Page 51 of Trouble

‘But you have such l-lovely yellow hair.’

‘You should perhaps save your energy for getting warm, sir, rather than for flirting.’

‘I’d rather die flirting,’ he said, trying to wink. It sent him into spasms of shivers, which finally quietened him down.

Down in the surf, two of the rescuers – burly men from the village who had lost their hats – pulled the first body from the water. They wrapped him in a blanket and carried him down the beach, away from the survivors. The second came out just a few moments later.

Nobody felt much like joking after that.

‘Joe is going back up to the house to fetch more supplies,’ Meera said, when Emily delivered a cabin boy to her, who looked barely twelve. ‘Go with him. And take this boy with you, will you?’

‘Take them all,’ said Captain Edwards. He had come to fetch a blanket, although by the careful way he was carrying it, it didn’t seem to be for him. ‘Take them all up to the house, if they can walk, and put them in every room with a fire going. Then light the rest. I’ll send Aster when I’ve pulled her out of that boat.’

Meera looked on the verge of questioning this, but it was only a brief ripple of uncertainty, and then it was gone.

‘Up to the house,’ she said. ‘All right. Grace, you go with Amy and Joe. Stick to them like glue, all right?’

‘They aren’t brigands.’ Grace said. She was comparatively warm and dry, but was still starting to shiver under her many coats. ‘They’re just sailors.’

‘Exactly,’ said Meera. ‘Like glue, all right?’

Chapter Eighteen

Emily wasn’t sure how exactly they made it up the cliffs and to the house. She was primarily concerned with keeping Grace moving, although she had to stop a few times to encourage some poor trembling sailor who looked ready to give up and die where he fell.

The chaos didn’t stop when she made it across the threshold.

She deposited Grace in the kitchen with Joe, who had immediately set about warming vast pans of broth, and then walked through each room, stoking the fires and pulling the curtains shut to try to preserve as much warmth as possible. Men huddled in sodden little piles around the hearths, leaving sand and puddles of seawater all over absolutely everything. They at least had the good sense not to sit on the furniture.

When they were all settled and there was nothing more Emily could practically do, she returned to Joe and Grace and found herself on another production line. She was so exhausted that she just accepted whatever she was given without comment, did as she was told, chopped vegetables and portioned up soup, then helped Akia carry it upstairs to the men, who grabbed on as if they were still drowning and this soup was to be their saviour.

Ten minutes after she had returned downstairs to the kitchen, Emily looked up from her work to discover that Captain Edwards was standing next to her. He had changed his clothes and was chopping carrots with mechanical precision, hair still wet, exhaustion that rivalled her own only showing around his eyes. He was standing so close to her that his arm brushed hers whenever he reached for a new carrot. She hadn’t even noticed.

‘Joe wants them thinner than that,’ she said. ‘Quicker to cook.’

Captain Edwards glanced up at her, his expression unreadable. When he spoke, his voice was monotonous and hoarse.

‘Are you giving me orders in my own kitchen?’

‘It’sJoe’skitchen,’ said Emily. ‘Still not thin enough. Look at mine if you want to see how to do it.’

Emily wasn’t sure if Captain Edwards knocked her arm by accident, or if he had just intentionally given her a gentle nudge of reproach before he resumed chopping. She darted a look at him and found him looking as inscrutable as ever; he was at least cutting the carrots correctly this time.

They worked together side by side like that for at least an hour, and developed a rhythm that stopped them from bumping into each other; Captain Edwards noticed every time Emily ran out of vegetables to chop, and rolled some more towards her. It was almost companionable, if Emily put aside the fact that every time their arms brushed now she felt a strange, shivery jolt run up her from wrist to elbow.

She remembered him drunk at this same table, leaning towards her, soft and unguarded. It had been hard to reconcile that man with the one she had dealt with in the past, but today it made sense to her that he might reside somewhere in the middle.

‘Is Aster all right?’ Emily said suddenly, pausing with her knife hovering in the air.

‘I had to drag her out of the water by the scruff of her neck, so she is not best pleased with me, but .?.?. yes. Otherwise, she is all right.’

They didn’t speak again except to deal with vegetable practicalities, but Emily was very aware of him the entire time; when he moved away to do something across the kitchen she felt his absence, and when he returned it was as if everything had been put in its correct place. She volunteered to transport soup once it was ready, and each time she returned from going upstairs, she saw Captain Edwards glance up at her before he returned to his work.

It was on Emily’s fourth trip upstairs to deliver soup that Meera looked from Emily to Akia and then ordered them both to sit down and eat a bowl themselves.

There were sailors talking in clusters in the halls, sitting on the stairs, leaving damp spots on the walls if they could find a place to lean; some of them were quiet and subdued, others clearly furious, looking for somebody to blame for what had happened. There was actually a brief scuffle by the stairs, which was broken up immediately when every officer in the vicinity went rushing to quell it.

The smell of damp clothes and hair, seaweed and the general fug of sailors was thick in the air. Those standing closest to the fires were steaming gently, which certainly did not help matters, although they looked as if they were being imbued with a second lease of life as they warmed their hands by the flames.