Marriage of Mercy

by Carla Kelly

  When his face was trimmed to within shaving distance of a straight razor, she crouched a little to tackle his neck. He turned his head to oblige her. After a few snips, she stopped and stared.

  ‘My God,’ she whispered.

  Rob frowned, then must have realised what she was staring at. ‘It’s not that bad, Grace. It didn’t hurt for long.’

  She couldn’t help her tears, but wiped them away with her apron, even as she knelt in the grass by the stool. ‘Why would anyone do that?’ she asked, when she could speak.

  Her question seemed to embarrass him. His finger went to the black imprint of the letter R in his neck just below the hinge of his jaw. ‘I don’t think the British penal system has much fondness for runaways, Gracie. At least that’s what we figured it stood for. Or maybe rascal, or wretch, except I think that’s spelled with a w. Think what a permanent memory I’ll have of your island.’

  Chapter Seven

  ‘They did that to you in Dartmoor?’ Grace asked. She just held the scissors. Her hands shook, and she didn’t trust herself to continue.

  ‘Who can blame them?’ he asked. ‘I did a runner, and had the misfortune to be caught and hauled back. When Captain Shortland grew bored of his goon lashing my back, he brought out the iron. Grace, it was seven or eight months ago. Now I just have a souvenir.’

  ‘That doesn’t make it right,’ she said, wondering why she wanted to argue this kind of logic with a prisoner, someone who had done her country harm.

  He tried to smile, but she saw how tired he was. ‘Grace, there’s no accounting for war. It’s a nasty business, better not engaged in, but once you’re caught in its grip, you realise how small a cog in the great wheel you truly are. Admiral or powder monkey, it hardly matters. Just cut me close,’ he told her; now there was no mistaking the exhaustion in his voice. ‘I’ll shave myself, if you trust me with a razor.’

  ‘Of course I do. And while you’re doing that, I’ll bring out some breakfast.’

  ‘Music to my ears,’ he said with a conscious effort.

  She hurried as fast as she could, because he seemed to wilt before her eyes. She wished she had brought him breakfast even before the bath; it was all he could do to sit upright. ‘I’ll send Emery out with a razor, soap and hot water.’

  Rob shook his head. ‘Food first.’ He could barely keep his eyes opened. ‘Anything.’

  ‘I’ll hurry back,’ she said, irritated with herself for not noticing how weak he was.

  * * *

  When she returned with a tray of well-sugared porridge and two hard rolls stuffed with butter and marmalade, her charge lay asleep on the ground. He had pillowed his head on his arms and his breath came slow and peaceful.

  ‘Drat!’ Grace said under her breath, guilty she had not thought to bring him food sooner. She set the tray beside him in the grass and sat cross-legged next to him under a hawthorn tree, which was shedding its white blossoms.

  Perhaps he had smelled the food. Rob opened his eyes and reached for a roll, almost in one motion. He moved onto his back, chewing and swallowing with the same singleness of mind she had seen yesterday, when he had devoured the watercress. The other roll went down faster than the first.

  ‘Can you help me sit up? It’s a pain to be so useless.’

  She did as he asked. In another moment, the bowl of porridge was just a memory. He looked around for more.

  ‘Emery is afraid you will vomit if you eat any more right now,’ Grace told him.

  ‘Emery can take a flying leap off a quay,’ Rob said. ‘You’re a baker’s assistant? At some point in your life, maybe you knew what it’s like to be hungry.’

  ‘I’ve been lucky,’ she said, too shy to tell him of her plummet from her station in life and her rescue from a worse fate by the Wilsons.

  By the time Rob had finished shaving—he took his time, stopping to rest—Grace had to agree with the maid who had brought the food from the manor. The man was at least a little handsome, discounting the high relief of his facial bones, a defect that time and food would soften.

  ‘I don’t think you’ll scare horses,’ Grace said, handing him a warm towel, which he draped over his face with an audible sigh.

  ‘I hope to heaven not,’ he replied and swabbed the warm towel across his face and neck, where the prison brand stood out in stark relief.

  Shaved and shorn, the captain looked so different. She wished she had not cut his hair so close, because it was a beautiful shade of reddish-gold. His eyes were as nicely blue as she had noticed earlier and his nose was straight, even if it did appear etched into his face, because of his total lack of body fat. There was something about him—she had noticed it last night on the stairs: an air of capability she did not expect to see from a man who was a prisoner and weak from hunger and ill use.

  She wondered if that was an American trait. Even with a brand on his neck and too few pounds on his body, her

  parolee did not look like a man who knew his place.

  How do Americans do that, I wonder? Her next thought: Can I possibly keep him on this estate, if he chooses not to be here? Lord Thomson, what have you wished on me?

  ‘Will I do?’ the captain asked, catching the eye of the little maid who still stood there.

  The child nodded. Grace doubted anyone in recent memory—maybe ever—had asked her opinion, much less with a smile.

  Grace touched her shoulder. ‘He’s teasing you.’

  ‘I think you’ll do,’ the maid said, then ducked behind Grace, overcome with shyness.

  ‘I think so, too,’ she told her. ‘If we do our duty—as Lord Nelson admonished all Englishmen—and fulfil our charge from old Lord Thomson, we’ll send him back to…to…’

  ‘Nantucket.’

  ‘…to Nantucket healthy.’

  ‘Your country is counting on you,’ he said gently.

  The appeal to patriotism brought the maid out from behind Grace. Still unable to speak, she bobbed a curtsy and dashed for the manor.

  The captain watched her go. ‘You realise, of course, that I will be able to inveigle anything I want from the big house, if she is my go-between.’ He handed back the empty porridge bowl. ‘Now, if you will help me upstairs, I hear my bed calling me.’

  Grace did as he asked, uneasy at his exhaustion and the way he had to literally pull himself up the stairs. He stood at the top of the landing for a long moment, teetering there until he had his balance. She wondered what he was thinking, unable to really know if his startling change of circumstance had even registered completely.

  He headed towards his chamber, but Grace put her hand against the small of his back and steered him to the next room. ‘Emery is fumigating the chamber where you slept last night,’ she told him as she opened the door. ‘This is where you will be staying.’

  He stood in the doorway, just looking at the simple but pleasant room. ‘Believe me when I tell you it is humiliating to be full of lice and fleas. I haven’t been so uncomfortable since my childhood.’

  Her curiosity piqued, Grace had to know more. ‘Fleas and lice on Nantucket?’ she teased in turn.

  The amusement in his voice was evident. He laughed softly, even as he sat down heavily on the bed. ‘Nantucket? Comes with sand fleas, too. But I told you last night I was born in England. I’m one of those Americans that England insists can only be English, because I was born here. This is what you get for choosing Rob Inman, officially branded a troublemaker. You may wish to surrender my parole to someone else.’

  ‘How could I possibly collect my thirty pounds a year, if I did?’

  ‘Only thirty pounds to watch me?’ The captain’s eyes were closing. ‘I fear you are not being paid well enough for the aggravation I will be.’

  It was a disquieting thought. She watched him as he drifted to sleep, wondering just how much trouble one parolee could be.

  * * *

  She left him then, sound asleep. It troubled her to watch a man wilt so fast and so she told Emery belowstairs, as he
continued to unpack the shabby goods Lord Thomson thought should furnish the dower house, now that a prisoner of war lived there, along with a baker’s assistant awarded the princely sum, per annum, of thirty pounds.

  ‘Why is Lord Thomson so intent upon punishing me for a mere thirty pounds?’ she asked Emery.

  The old retainer only shrugged and folded another tattered dishcloth into a drawer.

  She toyed with the idea of telling Emery of the switch in Dartmoor Prison, then decided against it. It would serve no purpose to tell anyone who ‘Captain Duncan’ really was. She wouldn’t tell the Wilsons, either, she decided, as she walked to Quimby, knowing Rob would sleep through the afternoon.

  * * *

  ‘He is rail thin and weak,’ she told them both as she stood at the familiar kneading table again.

  ‘Worms, more like,’ Mrs Wilson said. ‘I have a dose of black draught that will shift ’im.’

  Grace smiled, her equilibrium restored by the mere act of stirring a recipe she knew so well. ‘I’d rather wish the black draught on Lord Thomson! He took everything out of the dower house before Mr Selway and I returned from Dartmoor and replaced it—when forced to—with the worst rubbish from the attics!’

  ‘A double dose of black draught for Lord Thomson,’ Mr Wilson said with a laugh as he watched her. ‘Enough to keep him in the necessary and out of your business!’

  Trust the Wilsons to cheer her up, she decided as she hurried to the greengrocer to buy food to tempt the American’s appetite. Mr Selway had smoothed her path with the local merchants. She ordered food and timidly told the proprietor to direct the receipt to Philip Selway, Esq., Exeter, Postal Box Fifteen. The man didn’t even blink. ‘Aye, Gracie,’ he told her. ‘That solemn-looking solicitor gave us strict orders about your invoices.’

  So it went at each store she visited; everyone was curious about Captain Duncan. Grace resigned herself to being part of the most interesting thing that had happened in Quimby since Quentin Markwell, Exeter’s own notorious highwayman, had galloped through town a century ago, pausing to steal the vicar’s smallclothes from his washing line.

  * * *

  She returned to Quarle in good humour, at least until she saw Lord Thomson watching her out of an upstairs window, his glare evident even from some distance. ‘Surely it is but a matter of months until this poor man is gone,’ she muttered. ‘Lord Thomson, be a little less odious, if you can.’

  Grace’s irritation at the marquis did not improve when she entered the dower house. Emery was waiting for her, sitting on one of the rickety chairs in the small foyer and looking uncharacteristically glum.

  ‘We’ve lost him already, Gracie,’ he said.

  ‘Impossible,’ Grace retorted, trying to hide her sudden fear. ‘I left him asleep upstairs before I went to the Wilsons. He was too weak to move.’

  ‘He’s moved, Gracie. Trouble is, where?’

  Chapter Eight

  Why in heaven’s name did I ever agree to this parole? Grace asked herself as she quickly set down the purchases she had brought with her—choice dainties to tempt that wretched man’s appetite. The constable will shoot him on sight? Only if I don’t beat him to it, she thought grimly.

  ‘He can’t have just vanished, Emery,’ she stated, hands on her hips. ‘He could barely walk!’

  ‘Perhaps we are underestimating him,’ Emery offered.

  ‘Or he’s only trying to fool us so he can escape,’ Grace snapped back. ‘Where on earth would he go?’ She sat down on a rickety chair in the entrance hall. ‘Is there not a chair in this silly house that doesn’t list?’

  She was silent then, listening to herself: querulous, testy and complaining. She sighed. ‘Emery, I wish you would smite me when I complain.’

  He recoiled. ‘Never! That would go against every bit of butlering I can think of. Which ain’t much,’ he added philosophically.

  She couldn’t help smiling, despite her worries. ‘Don’t you know you should humour a lunatic?’ she teased. ‘If I am not imposing, would you please even off these chair legs?’

  ‘Consider it done,’ the old retainer told her.

  She stood outside for a long moment, wishing herself calm, even as she wanted to smack Lord Thomson and throttle Rob Inman. Where was he? She berated herself again for choosing Rob Inman, out of all the miserable American prisoners she could have selected. She walked to the modest circle drive in front of the dower house, totally at a loss. Emery had thought the parolee would have no trouble blending with the seamen that walked about Plymouth, but he would have to get there first. Plymouth was not close, especially for someone teetering just this side of starvation.

  If you’re found, you will be shot, you wretched man, she thought, walking into the road, but not ready to pass the manor house again, not with Lord Thomson watching her. She rubbed her arms, chilled at what would happen to him if the marquis had even an inkling that the captain had left the house unaccompanied.

  ‘Where would I go, if I were you?’ she asked out loud. ‘You’ve said you like the wind on your face.’

  And then she knew and realised she had better be right. Looking about to see if Lord Thomson was in sight, Grace hiked up her skirt and ran towards the highest point of land on his property. It wasn’t much of an elevation, but just enough of one to tempt someone homesick for the sea, who might think he could see Plymouth Sound from its height. She used to walk there occasionally with old Lord Thomson, when he’d had the strength, because he or one of his ancestors had put a bench at the top.

  Sure of herself now, she hurried to the high point, rehearsing in her mind what she would say to Rob when she found him. To her amazement and growing fear, he was nowhere in sight. She even stood on top of the bench, the better to scan the countryside.

  Defeat settled on her shoulders like a blanket. He hadn’t been in her charge for much more than a day and she had already lost him.

  The strength of her anger surprised her, until she realised that for the past ten years, she had maintained a steely, bloodless sort of calm—something to insulate her from slings and arrows. As she scanned the countryside, she was acutely aware that she was feeling stronger emotions than she had dared invoke earlier, even though she suspected Rob Inman was going to prove a challenge.

  ‘If I cannot find you, it’s your problem,’ she muttered out loud. Even as she said the words, she knew it wasn’t true. He was her stewardship now and she had come up short far too soon. It was a daunting thought and she took several deep breaths, trying to calm herself. How far could a barely functioning man go?

  The answer came to her with even more certainty than her last guess. She based it on something old Lord Thomson had told her, as he’d reminisced about the war with the colonies. ‘When I was garrisoned in New York City, I was so hungry for the sight of my estate and lands here that I used to stand by my window on Wall Street and turn north and east,’ he told her simply. ‘I was homesick and only the points of the compass helped.’

  ‘Rob Inman, you are looking south and west now, I vow,’ she murmured as she stood up and turned about. She started moving in that direction, knowing there was a small knoll, practically on the edge of Quimby, at the furthest corner of Lord Thomson’s land. ‘Not that you will know just where the boundaries are,’ she grumbled out loud as she ran.

  And there he was, lying down. Quietly she sank into the grass beside him, wondering if he was asleep, or even if he was dead. Gently she put her fingertips on his neck to find his pulse. Just as gently, his hand came up to cover hers.

  ‘I’m still alive, Gracie,’ he said. ‘I should have known you would find me. Maybe I hoped you would. I’m not certain I can stand. I’m a baby, I overdid it.’

  More relieved than she had ever been in her life, she let her breath out slowly, pulled her hand away and made herself comfortable beside him. ‘First I thought you might have gone to the high point by the bench, maybe thinking you could see Plymouth Sound.’

  He turned onto his back,
opened his eyes, then closed them again, as though the effort taxed him. ‘I did. What a disappointment. The wind felt good though.’ His eyes remained closed. ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘I remembered something your captain’s father told me about just wanting to stand somewhere and look in the direction of England. I…I thought maybe you had done the same thing, in the other direction.’

  ‘He did that, too? I’ll be damned. I thought maybe I could see just a sliver of the Atlantic. Just some tiny bit of the ocean that I know washes against Nantucket.’

  He couldn’t say any more. ‘What a damn fool you are in charge of, Grace,’ he whispered. ‘I want to go home so badly.’

  She didn’t say anything and debated a moment whether to take his hand. Perhaps I must earn my thirty pounds a year, she told herself as she put her hand in his and rested them both on his chest.

  ‘Tell me about your part of America. I know it is a large country.’

  ‘Very large. My part is Nantucket, not so large.’

  Only a hugely insensitive person could have failed to hear the way he caressed the word. Nantucket. Grace rolled it around in her mind, liking the sound of it. Maybe it was an Indian word.

  ‘Nantucket is a small island off the coast of Massachusetts. My home…’ He couldn’t speak for a moment. ‘My home is on Orange Street. I bought it for Elaine before we married. I can see the bay from my second storey.’ He smiled then, his eyes still closed. ‘Salt marsh and tar—what a lovely fragrance.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ she said, laughing.

  ‘Aye, it is, Gracie Curtis,’ he assured her. ‘I like it probably as much as you like the fragrance of those Quimby Crèmes.’

  She could understand that. ‘How long have you lived in America? Why did you ever leave England?’

  Grace hoped he would talk. If they were gone long enough, Emery might come looking for them and he could help her get the parolee back to the dower house. Besides, she wanted to hear why someone would leave his home and cross an ocean.