Sally Wentworth - The Sea Master Read online

  out; she could always shout to another boat or something. With any hick he wouldn't go to the cabin at all, but it might be better if she moved into one of the main empty ones. But he was bound to go into the bathroom at some time; she was surprised he hadn't used it already and found her clothes there.

  Fumblingly she picked up her dress and tried to wring as much water as possible out of it, hoping dial it would be dry by the time she got back to England, and shuddering at the thought of having to wear it. Her bra and pants, being nylon, weren't quite so wet, but they were still too damp to put on. She carried the things into one of the main cabins and looked around for somewhere to hang them, finally having to hook them over a wardrobe door. Then she went back for her jewellery and checked that she hadn't left anything else behind. Which left the problem of the towel. Painfully Michelle forced her splitting head to work. Would he miss the towel? She decided that he would and regretfully hung it on the rail. Back in the main cabin she put the jewels safely away in a drawer and then looked round rather helplessly. The bunks just had divans on them, there were no bedclothes or anything she could use to cover herself. She couldn't just stay in here stark naked!

  She groaned and forced herself to walk back to the small cabin where she again looked in the wardrobe, but there was nothing apart from a couple of lounge suits, a black evening suit, and several shirts still in their laundry wrappers. Certainly nothing she could use to wear. Damn the

  bunk and eyed the sleeping-bag longingly, wondering whether the owner would notice if he came into the cabin and found it gone. But of course he was bound to. She stood up again and the bunk creaked and moved as she did so. It suddenly got through to her aching head that where there was a bunk there might also be a locker. Lifting up the bag and the mattress, Michelle saw that they had been resting on a wooden board which had a hand-wide hole cut into it. Without much hope she lifted the board which hinged easily upwards, and then struck gold! Inside the locker was a spare sleeping-bag, brand new and still in its wrapper. Gleefully she took it out and then tidied the cabin as best she could, not that she could remember how it had looked when she found it, but just hoped the owner wouldn't notice anything amiss.

  Back in the cabin she'd chosen, she carefully bolted the door and then spread the sleeping-bag out on the bunk, climbing into it gratefully, her head_ now so bad that all she wanted to do was lie down' and dose her eyes. But even as she climbed on to the bunk, the sound of an outboard engine came surging nearer to the boat, and she cautiously lifted up the edge of the drawn curtain and looked out. The boat owner was coming back with his cargo. He came up to the back of the boat, skillfully turned the dinghy so that he was broadside on, caught the ladder and cut the engine of the outboard motor at the same time. For a few moments he was out of sight, but then he stood up to unload the cargo and Michelle saw has face for the first time. He was younger than she'd expected, about thirty or so, she guessed, and he had dark hair blown into disarray by the breeze.

  But she had been right about the firmness, though; there was a hard, tough look to the set of his jaw, the thin line of his mouth, and his cool grey eyes. It was the sort of face that would give short shrift to anyone who annoyed him or he thought a fool.

  Michelle shivered and quickly dropped the curtain back in place, hoping against hope that he wouldn't try the cabin door. For a while she lay fearfully listening to his movements along the deck as he stowed the cargo, but at length the pain in her head overcame her anxiety and she closed her eyes and fell asleep.

  A ghastly, rolling sensation in her stomach brought her awake fast. She gave a coughing, choking gasp that immediately brought a vile, nauseous feeling into her throat. Putting a hand up to her mouth and trying desperately not to be sick, she almost fell out of the bunk and groped for the door, hardly realising that the cabin was now in darkness. Somehow she managed to fumble open the bolt and reel across the passageway to the bathroom before she lost control and was horribly sick into the loo. She knelt there, retching painfully for some time, only then aware that the boat was pitching and rolling quite badly. With a moan of sheer misery, she pulled herself upright, washed out her mouth, and remembered to flush the loo before staggering back to the cabin and collapsing into the sleeping-bag, heartily wishing she was dead. She lay there in a huddled ball, groaning wretchedly and not dunking about anything except her stomach and her head, and praying for it soon to be over.

  Suddenly the light was switched on and she dimly realised that someone had come in and was towering over her. A man exclaimed, 'Good God!' in a stunned tone and she recognised the voice of the boat owner, but she was too ill to have cared less.

  Hopefully she opened her eyes and looked up into, she thought irritably as she pulled out the drawers of a built-in dresser and slammed them shut again, doesn't he even wear pyjamas? Disconsolately she sat down on the

  bunk and eyed the sleeping-bag longingly, wondering whether the owner would notice if he came into the cabin and found it gone. But of course he was bound to. She stood up again and the bunk creaked and moved as she did so. It suddenly got through to her aching head that where there was a bunk there might also be a locker. Lifting up the bag and the mattress, Michelle saw that they had been resting on a wooden board which had a hand-wide hole cut into it. Without much hope she lifted the board which hinged easily upwards, and then struck gold! Inside the locker was a spare sleeping-bag, brand new and still in its wrapper. Gleefully she took it out and then tidied the cabin as best she could, not that she could remember how it had looked when she found it, but just hoped the owner wouldn't notice anything amiss.

  Back in the cabin she'd chosen, she carefully bolted the door and then spread the sleeping-bag out on the bunk, climbing into it gratefully, her head now so bad that all she wanted to do was lie down" and close her eyes. But even as she climbed 9n to the bunk the sound of an outboard engine came surging nearer to the boat, and she cautiously lifted up the edge of the drawn curtain and looked out. The boat owner was coming back with his cargo. He came up to the back of the boat, skillfully turned the dinghy so that he was broadside on, caught the ladder and cut the engine of the outboard motor at the same time. For a few moments he was out of sight, but then he stood up to unload the cargo and Michelle saw his face for the first time. He was younger than she'd expected, about thirty or so, she guessed, and he had dark hair blown into disarray by the breeze. But she had been right about the firmness, though; there was a hard, tough look to the set of his jaw, the thin line of his mouth, and his cool grey eyes. It was the sort of face that would give short shrift to anyone who annoyed him or he thought a fool.

  Michelle shivered and quickly dropped the curtain back in place, hoping against hope that he wouldn't try the cabin door. For a while she lay fearfully listening to his movements along the deck as he stowed the cargo, but at length the pain in her head overcame her anxiety and she closed her eyes and fell asleep.

  A ghastly, rolling sensation in her stomach brought her awake fast. She gave a coughing, choking gasp that immediately brought a vile, nauseous feeling into her throat. Putting a hand up to her mouth and trying desperately not to be sick, she almost fell out of the bunk and groped for tile door, hardly realising that the cabin was now in darkness. Somehow she managed to fumble open the bolt and reel across the passageway to the bathroom before she lost control and was horribly sick into the loo. She knelt there, retching painfully for some time, only then aware that the boat was pitching and rolling quite badly. With a moan of sheer misery, she pulled herself upright, washed out her mouth, and remembered to flush the loo before staggering back to the cabin and collapsing into the sleeping-bag, heartily wishing she was dead. She lay there in a huddled ball, groaning wretchedly and not thinking about anything except her stomach and her head, and praying for it soon to be over.

  Suddenly the light was switched on and she dimly realised that someone had come in and was towering over her. A man exclaimed, 'Good God!' in a stunned tone and she recognised the
voice of the boat owner, but she was too ill to have cared less.

  Hopefully she opened her eyes and looked up into his astonished face. Per voice slurred and unsteady she got out, 'We—we in London yet?'

  'London?' He looked even more amazed, then his voice became grim as he said curtly, 'No, we're not near London. We're in the Atlantic Ocean heading for America!'

  CHAPTER TWO

  Michelle moaned miserably, feeling too ill to take in the real implication of his words and only aware that the terrible voyage wasn't over yet and that the rotten boat was going to go on rolling and pitching indefinitely.

  The owner seemed quite impervious to her pitiful condition; the amazed look had left his face, to be replaced by one of hard-eyed anger.

  'How long have you been here? How did you get on board?' he demanded. Michelle could only groan in answer and he impatiently repeated, 'When did you conic on board?'

  'L-last…' She tried to tell him, but her stomach came up into her throat again and she had to put a hand over her mouth. 'F—feel sick.'

  'Well, don't do it in here. Get out to the bathroom.'

  He reached to pull down the sleeping bag and caught hold of her arm, none too gently, intending to pull her on to her feet, but then his startled eyes took in her nakedness and he said, 'Good God!' for a second time. For a moment he seemed nonplussed, but then the boat rolled even farther than usual and Michelle groped wildly for the edge of the bunk, her eyes desperate.

  'Hang on!' he commanded curtly, and disappeared out of the cabin while she fought desperately to control her heaving insides. Within a minute he was back with a navy-blue towelling bathrobe, 'Here, put this on.'

  Michelle groped for it and tried to put it on inside the bag, still keeping one hand over her mouth, but the man gave an impatient exclamation and she suddenly found herself lifted bodily from the bed and the robe being wrapped round her, then she was picked up in a pair of strong arms, carried the few yards to the bathroom and deposited on the floor with her head over the loo.

  Above her she heard him swear and mutter, 'Damn this storm,' but Michelle was too busy being sick to care about him or anything else.

  He must have left her almost immediately, because when she had recovered enough to look round she was grateful to find that she was alone. Somehow she managed to crawl back across the heaving, rolling floor to the bunk and climb in it, feeling more wretched than she had ever done in her life and praying with every ounce of faith she possessed for the boat to stay still and for her' to be able to get out and on to dry land. .

  But the boat went on corkscrewing about for hours, first up and down, then sideways, then both together, and twice more Michelle had to stagger to the bathroom until there was nothing left in her stomach and she just retched horribly, which was worse than being sick. She fell over, too, as she tried to keep her balance, and banged her hip badly against the door jamb but felt so ill that she hardly noticed the pain, it was just part and parcel of the whole ghastly experience.

  At some point she was dimly aware of the man coming back into the cabin and leaning over her. He lifted her head up and made her drink something. She didn't want to and tried to push it away, but he was insistent and she obeyed him because she had no strength left to resist. The liquid made her cough and choke at first and it stung her throat as it went down, but afterwards she could feel it warm in her chest and her stomach didn't feel quite so bad, so that she was able to fall into an uneasy, exhausted sleep.

  The blissful awareness that the boat was comparatively still, just moving gently with the swell, was the first thing that penetrated to her mind arid stomach when she awoke some hours later. Gingerly she sat up, fully expecting to have to dive out to the bathroom again, but apart from a clawing, empty sensation her stomach didn't feel too bad. It was daylight again, when she drew the curtains back the sun flooded into the cabin and sent dust motes dancing in the air.

  Leaning back against the wall of the cabin, she looked down at the bathrobe and tried to remember what had happened. Her hangover seemed to have disappeared with the seasickness and her head didn't ache any more, just felt thick and cotton-woolly. 'Now she could recall vividly her quarrel with Peter and her fall into the river. She wondered how long he had looked for her before he had given up. Serve him right, she thought angrily, remembering how he'd tried to make her drunk so that he could take her. But then, in all fairness, he too had had quite a bit to drink, and, even to her somewhat limited experience, she knew that usually a boy's libido increased in direct proportion with his alcoholic intake. Not that it ever seemed to be far from the surface anyway: in the year since she had left school and been going out with boys she seemed to have spent most of her time fighting them off and refusing to go to bed with them. Although, when most of the boys she'd dated still lived at home with their parents, bed was usually the last place in which they tried to

  seduce a girl; it was more often the back seat of a car, up against a wall in a dark lane, in a lonely field, or—roost dangerous of all—oh a settee after their parents had gone to bed. Going steady with Peter had had the same problems, but he had been easier to handle than some of the others and she had been able to hold him off by making promises for-the future; a promise he'd wasted no time at all in trying to make her keep, she recalled resentfully.

  She wondered what he was doing now and what everyone at the party's reaction would be when he rushed in and said she'd fallen in the river. As the child of very famous parents she was used to always having to take a back seat, and it rather pleased her that she should be the centre of attention for a while, even if she wasn't there to see it. It occurred to her that they might even have thought that she was drowned. After all, no one knew that she'd managed to get aboard this boat. And it must have sailed from the Thames soon after, so even if they'd thought she might be on a boat they wouldn't have found her. A satisfied grin came to Michelle's mouth as she dwelt on the scene in her imagination. She could just picture Peter's parents telephoning her mother with the dreadful news. Here the smile faded as she cynically realised that her mother would make lull theatrical use of the situation, getting as much free publicity out of it as possible and acting the part of the distraught parent as only she knew how. And of course she would insist on carrying on with the opening of her new play despite the agony of mind she was going through. The show must go on. She couldn't disappoint her public, and all the other stock, meaningless phrases. Michelle's mouth twisted bitterly. God, her mother would love every minute of it! And how chagrined she'd be when her lost, drowned daughter turned up safe and sound after all. Bat she'd rise above it, she always did. She would just go into her rapturous, adoring mother routine when anyone was around and switch it off immediately they were alone, knowing full well that her charm no longer worked on Michelle.

  Sitting up in the bunk, she tried to work out how long she had been on the boat and how long it would take to get back to London. Obviously it must be into the second day now, but she had no idea at all how long it would take to get back, but her disappearance must have created quite a stir already. Perhaps they might even have sent for her father. But he was on location somewhere and in the middle of shooting a film, so whether he would be able or willing to fly to England was debatable. He was, she judged, fond of her in his own way and she had always wanted to visit him and the two wives he had got through since her mother, but Adele Verlaine had always let her know that he didn't want Michelle living with him permanently.

  A great welling bitterness filled her heart at their neglect of her, the need for love that they had never fulfilled. Serve them right if she didn't come back at all, she thought malevolently, or at least not for quite some time. Enough' time for them to feel remorseful of their treatment of her.

  The more Michelle let that idea run round in her mind the better,, she liked it. And after all, why not? What was it the man had said? That they were heading for America? If she could somehow persuade him to take her with him instead of back to Engl
and… For a moment the misery of the stormy night filled her mind and she almost rejected the idea, but with the optimism and speed of recovery of the young she was able to push the whole ghastly episode out

  of her mind, confident that it couldn't happen again. The biggest problem, of course, would be to persuade the owner not to take her back to London. But what if the news of her disappearance was announced over the radio; would he put two and two together and take her straight back? Not that he was to know that she'd boarded the boat in London, though, for all he knew she could have got on when he was tied up in Calais. Perhaps she could even pretend to be French or something so that he wouldn't suspect her real identity?

  She'd got that far in her reasoning when there was an imperative rap on the door and it was immediately pushed open as the man came in. For a brief second Michelle thought of feigning sleep to give herself more time to think, but he came in so quickly that there was no time to slide down into the sleeping-bag.

  'So you're awake, are you?' He came and stood beside the bunk, looking down at her grimly. 'How do you feel?'

  Michelle gulped, then took the plunge and said in what she hoped was a broken French accent, 'Much better, m'sieur, merci.'

  His brows drew together slightly as he looked at her intently for a moment. Then, 'Are you hungry?'

  To Michelle's surprise she found she was. 'Oui, m'sieur.'

  'Then get up and fix yourself something—there's food in the galley.'

  She looked at him indignantly. 'But I 'ave no clothes!'

  Then come as you are,' he answered unsympathetically.

  'But—-but, please, couldn't you bring me some-thing, m'sieur?'

  His dark eyes grew cold and his voice hardened. 'If you want to eat, you'll have to get it. I'm not acting as steward for a damned stowaway. And hurry up about it—-you've got a whole lot of explaining to do." He moved towards the door and then looked back. 'And wash your face, you look a mess.'