by Carla Kelly
When the door opened, he winced and rose to his feet to see Tavish Maxfield and a lovely lady of equally advanced years. He stared, then he understood. He bowed, rejuvenated despite his utter exhaustion. ‘Well, my dears. You must be—let me guess—the former Miss Ella Bruce. My congratulations to you both!’
He must have looked hungry as well as tired, because the conversation continued immediately over the dinner he had obviously interrupted. Before he tucked into a welcome meal that hadn’t come from a posting house, he had to ask, ‘My son and Mary Rennie?’ Obviously they were not there. He who could make anchorage in strange ports through fog was beginning to doubt his ability to find a gentle lady with a kind face and a boy with handsome Portuguese features.
‘They have been here and gone,’ Mr Maxfield said.
Ross groaned. ‘Then I am stymied and bludgeoned.’
The couple smiled at each other. ‘You’ll figure it out as soon as you’ve had dinner, Captain,’ the new Mrs Maxfield said. ‘Eat and let us thank you, too, for the fruitcake.’
He did just that, eating everything within easy reach and listening to a lovely tale of an old fellow working up the nerve to travel to Stirling, precisely as Miss Bruce’s nephew in Carlisle had wished.
‘More potatoes, Captain? I screwed up my courage and proposed on the spot. Love, hand the dear captain the gravy,’ Mr Maxfield said with a blush that belied his years. ‘We have been married upwards of six months now and we owe it all to Mary Rennie.’ Mr Maxfield leaned closer. ‘We think you should marry that lovely lady.’ He giggled. ‘She told us that you were all Rennies, but not spliced.’
Ross absorbed all this without a blush as he ate. ‘I am so tired and my brain is not working, sir. I want to do precisely as you wish, but damn me, I am out of ideas.’
‘No, you’re not, Captain,’ Mrs Maxfield said, her eyes so kind. ‘We think it best that you have dessert somewhere else.’
‘I’d rather have Mary and Nathan.’ He thought a moment, than slapped the table so hard that the jam jar jumped. ‘Lemon-curd pudding, eh?’
‘I told you he was smart man, Ella,’ Mr Maxfield said. ‘Will you have a nap before you...oh, well, Captain. Good day!’
* * *
When they pulled into Skowcroft a day and a half later, Ross could barely sit up. The pain in his stump was as bad as if he had stood on it through storms and battles, but the pain in his heart was worse. He directed the post rider to the Everetts’ parish, but hadn’t the energy to move when the post let down the step. He just sat there, his head on his knees.
He heard a door open, then felt gentle hands on his arm. ‘Mary?’ he said without looking up.
‘The same, Captain. Nathan, you take his other arm.’
The pain was so great he collapsed on the walkway and they were not strong enough to heave him to his feet again. To his embarrassment, the post rider helped him up, Mary leading the way, the Everetts concerned, but smiling, too.
‘Everyone is so damned cheerful here,’ he muttered, then closed his eyes.
* * *
When he woke, he wore a nightshirt and his leg was blissfully unencumbered with the peg, which he saw propped against a chair across the room.
Mary sat in a chair by the bed, her stockinged feet on the coverlet, reading, Nathan seated beside her. She put down the book and chuckled when he tickled the sole of her foot.
‘You’re among the living?’ she asked. ‘Nathan, better bring up the lemon-curd pudding.’ When Nathan ran down the stairs, she moved from the chair to the bed. ‘You’ve been mumbling about lemon-curd pudding for an hour or more.’
‘Kiss me,’ he ordered, and she did. She had no more skill than in the crofter’s cottage, but she had something more important, an intensity of purpose that began to stir his worn-out body.
He held her off then. ‘Mary, I owe you more apologies than exist.’
She shook her head, then returned to the chair when she heard Nathan on the stairs. With a flourish that reminded Ross of Inez just a little, Nathan set the bowl of pudding on his father’s lap. There were three spoons, so they all gathered close. While they ate, Nathan apologised for stealing Mrs Pritchert’s household money.
Ross thought it was an apology, but he couldn’t be certain, because Nathan ended with, ‘Da, I really think you should leave more household money with Mrs Pritchert. Suppose I need to run away to Edinburgh again?’
Mary gasped and grabbed his son, rubbing his head until he squealed. ‘That’s no apology!’ she declared. ‘You are a rascal and a scamp!’ They grinned at each other.
Her arms around Nathan, Mary picked up the thread of the adventure. ‘As you know now, I found him in York. We came here because it’s on the way to Edinburgh. We figured you were headed there, too.’
He nodded and felt his eyes close. ‘Won’t you both come south to Plymouth with me?’
There was a long pause. ‘Nathan will.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
She didn’t change her mind through a day of pleading, but did suggest that the tide was running more in his favour. Ross knew better than to accuse her of toying with him, because he knew her well enough to know that she was genuinely unsure. Could he blame her? He knew he had been ruined by war and he knew she knew it, too.
Still, he was a leader of men used to having his way. He told her he had a special licence in his pocket and wanted more than anything for Mr Everett to marry them right away. She merely nodded and told him to hang on to it just a little longer.
‘Say now, are you doing this to get me back for what was assuredly a nasty piece of meanness in Knaresborough?’ he finally asked, exasperated, as he let her ease him into his peg again.
‘I would never be so petty,’ she assured him.
‘Do you at least love me?’
‘More than I could possibly express in words,’ she told him. ‘The only thing left is to show you how much I love you. You’ll have to wait a bit, though. I have to apologise to a cook in Edinburgh and settle a few affairs.’ She hesitated then, and looked away.
‘Is it still Baltimore?’ he asked quietly.
‘I truly haven’t decided,’ she replied, and left the room so he could finish dressing. She paused at the doorway, her eyes so tender. ‘You are not totally ruined. Trust me on that.’
* * *
She left for Edinburgh early in the morning, before he and Nathan had finished packing. He watched her spend a long moment with his son, the two of them forehead to forehead, as she talked to him. He took heart, because he reckoned Nathan was her son now. They had forged a bond during their helter-skelter trip following a fruitcake—Good God, a fruitcake—from address to address. Lonely boy and lonely woman, they had written to each other while he was at sea—probably at sea in more ways than one, if he wanted to be honest.
‘You are not totally ruined. Trust me on that,’ was the last thing she said to him before the post rider handed her into the chaise for the short ride to the nearest mail-coach stop. He told her he could arrange a post chaise for her, too, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Mary Rennie wasn’t a Scot for nothing.
Not wanting to embarrass themselves in front of his son, and post riders and the Everetts, too, he had kissed her goodbye in the upstairs hallway. Only an idiot couldn’t have noticed how much improved they both were. Of course they had practised the evening before, when she kindly helped him out of his peg, and before breakfast, when she had helped him into it. No matter how the whole affair fell out, he had no intention of telling her that he hadn’t needed assistance in years.
Before the post rider could close the door, Nathan jumped inside. He clung to Mary and she to him, then she wrenched herself away, her face a mask of pain, and told him goodbye. Tears came to her eyes as she looked over Nathan’s head to Ross.
‘I have had enoug
h of hails and farewells!’ he couldn’t help shouting in that quarterdeck voice of his as the chaise rolled away.
* * *
Their summertime return to Plymouth reminded Ross forcefully of their trip in December to Dumfries. Father and son needed to reintroduce themselves to each other. By the second night, they were easy with each other again, with one exception: both of them felt the lack of Mary Rennie. If he lived to be an old, old man, Ross knew he would never understand the pull of such a quiet lady. Strangely, he thought of the Napoleon he had watched nearly a year ago on the deck of Tom Ussher’s frigate. Napoleon Bonaparte, a little man filled with ambition and cunning and genius, had ruled Europe for a generation. One man like that could change the course of history. One Mary Rennie would change nothing beyond the reach of her modest sphere. The world would never forget Napoleon. One man and one boy would never forget Mary Rennie. He knew, for the first time since the war began, which mattered more.
* * *
On the third day, Ross gave his son the scold he deserved for running away and frightening Mrs Pritchert, but he did it while the boy was close in his arms in the post chaise. He told his son everything he remembered about his beautiful Portuguese mother and told him he could ask anything he wanted about her. Nathan nodded and sighed. ‘I never knew her, though.’
‘No. She was a fine lady, Son. I loved her.’ He pulled his son closer, overwhelmed with his own uncertainty. ‘I love Mary Rennie now.’
‘What if Mary won’t come to you?’
He had no answer.
* * *
When they arrived in London, he took Nathan to Admiralty House with him. They waited in the antechamber until Lord Melville summoned him.
‘You’ll sit here quietly, Nathan?’ he asked.
His son nodded. ‘My running days are over,’ he assured his father, who turned away to hide his smile, because he sounded so dramatic.
Ross was not surprised when the First Lord offered him a desk job at Admiralty, an occupation with considerable responsibility, and coming with an increase in pay far exceeding his captain’s salary. ‘Of course, this will mean swallowing the anchor, Captain Rennie,’ Melville told him. ‘Your sailing days are over, but you’ll stay in the navy.’
Ross could not deny that the position flattered him, but he had considerable wealth increasing in volume under the careful management of Brustein and Carter in Plymouth. London was far grander than Plymouth, but he had never cared for London. And why would he want to continue in thrall to the Royal Navy that had ruined him?
‘I think not, my lord,’ he said, after not overmuch consideration. ‘I am mindful of the honour, but I really stopped here to resign my commission. My war is over, but I do not know if I have won or lost.’
Lord Melville gave him a strange look. Ross knew that every post captain still standing at the end of this world war would understand precisely what he meant, even if the First Lord did not.
‘You could give it more thought, Captain,’ Lord Melville suggested.
‘I could, my lord, but the answer would be the same.’ He bowed and started from the room.
To Ross’s surprise and no little gratification, Lord Melville walked him to the door. ‘As we speak, Captain Maitland’s Billy Ruffian is shepherding Boney to St Helena.’
‘Good God Almighty. That is a miserable rock in the middle of nowhere,’ Ross exclaimed.
‘Precisely. Goodbye, Captain. Fair winds and following seas to you.’
* * *
He had counted the miles to Plymouth, mainly because every mile took him farther from Mary Rennie. When the seaport was nearly in sight, he asked Nathan, ‘What would you think if we were to move to Baltimore? It is in Maryland, at the head of Chesapeake Bay.’
‘Da, that’s enemy territory,’ Nathan said. He thought a moment. ‘Mary’s thinking about going there, so it can’t be all bad.’
‘Aye, lad, and the American war is over, too. It’s just a thought.’
Ross paid off the post chaise a few streets from Flora Street, because he still liked the walk. Whatever Mary had done to him in Skowcroft, his stump barely pained him.
‘Do you think Mrs Pritchert will ever forgive me?’ Nathan asked.
‘She probably already has, laddie, but be prepared for the scolding that you richly deserve.’
They sauntered along slowly, Ross’s hand on his son’s shoulder. He never had to leave his boy again, but the whole thing hadn’t settled in yet. Maybe a few days of peace would remedy the strangeness he felt.
* * *
When they arrived at Flora Street, Ross looked up to Nathan’s bedroom window out of habit. A little embarrassed, he glanced at his son. ‘Lad, I know you’re beside me, but old habits die h—’
‘Look.’
He looked again and drew in a shaking breath. Mary Rennie stood there, gazing down at them. He blinked. She was gone. He had imagined her.
Transfixed, he stood there as he heard light footsteps on the stairs. Nathan stepped away from him. When the door opened, Mary stood still for only a moment before she flung wide her arms and pulled him into her embrace.
‘Did you change your mind?’ he asked her breathlessly when he could speak.
‘No. I told you somewhere or other while looking for fruitcake that I would love you until I die.’
Plymouth, one week later
‘I trust I have met some expectations, madam wife,’ he whispered into Mary’s bare shoulder. ‘You certainly have.’ He eased his arm round her and kissed her sweaty hair. ‘We’ll have to do that a few more times to make certain.’
‘Only a few more?’
No one would ever hear it from him, but his wife’s mouth wasn’t working so well. He thought her eyes had a glazed expression, too. Mary had told him earlier that her mother had never warned her about sailors, so he decided not to shoulder any of the blame—his first executive decision as a husband, after saying ‘I will’ to the vicar.
‘Perhaps more than a few times,’ he amended.
They lay so peacefully in a back room at Mrs Pritchert’s house, the one he had bought to provide a home for his infant son and to expiate some of the guilt he had felt when Mr Pritchert had perished in battle. He and Mary had wanted Mr Everett to marry them, but neither wanted to climb into yet-another post chaise for a trip anywhere. Thank goodness the Everetts had no objection to travelling to Plymouth. Even now, Nathan and Mrs Pritchert were escorting the Everetts around the pretty little town their son Dale had known so briefly. Mary had blushed most becomingly when Nathan suggested she come along, too, since she didn’t know the town too well, but Ross had overruled his son.
‘She can do that later. I’ll just show her around the house here while you’re gone for an hour or two.’
‘I’m certain she has seen a house, Da.’
‘Not this one.’
‘Well done there, husband,’ Mary had told him later, after the tour which ended rather quickly in that back bedroom.
‘I thought so.’ Ross raised up on his elbow and ran his hand down Mary’s breasts and stomach. When she moved his hand lower, he knew she was the perfect sailor’s wife.
He had a question, though, and moved his hand back to her stomach. Even a year ago, he had never thought he would have his hand on a wife’s belly and begin to dream about more children. Anything was possible now.
‘I have to know something, Mary Rennie. Ah, I like the sound of your new name. Mary Rennie—there’s such a ring to it.’
Mary thumped him in a tender spot.
‘Maybe I will call you Mary Rennie Squared.’
‘Maybe you will ask your question, so we can get back to business,’ she said, sounding amazingly wifely after only their first tour of the house. How did women do that?
‘Is it to be Baltimore?’
‘I thought you might, but be honest with me, wife: Is it your fresh start or mine?’
‘Yours,’ she said softly and kissed him. ‘Do you mind?’
He turned onto his back, crossing his stump over his other upraised knee and waggling it at her. She laughed and rested her head on his chest. His hand went naturally to her head, and he caressed her hair, humbled to know that he never had to leave this woman for war.
‘I’ve been thinking about Baltimore, too. I hate to admit this, but Yankee schooners and frigates ran rings around us in the Second American War. I can’t tell you how I envied those clean lines. Damn, but Yankees can sail! I want to build a shipyard in Baltimore, or maybe Annapolis, and design yachts. With some assistance from former enemies, I don’t doubt.’
‘My goodness. Can we afford that?’
‘Aye, lass. You married a reasonably well-off man.’ He could spring the whole amount on her later. ‘I’ll design yachts, hire Yankee builders and encourage future customers to forget that we burned their plaguey capital. Maybe I’ll start to drawl in that amusing way Marylanders do. Yes, I’ve known a few. Captured some. To make you happy, we’ll save money if you are my clerk. At least, until you have other matters to keep you busy.’
He fingered her breast, noting a mole. She was going to be great fun to explore. ‘One thing, though: absolutely no fruitcake. I will not be moved on this matter, no matter how you beg.’
She thumped him again.
He turned on his side, and she did the same, running her hand gently and a bit timidly down his ribs and hip, pausing at a scar he might explain some day, if she wanted to hear more of his war stories. He just looked at her, amazed at his good fortune in finding a wife. ‘Mostly, though, I will love you until I die.’
‘I thought you might,’ she said softly and kissed him.
* * * * *