Free The Bastard by Brenda Novak

caught right away—along with the gleam of extreme dislike in his eye. “My apologies, Lieutenant Cunnington. Perhaps next time I go ashore I will be lucky enough to find you a good lad, a good English lad, if you can’t manage to do that for yourself.”
    “You are pleased about this, are you not, Mr. Treynor?” Cunnington said.
    The captain scowled. “We will have none of that, Mr. Cunnington. I have promised a servant to Mr. Hawker, and he shall have this boy.”
    Cunnington’s lips thinned and his nostrils flared, but he did not speak again until the captain motioned to the confusion surrounding them.
    “Get these people off this ship, Mr. Cunnington.”
    “Aye, aye sir. I am working on it as we speak.”
    Cruikshank stared at Cunnington for a moment, as if weighing his arrogant tone against his actual words. “That will do.” Motioning to Jeannette, he lumbered toward the quarterdeck where she assumed they’d find his cabin.
    Grateful for Treynor’s reassuring presence at her side, Jeannette followed. As uncomfortable as the memory of their time together made her, he was the only thing remotely familiar in this strange world. Fleetingly she wondered what the lieutenant would do if he discovered her to be the wench who had left him rolling in agony.
    With a sideways glance at his tall, muscular frame, she hoped he would never find out.
    “Mr. Cunnington is first lieutenant and my second-in-command, Mr. Treynor,” the captain said as they walked, with Bull still fighting his rope leash.
    “I am aware of his rank, sir,” Treynor replied, his hands behind his back.
    “Then perhaps you have forgotten your own.”
    “No, sir.”
    Captain Cruikshank stopped and turned to face him. “Let me be more direct: Mr. Cunnington doesn’t like you.”
    Treynor’s eyebrows rose. “Does Cunnington like anyone, sir? With his excessive fondness for discipline, I sometimes wonder if we should fear mutiny more than the French.”
    The captain shook his head. “The two of you are very different. I know that. Do you think I cannot see how the men admire you? You are one of them. You rose to your present rank from a mere cabin boy. They would follow you anywhere.”
    “Thank you, sir.”
    “That’s not all.” He glanced in the direction of his first lieutenant. “Devil take him, Cunnington will advance to captain someday because of who his father is, regardless of his record, while you have less chance. That is how the system works, and there isn’t a bloody thing any of us can do about it.”
    His weathered face lost in concentration, Cruikshank looked at Jeannette, but she could tell he wasn’t really seeing her. He was thinking, selecting his next words carefully. “He is your superior,” he said at last. “I will not intercede again.”
    A muscle twitched in Treynor’s cheek, the only outward sign of emotion Jeannette could detect. He nodded once. “Yes, sir. I understand.”
    “Good. Wait here. When my clerk is done you may bring the lad to the bosun.”

*

    Mr. Hawker looked much younger than his wife. Jeannette studied him from beneath her lashes, wondering what it was, exactly, that had drawn the two of them together.
    Lieutenant Treynor, who was still with her, greeted them both before taking a seat in their small cabin on the orlop deck, which was one level above the hold, or so he’d said when he brought her here. “This fine, strong lad is Jean Vicard,” he said. “Captain Cruikshank has agreed to let him be your new servant. And this is his dog—” he shot a glance and a half-smile at Jeannette “—Bull.”
    Jeannette greeted the Hawkers in the deepest voice she could summon, and tried to look taller.
    The stocky bosun was balding, but his thick reddish eyebrows and mutton-chop sideburns gave him the appearance of a hairy man. “Strong, ye say?” he scoffed, reading the lieutenant’s grin the same way Jeannette had. “A weaklin’s better’n nothin’, I suppose. And ’avin’