If James’s argument had changed his mind, Ravenna didn’t know, but Vancouver did let her go ashore the next day. His rules for Sarah and her were strict: They were to be well chaperoned and never out of sight from the detachment of armed marines sent with every crew. With this arrangement, Ravenna couldn’t single out Paul for a moment alone, which had been precisely the captain’s intention to begin with. There’d be no sexual encounters to interfere with Paul’s work if Vancouver could help it.
As for James and Sarah, the captain didn’t even know about them.
In full view of everyone they were maid and master, just as they’d been for most of their lives. They didn’t flirt, didn’t kiss. They said nothing about their attachment to anyone, not even when the four of them were alone in James’s cabin, squished around the cannon for a glass of wine.
But Ravenna knew they made love. Sarah had condoms in her sea-chest, and nearly every week she’d slip out after bedtime with one in her pocket. Where she met James, how they kept from being caught, these things were a mystery to Ravenna. The walls have ears, Sarah would say, and she refused to discuss her sexual adventures, even in a whisper behind locked doors.
That first night in Tahiti was no different. There was a loud game of faro going on in the midshipmen’s berth when Sarah finally returned from her outing. Ravenna saw the girl’s face flushed in the candlelight, her eyes aglow with what she and James had just done beneath the cover of the gambling racket, and Ravenna wondered, What had they just done?
With the idea of shore leave in the morning and the possibility that Paul and she might steal away from Vancouver’s sight, Ravenna couldn’t help asking Sarah one final time: What exactly did she do with James? And if Ravenna were to do the same to Paul, would he finally make love to her?
From where she sat by the gunport window, Sarah rolled her eyes. “You’re gonna seduce him, m’lady? The maiden o’ seven-an’-twenty years? An’ where will we get the nerve, pray tell?”
“I will,” she insisted, but with the way the maid scoffed at her, Ravenna couldn’t help but laugh.
“You see?” Sarah said. “Even you can’t deny it. Chaste as an anchoress, that’s what James says. You could no more seduce a gentleman than I could be queen of—”
“Don’t make fun of me, just tell me how!”
“Why, I’ve no idea what you mean.”
“How do you…arouse him? I mean, when it’s you coming on to him, what do you do? Take off your clothes? Or take off his?”
“M’lady they can hear you, you know, every last one of ’em—”
“Oh they’re all playing cards,” she said as she climbed out of her hammock. “Just tell me what happens between you and James. Do you ever start it? What does he like?”
“Would you really seduce m’lord?” Sarah asked.
“Yes! Just tell me what I should—”
But Sarah had gotten up from her seat, was bent over the sea-chest now and hunting through the extra clothes. Ravenna watched in confusion, not knowing what the girl had in mind, and the mystery was no more solved when Sarah pulled out a pair of Ravenna’s trousers. “Here,” she said, tossing them in her lap.
“What am I supposed to do with these?”
“Don’t you know? M’Lord Killiney has a penchant for ’em, as does everyone else aboard this ship if James is to be believed.”
Looking down at the trousers in her hands, Ravenna was astounded. They were the master’s mate’s breeches Vancouver had long ago sent her for the voyage. She only occasionally put them on, and for one very good reason: They made her look as if she’d stood waist-deep in a barrel of buff-colored paint.
“Wear those to begin with, m’lady,” Sarah said. “Then we’ll work up to more serious fare.”