“Yes.”
“End of January now. Seven and a half months to go. Could be done. Letters take ages. A little mystification. . . . Yes; could be done. A fright, perhaps?”
Interesting, in a horrible way, to watch him grasping and coping with the facts of their case. If it was their case, which his next question put back into doubt. “But the father. Child’s to be my heir. Must know something of the father.”
It was a fair question. “He’s a gentleman, though he did not behave like one. More than that, I will not say. There is no reason why he, or anyone else, should ever know. You remember what that night was like.” Thank God he had not been on board.
“Yes.” He turned, as Price put his head round the door.
“Captain Telfair on the way down, sir.”
“Thank you.” When Captain Telfair entered the salon, Merritt had Helen’s hand in his. “The very man,” he said. “Captain Telfair, glad to tell you, your daughters made me the happiest of men.”
“And about time too,” said Captain Telfair.
Chapter 8
THERE was no time for second thoughts. Lord Merritt saw to that. He had himself rowed over next day to the Admiral’s flagship and returned with Lord Hood’s chaplain and what he described as excellent news. “All arranged,” he told Helen. “Lord Hood kindness itself. All sorts of polite messages; quite understands; happier on shore. There’s a young captain—what’s his name? Can’t for the life of me remember; can’t say it matters much. Just joined the fleet. . . . Distinguished himself on detached service . . . Wasn’t really listening, sounds like a good enough sort of fellow. And the Gannet’s quite done up with all the action she’s been in—has to go and refit at Naples. Suit us down to the ground. Not luxurious quarters. Very small ship—frigate, I believe; cabin for you and Miss Standish and Rose . . . Hope you won’t mind. Odd kind of honeymoon. Don’t like it?” He had noticed her blanched face.
“Did you say the Gannet?”
“Yes. What of it?”
“Oh, nothing.” She swallowed what felt like a lump of hot ice. “I believe she’s commanded by an old London acquaintance of mine—Captain Scroope. I read about his actions in the Gazette. A very successful man, by the sound of it. We should be safe enough with him.” The prospect was almost beyond bearing, but must be borne.
“Old acquaintance!” said Lord Merritt. “Admirable. Persuade him not to get up to any of his gallant tricks while we’re on board. Need to get to Naples as fast as we can,” he added, fending off the hint of cowardice.
“Yes.” She had recognised the implication of his remark about the cabin she was to share with Charlotte and Rose, and also the fact that this was as much of a relief to him as it was to her. . . . Just so long as the voyage did not take too long. How horrible it would be to make this disastrous marriage for her child’s sake and then have it branded as a bastard after all. But Charlotte had joined them. Charlotte was explaining something with a mixture of tact and stammering. She and Rose had it all arranged. This one night, after the wedding and before they transferred to the Gannet, Charlotte would share Rose’s cabin, as she had before Mrs. Telfair died, so that the bride and groom might be together. Lord Merritt’s eyes met Helen’s. “Too kind,” he said.
Trenche and Price had been busy covering the guns in the main salon with flags and improvising an altar out of the table on which they dined. The clergyman, whose name Helen would never remember, had retired to don his robes. Captain Telfair, resplendent in full dress uniform, could hardly conceal his impatience to give away the bride, and the clergyman, returning in full pomp, shared his sense of urgency. He had had an uncomfortable enough trip over from the Victory and longed to be safe back on board before the weather worsened.
Incredible that something so final should take so little time. Her father was kissing her with what seemed almost like affection. Charlotte was crying. Mr. Trenche was coming forward to take her cold hand in his colder one, and offer congratulations. He looked drawn with anxiety, as well he might. She longed to ask Lord Merritt—good God, her husband—to get rid of him, but she knew she must not. It would inevitably give a direction to his suspicions. Trenche was simply another of the burdens she would have to bear.
Price was producing a wedding breakfast to which the officers who were not on watch had been invited. Helen was glad to see Forbes, who seemed today like an old friend. He was talking bracingly to Charlotte, who had dried her tears and seemed to be managing to answer him without stammering. Price was pouring out champagne and, horribly, for a moment Helen remembered her mother and wondered whether, if she had yielded thus earlier, she might have saved her life.
Useless speculation. And no time for it now, or to wonder how Charles Scroope would receive her, while Forbes toasted the bride and groom and Lord Merritt looked increasingly uneasy as he recognised the need to reply. And, of all things, this was the moment when Helen began to feel sick. The rest of the party had gathered in a kind of loose half-circle round the two of them; Lord Merritt was nervously fingering his neck cloth. He cleared his throat, once, twice, then plunged into it. “Not a public speaker,” he said. “No trick for it. Grateful, just the same. Happiest of men. Thank you all. Most grateful, but no trick for it. . . .”
Was he going to go round and round like this for ever? Bile rose in Helen’s throat. With an effort, she swallowed it, laid a hand lightly on—her husband’s, and spoke: “My dear. All this excitement. I find myself a little faint. I am sure our guests will understand.” Her eyes, sweeping the little group, met Trenche’s, and she wondered for a sickening instant whether he might not understand all too well.
But her intervention had had the desired effect. The clergyman was delighted at the excuse to take his leave, after congratulating “the happy couple” once more, and urging, as he had done already, that they solemnise the marriage again “on terra firma” when they reached Naples. “If Lady Merritt understands me,” he added wag-gishly.
Lady Merritt, surprised at the title, did understand, but was aware that her husband did not. Suddenly, surprisingly, she felt responsible for him, and forgot her sickness in coming to his rescue. “Yes, indeed,” she said, “we will most certainly ask Sir William Hamilton to arrange it for us.”
“Or Lady Hamilton,” said Trenche. “She is adept, I believe, at arranging marriages.”
This time there was no Captain Nelson to come to Lady Hamilton’s defence, and Helen listened, helpless with anger, to the subdued masculine titter that greeted this sally. Lord Merritt, she noticed with pleasure, did not join in. She felt him beside her, wrestling with an idea. At last he brought it out, “Our Ambassadress,” he said.
“Not precisely,” said the clergyman. “But the point is well taken, just the same. Caesar’s wife, and all that.”
The party was breaking up at last. The endless day stretched before the newly married couple, and beyond it, worse still, the night. Helen racked her brains. Impossible to pretend it was just a day like any other, and get on with the reading and note-taking which were her usual occupations. Her father and the other officers had escaped to their various duties. Only Trenche and Charlotte remained with them in the salon, from which Price was swiftly removing all traces of the party. And Trenche, she now saw, must have contrived to come by a good deal more champagne than the rest of them. It explained, if it did not excuse, his remarks about Lady Hamilton. Now, he withdrew to his own tiny cabin with a muttered apology, and Helen saw him go with relief.
But at least she had stopped feeling sick. She looked from Charlotte to Lord Merritt. “We should do something to celebrate,” she said. “But it is hard to think just what.”
“A game of cards?” suggested Charlotte.
“Capital notion.” Lord Merritt welcomed the idea with enthusiasm, then turned to Helen. “Would you mind?”
Helen had tended to avoid the card games he liked, since she and Miss Tillingdon had always looked on every form of gambling, whether for money or not, with disap
proval. But today was different. “If it could be whist,” she said diffidently. “It is the only game I know.” Her father had a passion for the game, and she had often made a reluctant fourth when Mr. Tillingdon came to call. But at least it was a game of skill rather than of chance.
“Need a fourth,” said Merritt. “Rout out young Trenche, sore head and all?”
“Oh, no,” said Helen. “I cannot help feeling that he would be useless as a player. Could we not play three-handed?”
Her father, returning from the deck at this moment, settled the question by greeting the idea of a game with enthusiasm, and they were soon cutting for partners on the green baize cloth Price had produced for the table that had so recently served as altar. Helen, finding herself partnering her husband, could not help an odd, superstitious qualm, but her father commented on it jovially, with an inevitable remark about “partners for life.”
And, in fact, Lord Merritt played a surprisingly good game of a straightforward kind which Helen found easy enough to understand. Since Charlotte had no head for cards, they were soon winning consistently, and Helen was glad that there had been no suggestion of playing for money. She was becoming increasingly anxious about Charlotte’s finances. Mrs. Standish had certainly paid lavishly enough in advance for her daughters passage, but whether she had also thought to supply Charlotte herself with adequate funds was very much another question, and one that Helen intended to have answered, now that she found herself suddenly in a position of such extraordinary affluence. Her father and Lord Merritt, she knew, had had a man-to-man discussion about settlements and pin money, and doubtless, sooner or later, the results would find their way to her in the form of actual cash. In the meantime, the day was drawing on; Price had lit the salon lamps; it was time to clear the table once more for the last, light meal of the day. Once again, there was champagne, and Helen, sick with nerves, was glad of it. So, she saw, was Trenche, who emerged from his cabin looking haggard, but was making an obvious effort to be agreeable, particularly to her. He was, she knew, penniless, and to be turned away when they reached Naples would be a disaster for him. From now on, he would watch his step. But he would also, inevitably, watch her. It was almost a relief when the rather silent meal ended and she and Charlotte rose, as their habit was, to say good night and leave the men to their wine.
Here habit ended. Charlotte kissed her impulsively, close to tears. Lord Merritt rose ceremoniously to usher her towards the cabin they were to share. “Follow you very soon.”
Helen had always refused Rose’s offers of help with her dress, and was particularly glad of it tonight. If she had believed in anything but the greatest good of the greatest number, she would have fallen on her knees by her narrow cot and prayed for help. As it was, she got herself as quickly as possible into the ruffled flannel nightgown that had been a farewell present from Miss Tillingdon, and crept, shivering, into the cot. She longed to blow out the light and wait in the dark, but it seemed somehow an unfriendly act. She turned her face to the wall and would not think. Not about her own plight. Not about her husband. And, above all, not about Charles Scroope, whom she must meet tomorrow. How could she help it? What must he be thinking about her? Or had he, as she must hope, forgotten her long ago? But she must not cry either. Their situation—her husband’s and hers—was unpromising enough without his finding her in her bridal bed (cot, she reminded herself angrily) in tears.
She lay rigid on the hard, narrow bed, fighting sobs and sickness together. She had not thought her plight could be made worse. How little she had known. The idea of meeting Charles Scroope ate at her like slow poison. He had told her he loved her, and she had answered that she would never marry. The sun had shone in the garden, and he had told her that they were both solitaries. He had taken her hand and threatened to kiss her. If he had, would the spell have been broken? Would she have had the wits to forget her fear of marriage, and engage herself to him? How long was it since she had recognised that she loved him?
Too late now, a lifetime too late to be thinking like this. She lay still at last, the tears fought down, and waited for her husband. She could hear the rumble of voices in the salon, but she knew from long experience that it was impossible to distinguish words. The old Trojan had been solidly built.
At last, after what seemed at once no time at all and an eternity, a louder outburst of sound suggested that the party was breaking up. Her father would be going up for his last look around on deck, Trenche would doubtless be glad to return to his bed. And her husband . . .
The cabin door opened. It would be a coward’s part to pretend to be asleep, but surely reasonable to turn over and act a sleepy welcome.
“Left the light for me.” Lord Merritt closed the door behind him. “Obliging.” He sounded as ill at ease as she felt. “No dressing room.” He looked with disfavour round the tiny cell that imprisoned them. “Not my idea of a honeymoon. Not yours either, I expect.” He stood there for a moment, looking at her as she lay rigid under the protecting bedclothes. “Long, hard day,” he said at last. “Not at all the thing for you.” He stopped for a moment. “Proud of you,” he said. “Thought for a moment you didn’t feel quite the thing, out there. Carried it off. Proud of you.” He repeated it. “Must be tired out. Plenty of time, later, in Naples.” Was he reassuring himself, or her? “For tonight, I’ll just blow out the light and get myself to bed as best I may.”
“No need,” she managed. “I’m half asleep already; I’ll just turn my back.”
“I’m a lucky man.” He sounded as if he meant it.
Luckily the high wind that had plagued them all through January abated a little in the night, and the transfer from the Trojan to the Gannet presented no serious problem. If Helen looked white and ill, it was reasonably to be attributed to the parting from her father, brief and formal though that had been. He was glad to be rid of the lot of them. She knew it and hardly cared. All her thoughts were thrown anxiously forward, to the inevitable confrontation with Charles Scroope. He must, of course, know who Lord Merritt’s wife was. What would he think of her? At best, that she was a fortune-hunter. . . . At worst . . . But nothing could be worse than the real facts of her case.
She bit her lips and lost her temper with Rose, who was making a tremendous fuss about the hazards of being swayed down into the tossing little boat that was to take them over to the Gannet. It won her quick looks of surprise from Lord Merritt and Charlotte, but it astonished Rose into good behaviour. All too soon, they were being deposited, safe if a little damp, on the deck of the Gannet. She seemed tiny after the Trojan, but Helen could see nothing beyond Charles Scrobpe’s set face as he waited to greet them.
He looked years older than the frivolous young man who had turned so suddenly serious that sunny, far-off day in Wimbledon. Fair hair, bleached almost white, set off the deep tan of a face that bore the marks of hard service, both in the fine wrinkles that criss-crossed cheeks and brow, and in one savage scar, livid from hairline to chin on the left side.
And yet she would have known him anywhere. Worse still, she found she still knew him well enough to be sure that this meeting was as painful to him as to her. He was saying everything proper, everything polite and agreeable to Lord Merritt, who had been swayed up first. At last, he turned, with the tact she remembered, to greet her and Charlotte when they had had time to shake out crumpled petticoats and settle themselves a little on this small, unfamiliar deck.
His hand was cold in hers. “Lady Merritt, Miss Standish and I are old friends.” He spoke across her to her husband, then turned with a noticeably warmer greeting for Charlotte, who was surprised into one of her increasingly rare stammering fits.
For once, Helen could not come to her help; she was swallowing something between tears and sickness.
“Lady Merritt not quite the thing.” Her husband surprised her by recognising her plight. “Parted from her father. Best below. All of us. Got a wetting coming over. Don’t want a pack of invalids on your hands. Feels the motion a
bit, don’t she, your Gannet?”
A swift look from husband to wife told Helen just what Charles Scroope thought of her choice, but his reply was courtesy itself. “More than the Trojan, I must admit. And you will find your quarters, I am afraid, sadly confined after life on board a seventy-four. But, such as they are, I will have you taken to them at once. I will hope to present my officers when you dine with me.”
“Mighty stiff, that young man.” Lord Merritt summed it up as they settled themselves resignedly in the two small adjoining cabins that had been made ready for them. “Must hope for a fast passage to Naples.”
“Yes, indeed.” Helen echoed his hope fervently. This was worse than anything she had imagined, and only pride prevented her from pleading illness and dining in her cabin. Or was it only pride? Dare she plead illness with Trenche’s cold eye perpetually upon her? She rather thought not. Besides—was there no end to these painful thoughts—she could not leave her husband to expose his full gamut of absurdity to Charles Scroope and his officers.
Over dinner, she was ashamed of this thought. Lord Merritt might not be a sensible man, but he was used to the conversation of his equals, and, if only he had put the occasional verb into his sentences, might almost have passed at the mess table for a reasonable man, especially with her beside him to extricate him deftly from his more unmanageable attempts at thought. Inevitably, the talk turned to their destination. Naples, and Helen was relieved to hear that Charles Scroope was as anxious to get there as she could wish.
“Since our last action,” he explained to Lord Merritt, “we are in need of everything, and the crew sickly, as is to be expected after so long at sea.”
“Sickly?” Lord Merritt, Helen had noticed, was something of a valetudinarian. “Nothing catching, I hope?”
“Scurvy,” said Scroope. “You’re not likely to catch that, my lord.”
“No . . . no, I suppose not.” He sounded unhappy. “Deuced unpleasant if one did. Fingers fall off and all that.”
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