by Carla Kelly
Mr Whitney spoke a few quiet words to his butler, who turned on his heel immediately, but did not offer to show them to the sitting room. ‘You must forgive me, my dears, but I have an engagement that will not wait. ’Tis the season, after all.’
They exchanged just enough pleasantries—at least Mary did—to tide them over until the butler returned, bearing a familiar box, mailed weeks and weeks ago from Edinburgh. Mary looked closer. The address had been changed several times, but it was the fruitcake.
The butler handed it to Mary, and she sighed with relief. ‘Thank you, Mr Whitney. We’ll not take another minute of your time.’
‘Happy to help, my dear.’ Mr Whitney leaned forwards confidentially. ‘Before I received these letters and heard your knock on the door, I was all ready to send the fruitcake to my nephew serving in the army in Belgium. I say, do you think anyone actually eats fruitcake?’
To her relief—he had been so silent—Captain Rennie laughed. ‘I doubt it supremely, sir,’ he told Mr Whitney. ‘I never do. Do you, Mary?’
She shook her head. ‘I like to help Mrs Morison make it, but that is all. Belgium? That would have extended my adventure most amazingly.’
Mr Whitney gave her a questioning look, but the captain was already bowing and ushering Nathan ahead of him. It was time to leave. Mary thanked him again and clutched the well-travelled fruitcake to her. At the post chaise, she asked Preston to return her to the public house.
‘Not so fast, Miss Rennie,’ the captain said. ‘We’ve earned a look at that ring, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I suppose you have,’ she replied in what she thought approximated a cheerful tone. No need for either father or son to know how dreadfully she was going to miss them. The adventure was over. ‘Where should we go for what I’ve taken to calling the exhumation?’
‘Mum, we passed a church two streets ago,’ the post rider said. ‘If you don’t mind...I believe it’s a Methodist chapel.’
* * *
The vestibule was empty, which suited Mary, because there was no need to explain herself to the minister, who must have headed to the rectory for nuncheon. After moving aside a pile of improving tracts, she spread out the handkerchief from her reticule. She took the fruitcake from the wooden box and set it on the handkerchief. Such a lot of trouble this had been, Mary decided, as she explained that she would dismantle it bit by bit, then sift through each handful.
‘I’m hungry,’ Nathan said.
‘If you don’t mind crumbs, you can try it,’ Mary said as she took a folding knife from her reticule.
‘Ready for everything, eh, Mary?’ the captain said, eyeing the little penknife.
No. I’m not ready to say goodbye to you, she thought, but nodded. She carefully quartered the dark and dense cake, from which fumes of good Barbados rum rose. ‘Now I separate it piece by piece. That’s what I’ve done with the other three. I am ever so careful.’
She invited Nathan to take a handful of crumbs. ‘What do you think?’ she asked, as he chewed and swallowed. He made a face. ‘Oh, is that so?’ she teased, as she separated another quarter, searched, and then another quarter.
‘This is it, then,’ she said, picking up the remaining quarter. Even more careful, she separated the nuts and orange peel and citron and dried cherries, ready to see the little ring with leaves carved into it, the one belonging to Good Queen Bess, if Mr Algernon Page knew what he was talking about.
She searched the last quarter and searched again, as her heart started to pound and her face grew warm. Nothing. Taking a deep breath, she went through each of the other quarters again, sifted and searching. Her face on fire with frustration and embarrassment, she couldn’t raise her eyes to either Captain Rennie or Nathan.
‘I don’t understand...’ she said finally. ‘This is the fourth and final fruitcake. I searched the others so carefully.’
The silence in the vestibule was so thick she could have weighed it on a scale. The captain was absolutely silent. All she heard was his breathing as it grew deeper and heavier. She finally raised her eyes to his face, only to see him turn away from her.
‘Come, Nathan, we’re overdue in Dumfries,’ he said and sounded like a stranger. Nathan stared at his father.
‘Wait! Surely you don’t think I...?’ Mary had no idea what he thought. Her words came out pinched and at least half an octave higher than normal. ‘I’ve looked through three other fruitcakes. The ring should be here. It must be!’
Captain Rennie glared at her and she felt her heart sink into her shoes. He was a man on the raggedy edge of a towering rage, if the mottled red of his face, his narrowing eyes and his quick breath were symptoms. Her heart sank ever lower when she realised what he was thinking.
She tried again, determined that he not think ill of her. ‘You can’t believe I practised decep—’
To her horror, Captain Rennie took a step towards her, fire in his eyes. She stepped back, frightened. When he shouted in what she suspected was his quarterdeck voice, she covered her ears.
‘Are you a bored and lonely spinster, Miss Rennie?’ he roared, completely out of control. ‘What game have you been playing?’
‘No game, Captain,’ she managed. ‘I told you—’
He overrode her relentlessly. ‘You tried so hard to send us on our way before Knaresborough,’ he said, biting off each word with an intensity she had never heard from anyone in her sheltered life. ‘There never was a ring, was there?’
He glanced around the vestibule, as if he suddenly had no idea where he was. He looked as Mary imagined a frigate captain might appear when his ship was under attack. Had he forgotten himself completely?
‘What in God’s name am I doing in Yorkshire, chasing a...a...damned mythological ring?’
He swore a vicious oath that probably would have shocked the entire French navy, but he spoke only to her, Mary Rennie. She burst into tears, then suddenly found herself in the grip of anger as huge as his own. She dragged a shaking hand across her eyes, trying to calm herself.
‘Miss Rennie? Can we help you?’
The captain whirled around to see both Prestons, their eyes wide and faces pale. ‘Leave us alone!’ he hissed and raised his hand as though to strike them. They retreated to the doorway, but no farther.
He turned back to face her, his hand still raised. Nathan reached for his father’s hand, but Ross shook him off. Mary grabbed the boy and thrust him behind her, feeling the greatest sorrow of her life. War had ruined this good man as surely as if he had died in battle.
‘Don’t you dare.’ She said it quietly, with no idea how to calm a man in the grip of something as monstrous as war.
She wanted to run from the church and never look back. Mary took Nathan’s hand and turned to pull him from the room with her, since she had no idea what the captain would do. When she turned so quickly, her face connected with the edge of the bookcase holding religious tracts. Pamphlets scattered everywhere, fluttering around Ross Rennie, who stared at his upraised hand as though it belonged to someone else.
‘Good God,’ he muttered.
Mary staggered against the table as little stars danced in her vision. She blinked her eyes and saw Nathan, ghostly white and staring at them both with his mouth open. Horrified, she willed herself calm, taking so many deep breaths that she felt light headed. With hands that shook, she gathered up the corners of the handkerchief with the fruitcake and handed it to the boy she loved so much.
‘Na-Na-Nathan,’ she stammered, ‘f-f-find somewhere to dispose of this. There’s probably a close with an ash-bin behind the church. Please go.’
He snatched the handkerchief from her trembling hand and ran out the door. When he started to wail, Mary covered her ears again. As she turned around to face Captain Rennie, she felt disembodied, as though quiet Mary Rennie had died and left behind a ruined shell
. She gathered herself together like the scraps of fruitcake in the handkerchief.
‘That is what I will regret until I die, Captain,’ she said, her voice low and dangerous and completely belonging to someone else. ‘He should not have heard us going at each other hammer and tongs. I am ashamed. As for the fruitcake, I saw my cousin put the ring in the batter and I knew where we stored it.’
The look he gave her was so filled with contempt that she closed her eyes in misery. Her cheek was on fire and her left eye was starting to close.
‘I don’t believe a word out of your mouth,’ he said, his voice calmer now, but still filled with anger so deep that she didn’t understand where it could possibly come from or why. He seemed almost possessed, as though some dividing line, cobweb thin, between his ship in battle and the two of them standing there in a church vestibule had disappeared. ‘Not a damned word.’
His supreme distrust stung. ‘Then it doesn’t matter what I say. I believe the deception has been practised on me. Why, I do not know.’ She looked towards the door, where the Prestons still stood, transfixed. ‘If you could please take me to the mail-coach posting.’
She put her hand to her cheek. Relieved, she touched no blood, no jagged bone. She felt the captain’s eyes on her, and she looked at him, out of ideas, out of hope. What she saw was uncertainty, as though he wondered how she had come by what was probably turning into a black eye of astounding proportions.
‘It was an accident. You didn’t mean to do that,’ she told him, wondering why in heaven’s name she felt any urge to excuse him. All she felt was shame that grew and grew as she dragged her mind back to the night at the Blankenships. What a fool she had been. This was a man truly destroyed by war.
‘Think what you will, Captain. I am not really a dry twig of a spinster playing games. I am an ordinary woman.’ She gulped and swallowed, determined to say what she felt honour bound to say. She turned to the Prestons. ‘Go back to the chaise. I will be there in a moment. Please.’
‘I don’t know, miss.’
‘Please.’
She waited until they were gone and only the two of them remaining in the vestibule. ‘As for the matter at the Blankenships, I suppose we were both seeking some sort of solace.’ He started to say something and she gave him a look so fierce that it was his turn to back away. ‘Let me finish! It was solace any man or woman could have provided, I suppose. You’ll find more reliable and experienced comfort elsewhere, I do not doubt. I don’t feel proud admitting that, but there you are, sir. Forgive me.’
Humiliated to her heart’s core, Mary managed a glance at his face, surprised to see him wince, as though she had misinterpreted that, too. It scarcely mattered; this journey had reached a terrible conclusion.
‘I’m not certain how I feel about that, Mary,’ he replied, his voice quiet now, without the cutting edge that she suspected had flayed a generation of midshipmen and young lieutenants.
She turned away, appalled by the reality that war had ruined what might have been a good man. Astoundingly, she felt sorry for him. ‘It doesn’t matter, I suppose.’
She heard him step towards her, and she flinched, moving quickly out of his reach. Her action made him take an audible breath.
‘Damn this whole affair! I wish I were at sea.’
Mary turned around, her fury replaced by sorrow of the most exquisite sort. ‘Is that your answer for all ills?’
‘Aye,’ he snapped. ‘I can manage a ship and men.’
‘Then get you to it, sir,’ she said softly.
Chapter Twenty-Three
If Ross hadn’t already known, one look in Nathan’s eyes told him he had made a terrible mistake. Suddenly a stranger to him, his son huddled in a corner of the post chaise, as though he couldn’t get far enough away.
Silent, not looking at him, the Prestons had returned to the church after taking Mary Rennie to the mail-coach stop. ‘Where now, Captain?’ Tom Preston asked, his voice detached and professional, his eyes straight ahead and avoiding Ross’s. The companionship they had developed travelling together had vanished like a leaf in a hot furnace.
How dare you condescend to me? he thought, furious all over again and ashamed at the same time. He waited so long that Preston cleared his throat.
‘We will take you to the posting house here, Captain,’ the post rider said, his voice so studied and neutral. ‘Christmas is close and we have been travelling a long time.’ He glanced at his son. ‘Tony and I would like to head home ourselves. I...I...feel confident you can find other post riders to complete your journey.’
He had been dismissed by the men he had hired to serve him. If Preston had slapped him, Ross could not have felt worse. He nodded, unable to speak.
* * *
At the posting house, Ross settled the bill and held out a generous tip to the Prestons. The post rider just shook his head and turned away.
‘You know I wouldn’t have struck her!’ he said to their retreating backs. ‘It was you I was angry with.’ His words rang hollow, even in his own ears. No reasonable man would have struck his post riders, either. He wasn’t even fit company for the people he hired. Never mind; the Prestons left him alone without another comment.
* * *
Tom Preston was right; it was easy to find fresh riders. In a matter of an hour, the Rennies, minus Mary, had started out on the journey to Dumfries, where they were overdue. In all this time, Nathan had said nothing to him. When the new post rider climbed into his saddle and they left Knaresborough, Nathan closed his eyes and turned away, pretending to sleep.
‘Son, please,’ Ross said. ‘Oh, please! You know I would never have hurt Mary. She ran into the bookcase. It was an accident. Even...even she said it was.’
‘You should have seen your face, Da. You frightened me, too.’ His face crumpled and he began to weep. ‘And Mary even more! Da, I love her and you chased her away.’
Wordless, Ross opened his arms, nearly in despair at the length of time it took his child to accept his embrace. Nathan cried himself to sleep.
* * *
Ross had stared out the window until dawn came hours later, wondering what demon had possessed him in the church vestibule.
In fairness to Mary, now that his ferocious anger had dissipated, she had seemed as surprised as he was that she could not find the ring in the final fruitcake. Perhaps someone had practised a deception on her. And even if no one had done such a thing, there was no explanation for his irrational anger. She was a woman, after all, and not a battle-hardened sailor used to harsh treatment. Perhaps he was truly not fit for land.
The idea chilled him, but he could not deny it. For twenty-four years, he had truly been in the service of Napoleon the puppetmaster. On the other side of the Channel from France, instant obedience was expected of him by his royal sovereign, King George, his other puppetmaster. In turn, Ross ruled his own watery kingdom, meting out harsh punishment when required, starving or thirsting with the men who looked to him in all things and obeyed without question. He had fought alongside his people in ship-to-ship engagements throughout the oceans of the world. To call his life anything but hard would be a great error.
As they rode along in the dark, the other side of his conscience reminded him that women like Mary led hard lives, too. She had known heartache and disappointment. How arrogant he was to think his was worse. If some of his hopes were disappointed, so were hers. Shame on him.
* * *
On the second day, Nathan and Ross started talking about inconsequential matters, each avoiding anything that might bring back a memory of Mary or the church vestibule. He could have stopped at a few more public houses or inns where wardroom officers had written down their favourite foods on that list that was starting to haunt him. Somewhere in that honest part of his heart, he knew he did not stop because the food would always remind h
im of fine days with Mary Rennie, his gentle travelling companion, humouring him by sampling lemon-curd pudding and Cumberland sausage.
He revised his opinion of her gentleness. Aye, she was sweet and bonny, but she was also a strong woman who did not flinch to handle his peg-leg or save his worthless hide in Ovenshine when his former purser was bent on ruining him. And in bed with her at the Blankenships, when Nathan interrupted what Ross knew in his bones would have been a coupling of prodigious proportions, she had that same fire he remembered from Inez. With Mary, he would never want for anything.
For the final time, he thought of the lovely lady of his dreams, appalled that he had actually described her to Mary. How could he have been so stupid? The sweetest woman in his life had travelled with him for glorious days, and he hadn’t the wit to acknowledge it. He could not imagine a bigger fool that the man who glared at him through the window’s reflection.
One bad moment came when they passed a mail coach bowling along and swaying from side to side. Nathan sucked in his breath and stared out the window, his eyes searching for Mary. He began to cry and only shook his head with some vehemence when Ross reached for him.
* * *
They arrived in Dumfries two days before Christmas. It pained Ross that Nathan was still wary of him. His wariness went unnoticed when his sister scooped them both into her generous embrace and they began Yuletide celebrations. If Nathan was more quiet than usual, Alice Mae didn’t know, because she seldom saw either of them. Perhaps after a few days of eating, merriment and gifts, Nathan would forget the quiet woman who had such a sure touch.
* * *
Mary discovered something useful about travel on the Royal Mail with a black eye: people generally felt no inclination to pry. The coach was cold, too, so it was easy to keep the hood of her cloak around her face. If she could scamper aboard first and seat herself on the left side of the coach, she could turn her face towards the window and no one was any the wiser. It didn’t matter that she knew her black eye had been an accident. No one who saw her ravaged face would know the whole story, one she knew she would never tell.