Against the Wind Read online

  “If there’s one thing I truly dislike,” he remarked as he removed his belt. “It’s a young woman with a foul mouth. You have just added five strokes to your punishment, Miss Fowler, and another five for each obscenity you employ during your chastisement. Ten, I think, if the obscenity is directed at me.”

  McAllister doubled the belt and laid his first blow low and hard across the widest expanse of Emily’s shivering backside. When she threw one hand behind her, McAllister sighed and patiently removed her hand.

  “Perhaps I should have explained the rules more clearly, Miss Fowler. You are to keep your head well down, your bottom well up, and your hands tightly clasped in front of you, until I instruct you to do otherwise. I would also remind you that your young ship mates, in the way of cabin boys the world over, are probably at this very moment pressing their unwashed ears to the bulkhead, to better overhear your screams of agony.” He handed her a small cushion. “Perhaps biting down on this will help to avoid further embarrassment.”

  Emily groaned, but accepted the cushion, and bit into it.

  But McAllister’s earlier burst of anger had subsided. Now, with the lady’s very attractive backside so prominently displayed, he was having trouble concentrating on what he had begun. Emily Fowler, though small in stature, was clearly a mature and alluring woman, with a becomingly full, round ass, and shapely legs. His earlier encounter with her had been so brief, and his anger so strong that he had not actually noticed the feel of her lovely flesh beneath his palm. And when it suddenly occurred to him that he was achingly erect, he had switched to the use of his belt in the fervent hope that she was too distracted to notice his stiffening member beneath her stomach.

  Tonight, however, the damned thing had reared to life the moment he touched her, leaving him in a difficult position, as well as a physically uncomfortable one. If he failed to deliver the promised and well-deserved whipping, he would be admitting to his “problem,” and assuring himself of nothing but trouble on the remainder of the voyage to Halifax. As appealing as this young woman was, she had earned this thrashing, and very much needed to learn respect for authority—starting here and now.

  Ethan heaved a sigh, drew his arm back, and delivered a trio of scorching blows to the tender undercurve of Emily’s upturned bottom, leaving three precisely similar red stripes on her soft ivory skin. Emily grimaced, stuffed the cushion firmly between her teeth, and made no sound. McAllister steeled himself, and then laid his next blows up and down both cheeks of her ass. This time, she whimpered slightly, but stopped well short of crying out. Determined now, he leveled another volley at an already reddened area, causing her to groan and squirm and pummel the back of the trunk with both small fists.

  To Emily, lying facedown over a trunk with her feet barely touching the floor, each new, blazing stroke of the wide leather belt seemed to be leaving a trail of fire, and as the blows continued, the urge to cry out became almost unendurable. Muffling her howls of pain in the little cushion, it took all of her will to remain where McAllister had placed her. When he applied several blows across the sensitive upper part of her thighs, two of the blows went slightly astray, and landed between her opened legs. Hoping to avoid a recurrence, Emily slipped down on the chest until she was on her knees.

  “Get your ass up, and well out!” he ordered, surprising even himself with the harshness of his words. Emily gritted her teeth, pulled herself up to stand on tiptoe, and did as she was told. McAllister swatted the lower part of her buttocks twice more, and then noticed with alarm the pattern of livid red streaks he’d created. At that exact moment, Emily gave one last groan, and capitulated.

  “I’m sorry! Oh, God! Please, Captain, no more. I am truly, truly sorry!”

  Ethan breathed a deep sigh, in part because he had achieved a small victory, but mostly from sheer relief. He had been poised to stop in any case, defeated by his own unexplainable but growing weakness for the stubborn woman he was trying to spank into submission. When he glanced down at the red stripes criss-crossing Emily’s bottom, McAllister winced with guilt.

  “You may stand up now,” he said, in as stern a tone as he could manage. As she rose and began to straighten her clothing, he tossed the belt aside, crossed to his desk, and sat down with his back to her. He opened his log and began to work, knowing full well that she was waiting for him to speak. For perhaps a full minute, he left her standing there in silence. Finally, without turning around, he waved a hand to dismiss her.

  “You may go now, Miss Fowler.”

  “Thank you,” she said quietly. Ethan said nothing. He was struggling with a very puzzling urge to take her in his arms and comfort her.

  As Emily left, closing the door softly behind her, Ethan threw down his pen and put his head between his hands. Things had taken a very unexpected turn.

  McAllister’s confusion was small beside that of his victim. As she undressed and crawled into her bunk, Emily began to weep inconsolably, partly because of the painful throb in her backside, but at least as much because of consternation. This was a man unlike any she had ever known before, and her feelings about him were more than bewildering. They were ridiculous! She had felt it from the first awful moment of their first meeting. Lurking just beneath her anger at him was a need she couldn’t understand. A need to confront him, of course, and to test him, but an even greater, very bewildering need to feel his arms about her.

  Emily understood perfectly well that she was widely regarded as a shrew. She had heard herself described in that manner since the age of twelve, which was, not coincidentally, the same year that she had begun to understand what her place in life would be. Since childhood, she had been coddled and cosseted, with nothing asked of her other than to read the Gospels on a daily basis and to embroider reasonably well. (Emily also played the spinet, and painted, both as badly as she embroidered.) It was assumed by both her parents and her community that Emily would marry early (because she was so pretty) to a gentleman of excellent position (because her own family was so well-situated). She would have a number of beautiful, well-brought up children (because her future husband would be equally attractive and well-bred.) The couple would entertain, and she would be seen at Meeting each First Day in a different bonnet, as befitted her position. She would speak genteelly, and always defer to her husband in matters of politics, religion, and community. She would gossip, and chat, and run her household beautifully.

  And before long, in Emily’s opinion, she would shrivel inwardly, and die of boredom.

  The problem was that Emily was poorly equipped for any other life than the one being prepared for her. In her short, chaperoned trips to Boston and Philadelphia, she had sometimes seen young women of her age working in shops, and she couldn’t help but notice the menial nature of the positions they filled. Despite their supposed independence, the dreary lives of these young women seemed no more rewarding or interesting than the life that awaited her.

  Which was one reason why Emily had decided, at the age of fifteen, to abandon the faith in which she had been brought up, and to enter a convent. The sudden decision broke the hearts of her parents, but they eventually agreed, adhering as best they could to their own church’s insistence upon freedom of conscience for al of its members. But, life in the convent proved a disappointment to Emily, when she realized that she would never be able to commit to the unquestioning obedience required of a postulant nun.

  Nor could she accept the order’s strict rules regarding reading matter. Over the years, Emily’s doting father had reluctantly acquiesced to his elder daughter’s demands for the sort of books that would not normally have been brought into their home—novels, in particular. Novels such as Madame Bovary, which Emily often left here and there about the house, opened to certain pages designed to annoy her mother.

  She left the convent and returned to Nantucket in just under six months, feeling that her time in the convent had at least helped her to understand what she truly wanted from life. Marriage, but only to the right man—th
e sort of man who would allow her to be herself, make her own judgments, and to speak her mind freely. The sort of strong, confident man who wouldn’t be threatened by her intelligence. A man who would appreciate her best qualities, and simply ignore her worst.

  She had been home for less than a week when she began to understood that her options were exactly the same as they had been when she left. Within two years, she would marry as well as possible and take up the sort of tranquil domestic existence that all of her friends seemed eager to embrace.

  It was at that point that Emily set out to make herself as unappealing a marital prospect as possible, and at this, she did very well. At twenty-four, still unmarried and with neither the education nor the temperament for teaching or church work, Emily finally settled into a prickly spinsterhood. Young men came and went, and either she rejected them, or they rejected her. All of this rejection was done correctly and politely, of course, so that neither party could have been said to have “lost face.” But the fact remained that Emily was approaching thirty and had more or less kissed all of the available frogs in her small pond. And none of these frogs had turned out to be her prince.

  “But what is it you want, Emily?” her Mother wept, when the very last candidate from the very last “good” family had kissed her hand, taken his hat, and departed in a distinctly unflattering rush. “You’ve found fault with every single young man you’ve met, when any one of them would have made you a wonderful husband. Do you want everything in the whole world?”

  “No, Mother,” Emily had tried to explain. “I don’t want everything, but I want…” She paused, searching for the right words to explain her tumultuous emotions. “I want … something!”

  “But what?” Naomi cried.

  Emily could only sigh. “I don’t know, Mother. But when I find it, I’ll know.”

  But in all these years, Emily hadn’t found it—until she met Ethan McAllister.

  Chapter Four

  Emily stayed below most of the day following her disastrous shore leave, hoping to avoid any further contact with the captain. Forced by a still smarting rear end to lay on her stomach in the damp and chilly bunk, she spent her time there trying to think of a way out of what seemed an impossible situation. What the monster McAllister had done to her was unimaginably humiliating, to say nothing of painful. Yet, it was too late to telegraph her father to send the funds needed to return home in some other fashion than under the hard eye of the captain. Even if she could manage to slip ashore and reach the telegraph office, Emily had begun to harbor a nagging suspicion that the money might not be so readily forthcoming. She had been given no further news of Mr. Withers’ threatened suit, and feared that she might well be persona non grata anywhere on Nantucket.

  As the final afternoon of shore leave wore on, the crew began to straggle aboard in groups of two and three, and by dinnertime, most of them were accounted for, idling on deck at cards or sharing unlikely tales of their conquests ashore. The remainder of the day and evening would be spent preparing the Liza for sea, and the ship would set sail in the morning. Emily turned stiffly on her side, rubbed the sting in her bottom, cursed the captain, and tried to sleep for another hour. There would be little enough time for rest after today.

  It was dark when she was awakened by a loud whisper, and a thump on her shoulder. Harry Eakins was leaning over her bunk, shaking her arm.

  “Wake up, Miss, please! You’ve got to help us out. Hinton’s got himself in a proper fix, for sure!”

  With some discomfort, Emily sat up and rubbed her eyes. “What’s the matter with Hinton?” she asked irritably. At fifteen, Jack Hinton was the eldest of the boys, and a bit of a rake, despite his tender years.

  “He met this whore at the Red Rose, and stayed ashore with the others. Then, he filched a skiff from the docks and tried to come aboard without Mr. Johnson catching him.”

  “And?”

  “He’s bad drunk, and now, he’s gone and caught himself up in the anchor hawses. He’s near hung himself, dangling there, and Eli and I can’t pull him up without help. Please, Miss! If Mr. Johnson or the captain finds him, he’ll get his ass–sorry, Miss, I mean his rump, tanned something fierce, and lose his wages, too!”

  Emily struggled from her bunk and grabbed her pea jacket. Jack was a scoundrel, but she felt honor bound to spare any cabin mate the kind of tanning she’d gotten.

  It was almost three in the morning, and the deck was dark and still. The only evidence of life aboard was the soft snoring of the sailor supposedly on watch. At the starboard bow, Little Eli waited nervously, occasionally leaning over the side and gesturing frantically. Emily peered over the rail, and there, with his left trouser leg snagged on the anchor cable, was the fugitive fornicator, handsome Jack Hinton, who was currently heaving mightily into the harbor below.

  “He’s sick!” she whispered.

  Little Eli shook his head. “Not as sick as when Mr. Johnson gets aholt o’ ‘im, that’s fer sure. One of you needs to climb down git ‘im loose, then fix a rope ‘round ‘im tight, so’s the other two kin pull ‘im up. Harry, you up fer the climb?”

  Emily looked at the two of them. Little Eli weighed twice what she did, and Harry, at twelve, was well muscled and strong. Jack Hinton’s beefy frame probably weighed in at over two hundred pounds.

  “No,” she sighed. “The two of you need to pull him up. I’ll take the rope down and release Jack.”

  Eli slapped her on the back. “Yer a right square one, Miss! Jack’ll be in yer debt.”

  “Jack’s an idiot!” she snapped. “If we’re all caught and strapped black and blue by Mr. Johnson, it will serve us right for helping the jackass.”

  Quickly, the boys fastened two ropes around her waist, and Emily crawled over the railing and let herself be lowered slowly to where Jack dangled. Caught by his pant leg, he appeared to be unconscious now, and upon careful examination, it became obvious that the only way to free him was to remove the young criminal’s shoe, and his grubby trousers, as well. She removed the first rope from her waist and tied it around Jack’s own. Then, with some difficulty, since he was upside down and twisting in a strong breeze, she unbuttoned and began to remove his trousers. Not entirely to her surprise, young Mr. Hinton was totally naked, his brawny, hirsute buttocks directly in her face. Emily turned her head aside with distaste as she completed her task, pulling the trousers down over his buttocks and leaving them to hang there, like a forlorn flag. With this part of the rescue completed, she waved to the boys, who began to haul Jack up the ice-slick bulwark. Apparently feeling more like himself with an empty stomach, Jack began singing an obscene ditty. Emily gave him a sharp swat across his thigh to shut him up, and then watched as Jack’s body moved slowly upward, and waited nervously for her turn on the rope. In the meantime, she clung to the anchor cable, her fingers numb and blue with cold.

  “Please, hurry!” she whispered. “I’m freezing, and I can’t hold on much longer!” A moment later, Harry’s face appeared at the bulwark railing.

  “A minute, Miss!”

  Suddenly, Emily’s fingers slipped down the ice-slick surface of the thick cable, and she fell, coming to a wrenching halt a few feet below at the end of the short rope. Below, in the fog, she could make out the pale outline of the stolen skiff and the icy waters of the harbor. A moment later, her inexpertly tied knot gave way, and Emily plummeted downward, crashing into the flimsy little boat with the sickening sound of splitting wood.

  To Emily, and no doubt to her companions-in-crime, the noise of the impact was deafening, but after a few seconds, when no one else appeared to notice, Eli peered down and saw Emily on the bottom of the tiny smashed boat in her nightshirt and jacket, writhing in pain while the ruined skiff went down rapidly by the stern. Hurriedly, he threw her a coiled rope.

  “Hold on, Miss! We’ll git y’ up, quick as anything!”

  Fighting the urge to scream, and with her strength failing rapidly, Emily obeyed as well as she could. She had landed on her rig
ht flank, which was now in agony, and beneath the thin fabric of her nightshift, she felt a slow ooze of something sticky.

  Carefully, the boys inched her up the hull and dragged her over the rail to safety. Emily dropped to the deck, and doubled over in pain.

  “What is it, Miss? “ Harry whispered. “Are you hurt?”

  “No, Harry,” she lied. “I’m fine. Where’s Jack ?”

  “He’s already below, snoring like a typhoon.”

  “Good. Now, you two go, as well. We’ll all be in a fine mess if Mr. Johnson finds us.”

  When Eli and Harry hurried away to tend to their fallen comrade, Emily struggled to her feet, and limped to her cabin. It had been a very hard two days.

  When she awoke in the middle of the night with stabbing pains down the right side of her body, Emily’s first thought was severe bruising—not an unexpected result after the long fall she’d taken. She tried to sit up, and when that was impossible, settled for turning onto her back and reaching underneath her shift to explore the wound. From just beneath her ribs and extending almost to her knee, the skin was taut and hot to the touch, and the slightest touch made her cry out. She bit her wrist and felt the spot again. Something rough and sharp was embedded beneath the skin of her right hip, with the entire area caked in dried blood. Muffling a prolonged groan in her pillow, she forced herself to her feet, found a match to light the stubby candle over her bunk, and pulled up her gown to inspect the wound. Even in the meager light, she could see the filthy piece of splintered wood thrust deep in her flesh.