The Bonny Bride. Deborah Hale
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.
Though Harris continued to stare at the book, his ears reddened. “Should I not practice my lessons, too?” he asked innocently.
“Lessons? Ah, yer charm lessons.” It was on the tip of her tongue to tell Harris he was already a mite too charming for his own good—or hers. Instead she spoke tartly. “The most important lesson I can teach ye about flattery is don’t lay it on too thick.”
“‘He lived long and happily with Rowena,”’ Jenny read about Wilfred of Ivanhoe, “‘for they were attached to each other by bonds of early affection and they loved each other the more from recollection of the obstacles which had impeded their union.”’
The evening light was quickly fading and Jenny wanted to finish the book before she went to bed. Harris had promised they could start Waverley the next day.
“‘Yet it would be inquiring too curiously to ask whether the recollection of Rebecca’s beauty and magna…magnan…”’
“Magnanimity.”
“‘Magnanimity,”’ Jenny repeated, “‘did not recur to his mind more frequently than the fair descendant of Alfred might altogether have approved.”’
She read the final paragraph without further prompting from Harris. Then Jenny closed the cover with a thud of triumph.
“It was a bonny story,” she said. “Except that Ivanhoe should have married Rebecca.”
Harris cast her a sidelong glance, one brow arched expressively.
“He should,” she insisted. “There was more between Sir Wilfred and Rebecca. Mind how she nursed him after Ashby and how he fought the Templar to save her from burning at the stake?”
The lilt of music and laughter drifted back from the foredeck. Off watch, the crewmen often gathered there in the evenings to tell stories, sing and drink their watered-down rum.
Harris nodded in the direction of the forecastle. “Care to go up and join in the festivities?”
Flushed with the exhilaration of finishing her second book, Jenny accepted the invitation eagerly. She and Harris made their way forward and hovered on the fringes of the gathering. The sailors sat or stood in a rough circle, a few lounging against the rails, some perched in the rigging.
The air throbbed with an infectious, rollicking beat. Callused palms clapped together. Bare feet slapped against the planks of the deck. Wooden spoons drummed a tattoo on the lids of the bilge barrels. Above the chorus of deep male voices piped the spritely trill of a tin whistle. Jenny recognized the tune but not the words, which recounted the charms of the women in various ports of call. She soon found herself clapping in time to the music. The singing ended with a loud, joyous whoop.
“Chisholm! Miss Lennox! Come join us,” called the burly boatswain. With a flick of his thumb, he motioned a young seaman to vacate his seat on a sawed-off cask so Jenny could sit down. “We’ll mind our language, ma’am,” he assured her.
“Pay me no mind.” She waved away all worries of propriety. “I’ve seven brothers, so I’m used to the way men go on.”
As if taking Jenny’s reply as his cue, Tom Nicholson raised the tin whistle to his lips and began to blow another rousing tune. One of the many Irish fighting songs, it gradually picked up a lusty chorus. Several similar songs followed. Then someone called for a jig. The apprentice boy obliged by piping up a lively air. Two young crewmen were pushed into the midst of the circle. After an awkward start, they soon picked up the rhythm and broke into a nimble step.
One of the dancers reached down and caught Jenny by the hand. Hauling her to her feet, he began to spin her about the deck in time to the exuberant music. She’d only danced once before—a few tentative steps at a cousin’s wedding. This was altogether different. Her feet moved over the gently swaying deck with an impetuous ease all their own. The sweet, vibrant music pulsed in her veins. Her partner whirled her off into another pair of arms.
A hectic flush crept into Jenny’s cheeks. She spun away to a third partner and a fourth. Strands of her hair escaped their confining pins, as though anxious to take part in the revelry. She could only toss her wayward curls and laugh, delighting in the wild joy of the moment as the music built towards its feverish climax. The crewmen greeted her performance with noisy approval, clapping and whistling.
Laughing with what little breath she had left, Jenny subsided dizzily against her partner.
“Roderick Douglas won’t care how well ye read, when ye can dance like that, lass.” Warm with admiration, Harris’s deep voice murmured in her ear.
Something told Jenny she should pull away, with a sharp rebuke to Harris Chisholm for holding her in so familiar a fashion. But she dared not let go. She was off balance. It would be too easy to fall. So she lingered in his arms longer than was seemly, anchored by his strength. Clinging to him for the few steps it took to reach her seat, she collapsed onto her improvised stool.
Some remnant of giddiness left from the dancing must have possessed her, for she slid over, patting the lid of the barrel. “There’s room for two,” she said in a breathless rush.
Without a word, Harris dropped down beside her.
High spirits exhausted, the crew’s music slowed and softened. Tom Nicholson gave his tin whistle a rest. One of the men sang a mournful, meandering ballad about an ill-fated cattle raid. Then three of the lads joined in close harmony on “Annie Laurie.” Until that night, Harris had given the extravagant love protestations of Robert Burns a rather cynical reception. The pleasant recollection of hours spent with Jenny and the unsettling awareness of her hip pressing against his gave him a new perspective.
“‘For bonnie Annie Laurie, I’ll lay me down and die.”’
Suddenly Harris could imagine what it must be like to feel that way about a woman. He wasn’t sure he cared for the idea, though. It was tantamount to putting a loaded musket into a woman’s hands and offering his heart for target practice. What if the fickle, perfidious creature pulled the trigger?
“Will you give us a song, Miss Lennox?” one of the men asked at the conclusion of “Annie Laurie.” “There’s some just don’t sound right unless they’re sung by a woman.”
“Aye, like ‘Barbrie Allen,”’ another crewman piped up.
“Nah, not that one.” The boatswain pretended