by Carla Kelly
‘I don’t even like fruitcake,’ she told the ceiling quite distinctly.
Maybe she said it louder than she intended. She thought she heard someone laugh in the next bedroom.
Chapter Fourteen
‘Miss Rennie? Miss Rennie? Oh, please!’
Mary opened her eyes, happy enough to wake up from a dream where people were shouting and banging about, and swearing in a most ungentlemanly fashion.
‘Miss Rennie?’ The voice sounded so young and she heard tears. It was Nathan.
She leaped out of bed and yanked away the chair she had propped against the door. When she opened it, Nathan stood there, his hands out, pleading.
He was in her arms in a moment. She held him close as she looked around the parlour, where chairs had been turned over, a tablecloth ripped away and pictures tilted. A vase lay on its side as water dripped to the floor.
‘What in the world...? Where is the captain?’
Nathan sobbed into her shoulder. ‘A man in uniform hauled him away! Miss Rennie, he’s in his nightshirt and it’s cold out. And look there.’
She looked where he pointed and saw the captain’s peg-leg, looking small and discarded without the man attached. ‘They just dragged him away without giving him a chance to put on his leg?’ she asked, aghast. ‘He’s a frigate captain! A hero, most likely.’
‘Not for long, I fear.’
Mary looked at the open door, where Mr Clarke stood, impeccable and smug. She stared at him open-mouthed, then understood precisely what he had done. Her hand went to Nathan’s head and then her lips as she kissed the shivering boy. ‘It will be all right, Son,’ she told him, deciding immediately on the best tactic. ‘Get your clothes on and gather together your father’s effects. I’ll take his leg.’ She gave him a gentle swat. ‘Go on now. Get dressed.’
To her relief, he did not question their sudden change of relationship. She turned her attention to the owner of the Bloody Swash, where the brown bread was magic, even if the proprietor was spiteful. She had spent her life in calm and quiet and it came to an end at midnight. Clad in just her nightgown and her hair in a tangle, she stalked right up to the man and had the infinite satisfaction of making him back up into the hallway.
‘You have done a mean thing, sir!’ she raged, as doors opened all along the narrow hall, then closed again just as quickly. ‘You knew what he would say, when in his cups! You’ve...you’ve contacted someone—’
‘Our Justice of the Peace, Sir Henry Pontifract.’
‘—and told him there is a spy at the Bloody Swash.’
He smiled at her, but did not try to re-enter the parlour.
‘Someone should have shot you with a firing squad!’ she sputtered.
The supercilious grin left his face. ‘He fair ruined me!’
‘Him and others, I suspect,’ she shot back. ‘How were you ruined, sir, how? Ross told me you served no gaol time in the fleet, even though you should have. You spirited away your embezzlement from Navy funds and bought an inn with the money that should have purchased clothing and better food for the men of the fleet. Shame on you!’
She stopped for breath, amazed at herself, as he began to laugh. Shocked, she wondered if anyone had a conscience after all these years of war.
‘Shame on me? Oh, Mrs Rennie, I am all a-tremble.’
Without a word, she turned on her heel and slammed the door behind her. It was a matter of a few minutes to pull on her clothes and gather up Ross’s leg. His face pale, Nathan watched her.
Mary took a deep breath and went into the Rennies’ room. Nathan had gathered his father’s uniform and smallclothes, which she carefully folded and replaced in the shabby duffel he used. She looked around. ‘Does he have any money? A purse?’
Nathan felt underneath his father’s pillow and pulled out a wallet. ‘He told me he always keeps it under his head, ever since he was a midshipman. “Don’t trust too many people,” he tells me.’ He started to cry again.
‘You can trust me,’ she said in complete earnest. She put the wallet in her reticule, rethought the matter and tucked it down her dress front instead. Mr Clarke was probably still standing in the hall and she wasn’t about to give him anything. ‘I am going to have to pretend to be your mother, and—’
‘I don’t mind,’ he said quickly.
She smiled at him, touched. ‘I don’t mind, either.’
The little boy wavered so close to tears. His need gave her strength, even more than the captain’s dilemma. When things settled out from this evening’s work, she intended to remind Ross Rennie that he had brought this entirely upon himself. Nathan needed a parent. Maybe she was a cousin so distant that their ties were nearly non-existent, but she was the only parent he had right now. She thought the responsibility might feel onerous, she who was used to letting her aunt and uncle control her life, but it descended on her like a little blessing, to her gratification.
‘I’ll find him, my dear,’ she said. ‘Pack your clothes. We’re leaving this place.’
* * *
Mary took her own advice, cramming everything into her travelling case. When she came into the parlour again, Nathan was ready, too, his duffel slung on his shoulder, the son of a seaman, and his father’s tall hat tucked close to his side.
He looked at her with that patient expression she had directed at her aunt and uncle through the years as she let them guide her. Now it was her turn to do some good.
‘Suppose we can’t find him?’ Nathan asked, his eyes bleak.
Mary knelt and rested her cheek against his. ‘Never fear. I’m not about to leave Ovenshine without your father. And let me tell you, he will get a generous piece of my mind once we’re on the road again. Do overlook that, if you will.’
Her words had the desired effect. Nathan grinned.
She put her hands on both his cheeks now. ‘All I ask is that you do exactly what I tell you to do. Only trust me.’
He nodded, his face so serious, then surprised her by kissing her cheek. Her heart beat a little faster as she realised that for the first time in her life, two people needed her.
Mr Clarke stood outside the door, a self-satisfied smile on his face that she longed to peel off with her fingernails. Instead, she raised her head a little higher and addressed the curious bunch of onlookers that stood behind him in the hall.
‘I cannot imagine people who would trundle away an officer of the Royal Navy without not only his clothing, but his leg. I ask you, how much must a man give in defence of his king and country?’
She looked around in all her serenity, satisfied to notice that hardly anyone in that gathering could meet her eyes, even Mr Clarke, who cleared his throat.
‘Where is he?’ she asked.
‘In the cellar of the guildhall,’ the former purser said and offered not one more direction.
‘Very well, then,’ Mary replied. ‘Come, Nathan. Let’s...uh...fetch your father.’
Nathan took her travelling case and she shouldered the captain’s duffel, tucking his leg under her arm. Head high, she walked quickly to the stables and routed out the postilions, who did as she said and prepared the post chaise for travel.
‘Captain Rennie is in the guildhall, but I don’t know where that is,’ she told the Prestons, both so serious.
‘Not a problem,’ the father said. He went in search of the ostler, returning with him. The application of a little pressure on the ostler soon resulted in a satisfactory answer. In another moment the luggage was stowed, the door opened and Mary and Nathan ushered inside. For good measure, the postilion tossed the ostler in with them. ‘In case we need more directions’, was the man’s practical reasoning.
* * *
Mary took a deep breath when they pulled up in front of a stone building. There were a few winking lights on the botto
m floor and a grand but antiquated carriage out front.
The ostler rubbed his hands together, as though anticipating more action than Mary guessed Ovenshine ever saw. ‘Sir Henry Pontifract, he what is justice of the peace,’ he announced. ‘He’s not one to enjoy being dragged from bed at midnight.’
‘None of us is,’ Mary snapped, fixing the ostler with a glare that made him open the door and make a quick exit.
‘I think you frightened him, Mary,’ Nathan whispered, his eyes big.
‘I should hope I did,’ she told him. ‘Now, my dear, if you must address me, call me Mama. We have some work to do here. I am now Mrs Rennie, a woman who does not suffer fools gladly, especially the one she married!’
‘My Da?’ Nathan asked, his eyes wide.
‘Your da.’
Nathan laughed out loud, a little boy again and not a frightened child. ‘He told me this was going to be such an ordinary visit to my aunt in Scotland,’ he confided.
‘Maybe it started out that way,’ Mary said, happy for his company. ‘I was just looking for fruitcakes.’
* * *
It seemed like a huge chance to take, she who had never dissembled or prevaricated, or even engaged in half-truths that Dina insisted the Lord God Almighty didn’t give a fig about—although where Dina acquired her theology, Mary could never have said.
Brazen it out, she told herself, as Nathan helped her so nicely from the chaise. Going far above and beyond their duties, the postilions accompanied her up the steps to the guildhall. Neither father nor son were tall—what post riders are?—but their presence stiffened her spine. The ostler gave them a wide berth, perhaps not wishing to be thrown somewhere else.
The door was opened by an elderly gent with a long and lugubrious face, rather like a basset hound after a trying week.
‘Mrs Rennie needs to find her husband.’
She turned around, surprised to see the Bloody Swash’s ostler. The man had obviously decided there was more excitement to be had in this place than back at the inn. He still kept himself a respectful distance from the postilions.
‘Aye, sir,’ she said, taking Nathan’s hand and addressing the older fellow, perhaps a servant. ‘A constable has hauled him here in a half-naked state.’ She drew herself up. ‘I will remind you it is December and cold out.’
The elderly gent looked at her over his spectacles, his expression mournful. ‘My master, Sir Henry Pontifract, has been informed that the felon in the dungeon is a spy.’
‘A dungeon? My father?’ Nathan said. His lips quivered and Mary rested her hand firmly on his head.
‘Sir Henry was woefully misinformed by that scoundrel who runs the Bloody Swash,’ Mary said. ‘Captain Rennie is nothing of the sort. Please let me see him.’ She held up the peg-leg, which made the servant blink and step back. ‘A man ought to at least have his leg on if he is to answer charges!’
There was no logic to her statement and she knew it. The servant eyed the leg with real discomfort, then his expression mellowed. ‘It is cold out, and a man ought to have a leg,’ he muttered. ‘Follow me.’
Mary heaved a quiet sigh and tightened her grip on Nathan. Preston took Captain Rennie’s duffel from her and shouldered it, following her down the hall. He stopped and whispered to her, ‘Mum, my name is Thomas.’
‘I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am for you and your son, Thomas,’ she whispered back. ‘Just continue my charade, please.’
He touched his cap with a smile.
They descended a long flight of stairs, where the air was damp and foul-smelling.
‘Dear me,’ Mary said, as a trio of nasty customers that looked like rats ran across the stone flagway in front of them. Sir Henry’s servant shrieked like a girl and Nathan gave him a disgusted look, even as he tightened his grip on Mary.
Mary shivered in the damp, squinting into the gloom to see a uniformed man sitting in a chair tipped back against a wooden door with bars.
‘You, sir,’ she said as she came closer. ‘Please let me in to see Captain Rennie.’
The chair came down with a bang. ‘God help us!’ the constable exclaimed. ‘I suppose you will tell me you are his wife.’
‘I suppose I will,’ Mary snapped, hoping to sound like the world’s most put-upon wife. She touched Nathan’s head. ‘This is his son and I am Mary Rennie. You’re holding an innocent man who gets intemperate with drink—oh, how I have railed at him about this!—and claims he is in the employ of Napoleon.’
‘Exactly! We know spies in Ovenshine when we see them,’ the constable declared, managing to sound prim and virtuous when he obviously was neither.
‘How many spies do you see skulking about on a daily basis?’ Mary challenged, walking right up to him to practically stand on his toes.
‘Bravo, wife,’ she heard from the other side of the door.
Mary looked at the constable. In a fit of rare creativity, her long-ago fiancé Lieutenant MacDowell used to tell her she had eyes that spoke their own language. She tried them on the constable, managing to add tears that just threatened to fall. Coupled with a sobbing breath or two, and the man was blancmange.
‘Oh, for the Lord’s sake, go inside!’ he said, turning the key in the lock. ‘You, too, sonny.’ He stared at the peg-leg in Mary’s hands. ‘If a man can’t have his leg, what’s an England for?’
The sound on the other side of the door this time was a strangled yelp between a laugh and a cough.
I swear I will hurt you, Ross, Mary thought. You’re making this difficult. She tried another tack and sobbed out loud, ‘I pray he is not at his last gasp. Let me in.’
Chapter Fifteen
Captain Rennie had been in a worse prison in Spain, but at least he hadn’t been cold in Cadiz. He couldn’t stop shivering as Mary and Nathan came into his cell. She jumped when the door clanged behind them, which he found endearing. Whatever Miss Rennie’s quietly lived existence in Edinburgh, he could have successfully wagered that it had never included a turn in a dungeon, not even for a visit.
Good Lord, but the woman had beautiful eyes. There was a certain snap and fire in them right now, which hardly surprised him. She looked like a woman with a huge grievance, a wife, perhaps. As he admired the view, she opened and closed one eye in an elaborate wink. She turned around to address the constable.
‘Sir, I would greatly appreciate it if you would get a blanket for my wretched husband.’
So that was the game. He liked it. Mary Rennie might know nothing about prisons, but she seemed to understand that only close relatives would be allowed in dungeons after midnight, if at all.
The constable attempted an argument, but he got nowhere. Quite possibly the look that Mary was directing at him contrasted with the captain’s view. As he watched, appreciative, she ushered his son towards the constable.
‘If you don’t feel secure about leaving the captain with me, send Nathan upstairs with a note. Captain Rennie needs a blanket and he needs one now.’
She said it calmly and with vast authority, reminding Ross of Admiralty lords. The constable gestured to his son and they left the hall without a word. Nathan looked back, anxious, and Mary blew him a kiss, which seemed to reassure his boy. Like father, like son; he could remember a kiss or two like that from Inez.
‘Well, now,’ Mary began, when they were alone. ‘Let’s put on your leg and get you dressed and you can tell me why on earth you ever trusted that purser for a single moment. Honestly, Ross, you are trying my very last nerve and I have a limited supply.’
Her calm acceptance of the situation amazed him. She handed him the wadding to pad his stump, then eased his wooden leg in place. Unperturbed by his naked body under that nightshirt he should have discarded years ago, she strapped the belt around his waist, then started to help him into his smallclothes while he stood
and leaned against her.
He did try her once. When he told her he preferred his drawers on before his leg, because then the belt wouldn’t chafe his waist, she started over, after muttering something under her breath that he never intended to question. When her hand brushed his genitals, he found her touch entirely pleasing. Her hand didn’t linger there, but she wasn’t missish about the matter.
He probably didn’t need to lean against her—he had been dressing himself for years, after all—but her touch comforted him.
‘Do you have a plan?’ he asked after she helped him into his trousers and shook the wrinkles from his shirt. ‘I’m fresh out.’
‘I favour the truth. I assure you I can lard the whole thing with an ocean of tears that would likely upset our good king himself, be he ever so addled.’
He laughed and considered himself in capable hands. Then she spoke so seriously, and he knew she was right, as much as he disliked the matter.
‘Captain Rennie, when I get you out of this dungeon, and I will, we simply must part company tomorrow in York. I can find Apollo Street, retrieve that final fruitcake and you can be on your way.’
‘Am I disappointing you, Mary?’
To his chagrin, he who fought foreign navies and dealt in blood, her eyes filled with tears, and he knew these were genuine. He could have done a lot of things just then, most specifically agreeing with her and assuring her he would resume his previous plans. Instead, he held out his arms and she went into them, not crying, just resting her head against his chest because she seemed even more weary than he was. They sat together on the noisome straw until he heard his gaoler returning.
Mary heard them, too. She sat up, getting nimbly to her feet in that way he still envied of people with two sound limbs. She held out her hand to him and helped him to stand.
‘I think I am just not good at adventures,’ she told him, and it sounded like an apology. ‘You frightened me when you spoke so intemperately about Napoleon and now you are in a prison and there is much at stake.’
