The Captain's Frozen Dream
Bitterness stiffened her steps as she moved beneath the timbered ceiling and past the books, animals and artefacts filling the room. At one time the tattered flag, seal skins and the stories behind each item had impressed her. Tonight, they were a crushing reminder of Conrad’s true passion, like the tiger was a reminder of her father’s.
She stopped in front of the skeleton bleached an eerie white by the moonlight coming through the window. It stood just as she’d last seen it, wired together as her father had arranged it, except for the skull. It was missing.
She searched the floor beneath the table, looking for it, irritated to think it’d been ruined by someone’s carelessness. She and her father had spent hours hunched over the bones, studying, drawing and arranging them just as she had as a young girl when she’d sit beside him in their small house in Whitemans Green, cleaning away the hard dirt encasing her father’s latest find. Working with him had been the only way to garner his attention and she’d taken in everything he’d taught her about anatomy and biology. He’d even spent precious money on drawing lessons to increase her natural skill, though those had been more for his benefit than hers so that she could sketch his collections.
Despite her father’s selfish reason for tutoring her, those days with him were the only times she’d ever felt wanted and loved, until she’d met Conrad.
Pain squeezed her chest. If she’d known, less than a year later, Conrad would be aboard Gorgon and off to embrace his true passion, she would have been more cautious with her heart.
‘Come to see the animal?’ Conrad slurred from behind her.
She jerked up straight and focused through the darkness to where Conrad pushed himself up out of a chair by the fireplace, swaying as he stood.
She laid a shaking hand over her chest, as startled by his drunkenness as his unexpected presence. She’d never seen him drink to excess before. ‘Conrad, I didn’t know you were in here.’
‘You’d have avoided the room if you’d known?’
Yes. ‘No, I wanted to see the tiger.’
‘Of course you did.’ The edge in his voice disturbed her as much as the incomplete skeleton.
‘Where’s the head?’
‘Over there.’ He pointed to where the skull glowed white against the dark carpet.
She walked over and scooped it up, then turned it over in her hands to examine it. ‘I don’t think any permanent damage has been done.’
‘Can’t say the same about much else, now can we?’
Katie ignored the sarcasm as she reattached the skull to the neck.
‘I suppose you’ve heard my status in the world has been quite elevated since I’ve been gone?’ Conrad slurred as he staggered over to stand beside her.
‘As the heir, will you resign your commission?’ There was a little too much hope in her question.
‘No,’ Conrad answered without hesitation. ‘It’s what Helton expects me to do and I’m not about to do his bidding.’
‘I see.’ There was nothing in the world which would persuade him to cease exploring, not a title, or even love.
‘Aren’t you going to congratulate me?’ Conrad prodded.
‘I don’t envy you enough to congratulate you.’ There were few but the most sycophantic of people desirous of a place in government who envied a connection to the Marquis of Helton.
‘You’re right, you shouldn’t. No one should.’ The same desperation Katie had experienced during the past year, when the long days of spring had turned into summer and then autumn with no sign of Conrad or his ship, coloured his voice. He peered past her into the night beyond the window, the lines of his face hardening with a pain she felt deep inside her heart. ‘I had to leave him.’
‘Who?’ Katie whispered, troubled by the mournful tone of his voice.
‘Aaron.’ He choked out the name as if it cut his tongue.
Katie swallowed hard. She remembered the red-headed Scotsman with a laugh as thick as his brogue. Of all the men who’d assembled on Gorgon’s deck to meet her, the barrel-chested man with the quick smile and lively eyes had seemed the least likely to perish. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘So am I.’ He staggered back to the side table and took up a heavy, square decanter, gripping it tightly in one hand as he raised it to his lips. The liquid inside sloshed as he struggled to hold it, then he lost his grip and the heavy crystal tumbled to the floor, its fall broken by the head of the lion skin lying prone beneath the chairs.
‘Damn it.’ Conrad stared at his fingers as though they’d betrayed him.
Katie rushed to him, laying a comforting hand on his arm, wanting to draw out his pain like a splinter and help ease both of their suffering. ‘What happened, Conrad?’
* * *
The contrast between Katie’s white hand on his dark, sea spray-stiffened coat was as startling as this second show of tenderness after so much reserve. It gave him hope, but not enough to make him speak. At one time he could have described to her the heart-wrenching moment he’d discovered his friend lying frozen in the snow and the agony of having to leave him where he lay. He could have described to her the pain and fears he’d experienced during the winter and the damage they’d wrecked on his confidence, body and soul. He could have told her of his concerns about his reputation once Mr Barrow received his report. The Katie from over a year ago would have listened and comforted, but not this one. ‘You aren’t the woman I left.’
She snatched back her hand. ‘Did you really believe you could sail away and nothing and no one would change while you were gone? Did you think you could leave and come back to find everything the same?’
‘I believed our love would be the same.’
‘Love isn’t enough. It wasn’t enough for my parents. It isn’t enough for us.’ The surrender in her voice ripped through him like a gale wind.
He stepped closer, wanting to wrap her in his arms and soothe away the distress furrowing her brow, but he didn’t. She was no frail society miss. He’d seen her break ground with a shovel in search of a fossil too many times to think her weak. But as he’d learned over the past year, those who thought they were the strongest were sometimes the most vulnerable. ‘The Katie I knew before wouldn’t have given up like that.’
‘That Katie hadn’t seen how ugly London and everyone could be and how willing you were to leave me to face it alone while you chased your precious dreams.’
His sympathy vanished. ‘You know I wanted us to marry before I left. You were the one who insisted we wait.’
‘Because I needed to see what it would be like to live in your world and I did, every day while you were gone.’
‘That’s not my world. It’s my uncle’s.’
‘No, your world is in far-off lands,’ she scoffed, her dismissal of his work and everything he was as stinging as her rejection.
‘What did I do to you to engender such derision?’ he hissed.
‘You left.’
‘You know I had no choice.’
‘You could have resigned your commission. Instead, you chose to remain in the Discovery Service and put Mr Barrow’s whims and wants above everyone else’s. It’s the rest of us who were left with no choice but to deal with it and all the consequences. Despite coming home, it won’t be long before Mr Barrow snaps his fingers and you’re gone again.’
‘And what of you?’ He levelled an accusing finger at her. ‘Are you ready to leave your work for me, to give up the fossils and chasing after the acceptance of all the scientific societies to place me first in your life?’
She recoiled, her answer in her silence.
‘And you accuse me of being selfish.’ He snatched another decanter from the table, using both hands to grip it. The silver tag hanging around the bottle’s neck clanked against the crystal as Conrad raised it to his lips. By the time he lowered the thing, she was gone.
He dropped the decanter on the table with a thud, his failures hardening around him like ice on the masts of the ship. Katie wasn’t the first person to doubt him enough to give up and walk out on him. How many more would desert him when news of his failures in the north became public? He ran the toe of his boot over the wet fur of the lionskin rug, matting and staining the tan pelt with the dirt from his sole. Perhaps Katie was right and he never should have left. The mud on his boots from one expedition was rarely dry before he was in Mr Barrow’s office campaigning for another. He should have been more hesitant this time, more cautious, but he wasn’t a man to sit idle in the country with nothing better to do than hunt and raise dogs.
He tilted his head to the mountain of trophies surrounding him, the silent catalogue of all his past successes and triumphs. None had come easily, not even the first commission which had cemented his reputation as a master explorer. It was an achievement he’d fought long and hard to secure, one he wouldn’t surrender to his own doubts and fears.
He kicked the decanter, sending it spinning across the floor in a flurry of reflected moonlight and scattered drops. This was how weak and snivelling men dealt with their failures. It wasn’t how Conrad would deal with his. He’d made mistakes, but there wasn’t a captain alive who hadn’t. Nothing had been decided in London or here at Heims Hall. Whatever criticisms Mr Barrow decided to heap on him for his mistakes, he’d meet them and overcome them, just as he had so many other obstacles. Whatever victories his uncle believed he’d won, Conrad would see to it they were short lived, and if Katie thought she could simply walk away from him, she was wrong. In the morning, she’d expect him to see her home, but he wasn’t about to do her bidding. He hadn’t fought storms and scurvy to reach her only to let his misgivings or hers defeat him now.
He took up the flint and some tinder from the holder beside the mantel, knelt down in front of the hearth and sparked a small flame. When the fire was going, he tossed in a handful of coal from the bucket, rising to watch the fire grow taller as it consumed the fuel.
He would only have a day or two before he had to return to London and face, good or bad, whatever Mr Barrow had in mind for him. He’d use the brief time with Katie to draw out the love he’d felt in her soothing touch. Despite her hasty departure, her reaching out to him revealed something of the woman he’d left all those months ago. Their love had been strained by his absence, but it wasn’t gone. It was only hidden like grass beneath the snow waiting for the spring warmth to draw it out.
With any luck, the cart carrying the things he’d purchased in Greenland would arrive in the morning, before he ran out of excuses and delays to keep Katie here. On it, packed tight in sawdust and woodchips, was the one thing he knew would make her stay.
He was betting their future together on it.
Chapter Three
Katie marched across the kitchen garden to where Conrad stood by the cart, unloading crates, his jacket draped over the side. He’d avoided her all morning, leaving her to Miss Linton’s scowl at breakfast before secluding himself in his study to speak with the estate and mine managers. The part of her which still cringed at the nasty accusations she’d levelled at him last night was glad he’d stayed away. She wasn’t proud of what she’d said, but it was the truth and better he know it now than be led on by her silence into believing in something which no longer existed.
‘You’ve avoided me long enough. I insist on going back with this cart once it’s unloaded,’ she demanded, startled when he straightened. The strings of his shirt were undone and open, revealing the light chest hair underneath. The memory of his bare muscles beneath her palms, the soft sun caressing his shoulders as she held tight to him in the tall grass on the Downs nearly rattled her out of her purpose. They’d never gone far enough to completely compromise her, but they’d indulged in a few pleasures, the memory of which made the skin of her thighs tingle.
‘You can’t. It’s going back to Portsmouth.’ He slid the last crate off the wood and carefully laid it on top of the stack beside the wheel.
‘Then call the chaise.’
‘Matilda has use of it this morning.’ Conrad leaned against the cart and propped his elbows on the rough wood to face Katie, not as the angry, drunken man from last night, but as the self-assured one who’d won her heart two years ago.
‘Then saddle a horse. I’ll ride home,’ she insisted, eager to get away from him and his state of near undress.
‘Come, Katie, you don’t know how to ride.’ He playfully tapped the end of her nose, his touch as unnerving as his jibe.
‘I know what you’re trying to do, Conrad, and it won’t work.’
He picked up the crowbar lying beside the cart. ‘What am I trying to do?’
‘Keep me here.’
He slid the bar between the crate and its lid and pushed down. The nails broke free in a screech of metal against wood. ‘You’re right.’
‘Why?’
‘Because, I have something for you.’ He shoved the lid aside and dug through the straw until he found what he was searching for and raised it up into the light.
Katie gaped at the sight of the elongated skull, dark from its long rest in the earth, and all desire to hurry home vanished. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘I purchased it from an Inuit in Greenland before we boarded the ship for home. I had a great deal of free time on the voyage and cleaned the bones, the way you taught me.’
Their eyes met and the memory of their time alone together in the evenings, sitting side by side at the table in the conservatory while she positioned his hand over the bones, passed between them. His cheek would rest against hers while she’d reach over his wide shoulder to guide the small metal pick between his fingers in the patient removal of dirt from bone. She didn’t think he’d remembered the lessons, not with all the kisses and caresses which had distracted them.
She ran one fingertip over the smooth curve of her opal ring, regretting the loss of those days. They’d been some of the happiest of her life, but there was little time to ponder them or their passing as Conrad held out the skull to her. She took the heavy thing, her excitement heightened by the sweep of his fingers across hers.
‘What do you think?’ he asked.
She held it up to examine the row of long, dagger-like teeth lining the jaw, struggling as much to comprehend the animal as to avoid Conrad’s piercing gaze. ‘It’s marvellous. Like nothing I’ve ever seen in any of the books or private collections. It’s certainly not an ichthyosaur.’
‘Ichthyosaur?’
‘It’s what the lizard with the flippers Miss Anning found is called now. Mr Konig named it in his paper to the Royal Society last year. They rejected mine.’ She lowered the skull, bitterness marring her excitement.
‘Then they were fools.’ Conrad’s solidarity was only a slight comfort. ‘What will your father think when he sees it?’
‘He won’t see it.’ Katie set the skull down on the flat bed of the cart with a thud, irritated by how little the man knew and how much she was left to explain. ‘He’s dead.’
Katie felt more than saw Conrad stiffen with shock. She was too focused on the skull and holding back the tears blurring her eyes. She didn’t want him to see her pain, or to appear so weak and fragile around him. She wanted to be as resilient as she’d always been, but she was failing.
Without a word, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his chest. He was hot from working and the heat penetrated the thin shirt to warm her tearstained cheeks. There’d been no one to hold her like this the day her father had died, or during all the lonely ones afterwards. ‘What happened?’
She didn’t want to answer, but she was too tired and worn down by carrying the pain alone to stay silent. ‘A patient had come to see him and he’d turned her away. I was angry, we needed the money and I told him if he didn’t earn some, I’d sell his fossils. He stormed out of the house, saying he’d find the one which would save us, something a private collector would pay a fortune to possess. A miner found him a few hours later at the bottom of a ladder, his neck broken.’
Katie squeezed her eyes shut, unable to block out the memory of her father’s limp body as the miners had carried him into the house. The foreman had swept the dining table free of her father’s fossils, making the bones clatter over the floor like pieces of broken china. Another man had crushed one beneath his work boot as he’d jostled with the other men to lay out her father’s body. Then they’d filed out, uttering their apologies and leaving her with nothing but the tragedy, bills and bones. ‘The only things he left me were his debts, and after what your uncle did to me there were few in England who’d purchase my finds. If it hadn’t been for my American collectors, I wouldn’t have had any buyers and I would have starved.’
‘I’m so sorry, Katie.’ His voice vibrated through his chest, the way it had on the Downs when she’d cried against him as she’d revealed for the first time the anguish of her mother leaving. In between sobs, she’d described the loneliness of sitting in the window at Whitemans Green waiting for her to return, and the letter which had arrived three months later with news of her death. Then, just as now, Conrad had tenderly rocked her, making her feel safe and loved in a way neither her father, nor the mother who hadn’t cherished her enough to stay, had ever done. ‘You should have told me sooner.’
She pushed out of his embrace, her heart nearly shattering at the absence of his warmth, but she steeled herself against it and her weakness. Despite the comfort he offered, she didn’t want to depend on anyone, especially someone who might disappear over the horizon as easily as her mother had. ‘I didn’t tell you for the same reason you didn’t explain to me minute by minute the hardships and suffering you experienced while you were gone.’
‘I’m not asking for the details, only the broad strokes.’
‘And now you have them. So you may return to London and Mr Barrow and publish your journals and enjoy everyone in the Admiralty and the Naturalist Society falling at your feet.’
‘Careful, Katie, your anger near drips with jealousy.’
Katie stared down at the mess of bones in the crate, shamed out of her resentment. He was only trying to be kind. ‘You’re right, I am. No matter what I write or draw, my success will never match yours simply because of my sex. Only my connection to you and my father’s work has ever made anyone take note of me before.’ Even then they’d pinned her success on her feminine wiles, not her talent, listening to the vicious lies of Lord Helton and all those willing to repeat them.
‘Then this could be your chance to change that. If this animal is as unusual as you believe, then stay with me and study it, draw it and write a paper the Naturalist Society won’t be able to ignore.’
‘Last night you said you wanted me to give it all up,’ she challenged, confused by his change of heart and the wavering of hers.
His enthusiasm dimmed as he picked at a splinter on the edge of the cart. ‘I think we both said a number of things last night we regret.’
Yes, she regretted saying a great deal, despite most of it being true.
‘Even if I did stay and study it, I doubt anything I do, even on something as unusual as this, could sway the Naturalist Society members to support me. The last night we were at the society, they tore my father’s reputation to shreds, accusing him of plagiarism. It was the reason we finally left London.’
He flicked away the splinter. ‘Why would they do such a thing?’
‘Because of your uncle.’ She stomped her foot against the soft soil. ‘He wasn’t content to ruin me, but my father, too.’
Conrad banged his fist against the cart. ‘Then now’s your chance to ensure he doesn’t win.’
‘You make it sound so easy, but it isn’t.’ She ran her hand over the curve of the creature’s skull, thinking through each of the books she’d read in the Naturalist Society library and how no animal in any of them resembled this one. ‘You don’t know what it was like to stand there and watch them tear him, and me, apart, to have everyone whispering about you.’
‘No, but I know what it’s like to fight awful odds, to keep going even when you, and all those around you, want to give up.’ He shifted closer, his face set with determination. ‘If you think I’m going to let you surrender to my uncle, to crawl away and hide from all the difficulties, you’re very mistaken.’
‘It’s not your decision to make.’ For the past six months she’d hidden from the world, facing no one except through letters and doing all she could to avoid criticism and judgement. She didn’t want to enter it again and confront the hostile men who’d dismissed her research simply because she was a woman.
‘It’s my creature, and if you don’t think you’re up to the task of studying it, I’ll hire another,’ Conrad threatened.
‘You can’t.’ Panic burned through her at possibly losing such a specimen and how much like her father she felt at this moment. She’d cursed him so many times for being too involved with his research to see her, her mother, his shrinking medical practice and the mounting bills. Even after her mother had left, the fossils and his research had determined nearly every decision he’d ever made. Katie was about to allow them to do the same for her.
‘Don’t be afraid to show the men of the society what you’re capable of,’ Conrad urged. ‘This creature could be the making of you.’
He was right. With this animal, she could prove it was her brains and not her favours which had gained her past notice. If she succeeded, it would mean work as an illustrator, money from publishing books and pamphlets, and the security she’d craved since the day she’d taken over the finances in her mother’s absence and seen the harsh truth of her and her father’s situation.
Katie fingered one of the creature’s sharp teeth. Staying was risky. Conrad was tenacious in his determination to achieve whatever it was he set his mind to and now it was focused on her. However, she had only to hold out until Mr Barrow’s next order came through and pulled his focus, and presence, away from her. As much as she didn’t want to be here with him, leaving Conrad meant leaving the bones and she couldn’t do it.
‘All right, I’ll stay and examine the creature.’ A smile of victory spread over Conrad’s lips, as annoying as it was tempting, but she wasn’t about to let him believe he’d won. She was staying for her benefit, not his. ‘But it will be like it was when my father worked for you. You’ll pay me just as you paid him.’
Conrad scooped up the skull and laid it back in the crate. ‘I won’t.’
‘Then I won’t stay.’ She crossed her arms over her chest, as much to emphasise her seriousness as to calm her fears over losing access to the creature. ‘This is to be a business deal like any other and when it’s done that’ll be the end of it.’ And us.
‘All right,’ he conceded, picking up the lid to the crate and setting it down over the top, covering the bones. ‘Draw up a list of things you need from Whitemans Green and I’ll send someone to fetch them and close up your house. When you’re finished with your research you may keep the fossil, and the paper, and your drawings.’
‘If I’m to keep everything, what do you hope to get out of this arrangement?’
‘You.’ He brushed her lightly under the chin, the same self-satisfied smile he’d worn the first time he’d stolen a kiss from her in the study drawing up the corners of his wide mouth. ‘I’ll have Mr Peet bring the crate to the conservatory. I expect your work to be very interesting and revealing.’
Before she could tell him what to do with his expectations he slipped into the stable, his muffled instructions to Mr Peet carrying over the shift and whinny of the horses.
Katie slammed the top of the crate with her palm, dislodging the lid. It fell into the dirt, revealing the creature’s menacing smile. Her weakness and Conrad’s glib determination frustrated her. She shouldn’t remain here and torture herself with what couldn’t be or give Conrad false hope for reconciliation, but she couldn’t give up this specimen either.