“My God, look at that.” They had emerged on the gun deck, close to where a direct hit had been scored on one of the guns, but it was not the bloodstained deck that had caught Trenche’s attention, but the crowds of people who were pouring down from above. “We’ll never get through,” he said.
“Yes, we will. Try to remember that you are a man.” She moved aside to let him lead the way, certain that in this crowd of desperate refugees there was no need to worry about anything strange in her own appearance. They had troubles enough of their own. It was hard work pushing their way through the frantic crowds who seemed to speak every language but English, but at last they reached the captain’s quarters and Helen breathed a sigh of relief at sight of a marine on duty at the door. He saluted at sight of her, stepped back smartly to let her pass, then moved forward again. “Ladies only,” he said.
“Oh,” Trenche hesitated pitifully. “But where do I go?”
“That’s your affair, sir.” It was the first time Helen had realised to what extent Trenche had contrived to make himself disliked by the crew.
She forgot him when she entered the main cabin and saw Charlotte. “Charlotte!” When had she started crying? “Oh, Charlotte!”
Charlotte had her arms round her; Charlotte was soothing her, as she used to do her mother. Charlotte was urging her towards the tiny cabin they shared, was explaining something in her fluent French to a group of ladies who seemed to fade and reappeared through the veil of tears. Charlotte was now calling sharply for Rose.
“No, Charlotte!” Helen managed to speak through waves of dizziness. “Not Rose. Just you.”
Chapter 7
HELEN slept for what felt like hours and woke to find Charlotte sitting beside her, busy with her embroidery.
“Well.” Charlotte smiled at her. “You’re better!” Her tone as well as her expression told Helen that as she had hoped, her innocent eyes had not noticed what Rose’s sharp ones might have. “I never thought to see you faint,” Charlotte went on. “A lioness like you. Was it very dreadful down there?” And then, “Forgive m . . . m . . .”
The stammer was wonderfully bracing. “Nothing to forgive, love.” She had never called Charlotte that before. “And much to thank you for. You got me to bed?”
“Yes, poor lamb. Your skirt’s all bloody from that terrible cockpit. But we won’t talk about that.” Charlotte paused, then changed the subject. “I’ve been so grateful to you for the excuse to keep away from those good ladies out there.”
“Who are they?” Helen remembered them now, vaguely.
“Royalist refugees, poor things. Lord Hood sent me over with your father’s share. All of the best family, of course, and so busy about precedence, even in these cramped quarters, you wouldn’t believe.”
“What’s going to happen to them?”
“God knows. We’re on our way to a rendezvous in the Bay of Hyères. Perhaps Admiral Hood will have some orders about them when we get there. I certainly hope he has. The ship’s bedlam as it is. You should just see it. Price tells me it’s terrible below decks.” She smiled wickedly. “And your poor Lord M . . . M . . .”
“Not my Lord Merritt,” said Helen, more sharply than she meant. “But what’s happened to him?”
“Sharing with the lieutenants,” said Charlotte with simple pleasure. “And Trenche is in with the m . . . m . . .”
“The midshipmen?” Helen almost found herself joining in Charlotte’s laughter. But it could not last. She began to think about Trenche, and all that had happened down in that stinking darkness. She bit her lip, not to cry. What in the world was the use of crying? Besides, was it so very important after all? Something had happened to her, not of her own volition. Why should she feel herself changed by that? Only . . . “What day is it?” she asked.
“Sunday, dear. You’ve slept the clock round. You must be famished. I’ll ask Price to see what he can find for you.”
Left alone, Helen’s calculations were brief and bleak. “Sunday.” December the twentieth. Five days till Christmas, and ten until she would begin to know whether Trenche’s assault had had its possible disastrous effect.
The time passed quickly enough in the intolerably crowded captain’s quarters where everyone had some private terror of her own. In the last panic of the evacuation of Toulon, wives had lost their husbands, mothers their children. When the fleet made its rendezvous in the Bay of Hyères, there was good news for some, but not for many. Helen’s own anxiety seemed merely childish compared with that of these women, worn out with years of terror, who now faced exile, many of them alone. Helen’s heart bled for them. But she had something else to think of. Reluctantly, desperately, she was beginning to face her own situation. Of course, after such an experience, three or four days might mean nothing, but they might also mean that her whole life was changed. Characteristically, she was beginning to try and persuade herself that it might even be a change for the better. There had always been one major drawback for her about those plans she had shared with Miss Tillingdon for a placid bluestocking life in a cottage. She liked children. It was one thing not to marry; nothing would induce her to do that; but where Miss Tillingdon had recoiled with horror when she had suggested that they might, in the fulness of time, find some suitable subject for adoption, she had privately stuck to this plan. It was one of the vital points on which her plans for their future and Miss Tillingdon’s had begun to diverge. Now, perhaps, the problem of adoption was to be solved for her. It began, as the month drew on, to seem increasingly probable that she was to have a child of her own.
By the end of January, she was in no more doubt about the fact of the child, and was beginning to face the most acute of her problems. There were scandal and shame ahead, to be lived through, but she found she did not much care about them. The one thing that she found she passionately wanted to avoid was Trenche’s knowledge of his responsibility. And that was a facer, if ever there was one. For herself, she would have been prepared to brazen it out, to have the child and refuse to name the father. But, inevitably, if she did this, Trenche would know. And she knew she did not trust him. Well, how could she?
There was only one year to go now until her twenty-first birthday when she would come into her inheritance and be able to support both herself and her child. But for just this vital year, she was penniless, dependent on her father. Presently, she would have to tell him, but not until the last possible moment; not, simply, until she had decided what to do.
In the meantime, they were back on station, blockading Toulon. It was tedious work, but she was grateful for the bad weather and rough seas that provided an admirable excuse for her own bouts of sickness. She was even grateful now for the pressure Lord Merritt must be continuing to put on her father not to send her and Charlotte ashore. He had a good reason for his own continued presence on board. “Not a brave man,” he would say cheerfully. “Don’t half like the look of things in Italy. Greedy lot at best; treacherous at worst. Mean to get to Naples safe and sound. King’s ship’s the best way. I’ll bide my time if you’ll have me, sir.”
Captain Telfair was only too happy to keep a passenger who paid his way so lavishly, who had contrived to replenish his cabin stores on a brief trip to Leghorn, and who would end, he devoutly hoped, by taking his formidable daughter off his hands. He had said no more about this aspect of the situation to Helen, on what amounted to orders from Lord Merritt. “Take it easy and slow,” Merritt had said, and Telfair, who disliked scenes, except those he made himself, was happy to do so.
It suited Helen too, specially as Trenche was obviously quite as eager to avoid her as she him. She even managed to endure Lord Merritt’s second proposal with a good grace, if a firm answer. This was not, in fact, couched at all in the same language as her first refusal, but only Lord Merritt was aware of this. He thought, with some justice, that she felt more kindly towards him, and began to believe that it was only a question of time. But how much time had he? An immense batch of mail reached the fleet in J
anuary and brought him the news that his uncle’s health was failing again. He wrote off at once, with sympathies and an over-optimistic description of his hopes. Helen, he was able truthfully to say, was just the kind of strong-minded woman of whom his uncle would approve. Trenche, as usual, helped him draft his letter, and gave him a strange look when they reached this point, but Lord Merritt was much too full of his own affairs to notice.
Helen had had a letter too. Recognising Mary Tilling-don’s neat hand, she had opened it expecting the usual dullish catalogue of Up Harting affairs, and had not at first been disappointed. Mr. Tillingdon had had trouble with the choir. . . . Sir Harry had come down from London with another set of scandalous friends. . . . Miss Til-lingdon’s joints pained her worse than ever, and she had had to give up all attempts at gardening. “You’ll find me but an ineffective companion in our cottage, my love,” wrote Mary Tillingdon. And then, quite casually: “By the by: I can now set your mind at rest about the secret proviso in Mrs. Stott’s will. It need not concern you at all. My brother had a fit of the dismals when the bad weather started”—this was a familiar euphemism for one of Mr. Tillingdon’s drinking bouts. “He told me one night,” went on the neat scratch, “that we would lose half our income next year. ‘Whichever way,’ he said. So I remembered you, my love, and was brave as a lion and asked him what he meant. And, ‘Why,’ said he, and I will spare you his language, which was not at all the thing, ‘if she behaves herself, it all goes to that bluestocking friend of yours. And if she don’t, why the governesses get it. Either way, unless the Bishop comes up trumps, you and I will starve on my stipend.’ It was on the tip of my tongue,” went on Miss Tillingdon, “to tell him that at least he would starve alone, since I would be happily settled with you, dearest Helen, but you will be glad to hear that I restrained myself. You will be glad, too, to know that the mysterious condition turns out to be so unimportant.”
“Unimportant.” Helen folded the letter with hands that shook. “If she behaves herself.” Doubtless the casual phrase covered a whole paragraph of lawyers’ jargon, but there was no blinking at what it meant. The mother of an illegitimate child, however unfortunate, would never be considered to have behaved herself. She actually ground her teeth, and remembered, horribly, how Philip Trenche’s had chattered the day this all began.
There was no doubt in her mind now. She remembered too well the symptoms of the errant cook back at Up Harting. Her child would be born in September. She had until then to provide for its future. No, that was wrong. She had no time at all. If she could count forward, so could other people, backwards. She had heard it done often enough, sometimes in friendly, sometimes in malicious spirit. “Married in March, and the child born in September.” And a wealth of meaning behind the words. For herself, she thought she would not have cared. But the child was different. It was her responsibility, and she must think for it, more than for herself. All very well to face her father’s rage, the probability of being set ashore at the first Italian port he touched. By herself she could have done it. Night after night, lying awake with Charlotte breathing easily on the other side of the cabin, she thought this. By herself she would have turned her hand to something, have found employment of one kind or other at one of the small courts of Italy. Her Italian, after all, was nearly as good as her French, and knowledge of languages, in a world in chaos, was at a premium.
By herself she could have managed. But, heavily, obviously pregnant? Impossible. She had seen it happen too often to other women, unfortunates she and Miss Tillingdon had contrived to assist out of thosegenerous funds provided by her great-aunt’s will. A pity, she thought now wryly, that she had not had the wits to embezzle some of her own money to safeguard her future. Miss Tillingdon would never have noticed. Too late now for thoughts like these. She faced the decision that had made itself, almost without her being aware, some time during that wet, wretched January. After all those plans for a free and independent life, she must mortgage her own future to protect her child. She must marry, and since there was no one else, marry Lord Merritt.
But what would she tell him? And how? Bad weather made tête-à-têtes on deck an impossibility, and there was no chance of an uninterrupted conversation in the main saloon they all shared. Time was her enemy now, and her child’s. At all costs, she must do something, and do it fast. Her one comfort was the businesslike nature of Lord Merritt’s .own proposal. It made it possible for her to reopen the question. And, though she thought little of his intelligence, she had a considerable respect for his capacity to arrange things to suit himself. In the end, after another sleepless night, she wrote him one line, “I need to speak to you,” and handed it to Price when he came to take away her bitter cup of breakfast coffee. Inevitably, Charlotte was in the cabin too, and looked a question, but, receiving no answer, Charlotte could be relied on not to pry.
That was both unfair and absurd. The sooner she started crossing her bridges, tire better. She looked up at Charlotte and made herself smile. “I have decided to marry Lord Merritt,” she said.
“Helen!” They had never discussed this, but Charlotte could be in no doubt about her feelings.
“I know.” Helen managed a convincing shrug. “It’s not ideal, but he’s a reasonable man, and rich. I find I am beginning to value the comfort wealth entails.” She looked round the tiny cabin. “And, besides, I’m sick of this life. He’s persuaded my father, you know, to keep us all on board until I accept him.”
“What?”
“Yes. You could say I was responsible for my mother’s death.”
“I’d never say anything of the kind, and you mustn’t think it.”
“Thank you.” Helen found she was crying, and realised with a twinge of surprise that it was the first time since the day it happened. Well, what use were tears? She dried them angrily, and held out a hand to Charlotte. “You’ll come with us, won’t you?”
“If you want me.”
“More than anything. And, Charlotte, I’ve simply asked for a word alone with Lord Merritt. Help me, won’t you?”
“Of course, But, Helen, are you sure? I thought you didn’t even like him.”
“I shall learn to.”
“Oh . . .” and then, with an effort, “I wish I understood you, Helen.”
Since this was the last thing Helen wanted, it was a profound relief to her when Rose knocked on the cabin door to announce that Lord Merritt would be grateful for a word, alone, with Miss Telfair. Helen’s eyes met Charlotte’s. “You have to admit,” she said, “that he’s capable. I wonder what he’s done with Father. Sent him up on deck?”
“Very likely,” said Charlotte. “M . . . m . . .” it was only the second time she had stammered in the whole extraordinary conversation. She took a deep breath. “Money is power,” she said. “Is that what you want, Helen?”
“Perhaps. Security, certainly.” For the child. She gave herself a quick look in the cabin’s tiny glass. “Tell Lord Merritt I will be with him directly, Rose.” She gave Charlotte a quick, hard kiss. “Wish me luck.” Only she knew how badly she needed it. Sending her note, it had not occurred to her that Lord Merritt would act on it so fast. What was she going to say to him? She should have decided before she wrote. Was everything she did always going to be either too late or too early? But she was keeping Lord Merritt waiting. She opened the cabin door with a firm hand and joined him in the salon.
He was, as she expected, alone, and, she saw, as nervous as herself. He had been staring out the stern window at vacancy, but turned at once as she entered and came forward to greet her. “Had your note. Price is at the door.”
“And Miss Standish stays in our cabin.” Where did one go from there? “I am grateful to you for acting so promptly.” It was true, in a way. Surely this conversation was best got over with.
“And I for the message. Hope it means . . .” he paused. “What I hope it means.”
“Yes.” Was it so easy to sign away a lifetime’s freedom?
Apparentl
y it was. He had her hand and was kissing it lightly. “More grateful than I can say. You have made me . . .” another pause . . . “happiest of men.”
If it was not true, it was gallant. Curiously, it decided her. “There is something,” she said, “that I must tell you first. On your promise of secrecy.” It was odd, and a relief, to find that though she had often thought him negligible, she had never thought him untrustworthy.
“Secrecy?” Surprised. “Well—a wife’s secrets—her husband’s.”
It was a frightening thought. But she made herself go on. “When you know, you may change your mind. I beg you will feel free to do so.”
“Impossible.” For once, his expression was unfathomable.
“Thank you.” She bolted into it. “When you were away, on the Victory, in the confusion of the retreat . . .” She stopped. This was incredibly harder than she had expected.
“Yes?”
“I was raped.”
“God.” And the inevitable question. “By whom?”
“That I will never tell you.” Would he find out for himself? “And I beg you not to ask, not to think, not to wonder. . . . It is bad enough as it is. If you still wish to marry me, it must be at once. The child will be born in September.”
He had dropped her hand and now stood for a long moment staring at her with the slightly pop-eyed look she always found irritating. At last, “No need to tell me. Brave woman.”
“To tell truth, I did not mean to. But I found I must.”
“Thank you.” He was thinking it over, slowly. “Call it my child? Your idea? September, you say?”
“Yes.” Now she was into it, she would spare neither of them anything. “Nine months to the day from the evacuation of Toulon. It’s the child, you understand, that I am thinking of.”
“Not my beaux yeux.” But his tone was encouraging. “Swear it was rape?”
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