The Beckoning Dream

Her reward was “Good girl!” and a tightening of Tom’s arm. Her gratitude to him was expressed by her leaning against his strong warm body for further comfort. This resulted in a soft kiss on her cheek before Tom laid her down again, covering her with the sheet that had slipped its moorings during his ministrations.

“Try to sleep,” he told her. “I am going on deck to stretch my legs a little.” He beckoned at his man. “You, too, Geordie.”

“Growing soft, are we, master?” growled Geordie at Tom as they reached the deck. The storm had lifted and the sea had grown calm again whilst they were below decks. “The schnapps did its work right well and the doxy would not have objected to a little—well, you know what!”

Tom’s expression was an enigmatic one. “Oh, Geordie, Geordie—” he sighed “—you would never make a good chess player. At the moment I need her trust more than anything else in the world. Later—when it is gained—might be a different thing, a very different thing!”

Oh, blessed sleep “that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care”, as old Will Shakespeare had it, thought Catherine drowsily as she awoke to feel refreshed. She was not alone. Tom Trenchard was seated on a bench, watching her, a tankard in his hand.

He lifted it to toast her. “You are with us again, dear wife, after sleeping the day away. Your colour has returned, I see.” He drank briefly from the tankard, his brilliant blue eyes watching her over its rim before he handed it to her.

“Drink wife. We shall be in Ostend shortly, and there we may find shelter.”

“Oh, blessed dry land,” sighed Catherine, taking a long draught of ale. “I shall never wish to go to sea again.”

“You were unlucky,” Tom told her, “to find yourself in such a storm on your first voyage.”

“And was it luck that you were not overset like poor Geordie and me?”

“Oh, I am never seasick,” grinned Tom. “I have good sea legs. It is but one of my many talents,” he added boastfully.

Catherine laughed and, easing herself out of the bunk, handed the tankard back to him. It was odd not to be sparring with him. She decided to prick the bubble of his conceit a little.

“Why, dear husband, I vow that you would well match the play wherein I late acted. The Braggart by name—or Lackwit in Love. Which title best befits you, do you think?”

Tom met her teasing look and answered her in kind. “Why, Master Will Wagstaffe may write a play taking me as hero, calling it St George, or, England’s Saviour—and, if you do but behave yourself, you shall be the heroine. A new Belinda, no less.”

Something in his tone alerted her. “You saw me play Belinda, then? At the Duke’s Theatre?”

“Indeed, mistress, I had that honour. And a fine boy you made. I ne’er saw a better pair of legs—not even on a female rope dancer—and that is a splendid compliment, is it not?”

The look in Tom’s eyes set Catherine blushing. He was stripping her of her clothing in his mind, no doubt of it. She swung away from him lest she destroy the new camaraderie that had sprung up between them since he had succoured her in the storm.

After all, they were to live together for some time, although how long or short that might be Catherine did not know, and t’were better that they did not wrangle all the time.

By good fortune, to save them both, Geordie came down the companionway, his long face glummer than ever.

“Bad news, master, I fear.”

“And when did you ever bring me good?” Tom exclaimed. “’Tis your favourite occupation! Spit it out, man. We had best all be glum together.”

“Nothing less than that we may not dock at Ostend. There are rumours that the plague may be back, and the packet’s master has decided that we must risk all and go on to a harbour near Antwerp.”

“And that is bad news?” Tom taunted him, brows raised.

“Aye, for those of us who do not like the sea.”

“Antwerp or Ostend, it is no great matter. I have enough schnapps left to make both you and my dear wife drunk and insensible for the rest of the sea trip should the storms begin again. Tell me, wife, will that do?”

For answer Catherine made him a grand stage curtsy, saying, “I know my duty, husband, to you and to our gracious King, and if I must be rendered unconscious to perform it, I shall be so with a good grace.”

Tom rewarded her with a smacking kiss on the lips as she straightened up. “You hear that, Geordie? I shall expect no less from you.”

“Oh, aye, master. But don’t expect any pretty speeches from me.”

“Certes, no. The next one will be the first! Back to your bunk, wife, to rest. So far, so good.”

He was being so amazingly hearty that he made Catherine feel quite faint—and he was apparently having the same effect on Geordie, who sat grumblingly down on the dirty floor, complaining, “It’s as well that some on us are happy.”

Tom came over to sit on Catherine’s bunk. “And that shall be our epitaph, or, as you stage folk say, our epilogue. Will Wagstaffe himself could not write a better, nor his predecessor, Stratford Will. Rest now, wife.”

So she did, her mouth still treacherously tingling from his last kiss. Oh, he knew all the tricks of seduction did Master Tom Trenchard, and she must never forget that.

Chapter Three

Oh, the devil was in it that Hal Arlington had decided that William Grahame could best be snared by the wiles of a pretty woman so that, instead of carrying out this mission on his own, Stair was saddled with an actress who carped at his every word. And her every word was devoted to denying him her bed, which would have been the only thing that made having to drag Catherine around the Low Countries worthwhile!

The pox was on it that he had ever volunteered to try to turn Grahame at all! One last such junket, the very last, he had told Arlington and Sir Thomas, having at first refused to oblige them.

“I am seven years away from being a mercenary soldier for anyone to hire. If anyone deserves a quiet life, it is I. I have served my King both before his Restoration and after—as you well know.”

“The Dutch War goes badly—as you equally well know, Stair, and yours are the special talents we need.”

In a sense that had pained him, for were not those talents the ones that he had needed to survive in the penury which exile from England had forced upon him during the late usurper Cromwell’s rule? Cunning, lying, cheating and killing, yes, killing, for that was the soldier’s trade. Leading men in hopeless causes that he had won against all the odds, by using those same talents.

He thought that he had done with it, that he was now free to live a civilised life in peace. Not simply enjoying its ease, but also the pretty women to whom he need make no commitment, as well as music, the playhouse, books and the blessed quiet of his country estates, both in England and Scotland, when he was no longer at Court. Estates most fortunately restored to him when Charles II had come into his own again.

God knew, he no longer needed the money in order to survive. If he did this thing, he would do it for nothing, which, of course, Gower and Arlington also knew and was partly why they had asked him to be their agent in the Netherlands. As usual, the King’s Treasury was empty, and not needing to pay him would be a bonus.

So, he had agreed. Only to discover that they had also decided that he needed a woman to pose as his wife, and a pretty woman at that, skilled in seductive arts, for Grahame had a reputation for being weak where women were concerned.

“As a bird is caught by lime, so will he be caught by a pair of fine eyes,” Sir Thomas had said. “And we know the very doxy who will turn the trick for us.”

In consequence, he had found himself in his own proper person at the Duke’s Theatre, in company with Hal Arlington, trying to test the nerve of the young actress whom Sir Thomas knew that he could blackmail through her indiscreet and foolish brother.

And nerve she had, no doubt of it, by the way in which she had refused to let his unsettling jests with oranges, posies and gloves disturb her. She had also displayed a pretty wit, which she was now constantly exercising at his expense—except when she was seasick, that was.

Sir Stair Cameron, to be known in the Netherlands only as Tom Trenchard—Trenchard being his mother’s name, and Tom his own second Christian name—was leaning disconsolate over the packet’s side as it neared land, musing on his fate.

He lifted his face to feel the rain on it. Blessed, cleansing rain. By God, when this is over, he vowed, I shall refuse to engage in such tricks ever again, but now I must go below and help my disobliging doxy to ready herself to be on dry land again.

Tom did not reflect—for he never allowed the possibility of failure to trouble him—that having to take a young, untried woman with him might put his mission in hazard, even cause it to fail. He had made such a point to Gower and Bennet but they had dismissed it. And so, perforce, had he to do the same.

All the same, the idea was there, very like a worm that secretly eats away at the foundations of a seemingly secure house until at last it falls.

He shrugged his broad shoulders. No more mewling and puking over what was past and could not be changed, he told himself, no looking backwards, either. Forwards, ever forwards, was the motto his father had adopted on being made a baronet, and he would try to live up to it, as had always been his habit.

The day was growing late, and it was likely that they would not dock until the morning. Once on shore they would travel to Antwerp where they might, please God, find Grahame and finish the business almost before it was begun.