Regency Royal Navy Christmas by Carla Kelly

Author:Carla Kelly [Kelly, Carla]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Epicenter Press
Published: 2019-10-23T18:00:00+00:00

Chapter Three

Suddenly, he wasn’t cold. Andrew McCulloch felt himself being swaddled in a blanket and lifted into his sleeping cot.

“I fell out last night,” he muttered. To his sorely tried ears, it sounded like he was shouting in a gale, except that the pretty blond lady leaned closer – a blond lady on his ship? Good God, he was hallucinating. No, no, she looked vaguely familiar. He knew she shouldn’t see him like this. “I’m rancid,” he managed to say, hopefully louder, so she needn’t lean closer.

“You certainly are rancid,” she said, sounding far away. “Captain McCulloch, you’re about as sick as man can be. It’s off to Stonehouse with you.”

“No,” he said, and tried to sit up, which proved to be impossible. He wondered how his bones had fallen out. He lay there like a limp rag. “No hospital. Leave me alone and let me read my books in peace. I’ve been planning this for months.”

He saw the woman and man next to her – it was Bosun Kerry, damn his eyes – trade glances. He could deal with a bosun. “Bosun Kerry, leave me alone. That is an order.”

“I’m overruling your bosun, Captain McCulloch,” said that irritating woman.

You’re too pretty to be so irritating, he thought. If I had more energy, I would tell you that.

Merciful God, did all that come out of his mouth? The blond martinet and his bosun laughed. “Bosun Kerry, I will have you flogged,” he thought he said. Maybe he did, but the blond woman leaned closer, her eyes surprisingly kind.

“No, you won’t, Captain McCulloch.” She smelled so good. “You’re sick and you need a surgeon.” She put a finger to his lips. “Shh, now.”

Good God, he kissed her finger. When would his bosun stop laughing? Why was this happening to him? “Please overlook that,” he hoped he said.

He heard Bosun Kerry say something like, “Delirious, mum,” or maybe it was “Deleterious,” or maybe “hilarious.” Shut up, Andrew, he thought, which only produced more smiles.

“No hospital. Not at Christmas.” Dispute that, everyone. He had made himself perfectly plain.

Why did he even care about Christmas? In the fleet, it was hardly anything beyond a double ration of grog, and maybe a half day of leisure. He lay in his bed in silence, smelling the fever on him, and whatever else he had expelled from one or more of several orifices. He wasn’t fit company. Why wouldn’t they leave him alone? Hadn’t he provided enough amusement?

He tried to reason with them one more time, these stubborn people who surely had better things to do than embalm the dead. He spoke slowly; perhaps they would understand him. “Lie here. Read. No hospital.”

He remembered nothing else.

He knew time had passed. In that weird world of incoherent ravings and downright brain fog, he knew someone washed him clean from hair to heels, fiddled with a piss pot, to his ultimate, if humiliating, relief. He had no idea who that was, except she smelled of lilies of the valley, and fed him something mild that leached down past the boulders in his throat.

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