Camille disguises herself to gain a position as the captain's cabin boy aboard a ship bound for the Caribbean in 1676. She soon discovers her natural urges, and her feelings must be expressed as a young boy looking at a father figure, not as a smitt...
Charles led me down into the great cabin and across it to just aft of the privy closet. There, he rotated a piece of moulding and pulled open two broad doors to reveal a copper-lined box. Then he knelt and leaned down into it, lifting a piece of brass resembling a mushroom and saying as he showed it to me, "This plugs the drain."
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He replaced it, then when he turned a spigot, water flowed out the end of a pipe and into the bath. "This will have been well-warmed by the sun the past few days. Feel." He took my hand and placed it in the stream.
"Oh, my. How wonderfully ingenious. Is this your invention?"
"Only the blacked hogshead up top and the pipe leading down from it. The bath and its drain were built with the ship."
Charles unbuttoned and peeled my sodden shirt from me, then he stared at what he had exposed, nodding in silence for a while before he spoke, "As if sitting on a shelf for display. I had wondered how maidens steady these, yet retain their prominence."
He ran his fingers lightly across the curved tops while his thumbs caressed my nubbins, sending a thrill through my body.
I hummed a sigh and another, then I said, "Mistress Duncan had explained enhancing to me, so I thought to try it. Laced in this manner, it lifts and holds steady, rather than compressing."
"So, this is what lies beneath a maiden's bodice, giving them such intriguing shapes."
"Or possibly similar devices to push them up." I shrugged. "I missed that entire part of being informed. All parts, it seems." I unlaced the vest while Charles untied my cincture and lowered my breeches to my ankles, then he knelt to lift each foot and remove my shoes and stockings.
As I stepped into the bath, I said, "Please, do join me. There is plenty of room for us both here."
"As much as that entices me, I expect to be called again to the deck. But I will remain to assist until then, if you wish."
A while later, as he soaped my back, I asked, "How did you know she was Santiago?"
"Two of the rescued sailors were in the heads, and they recognised her tall sterncastle. They reported their thoughts, and this fast made its way to us. I sent for your father, and he agreed that it might be her."
"Might be her? Sounds as if he was not convinced."
"The design is Spanish, and there are others like her in these waters; this part of Hispaniola remains theirs. But that Santiago's return was due, and that she flew English colours, added suspicion, so we loaded and primed the starboard guns, ball odd and shot even."
"Starboard only? What if you needed the port?"
"We had the wind, so we could keep her to starboard as we closed. Beating to windward, she was hampered in her choices, and it would have been foolhardy for her to attack us."
