The Bonny Bride

Quite nearby, she heard a man snoring. The walls between the cabins must be as thin as paper, she grumbled to herself. Rolling over in the tight quarters of her berth, she came nose to nose with Harris Chisholm, snoring serenely with his head resting on her pillow.

“Mr. Chisholm, what are ye still doing here?” Jenny shrank back into the corner of the berth, gathering the blankets protectively over her chest.

Harris sat up on her trunk, pulling his head and torso off their resting place on the berth. “Where? What?” He peered around the cabin through half-closed eyes. When they focused on Jenny, he gave a visible start.

“I must’ve fallen asleep telling ye the last of Rob Roy.” He yawned and stretched his long arms.

“Do ye know what this means? If word gets out that I’ve been entertaining ye in my cabin all night, my reputation’ll be ruined. Roderick Dhu will never have me for a wife! How could ye let this happen?”

“I?” Harris drew himself up indignantly. “Ye were the one who begged me to stay. ‘Do what ye like with me,’ ye said. ‘Stay and tell me more of the story,’ ye said. Ye reckoned ye were going to die of the seasickness but I nursed ye through it. And this is the thanks I get. Bawling at me like a fishwife. Making it sound as though I forced my way into yer cabin and attacked ye in the night!”

“Ye did bust down my door!” Jenny accused him.

“That was an accident, and well ye know it. Now keep yer voice down, woman, or ye’ll have the whole crew onto us. We both know nothing happened last night to sully yer fair reputation—unless ye count puking on my shoes and spitting whisky into my face.” Harris started to laugh at the thought.

In spite of herself, so did Jenny.

“I’ll keep mum about my being here if ye will, and no one the wiser,” Harris assured her. “Besides, if it does get back to Roderick Dhu and he jilts ye over it, I promise to make an honest woman of ye.”

Jenny seized her pillow and fetched Harris a solid clout on the ear. “If ye do anything to queer my wedding with Roderick Dhu, Harris Chisholm, I won’t marry ye supposing ye’re the last he-creature in North America!”

Fortunately, Harris was able to steal out of Jenny’s cabin that morning without being caught. The crew was too busy assessing storm damage, while the other passengers were dealing with their own seasickness in varying degrees. Later that day, in a show of innocent concern, he helped the ship’s carpenter repair Jenny’s broken door latch.

Jenny kept to her cabin all that day, with the excuse of recovering from her bilious attack. When she finally emerged the following morning, she treated Harris with the frosty politeness reserved for particularly odious strangers. To his surprise and amusement, Harris found himself unable to take offense. When one had nursed a woman through a bout of seasickness, Harris discovered, the lady in question—no matter how attractive—permanently lost her ability to intimidate a fellow.

It might also have been partly due to Jenny’s admission of her own inadequacies. Perhaps it owed to his status as her protector. Whatever the reason, Jenny Lennox had pitched headfirst off her pedestal. Harris found it an odd and rather heady experience, being on equal footing with a woman. As he might never enjoy such a novelty again, he decided to make the most of it while it lasted.

He gave Jenny precisely forty-eight hours to grow tired of her own company. Then he made his overture.

“Do ye plan to give over snubbing me before we get to Miramichi?” he asked with good-natured disinterest, as he escorted her back from breakfast.

She appeared to have trouble preserving a straight face. “Ye ken my snubbing ye for two days squares yer snubbing me for years?” Her eyebrow cocked in an expression of bewitching arrogance.

“No.” His mouth twitched with the effort to suppress a smile. “But I ken feeding ye all my good whisky, and resisting the urge to brag of spending the night in yer company, does weigh heavy on the balance.”

“Keep yer voice down!” Jenny glanced nervously around to see if anyone had overheard. She must have decided there was no one within earshot, for her expression grudgingly softened.

“I ken there’s some truth to what ye say.” She held out her hand. “I’m willing to make peace if ye are.”

Harris grinned. “It’s a bargain.”

He shook her hand. It was not soft or dainty, but roughened by years of work. More eloquently than any spoken plea, it told Harris of the life she longed to leave behind.

“It’ll be a relief to have someone to talk to.” She looked genuinely relieved. “Who’d have thought after twenty years of slaving away from dawn till dusk, I’d get sick of idleness after only two days. Time hangs heavy on yer hands when ye’ve nothing to do.”

“I stand behind my offer to teach ye to read,” said Harris. “A good book’s the best antidote for boredom I can recommend. While we’re about it, ye can instruct me in the gentle art of charming the ladies, like ye promised.”

“We’d better get busy.” An amethyst twinkle gleamed in Jenny’s gray eyes. “If I’m to teach ye some manners before we land in Chatham, there’s not a moment to lose!”

Chapter Three

“The…con-dit-ion…” Jenny sounded out the unfamiliar arrangement of letters.

“Condition,” Harris prompted.

“Oh, aye.” Her eyebrows drew together in a grimace of intense concentration as she attacked the passage once more. “The condition of the English nation was at this time…suf…suf…”

“Sufficiently miserable.” Harris helpfully supplied the last two words of the sentence.

“It’s no use.” Jenny blew out an exasperated sigh, which stirred the lock of hair curling over her brow. “I’ll never be able to read like ye can, Harris. I fear I’m an awful dunce.”

“Nonsense,” he protested. “It took me years to read as well as ye can after only a fortnight. Ye’re a clever lass, Jenny.”

The compliment warmed her more than she cared to admit. She pretended to dismiss it with a derisive wave of her hand. “Get away with ye!”

Tutor and scholar nestled in their usual perch—a short flight of wide, shallow steps leading up to the poop deck. These seldom-used side steps made a convenient retreat for Jenny’s reading lessons, out from underfoot of the crew. They had the added advantage of receiving shade from the spanker in the morning, and from the mainsail for the rest of the day.

Of late, shade had become a rare commodity on the St. Bride. Ever since that inauspicious gale at the outset of their journey, the North Atlantic weather had turned unusually clement. The wind had died to a light, fitful breeze, while the lazy waves rocked the barque as gently as a baby’s cradle. Day after day, the sun beamed down from a canopy of deep, tranquil blue. Filmy clouds floated high in what the master of the St. Bride called a “mackerel sky.”

“Ye’d likely have learned quicker with an easier book.” Harris leaned back from his seat two steps below Jenny. He cast an apologetic glance at the fat volume of Ivanhoe lying open on her lap. “Other than the Bible, I fear Mr. Scott’s books are all I could afford to bring with me.”

“Don’t fret yerself.” Jenny felt her natural optimism rebounding. “I know the Bible well enough already. I like these stories. I’d far rather read a book that’s hard but interesting, than one that’s easy but dull.”

Harris grinned. “Aye, there’s sense in that.”

They had finished Rob Roy a few days ago. First, Jenny struggled through the opening pages of each chapter, then Harris rewarded her efforts by reading the rest aloud to her. Between chapters, they discussed the story and the characters. Harris would explain any pertinent historical background.

The high adventure and heroic romance of the stories intrigued Jenny no end. At night they figured in her dreams, the heroes all looking and sounding strangely like Harris.

Every morning, Jenny hurriedly dressed and bolted her breakfast, eager to tackle another chapter. Thanks to Walter Scott and Harris Chisholm, whole new vistas of thought and experience were opening before her. Never in her life had she felt so completely alive.

“Hallo!” called a voice from aloft. “How goes the lessons, Miss Lennox?”

Jenny waved up at Thomas Nicholson, the apprentice boy who was nimbly scaling the ratlines on the mizzenmast.

“Oh, it’s coming, Thomas,” she called. “Not fast, but it’s coming.”

“Don’t listen to her, Thomas,” Harris countered. “Miss Lennox has brains to match her beauty. Why, I could make an Edinburgh lawyer out of her in six months.”

With a cheery salute, the boy returned to his work. Captain Glendenning kept men aloft all hours of the day, adjusting the sails continually to catch the faint, fitful winds. As the unpromising weather had improved since the early days of the voyage, so had the crew of the St. Bride.

A rigorous stickler for discipline, the master had taken a hard line with slackers and insubordinates. Any sailor who failed to pull his weight soon found himself scouring the deck with salt water and holystone, under the blazing sun. Diligent sailors found the St. Bride a soft billet. They ate better than the usual forecastle diet of hardtack and salt beef, and the captain used a liberal hand doling out their daily rum ration.

Discovering Jenny had a champion in the tall, menacing person of Harris Chisholm, the sailors had quickly come to treat her with respectful deference. It helped matters further when word got around that she was on her way to wed a rich shipbuilder in the port of their destination. Any sailor who planned to jump ship and look for work in Miramichi might hope for a good reference from Miss Lennox.

Returning to the text of the novel, Harris searched out more obscure words that might present a problem for Jenny’s novice reading skills.

“Brains to match my beauty?” she scoffed.