Burning Bright (7 page)

The seated man said, “Grafton, have you taken leave of your senses?”

“My lord, please…give her five minutes,” Grafton said, glancing at Elinor with no small measure of fear.

“No, not five seconds. Young lady, I do not know how you enticed this man to bring you here, but I am astonished at your want of conduct. Please leave before I am forced to have you escorted out.”

In addition to the fire laid in the fireplace, there were unlit lamps in sconces along the walls and a decorative lamp she guessed was some kind of ship’s lantern on a table below the windows. Another lamp of translucent, cloudy glass some three feet in diameter hung high above the table, shedding only a dim light on the proceedings below. Elinor wondered that the dimness did not bother the First Lord, who surely must be squinting at whatever his paper said.

She shivered and drew her cape more closely about herself. “Your room is too cold,” she said, and lit every fire in the room at once. The fire on the grate roared in its joy at being set free, filling the fireplace and stretching two feet up the chimney. The lamps on the walls flared seven inches in the air and set liquid wax pouring over the sconces to drip on the floor. The ship’s lantern made a popping sound; Elinor quickly soothed that fire and hoped it had not damaged the lamp too badly.

Melville leapt to his feet, knocking his chair over; the man nearest the fireplace stepped away from it, shielding his face from the raging heat of the fire; and the man by the window glanced down at the burning lantern next to him, then turned around to look at Elinor and crossed his arms over his chest, reclining against the wall. In that stance, despite his face being backlit by the morning light streaming through the window, Elinor recognized immediately the captain she had met the night before. She took an involuntary step backward, then turned her attention on Melville. He had gone from startled to furious.

“You dare come into my offices and play Scorchers’ tricks on me!” he shouted. “Grafton, remove this woman at once!”

“I apologize. I seem to have made your room too warm,” Elinor said. It astonished her that she sounded so calm. “Let me correct my mistake.” She extinguished all the fires with a thought, leaving the room with only their residual heat. Without the scant light of the overhead lamp, the room seemed even colder than before, the wan, blue-grey light from the windows making the four men look as if they were made of wax. Elinor hastily relit the overhead lamp, which lessened the effect but did not eliminate it. Her anxiety melted like the candle wax. She had taken an irrevocable step, and there was no going back now.

“Grafton—” Melville began, then realized what she’d done. His face fell into the same mask of astonishment the functionary’s had borne only minutes before. “You—” he said to Elinor, then seemed to run out of words.

“My lord, this is Miss Pembroke,” the captain said, advancing toward the table with his hand on the hilt of his sword to keep it from swinging. “She is, as you may have realized, an Extraordinary Scorcher.” He made a slight bow in her direction. “We were…introduced yesterday evening.”

“Captain,” Elinor said, bobbing a slight curtsey. He didn’t seem to hold her rudeness against her, but he didn’t exactly seem friendly either. Where had he learned her name? “My lord, I apologize for the display, but I wanted you to take me seriously. I wish to offer my services to the Royal Navy.”

The room went perfectly silent. Elinor refused to allow herself to blush. This was her third path, and she would not let them deny it to her. “It is well known that the Navy is fighting a losing battle,” she said. “Pirates are harassing British merchant ships, disrupting our trade, while Napoleon’s ships are interfering with the convoys supplying Lord Wellington in the Peninsula. Our Navy is the jewel of our military forces, but most of our ships are too heavy to successfully defend against the smaller, faster privateers and pirates, and as I understand from reports in the newspapers, we cannot afford to split our forces now that Napoleon has closed off European ports to our trade. To make matters worse, most of the enemy ships bear Scorchers in greater numbers than we currently have, and they have destroyed or captured many of the ships we depend on to defend our fleet, forcing our shipyards to scramble to replace them.”

She took a breath. “My lord, I believe you can use someone with my talent. I am capable of rendering those attacks useless; my power at igniting fires is unmatched; and if enough of our enemies realize that tangling with our ships will bring only death and disaster, they will look for easier targets elsewhere.”

She was not actually certain of her second point, as she had never yet had reason to test the limits of her power, but she could feel the fire call to her, and believed if she asked it, it would rage hot and bright enough to immolate this building and everyone inside. The image sickened her.

The silence persisted for a few seconds more, then both Admirals spoke at once, their words tangling in the air so they never reached Melville’s ear. The First Lord bent to right his chair, then sat in it, fixing his eyes on Elinor’s. Years of turning a calm visage to her father’s scorn and anger kept her from flinching at the intensity of his gaze. “Hold a moment,” he said, and the admirals went silent. “You are a woman,” he continued.

“I realize that. I have been a woman my entire life. Do you think a woman might not feel some desire to defend her country?”

“Women do not serve in the Navy. For a well-born woman, even an Extraordinary, to do so is unthinkable.”

“Yet you would accept my offer were I a man. You need me, my lord, and I think under such circumstances, neither of us can afford to entertain such niceties as pertain to my sex.”

One of the admirals said, “My lord, she’s not wrong.”

Melville looked at him in astonishment. “Stanhope? You, of all people, entertaining this radical notion?”

The admiral stabbed at the map with his forefinger. “Six merchant vessels lost in the last month, my lord. And that upstart Wellington has been foaming at the mouth, complaining that we are not making any effort to keep that rabble of an Army of his from starving to death. If she were a man, you wouldn’t think twice. You would probably have gone out of your way to recruit such a talent. And you know the government expects all Extraordinary Seers, Shapers, and Bounders, male
and
female, to serve four years in the Army’s War Office. We’ve been rejecting female Extraordinaries based on long-standing naval policy, but it might be time for us to rethink that policy. If this young lady is willing to take the risk, I say we allow her to.”

“That’s preposterous!” the other admiral said. “Miss…Pembroke, was it? Miss Pembroke, you have no idea what conditions on shipboard are like. You know nothing of the privations of war. We cannot guarantee your safety, let alone that you will be treated with the respect a gentlewoman deserves. There is little privacy, the men behave in a coarse fashion that will surely offend your delicate sensibilities, and what they will think of any unmarried woman who—they may offer you insult—”

“I believe any Scorcher is more than capable of defending against such assaults,” the captain drawled.

“But no lady should be subject—”

“I appreciate your concern, Admiral,” Elinor said. “You are correct that I have never experienced such conditions as obtain aboard a ship. I am, however, willing to endure if that is what I must do.”

Melville shook his head. “I don’t like it.”

“We haven’t become the preeminent naval force in the world by failing to innovate,” the admiral Melville had addressed as Stanhope said. “Consider it, my lord. Those da— those accursed pirates fleeing before
us
for a change.”

“But your reputation—” the other admiral began.

“Need not suffer if you do not publicize my involvement,” Elinor said, smoothly heading off his objection. “Although that does bring me to the second part of my offer.”

“And what is that?” Melville said. Elinor thought his opposition might be weakening. What she was about to say might cause him to throw her out of the office entirely.

“My services do not come free,” she said, “much as my offer is made in a spirit of patriotism. I want fifteen thousand pounds, invested in the funds, available to me in full when my term of service is complete.”

All the men except the captain burst out in torrents of speech. Elinor waited patiently, clenching her shaking hands in the folds of her skirts, until she judged their outrage had died down somewhat. “Gentlemen,” she said, raising her voice to carry over the din, “you have already addressed an important point: I may well be throwing my reputation away by my actions. I must have the assurance that I will be able to support myself if I do, in fact, end up ostracized by society.”

“Fifteen thousand pounds is out of the question,” the First Lord said, his face red. “Out of the question. We are stretched to the limit as it is. Do you have any idea of the cost to His Majesty’s government of our sailors’ pay alone, young lady? I cannot approve it.”

“I am well aware England has invested a great deal of money in this war,” Elinor said. “It is one of the primary points of contention between Whig and Tory and the subject of much debate for those who care about the future of our kingdom. I am also aware that the cost of a new frigate is much greater than the sum I am requesting, and we continue to require more of those since, as I mentioned before, our enemies persist in destroying or capturing them. You might think of me in terms of…of adding another ship to your fleet, in which case fifteen thousand pounds is a rare bargain. And I will forgo my share of the prize money I would otherwise be entitled to as a, well, a sailor aboard one of His Majesty’s warships. Whatever my rank within the Navy would be.”

“It is impossible. I cannot justify such an expense.”

“My lord,” Stanhope began, “her logic—”

“Admiral Stanhope, you should be the first to argue against such an extravagance!”

“Because I am in favor of reining in our expenses? If we accept Miss Pembroke’s conditions, we save the cost of another ship as well as the time it would take to build one. I have seen an enemy Extraordinary Scorcher in action off the coast of Panama, my lord. Used wisely, Miss Pembroke’s abilities could tip the scales in our favor.”

“My lord,” Elinor said. “I realize I am asking you to take a risk. If it turns out I am wrong, and I can offer the Navy nothing, then our agreement is void.” She put her hands on the table and leaned forward to look the First Lord in the eye. “My lord, no one knows I came here today. I can walk out of this office and return to my old life if you refuse me. But I don’t want to do that. And I don’t think you want me to either.”

“My lord—”

Melville cut off the second admiral with a gesture. He ran the fingers of his left hand through his hair, revealing the secret of why it looked so disordered. “Your family cannot possibly approve this course of action.”

“I am of age, sir, and an Extraordinary. My family may disapprove, but I am free to make my own decisions.”
And I will endure when my father most certainly casts me off.

The First Lord intertwined his fingers on the desk before him, possibly to prevent himself from rumpling his hair still further. For a moment, he seemed to be looking past her, contemplating some unknown future. Then he brought his gaze to bear on her, and for a moment it contained a degree of calculation so similar to the expression she had often seen in her father’s eyes that her hands shook again. “Miss Pembroke,” he said, then went silent again. “Miss Pembroke, are you certain you understand the implications of what you offer? This is not the life you were raised to. Admiral Pentstemmon is correct; we cannot guarantee your safety, let alone your comfort. There are superstitions about women aboard ship that may cause many seamen to treat you with a lack of the respect you are no doubt accustomed to. And you may find yourself without a life to return to. I repeat—are you certain?”

Elinor took another deep breath. “My lord,” she said, “the life I was raised to has not turned out to be as satisfactory as you imagine. I had far rather take this chance than stay at home and continue as I have always done.”

Melville looked at her for another long moment. He extended his hand. “Then I welcome you to the Royal Navy, Miss Pembroke.”

Admiral Pentstemmon threw up his hands and turned away. Stanhope also extended his hand to shake Elinor’s. “Admiral Stanhope,” he said. “Your talent is remarkable. Can you do it at any time?”

“I can,” Elinor said, “though I have had it only four months and have yet to discover its limits.”

“Remarkable,” Stanhope said. “I would like to see the looks on those villains’ faces when they come up against you.”

Elinor smiled, though now that she’d achieved her goal, her certainty wavered. Not her certainty that she had made the right choice, nor that she could endure shipboard life; she feared she had made these men promises she would not be able to keep. She lit the ship’s lamp once more and gave that flame space in her mind. Yes, if she chose, she could feed it until it broke free and encompassed the room. Whatever her limits might be, burning a ship was not beyond them.

“I think concealing your presence will give us an advantage in this fight. We shall proceed as quickly as possible, so word of this has no time to spread,” Melville said, removing paper and ink from a drawer next to his seat. “Your word as an Extraordinary is binding in itself, but I think a short document outlining our agreement will be a valuable surety for both our sakes—if you’ve no objection to these gentlemen witnessing?”

Elinor nodded. It was probably a good idea to define exactly what actions on her part would qualify as benefiting the Navy, in case the penny-pinching First Lord thought to cheat her later by saying she had not performed to satisfaction. Even so, she did not think the talentless Melville would dream of cheating an Extraordinary, however much political power he wielded. She read the document twice, signed, and handed the pen to the First Lord to do the same.

He swept the nib across the paper with a flourish and waved the paper in the air to dry it. “Excellent. Miss Pembroke, how soon can you be ready to leave?”