“It only explains why you won’t turn around now,” Alexis said calmly. “It does not explain why you ever took it upon yourself to take me in the first place.”
“I already told you why. You needed medical attention.”
“That is what you told me.” She leaned forward in her chair, putting her hands on the table, intertwining her slim fingers. She looked at him expectantly. “Cloud,” she said softly, liking the stressed intimacy of his name on her lips. “I asked you earlier what there was for me in Washington but I answered my own question. I said there was nothing. I have been thinking I would like you to answer that question. When I get to the United States I will still want to return to Roadtown. Will you help me?”
“No.”
“So what is there for me in Washington?”
He drew in his breath.
“I don’t know any longer. I only know I can’t let you go.”
Alexis smiled tentatively, almost shyly at him. Her eyes searched his face and she was pleased to know he spoke the truth. “Thank you for being honest.” She wondered if he knew it was the thing she valued most.
She stood, her posture resuming its former stiffness. She was the cabin boy in the presence of her captain. “Am I dismissed now?” she asked.
“Yes. When you come back to move my things be sure to clean up the glass.” He watched her leave. When the door shut he cursed softly under his breath. He knew then she was everything he wanted. He couldn’t let her go. Would she understand that he respected her for trying to fulfill her vow but that he could not allow it? He admired her strength, her determination, her honesty, and her beauty. How could he let her slip from his grasp?
He remembered his own desire to escape from the prison of the British Navy. He had been punished for it twice and only Landis’s skills had saved him after the second flogging. But still he had tried a third time and he had made it. And why had escape been so important? The answers pressed against him with almost physical force. Because he had been taken against his will; forced to serve without regard to his liberty. What he had wanted to do with his life was not what the British wanted. Was that how she saw him? Was he the enemy to her? If that was true, then she had no choice but to escape from him. Still, he would do everything in his power to see that she failed.
It did not take Alexis long to complete her assigned tasks. She began immediately after she heard Cloud leave his cabin and in a little more than an hour she was finished. She had cleaned his quarters, made up his bunk, and put his clothes away. She had taken special care in transferring his navigational charts and equipment. Even his liquor had been carefully removed from her cabin to his. When she was satisfied her work was completed she went back to the deck to ask what other chores he had for her.
She saw Landis first and went to him. “Captain Cloud—where is he? He might have something for me to do.”
“He is in the hold, checking some crossbeam supports,” he replied. “Some of them are rotting. He won’t be needing you for a time now.”
“Then do you have something I can do?”
Landis shook his head. “We’re having some trouble with the main topgallant right now.” He pointed high overhead. “Harry’s trying to fix it. It’s caught in the—”
“Yes,” Alexis interrupted. “I see what the problem is. I can take care of it.”
Before Landis could utter a word in protest Alexis had kicked off her shoes, thrown the skirt of her dress over her arm, and was climbing the rigging. In a moment all work on board had ceased as the men watched her nimbly make her way to the top.
“Alex! Your dress!” Landis called after her. “Come down and we’ll find you something else to wear!”
Alexis shook her head and laughed. “I told the captain I would need a pair of trousers and he refused me! If the sight of my legs is so distasteful, then don’t look!”
Landis joined the laughter of the others in response to her suggestion. There was certainly nothing wrong with her legs. They all tilted their heads back as they watched her climb higher.
“I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes,” Mike Garrison said admiringly when she joined Harry at the top. “She didn’t falter once. And wearing that dress too. Don’t think I could have done it in a dress.”
“Maybe she’ll let you borrow one so you can find out,” Tom Daniels drawled. He cut off the laughter around him. “You’d better have your apology ready when she gets down. She’s got spirit, not bats in her belfry.”
Mike nodded his agreement and continued to stare upward.
Harry was as surprised as anyone when Alexis clambered beside him.
“What possessed you to come up here?” he asked, astonished. The captain had said treat her like one of them but Cloud wasn’t going to like this at all.
“I thought you might want some help. Don’t be so shocked. I know what I’m doing.”
“God help us all if you don’t.” he answered, crossing himself.
“If you could pull that rope over there and hand it to me, I will take the knot out.”
“What do you think I have been trying to do?”
