She opened her mouth to protest, but he trod on inexorably and felt himself on the firmer deck of command. ‘‘If you feel a burning desire to argue, I would not recommend it. I suspect that your uncle has funds on ’Change. Once the probate is done—and I will see that it is going forward—you should have funds to repay me, even with interest. Until that moment, I won’t hear of anything else.’’
He returned to his eggs with what he hoped was the semblance of serenity. Miss Partlow blinked, favored him with a steady gaze, and then directed her attention to the egg before her. ‘‘Captain Lynch, I suppose we will be happy to accompany you to . . . where was it? Lincolnshire?’’ she murmured.
‘‘Lincolnshire,’’ he said firmly. ‘‘Yes, indeed. Pass the bacon, would you please?’’
They finished breakfast in silence. He knew that Mrs. Brattle was almost leaping about in her eagerness to have a word in private with him, so he directed Tom and Sally to make themselves useful by taking the dishes belowstairs to the scullery. To his amusement, the Partlows seemed subdued by his plain-speaking, a natural product of years of nautical command.
The door had scarcely closed behind them when Mrs. Brattle began. ‘‘I never knew you had a mother, Captain Lynch,’’ she declared.
He looked at her in mock horror. ‘‘Mrs. B, everyone has a mother. How, pray, do you think I got on the planet?’’
His landlady was not about to be vanquished by his idle wit. ‘‘Captain, I am certain there are those of your crew who think you were born fully grown and stalking a quarterdeck! I am not numbered among them. I am not to be bamboozled. Captain, is this a good idea?’’
‘‘I don’t know,’’ he was honest enough to admit. ‘‘They have nowhere to go, and I have not visited my mother in twenty-two years.’’
She gasped again and sat down. ‘‘You would take two perfect strangers to visit a lady you have not seen in twenty-two years? Captain . . .’’ She shook her head. ‘‘Only last week I was saying to my daughter that you are a most sensible, steady, and level-headed boarder, and wasn’t I the lucky woman!’’
‘‘Yes?’’ he asked, intrigued again that he would come to anyone’s notice. ‘‘Perhaps it is time for a change.’’
‘‘It’s been so long, sir,’’ Mrs. Brattle reminded him. ‘‘Twenty-two years! Is your mother still alive?’’
‘‘She was five years ago,’’ he told her. ‘‘I have kept in touch with the vicar, at least until he died five years past and my annual letter was returned.’’
She looked at him with real sympathy. ‘‘A family falling out, then?’’
‘‘Yes, Mrs. Brattle, a falling out.’’
And that is putting too kind a face upon it, he decided, as he sat down after noon in the post chaise with the Partlows, and they started off, with a call to the horses and a crack of the coachman’s whip. Even after all these years—and there had been so many—he could not recall the occasion without a wince. It was more a declaration of war than a falling out.
‘‘Captain?’’
He looked up from the contemplation of his hands to see Sally Partlow watching him, a frown between her fine eyes. ‘‘What is it?’’ he asked, clipping off his words the way he always did aboard ship. As he regarded the dismay on her face, Michael regretted the sharpness of his inquiry.
‘‘I . . . I didn’t mean any disrespect,’’ she stammered. ‘‘I just noticed that you looked . . . distressed,’’ she concluded, her voice trailing off. She made herself small in her corner of the chaise and drew her cloak more tightly about her.
‘‘I am quite in command, Miss Partlow,’’ he replied, the brisk tone creeping in, even though he did not wish it this time.
She directed her attention to the scenery outside the window, which amounted to nothing more than dingy warehouses. ‘‘I didn’t mean to intrude.’’
And she did not intrude again, through the whole long afternoon. He heard her sniff once or twice, and observed from the corner of his eye that she pressed her fingers against her nose several times; there were no tears that he could see. She put her arm about her brother with that same firm clasp he had noticed yesterday. When Thomas drifted to sleep, secure in his sister’s embrace, she closed her eyes as well, with a sigh that went directly to his heart.
I have crushed her with my grudging generosity, he realized, and the revelation caused him such a pang that he longed to stride back and forth on his quarterdeck until he wore off his own irritation. But he was trapped in a post chaise, where he could only chafe and wonder how men on land ever survived such confinement. I suppose they slam doors, kick small objects, and snap at well-meaning people, as I have done, he decided, his cup of contrition full. He couldn’t think of a remedy except apology or explanation, and neither suited him. Thank God my father forced me to sea years ago, was the thought that consoled him. He found himself counting the days when he could be done with this obligation to the Partlows, which had forced him into a visit home that he knew he did not want.
The time passed somehow, and Sally Partlow was obliging enough to keep her eyes closed. Whether she slept, he had no idea. Darkness came even earlier than usual, thanks to the snow that began to fall as they drove north toward Lincolnshire. Inwardly he cursed the snow, because he knew he could not force the coachman to drive on through the night and end this uncomfortable journey. When after an hour of the slowest movement he saw lights ahead, he knew the driver would stop and insist that they spend the night.
The village was Firch, the shire Cambridge, one south of his own, but there was no budging the coachman, who looked so cold and bleak that Michael felt a sprinkling of sympathy settle on the crust of his irritation. It was an unfamiliar emotion; he almost didn’t recognize it.
‘‘We have to stop here,’’ the coachman said, as Michael opened the carriage door. ‘‘No remedy for it, Captain.’’
‘‘Very well.’’ He joined the man outside the carriage, grateful for his boat cloak and boots. He noticed the other carriages in the yard, and made the wry observation that Christmas continued to be a challenge for innkeepers. ‘‘Can you find a place for yourself?’’ he asked the coachman.
‘‘Aye, sir. I’ll bed in the stables with t’others.’’ The man scratched his chin. ‘‘You’re the one who might not be so lucky, beggin’ yer pardon.’’
He feared the man was right. With no allowance for argument, Lynch told the Partlows to move along smartly and follow him inside. He started across the yard, leaning against the snow and wind, and wondering as he had before on the Portsmouth docks if they would follow him. He slowed his steps, hoping they would catch up with him, but they did not, hanging back, not wishing—he was sure—to trouble him beyond what they were already doing.
Hoping for the best, even as he suspected the worst, he asked the innkeep for two rooms and a parlor. ‘‘Sorry, Captain,’’ the man said, properly cowed by what Lynch suspected was the height of his fore and aft hat and gold braid, if not the look on his face. The keep glanced beyond him, and he felt some relief that the Partlows must have followed him inside.
His relief was momentary. The keep asked him, all hesitation and apology, ‘‘Can ye share a room just this once with your son and daughter?’’
‘‘She’s not my daughter,’’ he said before he thought.
‘‘Sorry, sir,’’ the keep apologized. ‘‘Then you and your lady’ll have to have’’—he hesitated, as if trying to determine the relationship—‘‘the boy on a pallet in your room, I’m thinking. There’s no parlor to be had. Once you take that room, there won’t be another for anyone else, it’s that full we are.’’
‘‘Very well,’’ Lynch said, disconcerted right down to his stockings, but determined not to make it worse by saying more. ‘‘It seems we have no choice.’’
‘‘None, sir,’’ the keep replied.
Lynch was too embarrassed to look at Sally Partlow so he ignored her and followed the keep’s wife up the narrow stairs to a room at the b
ack of the inn. Again he listened for the Partlows behind him, because he knew that only the weather outside was keeping them tethered to his side.
The keep’s wife apologized for the size of the room, but he could find no fault with the warmth from the fireplace and the general air of comfort in small places that he was used to, from life aboard a man o’ war. When the woman left the three of them, Sally removed the plaid about her head, shook the flakes into the fireplace, and put the shawl on the narrow cot.
‘‘I was thinking I should take that berth,’’ he told her. ‘‘You and Tom can have the bed.’’
‘‘Nonsense. I am fully a foot shorter than you, sir,’’ she said, and nothing more; he had the wisdom not to argue.
He knew he would dread dinner in the common parlor, but he did not, even though the setting was not one he was accustomed to. No matter how rough his life at sea, his infrequent sojourns on land, in whatever port of the world, had always meant private parlors and deference. He sat at the long table next to Sally, and followed her lead, passing the common dishes around to the next diner, and engaging, eventually, in small talk with the farmer to his left, an act that would have astounded his late first mate. He decided to enjoy conversation about crop prices, and even yielded far enough to tell a sea story.
He never embellished tales, and he did not now, so he was amazed that anyone would care to listen to his paltry account of life at sea. Maybe he was trying to explain himself to the Partlows; he didn’t understand either, beyond a sudden need to offer some accounting of himself.
When dinner concluded, he could beat no retreat to a private parlor; before he could say something about sitting for a while in the public room, Sally told him that she was going to settle Tom upstairs in bed. ‘‘It was a long day, sir,’’ she murmured, and he realized with a start that it was only the second thing she had said to him since his unkindness at noon.
I suppose it was a long day, he thought as he watched her escort her brother upstairs, her hand upon his back, her motion on the stairs so graceful that he felt like a voyeur. He went into the public room, content to prop his booted feet by the fender and enjoy the warmth of the fire. He even leaned back in the chair and called it a luxury.
He had thought that his hearing was going after years of cannonading, but he knew her steps on the stairs when she came down later. Before he could say anything—had anything occurred to him—she was out the door and into the snow. He debated a moment whether to follow—surely she would never leave her brother behind—then rose, pulled his cloak around him, and head down, went into the snow after her.
He could barely see her in the dark, but he watched her pause at the fence beyond the high road. The wind swirled the snow, but she raised her face to it, as though she hated super-heated rooms as much as he did. He walked across the road to stand beside her.
‘‘I was not running away, Captain,’’ she said without looking at him.
‘‘I know that. You would never leave Tom.’’
‘‘It is just that I do not like being an object of charity, sir,’’ she said.
The candor of her words startled him, until he recalled her uncle, who never feared to tell him anything. ‘‘Who does, Miss Partlow?’’ he asked. ‘‘May I remind you that you can repay me when your uncle’s funds on ’Change are probated.’’
‘‘There won’t be any funds, sir.’’
She spoke so firmly that he did not doubt her. ‘‘How is this?’’ he asked. ‘‘He has always had his share of the salvage.’’
‘‘Uncle Partlow sent his money home for my father to invest.’’ She hesitated, then took a deep breath and forged on. ‘‘My father had no more notion of wise investments than a shoat in a piggery.’’ He could hear the tears in her voice then. ‘‘He wrote such glowing letters to Uncle Partlow, and truly I think Da believed that he could recoup his losses. Year after year he thought so.’’ She sighed and faced him for the first time. ‘‘We are objects of charity, Captain. What will you do with us?’’
‘‘I could leave you here and continue by myself in the morning,’’ he said. ‘‘Every town of any size has a workhouse.’’
The look on her face told him that was exactly what she expected him to say, and her assessment of him bit deep. She did not flinch or try him with tears, but merely nodded and turned back to the fence to lean upon it again, accepting this news as though he told her that snow was cold and winter endless.
‘‘But I won’t leave you here,’’ he assured her. He surprised himself and touched her arm. ‘‘I have a confession of my own, Miss Partlow.’’
‘‘You have not been home in years and years,’’ she said. ‘‘Mrs. Brattle told me.’’
He leaned on the fence, same as she, and stared into the snowy field. ‘‘I have not,’’ he agreed, perfectly in charity with her as though they were of one mind. What happened just then between them he never could have explained, not even at a court of inquiry convened by the Lords Admiral themselves.
‘‘I suppose I should hear the gory details,’’ she said at last, and he could not fail to note the amusement in her voice.
‘‘Not out here in the snow. Your feet would freeze before I finished my tale of family discord, love unrequited, and blood in the orchard,’’ he replied, turning toward the inn. He shuddered in mock terror and was rewarded with a small laugh.
Funny, he thought, as they ambled back together, but I have never made light of this before. Could I have made too much of it through the years? Surely not. He stopped her with one hand and held out the other one to her, which she took. ‘‘Let us be friends, Miss Partlow,’’ he said, and shook her hand. ‘‘If you will help me keep my temper among my relatives, all of whom may wish me to the devil, I will figure out something for you and Thomas to do that won’t involve the slave trade.’’ It sounded so lame, but he had nothing else to offer that was remotely palatable. ‘‘Come, come, Miss Partlow, it is Christmas and we just shook on it. Have a little charity.’’
She laughed, and he knew he was backing off a lee shore. ‘‘This could be a Christmas of desperate proportions, sir,’’ she joked in turn, and his relief increased. ‘‘Oh, very well, then!’’
Once inside, he told her that he would remain in the parlor and give her time to prepare for bed. She thanked him with that dignity he was becoming accustomed to, and went upstairs. When he retired a half hour later, the room he shared with the Partlows was dark and quiet. By the light of glowing coals in the hearth, he undressed and lay down with a sigh, content to stare at the ceiling. His years at sea had conditioned him to brace himself against the ship’s pitch and yaw, but the only movement was Tom sliding closer, seeking his warmth. He smiled and stretched out his arm and the boy curled up beside him. He slept.
Nightmare woke him an hour later or so, but that was not unusual. He lay in bed, his heart pounding, his mind’s eye filled with explosions and water rising and the ship—his first ship, well before the Admirable—slowly settling in the water: the usual dream, the usual time. After the moment of terror that never failed him, he closed his eyes again to let the dream fade, even though he knew he would not sleep again that night.
He opened his eyes in surprise. Miss Partlow had risen from her cot and was now perched on the side of his bed. Without a word, she wiped his face with her handkerchief, then pinched his nostrils gently with it until he blew his nose. His embarrassment was complete; not only had she seen his tears and wiped them away, she had made him blow his nose like a dutiful child.
‘‘I would have been all right, Miss Partlow,’’ he said in a whisper, unwilling to add Thomas to the audience. ‘‘Surely I did not cry out. I . . . I don’t usually.’’
‘‘You weren’t loud, Captain,’’ she whispered back. ‘‘I am a light sleeper, perhaps because I took care of Da for months before he died. Go back to sleep.’’
So he had cried out. The devil take her, he thought. He wanted to snap something rude at her, as he had done innumerable time
s to his steward, until the man never came into his quarters, no matter how intense the nightmare. But his steward was dead now, and he held his tongue in time.
‘‘I thought your father was your ruin,’’ he said without thinking.
She stared at him as if he had suddenly sprouted a dorsal fin. ‘‘And so why was I nice to him?’’ she whispered, after a moment in which she was obviously wondering what he was saying. ‘‘Captain, you mustn’t throw out the bairn with the bathwater! He had his failings but he was my da.’’ She rested her hand for too short a moment on his chest. ‘‘Have you never heard of forgiveness, this far south?’’
‘‘See here, Miss Partlow,’’ he began, but she put her hand over his eyes and he had no choice but to close them.
‘‘Good night, Captain.’’
He must have dreamed the whole matter, because in the morning, Miss Partlow made no mention by blush or averted eyes that he had roused her from her bed. She was seated by the window, Bible in her lap, when he and Tom trooped downstairs to the common washroom, leaving her to complete her morning toilet in the privacy of the chamber. When they returned, she was still seated there, but her marvelous hair was now captured in a bun and she wore a fresh dress. And she looked at him—he couldn’t describe the look, except that it warmed his heart.
He waited until they were some hours into their journey, and Tom was dozing, before he explained himself. ‘‘You wanted the gory details, Miss Partlow,’’ he began. ‘‘Let me lay the bare facts before you.’’
She looked down at her brother, whose head rested in her lap. ‘‘Say on, Captain Lynch.’’
He told his story for the first time in twenty-two years of avoiding any mention of it, astounded how easy it was to talk to this sweet-faced woman. ‘‘I was young and stupid and hot-headed, Miss Partlow, and quite in love with my brother Oliver’s fiancée,’’ he told her.
‘‘How old?’’
He almost smiled, because in the actual telling, it seemed almost ridiculous. ‘‘Fourteen, and—’’
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