, no matter what, she wanted to live.
‘Do you know anything about me?’ she asked him.
He paused before answering. ‘Very little. That you sailed from Dublin. Your name. That you are sister to the Earl of Keneagle.’ His voice stiffened.
She did belong to someone! ‘Do you know the Earl of Keneagle?’
He shifted his body a little. ‘He is an Irish earl, that is all I know.’
‘Then someone will look for me.’ She relaxed against him again.
‘These waters are well travelled,’ he said.
He did not sound convincing.
The waves beneath them rocked them like a bumpy carriage ride and the air smelled of brine. Her skin itched from the salt. They’d lapsed into silence. Only the slapping of the water against their raft made a sound.
The emptiness was driving her mad. She needed memories, any memories.
Even his would do. ‘Will you tell me about you, Lucien Roper?’
He stirred a little. ‘I am in the navy.’
‘The navy?’ Keep talking, she wanted to beg. He was her only reality at the moment. He and some brother she could not remember. A governess who’d been her companion.
And probable death. ‘What do you do in the navy?’
He shrugged. ‘I am a captain.’
‘Do you have a ship?’ Captains had ships, she somehow knew.
His ship, his home, was likely scrap by now. ‘Not at the moment. I’m bound for the Admiralty to be given a new ship.’
How could she know what the navy was and nothing about herself?
Maybe if he kept talking...
‘Are—are you on half pay?’ she asked.
* * *
Half pay, Lucien thought. She obviously knew what half pay was.
He nodded. ‘Until I’m given a new ship.’
‘You had a ship? What happened to it?’ she asked.
‘The war is over. The navy does not need so many ships. It was sold.’ He could not bear to tell her the Foxfire would be broken up. The ship had more life in her.
‘How sad for you.’ Her voice sounded genuinely sympathetic. ‘What was the name of your ship?’
‘The Foxfire.’
‘A lovely name,’ she remarked. ‘What kind of ship was it?’
‘She was a Banterer-class post ship with twenty-two guns.’
‘How impressive sounding,’ she said. ‘I know nothing of ships—at least nothing I can remember—but I know of the war somehow. I know it is over. Is that not strange?’
Strange that she remembered some things and not others? ‘I suppose it is.’
‘I—I cannot remember anything to do with me.’ She said this quietly, but he heard the pain of it in her words. She moved enough to look him in the face. ‘Would you tell me more about you? About being in the navy, perhaps? I need to know that there is more than us drifting on this water. I need to know someone has memories.’
His heart resonated with her pain. The fact that they were drifting on these boards in the middle of the sea would be terrifying enough without amnesia on top of it. She might be a spoiled aristocratic lady, but at the moment she did not know even this. And, although he would not say it to her, she must realise they faced probable death.
If talking about himself would ease her anguish, he would talk about himself.
‘My father is an admiral,’ Lucien said. ‘My grandfather was an admiral. I was always meant for the navy, as well. It is in my blood. And I’ve done well in it.’
‘How long have you been in the navy?’ she asked.
‘Twenty-one years. Since age twelve. At fifteen I was in the Battle of the Nile. At twenty-two I was at Trafalgar and, since then, countless encounters with French, American and Danish ships. Mostly in the Adriatic Sea and the Mediterranean.’
‘You did well in the war, then.’ Her sympathy seemed genuine.
He gazed out to the horizon. ‘I also sent good men to their deaths.’ He closed his eyes and saw the carnage of battle. He saw his quartermaster blown apart. His midshipman, a mere youth, set afire. Why had these memories come and not the glory of capturing enemy vessels?
‘Did you earn prize money.’
There it was. He should have known she would ask about his money. A man’s monetary worth was of prime importance to aristocrats.
‘I did well enough.’ Good enough for him to retire, if he chose to—if they ever made it to shore again. Good enough for him to pay his uncles’ debts and set them up more securely. They should have no financial worries now.
‘And you will be given a new ship?’
‘So I have been told.’
If they survived, that was.
* * *
As the day wore on, the sun warmed them as he’d expected. It dried the canvas and most of their clothes. Lucien scanned the horizon for ships, to no avail. Lady Rebecca remained calm, eerily calm, as if detached from the danger they were in and the suffering they would endure if rescue did not come soon. She must be as hungry and as powerfully thirsty as he was, but, unexpectedly, she did not complain. Instead, she asked more questions about his life and Lucien found himself telling her things he’d never shared with anyone.
Like being left to his own devices as a young boy in a village outside Liverpool. How his mother, in her loneliness when his father was at sea—which was most of the time—sought amusement elsewhere by pursuing the local Viscount, who took his pleasure from her when the fancy took him. His mother was always too preoccupied by this love affair to bother much with a little boy or to make certain his nurses attended him. Lucien told her about how he’d been left to his own devices, sometimes to cope with situations he was too young to understand. His mother seemed happy when he was sent to sea.
He told her how his life changed after that. He’d loved the structure of rank and the discipline the navy required. Every man had his place and his duty and together they conquered the enemy and the sea itself. The sea, which so often was beautiful. A beautiful, if often treacherous, mistress.
Lucien shared with this woman what he’d never spoken of with anyone else. How he loved the sea.
He didn’t tell her that he’d be happy to die at sea and be sent to his rest beneath its depths.
Not yet, though. He wanted to live. He wanted her to live.
The sky darkened as the sun dipped closer to the horizon. Lucien continued talking, recounting his experiences at sea and his ship’s victories. He left off the close calls of horrific storms and the carnage of battle.
She listened and asked questions that showed some knowledge of naval matters, not entirely without memory of facts, at least.
He’d thought about telling her of the connection between their families, of how her grandfather had cheated his grandfather out of his property and fortune, but what good would that do? She had enough agony without him adding to it.
Her predicament almost made him forget his thirst, his hunger and the dire consequence of spending another night floating to nowhere.
He kept