Free Burning Bright by Melissa McShane Page A

something up at her, but she couldn’t make it out. A gull swept past, croaking its shrill cry; she squeaked involuntarily and cringed, then felt like a fool.
It’s only a bird. And you’re not dangling what feels like twenty feet in the air with nothing beneath you but a tiny wooden boat and who knows how many feet of filthy water.
    Soon her eyes were level with the deck, then she rose above it and realized the seat was attached to a spar and its ropes were being pulled on by several men who acted as if her slight weight was almost impossible for them to manage. A couple of crewmen came forward to help her out of the chair; they both looked puzzled at her appearance, as if they hadn’t been expecting her. Which, of course, they weren’t. “I would like to speak to Captain Ramsay, please,” she said.
    They looked at one another, then at her, their expressions of puzzlement deepening. “The Capt’n?” one said. “Wotcher want w’ the Capt’n?”
    “That’s my business,” Elinor said in her most patrician manner, softening it slightly with a serenely smiling visage. She was barely able to understand his thick accent. Yet another problem she had not considered when embarking on the madness that was this journey. Behind her, the ropes and pulleys creaked again. She hoped it was her…dunnage, yes. It was like learning a foreign language.
    “Whom have you brought on board?” A dark-haired man wearing a lieutenant’s epaulette approached her. He sounded irritated. “We are not expecting—I beg your pardon, who are you?”
    “I have business with Captain Ramsay,” Elinor said in that same firm tone.
    “And what business is that?” The lieutenant had bad skin and a nose that turned up at the tip, which gave him the appearance of a somewhat seedy elf.
    “Private business. Can you conduct me to him, Lieutenant?”
    The lieutenant looked her up and down, almost leering, as if he had a suspicion of what the captain’s private business might be.
Again I wonder if there is something about me that makes men believe I am open to the most immoral practices.
“Certainly,” he said. “Follow me.”
    There was rope
everywhere
, tawny, thick strands strung like a giant child’s cat’s cradle from the masts to the sails and from there to the deck, where it was wound round pegs and an enormous spool with spokes emerging from it. Men swarmed over the deck, hauling more rope and wooden buckets and other things she did not recognize; they stepped around Elinor, glancing at her, but did not pause in their activities. They were surprisingly quiet, speaking just above a normal volume, rarely shouting out to their fellows but appearing to understand one another quite well nevertheless.
    Elinor looked up at the sails and observed more men clinging to the masts and the cross-pieces—she ought to at least learn the names of the ship’s parts, if she were to be even nominally a part of Captain Ramsay’s crew. They were beginning to unfurl the white sails, and Elinor wondered if the wind would be sufficient to take them out of harbor or if they might be stranded here at Deptford for days. Days during which her father could search for her.
    She closed her fists until her nails cut into her palms. Her father might think to ask the butler, who knew Elinor had hired a hackney the previous day and might have heard her instruct the driver to take her to the Admiralty. Then he might manage to find someone there who had seen her…she unclenched her fists. Lord Melville and the two admirals would say nothing. Her father would not be able to find her. And even if he did, Captain Ramsay would not allow him to drag her, screaming, off
Athena
. Probably.
    The lieutenant led her past a grating over a large, square hole in the deck to a set of steep stairs—Elinor was tempted to turn around and go down them as if they were a ladder, but the lieutenant seemed quite casual about descending them, and she already disliked him enough not to