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‘Oh, but—’ she said, even though she knew the matter was now closed.
‘Perhaps you had better...er...pack.’
He smiled then, a huge smile that transformed his face. If she hadn’t been so irritated with him, she would have enjoyed the sight.
‘Or rather I should say, go and pack, my dearest love.’
Chapter Ten (#ud480d6bb-3198-5402-b3a9-7f97dc803e4b)
They left at the ungodly hour of six in the morning. Joe had no difficulty with early times. From the looks of his soon-to-be travelling companion and sudden fiancée, the matter was thornier. Miss Newsome was obviously not a cheerful riser.
‘I gather you are not a lark,’ he said and regretted his good cheer the moment the words tripped off his lips like happy sprites and crashed to the floor, victims of a frown and a pout.
She did have lovely lips, full and nicely chiselled. Wiser now, he knew better than to venture another comment, positive or negative. Some people needed an hour or two to accustom themselves to a new day. On the other hand, he felt like a wrung-out rag after eleven in the evening. Make that ten. She would find out soon enough.
Over breakfast, the Newsomes and Joe discussed the matter of an engagement ring while Verity ignored the three of them. She turned her attention to her baked egg, but soon gave up. Breakfast might be her favourite meal, but this morning it was gall and wormwood.
‘I don’t have anything even for short loan,’ Joe confessed.
‘You can tell anyone who asks that this is a quite recent engagement and you haven’t a ring yet,’ Mama said.
Verity raised her eyebrows. Obviously she was not one to indulge in prevarication.
He couldn’t disagree with her reluctance. ‘Perhaps, Mrs Newsome, but too many lies require extreme vigilance in keeping a story straight.’
‘And you know this how, Captain?’ Verity asked, all sweetness.
‘Miss Newsome, my darling, affianced dear, I was eight years old once, as hard as that is to credit. I recall a painful spanking from my mother.’
Good God, where was his conversation coming from? Not a single member of his crew would recognise him.
Miss Newsome seemed to take pity on him then. ‘Very well. We can say it is an engagement of recent origin,’ she conceded, after a sigh of theatrical proportion.
‘Which is precisely true,’ Captain Everard said, keeping his expression bland. ‘Only a mere ten hours ago I was a free, unencumbered man.’
Miss Newsome burst out laughing. She looked in the captain’s eyes and he gazed back, perfectly calm. This was no fleet action, but he was beginning to enjoy himself.
‘Oh, for goodness sake. We’ll be late,’ she said. ‘Eat your eggs, Captain.’
‘I’d better be Joe to you, Verity,’ he told her.
* * *
It appeared that a fair number of Weltby’s citizens were either travelling this morning, too, or liked to see people off on a journey. To Joe’s eyes, most seemed to have no specific purpose at all.
‘Does everyone in Weltby bail out at Christmastime?’ he asked, genuinely puzzled. ‘What do you make of this, Mr Newsome?’
Augustus Newsome regarded the crowd and turned back to Joe with a bland expression containing the hint of apology to it, which roused Joe’s suspicions.
‘I mentioned to a few people in the village yesterday that you were a genuine Trafalgar hero, come to offer personal condolences to us about Davey,’ he said.
‘No hero. I was merely attending to my duty.’
Mr Newsome continued to beam at him, so Joe tried another tack. ‘We weren’t doing anything glamorous,’ he said, as the crowd gathered closer. ‘Frigates serve as repeaters in a large ship-to-ship engagement as Trafalgar was. We were just doing our job.’
He didn’t mean to raise his voice, but there was Verity’s hand on his arm. Her touch calmed his heart, something he needed at that exact moment, because Trafalgar felt too real again.
He dug deep and thank God the coachman was climbing into his box. ‘The real heroes are those of you who give us your sons,’ he said quietly. ‘I mean that with all my heart.’ He touched his chest. ‘Thank you from the bottom of mine.’
Goodness gracious, now his audience was sniffing.
‘Are ye bound back to war, sir?’ someone in the crowd asked.
‘Aye, but first I have agreed to escort Miss Newsome to Norfolk,’ he said, happy to change the subject.
Knowing looks passed from one to another, which made his face feel warm. He knew small villages because he came from one, where people shared all news because nothing important ever happened. He looked for kindness and charity in those eyes, and did not look in vain. They could imagine all they wanted over someone who was obviously a village favourite, from the kind looks coming Miss Newsome’s way. No need for him to explain himself further.
‘It is one last service I could perform for my second lieutenant,’ he said. ‘I do it with pleasure. Good day. I believe the coachman would like to keep to his time.’
He held out his hand for Verity and helped her up, where four travellers already on the coach looked back at them. One rotund little fellow moved as close as he could to the window, but the space remaining was scarcely adequate.
Miss Newsome seated herself next to the window and he squeezed in beside her.
‘I wish I didn’t have to keep explaining myself,’ he whispered to her. ‘I didn’t reckon it would be this hard.’
‘Easily dealt with,’ she whispered back. ‘Put your bicorn in my lap and your head against my shoulder and go to sleep.’
‘I’m not tired,’ he whispered back.
‘I am. Be quiet and pretend.’
‘There’s no room for my arm,’ he said, feeling like a pouty child.
‘Put it around my shoulders,’ Miss Newsome replied. Was the woman never at a loss?
She was right. He eased his arm around her shoulders and gained enough space to wedge himself into the tight space. But his head on her shoulder? They were much the same height, so the theory was sound enough. He tested cautiously, and actually found himself relaxing. Maybe he hadn’t slept as soundly last night as he had imagined. Maybe he hadn’t slept well in weeks.
* * *
He woke up several hours later, looking around in surprise because he had actually relaxed. Miss Newsome was knitting and chatting with a woman about her age seated across from her, from the looks of her about ready to give birth.
Without raising his head from its admittedly comfortable resting place—thank goodness Miss Newsome wasn’t a skinny thing with bones everywhere—he managed a sideways glance at the little man crowding him, also asleep and leaning against him.
Such a dilemma: if he sat up, the porky fellow would likely wake up, too. Joe doubted too many men had leaned against Miss Newsome, which he privately discovered was a pleasant thing to do.
‘I could sit up, but I would wake up the man leaning against me,’ he whispered to Miss Newsome.
‘Let him be, then,’ she said. ‘I’m having no trouble knitting and you are not a burden,’ she replied. ‘In fact, if I may speak plain, I like the fragrance of your cologne. So does Mrs Black. Mrs Black, let me introduce Captain Everard. Joe, Mrs Black is the wife of a joiner and headed home after a week visiting her sister.’
‘Pleased to make your acquaintance,’ he said, ready to laugh at the incongruity of the situation, but happy to have his notion confirmed about the interesting people one could meet on the mail coach.
‘Same here,’ Mrs Black said. She shifted a little and winced, obviously finding not a single bit of comfort in her gravid state. ‘We’ve been wondering, your wife and I, where you got that fragrance. She said you’re newly back from Trafalgar.’
‘Oh, but...’ Miss Newsome began saying. ‘I should explain...’
Oh, worse and worse. Mrs Black was labouring under a not surprising misapprehension, since he had made himself at home against Miss Newsome, with his arm around her shoulder and his fingers drooping perilously close to her bosom. Joe didn’t know a great deal about social niceties, but he strongly suspected that even a fiancé would not sit this way. Mrs Black had made the logical connection. If he said anything, fiancé or not, she would probably be aghast.
‘I was at Trafalgar and newly back,’ he said quickly. ‘I haven’t had enough time to tell Verity all my stories.’
He could explain to Verity later why he was continuing an understandable error. ‘My crew had an opportunity to relieve the officers of the captured Ildefonzo of some personal possessions. I am the dubious beneficiary, but I like lemon, too.’
‘Poor, deluded men,’ the joiner’s wife said in sympathy. ‘Couldn’t you stop the looting?’
‘Joe... Captain Everard...was unaware of it,’ Miss Newsome said, as smoothly as if she lied every day. ‘You can see that he had a dreadful wound to his face.’
‘That’s the whole story,’ Joe said, well aware that it was fiction—calling it a story was no stretch. He had bought the cologne at Gibraltar, where they docked for enough repairs to limp them home. ‘Spoils of war, Mrs Black, and nothing more.’
Apparently satisfied, Mrs Black continued her own knitting and Verity returned to the sock in her lap. Considering discretion the better part of valour, Joe pretended to be asleep.
* * *
When they arrived in Whistler, he happily escorted Mrs Black from the mail coach and wished her well with her upcoming blessed event. She touched his heart by kissing his cheek and thanking him for his role at Trafalgar.
‘Please tell Mrs Everard how mindful England is of her family’s sacrifice,’ she said.
‘I will,’ he said and that was no lie.
He helped Verity down next because the coachman had announced a noon stop. He laughed inside at the contrition on her face and waited for her apology, which wasn’t long in coming.
‘Captain, I had no idea she would assume we were married,’ she whispered. ‘I never had a chance to mention our engagement and I didn’t want to embarrass her.’
Her lips nearly tickled his ear and he found the sensation beguiling and far from unpleasant. ‘No fears, Verity,’ he said. ‘If the others on the coach continue their journey, we have no choice but to continue the charade.’
‘It’s perhaps regrettable, but no hardship,’ Miss Newsome said. ‘We looked even more casual than an engaged couple, didn’t we?’
‘Decidedly ramshackle on my part, but I have to say that your shoulder is comfortable.’
‘And your arm around me equally so,’ she said quietly. ‘But that is travel on the mail coach, eh?’
Chapter Eleven (#ud480d6bb-3198-5402-b3a9-7f97dc803e4b)
The charade continued, because the round man remained aboard.
‘There is one problem with lying,’ Verity whispered as they tried to make themselves comfortable for the continuation of the journey.
‘Only one?’ he teased.
‘Wretched man,’ she said with some feeling. ‘We have to remember our lies so we do not misspeak.’
‘Heaven forbid,’ Joe said, enjoying this journey more by the minute. Blockade life bored him so badly that even this gentle misdemeanour amused him excessively. Still, a man should explain himself.
‘When we followed Villeneuve and the Bucentaure from Toulon, and thence to Trafalgar, you could have sliced our enthusiasm with a sharp knife and made a sandwich of it,’ he whispered. ‘Every one of us happily traded the boredom of the blockade for sea action.’
‘Even my brother?’ she asked without a falter.
‘Especially Davey. He was eager for action. That is life at war.’
Her tears did not surprise him. He put his arm around her and touched her head until she rested it on his shoulder this time. Her bonnet poked his eye so he removed it and placed it in her lap. Nothing was easier than inclining his head against hers and giving her his handkerchief.
He met the sympathetic looks of the new riders on the mail coach with honesty, or as near as. ‘I am Captain Everard. I served at Trafalgar and my dear...wife’s brother died under my command,’ he said. ‘Forgive us, please.’
He would have told the simpler lie, but the silent little man had not quitted the coach. What else could he do? The engagement of convenience that had seemed so plausible and foolproof in the Newsomes’ sitting room had not lasted for the smallest portion of the journey.
The other riders nodded in sympathy and spoke quietly among themselves, content, apparently, to leave the Everards alone. The round fellow gave them a benign glance and settled back with his book again.
‘Dear wife?’ his incorrigible helpmeet whispered after she blew her nose.
‘Only the best for me, my heart,’ he whispered back, wondering where this gleeful streak was coming from. This earned him a little dig in his ribs, which further strengthened the reality that not one single midshipman on the Ulysses would recognise this side of their Captain. He would have to tell that to Verity when they had a moment alone.
Verity had relaxed against his shoulder, which touched his heart for some strange reason. Maybe she trusted him; more likely she was simply tired.
* * *
As the afternoon wore on, he became aware that the mail coach was travelling slower and slower. A glance out the window explained the matter. The rain that had started falling after their noon stop had turned into sleet and then slush.
Slower and slower, and then a stop. He looked out again, surprised at the gloom, then realised that he had returned to sleep as well, Verity tucked close to him and his head against hers.
He sat up carefully, not wanting to wake her. He heard the relief in the coachman’s voice when he announced they had arrived at Chittering Corner, where they would stop for the night. The other riders left the coach quickly, leaving them alone, which bothered Joe not a bit. With any luck, the silent rider had found his destination, which would simplify the rest of the trip. He gave his head a mental slap. What about the others who had heard his ‘dear wife’ remark?
Please, Lord, let them be from Chittering Corner and walking home now, he thought. It wasn’t too much to ask.
Joe touched Verity’s shoulder, feeling shy even though they had spent most of the afternoon cuddled close in sleep. She woke up and looked around, but stayed in his loose embrace.
‘Where are we?’
‘Chittering Corner,’ he said. ‘This is our stop for the night.’
‘Somehow I thought we would travel through to Norfolk.’
‘Unlikely, even in good weather,’ he told her. ‘Your strength does not lie in geography or navigation. I should have found that out before we became, ahem, engaged.’
She smiled at that, a sleepy smile that touched his heart again. Her eyes were heavy-lidded anyway, a feature he had not thought to find so attractive.
‘Let us venture inside and seek a couple of rooms,’ he said. ‘I can make arrangements.’
Joe stepped from the mail coach and felt the mud ooze over his shoes. Whoever cleaned shoes in this inn would be busy tonight, he decided. Luckily it was but a few steps to the inn, somehow appropriately named the Noah’s Ark. He held out his arms for Verity.
‘I’ll carry you,’ he said hopefully in his captain’s tone of voice.
