by Carla Kelly
She stared right back. “Nothing has changed.”
“All those years,” his mother murmured. She touched his face. “You want to know how I am acquainted with your first mate?”
He nodded, relieved almost not to think of the hot tears he had shed—a man-child of fourteen—wanting her arms about him when he lay swinging in his hammock over the guns. He thought of all the tears he had swallowed to protect himself from the laughter of the other midshipmen, some of them younger than he, and hardened already by war. “Mama, was it the vicar? I can think of no other.”
“My dear son, Mr. Eccles was on his deathbed when he asked me to attend him. Oh, my, hadn’t I known him above thirty years! He was too tired to talk, really, but he said he would not be easy if I did not know that for five years he had been hearing from you.”
“It was never much, Mama, but I did want to know how you got on, even if you never wanted to speak to me… or at least, that was what I thought,” he corrected himself.
She stood up, as if the telling required activity, and in her restless pacing, he did recognize the woman of years ago. I do much the same thing on a quarterdeck, Mama, he thought. To his gratification, she stopped behind his chair finally and rested her arms upon his shoulders. He closed his eyes with the pleasure of it. “He woke and dozed all afternoon, but before he died that evening, he told me that you were well and in command of a frigate.” She kissed his head. “He told me a story or two that included David Partlow and ports from Botany Bay to Serendip.” She sat beside him, taking his hands again. “He never would tell me if you wanted to hear from me or not; indeed, he feared that he was betraying your confidence.”
“I didn’t know what to think, Mama, when I never heard from you. All I had ever asked of him in letters was to let me know how you were.” He squeezed her hands. “And that he did.” He hesitated a moment. “He told me that Father died ten years ago.”
“He did,” she said, and he could detect no more remorse in her voice than he felt. “Since then, Oliver has had the managing of me.”
“And a poor job he has done, Mama,” Lynch said, unable to keep his voice from rising.
To his surprise, Lady Lynch only smiled. “I thought that at first, too, son.” She looked at the Partlows. “Thomas—does your sister call you Tom? I shall then, too. Tom, you’re drooping! I hope you will not object to sharing a chamber with my son. Miss Partlow—”
“Do call me Sally,” she said. “It’s what everyone calls me, even if the captain thinks I should be Miss Partlow.”
“And here I thought he would know nothing of the niceties, after all those years at sea!” Mama exclaimed with a smile in his direction. “Sally it is, then. My dear, there is the tiniest alcove of a bedroom next to my room, with scarcely a space for a cat to turn around. How fortunate that you are economical in size.” She looked around the table, and Lynch could see nothing but delight in her face. “We will be as close as whelks in a basket, but I dare anyone in Lincolnshire to have a merrier Christmas.”
She had directed her attention to the Partlows, but he followed them upstairs, leaning against the doorframe of the little chamber he was to share with Tom while Sally tucked him in. “I want my own bed,” he heard the boy say to his sister as she bent over him for a good-night kiss. “I want to be home.” Don’t we all? Lynch thought, remembering years and years of writing unanswered letters, letters where he pleaded with his parents to forgive him for being a younger son, for being stupid, for being a child who thought he was a man, until the day came when he could think of nothing that warranted an apology and stopped writing, replacing remorse with bitterness. I was intemperate and wild, he thought as he watched the Partlows, but these are forgivable offenses. Too bad my father never thought to forgive me and Mama was never allowed the opportunity.
He thought his cup of bitterness, already full, should run over, but he was filled with great sadness instead. My parents have missed out on my life, he thought with regret but no anger this time. He remained where he was in the doorway while Sally conferred with his mother in low whispers. He heard “nightmare” and “mustn’t trouble you” and looked away while they discussed him. I am in the hands of managing women, he thought, and again he was not irritated. It was as though someone had stretched out a wide net for him at last, one he could drop into without a qualm.
He said good night to Sally there in the hall, standing close because it was a small corridor, and then followed his mother downstairs, where she gave a few low-voiced orders to Cook and bade Simpson good night. She took his hand and just looked into his face until he wanted to cry again. “Have I changed, Mama?” he asked at last. She nodded, her eyes merry. “You’re so tall now, and—”
“That’s not what I mean,” he interrupted. “You’ve changed in ways I never thought you would. Have I?”
“You have,” she said quietly. “How much, I cannot say, because you have only returned.”
“For better or worse?”
“We shall see, Michael,” she replied. “Oh, why that look? Does no one ever call you Michael?”
No one ever did, he realized with a jolt as he heard his Christian name on her lips. “No, Mama. I am Captain to everyone I know.”
She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Then we will have to enlarge your circle of acquaintances.” She pulled him down to sit beside her. “And you must not look at me as an object of charity, son! I am nothing of the kind.”
He knew he must only be pointing out the obvious, but he did it anyway. “Mama, there is little coal in this house, few candles, and I have never seen you in a dress so shabby!”
But she only smiled at him in a patient, serene way he had never seen before in his parent and tucked her arm in the crook of his. “I don’t know that any of it matters to me, son, now that you are home for Christmas.”
“That is enough?”
“Why, yes,” she replied, even sounding startled at his question. After a moment, she released his arm and stood up. “My dear, morning comes early, and we can be sure that Oliver will be over soon.”
He stood up with her, more bemused than agitated. “I don’t understand, Mama.”
She kissed his cheek again and stood up. “I don’t know that things are ever quite as bad as we imagine they are, son. Good night.”
Oliver was the last person he thought of when he finally slept, and the first person he saw when he woke hours later. He was dimly aware that at some point in the night someone came into his room and sat beside him, but he could not be sure who it was. He sank himself deep into the mattress and did not open his eyes again until much later when he heard someone clearing his throat at the foot of the bed.
My, how you’ve changed, was his first thought as he stared—at first stupidly, and then with recognition—at the man gripping the footboards and glaring at him through narrowed eyes. “Oh, hullo, Oliver,” he said with a yawn. “How are you?”
Comfortable in the way that only a warm bed and a venerable nightshirt allow, he gazed up at his older brother and decided that if he had passed the man on the street, he would not have known him. He folded his hands across his stomach and observed his brother. So this was the object of my bitterness all these years, he thought as he took in a man thin to the point of emaciation but dressed in a style much too youthful for him. If I am thirty-six, then he is rising forty-four, Lynch thought, and there he is, dressed like a popinjay. Sir Oliver looked like a man denying age, with the result being that he looked older than he was.
“Why did you think to come here now?”
To Lynch, it sounded more like a challenge than a question. “Well, Oliver, I have it on the best of authority that people who are related occasionally choose to spend certain calendar days together. I realize there’s no accounting for it, but there you are,” he replied. “And do you know, even though I am sure no one in the White Fleet believes me, I have a mother.” He sat up then. “Is there some problem with the estate that she must dress like an old ma
id aunt no one cares about?”
Oliver smiled for the first time. “Economy, brother, economy! On his deathbed, our father made me swear to keep a tight rein on his widow, and so I did.”
My word, two rogues in as many generations, Lynch thought. Vengeful even to death, was the old man? I imagine the next world was a jolt to his system.
“We have order and economy and—”
“—tallow candles cut in half and coal doled out by the teaspoon!” He couldn’t help himself. Lynch knew his voice was rising. “You won’t object if I order more coal and beeswax candles for Mother, will you?”
“Not if you pay for them,” his brother replied. “Through the years Amelia and I have been frugal with everything.”
“You have indeed,” Lynch agreed, remembering with some slight amusement that his brother had no progeny. “Last night we were even wondering if the manor was inhabited. Scarcely a light on in the place.”
His brother shrugged and sat down. “Why waste good candles when one is not home?” He leaned closer. “And when you speak of ‘we,’ brother, surely you are not married to that… that rather common person downstairs?”
A number of intemperate words bubbled to the surface, but Lynch stifled them all, determined for his mother’s sake not to continue the fight where it had begun twenty-two years ago over a woman. “No, I am not married to her. She and her brother were wards of my late first mate, with nowhere to go for Christmas.”
To his further irritation, Oliver waggled a bony finger at him. “That’s the sort of ill-natured charity that makes dupes of us all! I’ll wager you don’t even know them!”
Better than I ever knew you, he thought, or wish to know you. He got out of bed and pulled down his nightshirt at the same time that Sally Partlow entered the room with a tray and two cups of tea. He wasn’t embarrassed because she seemed unconcerned. “Your mother thought you two would like some tea,” she said, her glance flicking over him then coming to rest on the wall beyond his shoulder. Her face was only slightly pink, and dashed pretty, he considered. He took a cup from her and sat down again, remembering that this particular nightshirt—long a favorite—had been from Bombay to the Baltic and was thin of material. “And you, sir?” she said, indicating his brother. “Would you like some tea?”
Oliver shook his head. “Tea at midmorning smacks of waste and profligacy,” he said, so smug that Lynch itched to smack him. “I ate my mush at daybreak and will make it last until luncheon.”
Over the rim of the cup, Lynch glanced at Sally and knew without question precisely what she was thinking. He turned his head so Oliver would not see his smile. I do believe, my dear Sal, that it would not be beyond you to tell my prig of a brother just where to put his mush, he thought.
He feared that Oliver must be wondering at the expression on his face, but his brother was staring at the tray Sally carried. The color rose up from his scrawny neck in blotches. “I cannot imagine that Lady Lynch would ever permit someone she cannot know to be handling our silver!”
“It’s just that old teapot even I remember,” Lynch said, stung into retort. “I hardly think Sally will… will stick it up her skirt and trot to the pawnshop!”
“That is precisely what I mean!” Oliver replied. “We have had years and years of order and serenity, and now you are back one morning with… with heaven knows who this woman is—and things are going to ruin! I am going downstairs directly to tell Mama to count her—my silverware carefully!”
Sally gasped. Without a word she picked up the teacup on the tray and dumped it over his brother’s head. Oliver leaped to his feet, his hand raised, but Lynch was on his feet as well, and grabbed his brother’s arm. “I wouldn’t,” he said.
“But she poured tea on me!”
“I don’t blame her,” Lynch replied. “You’re dashed lucky this isn’t the Middle Ages and it wasn’t hot tar! How dare you accuse her of having designs on the family silver?”
Oliver looked at them both, his eyebrows pulled close together, his face in a scowl. “I’m going to talk to Mother about the wisdom of house guests at Christmas,” he said primly as he left the room.
Sally stared after him and then looked down at the empty cup in her hand. Lynch smiled at her and sat down. “You should have a little charity, Miss Partlow,” he said. “Didn’t you tell me only yesterday that it was high time I forgave my brother?”
He decided that she must not have realized what she was doing, because she sank down beside him on the bed. “Perhaps I was hasty,” she amended. “I hadn’t met him yet.” Lynch shouted with laughter. After a long moment, she smiled, if only briefly. She stood up then, as if suddenly aware of him in his nightshirt. “He may be right, Captain,” she said as she replaced both cups on the tray and went to the door. “I really don’t have much countenance, do I?”
“Probably not,” he agreed, in perfect charity with her, although he was not certain that she appreciated the fact. “It doesn’t follow that the matter is disagreeable.” To his utter delight, she made a face at him as she left the room.
He lay back down, hands behind his head, content to think of Sally, when she stuck her head in the room again. “Your mother said most particularly that you are not to do what you are doing now! She wants your escort to the vicarage this afternoon.”
“Shrew,” he said mildly. “When am I to have the nap I so richly deserve after nine months of watch and watch about on the blockade?”
Sally Partlow sighed and put her hand on her hip, which only made him want to grab her, toss her down beside him, and abandon naps forevermore. “Captain, I believe that one must rise, before one can consider the next rest as a nap.”
To his relief, Oliver was gone when Lynch made his appearance in the breakfast room. The table was covered with material and dolls—dolls large and small, with baby-fine hair of silk thread and abundant yarn hair. Sally was diligently embroidering a smile onto a blank face, and even Tom was occupied, pulling nankeen breeches onto a boy mannequin. Lips pursed, eyes narrowed in concentration, his mother—who to his knowledge had never plied a needle in her life—pushed the last bit of cotton wadding into a disembodied leg.
He kissed her cheek and cleared a little spot for himself at the table, which only brought a protest from Sally and the quiet admonition of his mother to please eat his breakfast standing up at the sideboard. He didn’t wish to spill eggs or tea on the dolls, did he?
Mystified at the doll factory on the table, he did as he was told. “Is this one of Oliver’s cottage industries?” he asked finally when he had finished and sat himself at the table.
“La, no,” his mother said as she attached a leg to a comely doll with yarn ringlets. “Ever year he complains when I ask for a few shillings to make dolls for the orphanage. He can be wearing at times.”
He leaned closer to her, wishing with all his heart that he had come home sooner. “I can change things for you now, Mother,” he said.
If he expected to see relief in her eyes, he was doomed to disappointment. With a few expert stitches, she concluded the limb attachment and picked up another leg. “I suppose Oliver is onerous at times, son, but do you know that his nipfarthing ways at my expense have quite brought out a side of me I never knew?” She looked around the table, and Lynch could see nothing in her face but contentment. “When I think how little I used to do with much, and now how much I do with little, it fair amazes me!” She patted his arm, handed him an empty leg, and pushed the stuffing closer. “And I owe Oliver this revelation of character.”
“I… I suppose I never thought of it that way, Mother,” he said, picking up the stuffing. He saw with a frown that his fingers were too large to make any headway on the leg. To his relief, Sally came to the rescue, moving her chair closer until her glorious hair touched his cheek as she expertly worked the stuffing in place with her own slim fingers. I’m in love, he thought simply as he breathed deep of her fragrance—probably nothing more than soap and water—and tried to think when any woma
n had stirred him as completely as this one. The deuce of it was that he didn’t think she had the slightest idea of her effect on him.
The thought niggled at the back of his brain all morning as he sat at the table and brought his mother up to date on twenty-two years of his life. He had no need to enlarge upon his experiences, because they were vivid enough with war, shipwreck, illness—which set Sally to sniffling, even though she heatedly denied it when he teased her—salvages, and exotic ports as his topics. Before he brought his recitation to a close, even Simpson and Cook had joined them around the table.
“The blockade is the least pleasant duty of all, I believe,” he commented.
“We will have it, too, son, since you have told us everything else,” his mother said.
“No!” he exclaimed, louder than he had intended. Sally looked at him in surprise. “It’s… it’s not worth the telling.”
He watched his mother gather the dolls together and motion to Tom put them in the pasteboard box Simpson provided. “And now the Admirable is in dry dock and I find myself in a strange position for a seafaring man.”
“On land and hating it?” Sally asked, her voice soft.
She hadn’t stirred far from his side but had continued to work on the doll in her lap.
Twenty-four hours ago he would have agreed with her, but now he could not say. “Let us say, on land and not certain where to go from here,” he told her, “or even what to do.” He was deeply conscious of the fact that he was aware of every breath she took, so close there to him.
“Then that makes two of us,” Sally murmured. She put down the doll. “Captain Lynch, do you ever wish, just once, that you could be sure of things?”
He shrugged. “Life’s uncertain,” he told her. “I suppose that is what I have learned.”
“Not that it is good?” she asked. “Or at least satisfactory on occasion?”
