Oliver laughed. ‘‘It would serve you right.’’
‘‘I’ll see what I can do,’’ he offered, ‘‘but my credit with Sally is on the ground right now. I think she wants me dead, too.’’
Oliver was still laughing when Lynch turned away. He didn’t hurry back to the dower house, because he knew they would have gone on without him. He sat at the table in the breakfast room for a long moment, wondering if it would be better if he just left now. He could make arrangements with his solicitor in Portsmouth for his mother, and add a rider to it for Sally and Tom, even though he knew that scrupulous young woman would never touch it. In only a day or two he could be back on the blockade conning another ship.
The thought of the blockade turned him cold, and then nauseous. He rested his forehead against the table until the moment passed. He knew that he needed Sally Partlow far more than she would ever need him.
The vicarage was much as he remembered it, but this new man—vicar since his old confidant had died five years ago—had taken it upon himself to organize a foundling home in a small house just down the road. ‘‘My good wife and I have no children of our own, Captain,’’ the man explained, after Lynch arrived and introduced himself. ‘‘This gives us ample time to help others.’’
Lynch nodded, thinking of his own childless brother, who spent his time pinching pennies, denying his mother, and squeezing his tenants. ‘‘It seems so . . . charitable of you,’’ he said, realizing how lame that sounded.
‘‘Who among us is not a beggar, sir?’’ the man asked.
Who, indeed? Lynch thought, turning to watch Sally Partlow bend over a crib and appropriate its inmate, a child scarcely past birth. He watched as the baby melted into her, the dark head blending into her own beautiful auburn hair. He thought of years of war and children without food and beds, left to shiver in odd corners on wharves and warehouses, and die. ‘‘I am tired of war,’’ he said, his voice quiet. I need that woman.
‘‘How good that you can leave war behind now,’’ the vicar said.
‘‘Perhaps,’’ he told the man as he watched Sally. She has an instinct for the right thing. I wish I did. He sighed. If she turns me down flat, then my sentence is the blockade and I will die.
He shuddered at the thought; he couldn’t help himself. The vicar looked at him in surprise, then touched his sleeve. ‘‘Can you leave it behind?’’ he asked.
That, apparently, is the question, he asked himself as he went to Sally. ‘‘Please forgive me,’’ he murmured and without another word took the sleeping child from her. To his deep need and intense gratification, the baby made those small sounds of the very young, but did not even open her eyes as she folded into his chest, too. He felt himself relax all over. Her warmth was so small, but as he held her close, he felt the heat of her body against his hand and then his chest, as it penetrated even the heavy wool of his uniform. He paced up and down slowly, glad of the motion because it reminded him of his quarterdeck. The baby sighed, and he could have wept when her little puff of breath warmed his neck.
He wasn’t aware of the passage of time as he walked up and down, thinking of nothing beyond the pleasure of what he was doing, the softness of small things, the impermanence of life, its little span. What would it have cost me to forgive my brother years ago? Nothing.
Stung by his own hypocrisy, he walked on, remembering the Gospel of Matthew, which he read from the quarterdeck to his assembled crew on many a Sunday, after the required reading of the Articles of War. With painful clarity, he recalled the parable of the unmerciful servant, who was forgiven of a great debt, then inflicted his own wrath on another who owed him a tiny portion of that which had been forgiven. ‘‘ ‘Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee?’ ’’ he whispered to the baby.
He never prayed, but he prayed now, walking up and down in the peaceful room with a baby hugged to his chest. Forgive us our debts, he thought, as we forgive our debtors. How many times as captain have I led my crew in the Our Father and never listened? Forgive me now, Father, he thought. Forgive me, Sally. Forgive me, and please don’t make me go back on the blockade. For too many years I have nourished my animosities like some people take food. Let us now marry and breed little ones like this sweet child, and walk the floor of our own home, and lie down at night with each other. Please, not the blockade again.
He stood still finally. The baby stirred and stretched in his embrace, arching her back and then shooting out her arms like a flower sprouting. He smiled, thinking that in a moment she would probably work up to an enormous wail. It must be dinnertime, he thought. She yawned so hugely that she startled herself, and retreated into a ball again. He kissed her hair and walked on until she was crying in earnest and feeling soggy against his arm. In another moment, the vicar’s wife came to him, crooning to the baby in that wonderful way with children that women possessed: old women, young women, barren, fertile, of high station, and lower than the drabs on the docks. ‘‘The wet nurse is waiting for you, little one,’’ she whispered. ‘‘And did you soak Captain Lynch’s uniform?’’
‘‘It’s nothing,’’ he said, almost unwilling to turn loose of the baby.
She took the baby and smiled at him, raising her voice so he could hear over the crying, ‘‘You’re a man who likes children.’’
I know nothing of children, he thought, except those powder monkeys and middies who bleed and die on my deck. ‘‘I think I do,’’ he replied. ‘‘Yes, I do.’’
He stood another moment watching the woman with the baby, then took his cloak from the servant, put it on, replaced his hat, and soon stood on the steps of the vicarage. Sally Partlow waited by the bottom step, and he felt a wave of relief wash over him that he would not have to walk back to the dower house alone, he who went everywhere alone.
‘‘I sincerely hope you have not been waiting out here for me all this time,’’ he said.
She smiled that sunny smile of hers that had passed beyond merely pleasing to absolutely indispensable to him. ‘‘Don’t flatter yourself! I walked home with your mama and Thomas, and then she told me to return and fetch you.’’ She tugged the shawl tighter around her glorious hair. ‘‘I told her that you had navigated the world, and didn’t need my feeble directions. Besides, this is your home ground.’’
‘‘But you came anyway.’’
‘‘Of course,’’ she said promptly, holding out her arm for him. ‘‘You’re not the only biped who likes to walk. The path is icy, so I shall hang on to you.’’
He tucked her arm in his gladly, in no hurry to be anyplace else than with Sally Partlow. ‘‘I am thirty-six years old,’’ he said, and thought to himself, That ought to scare you away. Why am I even mentioning my years to this woman? was his next thought, followed by, I have not the slightest idea what to say beyond this point.
‘‘Only thirty-six?’’ Sally said, and gathered herself closer. ‘‘I’d have thought you were older.’’ She smiled at him.
‘‘Wretched chit.’’
‘‘I am twenty-five.’’ She gripped his arm tighter. ‘‘There, that’s in case my advanced years make you want to flee.’’
‘‘They don’t.’’ To his gratification, she didn’t let loose of him.
They walked on slowly, Lynch gradually shortening his stride to make it easier for the woman beside him to keep up. I’ll have to remind myself to do that, he thought, at least until it becomes second nature.
In far too short a time, he could see the dower house at the bottom of the slight hill. Beyond was the copse, and then the manor house, all dark but for a few lights. It was too close, and he hadn’t the courage to propose.
He sighed, and Sally took a tighter grip on his arm. ‘‘I hoped this would be a happy Christmas for you,’’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘‘Perhaps we can remember this as the necessary Christmas, rather than the happy one,’’ he replied, then wondered at his effrontery in using the word ‘‘we.
’’
She seemed not to even heed his use of the word, as though something were already decided between them. ‘‘Well, I will have food for thought, at least, when I return to the blockade,’’ he continued, less sure of himself than at any time in the last decade, at least.
‘‘Don’t return to the blockade,’’ she pleaded, and stopped.
He had no choice but to stop, too, and then made no objection when she took the fork in the path that led to the village and not the dower house. ‘‘You’re going the wrong way,’’ he pointed out.
‘‘No, I’m not,’’ she said in that unarguable tone that he had recognized in her uncle. ‘‘We’re going to walk and walk until you have told me all about the blockade.’’ She released his arm so she could face him. ‘‘You have told us stories of the sea, and personally I thank you, for now Tom has no urge to follow his uncle’s career! You have said nothing of the blockade, beyond watch and watch about, and you look so tired.’’
‘‘Say my name,’’ he said suddenly.
‘‘Michael,’’ she replied without hesitation. ‘‘Michael. Michael.’’
‘‘No one says my name.’’
‘‘I noticed how you started the other day when your mama did.’’ She took his arm again, this time twining her fingers through his. ‘‘I can walk you into the ground, Michael. No more excuses.’’
You probably can, he told himself. He yearned suddenly to tap into her energy. ‘‘I’m tired. Watch and watch about is four hours on and four hours off, around the clock, day after week after month after year. We are a wooden English wall against a French battering ram.’’
She rested her cheek against his arm and he felt her low murmur, rather than heard it. ‘‘At first it is possible to sleep in snatches like that, but after a few months, I only lie in my berth waiting for the last man off to summon me for the next watch.’’
‘‘You never sleep?’’ she asked, and he could have cringed at the horror in her voice.
‘‘I must, I suppose, but I am not aware of it,’’ he said, after a moment of thinking through the matter. ‘‘Mostly I stand on my quarterdeck and watch the French coastline, looking for any sign of ship movement.’’ He stopped this time. ‘‘We have to anticipate them almost, to sense that moment when the wind is about to shift quarters, and be ready to stop them when they come out to play in our channel.’’
‘‘How can you do that?’’ Her voice was small now. ‘‘It is not possible.’’
‘‘Sally, I have stood on the deck of the Admirable with my hat off and my cloak open in the worst weather, just so I won’t miss the tiniest shift in the wind.’’
‘‘No wonder you tell us of fevers.’’
‘‘I suppose.’’ He took her arm again and moved on. ‘‘Not only do we watch the coast, but we watch each other, careful not to collide in fog, or swing about with a sudden wind, or relax our vigilance against those over our shoulders who would sneak in under cover of dark and make for shore.’’
‘‘One man cannot do all that,’’ she whispered, and she sounded fierce.
‘‘We of the blockade do it.’’ He patted her hand and they walked on into the village, strolling through empty streets with shops boarded for the long winter night. Through all the exhaustion and terror he felt a surge of pride and a quiet wonder at his own abilities, despite his many weaknesses. ‘‘We do it, my dear.’’
He knew she was in tears, but he had no handkerchief for her. I don’t even know the right words to court this beautiful woman, and flatter her, and tell her that she is essential to my next breath, he told himself. I’ve never learned the niceties because they’re not taught on a ship of the line. In the middle of all my hurt and revenge, I hadn’t planned on falling in love. He knew he had to say something. They were coming to the end of the village. Surely Sally did not intend just to keep walking.
To his amazement, she did, not even pausing as they left the last house behind. She kept walking on the high road, as though it were summer. She walked, eyes ahead, and he talked at last, pouring out his stories of ship fevers, and death, and cannonading until his ears bled from the concussion, and splinters from masts sailing like javelins through the air, and the peculiar odor of sawdust mingled with blood on the deck, and the odd patter of the powder monkeys in their felt slippers, bringing canister up from the magazine to the men serving the guns, and the crunch of weevils in ship’s biscuit, and the way water six months in a keg goes down the throat in a lump.
She shuddered at that one, and he laughed and took both her hands in his. ‘‘Sally Partlow, you amaze me!’’ He looked at the sky, and thought he saw the pink of dawn. ‘‘I have told you horrible stories all night, and you gag when I mention the water! If there is a man alive who does not understand women, I am he.’’
Holding her hands like that, he allowed himself to pull her close to him. If she had offered any objection, he would have released her, but she seemed to like what he was doing, and clasped her hands across his back with a certain proprietary air.
‘‘I’m keeping England safe so my brother can squeeze another shilling until it yelps, and . . .’’ He took a deep breath and his heart turned over. ‘‘. . . and you can lie safe at night, and mothers can walk with babies, and Thomas can go to school. Marry me, Sally.’’
She continued to hold him close. When she said nothing, he wondered if she had heard him. He knew he didn’t have the courage to ask again. The words had popped out of his mouth even before he had told her he loved her. ‘‘Did you hear me?’’ he asked at last, feeling as stupid as a schoolboy.
She nodded, her head against his chest, and he kissed her hair. ‘‘I love you,’’ he said.
She was silent a long moment. ‘‘Enough to leave the blockade?’’
His heart turned over again and he looked up to see dawn. He had told her all night of the horrors of the blockade, and in the telling had come to understand his own love of the sea, and ships, and war, and the brave men he commanded. It terrified him to return, but he knew that he could now. With an even greater power than dawn coming, he knew that because he could, he did not need to.
‘‘Yes, enough to leave the blockade,’’ he said into her hair. ‘‘I will resign my commission with the new year.’’ He waited for such a pronouncement to rip his heart wide open, but all he felt was the greatest relief he had ever known. This must be what peace feels like, he told himself in wonder. I have never known it until now.
She raised her head to look at him then, and he wanted to drop to his knees in gratitude that for every morning of the rest of his life, hers would be the first face he saw. She put her hands on his face. ‘‘You are not doing this because I am an object of charity?’’ she asked.
‘‘Oh, God, no!’’ He kissed her until she started to squirm for breath. ‘‘My dearest love, you are the one marrying the object of charity.’’ He smiled when she did. ‘‘Of course, you haven’t said yes yet, have you? You’re just clarifying things in your Scottish way, aren’t you?’’
‘‘Of course,’’ she replied calmly. ‘‘I want to know precisely where I stand. Your brother will be horrified, your mother will be ecstatic, and Thomas will follow you about with adoration in his eyes. You’ve lived solitary for so long. Can you manage all that?’’
‘‘Actually, Oliver will be ecstatic. I’ll explain later. I wish you would answer my question, Sally, before you start in with yours! My feet are cold, and do you know, I am actually tired right down to my toenails.’’ That was not loverlike, he thought, but it didn’t matter, because Sally was pressing against him in a way that sharpened his nerves a little more than he expected there on a cold road somewhere in the middle of Lincolnshire. ‘‘Where the deuce are we?’’ he asked.
‘‘Somewhere in Lincolnshire, and yes, Michael, I will marry you,’’ she said, then took her time kissing him. When they stopped, she looked at him in that intense way that warmed him from within. ‘‘I love you. I suppose I have for a long time, ever
since Uncle Partlow started writing about you in his letters home.’’
‘‘Preposterous,’’ he said, even as he kissed her once more.
‘‘I suppose,’’ she agreed, after that long moment. ‘‘There’s no use accounting for it, because I cannot. I just love you.’’ She held up her hands, exasperated at her inability to explain. ‘‘It’s like breathing, I think.’’
‘‘Oh, Sally,’’ he said, and then kissed her again, until even the air around them felt as soft as April.
They learned from a passing carter (who must have been watching them, because he could hardly contain himself), that they were only a mile from Epping. It was an easy matter to speak for breakfast at a public house, admire his blooming Sal over tea and short-bread, then take the mail coach back to Lynch. Pillowed against Sally’s soft breast, he fell asleep as soon as the coachman gathered his reins. He probably even snored. Hand in hand they walked back to the dower house. He answered his mother’s inquiries with a nod in Sally’s direction, then went upstairs to bed, leaving his pretty lady to make things right.
She must have done that to everyone’s satisfaction. When he woke hours later, the sun was going down and she was sitting in a chair pulled close to the window in his room, her attention on yet another doll in her lap. He lay there admiring her handsome profile and beautiful hair, and hoped that at least some of their children would inherit that same dark red hue. He chuckled at the thought; she turned in his direction to give him an inquiring look.
‘‘I thought I would prophesy, my dearest,’’ he said, raising up on one elbow.
‘‘I almost shudder to ask.’’
‘‘I was merely thinking that a year from now it will probably still be watch and watch about.’’
She put down her needlework and he recognized that Partlow glint in her eyes. ‘‘You promised me you were going to give up the blockade.’’
‘‘I am! Cross my heart! I was thinking that babies tend to require four on and four off, don’t they? Especially little ones?’’
Homespun Regency Christmas (9781101078716) Page 7
