Free SQ 04 - The English Concubine by Dawn Farnham Page B

had watched over and protected her from the savagery of the ocean, the dangers of the deep and the eyes of the men which followed her every day and every night. Every man aboard the ship knew she was Lieutenant Mallory’s woman but she had been too young and naive then to realise that he had been falling in love with her.
    Edmund Mallory remembered, too, those days and nights on board the Madras . A feeling of the utmost tenderness had entered him almost the moment he had seen her come aboard. So slight, so pale, with her perfect features, her blue eyes, her long black hair. But smart and resourceful too, educated, intelligent, clever about the sea, which she understood. He would have killed any man who touched her and he had made it known on a ship full of lustful men. His control in her presence was wrought with the greatest of difficulty. Had she but known the number of times he wanted simply to forget all decorum, to find a dark place on this dark ship and feel her body against his, his lips on hers, possess her, she would not have thought him quite so gentlemanly.
    Now, even now, after so many years, she still had this power. When he passed here for service in China, he had sought her, for he knew Robert was her brother. Then she had been not been in Singapore but in Batavia and he had been disappointed. When he had seen her at the reception he could hardly believe his eyes. After the incident with the Chinese man he had made inquiries. He had been told of her reputation. She was the most notorious woman in Singapore, the English concubine was what she was called. She lived with a Chinese man, had a Chinese child. It was beyond everything but some older families still welcomed her for they had known her a long time. So he had been told. Wealthy too, he had learned, and he knew this also led to jealousies. He wondered what on earth had led her to share her life with a Chinese man. It seemed extraordinary, outlandish, unwise, but it spoke of something deep which he understood. Passion.
    After Charlotte had rejected his proposal, he had lost himself in the sea. The long voyage back from Calcutta to England was wretched, a minute and hideous torture, the memory of her everywhere on the Madras , and once home, he had sought a different ship, a different life, one full of even more danger than this. He had joined the Royal Navy and his experience on board armed Company vessels had led to rapid advancement. He had served in the suppression of slavery in the Atlantic, captained many hydrographic expeditions to map the seas and seen active service in the Crimea.
    He forgot Charlotte, sometimes for a long time. But when the ship was on calm waters and the moon floated its silver rays on the ocean, he remembered her and missed her to his soul. For almost ten years he had settled for the uncertain pleasures of casual liaisons in ports all over the world and the camaraderie of the sea. Then in Hong Kong he had met Lucy, the daughter of an English merchant and his Chinese female companion. The father, as many before him had done, had departed back to his home and an English wife. But he had done a decent thing and left funds for his daughter to be raised properly, and this had come to pass. She had been raised by her mother, who sought a husband for her amongst the English naval officers. Edmund had been perceptive enough to see that Lucy reminded him of Charlotte with her willow figure, the beauty of her eyes, and her long black hair, but he had chosen to embrace it and pour the pent-up well of love he had guarded for so long onto her. She had been just seventeen when they married and he had loved her as tenderly and as passionately as any man could. She had died only two years ago, barely twenty-one years old.
    He told Charlotte some, but not all, of this. The servant brought coffee.
    ‘You have had an extraordinary life.’
    ‘These are extraordinary times. No more than any other. No more than you. You became the wealthiest woman