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The last thing you want is pity, isn’t it? he told himself. ‘So here we are, the two of us, at point non plus,’ he said.
‘I suppose we are,’ she replied, the faintest glint of amusement returning to her eyes.
‘And I must return to my estate, still a single gentleman, with no prospects and a cook on strike.’
‘Whatever did you do to him?’
‘I told him my sisters were coming to visit in two days. They order him about and demand things. Mrs Paul, he is French and he has been my chef for eleven years, through bombardment and sinking ships, and he cannot face my sisters either!’
‘What makes you think matrimony would change that?’ she asked sensibly. ‘They would still visit, wouldn’t they?’
He shrugged. ‘You have to understand my sisters. They are never happier than when they are on a mission or a do-gooding quest. With you installed in my house, and directing my chef, and having a hand in the reconstruction, they would get bored quickly, I think.’
‘Reconstruction?’ she asked.
‘Ah, yes. I found the perfect house. It overlooks Plymouth Sound, and it came completely furnished. It does require a little … well, a lot … of repairs. I think the former owner was a troll with bad habits.’
Mrs Paul laughed. ‘So you were going to marry this poor female who has cried off and carry her away to a ruin?’
Bright couldn’t help himself. He wasn’t even sure why he did it, but he slipped his hook into the ribbons holding Mrs Paul’s bonnet on her head. She watched, transfixed, as he gave the frayed ribbon a gentle tug, then pushed the bonnet away from her face, to dangle down her back. ‘Are you sure you won’t reconsider? I don’t think you will be bored in my house. You can redecorate to your heart’s content, sweet talk my chef, I don’t doubt, and find me a tailor.’
‘You know absolutely nothing about me,’ she said softly, her face pink again. ‘You don’t even know how old I am.’
‘Thirty?’ he asked.
‘Almost thirty-two.’
‘I am forty-five,’ he told her. He took his finger and pushed back his upper lip. ‘That’s where the tooth is missing. I keep my hair short because I am a creature of habit.’ He felt his own face go red. ‘I take the hook off at night, because I’d hate to cut my own throat during a bad dream.’
She stared at him, fascinated. ‘I have never met anyone like you, Admiral.’
‘Is that good or bad?’
‘I think it is good.’
He held his breath, because she appeared to be thinking. Just say yes, he thought.
She didn’t. To his great regret, Mrs Paul shook her head. She retied her bonnet and stood up. ‘Thank you for the luncheon, Admiral Bright,’ she said, not looking him in the eyes this time. ‘I have had a most diverting afternoon, but now I must go to the registry office here and see if there is anything for me.’
‘And if there is not?’ It came out cold and clinical, but she didn’t seem to be a woman searching for sympathy.
‘That is my problem, not yours,’ she reminded him.
He stood as she left the table, feeling worse than when he waited for The Mouse. She surprised him by looking back at him in the doorway, a smile on her face, as though their curious meal would be a memory to warm her.
‘That is that,’ he said under his breath, feeling as though some cosmic titan had poked a straw under his skin and sucked out all his juices. It was an odd feeling, and he didn’t like it.
With each step she took from the Drake, Sally Paul lost her nerve. She found a stone bench by the Cattewater and sat there, trying to regain the equilibrium that had deserted her when she was out of Admiral Bright’s sight. The June sun warmed her cheek and she raised her face to it, glorying in summer after a dismal winter of tending a querulous old woman who had been deserted by her family, because she had not treated them well when she was able and could have.
Let this be a lesson to me, Sally had thought over and over that winter, except that there was no one to show any kindness to, no one left that being kind to now would mean dividends later on, when she was old and dying. Her husband was gone these five years, a suicide as a result of being unable to stand up to charges levelled at him by the Admiralty. The Royal Navy, in its vindictiveness, had left her with nothing but her small son, Peter. A cold lodging house had finished him.
She sobbed out loud, then looked around, hopeful that no one had heard her. Even harder than her husband’s death by his own hand—mercifully, he had hanged himself in an outbuilding and someone else had found him—was her son’s death of cold and hunger, when she could do nothing but suffer alone. She had been his only mourner at his pauper’s unmarked grave, but she had mourned as thoroughly and completely as if a whole throng of relatives had sent him to a good rest.
There was no one to turn to in Dundrennan, where her late father had been a half-hearted solicitor. The Paul name didn’t shine so brightly in that part of Scotland, considering her father’s younger brother, John, who had joined American revolutionaries, added Jones to his name and become a hated word in England. This far south, though, it was a better name than Daviess, the name she had shared with Andrew, principal victualler to the Portsmouth yard who had been brought up on charges of pocketing profit from bad meat that had killed half a squadron.
She had no other resource to call upon. I could throw myself into the water, she told herself, except that someone would probably rescue me. Besides, I can swim, and I am not inclined to end my life that way. I could go to the workhouse. I could try every public kitchen in Plymouth and see if they need help. I could marry Admiral Bright.
She went to the registry first, joining a line by the door. The pale governess who had shared a seat with her on the mail coach came away with nothing. The bleak expression on her face told Sally what her own reception would be. The registrar—not an unkind man—did say Stone-house Naval Hospital might still be looking for laundresses, but there was no way of knowing, unless she chose to walk four miles to Devonport.
‘It’s a slow season, what with peace putting many here out of work. You might consider going north to the mills,’ he told Sally. When she asked him how she would get there, he shrugged.
Dratted peace had slowed down the entire economy of Plymouth, so there was no demand for even the lowliest kitchen help in the hotels, she discovered, after trudging from back door to back door. One publican had been willing to hire her to replace his pots-and-pans girl, but one look at that terrified child’s face told Sally she could never be so callous. ‘I won’t take bread from a baby’s mouth,’ she said.
‘Suit yourself,’ the man had said as he turned away.
* * *
Evensong was long over and the church was deserted. She sank down wearily on a back pew. When her money had run out two days ago, she had slept in Bath’s cathedral. It had been easy enough to make herself small in the shadows and then lie down out of sight. St Andrew’s was smaller, but there were shadows. She could hide herself again.
And then what? In the morning, if no one was about, she would dip her remaining clean handkerchief in the holy water, wipe her face and ask directions to the workhouse. At least her small son was safe from such a place.
There were several prayer books in their slots. Sally gathered them up, made a pillow of them and rested her head on them with a sigh. There wasn’t any need to loosen her dress because it was already loose. She feared to take off her shoes because she knew her feet were swollen. She might never get them on again. She made herself comfortable on the bench and closed her eyes.
Sally opened her eyes with a start only minutes later. A man sat on the end of the row. Frightened at first, she looked closer in the gloom at his close-cut hair and smiled to herself. She sat up.
He didn’t look at her, but idly scratched the back of his only hand with his hook. ‘The Mouse still hasn’t turned up.’
‘You have probably waited long enough,’ Sally said as she arranged her skirt around her, grateful she hadn’t removed her shoes. ‘I don’t know what the statute of limitations is on such a matter, but surely you have fulfilled it.’
He rested his elbows on the back of the pew, still not looking at her. ‘Actually, I was looking for you, Mrs Paul. The waiter informed me that you left your valise in the chair.’
‘I suppose I did,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing in it of value.’ She peered at him through the gloom. ‘Why did the waiter think I was your responsibility?’
He glanced at her then. ‘Possibly because earlier I had told him you were my cousin, and we were on the outs, and I was hoping to get into your good graces by buying you dinner.’
‘That was certainly creative, Admiral,’ she said.
‘Dash it all, how am I supposed to approach a single female I have never met before?’ he said. She couldn’t help but hear the exasperation in his voice. ‘Mrs Paul, you are more trouble than an entire roomful of midshipmen!’
‘Oh, surely not,’ she murmured, amused in spite of her predicament. She glanced at him, then stared straight ahead towards the altar, the same way he stared.
There they sat. He spoke first. ‘When you didn’t come out of St Andrew’s, I thought you might not mind some company.’ His voice grew softer. ‘Have you been sleeping in churches?’
‘It … it’s a safe place.’
He hadn’t changed his position. He did not move any closer. ‘Mrs Paul, my sisters are still meddlers, my chef is still on strike, I can’t get any builders to do what they promised, the house is … strange and I swear there are bats or maybe griffons in the attic.’
‘What a daunting prospect.’
‘I would honestly rather sail into battle than deal with any of the above.’
‘Especially the griffons,’ she said, taking a deep breath. Am I this desperate? Is he? she asked herself. This man is—or was—an admiral. He is either a lunatic or the kindest man in the universe.
‘What say you, Mrs Paul?’ He still didn’t look in her direction, as though afraid she would bolt like a startled fawn. ‘You’ll have a home, a touchy chef, two dragons for sisters-in-law, and a one-armed husband who will need your assistance occasionally with buttons, or maybe putting sealing wax on a letter. Small things. If you can keep the dragons at bay, and keep the admiral out of trouble on land, he promises to let you be. It’s not a bad offer.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ she replied, after a long pause in which she could have sworn he held his breath. She just couldn’t speak. It was beyond her that anyone would do this. She could only stare at him.
He gazed back. When he spoke, he sounded so rational she had to listen. ‘Mrs Paul, The Mouse isn’t coming. I want to marry you.’
‘Why, Admiral? Tell me why?’ There, she had asked. He had to tell her.
He took his time, exasperating man. ‘Mrs Paul, even if The Mouse were to show up this minute, I would bow out. She’s a spinster, and that’s unfortunate, but she has a brother to take care of her, no matter how he might grumble. You have no one.’ He held up his hand to stop her words. ‘I have spent most of my life looking after England. One doesn’t just chop off such a responsibility. Maybe it didn’t end with Napoleon on St. Helena and my retirement papers. Knowing your dilemma, I cannot turn my back on you, no more than I could ever ignore a sister ship approaching a lee shore. You need help. I need a wife. I don’t think I can make it any plainer.’
‘No, I suppose you cannot,’ she murmured, but made one final attempt to make the man see reason. ‘Admiral, you know nothing about me. You truly don’t.’ It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him, but she found she could not. Coward, she thought.
He looked at her then, and his face was kind. ‘I know one thing: you haven’t wittered once about the weather. I suppose marriages have started on stranger footings. I don’t know when or where, but I haven’t been on land much in the past twenty years.’
‘I suppose they have,’ she agreed. ‘Very well, sir.’
Chapter Three
Sally didn’t object when the admiral paid for a room at the Drake for her, after suggesting the priest at St Andrew’s might be irritated to perform a wedding so late, even with a special licence. And there were other concerns.
‘I must remind you, sir, I’m not The Mouse. I cannot usurp her name, which surely is already on the licence,’ she pointed out, embarrassed to state the obvious, but always the practical one.
Admiral Bright chuckled. ‘It’s no problem, Mrs Paul. The Mouse’s name is Prunella Batchthorpe. Believe it or not, I can spell Batchthorpe. It was Prunella that gave me trouble. Prunella? Prunilla? A coin or two, and the clerk was happy enough to leave the space blank, for me to fill in later.’
‘Very well, then,’ Sally murmured.
* * *
She was hungry for supper, but had trouble swallowing the food, when it came. Finally, she laid down her fork. ‘Admiral, you need to know something about me,’ she said.
He set down his fork, too. ‘I should tell you more about me, too.’
How much to say? She thought a moment, then plunged ahead. ‘Five years ago, my husband committed suicide after a reversal of fortune. I ended up in one room with our son, Peter, who was five at the time.’
She looked at the admiral for some sign of disgust at this, but all she saw was sympathy. It gave her the courage to continue. ‘Poor Peter. I could not even afford coal to keep the room warm. He caught a chill, it settled in his lungs and he died.’
‘You had no money for a doctor?’ he asked gently.
‘Not a farthing. I tried every poultice I knew, but nothing worked.’ She could not help the sob that rose in her throat. ‘And the whole time, Peter trusted me to make him better!’
She didn’t know how it happened, but the admiral’s hand went to her neck, caressing it until she gained control of herself. ‘He was covered in quicklime in a pauper’s grave. I found a position that afternoon as a lady’s companion and never returned to that horrid room.’
‘I am so sorry,’ he said. ‘There wasn’t anyone you could turn to?’
‘No,’ she said, after blowing her nose on the handkerchief he handed her. ‘After my husband was … accused … we had not a friend in the world.’ She looked at him, wondering what to say. ‘It was all a mistake, a lie and a cover-up, but we have suffered.’
Admiral Bright sat back in his chair. ‘Mrs Paul, people ask me how I could bear to stay so many years at sea. Unlike my captains who occasionally went into port, I remained almost constantly with the fleet. We had one enemy—France—and not the myriad of enemies innocent people attract, sometimes in the course of everyday business on land, or so I suspect. My sisters have never understood why I prefer the sea.’
‘Surely there are scoundrels at sea—I mean, in addition to the French,’ she said.
‘Of course there are, Mrs P. The world is full of them. It’s given me great satisfaction to hang a few.’
She couldn’t help herself; she shuddered.
‘They deserved it. The hangings never cost me any sleep, because I made damned sure they were guilty.’ He looked into her eyes. ‘Mrs Paul, I cannot deny that I enjoyed the power, but I have never intentionally wronged anyone.’
Too bad you were not on the Admiralty court that convicted my husband, she thought. Or would you have heard the evidence and convicted, too? She knew there was no way of knowing. She had not been allowed in the chambers. Best put it to rest.
‘I have the skills to manage your household,’ she told him, when he had resumed eating. ‘I’m quite frugal, you know.’
‘With a charming brogue betraying your origins, could you be anything else?’
‘Now, sir, you know that is a stereotype!’ she scolded. ‘My own father hadn’t a clue what to do with a shilling, and he could outroll my rrr’s any day.’ She smiled at the admiral, liking the way he picked up his napkin with the hook and wiped his lips. ‘But I am good with funds.’
‘So am I, Mrs P.,’ he said, putting down the napkin. ‘Napoleon has made me rich, so you needn’t squeeze the shillings so hard that they beg for mercy! I’ll see that you have a good allowance, too.’
‘That isn’t necessary,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ve done with so little for so long that I probably wouldn’t know what to do with an allowance.’
He looked at his timepiece. ‘Past my bedtime. Call it a bribe then, Mrs P. Wait until you see the estate I am foisting on you!’ He grew serious quickly. ‘There is plenty of money for coal, though.’ With his hook, he casually twirled a lock of her hair that had come loose. ‘I think your fortunes have turned, my dear.’
It was funny. The hook was so close to her face, but she felt no urge to flinch. She reached up and touched it, twining the curl further around it.
‘My hook doesn’t disgust you?’ he asked, startled.
‘Heavens, no,’ she replied. ‘How did you lose your hand? And, no, I’m not going to be frippery again and suggest you were careless.’
He pulled his hook through the curl, patted it against her cheek and grinned at her. ‘You do have a mouth on you, Mrs Paul. Most people are so cowed by my admiralness that I find them dull.’
‘I am not among them, I suppose. After your taradiddle about being my cousin, I think you are probably as faulty and frail as most of humanity.’ She sat back, amazed at herself for such a forthright utterance. She had never spoken to Andrew that way, but something about Charles Bright made him a conversational wellspring as challenging as he was fun to listen to.
‘Touché!’ He looked down at his hook. ‘I was but a first mate when this happened, so it has been years since I’ve had ten fingernails to trim.’
She laughed. ‘Think of the economy!’
He rolled his eyes at her. ‘There you go again, being a Scot.’
‘Guilty as charged, Admiral.’
‘I wish I could tell you it was some battle where England’s fate hung in the balance, but it was a training accident. We were engaged in target practice off the coast of Brazil when one of my guns exploded. Since it was my gun crew, I went to lend a hand.’ He made a face. ‘Poor choice of words! The pulley rope that yanks the gun back after discharge was tangled. I untangled it at the same time it came loose. Pinched off my left hand so fast I didn’t know it had happened, until the powder monkey mentioned that I was spouting. Mrs P, don’t get all pale on me. We had an excellent surgeon on board, almost as talented as the smithy who built me my first hook.’
‘You never thought about leaving the navy?’
‘Over a hand? Really, madam.’
‘How do you keep it on?’
