by Carla Kelly
‘I have you there,’ he said softly, delighted when she blushed.
They could joke, but he still hesitated to go back inside. She must have seen it, because she crooked out her arm for his son. ‘Come, Nathan, we have enough sense to go inside where it’s warm.’
Nathan put his arm through hers and looked at Ross. ‘Da?’
‘Just a minute.’ Mary handed Ross the little book he had left inside, her face suddenly solemn.
He pocketed it, then took her other arm and let her escort them inside. He knew he was a brave man at sea. Maybe he could be a brave man on land, as long as his cousin didn’t stray too far in Skowcroft. An epiphany: cousins had their uses.
* * *
Dinner at the vicarage was an unalloyed delight, to Ross’s amazement. He gave all credit to Mr Everett, who, with a few questions, drew him out about life at sea. He couldn’t bring himself to ask why this topic wasn’t painful to them, but Mrs Everett seemed to understand his unasked query.
‘Dale used to send us the most marvellous letters, full of little drawings and stories of life below deck. He found his new world interesting, so we did, too. Please tell us more,’ she asked as they ate.
It was easier than he would have thought to reminisce until he felt a little like an antiquarian, reliving old glories to a bored audience. Except that it was obvious no one found his stories dull. He could tell they yearned to know every detail of their son’s life and he obliged them. It gave him true pleasure to tell the Everetts that their son was the only cully he knew who plotted true courses without fail from Mr Pritchert’s quarterdeck classroom.
‘Never once did his navigational directions land our frigate in the middle of St. Peter’s behind the high altar, or in Ohio, United States,’ he informed them. ‘I have since wished for second lieutenants as accurate as Dale Everett.’
They laughed and the conversation moved in other directions. Mr Everett apologised for keeping him talking until his food turned chilly, but Ross assured them he did not mind. He looked around at the kindness that surrounded him and felt boulders sliding from those broad shoulders he had boasted of.
Mary gave him a broad smile as she helped Nathan with the correct fork. It pleased him to see her hand on the back of his son’s chair as she gave him her gentle attention. She had a sure touch with children and he wondered how she acquired it, considering that she was a spinster, as she had announced earlier. Briefly, he wondered how Inez would have mothered their son, then had his own epiphany: it was time to tuck Inez into a corner of his heart, instead of letting her wander through it. He wasn’t certain who or what should fill up other parts of his heart not inhabited by his son, his ship and crew, but he did like his cousin’s sure touch. And maybe some day, when he was certain the war was really over, he would find a wife like Mary.
Ross couldn’t help an inward smile, wondering if she would laugh or look askance at him if he ever told her about his tall, blonde, willowy woman with the French-Caribbean accent. He decided she would laugh and wish him good luck.
He shouldn’t have feared that conversation might dwindle and leave them with awkward silences. In her matter-of-fact way, Mary kept the table chat moving along. She asked them about Dale’s interests when he was home and their favourite memories. Centring the conversation on Dale startled him at first, until it dawned on him that the Everetts were starving to talk about their son. The vicar said as much, as they rose from the dinner table.
‘Even after all these years, people still tiptoe so carefully around us, my dear,’ he confided to Mary. ‘They fear it would make us sad to speak his name.’ He shook his head. ‘To say nothing makes us feel like he never existed and we do not want that.’
‘How do you know to do this?’ Ross whispered to Mary, when the Everetts went to answer the doorbell and usher in what sounded like a legion of children.
Mary blushed, which he found so beguiling, he who laboured among hard men who never blushed. ‘Didn’t you notice how Mrs Everett’s eyes brightened when you told her about her boy’s navigational skills?’ She stopped and her blush deepened, which made him smile at her, making her confusion worse. ‘Cousin Ross, everyone likes to be thought well of. We all want to be special to someone.’
‘Do you?’ he asked, teasing her.
‘I would like to be,’ she said, her voice so soft he wasn’t certain he had heard her, not above the tumult from the hallway now.
* * *
The parish children made conversation difficult, as the vicar moved his younger parishioners into the sitting room. With unholy glee, Mary smiled inside to see their awe of Captain Rennie and his own reddening cheeks. Their unbridled interest made her suspect that post captains in the Royal Navy didn’t make their way so far inshore too often.
She took a moment to admire her cousin, too. He was tall and sturdy, filling his uniform nicely, but there was a starved look about his face, where weather lines had taken a lengthy toll. She couldn’t explain it, but he had the appearance of a man who would always be hungry, even if he sat at a banquet table every night. In an era of full-fleshed men, his face was lean, carved that way by relentless warfare. She didn’t find it unpleasant, but she wondered what would make such a man as her cousin happy.
True, she had her own sorrows and misgivings about the somewhat stingy hand life had dealt her. Her parents were dead, her aunt and uncle kind but indifferent once her wants were provided. And Dina? She was spoiled and wilful and the author of Mary’s current circumstances, sent on a silly expedition for fruitcake. For that expedition, Mary suddenly decided she could forgive Dina her slights, condescension and supreme silliness. Mary’s own epiphany told her she was having fun for the first time in years.
In the way of vicars Mary remembered from her own father, Mr Everett soon had his Christmas singers sorted out and ready for the challenge ahead. With a flourish, he introduced Nathan to the horde, which quickly absorbed him into the pack. Coats and mufflers came on and the open door beckoned again. The vicar looked at the Rennies.
‘You may come with us if you choose,’ he offered. ‘We aren’t very good and we don’t stay out too long.’
‘I’ll join you,’ the captain said. ‘I can’t even remember the last Christmas I spent on shore, and I certainly have not heard carolling in years. Mary?’
‘Several ladies will be helping me with refreshments, so I can spare you,’ Mrs Everett said.
Mary looked from the captain, who appeared neutral about the matter, to her kind hostess. ‘I believe I can use a walk after all the lemon-curd pudding I consumed at the Begging Hound, even before dinner here. Excuse me, please, Mrs Everett?’
‘Certainly, my dear.’
The night air was brisk and the stars huge. When the captain offered his arm again, she accepted, but shyly. Somehow, it was different in the dark, with Nathan far ahead and already singing with children his own age at the first house in the village. There were other parents accompanying their broods, but the captain seemed content to stay with her alone.
His tread was regular and unremarkable, testifying to her of his utter comfort in his own skin, even with a wooden leg. After only a few stops at houses with him, she couldn’t help but feel a certain pride at such a distinguished escort. She also decided that the Royal Navy had it all over the other services, when it came to uniforms. The army and the Royal Marines could peacock all about, but there was something understated and elegant about a man in navy blue. All he lacked was a sword.
‘You don’t wear your cutlass off the ship?’ she asked.
‘I barely wear my hanger on the ship,’ he replied. ‘Only when I need to use it for boarding an enemy vessel.’
‘Hmmm.’ Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to her that it was for more than ceremonial dash.
He nudged her shoulder and leaned down. ‘Didn’t think I’d have to repel any boarders i
n Scotland, or in God-help-us England.’
She laughed out loud. ‘I’m a looby.’
‘No, you’re my cousin,’ he replied, which warmed her as much as if he had said something that made sense.
They stayed with the rowdy pack for a few houses, happy to dawdle. From the captain’s obvious enjoyment of that simple act, Mary suspected that dawdling wasn’t on his daily roster. He had a pleasant enough singing voice, remarkable for the loudness of it. When the others looked around, surprised, at his strengthier than usual conclusion to ‘O Come, O Come, Emanuel’, Ross merely gazed back in all innocence. ‘I put it to you, ladies and gentlemen: how would you get a topman’s attention to reef t’gallants in a gale?’
The parents chuckled, and the vicar threw back his head and laughed. From the look of surprise on the faces of his parishioners, Mary didn’t think they heard such laughter from him often. It touched her heart.
Gradually, the captain slowed down, and she slowed her steps accordingly. Kind man that he was, he decided to give her the credit for the vicar’s good humour. ‘Mary, I would have just eaten the lemon-curd pudding and never visited, but for your insistence.’
‘I don’t believe that for a minute,’ she chided gently, even though she couldn’t help feeling flattered.
He walked slower, and she began to notice a pronounced limp. She stopped walking and turned around. ‘Back to the vicarage, sir.’
‘Getting tired?’ he teased but he had no objections. ‘I do start to wear out,’ he admitted. ‘One-and-a-half legs are only part of the problem. The other problem is that while I do considerable standing on deck, I seldom walk for miles. I leave that to Wellington’s army.’
The vicarage was soon in sight, but her cousin held back. He inclined his head towards the church across the yard and she let him steer the course. A branch of candles lit the interior just enough, aided by a full moon. Mary sniffed the greenery decorating the nave. The hanging of the greens was nearly two weeks ago. She thought about the last fruitcake and weighed it against the importance of this new journey with her Cousin Ross. Maybe Mr Tavish Maxfield of Apollo Street, York, hadn’t yet sliced up the Christmas cake.
‘You’re thinking about that damned fruitcake,’ Captain Rennie told her when they sat down in the last pew.
Since he hadn’t tried to hide his sigh of relief to be off his feet, Mary knew they hadn’t turned back a moment too soon. Funny that he could read her mind about the cake.
‘I have to admit that my resolve to see the business done is weakening,’ she admitted in turn. ‘If I had a fiancé, I certainly would never throw away a gift he had sent, no matter how paltry.’
‘I have the feeling that this Dina I do not know doesn’t care much for her future husband, whom I also do not know,’ he said, after pulling down the kneeling bench and resting his wooden leg on it.
‘I suppose she wants a more exciting man. Mr Page will probably just nod over his newspaper after dinner, go to sleep and have to be wakened to get to bed.’
‘Oh, ouch! That is your opinion of new husbands?’
Mary refused to be embarrassed. ‘No, silly. That is my opinion of Mr Page.’
‘What would you like in a husband?’
A mere twenty-four hours ago, such a question would have amazed her with its impertinence. As she sat there considering his question, she discovered that she had already taken the measure of this man. Captain Ross Rennie was as transparent as water, a capable man with no inclination to dither or waste his time or anyone else’s. He had spent a lifetime in duty to his country so intense and harsh that it did not let go, even in a snowy village in Yorkshire. She knew it was not a casual question because he was not a casual man.
‘I’ve never really thought about it,’ she told him honestly.
He didn’t believe her. ‘Come, come, Miss Rennie,’ he chided in turn. ‘You’re a fine-appearing Scottish lass!’
‘Thank you kindly, Cousin,’ she said with a smile. ‘I also live with my aunt and uncle, who have no particular obligation to see me wed. They never said as much, but this is surely so. They are kind enough, to be sure, but they’re not the sort of people who exert themselves.’ She thought about the matter. ‘And perhaps I have not exerted myself overmuch either.’
She didn’t say that in any attempt for pity, and he seemed to know it. With a smile, he touched her hand, a light touch.
‘Sometimes I think we of the Royal Navy take all the hard knocks.’
‘I would say you do,’ she said quietly.
He shook his head. ‘We do it with big guns and blood and battle and noise. Your hard knocks come quietly, but I will wager they are no less painful.’ His expression was self-deprecating. ‘Well, certainly they are. I should remember your Lieutenant MacDowell and apologise again for my rudeness.’
She couldn’t help her sigh. Watching Nathan, watching the parents accompanying their children, walking along slowly, shoulders bumping, smiling those private smiles of husbands and wives, had taken its own toll that evening. Maybe the whole, foolish trip had done that, too. When she lived so quietly in Wapping Street in Edinburgh, she lived cushioned off from others of her age. Somehow, Dina, in her great self-absorption, didn’t count.
Seeing women in the mail coach, generally paired with husbands, or in the public houses and inns, Mary began to sense the world passing her by. And so there were tears in her eyes; she suddenly couldn’t help it.
Chapter Ten
Captain Rennie put his arm around her shoulders and drew her close to him. His boat cloak enveloped them both, which she found comforting, not because she was cold, but because it felt like protection she hadn’t known since her parents died. Her aunt and uncle were busy leading their own lives and she understood that. Here was this man she could barely call a relative, going out of his way to care a little. It was unexpected and altogether gratifying.
She couldn’t help but lean into that pleasant hollow between a man’s shoulder and chest that she remembered on one occasion from her late lamented lieutenant, before he’d pleaded poverty—her poverty—and cried off. She didn’t want Captain Rennie’s pity, though, and she sat upright to tell him that.
Before she got a word out of her mouth, he gently pushed her head back against his shoulder and tightened his grip on her.
‘Suffice it to say we have both missed out on many things, thanks to Boney,’ he told her. ‘I will probably hate the man until I die, this employer of mine.’
‘You probably shouldn’t call him that. Someone might take it the wrong way.’
‘And declare me a spy?’ He laughed at that and the pleasant sound carried some distance in the empty church. ‘Here we are at peace, Cousin—although I would not wager even a groat on that. I have a month of unbridled leisure...’
‘Which you are squandering by helping me search for a fruitcake,’ Mary couldn’t help but remind him. ‘I own to some guilt in the matter.’
‘Please don’t excoriate yourself overmuch,’ he told her. He loosened his grip, but he did not release her. ‘Between you and me, I’m dreading the visit to my sister just a little.’
‘Why, sir?’ Mary asked, surprised.
‘Alice plans to show me a gentleman’s estate for sale not far from Dumfries. She also claims I can see the ocean from the upper floor, but it will take more than a postage-stamp view to satisfy me.’ He paused, and when he spoke again Mary heard something resembling embarrassment in his voice. ‘You’ll think me a great fool, but I feel uneasy so far from the ocean. Don’t laugh now.’
‘I would never!’ she declared.
‘Thank you,’ he said quite formally. ‘I have spent most of the past twenty-four years at sea. My ship, however noisome it gets after a long voyage, is my home. The ocean is my estate.’ He sighed. ‘The longer I can avoid Alice’s insistence that I move inshore
, now that peace has broken out, the happier it makes me.’
‘But Nathan? I can tell you do not wish to be away from him,’ she said, thinking of the many looks he gave his son during their post-chaise journey.
‘That is my dilemma. I would rather be with him always, but I still miss the sea.’ He shifted, and she could tell the subject made him uncomfortable.
Then it was her turn to be uncomfortable, as he turned the conversation back to her. ‘Come, Cousin, you have not answered my question. What is it you are looking for in a husband, should one materialise?’
‘I told you I hadn’t considered the matter,’ she said again. She was certain she could have sat up, if he hadn’t been so pleasant to lean against.
He looked around elaborately, and she could not help but chuckle. ‘No one needs us right now, the hour is not late and the choir is still tormenting some household or other. Think about it.’
‘There’s only one thing,’ she said, after considerable thought. ‘I just want a husband who will love me until I die.’
Captain Rennie made a sound as though someone had punched the air out of him. He took his arm out from around her and stood up. As Mary watched in surprise, he took precisely twelve steps forwards and then twelve steps back. As she watched, it dawned on her that he was probably pacing off the space on his quarterdeck.
‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ she said as he started his second circuit. ‘I rather feel I have upset you enough today.’
When he didn’t say anything, she quietly left the church and returned to the vicarage, determined to leave by herself in the morning. All he wanted was a bowl of lemon-curd pudding and I forced him to visit grieving parents, she thought in remorse. I should be ashamed of myself.
Once inside, she wanted to go upstairs, but she had no idea which room was hers for the night. As she stood in the front entrance, dissatisfied with herself, Mrs Everett joined her. She took one look at Mary’s face and frowned.
‘My dear, whatever is wrong?’
