Loving Sarah

Chapter One-1

Chapter One

Liverpool, June 1835

“What about her? She looks fast, doesn’t she?”

“Hmmm… Aurelia,” Ian Alexander Ross-Mackeever, grandson of the Earl Mackeever, mused as he strolled alongside his friend, Lucky Gualtiero, brother of the Duchess of Caversham. “She may look fast, but she’s not built the way I like. Something about her shape… too curvy if you ask me. It looks like she might fall apart before the ordeal is over.”

“What about that one? Evangeline,” his dark, olive-skinned friend asked.

Ian turned his gaze to where Lucky motioned. “Too top-heavy, and her bottom’s too narrow to support her. She’ll tip over in a stiff wind.”

“What about that one?”

“Her bottom’s too broad. She’ll be too slow to tack.”

“Well, you can’t say the same about that one over there. She has a nice, well-proportioned hull. At least what I can see of it.”

Ian didn’t need to consider the vessel in question, for he knew her design well. He should, it was very similar to, if not exactly like, a design of his father’s. “Yes. Nice curves, sturdily built, and I think I know her owner. If it is who I think, he has a load of money, but no skill at the wheel.” He gazed at Ann McKim longingly. “She was launched five years ago from the very yard my father helped found and has already broken records for the fastest crossing times for the Atlantic and Pacific in both directions. But a ship like that could do far better with the right man at the wheel.” Sighing, he turned to Lucky. “What that lady needs is a man with a knowledgeable, soft hand and the experience to coax her on when she wants to give up.”

“So, do you think we stand a chance?” Lucky stopped and turned toward him.

Ian looked over the competition once more, and nodded. “Oh, I’d say the odds are very good. Next to McKim’s lady out there, we’ve definitely got the best boats in this race. A little smaller, a little aged, but well broken in. More importantly, both of them are lovingly maintained and handled.” They walked away from the dock and the preparations for the next day’s ceremony. “I believe everything is ready for the morning. God willing, we’ll have good wind.”

“The weather will hold until we’re well out,” Lucky said as he scanned the sky and horizon around them. Ian didn’t question him. He knew better. Like an old sailor, Lucky had an instinct for forecasting weather just by looking at the clouds. “Remember, my sister’s throwing us a dinner party to see us off. Be at the house around seven.”

“I’ll be there. You know I wouldn’t miss an opportunity for real food. Anything is better than the grub Old Will throws into a kettle,” Ian said as they neared a waiting hackney.

“You need to find a better cook,” Lucky replied. “So you stop trying to take mine.”

The driver tipped his hat and opened the door for the gentlemen. “You go on without me. I’m just going to get cleaned up and make sure the watch is in place. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Fine.” Lucky gave a quick nod to the man holding the door, then asked Ian if he needed the address again. Ian shook his head and simply asked the hackney driver to return for him after dropping off Lucky. “Then I’ll see you soon.”

The hackney door closed on Lucky. After the driver cued the horse to move on, Ian turned back to the dinghy tied below and rowed out to the Revenge, his best hope for victory in this race. Their supplies had been loaded earlier in the day, so he’d moved his boat away from the hustle and bustle of the dock. And any potential sabotage. Not that he suspected his fellow competitors of such underhanded behavior, but one could never be too careful when the stakes were this high. Tying off the dinghy, he climbed onto the deck and double-checked to make sure all was in readiness for the start of the race.

Normally, he wouldn’t have considered wasting their time entering a race, but the twenty-five-thousand-pound purse was far too large to ignore. More importantly, if he and Lucky were serious about succeeding in their joint venture, the newly chartered Empire Tea Importers, they needed more ships. Two retrofit Baltimore schooners, though a respectable beginning, wouldn’t turn the kind of profits necessary to expand their business in the manner they wanted. The tea run they’d made last year left him with barely enough to live on after paying the note—a full half of what they borrowed—and their crew’s salaries. Lucky might not need the money as much as Ian did, but he’d be damned if he’d let his partner pay their way until they could turn a profit. Lucky had done enough already by paying the shipyard bill for the retrofit of the two boats over the past winter.

His dream, and Lucky’s too, was to have a fleet of at least a dozen clippers, preferably designed and built to their specifications. After carefully studying Colonel Beaufoy’s publication, Nautical and Hydraulic Experiments, where Beaufoy tested and found Newton’s hydraulics theory unlikely, Ian had begun drawing his own hull designs. To maximize hull space for valuable cargo, Ian’s idea was first to streamline the design of the hull; next to make her longer and deeper in the keel; then, eliminate the complete dependence on ballast and use lead plate on the keel in conjunction with minimal internal ballast for stabilization. He was excited and anxious to test his theory. If it worked, he knew it would forever change the way hulls were designed and built. And his father, wherever his soul rested, would be proud.

Having grown up with a university-educated naval architect for a father, a man who designed clipper hulls and constructed them, Ian knew that shipyards in New York and Baltimore were willing to build experimental designs; whereas in Aberdeen and Halifax, they were more likely to insist the time-tested and proven designs they had been successfully building for the last twenty years were better. Ian knew his design held promise and so did his partner. So he would amuse Lucky and have the Aberdeen yards look at the designs, but Ian knew they would likely have to go back to America to have them built the way they wanted.

Ian made his way down to his small cabin, stopping to take a bucket of fresh water from the barrel near the companionway. He ladled some into the metal basin, set the bucket down near the washstand, then stripped. He dunked his head into the bowl and began washing. One day, he’d like to have a house with a proper bathing chamber. There would be no more tossing water out of portholes or over the railing and refilling wash basins. No more bathing with cold water, except when at sea. Worst of all were the times he had to bathe with salt water, because it always left him feeling sticky and itchy. For that reason, he understood why some of the crew went without baths during those times.

Life at sea wasn’t the romantic, adventurous dream he’d imagined. But this had been his reality for the past five years since leaving university. He supposed he could have lived on credit and taken rooms somewhere, as did others in his financial situation. But Ian was too American for that, as Lucky reminded him on those rare occasions when Ian complained out loud. He might be the grandson of the Earl Mackeever, former commander in the King’s Navy and a hero who was severely injured in the Siege of Charleston saving the lives of his sailors as his ship sank. But, he was still the American-born son of a Baltimore naval architect who’d designed ships for the Americans in their second war for independence—one of the two reasons his grandfather hated him, and the old sod reminded him of it each time Ian had seen him. Of course, since the incident, Ian hadn’t seen him at all.

Yes, the man with whom he shared blood despised him because of it. He never failed to remind Ian that his mother was a servant in his home and his father was a traitor to Great Britain and responsible for the deaths of many fine British sailors, perhaps even his uncle.

But there was another reason the old man hated him. One so dark and so foul that Ian had never told a soul, not even his best friend. The secret existed only between him and his grandfather, and when the old bastard died, Ian would be free to live a normal life. Or, as normal as an American-born heir of a Scottish earl could live.

Coming to Britain as a child hadn’t been easy. Some people, he’d learned over the years, had long memories, especially when they’d lost loved ones. And when your father was instrumental in expediting their dispatch to the next life, it was even more difficult to find a friendly face at school, and later university. Ian often felt he was the only unwelcome foreigner at school. It wasn’t until Oxford, where he met Luchino Antonio Francesco Gualtiero, the Conte di Loretto, Lucky to all who knew him, that he’d found a kindred spirit. His new friend was just as much an outsider because of his swarthy, Mediterranean appearance as Ian was for his American blood. It was in that atmosphere, that he and Lucky had become fast friends and immediately after university, business partners.

Now, at age twenty-five, Ian had the entire world before him. And no place to call home except this ship. He wasn’t British because he was born in America, but no longer American because nothing remained there for him, hadn’t since his father died twelve years earlier, when Ian was thirteen. The last time Ian saw his father, Ian had been twelve years old and forced to board a ship to England to live with the grandfather and two aunts who would see to his proper education and preparation for him to take his place in society as his grandfather’s heir. It had been something he’d fought against with all of his little boy might, to no avail.

Opening the cabinet, he remembered the cedar lining still needed replacing as he took out his good clothing. Repairs inside his cabin had been low in priority during the renovations, but now as he looked over his best trousers to make sure they weren’t moth-eaten or torn, he decided it needed to get moved up on the list. He checked the coat and linen shirt for tiny holes, saw none, and smiled. Lifting the only waistcoat he owned, he noticed the stitching at the edge of the wool where it met the satin was coming apart, but knew it would remain hidden by the coat.

If he ever did take his place in society, he would need to pay more attention to his dress. Ian owed it to his father’s sisters not to be an embarrassment to them when he did, especially after all they’d done for him over the years, from taking him in when his father sent him over for his formal education to sponsoring his entrée into society. Events like this dinner with Lucky’s family were sure to become more common as they became more successful. He had to think of tonight as an opportunity to polish his manners and become more accustomed with the world he’d not been born to but now found himself a reluctant part of.

Success would make his aunts, two dear old ladies he adored, proud. Until then, he had to stop wasting time worrying over his grandfather’s hatred.

Lady Sarah Eileen Halden dropped her gaze as her brothers discussed the upcoming race, lest they see the delight in her eyes while her final plan started to form. The rented home in Liverpool the family had taken for the next several months was nowhere near as large or opulent as Caversham House or Haldenwood, but it had something that would serve her well this night. She’d spied it right after arriving and looking over her temporary bedroom. She had a balcony that was a mere ten or twelve feet above ground. Sarah could quite easily climb over the railing and ease herself down. The drop, after lowering herself as much as possible, wouldn’t be much more than the jump from her favorite tree at home.

She saw it as a sign that she was meant to go with Lucky on this race.