"No, no, not like that!" came the firm reprimand.
Stephen, who had been tying a reef knot very badly, paused as an even firmer hand gripped his to correct him. He paused and looked up at Miss Marlowe, whose grey-blue eyes were fixed sharply on his handiwork as she took his hand in one of hers.
Her grip was tight and very hard, the strength of those long, white fingers incongruous with the delicacy of her pretty hands. She halted his movement, took the knot in her own hands, and, fingers flying, tied it correctly in a matter of moments.
"There, like that, doctor," she said, and placed the knot in his fingers. "Do you see how it's done?"
Stephen gave her a small smile. "I do, Miss Marlowe. Reproducing it, however, is something else entirely."
"Come, try again, sir. I cannot imagine why you are having such difficulty - you are so very skillful and dextrous with your hands otherwise!" she said, and her bright eyed were sharp, demanding excellence from him.
He smiled to himself. He had long since mastered the art of tying the knot. But Miss Marlowe's correction, her hands on his, those were things he could not enjoy if he did not feign ignorance.
Miss Marlowe, though a patient teacher, had begun to become irked with him for she, with a flick of that hand, spoke.
"If you produce the knot correctly, I shall end our session early and you will have to endure less time with this wicked schoolmistress," she said, affecting an air of benevolent bartering.
Stephen looked directly into her face and tied the knot incorrectly.
She blushed pink. Reaching forward, she took the rope from his hands and with deft movements, tied the knot perfectly. "I - Dr. Byrne, I am flattered, but I should imagine that my constant nagging of you in these ridiculous lessons has become somewhat tiresome over this week and you need not pretend that you enjoy my tutelage for I-"
"Nothing could be further from the truth, Miss Marlowe," said Stephen, noting how the glorious Miss Marlowe, that steely creature, had become somewhat bashful. "You are right if you assume I have little interest in affairs of the sea - I should be lying is I said otherwise. But I should be a fool if I passed up any opportunity for the company of any person so" - Stephen searched for a word that would not make him sould ridiculous - "admirable as yourself."
Miss Marlowe did not smile, and that worried Stephen. Perhaps he had overstepped his bounds with her. After all, they had known one another just over a week, and perhaps he had been foolish to assume that she liked his company so well as she liked Isaac's, or that damned Mr. Browne's.
"Tush and nonsense," Isaac had said when, at dinner the previous night, Stephen had quietly voiced this concern. "Rosalind speaks very highly of you. She enjoys your conversations, very much so."
"Better than Mr. Browne's?" he asked.
Isaac got a strange, impish smile on his face at Stephen's query. "I should think so. She has a fair degree of affection for you. As much as you have for her, I'd imagine."
"Are you implying something, Isaac?" Stephen had snapped, his attention momentarily having been distracted from Miss Marlowe, who was speaking in a low voice to Mr. Fanning. Stephen had thought it was remarkable that anything managed to distract him from her, for her magnetism drew every eye to her, even his own, even when no woman, nor any other person, had ever captured him so.
"Of course not, Stephen," said Isaac, but his eyes danced with too much good humour for his words to be anything but a good-natured lie. "I am only observing that Rosalind appears to be quite fond of you, and that you have seemed positively infatuated with our esteemed Miss Marlowe over this past week."
Stephen ground his teeth and had hissed the next words at Isaac. "I am not - besides, it has been more than a week! Nine days at sea, in addition to the three at port!"
"You are counting the days not out of a fondness for the sea, I'd imagine. And you say that you aren't infatuated. Pah! You're lying," said Isaac. He smiled broadly and Stephen would have throttled him had he not admired him so. It was evident that Isaac himself was fond of Miss Marlowe, and to discuss such a matter with not a scrap of jealousy was admirable.
But that admiration did not prevent Stephen's fury from jumping to life, red-hot and sparking.
"You damn-" began Stephen, snarling with anger, but Mr. Fanning had interrupted them.
Now, he stared hard at Miss Marlowe, and spoke, remembering that Isaac, who was her friend, had said she was fond of him.
And that Isaac had also said Stephen was infatuated with her.
"Miss Marlowe, have I upset you?"
She regarded him archly. "No, sir."
Stephen realized that, quite unlike his usual state of being, he would care very deeply if he had upset Miss Marlowe. He had not cared for the opinion of another human being for as long as he lived. Now, the very fact that he was concerned for Miss Marlowe's feelings disturbed him greatly. He was not infatuated, surely not!
"Then why do you look as though you have just been whipped, Miss Marlowe?" he probed.
She glared directly at him, unblinking, her eyes sharp and demanding obedience from him. "I am merely offended at your dislike of naval affairs, sir."
Stephen glared back at her for a moment before his mouth twitched and he smiled. She followed suit, a smile slowly curling over her face until it lit up her entire countenace with brightness.
Though she bore a striking similarity to the Vice-Admiral, she had in that moment a sunny vivacity that he did not, and it made her even more hypnotic than her impressive father. And when she laughed, a rare, joyous laugh, Stephen joined with her eagerly, her mirth infectious.
Perhaps he was somewhat infatuated. He had affection for her, at the very least.
"Sir, if you should like, I would show you a properly tied reef knot, so that you might learn it," she said, changing the subject back to their initial discussion.
Stephen nodded. "I should like that very much."
He stood and, holding out his hand, motioned that Miss Marlowe ought to precede him out of the wardroom and through the ship. Stephen waited patiently while she retrieved a coat from her cabin - it was unseasonably cold, she had said, and then she had insisted he get his and he was powerless to refuse her - and then followed the tail of her dress as she walked.
Every head turned to watch her, with sailors doffing imaginary caps as she passed. She did not grace any of them with a glance, but with her head high, her chin in the air, she swept by them.
"After you, Vice-Admiral," Stephen muttered as she leapt nimbly up the steps.
A sailor laughed.
They emerged on deck and Stephen then realized that any chance he had of seeing a properly tied reef knot had vanished, for on the quarterdeck stood a rival to him.
"Ah, the Vice-Admiral," he said, and Miss Marlowe was momentarily distracted from her father. She turned to look at Stephen, her grey-blue eyes alight and her cheeks flushed.
Miss Marlowe's bearing did not shift in nature, but Stephen noted how the immediately fell into line with the Vice-Admiral, despite a distance of some sixty feet between them. As the man's head turned towards his daughter, so did Miss Marlowe's, in a perfect mimircy of his movement. They were not even looking at one another, yet their movement was so perfectly timed it was positively supernatural.
"Come, Dr. Byrne," said Miss Marlowe, and now she turned back to him once more. "Perhaps a reef knot later?"
"Then you do not require my presence," he said, not particularly desiring to be in the company of the Vice-Admiral and Captain Spenser, the latter whom Stephen had just seen pacing on the starboard quarterdeck - the captain's special side, Miss Marlowe had once said.
She smiled very sweetly and cocked her head. "Require? No. But I very much wish it, sir."
Stephen did not refuse her; could not refuse her, not even if he had wanted to. Instead, he offered her his arm and she took it, slipping one of her white hands through the crook of his elbow and resting it against his forearm.
That little gesture should not have given him such a thrill, but it did.
His pleasure was diminished as, Miss Marlowe having paid her respects when they reached the quarterdeck, she left him in favour of her father, taking his arm without a cue or a motion.
Stephen gave a soft sigh and noted how Miss Marlowe's eyes turned his way as he did. Isaac was nearby, some distance away, supervising a group of sailors who were hoisting a long spar aloft for some minor repairs, but he turned his head and smirked at something.
Stephen turned instead to contemplate the Vice-Admiral and his daughter. He was interrupted in this, however, when the captain spoke to Miss Marlowe, his brows arched, a sneer on his face that was not directed at her:
"How does your pupil, Miss Marlowe?" As he spoke, he sent a contemptuous look Stephen's way and took a little step toward Miss Marlowe.
Stephen was about to open his mouth, to retort that the captain ought to try a day in surgery and see how well he fared, but he realized that the captain's motivation was at least in part jealousy, for Stephen enjoyed the company of the delightful Miss Marlowe every afternoon.
"Very well, sir," said Miss Marlowe, and smiled in a way that left her eyes flashing cold.
Her father drew her closer and spoke.
"My greatcoat, if you would," said Vice-Admiral Marlowe to the captain's steward, who seemed to being going about fetching the captain's, as well. The man went scurrying off and Stephen, drawing his own coat tighter about his body, looked up at the sky darkening sky. It was now firmly grey, turning the choppy waters about them a stormy, grey-blue.
"Will it rain, captain?" he asked.
Captain Spenser nodded. "Undoubtedly. See those clouds there, doctor? There's rain in them. I dare say we should shorten sail now."
Miss Marlowe, who was standing at her father's side, smiled at Stephen but said nothing.
The steward came back with the coats and helped Captain Spenser into his. He looked as though he wanted to do the same for Vice-Admiral Marlowe, but Miss Marlowe came forward instead.
"Allow me," she said, and took the greatcoat from the man. Stephen watched as she placed it over her father's shoulders and, doing it up with expert motions of her nimble fingers - suggesting that she had done this before - smoothed it down with one hand.
Then she took her father's arm and turned her gaze out to where he was looking. Stephen noted the closeness with which the Marlowes stood, and the fact that they seemed nearly inseperable. He had long noticed the curious possessiveness they exercised over one another, and observed it now.
"Bloody hell, I thought she was his missus when she was introduced as a Marlowe!" he had once heard a sailor exclaim, and could not blame the man. There was something more in the bond between them than that of father and daughter.
"It's quite something," Isaac had marvelled. "I've known her for years, and I've seen that she loves him in a way I've never seen before. It's not even love, really. They're just so precisely similar."
And so Stephen, watching how the pair of them blinked at exactly the same moment, how their breath came and went in unison, supposed the love between Miss Marlowe and the Vice-Admiral was the unbreakable and impossible love of two people who shared the same soul.
And they did seem to share one - Stephen noted that they moved in tandem, in a synchrony too perfect for that of practice. They moved with the same spirit, spoke with the same breath, acted as one person. It was as though they had the same soul in two bodies.
"Oh, yes, Rosalind is very devoted to him," Isaac had once said, smiling over a cup of coffee. "She loves her father very much, and hates being separated from him. I made the mistake once, of asking her to come down to visit her friend in London so I could see her when I was there, while at the same time her father was on leave in Taunton. She rebuffed me and stayed with her Papa."
"There is no competition, then? One does not compete with the Vice-Admiral?" asked Stephen, and he had looked over at Miss Marlowe, seated by the window, a book in hand.
"None at all. I wonder what would happen if Rosalind were to finally have a young man. I dare say he would come a far second behind her father," laughed Isaac.
That idea pained Stephen as he stared over at Miss Marlowe. His feelings for her were tinged with an odd jealously of Mr. Browne, of Isaac, of Vice-Admiral Marlowe. And though Miss Marlowe reciprocated a form of friendship with him, though he was in her confidence and she spoke with him daily, just as much as she saw Isaac, he wondered if it would ever be possible to win her attention when it was so obviously always with the Vice-Admiral.
He was suddenly gloomier than the looming clouds. So it was without any tact nor grace that he spoke abruptly:
"Good day, gentlemen, good day Miss Marlowe."
As he paced away from the quarterdeck, he was aware of Miss Marlowe's grey-blue eyes fixed upon his back, until he heard the Vice-Admiral call her attention away.