Robert Wilton was every inch a naval captain even if he had shed his jacket, and his weapon of choice was some sort of knife stuck in a sheath at his side.
He came to her, took her outstretched hands, kissed one and led her to the only chair. He found a seat on the cushion that ran along the base of the stern transom.
“You did it. You did it again. You are an amazing woman and I salute you.”
“Thank you, Captain,” she said, smiling at his enthusiasm. “And you found us with only a little delay. Equally amazing, with no road signs or mileposts to guide you.”
“We both know how to do what is important to us,” he said, shrugging. “You are not finished, are you? Georges stays behind yet again.”
“Georges must stay behind to continue our work while I settle the children. But I am not unprotected. The two of you are cast from the same mold, and if Georges cannot be with me then I am lucky to have you.”
“Is that so?” was all he said.
“Wilton, I mean that in the most chaste way possible. Why is it inevitable that all men and a good many women cannot resist the thought of the other in bed?” She settled herself more comfortably, removing the ugly head shawl and shaking her hair free. “You know it as well as I do. A smart woman makes the most of it. And a smart man takes advantage when he can.”
“You have spent too much time in diplomatic circles.”
“We both agree on that as well.” She smoothed her skirt and told herself that his criticism of the diplomats’ world was not meant as an insult. “You are an intelligent man, Wilton, only too rigid in your moral view. Even after all these years, Madeline has not helped you to see differently. How is your lady wife?”
“Very well, thank you.”
She let her expression convince him that his conventional answer was inadequate. He relented with a laugh.
“She manages wonderfully without me there. I wish I were as proud of that as I should be. Whenever I come home she treats me like one of the children.”
“I cannot imagine that lasts beyond your first night home.” He did not answer and Charlotte realized that she probably should not have said that. “Do excuse me if that embarrasses you, Wilton. The truth is that no man or woman is too old for mothering.”
“Is that so?” he said, and after a moment went on, “I have managed without one since I was ten, since my mother died. As have many of the men in the Royal Navy.”
“I suppose that could be true,” she said, though she thought the need for grog daily only proved she was right. “Whether they have mothers or not, the truth is that you are the luckiest man on this ship. And not only because you are the one in command. Your wife is a beautiful, capable woman who understands what you need better than you do.”
“Yes, she does seem to.”
She could see him smile even though he turned his attention to straightening the chart on the table between them.
“In fact, Wilton, if I could find a man who knew what I wanted before I did, as Madeline can with you, I might even be willing to marry again.”
“You would?” The words seemed to be surprised out of him. He forgot the chart and gave her his full attention.
“Yes, I would,” she said with a firm nod. “But you see, my dear captain, no such man exists.” She laughed. “I will not marry again. It may not be easy, but the family will manage without a man to lead it. Have you word from my mother?”
“Yes, she is well, as is the household, but there is something that you should know.” Wilton leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands clasped between them. “The woman who owns the draper shop told Madeline that a gentleman came looking for Mrs. Strauss. You are not known by that name, so no one was able to work out the puzzle.”
It came as a shock that her past would find her even in Sussex. But that was the truth of it. The past was never truly forgotten. “If they find out that I am Charles’s widow, the worst they can do is spread vile gossip. It is not the first time someone has maligned me.”
“That is in the past and you were not the one who was guilty.” He took her hand, covering it with his other.
“How kind of you to say so.” She squeezed his fingers, pulled her hand from his and folded both of them in her lap, trying for a composure she was far from feeling. “Yes, Charles was the reason those parents were separated from their children. Some of them forever. He was hated by more people than a debt collector. He is dead. I can swear to that. No one will find him anywhere but in that cemetery in Le Havre.”
After his death she had used most of her money to go back to England and had two months of peace. Then Georges brought her the damn papers he had found. That had been four years ago.
“Let it end there.”
“I wish I could, Captain, but I am guilty of complicity, guilty in so many other ways it hardly matters.”
“So you think someone is looking for revenge?”
“I don’t really know, but I have my family to consider.” Her mother, the children, even the servants. She stood up. “I suppose I could leave for a while and hope whoever is looking for me will follow. I could go to Edinburgh.”
“No, stay home. You have friends who will vouch for you, protect the family.” Wilton assured her. He did not stand, but straightened from his relaxed position. “Sit down, my dear. Madeline and I understand the kind of family that shares no blood. We want you to stay at Taunton for as long as you want. The house is yours forever if you wish.”
“Thank you, sir.” No one else knew, except perhaps his wife, how truly generous this man was.
“Speaking of finding people,” Wilton said, clearing his throat, “your rescue was a success on all counts, yes?”
“Yes, only it did not go as smoothly as I would have wished.” She explained about the much-too-curious colonel.
“You and Georges cannot be at this much longer. You know that, don’t you? Napoleon is on the road to ruin. I think he will abdicate before the end of summer. That could send the country into chaos.”
“I know.” She thought of Raoul Desseau and her worry for him. “Soon I will settle in Taunton. I will paint portraits, perfect the paper-cutting and silhouettes, and turn into an eccentric female. I will be content, even if the villagers never accept me.”
“If you pay your bills promptly and live a quiet life, in time they will.”
“My mother, perhaps, not me. I am too much a mystery.” She waved away his protest. “It does not matter. I want only the quiet and my studio. I long for it the way you miss the sea when you have been too long ashore. The way Gabriel Pennistan wants nothing more than for people to believe him innocent.”
“Is he innocent?” Wilton asked.
“I think he may be. He is so given to temper, and yet so intrinsically kind that it is hard to imagine him involved in such coldhearted betrayal.”
“You know him that well?” He raised his eyebrows exactly like the gossiping old biddy at the drapers in Taunton.
Yes, she did, she realized. Charlotte had seen the temper, felt the kindness. It was a mistake to have spoken of it, a sure sign of her fatigue. Wilton did not need to know anything about that part of her life. “He thinks it strange the captain has not made his presence known.”
“Dose him with laudanum.” He drank down the last of his wine as though it would help him in the same way. “Let him sleep until we are in port.”
“I trust you are joking.” She pushed her wine away. “He is abed now, but his worries will compete with his exhaustion. I do not expect him to sleep well.”
“Would you, if you were to meet the hangman?”
“Is that what you have heard?” She raised her hand to her throat.
“I have heard nothing since I left England,” Wilton admitted. “But when I first made inquiries for the duke, Viscount Sidmouth had some particularly damning evidence. That the French Minister of Police offered Lord Gabriel Pennistan a bribe that he found irresistible.” Wilton put his glass on the table with
more force than necessary.
“If they had bribed him and he accepted, then why was he in prison?” Charlotte asked, hoping that the anger she was feeling did not show as clearly as Wilton’s did. Had Lord Gabriel been lying when he said he did not know why he had been taken? And she had believed him so honest.
“Putting him in prison is curious, Charlotte, but both Lord Sidmouth and I agree it is a question easily answered if one has ever worked with the Minister of Police.
“No matter who is Minister, they have all learned from Fouché and release as little information as possible. I suspect that the men who were transporting him had not been told anything more than to bring him to Paris in one piece. That had one added advantage that Pennistan must have realized. If, somehow, they were stopped by the English, he would have a chance to pretend he was loyal and being held against his will. I am sure he was very comfortable until they reached Le Havre.”
“Lord Gabriel admitted he was not tortured or mistreated until he tried to escape from the prison.” Charlotte thought for a moment. “That should have struck me as odd. Spies are not spared as men in uniform are. They can be tortured and executed without the same considerations a soldier would have.”
“Yes, and when events grew complicated his escorts put him in prison,” Wilton continued. “Affairs grew even more confused and they forgot about him.”
And she had called him a fool. She was the fool. “Then tell me, Wilton, if you knew he was a traitor, why did you even consider aiding his rescue? Why not let him rot in a French prison? Why did you send the duke to me?”
“I did it because I knew Meryon would pay you very well and you need the money so much more than he does.”
In other words, he’d done it for her financial security and as a sort of trick on his family, not for his family.
“I knew you could manage the escape. It was a perverse stroke of luck that Lord Gabriel was imprisoned in Le Havre. No one knows it as well as you do.”
“If you feel that way and want to avoid the Pennistans, then why were you willing to be here as part of this rescue?” It was too direct a question for him to give her an honest answer, and she was surprised when he did.
“I am here, madame, solely because the admiralty ordered it.”
GABRIEL STARED AT THE empty bunk until he had calmed himself enough to think reasonably. She could not have gone far. Or found too much trouble. He picked up the blanket and tossed it on the bunk. He had no doubt she could take care of herself no matter the situation. Surely she would call out if she was in danger. The tangle of thoughts ran through his head as he put on his jacket, found his shoes and checked on the children. Both were sound asleep. He made his way around their hammocks to the door.
No one guarded it now. Good: no one to keep him from moving about. Bad: no one to ask about his “wife.”
A ship was never quiet. At this hour most of the sounds came from creaking seams, the rigging and the wind. He found the officer on watch, avoided him. Asking about a missing passenger, especially a woman, would raise an alarm for fear she had gone overboard. The odds were good that Charlotte was exactly where she wanted to be.
He would stay near the ladder to the lower deck and wait for her. Most likely she had come above to enjoy the evening and the air.
Gabriel leaned against the mast. He turned his eyes to the night sky for the first time in two years. Cassiopeia, Ursa Major and Minor. He knew them so well that the movement of the ship was no hindrance. Nothing could obscure the Milky Way, its carpet spread out across the heavens.
The ship creaked and groaned its way west as he let the stars blur above him. Charlotte was right. How could God be limited by man’s beliefs? He was greater than man, greater than this planet, greater than the cosmos spread before him.
How could God care about something as insignificant as Gabriel? And his bad choices, his time in prison, this escape were even less than he, a small part of a man, who was less than a dot in the night sky. Still, Gabriel realized, he cared, whether God did or not. He cared about life, his family, his work, his future. About the people who had touched his life: Georges, the children. And Charlotte.
He stayed as he was a few moments more. Then admitted to himself that while it might not matter at all to God or the universe, he wanted to know where she was.
Gabe circled the deck and found three seamen talking quietly and laughing.
“I beg your pardon,” Gabriel started, feeling like a complete ass as he began what had to be the stupidest question a man could ask, “have you seen my wife?”
“Aye, sir, we have,” one said, touching his head in what Gabe had decided was a gesture of respect. “She be with the captain.”
“Has been for nearly an hour,” another said.
Gabriel knew exactly what the seaman was implying and ignored it. “They are expecting me.” He bit each word out, clenched his fists. He did his best to ignore their looks. He turned from them and headed for the captain’s cabin.
“Three can have more fun than two, so I hear.”
Gabriel froze in his steps. Then turned back to the troublemakers. Clearly ignoring the insult was not the right way to proceed. He walked to them, anger radiating in his every step. When he spoke, the effort to control his temper made his voice hard, each word slowly spoken. “Keep your filthy ideas to yourself, seaman. I have been in a French prison for nearly a year. They have shown me ways to cause pain you cannot even imagine. Do not insult my wife again.”
All three seamen nodded. One with such a nervous jerk that Gabriel thought he would fall down.
“It was the grog talking, sir. He meant nothing by it.”
Gabriel turned away. He hoped that one of them would test him. No one made a move. So Gabriel did his best to vent his anger with a long breath. Damn Charlotte anyway. What was she doing with the captain? He went on to the stateroom, where he could see candles lit. As he walked closer, he could hear voices. Then he heard a woman’s laugh.
Gabriel realized that he had never heard her truly laugh before. Beneath the humor was a hint of the bedroom, intimacy and invitation. No wonder the crew was intrigued.
There was a man waiting outside this cabin. Gabriel ignored him, reaching for the door latch. The man stepped in front of him, forcing Gabe to drop his hand.
“The captain is with someone, sir.”
“Yes, I know,” Gabriel answered, smiling. “He is with my wife. I’m sure they are expecting me.”
“No, sir, the captain said no one was to disturb them.”
“You will stop me, how?” Gabriel asked. The man had no gun or sword that he could see.
“With my hands, if I must, sir.”
“Oh, I wish you would try.”
Before the steward could do more than raise clenched fists, the door was opened from the other side. “What goes on here?”
“This gent wants to see his wife, Captain.”
Gabriel walked into the cabin without invitation. The man grabbed his arm. Then released him as quickly.
“Leave us,” the captain said to the man. “Keep your mouth closed.”
“Aye, sir.” The crewman closed the door quietly.
Gabriel was watching Charlotte, who was less tidy than she had been before going to bed. Her hair hung down her back, now dark brown where the powder did not cover it. The simple fichu was missing from her dress. Without it, the nondescript, patched dress was not what any man on this ship would notice.
“I woke and saw you were gone. I wanted to make sure you were safe.” He paused before the last word. The other words he had considered were totally inappropriate.
“You can see that I am.” She smiled as if calling his bluff. “I am having a conversation with an old friend.”
He turned toward the captain. Only so that she could not see how her taunting angered him. He knew her game by now and she still managed to infuriate him.
That idea was banished by shock. “Wilton! What are you doing here?” He turned to Charl
otte. “Is this how the duke found you? Through our brother?”
“I am not your brother.” Wilton showed that spark of temper that was the Pennistan curse.
“Oh for God’s sake, yes you are.”
Gabriel spoke at the same time as Charlotte. “Meryon blood runs in our veins. Both of us.”
“I am the bastard and you are not. A key difference, my lord.”
He used the same inflection on my lord that Charlotte did, the one that stripped the two words of any sense of deference.
“But here the tables are turned,” Wilton said, “I am in command of this ship.” Using the tip of his knife he gestured to the padded bench. “Sit down.”
19
THE KNIFE MADE the captain’s point with more vigor than Gabriel thought necessary. He raised his hands. “I did not come here to fight.” He backed toward the other chair in the room.
“Is that so.” Wilton stayed near the door, though he did tuck the knife back into its sheath. “Then why are you here?”
“Are the children all right?” Charlotte asked, standing up as she spoke.
“Yes. They are sound asleep,” Gabriel answered, with a glance. Turning his back to her, he spoke to the captain: “I am here because her bed was empty. I was afraid that she might need my help.”
“Your help?” Wilton gave a bark of laughter. “She is the one who rescued you.”
“I am more than willing to return the favor should the need arise.” He could see Wilton bite back a smile. He chose, wisely Gabriel thought, not to say anything.
“You can see that I am perfectly safe.” Charlotte gathered her shawl around her and bundled her hair into a loose knot at the nape. “I will leave you two to share brotherly affection, but I remind you, Captain, I am paid a bonus if he arrives in England alive.”
Without a word to Gabriel, she swept out. He followed, then stopped, though Wilton had the door half-closed. “Our father is dead, Captain. As the new duke, my brother will surely be willing to make amends.”
Wilton shook his head. “We have nothing to say to each other.”
Mary Blayney Page 14
