Marriage of Mercy

by Carla Kelly

  He nodded. ‘You’re a sensible soul, Grace, and quite fetching in flannel.’

  She made a face at him.

  ‘I admit I want to see Mr Selway, too,’ he told her. ‘Ugly Butler makes me uneasy and I wonder when Lord Thomson will show his nasty visage again. I’d also like to hear a little news about the war.’

  Grace laughed. ‘You mean Lady Tutt’s views aren’t enough?’

  He just rolled his eyes, then held out his hand. ‘Give me your brush, Grace, and undo that particular braid. You missed a hunk of hair in the back.’

  She knew her mother would have had spasms, but she handed him her brush, then untied the braid, running the hair through her fingers. He was right; she had missed a hunk of hair.

  ‘That’s better.’ He sat on her bed and she obediently turned her back to him, enjoying the unheard-of pleasure of someone brushing her hair, something that no one had done for her after Mama had died.

  ‘I used to squirm when my mother did that,’ she said, surprised how breathless she sounded. ‘She would usually rap me on the head with the brush and tell me that if I didn’t behave, Napoleon would get me.’

  He laughed and rapped her head lightly with the brush. ‘In Massachusetts, the threat is Indians.’ He brushed in silence until her hair began to crackle. ‘You have beautiful hair, Gracie.’

  She didn’t want him ever to stop. ‘It’s just brown. You’re the one with lovely hair.’

  He braided her hair expertly and she knew, with a pang, that he must have done this many times for his Elaine. How had that ended each evening? she wondered. Would he turn her around and kiss her? And where did it go from there? And what would she do if he kissed her now?

  She felt his breath on her neck, but nothing else, which she told herself was a relief, after he said, ‘Nice braid, Gracie’, wished her goodnight, and left her room. She lay awake a long time, seeing a handsome man sitting on a porch in Nantucket, feet up and visiting with his neighbours as a sweet-faced woman knitted.

  ‘Why couldn’t that have been me?’ she asked softly, her hand gentle on the braid he had created so handily.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Grace woke early, squinting to see the little clock that Lord Thomson must have missed when he plucked the dower house clean. Four-thirty. She tiptoed to the door, knowing which squeaky floorboards to avoid.

  She let herself into Rob Inman’s room. He was breathing evenly; she listened for a moment, enjoying the homely sound. As she stood in his room, she thought about all the years in her little room off the bakery ovens, hearing no one else, because the Wilsons slept upstairs. I have lived too much in solitude, she told herself. I have also been angry for too long. Rob is right. I don’t want to be angry any more.

  But now it was time to wake the parolee. She leaned over him, reaching out to tap his shoulder. Instead, his hand went around her wrist. She gasped and clutched his bare shoulder.

  ‘I’m awake,’ he whispered. ‘Didn’t mean to knock ten years off your life.’

  Startled, she blurted, ‘Did we never see that you had a night shirt? I can remedy that.’

  He chuckled. ‘What would I do with a night shirt?’

  ‘Wear it at night,’ she replied, feeling as stupid as she sounded.

  ‘Never wore one before,’ he said. She heard him sit up and realised she still had her hand on his warm shoulder. ‘You have a choice, Gracie, either close your eyes, or exit the room. Or leave them open if you wish. I don’t think I’ve ever startled horses.’

  Good thing the room was dark and the parolee couldn’t see her fiery cheeks. ‘Mind your manners! I think I will tiptoe quietly out,’ she whispered.

  ‘Good choice. Let’s meet outside the front door. The side door is too close to the kitchen and Emery might hear us.’

  She dressed quickly, lighting a candle only to find the parole Mr Selway had left with her. She had decided it was safest to keep the document in her room, hidden in a pouch behind her aprons. She hung the pouch around her neck and out of sight.

  * * *

  Rob was sitting on the front steps when she quietly opened the outside door. She could just see him in the moonrise.

  ‘Ready?’ he whispered.

  He surprised her by picking her up and carrying her across the gravel of the curved driveway, then setting her down on the grass. ‘Quieter,’ he said. He took her hand. ‘Let’s walk in the borrow pit.’

  A single lamp burned in an upstairs window as they silently passed the manor house. ‘Ugly Butler keeps early hours,’ she whispered.

  ‘Or he’s scared of the dark.’

  Grace put her hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh. Rob held tight to her hand as they walked to the junction, waiting with a woman and two cages of chickens. Grace recognised her as the wife of one of Lord Thomson’s crofters.

  Grace exchanged pleasantries with the woman. ‘’Tis market day in Exeter,’ the tenant said.

  So it was. The local carriage to Exeter was already full of hopeful people like the crofter’s wife, carrying goods to market. The driver assessed them. ‘Sonny, you’ll have to put your wife on yer lap,’ he told Rob, then laughed. ‘This doesn’t mean she’s merchandise to sell in Exeter!’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of such a thing,’ Rob said, doing a creditable imitation of Grace’s own West Country burr, ‘even if she is as sweet as a basket of strawberry tarts.’

  Everyone laughed. Grace’s cheeks flamed. Rob squeezed himself between the woman with the chickens and a man with a single pig. The parolee patted his lap and she sat down, with nowhere to put her arms but around his neck. Both of his arms went around her waist.

  ‘Gracie, you’re an everlasting temptation,’ he whispered.

  ‘And you are just shy of certifiable,’ she whispered back, which made him chuckle.

  The other passengers in the crammed conveyance beamed at her. The man seated next to Rob nudged him in the ribs. ‘She’s a tasty morsel, lad,’ he boomed out, which made the pig squeal.

  ‘Sir, you have no idea,’ Rob replied. Two geese flapped their wings and honked.

  ‘You’re determined this is going to be the hardest thirty pounds I have ever earned,’ Grace whispered in his ear, under the noise of the poultry.

  ‘Gracie, don’t blow in my ear,’ he said. ‘It’s almost more than a man a year in Dartmoor can stand.’

  I have said enough, she thought. Still, Rob Inman was comfortable to sit on, now that a few months of good food had filled him out. And there was still that wonderful fragrance of cinnamon and yeast from his shirt, and his own pleasant odour, nothing more than sun, newly washed hair and whatever it was that made him Rob Inman: sailing master, widower from Nantucket, enemy of the crown and her own parolee.

  Her silence must have inspired some remorse from her charge. ‘I shouldn’t be such a tease,’ he whispered practically in her ear.

  ‘And I should play along better,’ she whispered back. ‘I can do that, you rascal.’

  With a small sigh of her own, she rested her head against the captain’s chest and closed her eyes. His arms settled around her more gently and he seemed to naturally lean his head on hers. I wish I had your confidence, she thought, and then she slept.

  * * *

  The seagulls woke her; she sat up on Rob’s lap, wondering if she was still dreaming.

  ‘I think this must be the market square,’ he said. ‘It’s as noisy as Nantucket’s harbour. Do we get off here?’

  Grace nodded. She felt his sigh, then he surprised her with a kiss to the top of her head.

  ‘My legs have gone to sleep,’ he told her. ‘On the way back, I’ll sit on your lap.’

  She laughed, waiting until the others with chickens, geese and one amazingly out-of-place cockatoo left the carriage, intent on their modest commerce. Looming above all was

  Exeter Cathedral. Beyond that, she knew, was the city’s Chancery Lane, where the barristers and solicitors competed for business.

  Business. That was it. Tim
e to get off Rob’s comfortable lap and find Mr Selway. She left the carriage, shaking the wrinkles from her dress and looking at the cathedral, one of England’s loveliest. ‘I doubt you have anything to compare with this in Nantucket,’ she said to Rob.

  He shook his head. ‘I know we’re not here to gawk and sightsee, but can we go inside?’

  His open-mouthed reaction inside the cathedral gave her a warm glow. He stared at the intricate ribbing overhead, turning around to admire the building’s magnificence.

  ‘Amazing,’ he murmured. ‘I go to meeting in a little shingled church just off the bay. Sometimes we sing louder than the seagulls caw, sometimes we don’t.’

  He walked further into the cathedral, eyes up mostly.

  ‘You there! Shoo! Shoo!’

  Startled, Grace turned to see a deacon coming toward them both, making motions with his hands, as though he would sweep them from the building. Rob moved quickly toward her, as though in her defence. His face was alert, with a determined set to his jaw that boded considerable ill will to the deacon, even if he was a man of the cloth.

  Grace clamped her hand on his arm and stepped in front of him. ‘Rob has never seen Exeter Cathedral before and we were—’

  ‘Go on now!’ the clergyman exclaimed. ‘There is a wedding in an hour of people far above you two! Go away.’

  After a long look, Rob turned on his heel and left the cathedral, Grace right behind. He didn’t stop on the steps, but took long strides on to the lawn, where he stood finally, his hands tight into fists, his face grim.

  ‘I will stick with my grey-shingled meeting house,’ he said when he could speak. He held up his hand. ‘Grace, don’t apologise for your countrymen! There’s no excuse.’

  He was right; she had been about to offer an excuse for rudeness that had no excuse, except that they were poorly dressed. She looked away, unable to bear the hurt in his eyes. As she stood there, so embarrassed, another thought crossed her mind, one that took some of the sting away. A year ago, she would have thought little of the deacon’s rudeness. She knew she had slipped and had no place in the more privileged world. Now she was embarrassed, because she saw the incident through Rob’s eyes. He might have been a prisoner of war and a not-so-distant inmate of Dartmoor, but he knew he was the equal of that rude man—certainly his superior in manners. No wrong had the power to dismiss what he was—an American.

  She couldn’t put all that into words because she wasn’t sure how. Grace raised her eyes to his, saw the wound there, but no loss of dignity. She touched his hand lightly, not certain how he would take it.

  ‘Let us go and find Mr Selway,’ she said simply.

  They crossed the lawn in silence. Rob slowed down as his anger cooled and he realised she was hurrying to keep up.

  ‘I want to go home so badly,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps Mr Selway can tell us of any progress.’

  Perhaps. The problem? No one in Chancery Lane had ever heard of Mr Selway.

  Grace had been to the rabbit warren of streets only a few months before her father’s final illness, when she had almost convinced him to see a solicitor to discuss selling his estate. As they had approached the office, Sir Henry had exclaimed, ‘Daughter, I am a baronet!’ as though that would make him immune from his own self-induced ruin, not to mention hers.

  Grace went to that same office because she remembered its location. She asked as politely as she knew how, short of grovelling, if the clerk could direct her to the office of Mr Philip Selway.

  After a long stare, the clerk had condescended to ruffle through the pages of the magistrate’s directory on his high desk. ‘No one by that name in Exeter,’ he said, still staring at the pages, probably hoping something would appear, so she would leave. ‘I cannot find what isn’t there.’

  Grace turned away. After the rudeness in the cathedral, Rob had waited for her outside. He frowned when she shook her head.

  ‘Not there?’ he asked.

  ‘Apparently not anywhere. The clerk looked through a directory of some sort. There is no solicitor of that name in Exeter.’

  They started down the street. He stopped after a while. ‘I’m lost, Grace. Is there a straight thoroughfare in this entire town?’

  ‘Probably not. Let’s go back to the market square. You’re probably famished. Eat away troubles, I always say.’

  They found a stall where sausages snapped in the grease. Grace bought three and a grease-soaked packet of pasties. They walked to a low wall beside the River Exe and sat there, eating in silence.

  ‘We’ve been diddled some way or other,’ Rob said finally, wiping his hands on the grass. ‘Didn’t Mr Selway give you an address where the merchants in Quimby could forward the receipts for any purchases you made?’

  She had forgotten that. ‘He did. Should I go to the greengrocer tomorrow and ask if he has been paid for what I have bought?’

  ‘I think so,’ he said, his uncertainty evident. ‘Surely you would have heard by now, if there were bills outstanding.’

  She nodded. ‘I will ask, but perhaps we should write to Mr Selway ourselves. He told me that letters are to go to Philip Selway, Esq., Postal Box Fifteen, Exeter. Mr Selway—’

  ‘—or whoever he is—’

  ‘—would have to retrieve any mail himself, but we have no idea where he really is,’ she finished. ‘This makes me uneasy.’

  ‘Aye. Maybe we misunderstood him. Maybe it wasn’t

  Exeter.’

  ‘It was Exeter, Rob.’ Grace shivered, in spite of the summer’s warmth. ‘I don’t understand what is happening. He prepared and read Lord Thomson’s will, arranged for us to retrieve you—or at least, Captain Duncan—from Dartmoor, set up your maintenance in the dower house…’

  ‘…and then he left, trusting you with everything,’ Rob continued. He looked at her half-eaten pasty. ‘I know this makes me as rude as the deacon at Exeter Cathedral thinks I am, but I could eat that, if you don’t want it.’

  He finished her pasty and wiped his hands again. ‘Let’s go back to Quimby and write to Mr Selway, or whoever he is.’ He stood up and pulled her up with him. ‘I’m going to look for a newspaper first, if you’ll spot me a penny or two.’

  She looked in her reticule and looked again, as if hopeful something would appear. ‘Better see if you can find a paper left in a dustbin. I thought we could get some money from Mr Selway today, so all I have is coach fare.’

  He grinned. ‘I’m resourceful, Gracie. I should find something easily enough. I can’t quite believe that Lady Tutt’s interpretation of the war is the last word in accuracy. Wait here.’

  She nodded, sitting on the low wall again to watch the River Exe, until she remembered the danger of letting Rob Inman out of her sight. She leaped up and ran after him as he crossed the market square.

  ‘I can’t leave you alone!’ she said, breathless, when she caught up to him.

  ‘Don’t you trust me by now?’ he asked, chiding her gently.

  She tugged at his arm. ‘You don’t understand! Suppose Ugly Butler followed us? I have to go where you go because I hold your parole. Someone has to worry, if you won’t!’ It all came out in one breath.

  He took her by both shoulders. ‘Slow down, Gracie! We haven’t been followed today.’

  She couldn’t help the tears that welled in her eyes. ‘I couldn’t bear it if you were hauled away or shot.’

  He pulled her close, unmindful of the people in the marketplace. ‘Grace, I’ll be fine. Hey now, don’t waste a tear over a Yankee sailing master!’

  She sobbed and clung to him. ‘Oh, Gracie,’ he crooned. ‘We’ll figure this out. Don’t be so fearful.’ He tipped her chin up. ‘Or tearful. There’s not a man alive who has any defence against that, no matter what his nationality.’ He clapped his arm around her shoulders and started moving again. ‘I reckon you’ll have to come with me behind that public house there, so I can search through a dustbin. Maybe the deacon in the cathedral had us pegged. Grace, you’re cons
orting with low company.’

  ‘I am not!’ she said, indignant.

  ‘Are too,’ he contradicted. ‘Wait here at the top of the

  alley…I’m in plain sight!’

  She did as he said, fingering the strings of the little pouch around her neck holding the parole papers, as he searched through a dustbin, then another. He stopped finally and shook off what looked like bread crumbs.

  ‘Success. Let’s see what Lady Tutt has not told us.’

  He read the odourous paper as they waited for the conveyance, frowning over the news. ‘What day is it, my dear parole officer?’

  ‘July 25,’ she said promptly. ‘I am not your parole officer.’

  ‘Bow Street Runner, then,’ he teased. He folded the paper and set it beside him. ‘Six-week-old news is hardly better than Lady Tutt.’

  ‘Bad?’

  ‘We were not prepared for this war,’ he said. ‘Now that Napoleon is on Elba, your army has turned its full attention to my country.’ He frowned at the paper. ‘Now the redcoats are raiding up and down the Atlantic coast, burning, pillaging and raping. Or they were six weeks ago.’ Looking grim, he rested his elbows on his knees. ‘This hasn’t been much of a cheerful outing, has it?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I learned today that we’re not good enough for Exeter Cathedral, Mr Selway doesn’t exist and my country could be in ruins,’ he said, his eyes on the approaching conveyance. ‘Learn anything today, my dear Gracie Curtis?’ he asked.

  My dear Gracie Curtis. She closed her eyes, wishing he would not tease her. ‘Mostly I wish I knew what was going on,’ she said, digging in her reticule for carriage fare. ‘Maybe I wish you were home in Nantucket.’

  Maybe I wish I were there, too, she added in her heart.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The carriage was empty on the return journey. In solitude, Grace searched her mind for any information about Mr Selway that she might have remembered. All she could dredge up was a mild-looking man who had assured her that watching Captain Duncan would be easy and rewarding.