by Louise Allen
After a moment he said, ‘You are right, my feelings for you are very different from what I now feel for Julietta.’ Clemence felt the cramping misery inside at the shadow that passed over his face as he spoke.
‘Well,’ she said with an attempt at lightness, ‘we may be friends again, may we not?’ There were weeks still to go, days to become accustomed to being with him and knowing that now she could never become any closer, figure any larger in his life.
‘Friends?’ Nathan reached out and lifted her hand, which lightly clasped the edge of the hammock. ‘Yes, we may be friends.’ The kiss he dropped on her fingertips was feather-light, but Clemence felt it as though it had caressed her lips. Then he picked up her book and grimaced at the open page and the moment had passed.
‘You are enjoying this?’
‘No, it is deadly dull, but Mr Jones gave it to me and I do not like to hurt his feelings. I thought I could read one sermon at least and then discuss it with him at dinner.’
‘The trials and tribulations of being a well brought-up young lady,’ Nathan teased, settling back in his chair and tipping his hat over his eyes.
‘I am sure my manners will fall far short of what is expected in English society,’ Clemence worried.
‘You will enchant them with your freshness. Anything that is different to prevailing manners in Jamaica you will quickly learn; besides, your relatives are sure to be in the country or at the seaside, so you will have plenty of time before you have to worry about the rigours of the Season.’
‘Will you go to sea again soon?’ she asked, endeavouring quite successfully not to sound wistful. Nathan must never guess how she truly felt about him.
‘I would hope to. I have no desire to languish on half-pay.’
‘No, indeed not. I imagine that must be most frustrating. And I suppose, too, that with the end of hostilities there must be fewer opportunities.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed, his mouth set, and she mentally kicked herself for tactlessness.
‘Papa wished to go into the navy. He was the youngest son, so that was quite acceptable. But then they found his eyesight was so very poor he was ineligible.’
‘Is that why he became a merchant and built his fleet?’
‘I suppose so—he did love the sea,’ Clemence mused. ‘Personally I am becoming thoroughly bored with it and this intolerable dawdling progress.’
‘Don’t wish yourself a storm.’ Nathan pushed back his hat and got to his feet. ‘The wind is changing now—can you feel it? We’ll be clear of the Straits soon and into the Atlantic and all its swells and winds. Then we’ll see how bored you are! And cold,’ he added, pausing by the hammock and running the back of his hand fleetingly up her bare arm, sending delicious shivers down her spine. ‘You will disappear under layers of everything you possess.’
‘Forty-two days out,’ Clemence observed, looking up from the diary she was keeping of the journey. ‘Is it always this slow?’
‘No.’ Nathan glanced up from his own notes. ‘We’ve had more contrary winds than I would have expected. Are you warm enough? I fear we will have to move our customary morning journal meeting inside soon.’ From the day after what Clemence always thought of as their truce, they had been meeting in the morning to write their journals. It was companionable, yet entirely proper, and gradually she sensed that both of them had relaxed into friendship. Nathan was careful not to touch her and she resisted any inclination to flirt. It answered very well in daylight, but at night she still ached for him, lying awake listening to the sounds of him moving about in his cabin, trying to imagine what he was doing.
‘Oh, no, I enjoy this.’ Clemence smiled over the top of the warm scarf Midshipman Stills had bashfully offered her when he overheard her commenting on the cold.
‘Three weeks perhaps, sooner with any luck,’ Nathan added, looking up at the mainmast and then down to his notebook. ‘We’re a good two hundred miles off the Newfoundland Banks now.’ Clemence glanced across to see what he was doing and smiled at the sketch of one of the hands clinging on like a monkey that he had achieved with only a few pencil lines.
‘That’s good.’ Her own journal was so scrupulously devoid of any personal remarks or feelings that she could have heard it read at Sunday service from the poop deck without blushing and Nathan appeared as unconcerned about her reading his.
‘Midshipmen are taught to sketch as part of the training.’ He looked across at her, grinned and executed a swift caricature of her bundled up in her scarf and borrowed pea jacket. I wish I could draw, Clemence thought. When we part, I will have nothing tangible to remember him by.
‘What is the first thing you are going to do when you land?’ Nathan asked.
‘Buy warm clothes! And then find out where Aunt Amelia is.’
‘Which one is she? I lose track of your vast clan.’
‘Lord Sebastian and Lady Dereham’s mother. I have been studying the family tree in an effort to learn them all—I just hope I meet them one at a time or I will be quite overwhelmed.’
‘You will cope,’ Nathan said easily, closing his notebook and getting to his feet. ‘I have every confidence that next Season you will be the toast of London society.’
‘Oh, good.’ Clemence sighed inaudibly as he smiled and left her. ‘I cannot wait.’
Chapter Seventeen
‘Land ho!’
‘Eliza! Eliza, wake up!’ Clemence scrambled off the bunk, thrust her feet into her slippers and pulled on her wrapper. ‘Land!’
There was the sound of feet outside as those with cabins on their deck ran to see.
‘It’s the middle of the night,’ Eliza complained sleepily, opening her eyes. ‘Miss Clemence!’ She sat bolt upright. ‘You cannot go out like that—look at you.’
‘Oh, bother it.’ Clemence snatched up a scarf and wrapped it around her neck. ‘It cannot be that cold, close to land; it is early September, after all.’
‘I mean you aren’t decent—’ Eliza’s voice vanished as Clemence ran up the companionway into the early morning light. And there it was, land at long last, low wooded cliffs, rolling hills, the line of grey that seemed to be an endless shingle bar.
She clung to the rail, staring across the grey water to her new home. No scents reached her nostrils, no vivid colours broke the tranquillity of grey and brown and muted green. Would the people be as cool and muted, too?
‘Welcome to England. We are off Weymouth, not so very far from Portsmouth now,’ said Nathan’s voice in her ear. She turned against the rail and found him close, shrugging out of his heavy coat. ‘Here, put this on. You’ll catch your death and you’ll corrupt the innocent midshipmen before their time otherwise.’
Smiling, Clemence did as he said and found herself enclosed in warm, Nathan-scented wool. For a moment it befuddled her half-sleepy senses and she found herself looking up into his face, smiling, her face unguarded, the carefully polite smiles of friendship forgotten. ‘Thank you.’
‘I had made myself ignore what a kissable mouth you have,’ he said, pulling her gently into a secluded corner. ‘But we are nearly there now. What harm can one English kiss do?’
An English kiss, from Nathan, was, if anything, more inflammatory than a Jamaican one, perhaps because of the contrast between the cool air brushing her face and the heat of his body and his mouth. Or perhaps it was the effect of weeks of living so close to him and behaving with utter propriety.
Her lips parted and he took her mouth with the same implacable gentleness that she had learned to expect as she wrapped her arms around his neck and the coat slid unheeded to the deck.
This was the last time he would kiss her, her last chance to fill her senses and her memory with the feel and scent and taste of him before he became unobtainable, the man she would measure all the others against. The one they would never match.
His eyes were dark and hazed as he lifted his mouth from hers and stood looking into her face. ‘It has not gone away, then, that connection when we touch,’ he sa
id, his voice husky.
‘No.’ Does it not tell you something? she wanted to ask him, but that was impossible without saying that she loved him, spoiling their last hours together with regret and embarrassment and pity. Instead she smiled and lifted her hand and touched his lips lightly, then bent to pick up the coat. ‘Take this, I must go below.’ And she ducked under his arm and down the steps before the tears had a chance to show.
That was a mistake, Nathan told himself, shrugging back into the coat and not even attempting to pretend to himself that he was not burying his nose in the lapels to drink in the perfume of sleepy woman. A mistake and an indulgence, but also another memory of Clemence that he could store and bring out on some long, lonely watch to warm himself with.
He was conscious of another, bulkier figure close by and turned to see Melville leaning on the rail beside him, his telescope on the small sailing boat beating out to meet them. ‘That’s flying the ensign, they’ll have been on watch for us from the harbour battery and will be bringing orders, I’ve no doubt.’
‘I thought you were making for Portsmouth.’ Nathan realised he had thought no further ahead than landfall. His own orders were to report to the Admiralty in Whitehall.
‘Aye. I hope they haven’t changed that and we’ve got to beat round to Chatham.’
The lieutenant scrambling on board with the oilcloth-wrapped packet of orders saluted smartly. ‘The admiral’s compliments, Captain Melville. If you would be so good as to proceed to Chatham with all speed.’
Melville caught Nathan’s eye, but made no comment other than to thank the man and take the orders. Clemence, Eliza at her side, came back up on deck. The maid looked miserable, hunched in her layers of clothes as her eyes fixed hopefully on the shore, and Clemence looked paler, more weary than she had when she had left him just a little while before. As Nathan watched, Clemence put her arm around Eliza’s shoulders and hugged her to her side.
‘Are you both all right?’ he asked.
‘Tired and cold and impatient,’ Clemence admitted with a rueful smile. ‘Seeing land and not being able to disembark brings it home how long we have been on this ship.’
And now they would have the delay while they sailed along the entire south coast, round into the Thames estuary. He walked back to Melville. ‘We could put the women off here, send them back in the boat with the lieutenant.’
‘What, by themselves?’ Melville looked across. ‘Although they do look as though they would like to get ashore, I must admit.’
‘I’ll go with them. I can find them a respectable lodging, discover where Miss Ravenhurst’s aunt is, send her off in a hired chaise and post up to London myself. My orders are to report to the Admiralty, not stick to the Orion.’
‘True enough. And you won’t be much later, if at all, that way. Lieutenant! Hold hard there.’ He strode away across the deck, leaving Nathan to speak to Clemence.
‘Would you like to go ashore here at Weymouth, now?’
‘Now?’ Clemence blinked at him.
‘It is that or stay on board until we reach Chatham. Better to land now.’ She was looking doubtful, daunted no doubt by the thought of coping alone in a strange country. ‘I’ll come, too,’ he added. ‘I can find you lodgings and organise a post chaise to take you to your aunt.’
‘But your orders?’
‘This will probably be faster,’ he said. ‘The roads are a little different from what you are used to and I can be in London in hours from here.’
‘Then if it is not an inconvenience to you, I would be most grateful, thank you.’ She said it with cool good manners, a remote young lady, no longer the warm soft creature, half-tumbled from sleep, responsive in his arms. She was wise, no doubt, to distance herself like this. When he had kissed her, when she had responded to him, they had expected to be parted within hours. Now it could be a day or two.
‘You had better hurry and pack, I’ll send some men down to carry your things on deck.’ Even Eliza roused herself at that, hurrying below to leave him to explain to the lieutenant that he was returning with three passengers, a pile of luggage and a cantankerous old hound.
Nathan stood for a minute, contemplating what he had just let himself in for. But she was tired and anxious and needed to be with her new family; to make her endure any more time, within sight of land yet in limbo, was too cruel. He just needed to extend the self-control he had been exercising for a little longer. No doubt it was good for his soul, Nathan thought with a wry smile as he followed the women and went to fetch his belongings.
Clemence clutched the rail of the skiff with one hand and her hat with the other and squinted against the stiff breeze. ‘What a fabulous beach!’ Golden sand arced around a wide bay before the coast lifted into cliffs and the wide expanse was dotted with figures and strange small huts.
‘See the bathing machines?’ Nathan stood at her elbow, his fingers clenched in One-Eye’s collar. ‘You could go for a swim.’
‘No, thank you! I can recall everything you told me about flannel bathing dresses and large women who dunk you under.’ And although the beach might be golden, the sea was grey and cold and there were no palm trees waving in a warm breeze. She shivered. This cool foreign land was home now so she’d better get used to it.
They were into the harbour channel now, steep slopes crowned with fortifications to the left, the busy quayside to the right. Clemence craned to see while Eliza at her side was wide-eyed. ‘It’s so different, Miss Clemence, so square and grey.’
Nathan was talking to the lieutenant who had brought the orders out to them. ‘The Golden Lion? Remember, I have ladies with me—is it respectable?’
‘Eminently, the senior officers always lodge there with their wives. And you can hire post chaises from them.’
Clemence felt she should take a hand in the decisions being made, assert herself and not rely upon Nathan. Soon, very soon, he would be gone and she must learn to manage. ‘That sounds perfectly satisfactory, thank you.’ Then a thought struck her. ‘Nathan,’ she whispered. ‘I have no money!’
‘Here.’ He opened his pocket book and handed her some unfamiliar bank notes. ‘This is the change from the one hundred guineas Melville drew against our official expenses. I am sure your aunt will be able to arrange to have it repaid to him.’
‘Thank you.’ She took the money and folded it carefully into her reticule, relieved that she was not having to borrow it from Nathan. How expensive would the inn be and how long would they have to stay? What if…? Clemence drew a deep steadying breath and told herself to stop worrying. She could cope, of course she could.
The Golden Lion proved comfortable, if rather dark and overpowering with thick hangings and a heavily be-curtained bed. ‘It all smells odd,’ Eliza complained as they set out on foot for Harvey’s Library and Reading Rooms where the porter had assured Nathan they would find all the news-sheets they could possibly want.
‘Shh, and don’t stare so,’ Clemence chided.
‘They are all staring at us,’ the maid retorted.
It was hardly surprising, Clemence thought. A young lady bundled into layers of decidedly unfashionable garments, attended by a maid in a colourful head-wrap and escorted by a naval officer and a vast man with an ancient and belligerent hound on a leash. Yes, they certainly stood out amongst the crowds going about their business and the fashionable strollers who sauntered down the pavements closer to the centre of the town.
‘Here we are,’ Nathan said, sounding as nearly rattled as she could recall hearing him. ‘You wait outside, Street.’ Under the eye of a matron with a vast bonnet and an eye glass, he swept them into the entrance of Harvey’s Library.
An attendant showed them into the newspaper reading room, found them a table and chairs and brought them the Morning Post and The Times from the beginning of June.
Clemence applied herself to scanning the columns in search of any reference to the Ravenhursts, but it was hard to ignore some of the other news.
‘It say
s here,’ she reported, ‘that Mr Kemble remains at Stanmore Priory under the severe visitation of what Dr Johnson styles arthritic tyranny, vulgarly called the gout. Poor man, having that printed. And there is famine in Transylvania, wherever that is.’
‘I have found a list of the prices at the Pantheon Linen Warehouse,’ Eliza contributed. ‘Coloured dresses for only seventeen shillings and six pence.’ She frowned. ‘Is that expensive?’
‘I have no idea,’ Nathan said repressively. ‘Concentrate, or we will be here all day.’
They had arrived at the first week in July before Clemence found it. ‘Here! It is understood that Lord Standon daily expects a most fashionable house party to assemble at his country seat in Hampshire, the distinguished company of Lord Standon’s illustrious relatives to include, it is rumoured, Lord Sebastian Ravenhurst and the Grand Duchess of Maubourg. Thank goodness.’ Although a house party did sound somewhat daunting.
Nathan was already on his feet, checking the Peerage. ‘Long Martin Court, principal seat of the Earls of Standon. And it is not far from Romsey, which means I can escort you and then take the chaise on to London.’
‘I had better write.’
‘You would arrive on the heels of the letter if we leave first thing tomorrow,’ Nathan said, unfolding a map he had found on the shelves. ‘Look, we are here, there is Romsey. Now we know where you are going and when, would you like to look at the shops?’
What she wanted was to retreat to her fusty, dark room and panic quietly about her arrival at Long Martin Court. It was almost worrying enough to distract her from the dull ache inside at the prospect of parting from Nathan for ever. Clemence fixed a smile on her face. ‘That would be delightful.’
It was seven years since he had been shopping with a lady, Nathan realised, watching the tension gradually fade from Clemence’s face as she browsed amongst the shops lining the more fashionable streets. He wanted to take her somewhere quiet and hold her, stroke those lines creasing her brow until they vanished, kiss her until the worry disappeared from her green eyes.
