An Affair in Autumn Read online

  Then, abruptly, the ship righted itself, overbalancing and swaying slightly to the opposite side before bobbing up again only to pitch forward as it slammed over another wave.

  “Is everyone all right?” Mark called.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Frank. “Evie and I are.”

  “Owen?” Evan called.

  Owen was silent.

  “I’m not sure about Owen! I heard him fall,” his brother said.

  Mark shifted beside her. “Everyone, stay where you are and hold on. It might happen again.” He turned to Caro. “Stay here. I need to check on him.”

  Caro shook her head vigorously. “No. I’m coming with you.”

  He sighed but didn’t argue. “Stay with me then.”

  They crawled across the room toward the wall. They’d been sitting closest to where Owen had been, and soon they encountered him, lying flat and still on his back.

  “We found him,” Mark called to the others. “He’s unconscious but he’s breathing.” He didn’t mention the fluid—definitely blood—that Caro’s fingers slipped through as she touched his face.

  “We need the ship’s surgeon,” Evan said. He was close, and Caro realized a moment later that he’d crawled up beside Mark. Evan’s voice rose in panic. “He needs a doctor right now! He might die… Oh God, what if he dies? Is that blood? I think I feel blood on his face!” Evan was breathing in sharp, short gasps, his voice high-pitched and rising quickly, mingling with the screeching, moaning, splashing sounds of the wind and sea and punctuated by crashing noises and the faint shouts of sailors on the deck above them.

  Caro felt Mark reaching out to Evan. “Stay calm,” Mark said loudly enough to be heard over the racket. “I’m sure he’ll be all right. Feel this.” He shifted a bit, perhaps bringing Evan’s hand to Owen’s chest. “Feel how strong his breaths are? But you’re right—the surgeon should take a look at him, just to be sure. I’ll go fetch him.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Caro repeated. He didn’t argue, just grasped her hand.

  Slowly, they crawled across the room. It was a good thing it was a small room and she’d memorized the location of the furniture, but it was not easy going. The ship rose at a frightening angle as it climbed up every enormous wave, and then as it crested the wave, it dipped down, bow first, as if it were going to plunge straight to the bottom of the sea.

  They found the door and stood awkwardly. “Don’t let go of me,” Mark said into her ear. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  “I won’t,” Caro agreed.

  Mark fumbled around until he found the door handle, then wrenched it open, and they lurched out into the corridor, the door slamming on its own behind them as Mark grabbed the railing.

  The corridor was as dark as the salon had been, and they felt their way down it. Caro realized with a sinking feeling that no one besides the passengers were in this part of the ship—it was dark and quiet, with just the weather screaming around them and the ship tossing them this way and that.

  That meant the surgeon was probably in his cabin at the stern, where the ship’s officers resided. Which, in turn, meant that to find him, Caro and Mark would need to go out on the deck and into the weather.

  Mark led her up the steps to the companionway and pushed open the sliding wooden door that blocked the elements. Immediately, the sounds increased—roaring water, screaming wind, violently flapping canvas. Cold rainwater and seawater splashed into the opening, drenching them almost instantly. As if from somewhere far away, a panicked voice shouted, “Cut the halyards! Cut the halyards!”

  She had no idea what that meant, but it couldn’t be good.

  She and Mark stumbled up into a sheeting, frigid rain. It was dark, but not as dark as in the cabins, and she could vaguely see sheets of water spraying over the deck and onto frantically working seamen hunched over in their oiled coats.

  Mark turned to her. “It’s too dangerous, Caro. Go back to the others. I’ll bring the surgeon.”

  “No,” she insisted. “I’m fine.”

  Before he could respond, an earsplitting crack rent the air followed by at least a dozen panicked shouts.

  “What the hell?” Mark looked up, and Caro followed his gaze, only to see an enormous shadow falling over them.

  It was the mizzenmast. And it was coming down like a hundred-year-old oak tree felled in the forest. Straight on top of them.

  “Caro, move!” Mark shoved her toward the larboard side of the ship as the mast fell with an enormous thud onto the deck where they’d just been standing. But that wasn’t all. There were cracking and whistling noises as lines of rigging and the sail were yanked loose and came plummeting toward them.

  “Get down,” Mark roared. He pushed her again, and she went stumbling to the edge of the deck as he threw himself over her. Rope and wood and canvas rained down on them. Mark was heavy, but he covered every bit of her, and she felt nothing but his weight.

  Mark, though, twitched and grunted in pain.

  It seemed like forever, but it was probably only a few seconds before it all came down and everything went still save the wind, rain, and waves. The Liberty still flailed in the waves, its movements more sporadic and even less predictable than before.

  Caro opened her eyes and saw nothing. They were draped beneath a wide swath of canvas, and it was completely dark. She gripped Mark’s arm. “Mark! Are you all right?”

  He groaned and shifted painfully off of her, and her heart leapt with fear. “Mark?”

  “I’m… all right,” he managed to say though it seemed to take him great effort. “We need to…” His voice dwindled as if he didn’t know how to finish that sentence. She didn’t need him to finish the sentence though. She knew what they needed—they needed to get out from under this sail.

  She could—just barely—see an edge flapping in the wind, and she started to crawl toward it, thrusting rope and splintered wood and canvas aside. Mark pulled himself along beside her. She risked one glance at him but could only see the faint shadow of his face, of his lips pressed thin in determination.

  She reached the edge of the sail before him and pushed it back. Rain instantly stung her cheeks. They were close to the aft companionway at the center of the ship. A nearby seaman, his hands full of rope, saw her and rushed to her and Mark, helping them from the tangle of broken rigging.

  Mark couldn’t quite stand up straight, and she wasn’t sure of the reason for it. The seaman leaned toward him, and just then, as it had when they’d been in the salon, the ship listed hard to the side. Caro stumbled. Then she went flying over the deck rail and head over heels into the freezing Atlantic Ocean.

  Chapter Ten

  “Caro!” Mark shouted. He pushed the young seaman aside and lunged to the deck rail. “Caro!”

  Goddamn. It was so dark. He couldn’t see her.

  He couldn’t see her. Panic boiled in a hot vat inside him.

  Without sparing it another thought, he dove in after her.

  The water was bitterly cold, and Mark came up sputtering salt water out of his mouth and nose, wincing against the stinging, raw pain in his back, and thanking God that he was a good swimmer. Though this wasn’t simple pond swimming. This was like swimming in powerful, ice-cold river rapids, the turbulent, frigid water sucking away his energy almost immediately.

  “Caro!” he called, looking frantically around. She could swim, he knew, and almost as well as he could. They, along with Nate, had taken many a secret swim on the river and the lake near Ironwood Park on hot summer days, and after that one time she’d nearly drowned in rapids, she’d worked hard to become even a better swimmer, sometimes besting both him and Nate when they raced across the lake.

  It was dark and almost impossible to see anything. The sea was covered in foam—the top of it whipped into froth by the extreme wind that sent water droplets slamming into his face with stinging ferocity.

  “Caro!”

  He couldn’t see a damn thing except the steep edge of the Liberty’s hull. T
he ship wasn’t forging ahead; instead it floundered nearby, stagnant in the churning waters thanks to the collapsed mizzenmast that had nearly crushed the starboard stern and dragged heavily in the turbulent waters behind the vessel.

  He began to swim in circles, calling Caro’s name. She had to be nearby, damn it. And then he saw her, struggling to keep her head above water. She popped up for a second, her pale face a light beacon on the midst of all this darkness, and then dipped beneath the surface.

  He swam toward her with every ounce of energy he possessed, with only one thought in his mind. He had to save her. He had to keep her safe.

  He reached her, grabbing her from behind and kicking with powerful strokes to keep both their heads above water. She coughed and sputtered, and damn, but she was heavy. It was, he realized, the weight of all her clothes and her shoes, saturated with water.

  “Mark!” she choked out, holding on to him for dear life. They both tried to swim, doing everything they could to stay above water, but every second one of them dipped underwater, then came up sputtering in the thrashing waves.

  “Ahoy!”

  Mark heard the shout as if from far away. He tried to turn toward the source of the sound, but he couldn’t do that and hang on to Caro at the same time. She looked up though and suddenly lunged forward, reaching out toward a cork life preserver that had been tossed into the water. He swam alongside her and grabbed one side of its ringed surface. It was tied to a line, which a pair of seamen pulled from the deck of the Liberty.

  It seemed to take a lifetime, but eventually, they were helped back onto the ship, first Caro then Mark, gritting his teeth in pain as they grabbed him under the armpits and hefted him onto the deck. He crawled to Caro, who lay in a heap, panting, and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her wet, shivering body into his arms.

  “Thank God,” he murmured over and over. “Thank God.”

  They were taken to the ship’s surgeon, a jolly pink-cheeked American who pronounced Caro “fit as a fiddle,” but after checking on Owen Evans, whom he diagnosed with a concussion, he spent more time on Mark. The shrouds, the lines descending from the top of the mast to the deck, had snapped, and one on its descent had sliced straight through Mark’s clothes and into his flesh, leaving an open, long, bloody wound that needed sixty stitches from his shoulder blade to his hip. As the surgeon sewed Mark up, the storm calmed somewhat, and Caro sat beside him, wrapped in a heavy wool blanket and holding his hand. Neither of them knew what was happening up on deck with the broken mast, and neither of them asked.

  When the surgeon finished, he said he was going to check on Owen again and that Mark and Caro should remain in his cabin and try to get some rest. Caro, her hair still wet, climbed onto the bed beside where he lay on his stomach. She kissed his cheek.

  Mark smiled at her lazily, drunk from the laudanum the surgeon had given him.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he told her. “And you smell so good.”

  She laughed softly. “I smell like saltwater.”

  “That’s not such a bad smell.” His smile widened. “Not on you, in any case.”

  She snuggled up closer to him. “You saved me. Yet again.”

  “I’m happy to save you anytime,” he murmured. He meant it. He’d march through hell and back a hundred times to keep her safe.

  He closed his eyes, drifting into sleep, but as he slipped away, he heard her voice once more. “I love you, Mark. I love you so much.”

  And for some reason, he believed her.

  The next morning dawned clear and sunny, warmer than the week before. The ocean was a deep, pleasant blue with gently rolling waves, and for the first time in weeks, seagulls skimmed the surface of the water. All would have been well… if not for the state of the Liberty.

  The exhausted sailors took shifts throughout the morning, making repairs as they could. One thing they definitely could not do was remount the mizzenmast, which had splintered at a height of about six feet, leaving a sad-looking stub where once the mast had risen to a soaring height of seventy feet in the air.

  So the crew salvaged as much of the sail and rigging as they could, then sawed off the broken part that dragged sadly behind the Liberty and left it to the sea.

  Without its mizzenmast and its corresponding sails, the Liberty limped along slowly. The good news was that the mast was the only casualty of the storm. None of the sailors had suffered so much as a scratch. Owen’s and Mark’s were the only two injuries sustained in the storm.

  When the Liberty should have been arriving in New York, Caro could only just spot the shadow of land forming over the horizon. At dusk, they’d made little progress, and she had to face the fact that it would be yet another day before her feet landed on solid ground.

  Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe, she thought, it would be all right if they were stranded out here forever. Because if they were, she wouldn’t have to face the end of her relationship with Mark.

  But they weren’t stranded at sea forever. On the second afternoon after the gale, as Mark and Caro stood at the bow rail, the Liberty followed its pilot through the Narrows between Long Island and Staten Island, both islands covered with greenery awash with the colors of autumn. They stopped at the quarantine grounds near the eastern part of Staten Island, where a health officer inspected them and declared them all fit to enter the United States, though he did give Evan a long, hard look before shrugging off his condition as “chronic seasickness.”

  Three hours later, they docked at the busy New York wharf. Ashore, people seemed to crowd every available space, and buildings stretched as far as the eye could see. As the seamen hurried about, Caro turned to Mark. “This city is so much bigger than I expected. How are we ever going to find him?”

  Mark scanned the bustling wharf, then the docklands beyond and sighed. “Nate stands out.”

  “In the midst of a hundred thousand people?” she asked doubtfully.

  “People notice him,” Mark insisted. “Didn’t you?”

  “Only… Well, only because he was my friend, I think.”

  He shook his head at her, looking bemused. “People will have seen him. We’ll find him. I’m certain of it.”

  She wished she had his confidence.

  A few minutes later, a sailor informed them that their luggage was waiting for them ashore and they were now free to disembark. After saying a fond goodbye to Captain Torrance and Mr. Woods, Mark took Caro’s hand and they hurried amidships, where the gangplank was located. The Evans brothers preceded them down the plank, and as promised, as soon as his feet touched solid ground, Evan dropped to his hands and knees and pressed his lips to the dirty ground. Still bandaged and pale from his head injury, Owen watched his brother, his expression dispassionate.

  They all gathered round to say their goodbyes. Mrs. Frank hugged Caro tightly and kissed her cheek, then whispered into her ear, “That’s a fine young man you have there, my lady. And he adores you, you know. If you’ll take a bit of advice from a simple old woman—don’t let him slip through your fingers.”

  Caro smiled at the older woman. “Thank you. I don’t intend to.”

  The Evans brothers said a polite and slightly stilted goodbye—their relationship with both Mark and Caro had been strained since Owen had kissed her—then left, followed by their valets and the four hired servants required to carry their luggage.

  Finally, Caro and Mark were alone… in a strange place that felt very foreign indeed. Even the smells of fish and fresh sawdust were nothing like what she’d ever experienced in the coal-saturated air of London. Caro had never been so excited. She took a step toward the area the Franks had told them they might find a carriage to take them to an inn. But the world wavered under her, and she stumbled.

  “Steady now.” Mark wrapped his arm around her, and she grinned up at him.

  “I suppose I don’t have my land legs yet. Captain Torrance said this might happen.”

  “I feel the same way,” he admitted. “This unmoving ground is g
oing to take some getting used to.”

  She turned in his embrace and slipped her arms around him. “We’re here,” she said, smiling, as people flowed around them—sailors and merchants and servants and passengers going about their busy evening activities, none of them paying the slightest bit of attention to the unmarried English lady and lord embracing in their midst.

  “Yes, we are.”

  “I love it already,” she declared.

  “You haven’t even explored ten feet of it yet. America might be a terrible place,” he warned, but he didn’t sound at all convinced. He was far more well traveled than she was, it was true, but she still saw that glow of excitement in his eyes.

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “Not at all. I already love it, too, though I can’t imagine why,” he said, gazing down at her.

  Impulsively, in front of about a hundred Americans, the crew of the Liberty, and Lord knew who else, she raised herself up on her tiptoes and kissed him. On the lips.

  It was a brief kiss, but a deep one, and when she pulled back, her cheeks were hot. She’d never have done such a thing in London, but this was America. Perhaps she was imagining it, but she already felt liberated.

  The hair prickled on the back of her neck, and she turned. Mark must have sensed the same thing she did, because he looked over at the exact time she did.

  A man stood a few feet away from them, staring. His blond hair curled to his shoulders, and his blue-green eyes were wide with shock. His well-formed mouth had dropped open.

  Caro’s mouth dropped open, too. “Nate?” she whispered.

  He looked from her to Mark and back to her again. She noticed Mark’s hands had slipped from her waist, and she dropped her own hands, stepping back from Mark, her cheeks now burning.

  “Caro? Lady… Whytestone? What…?” He looked at Mark again, frowning. “Mark?”