Free Burning Bright by Melissa McShane Page B

want to show weakness in front of him—and into a noisy, crowded place filled with sweaty bodies and cannons larger around than she was.
    Men shouted past each other and laughed at jokes she couldn’t make out, told in accents she couldn’t understand. The walls curved just the slightest bit, and the ceiling was low enough the lieutenant had to duck a little to avoid cracking his head on the beams. It was lit only by the sunlight coming through the gun ports and by brass lanterns giving off an orangeish light; she heard the noise decrease, and as her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she saw the men nearest her were staring, their silence spreading outward until Elinor felt deafened by it.
    She turned and hurried to catch up to the lieutenant, who had moved without hesitation beyond the stairs to a door whose carved moldings belonged in a country house rather than on board a ship, an unexpected contrast to the flimsy wall into which it was set. Beyond that was a tiny, windowless room with another door, on which the lieutenant knocked and said, “Captain? You have a…visitor.” He looked at Elinor over his shoulder and smiled; it was, again, nearly a leer.
    Elinor responded with a smile of her own, innocent friendliness concealing her irritation.
I wonder what that smile of yours will look like when you learn we are shipmates?
    Half a minute later, the door opened, revealing Ramsay in the process of buttoning his jacket. “Miss Pembroke,” he said, “please come in. Thank you, Mr. Livingston, that will be all.” Elinor glanced back before the door closed and saw, for a moment, a hint of disdain touch the lieutenant’s eyes.
    This room was brightly lit by the morning sun pouring through the clear glass of the windows, two of which were open to catch the brisk air and the sound of seabirds
kraaawing
across the river. With pictures adorning the walls, it had a comfortable, home-like look. Less domestic was the pair of swords mounted one above the other on the wall to her right, the longer one decorated with gilt and a tassel, the shorter one plainer with signs of use. There was another door to the left, smaller and flimsy by comparison to the others, and a couple of covered objects Elinor realized after a moment were small cannons. They were a reminder that this room, as homelike as it seemed, was still built primarily for war.
    Two couches upholstered in brown leather, with a short oak cabinet resting between them, fit nicely into the space beneath the windows, though why they were attached to the walls, she could only guess—to keep them secure in bad weather, perhaps? A long table stood near the furthest left-hand window where the light would fall most brightly on its surface, with a log book open on it, and a chair was drawn up to it at an angle as if someone had just got up, for example, to answer the door.
    “You’re earlier than I expected,” Ramsay said.
    “This is apparently what the First Lord meant when he said he would send a carriage in the morning,” Elinor said. This was the first time she had seen the captain in full light. His face was long and interestingly bony, his nose a little crooked as if he’d broken it once and had it imperfectly set. He wore his light-brown hair cut short and swept back from his face, which again had that neutral expression she’d seen in the Admiralty, and his eyes were a startling blue against his tanned skin. Elinor had heard seamen grew weathered and prematurely aged because of their exposure to wind and wave, but despite the faint lines at the corners of his eyes, Ramsay didn’t look old, merely as if he were contemplating a puzzle he was not certain he could solve.
    “Where is your companion?” he asked.
    “My—?” Elinor flushed. “I have no companion.”
    Ramsay’s eyebrows went up. “No companion? Miss Pembroke, do you have no care for your reputation at all?”
    “I cannot expect another woman to endure what are apparently the privations of shipboard