The Wedding Ring Quest

by Carla Kelly

  The Prestons returned from the barn after seeing to their four horses. Mary could tell they were ready to insist all over again that the barn would be good enough for them, but Ross wasn’t listening. His firmly stated ‘I’m not accustomed to argument’ ended the matter. Father and son went up the ladder, too. Ross had turned away by then, but Mary noticed the grateful look the postilion bestowed on the post captain.

  She prepared the bed for herself, ready to share with Nathan, but was not surprised when he chose the loft, where general merrymaking seemed the order of the evening. Callie Blankenship had kindly provided Mary with a cloth-covered stone. As she started towards the equally tiny room she shared with her husband, Callie turned her attention to the captain still sitting in the front room. Mary could tell she wanted to say something to him, but there was a gulf of shyness and social order that must have felt too wide to span, even though the Blankenships had opened their home to strangers.

  Mary put out her hand to Callie. ‘Do you want to ask him something?’ she whispered, determined not to tread on the woman’s dignity. ‘Here, let’s ask him together.’

  Callie flashed her a grateful smile. ‘Will he mind?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Mary assured her. ‘He’s quite human.’

  ‘Mercy, I didn’t mean...’

  ‘I know.’

  Ross seemed involved in that inward conversation she had noticed about him. Gently, she put her hand on his shoulder, feeling almost as shy as Callie Blankenship. She felt him tense, then relax when she did nothing more than pat his shoulder. Maybe it was brazen of her. To be sure, it was, but in the past few days of their acquaintance, she found him less and less majestic and fearsome with each day and more a man to be cared for, because he received so little care from any source. How hard it must be to be a post captain in the Royal Navy.

  ‘Ross, if you have a moment for Callie Blankenship...’ she began, nearly speaking in his ear.

  ‘Certainly I have.’ He stood and, while he did not bow to someone so common, he inclined his head. ‘My dear, you are an excellent, impromptu hostess. What may I do for you?’

  So much praise seemed to fluster the crofter’s wife. For one small moment, Mary feared the woman would burst into tears, or, at the least, cover her face with her apron, as Mary had seen other simple women do when tasked.

  Callie was made of sterner stuff. After several deep breaths, she cleared her throat. ‘Captain, sir, I have a brother who went to sea.’

  She couldn’t say anything else for a while. Mary turned her head to allow the woman a measure of privacy, which only brought the captain into her view. She turned away again; his face was a curious mixture of pain and uncertainty, almost as though he had seen a whole roster of Callie Blankenships. It was as though he knew what she was going to ask and he had no answer. Oddly, also, she felt his pain and knew she had no consolation for either of them.

  The captain indicated a stool, and their hostess sat down. Mary moved to sit on a stool beside her, but Ross took her hand and guided her to the short bench where he sat. They were hip to hip and he put his arm around her waist. She knew it was no pretence, to make the Blankenships think they were husband and wife and avoid an awkward situation. The trembling of his arm told her worlds about his own disquiet. It might have been Skowcroft and the vicarage all over again.

  ‘You have not heard from him.’ It was a statement and a kind one.

  Callie shook her head. ‘He was sixteen when he went to sea ten years ago. Mam died when he was a wee babe and I had the raising of Tommy Watts. Crops were poor and times were hard.’ She shrugged. ‘He thought the navy might be better. Thought he might at least eat regular.’

  ‘He never wrote?’

  ‘None of us can read or write, Captain,’ she said, her eyes down. After a moment to command herself, she looked him full in the face. ‘How can I find out how he is or where?’

  The captain was silent a long time. When a knot popped in the fireplace, he seemed to recall where he was. ‘Mrs Blankenship, I can enquire at the Navy Board. Thomas Watts? Has he a middle name? A birth date?’

  ‘No middle name. As for his birthdate, I don’t know.’ Callie’s embarrassment was unmistakable. ‘I packed him some bread and turnips one morning and he set off walking south.’

  ‘My dear, do you even know if he reached the seacoast?’ Ross asked. His arm behind Mary’s back trembled more, so she threw caution to the winds and rested her hand on his leg. He gave her a smile that didn’t approach his eyes and only increased her disquiet.

  ‘I do know that,’ Callie replied with some triumph. ‘He had a friend write a letter. We took it to the vicar and he read it.’ She sighed. ‘I had the vicar write back, but I never heard anything.’ She looked at Ross, expectation in her eyes, as though he held the secret of navy rosters.

  ‘It’s been a long war,’ Ross said finally. ‘I don’t even know the number of ships in the navy, and believe me, I am but a small cog in Admiralty machinery.’ He grasped her hand. ‘I pledge to you that I will ask. You never know, madam. He may just walk back onto your property next week.’

  She nodded and rose, the expectation gone from her eyes. ‘I’ve been looking for the past ten years. Not a day goes by...’ Her voice trailed off. She dropped a little curtsy and went to her room.

  ‘Do you think she’ll see him again?’ Mary whispered. ‘If I had a brother, I don’t think I could bear not knowing here he was.’

  ‘You’d be amazed what you can bear,’ he said. ‘I failed that woman.’ Without another comment, he went outside, answering her question without words.

  Uncertain what to do, Mary stood in the front room. Deep cold had already settled in for the night and the captain wasn’t wearing his boat cloak. Why must you take on everyone’s woes? struggled with the realisation that once they arrived in Knaresborough, the journey would be over and none of this would be her business, if it even was her business now. She knew the supreme unlikelihood that any man would take her into his confidence again. For one irrational moment, she hated Mrs Morison for so calmly sending her on an adventure.

  ‘It’s war.’

  Mary turned around in surprise. She hadn’t heard the door open, but there Ross stood, his expression so bleak that she wasted not a second in going to him with her arms outstretched. He was cold, but he wrapped his arms around her, too.

  ‘You worried me,’ she said into his chilly uniform coat.

  He chuckled and she thought she heard some mirth this time. ‘Mary, you’re a looby.’ He sighed. ‘Or more, I confess. War has ground me down and frazzled me until I am not fit company. I can’t lie and cajole our good hostess.’

  ‘She never expected you to,’ Mary said softly.

  ‘I think she did, on some level,’ he replied. He yawned. ‘It’s late and I’m cold and tired. Mary, this is so irregular as to be unacceptable, but do you trust me enough to let me just lie down with you?’

  ‘We already did that a few days ago,’ she reminded him.

  ‘I suppose we did, Cuz,’ he said, as if adding a distant relationship made the prospect unexceptionable. He glanced above, where childish voices still chattered, although softly now and with a drowsiness that indicated sleep fast approaching. ‘There isn’t room above deck. D’ye mind, Mary?’

  ‘I do not,’ she replied firmly, then added. ‘I will never feel compromised because I trust you.’

  ‘That’s a burden,’ he said drily, which calmed her.

  ‘And there is the expression “needs must when the devil drives”. Just let me prepare for bed first. I’ll lie down closest to the wall.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ he protested. ‘That’s the coldest place.’

  ‘That may be, but I’ll arrive there first and you daren’t dislodge me, or I will cry foul.’

  * * *

  Ross sat down aga
in when she went in the other room, which had no more than a curtain for a door. He contemplated all the Blankenships squeezed into such a small house and wondered that the mother and father ever felt enough privacy to produce so many children. ‘Needs must, I suppose,’ he murmured out loud, thinking suddenly of his own body’s needs. He knew without ever asking that his midshipmen—and probably his lieutenants—could never imagine passion from their captain.

  He shouldn’t have looked, but he could see Mary’s preparations for bed through a slit in the curtain. A gentleman would have looked away, but he was sour and feeling old.

  She stood a moment and he wondered if she contemplated disrobing completely or leaving her clothing on, the better to stay warm. He could have told her that so small a bed meant they would warm each other soon, but he was at least wise—or sly—enough to make no commentary through the curtain.

  To his pleasure, she decided the dress must go, followed by the petticoat, and what he assumed was a corset. Since it was so cold, she disrobed quickly. When her stockings came off—good God, but she had shapely legs—she hopped from one foot to the other until he nearly laughed. She was down to her chemise now. He suddenly didn’t feel old and sour, because she began to stir his body. He tried to summon some immunity, because she did trust him, but failed in the attempt.

  I am on a lee shore, he thought miserably, wanting to look away, but unwilling or unable. There she stood in her shimmy. He suspected she had freckles on her shoulders, which he found oddly provocative, he who had bedded women around the globe with skin creamy white, olive, café au lait and dark brown.

  Look away, you idiot, he told himself, then ignored his own injunction. To his disappointment or his relief—he couldn’t decide—she stopped with her shimmy and pulled on her nightgown. She was in bed in a minute. The mattress was straw and noisy, so he knew suddenly that her virtue was safe. This fact should have relieved him, but it did not. He wanted her.

  You had better think a little, he scolded himself. Maybe it wasn’t Mary he wanted, but just a woman. Aha, that was it. He could defer that particular itch and scratch it when Nathan was back in Mrs Pritchert’s care and he had a day or two to visit Plymouth’s stews. Hadn’t he promised himself that when he was good and certain that Napoleon was gone for good, he would look around for a wife?

  He crossed his fingers and hoped Mary would extinguish the candle. He didn’t need any highlighting of his current dilemma. Someone would think he was a schoolboy. ‘Good Lord, Ross,’ he scolded himself, looking down.

  She blew out the candle, and he heard the rattle and whoosh as she settled into the straw mattress. Another minute or two rendered him less obvious. He wrapped his boat cloak around himself to be certain, grateful for the shadows.

  Mary lay on her side, looking at the wall. He took off his boat cloak and laid it on top of her. ‘We might need it if the night grows more frigid,’ he said.

  He took off his garments except for his smallclothes, then wrestled off his wooden leg, cursing far too fluently when the buckles caught on the string of his underpants. He heard a rustle as Mary turned over and sat up. She released the buckle from the tangled ties, laughing softly, which helped his current frame of mind not at all.

  ‘See here, Cuz,’ she said, emphasising the word as he had done earlier to her. ‘I know you’re not related to that brother who was our family’s black sheep and I am the daughter of a vicar. Mind your tongue.’

  He couldn’t help but laugh, which made Mary hush him with her finger to his lips, except that it was dark and she poked his eye. He swore again; she apologised.

  He raised his half-leg to remove the wadding, and Mary unrolled it for him without asking. She touched the stitched-over fold of skin as the surgeon used to do, briefly and clinically.

  ‘You’ve been on it too long,’ she whispered.

  ‘I am on it too long most days,’ he replied. ‘When I get to Dumfries and my sister’s house, I intend to stump about for a while on crutches. Her husband is a surgeon and I know he has a pair. Don’t tell Admiralty, but I’m an invalid.’

  ‘Oh, you are not,’ she replied, her voice as soft as his. ‘You just need to take better care of your parts.’

  You can’t imagine, he thought irreverently. ‘Go to sleep, Mary. Cousin.’ Great gobs of Boney’s phlegm, but he was an idiot.

  She lay down again on the noisy straw, wiggled her hips to carve out a nice depression and sighed the sigh of someone as tired as he was. He lay down beside her. True, they had done this very thing the night he drank too much at the vicarage, but something had changed for him. And for her? He knew there wasn’t that much foolhardiness in the world for him to ask her.

  As the mattress crunched and rustled, Ross composed himself for sleep in the tiny space allotted them. They were decorously back to back, until—horrors—Mary turned over and punched her pillow, as though trying to subdue it. ‘Do you suppose those people on the mail coach made it into Knaresborough or are freezing to death on the road?’

  He couldn’t help himself. He laughed, then put his hand over his mouth when he heard the mattress rustle in the next room. He didn’t want to wake the Blankenships and whispered that to his own bed partner.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered back, the contrition evident. She turned over again.

  He lay there, knowing he would never sleep, especially when the Blankenships’s motions in the straw next door settled into a certain rhythm he was quite familiar with, even though it had been a few years. He couldn’t imagine what Mary must be thinking. He hoped devoutly that she was completely in the dark.

  She started to shake with laughter, which made him suspect she was a bit more worldly than he imagined. ‘Tell me, Ross, have you ever been in a more uncomfortable situation?’ she whispered.

  You have no idea, he wanted to say, and murmured something—what, he wasn’t certain. He chose discretion, which was more than the Blankenships chose, if Callie’s low moan was any indication. He felt his face go fiery and his loins began to gather their own heat again.

  Davey Blankenship was a study in efficiency, apparently. His own sigh followed Callie’s effort and then all was silent in the next room. In a few minutes, Davey started to snore.

  ‘I, uh, deeply regret the education you’re getting,’ he whispered to Mary, who thumped him.

  She shouldn’t have done that, in the greater scheme of things. He couldn’t help himself, not with the muted chorus of lovemaking next door on his mind and settling lower via some artery or other. Ross turned over, which meant Mary did, too. She was in his arms in a moment, and God Almighty, wasn’t she soft? She had no skill at all, which hardly surprised him, but he could not fault the masterful way she ran her hand so gently down his back.

  He weighed the matter a moment, then touched her breast. Her nightgown was heavy flannel, so he unbuttoned it and touched her skin this time. His hand went to her bare shoulder next, because he always liked the way women’s shoulders felt—smooth, rounded and fragile. He was mindful this was Mary Rennie and not a white woman, or a brown woman or an olive woman whose names he never knew. She wasn’t even Inez, his wife so briefly, and certainly not the lady of his list.

  Her hand had strayed down as far as his waist, but no farther. With fingers that shook, he started on the ties to his smallclothes. He had skin, too, and he wanted her hands on him.

  ‘Da?’

  He stopped and held his breath. Mary did the same.

  ‘Da?’ his son asked again.

  Ross was tongue-tied, but Mary was not. She raised up on her elbow. ‘Nathan, can’t you sleep?’ she asked, her voice soft and perfectly normal.

  ‘Mary!’ Nathan said, then lowered his voice. ‘I’m glad you’re here, too. I was feeling lonely up there.’

  Mary chuckled. How in the world did she manage to sound so normal? Ross wondered. He relaxed and
thought back to his own childhood, when he had done that very thing—crept to his parents’ bed. Mirth swelled in him as he wondered just how many times he had interrupted them.

  ‘The loft is full of people,’ he murmured. ‘How could you be lonely?’

  ‘None of them was you or Mary,’ Nathan replied, with the indisputable logic of a child.

  He had no proof against that and knew he should not have been fondling Mary, anyway, not after he assured her she could trust him. He lifted the covers. ‘In you get,’ he said. ‘Crawl over me and get in the middle.’ It’s safer that way, he thought. Maybe between now and tomorrow, I’ll think of a way to apologise to Mary.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Filled with remorse, Mary edged as close as she could to the wall. The traitor straw rustled, and she wanted to bury herself so deep that no one would ever find her. Stupid, stupid, she berated herself, You told him you trusted him, but never thought to wonder if you trusted yourself!

  She flinched when Nathan patted her back, then reminded herself that Ross’s child was not part of the problem. Somehow between now and tomorrow morning, if the straw hadn’t swallowed her, she would have to face Captain Rennie and apologise. The only relief she could see was that surely they would be in Knaresborough tomorrow, the last fruitcake recovered, the ring in hand and both of them heading on their own journeys.

  Nathan patted her again. She turned around to face him, grateful that the room was too dark to see his father. ‘Yes, Nathan?’ she asked, hoping her voice didn’t quaver overmuch.

  ‘D’ye mind if I’m here?’

  ‘Heavens, no, Nathan,’ she told him, touching his face. ‘We’re tight as whelks in a basket, but it’s a cold night.’ She kissed his forehead. ‘Besides, I like you. Go to sleep now.’

  Mary patted his shoulder, and Ross’s hand covered hers. He gave it a little squeeze, then released it. She was so embarrassed that tears started in her eyes. She waited a few minutes until Nathan’s breath slowed and became regular. ‘I am so ashamed of myself,’ she whispered. ‘Please...I’ll get on the mail coach tomorrow and you and Nathan can continue your own journey. Please.’