Chapter Five

in which sam brawls

A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment. —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

I made my way carefully back down the stairs to the dining room, using mincing steps so I didn’t stomp on my dress. The captain was waiting at a table near an unlit fireplace filled with clay pots of fresh-cut flowers, with a small spread and a bottle of wine already at his elbow. Apparently his rank meant something, because we’d been seated at the best table in the house.

It made sense: this was an English naval port, after all, and he was an English captain. And I was his not-so-English date.

I had to remember where I was. When I was.

Without losing who I was.

And who is that? Outspoken queer feminist and victim of accidental time travel shenanigans? Or is what the captain said true, and I am a mermaid who’s forgotten my way back to Atlantis? Or maybe I really am mad.

Maybe I really did come from a ship; maybe we were wrecked and a knock on my head had made a childhood fantasy, a well-loved daydream, become my reality. Maybe my whole life in the twenty-first century was an unexplainable delusion. But then how could I have the sneakers and the jeans, the jacket with the pins and the rectangles of plastic in my leather billfold?

Clutching the bundle of my only worldly goods, I made my way through the crowded hodgepodge of diners and furniture to Goodenough. He jumped to his feet when he caught me approaching, and hurried across the room to meet me. He bowed tersely, flushed and adorably put out, and hissed out of the side of his mouth: “ Really , Miss Franklin. This habit you have of going about unescorted . . .” He trailed off at my frown. “A servant was to be sent up.”

“Sorry,” I said lamely and let him hustle me with as much elegance as I could muster to the table, where he pulled out my chair for me. Okay, that was cute. “It’s just that where I’m from, I can, uh, escort myself places. If I want.”

“Not here, Miss Franklin,” he whispered right into my ear from behind as he helped me tuck in. “I would prefer not to provoke more talk.”

“ More talk?” I asked, but he was already making his way over to his own chair. The captain shook his head once, quick—there would be no conversation on the topic here, now.

Who was talking? And what were they saying? We pulled a strange woman out of the water in the middle of nowhere; she dresses and talks funny; she freaked and threw our booty into the sea. I could see how that could happen.

“Will you take wine with me?” he asked, even as he did the honors and poured. It glinted a lush ruby in the candlelight.

I wondered if it was Spanish.

He’d already started in on it, going by his half-full glass. It was comically tiny, like a thick-walled jigger on a fat stem, etched with intricate geometric motifs. They were not at all the thin glass bowls I was used to at upscale restaurants. How was a gal supposed to get drunk to toast her new life when the pours were the size of a shot?

Between us, a whole roasted fish dressed with what smelled like fennel and mint stared up at me with a ghastly cooked eyeball. There was also bread, cheese, potatoes, turnips, and some other unidentifiable wilted leaves that may have only been present as garnishes. It wasn’t tapas, but despite my dinner gawking at me, the appetite I had lost on the ship returned full force.

I stowed my bundle under my chair and let the captain portion out the food, as if I was a dummy who couldn’t shift for myself. It made him happy, though. It looked proper . Which I immediately ruined by then happily scooping up the overboiled greens he’d skipped from the serving platter.

“Miss Franklin!”

“What? You’ll get scurvy if you don’t eat your spinach,” I admonished with a smile, trying to lighten his sullen mood. The captain pulled a face that would have been more suitable on a five-year-old. I couldn’t help the bubble of surprised laughter. “No, really, the big virile captain doesn’t like his greens?”

“Please, Miss Franklin,” he said, the tips of his ears turning positively red. “ Virile? I hardly think it a proper topic for a lady.”

I couldn’t help a cattish grin. “Not where I’m from.”

Instead of rising to the bait, the captain tilted his head slightly and leaned back in his chair. “Where women wear trousers, shear off their hair, walk about unescorted, and say what they like about their gentleman companions? It must be quite a barbaric place, this colony of yours.”

“Oh, it is,” I said. It felt good to be smiling and teasing again, really damn good, and I wanted to laugh . “And the blackflies are the size of your fist. Ladies have to shear their hair or else it’ll get caught in pine branches, and they must escort themselves everywhere because the men are too busy burning the Yankees’ capital.”

No, wait, has that happened yet? Crap, seven years too early.

He considered for a moment, sipped his wine, and then his dark eyebrows dropped into that familiar little miffed vee. “You are having a lark with me?”

“I’m having a lark with you,” I agreed. The dimples made a reappearance as he sat back, satisfied with his ability to detect sarcasm. “The ladies in Canada are just like your ladies here.”

“And yet,” the captain persisted, “your hair is à la victime .”

“Maybe I really am a mermaid.” I shrugged. I was content and warm for the first time in days, and in a mood.

“In de Nimes trousers?”

“In blue jean trousers.”

“You are a beautiful mystery, Miss Franklin.”

“And I’ll take that for a compliment, Captain Goodenough.”

“It was meant to be.”

Yeah, and that was me blushing now. Jeeze.

He smiled fondly, and tucked into his own meal. I was impressed by the delicateness with which he handled his utensils, and self-consciously attempted to mimic the same level of etiquette. It seemed there was a proper way to do everything around here.

I wondered if I’d ever figure out how to do it all.

I would have to.

There was no going home again.

Home . That place back on the other side of the airport security gates. That place where my parents were waiting to hear word that I had landed safely. Or would wait in the future. Or . . . whatever. That place where they never would.

The burning lump in my throat was back. I swigged my wine in an attempt to wash it back down, then covered my trembling lips with my napkin.

The captain refilled my glass with a questioning look.

“I’m fine,” I said, preempting any platitudes. “Just culture shock.” By the squiggle of his eyebrows, he had no idea what I was talking about. “It’s . . . everything’s very different and I’m—”

“Alone,” he supplied softly. “And somewhere strange.”

“A—” I tried to repeat, but my voice cracked dangerously, so I snapped my mouth shut and just nodded.

“You require cheering up,” the captain ventured. He held out a hand, which had somehow materialized a pristine white glove. “Dinner will keep—will you dance?”

“Dance?” I asked. I had visions of strobe lights, of gyrating on an overpacked dance floor with a sweating vodka cooler clasped precariously, swinging over my head. Somehow I didn’t think that was what he meant.

The captain nodded to the large double doors on the side of the room. They hadn’t been visible from the bottom of the stairs. Now that I was paying attention, I heard the soft strains of a string group. I had mistaken it for common restaurant Muzak. But this was no classic rock being piped through an invisible PA system. This was the literal live thing.

“I, uh.” I hesitated. “I can waltz. I learned in gym class.”

The only outward indication of the captain’s complete and utter horror was a straightening of his spine. “Proper gentlefolk do not waltz .”

“Huh?” I asked, utterly confused. How many period pieces had I seen with waltzing in them? They couldn’t all be wrong.

“I assure you that dancing of that sort will never occur in a civilized assembly room.”

I was pretty sure that wasn’t true; if nobody was waltzing now it was just because it hadn’t gotten popular enough yet. Women in wide skirts with massive butt baskets and men in tight pointy trousers, they would waltz. I surveyed the bustle-less wardrobe of our fellow diners— Yeah, okay, so maybe it’s a few decades too early for the waltz . Huh .

“So how do you dance, then?”

“The gentleman touches the lady’s hand and they move in the patterns prescribed by the song.”

“Oh!” I said. “The whole walking around each other in lines thing.”

He was trying very hard to hold on to his scandalized bafflement, but my naivety seemed to be too amusing to allow for the heated emotion to linger. He sighed ruefully, a puffing kind of deep breath that I didn’t think men in such tight waistcoats could achieve, then stood and presented his hand again.

“I never learned,” I admitted, giving him mine.

“Fist-sized blackflies do not dance?”

“No.” I chuckled.

“Then I must teach you,” he said. And then, I shit you not, stooped over my hand and kissed the back of it . I did not swoon , absolutely not.

What I did do, shortly thereafter, was gain new respect for my female predecessors.

I might have possessed the manic coordination it took to steer a wheel and press a gas pedal while shifting the gears of a car, or to type without looking at the movement of my fingers on a keyboard, but remembering all those dance steps and in which order they came in a dance that went on for half a frickin’ hour was just amazing. And there were dozens of these different dances—hundreds, maybe, each of them with their own choreography.

I spent way more time peering out of the corners of my eyes to copy my fellow women than I did looking at my partner. Captain Goodenough ignored the stares and glared down the worst of the gawkers at my ineptitude on my behalf.

The room was small, just big enough for a dozen officers in their blue coats with their pretty maidens. Chaperons held up the walls. A handful of men with instruments were shoved raucously into a corner, cheeks red with laughter and booze. The dance started sedate and easy to follow, but soon ladies were picking up their skirts and men were bouncing on the balls of their feet, and the swinging turns grew wide and reckless.

The captain, for all his talk of “proper” and “gentlefolk,” was just as giddy as his fellow seamen. His smile was unstudied and wide. He was handsome like this: glowing with exertion, posture loose, laughter generous, smile unstudied, feet nimble.

You could do worse .

The thought came without warning, and I stumbled hard and careened into the captain’s side. He merely slung an arm across my shoulders and steered me back into the line with good cheer.

If you’re stuck here forever, there are worse people than Captain Fenton Goodenough in the world to lean on. Hell, probably in this room. I ran an appraising eye over the other gentlemen. Less attractive too. Then I dropped my eyes to his hands. They were gloved for the dance, but I knew he wore no wedding ring.

You could love him, I told myself. If you tried.

By the time we reached the end of the set my hair was falling out of its pins in sweaty tendrils, and his bangs were plastered against his forehead. The people, the dancing, the layers, and the candles made the air stifling.

“There’s the smile I was hoping for,” the captain said as we came together on the last chord.

It made said smile want to scurry back into hiding, but I forced it to remain where it was. To be approachable. He had done an awful lot to try to make me feel happy today—dress, dinner, and dancing. Maybe it was a bit shallow to woo contentment out of a girl by buying her things, but I decided then and there that I was going to let it work.

~

The captain proved to be a popular man, and we were kept from private conversation as soon as we returned to our table. We were visited by officers recounting the missed battle, commenting on the sudden and strange storm that had blown up directly on the eve of the fighting ( Sorry? Was that my fault? ) and the somber news that Lord Horatio Nelson, commander of the fleet, had been shot aboard the HMS Victory . What happened after that seemed unclear to the men docked at Gibraltar—news was still racing between ships, only as fast as semaphore, carrier pigeon, and common gossip could carry it. Some said he was overseeing the captured ships up the coast, his only injury a rakish graze. Some said he’d been wounded but leaped aboard the ship bearing the French sniper and beat the man bloody. Still others said he’d never been shot at all.

Fun fact, the memory of Dad said. The statue at the top of Nelson’s Column in London faces in the direction of Cape Trafalgar, where the man himself died.

Yeah, I wasn’t going to be the one who broke the news.

Instead, I listened, and flirted demurely every time the captain’s gaze flicked my way, and made my plans. By the time the sun had set, I had made up my mind. There was just one hitch—I couldn’t, I wouldn’t spend the rest of my life pretending to be someone I wasn’t. Marriage required truth, and the captain deserved mine if I was going to seduce him into it.

When we finally left the inn, the captain gallantly carrying my bundle of twenty-first century stuff, I decided to make my move.

“I have something to show you,” I told him, pulling him into a nearby alley. His surprise was so great that he didn’t resist as I steered him into an alcove with just enough lamplight for my purposes.

“Miss Franklin!” he gasped, scandalized all over again, and honestly, it was adorable. “This is most improper—”

“Shhh,” I admonished, tugging my bundle out of his hands and working the knot open. “Someone will find us.”

“They must not . Cease this at once, we—”

“Look.” I tugged my driver’s license out of my wallet. “You asked me about my family, where I come from. See? That’s me in that photograph.”

“What an incredible portrait,” the captain whispered, all ire forgotten as he held the card close to his face to study the holographic finish. “What is this?”

“It’s made of a material called plastic. It hasn’t been invented yet. This is my government identification—Samantha Jayne Franklin. And this is my birthday. August second, in the year 2000.”

My heart thundered in my throat. This was a precipice. Either the captain would believe me and I could back away from the brink, supported and confident. Or he’d call me mad and shove me off to fall, alone, with no way to catch myself. I was laying more than just my driver’s license in his hands.

The captain’s eyes snapped up to mine, shock and confusion galloping across his face. “Surely not.”

“It’s true,” I pressed, as sincerely as I could. “Captain, please , you have to believe me. The green flash, the plane crash, I don’t know how , or why but—”

“Hush!” He snatched my wallet from my hand, slotted the card back in, returned it to the bundle, then took the whole thing from me and tied it up tightly. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Miss Franklin, you must stop.”

“Stop what?” I asked, watching with my own helpless confusion now.

I’d screwed up. I didn’t know how, but I had. The time travelers were always believed in Dahl’s holiday made-for-TV movies. How had I gotten this so wrong?

“These fibs are . . . !”

I ducked low to force him to meet my eyes. “Look at me. Look. I’m not lying! I’m not!”

His face flushed. He grabbed my shoulder so hard it actually hurt. “Do not say such things! This story will not make you any friends here, and you are in very great need of friends.”

“You’re my friend—”

“No,” the captain said miserably. “You cannot—I am already doing my utmost to stay the wagging tongues of my crew, you cannot spread this fiction—”

“It’s not fiction!”

“It must be!” he snarled. I reared back, affronted. He caught himself, lowered his voice again. “For such things cannot happen. Storms, and green lightning, and strange, fairy vessels! Such madness, it is dangerous , do you not see? They will confine you to Bedlam or worse. You spout stranger stories than my sister!”

“But it did! And now I’m here, and I shouldn’t be—”

“No!”

“Shhh! You’re the one who was worried we’d get caught in the dark together, stop—”

“I am a good, God-fearing man, and I refuse to believe—”

“Captain—”

“No!”

I shut down his growing panic the only way I could think of. I grabbed his fancy lapels in both fists, and kissed him.

He hesitated for only a moment, surprise arresting him on the spot. Then with a groan like a parched man finally being offered relief, he dropped my bundle, sagged into my hold, and opened his mouth to mine. The prick of his late-evening stubble was strange. I’d only kissed clean-shaven guys before. I wasn’t sure that I liked it. But his tongue, wow, his tongue . I let him walk me backward until I hit the plaster wall of the building behind us, and praised my foresight for being so diligent about doing my daily yoga when he rucked up my skirts to hoist my thigh up over his hip.

Heck yes , no underwear.

His strong hands squeezed my hips before sliding in opposite directions, one kneading my ass and the other palming my tits, working one free of the stays. He ducked his head and sucked my nipple into his mouth. I groaned, arching my back, and suddenly his free hand was pressing against my mouth, muffling my noises.

Goddamn, that’s sexy .

I scrabbled at the unfamiliar buttons of his breeches. He let go of my ass to shove his trousers away himself one-handed. I bit the meat of his middle finger, teasing, and he cussed softly against my flesh. Surging like the tide, he threw his mouth against mine desperately, clumsily. His hip bones dug into my pelvis, the blood-hot hardness of him skittering through the moisture gathering at my entrance, and he let out a desperate, high whine, which I swallowed.

“Shh, shhh,” I soothed, when he pulled back for air, petting my hands through his hair. “It’s okay, no rush.”

“Miss Franklin,” he panted, reedy and desperate. He rested his forehead on my shoulder, chest heaving like he’d been running a marathon, breath hot on my bare nipple. His hands roamed and squeezed, up and down my ribs, dipping below the bunched fabric of the dress to clutch at my thighs, but too shy to go farther.

That’s cute . Yeah, falling in love with Captain Goodenough would be easier than I thought it would be.

“Sam,” I whispered, and pushed my face against his neck. He smelled of sweat, and the sea, and comfort. He smelled alive . He smelled like safety. “If we do this, you can call me Sam.”

“Do what—?”

Before he could finish his inquiry, I wrapped my fingers around the root of his prick and guided it inside. The stretch burned in the most delicious way—it’d been a long time since I’d had a cock that wasn’t silicone, and I’d forgotten the way a living one throbbed with heat. He made a punched-out sound of aroused shock, stuttering forward hard and crushing me against the wall in his startled enthusiasm. The back of my head bounced off the plaster.

“Oof!”

“Oh lord! I am so sorry—”

“Don’t stop, fuck —”

But he did stop. He stepped in, pressing us together from nose to knees, making sure I was well supported. He wrapped one hand behind my skull to keep it from bouncing into the wall again, and I swear just the chivalry of that alone almost made me climax. Almost .

“Samantha,” he gasped, trembling like an overeager puppy.

“Fenton,” I replied with a smug smirk. His hips stuttered at his name, and I felt my own eyelids flutter. I dug my hands into his jacket, one at his nape, the other at the small of his back. “Fenton. I’m sick of hurting and I’m sick of uncertainty, and I’m sick of fucking nineteenth century manners. We wined, we dined, now let me have this.”

“Samantha,” he said again, like my name was a benediction, or a curse, falling from lips that hovered just over mine.

“C’mon,” I said into his mouth, our hearts pressed together, thundering in harmony. “C’mon.”

He bent his knees and snapped his hips up.

“ Fuck , yes,” I hissed.

He chuckled into the skin of my neck, hot and moist, sending goose bumps sliding down my spine. I wrapped an arm around his neck and held on, encouraging him to do it again with a filthy little hip roll and he obliged.

“Your hand,” I panted into his ear, and he offered one. I pulled off his glove with my teeth and slid our fingers between our bodies. “There.” I pressed his fingers to the swollen nub that was sitting up and literally begging for attention. He pressed and rubbed, and I bit down on the fabric of his collar to silence a delighted little scream. I squeezed him once with my inner muscles in gratitude, and it was his turn to muffle the scream.

“Incredible girl,” he said and then we were kissing again, his fingers, then his tongue moving in sync with his thrusts.

It wasn’t until I was about three seconds away from my peak that it hit me that we weren’t using a condom. And I wasn’t on the pill. I hadn’t needed it with Dahl.

“Pull out, pull out,” I hissed. He was almost too close himself to comprehend, but Fenton was a gentleman if nothing else, and withdrew just enough for me to push him back, crouch, and swallow him down.

“Lord in heaven!” he shouted. He shook through his orgasm, hands pressed against the wall behind me in tight fists. I waited until the last spurt, licked my lips clean, then stood and guided his bare hand back under my skirt.

“Now me,” I said. “Put your fingers in.”

He did. Clumsily, uncertain, like he’d never fingered a girl before—and maybe he hadn’t, it was 1805, and while I had to believe he’d hired sex workers, it was possible he’d never helped them finish—either way, I was so close it didn’t matter.

“Curl your finger up and . . . do you feel the little rough bit on the inside—Jesus! There! Again . . . ung !”

“Oh my,” he said, as I shivered down from my own climax. He regarded his fingers, the glisten of them reflected in the lamplight. “I did not know women could do that.”

I grinned slowly, purposefully.

“There’s a lot I bet you don’t know, Fenton,” I said, leaning up to whisper in his ear. “Luckily, I’m a very patient teacher.”

He grinned fit to match mine, cleaned up with a handkerchief, tucked himself away, and straightened his clothing. I only had to smooth down my skirt. Yup, there were some advantages to this century after all.

Fenton’s hands lingered on my bundle as he fetched it up. He stared into my face for a moment, searching for . . . something .

“You do believe me, don’t you?” I asked, desperate for confirmation. For the promise of safety I’d just offered myself up for.

Fenton licked his lips, still pink and glossy, but did not answer.

That was fine. It wasn’t a no, and I could work with that. I could get him there.

He crooked his arm. “I believe it’s time we returned to the ship. Come, Miss Franklin.”

“Already did,” I bandied back, but wrapped my arm around his all the same.

~

We were most of the way up the pier, and I was feeling quite smug about my ability to snag myself a man. I didn’t know what all those ballroom debutants stressed about in the romances—all I’d needed was a bit of good, old-fashioned “charm.” Dudes thought with their little heads in this era just as much as in mine.

I was about to suggest a repeat performance as soon as we got back to Fenton’s cabin when a flash of something silver in the moonlight caught my attention.

The knife it danced along was small but edged in a wicked blade.

“So ’ere’s the mermaid, then?” the wielder asked, stepping into our path from the deep shadows cast by a pile of barrels. By his clothing I guessed he was a bilge rat from the lowest part of a ship.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, Cap’n,” another man said, crowding up behind us. I hadn’t heard him approach, and I whipped around to look at him. He was just as grimy, and flashed a similar knife. He had less hair than his compatriot, but more teeth.

“Out of my way, sailor ,” Fenton ordered. He shifted onto the balls of his feet. I slipped my hand out from around his elbow, freeing his arms for movement.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, Cap’n,” the second man said again, “but t’aint good luck to bring no woman on board, ’specially one that was pulled out of the water.”

“I’m not a mermaid.” I pulled the hem of my dress up. “See? Feet!”

“Miss Franklin, hush ,” Fenton entreated. “You are not helping matters.”

Neither sailor concerned themselves with the scientific evidence of my nonfishyness.

“T’aint right , Cap’n,” the first man insisted.

“Nor is your insistence on this foolishness,” Fenton snapped. I understood, all at once, why Fenton feared “talk.” His hand dropped to the pommel of his sword. He had been wearing it all day, but until now I had regarded it as simply an ornament. It occurred to me that the sword was real, and that Fenton was trained to fight with it.

“We’ve had enough bad luck, Cap’n!” the second man insisted. “No prizes, the salvage gone, and then Lord Nelson . . . ! It’s her fault, can you not see? We stopped an’ picked ’er up and he —”

“Enough!” Fenton roared. “Miss Franklin is a woman in distress and it is our obligation to see her delivered safely into the arms of her family.”

He seemed to conveniently forget that I had twice admitted that I had no family to be delivered to. Was it that he fundamentally misunderstood, or was it a show for our assailants?

“Oh, she’ll be delivered owl’ight,” the thug closest to me said, his curving grin matching the angle of his blade. “Right back to where she came from.”

“No!” I cried, but I was too slow, the other man too fast. Fenton lunged but the knife was coming at him already.

It was aimed at his face. Stupid blind instinct, the same one that had made me clutch the rising life jacket, made me throw out an arm to protect him.

The blade sliced through the thick, fatty flesh on the underside of it, near my armpit. The bone in my arm juddered as the knife struck, an agony like I’d never imagined . I’d never broken a bone before; was this what it felt like?

I screamed. Blood splattered on my face. It was more the abrupt shock of being stabbed than the pain itself that made me jerk backward. The slickness of the blood spurting up the handle, or my cry, or the surprise of my movement made the sailor lose his grip on the knife. I fell back, crashing to the planking of the pier, clutching my elbow.

There was a goddamned knife sticking out of my arm!

Fenton launched himself into the fight. A knife doesn’t have near the reach of a sword, and the man behind us let forth a pained yelp as Fenton’s blade literally cut the weapon out of the second man’s fingers. He clutched his hand in a gruesome mirror of my own agony.

“Cursed mermaid! Back to the devil with ye!” the man who’d stabbed me snarled. He threw his knees into my stomach, rough hands curling around my throat, driving my head back against the planking.

I gurgled, like I really was a thing from under the sea. Crushing blackness dove over my senses, and I was under the water again, drowning, kicking, drowning, fighting, drowning . . .

Shouting from the ship, feet on the pier, and the guy with his fingers digging into my windpipe suddenly went limp. He slumped, a floppy dead weight on top of me.

“Get him off!” I shrilled, lungs burning.

He was rolled off, faceup and sightless. More than just a dead weight. Actually dead.

“Oh god.” I gulped.

Begam pushed through the crowd of our rescuers. Before I understood what he meant to do, he was already extracting the knife from my arm. In my agony, I wished desperately for the unconsciousness that had been so tantalizingly close just seconds earlier.

I clamped down obligingly on a roll of leather someone stuffed into my mouth; better to chomp on it than my own tongue in my frothing torment. Above me, around me, I heard angry shouts, felt the stomp of booted feet against the planks, was choked by the nauseating pain and the dizzying bob of handheld lanterns.

Fenton hovered in and out of my view, blocking out the stars far above my nose with his flushed face and furious snarls. Beside him, Worsley was plucking at his sleeve.

Fenton finally turned his glittering, furious gaze to the lad. “Yes?” he snarled.

“It’s Lord Nelson,” Worsley said, nervous now that the captain’s wrath was aimed at him.

But Fenton was in no mood for hesitancy. “What about him?”

“We got word just now, sir,” the lad whispered, voice dipping low and sodden with sorrow. “Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, sir . . . he’s dead .”