The Wedding Ring Quest

by Carla Kelly

  ‘We’ll think about it in the morning,’ he whispered back. ‘Besides, didn’t you say that all the people in the mail coach have probably frozen to death?’

  She couldn’t help smiling a little, until the enormity of what she had done came back like cold water in her face. ‘Please, just let me go to Knaresborough,’ she pleaded. ‘I’m so ashamed.’

  Ross was silent. She couldn’t possibly see how he could be asleep, but he wasn’t talking. She turned towards the wall again and rebuttoned her nightgown, visiting again the feel of his fingers on her breasts. Somewhere deep down, she knew it would never happen again.

  * * *

  The thought had kept Mary awake most of the night. She had discovered there was nothing worse than trying to lie still and breathe evenly in pretence. Maybe she had slept. All she knew was that when morning came, her eyes felt gritty and she was as cross as two sticks.

  She prayed Ross would not still be in the bed and he was not. Nathan had curled up close to her, which soothed her heart. It was enough to know that even though she had behaved foolishly last night, Ross’s son had no knowledge of the heavy business and still admired her.

  That she was going to miss him was obvious to her. She knew that until last night, it wouldn’t have been improper of her to ask Ross if he would allow her to write to Nathan in Plymouth. She had no idea what response he would give if she asked now and decided not to put the matter to the test.

  She waited quietly until the noises of a small crofter’s holding waking up chased away slumber from a tired boy. Nathan opened his eyes, yawned and snuggled close for another minute. Her arm went around him naturally and it was the world’s easiest thing to kiss his temple.

  ‘When it’s cold out, do you ever just want to stay in bed for ever, Mary?’ he asked.

  ‘All the time,’ she assured him. Especially now, she thought, with equal measures of rue and remorse. I’d do nearly anything to avoid looking Captain Rennie in the eye.

  The matter couldn’t be avoided, especially after the captain glanced in the room and ordered his son to ‘get topside and handsomely now’. Funny how he used nautical terms for the commonest event. Funny how he couldn’t look her in the eye, either. Maybe he was as embarrassed as she was. She prayed the mail coach remained where she had last seen it.

  With the mail coach in mind, she dressed quickly, once Nathan had left the room, and edged out of the house, not looking right or left. The snow had stopped and some enterprising soul had shovelled a path from house to barn. She found both Prestons in the barn, harnessing their horses. They looked surprised when she asked them to stop and let her off, if they happened to pass the mail coach, but they nodded and asked no questions.

  When she returned to the cottage, everyone was sitting down to breakfast and eating out of the pot, sharing spoons. Callie gestured to her and she joined her hostess, taking her turn at the porridge.

  No one had much to say, but Callie tried. ‘Are ye spending Christmas in Knaresborough?’ she asked.

  ‘Edinburgh,’ Mary said at the same time Ross said, ‘Dumfries.’

  Their hostess looked from one to the other, puzzled, but made no comment. Mary felt her face go even redder. She glanced up to see Captain Rennie regarding her with a frown. She blushed all over again to think how eagerly she had found her way into his arms and lodged not one single complaint when he unbuttoned her nightgown. I am a scandal to the Rennies, she thought in misery. Reminding herself that Ross was a Rennie, too, did nothing to soothe her mind.

  * * *

  When breakfast ended, she went into the little room to retrieve her travelling case. Ross must have left the nest of coins on the pillow. She added a few of her own, after making certain she had mail-coach fare to Edinburgh. She turned to leave the room and Ross stood in the doorway. Tears of humiliation started in her eyes when he took hold of her shoulder.

  ‘Please don’t flagellate yourself over our misdemeanor,’ he said quietly after a glance over his shoulder. ‘Blame it on close quarters.’

  She nodded and pushed past him. After a farewell to the Blankenships, Mary seated herself in the post chaise, dreading more close quarters until they could stop at the mail coach. Nathan bounced inside and sat beside her. He leaned against her, which did nothing to restore her equanimity.

  ‘We’re going to find the ring in the fruitcake,’ he announced.

  ‘I am,’ Mary informed him gently. ‘You and your father are long overdue in Dumfries. I know I have been saying that over and over, but I never meant it more than now.’

  Nathan gave her a look she could only call mutinous, but he kept his peace. Mary knew enough about little boys to reckon that this particular one enjoyed some success in using such an expression on Mrs Pritchert. Such a thought furnished her the only amusement of the morning.

  She watched through the window as Captain Rennie spoke with Tom Preston. There appeared to be an argument, which furnished Mary with the opinion that Nathan had inherited the mutinous glance from his father. Preston appeared to be standing his ground, which impressed Mary. In another moment, Ross had turned away and opened the door to the chaise.

  ‘Mary, you are a trial,’ was all he said as he sat down and gazed out the window.

  She gazed out the other window as they set off. Silence reigned supreme until Nathan nudged her.

  ‘It was something I did, wasn’t it?’ he asked in a low voice.

  Both of them looked at the boy.

  ‘Never!’ Mary declared at the same time Ross said, ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘I should have stayed in the loft last night,’ the boy said with a sigh. ‘You didn’t like being crowded.’

  ‘I didn’t mind,’ Mary said and put her arm around Nathan. ‘We all stayed warm together. I’m just in the dumps because...because I have to go back to Edinburgh once I find the ring, and England’s not so bad.’

  Ross chuckled at that. ‘A ten-year-old’s logic,’ he told Mary in a little sidewise comment not meant for Nathan, which made her smile, too, but only a little. ‘And I’m in the dumps because I’m tired of travelling,’ he told his son.

  That’s a set down, Mary thought, then tried to assure herself that no one had forced him to follow the trail of the circulating fruitcake.

  * * *

  To her infinite relief, the mail coach came in sight a mile later. All appeared to be well, with the horses prancing a bit and stretching out their necks as if eager for movement. The passengers stood close by, apparently none the worse for wear. A shire road crew from Knaresborough must have smoothed some of yesterday’s storm to the side of the highway, because the mail had to get through.

  Just as she had asked, the post chaise slowed and came to a stop. Mary got out when the younger Preston opened the door and dropped the step. He took her travelling satchel from the boot and followed her to the mail coach.

  ‘Well, miss! You forfeited a chilly evening huddling with everyone else and listening to one man’s story of the Orient, and another’s glimpse of Russia,’ the coachman of the Royal Mail said, as cheerful as a man would probably be, with a coach full of riders wishing him to the devil and themselves at their delayed destinations.

  She handed her luggage to him, and he stowed it and helped her aboard. She steeled herself and did not look behind her.

  It hardly mattered. In a moment, Nathan clambered on board, followed by his father, who appeared to have found permanent residence under a thundercloud. ‘Nathan,’ was all he said, but the delivery was everything. Mary felt her skin tighten.

  ‘I want to ride the mail coach with Mary. She will be alone.’ He spoke as firmly as his father.

  ‘The coach is full,’ Ross argued, his face reddening. Obviously, his repertory with small boys didn’t include reasoning with them without raising his voice in front of perfect strangers. ‘She won’t be a
lone. I will be alone, if you ride with Mary.’

  Nathan only cuddled closer to Mary. ‘Mrs Pritchert says captains are always alone, so it shouldn’t bother you, Da. I’ll see you in Knaresborough.’

  Startled, Mary glanced at the captain. His thunderous look had given way to one of infinite sadness. ‘Nathan, you should—’ she began.

  Captain Rennie cut her off. ‘No need, Miss Rennie,’ he said so formally, trying to maintain dignity even though his son had wounded him. She knew it was unintentional, but Nathan’s careless words had struck a nerve. ‘I’ll see you both soon enough.’ He raised his hat to them and stepped away from the mail coach.

  She watched, saddened, as he gave the coachman some money, then returned alone to the post chaise. There was no lift to his shoulders, no purpose in his stride. He suddenly looked like what he was—an ageing sea captain with a limp.

  ‘Oh, Nathan,’ she said. ‘I believe you hurt his feelings.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to.’ It was a small voice from a small boy. ‘Mrs Pritchert does say that about him,’ he added in his own defence.

  ‘He wants to spend this holiday with you, not me,’ she said as the coachman snapped his whip and they started off.

  Let this journey end, Mary thought as she winked back tears. She had no desire to cry in front of one salesmen, a clergyman and a farmer. Her head ached and her heart was sore. She was cured of adventures for ever.

  * * *

  Ross was alone and he didn’t care for it one iota. Trust Mrs Pritchert to understand captains. For twenty-four years he had served his royal sovereign on all seas and in all weathers. His ships had worked death on the enemy from the Baltic to Chesapeake Bay. He had fought ship-to-ship engagements and killed his share of the enemy face to face. His leg had been detached from him and thrown overboard in the Mediterranean and he had consigned his crew to their own watery ends in all oceans.

  This shore leave, which had begun as a chance to visit a dear sister and renew his acquaintance with bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, had turned into far more than he bargained for. If he was honest—and why not, since he was by himself?—he was ill equipped to handle anything that didn’t involve a frigate and a crew. He was as useless as lubbers pressed onto his frigate against their will, because the navy was so desperately short of men in a war that ground on and on.

  For years, he had harboured the secret delight of imagining himself married one day and perhaps living a gentrified life on an estate of his own. He had earned enough prize money for just such a scenario. He knew he would marry again because he had planned it out years ago. As he thought about the matter, he became uncomfortably aware that in all the terror of war, the woman with the blonde hair and exotic accent had burned herself into his brain like a brand. ‘Go ahead and think it,’ he murmured to himself. ‘An obsession.’ When the horrors of death surrounded him through countless sea battles, he had retreated inside his own head with that lovely lady, thinking of her instead of maimed limbs and bodies thrown overboard during battle, and throat-closing thirst surrounded by the water of distant oceans that no one could drink. She had become his curious retreat from the destruction that would have driven another captain insane; he had seen it happen.

  Things had changed after Carlisle. Somewhere in the past week, he had begun to use Mary Rennie as a measuring stick, instead of his blonde lady with the beguiling accent. Some day he would have a wife who was refined, but not rarefied; clever, but not a bluestocking; nice to look at, but not someone who would spend all her time preening in front of a glass; kind to children, but not a pushover; pliable but not a woman to twist in the wind. What had happened to the beautiful lady of his dreams?

  For some reason, as disloyal to his dream as it was, Providence had put him in the path of just such a measuring stick. He knew in the deepest part of him that the war was not over yet; it couldn’t be. When it was, he might credit Mary with being his inadvertent model as he searched for a wife to make his more mature years comfortable. Inez had been a wife for a man of hot blood. His next wife, whoever she turned out to be, would cause him no grief or anxiety. After a generation of constant war, he had earned such a paragon.

  Well and good, but since he was in an examining mood, his plan began to smack of the worst sort of self-serving claptrap. Service in King George’s navy had turned him into an efficient killing machine. Beyond urges for women made sharp because men were so long away, it had taught him nothing about daily living on land.

  In a way he could not understand, the lady of his list began to mock him. She had always been out of reach because she did not exist. He had clung to her ideal through an entire career at war, almost as though she were real. Was this whole business of war finally driving him mad?

  And so he floundered.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Snow notwithstanding, the mail coach dropped them at the Tudor Rose before noon. Mary’s head truly ached. In his own way, Nathan had been a comfort, leaning against her and then resting his head in her lap when he dozed. His presence throughout the whole journey from Carlisle had forcibly borne home to her that no one in Edinburgh ever touched her.

  All this adventure had done was make her highly dissatisfied with her lot. Mary closed her eyes in weariness, knowing that wasn’t entirely true. She had fallen in love with an aggravating man.

  She had no particular illusions about men. Unlike Dina, she had never glamourised the male sex into something it was not. Her own innate sense of fair play informed her that men were probably as flighty and foolish as women, possessing no particular abundance of brains that the ladies couldn’t own in equal shares. They probably even made just as many stupid decisions. Maybe more; it wasn’t the ladies who started wars, except for perhaps poor Helen of Troy and her pretty face.

  Somewhere between Cumberland sausage in Carlisle and porridge in the amorous Blankenships’ cottage, she had decided that no one would do for her except Ross Rennie. He seemed to find the fruitcake expedition interesting enough to invest time and travel in it. She had wondered if she was in love with him, but had decided, practical woman, that whatever it was she felt would pass, especially after he started offering her advice about Canada. Someone truly interested in her would never suggest she move there.

  Until last night—she felt her face grow red in remembrance—she hadn’t experienced brains and common sense deserting her body simultaneously. With no urging, she would have given herself to him completely, she who was raised to know better. Thank God Nathan had interrupted them.

  What if he hadn’t? Without question, she would have been compromised. Perhaps the captain would have offered for her hand out of duty. He had never declared any love for her—far from it. Several times he had mentioned Our Lady of the List, as he jokingly called her. But was he joking? Likely it would be someone lovely and possessed of her own income. It always came back to money.

  ‘Bother it,’ she murmured, which caused the farmer next to her to give her a sidelong glance before returning to his book.

  Nathan smiled as the coach guard blew an extra flourish with his yard of tin, maybe because everyone, not just the passengers, was relieved to be in Knaresborough. The captain’s post chaise waited at the public house. In fact, Tony Preston helped her from the mail coach.

  ‘God’s bones, miss, but the captain is in a foul mood,’ he whispered.

  ‘I told him and Nathan to go to Dumfries,’ Mary said. ‘I’m quite capable of finding Knaresborough by myself.’

  As they walked to the chaise, Mary smiled to think of herself at the beginning of the fruitcake adventure, as she intended to call it—unsure of herself, a bit of an old maid. Everything had changed in Carlisle, and she knew she at least owed that to Captain Rennie. Maybe she really would find the courage to cross the ocean herself to North America. The matter would call for some contriving on her part, but she knew she could
manage it in a few years, if her little nest egg continued to do well in Uncle Sam’s counting house. She could thank Ross for that before they parted company. No, no, Captain Rennie. She probably should no longer think of him as Ross, even if he was a distant cousin dangling from some twig of the Rennie family tree.

  ‘Where to, miss? The captain couldn’t remember,’ Tom Preston said, as he handed her into the vehicle after Nathan clambered in to greet his father.

  ‘Number Twenty-five Corydon Circle.’ She hoped it wasn’t far.

  * * *

  It wasn’t. The door to Number Twenty-five sported a Christmas wreath, reminding Mary that the festivity was only four days away now. She had not written to her aunt in more than a week. Those particular Rennies were probably wondering where she was. Two days on the mail coach would see her back in Edinburgh.

  As Mary tumbled out her story to the butler who answered their summons, he seemed disinclined to interrupt his master somewhere in the bowels of the house until she mentioned Mr Tavish Maxfield of York, the previous owner of the fruitcake.

  ‘Wait here in the hall, please,’ he said, holding up one finger.

  ‘He leaves us here in the hall,’ Captain Rennie grumbled, the sound of ill usage high in his voice.

  ‘He doesn’t know us,’ Mary said sensibly, which earned her a glare.

  Mr Bartemus Whitney greeted them with a smile. He was dressed to go outdoors, so Mary explained the whole matter to him quickly.

  ‘You have been sent on an expedition to save the world from tainted fruitcake?’

  Put that way, Mary laughed. ‘Aye, sir!’ she told him, which made him smile wider and make some comment about her delightful accent. ‘You’re a lucky man, Captain,’ he said to Ross Rennie, who merely nodded.