False Colors Read Online Free

while Cavendish stood, dazed by his resistance, lips slightly parted and breathing hard, exactly like a man expecting—hoping—to be kissed.
Alfie re-lived that moment on a regular basis, taking the step, pulling the captain close by his lapels, making him drop the lantern in shock and kissing him there in the utter dark until he stopped struggling and started begging for more.
Only dreams, of course. In truth, if Cavendish had rebuked him then, and really sounded like he meant it, that would have been the last of it. Even on Alfie’s reckless nature, the threat of the noose worked a certain restraint. But he saw neither revulsion, nor anger, nor even indifference. When he ducked into cover beyond the door, let down the shutters on his dark lantern and looked back, concealed, he had seen—just for one instant— Cavendish’s fierce expression melt into a puzzled smile, and his long, slim fingers reach up to adjust the bow in his hair, even as his worried frown returned.
So, not disgust by any means. Alfie rather thought it was innocence. The innocence of a man who did not know what had just happened, but who liked it nevertheless. Doubtless Cavendish thought of inverts as mincing, womanish creatures, easy to spot by their affected gestures and foppish clothes. Really the broadsheets with their satires of the “third sex” formed an honest sod’s best defense. No one expected it, Alfie smiled wryly, in so bluff and manly a chap as himself.
But it did add a hundredfold to the difficulties of courtship. Though Alfie very much hoped to be the one who turned Cavendish’s naivety into experience, who showed him what his nature clearly yearned for, it would take gentle handling and a great deal more caution than came naturally, if he was not to go too far too early, and altogether frighten the captain away.
    Four hours of watch ended in as much peace as they had begun. Alfie handed the quarterdeck back to a sleepy Armitage and went below to the wardroom, where Mrs. Harper, the Doctor’s loblolly girl, was laboriously serving tea from the mess’s big brown pot. Her arthritic knuckles were twisted and bleached as driftwood. Her hands trembled, and tea spattered over the tablecloth. It did not give him great confidence in her ability to hold down a shrieking sailor for amputation. But he said nothing and accepted a half full cup with thanks, while the wardroom servant brought in a breakfast of hard tack fried in slush, and a glorious dish of bacon from the galley.
    From the gun-deck, further forward, separated from the officers’ mess only by a canvas screen, came the homely sound of spoons scraping on wooden plates, and a periodic roaring of laughter as the off-duty watch shoveled up their porridge.
    Slumped in a chair by the door, filling the room with the scent of stale rum and staler smoke, the Master punctuated his snoring with retching coughs, but did not wake. The Boatswain haunted the deck already with his mates, looking for someone to hit, and Hall—the Purser—would not rise for another three hours, thank God.
    It is a good time to be here, Alfie thought, listening to Mrs. Harper’s account of the various accidents of the night—two bursten bellies and a wrenched wrist caused by almost falling from the rigging. With no one but the pleasant old relic for company he could forget the shortcomings of his other colleagues and concentrate on his own thoughts.
    Cavendish will be getting up around now. Alfie wondered about the man’s routine; did he sleep in his uniform in case of emergencies, or in a nightshirt? Did he mumble into his pillow and rise groggy, having to be revived by coffee, or was he one of those cheery souls who hummed an aria while they shaved?
    Alfie wanted to know. He wanted to know if John Cavendish preferred Handel to Bach, if his parents were alive and whether they were close, if he had had a puppy as a child and if so, what it was called. Where he had been schooled, what made him laugh, which