by Carla Kelly
“Say my name,” he said suddenly.
“Michael,” she replied without hesitation. “Michael. Michael.”
“No one says my name.”
“I noticed how you started the other day when your Mama did.” She took his arm again, this time twining her fingers through his. “I can walk you into the ground, Michael. No more excuses.”
You probably can, he told himself. He yearned suddenly to tap into her energy. “I’m tired. Watch and watch about is four hours on and four hours off, around the clock, day after week after month after year. We are a wooden English wall against a French battering ram.”
She rested her cheek against his arm, and he felt her low murmur rather than heard it. “At first it is possible to sleep in snatches like that, but after a few months, I only lie in my berth waiting for the last man off to summon me for the next watch.”
“You never sleep?” she asked, and he could have cringed at the horror in her voice.
“I must, I suppose, but I am not aware of it,” he said after a moment of thinking through the matter. “Mostly I stand on my quarterdeck and watch the French coastline, looking for any sign of ship movement.” He stopped this time. “We have to anticipate them almost to sense that moment when the wind is about to shift quarters, and be ready to stop them when they come out to play in our channel.”
“How can you do that?” Her voice was small now. “It is not possible.”
“Sally, I have stood on the deck of the Admirable with my hat off and my cloak open in the worst weather, just so I won’t miss the tiniest shift in the wind.”
“No wonder you tell us of fevers.”
“I suppose.” He took her arm again and moved on.
“Not only do we watch the coast, but we watch each other, careful not to collide in fog, or swing about with a sudden wind, or relax our vigilance against those over our shoulders who would sneak in under cover of dark and make for shore.”
“One man cannot do all that,” she whispered, and she sounded fierce.
“We of the blockade do it.” He patted her hand, and they walked on into the village, strolling through empty streets with shops boarded for the long winter night. Through all the exhaustion and terror he felt a surge of pride and a quiet wonder at his own abilities, despite his many weaknesses. “We do it, my dear.”
He knew she was in tears, but he had no handkerchief for her. I don’t even know the right words to court this beautiful woman and flatter her and tell her that she is essential to my next breath, he told himself. I’ve never learned the niceties because they’re not taught aboard ship. In the middle of all my hurt and revenge, I hadn’t planned on falling in love. He knew he had to say something. They were coming to the end of the village. Surely Sally did not intend just to keep walking.
To his amazement, she did, not even pausing as they left the last house behind. She kept walking on the high road as though it were summer. She walked, eyes ahead, and he talked at last, pouring out his stories of ship fevers and death and cannonading until his ears bled from the concussion, and splinters from masts sailing like javelins through the air, and the peculiar odor of sawdust mingled with blood on the deck, and the odd patter of the powder monkeys in their felt slippers, bringing canister up from the magazine to the men serving the guns, and the crunch of weevils in ship’s biscuit, and the way water six months in a keg goes down the throat in a lump.
She shuddered at that one, and he laughed and took both her hands in his. “Sally Partlow, you amaze me!” He looked at the sky and thought he saw the pink of dawn. “I have told you horrible stories all night, and you gag when I mention the water! If there is a man alive who does not understand women, I am he.”
Holding her hands like that, he allowed himself to pull her close to him. If she had offered any objection, he would have released her, but she seemed to like what he was doing and clasped her hands across his back with a certain proprietary air.
“I’m keeping England safe so my brother can squeeze another shilling until it yelps, and…” He took a deep breath and his heart turned over. “… and you can lie safe at night, and mothers can walk with babies, and Thomas can go to school. Marry me, Sally.”
She continued to hold him close. When she said nothing, he wondered if she had heard him. He knew he didn’t have the courage to ask again. The words had popped out of his mouth even before he had told her he loved her. “Did you hear me?” he asked at last, feeling as stupid as a schoolboy.
She nodded, her head against his chest, and he kissed her hair. “I love you,” he said.
She was silent a long moment. “Enough to leave the blockade?”
His heart turned over again and he looked up to see dawn. He had told her all night of the horrors of the blockade, and in the telling had come to understand his own love of the sea and ships and war and the brave men he commanded. It terrified him to return, but he knew that he could now. With an even greater power than dawn coming, he knew that because he could, he did not need to.
“Yes, enough to leave the blockade,” he said into her hair. “I will resign my commission with the new year. Mind now, the Lords Admiral will object, because we remain at war, but I will wear them down eventually.” He waited for such a pronouncement to rip his heart wide open, but all he felt was the greatest relief he had ever known. This must be what peace feels lik e, he told himself in wonder. I have never known it until now.
She raised her head to look at him, and he wanted to drop to his knees in gratitude that for every morning of the rest of his life, hers would be the first face he saw. She put her hands on his face. “You are not doing this because I am an object of charity?” she asked.
“Oh, no!” He kissed her until she started to squirm for breath. “My dearest love, you are the one marrying the object of charity.” He smiled when she did. “Of course, you haven’t said yes yet, have you? You’re just clarifying things in your Scottish way, aren’t you?”
“Of course,” she replied calmly. “I want to know precisely where I stand. Your brother will be horrified, your mother will be ecstatic, and Thomas will follow you about with adoration in his eyes. You’ve lived solitary for so long. Can you manage all that?”
“Actually, Oliver will be ecstatic when I marry you. I’ll explain later. I wish you would answer my question, Sally, before you start in with yours! My feet are cold, and do you know, I am actually tired right down to my toenails.” That was not lover like, he thought, but it didn’t matter, because Sally was pressing against him in a way that sharpened his nerves a little more than he expected there on a cold road somewhere in the middle of Lincolnshire. “Where the deuce are we?” he asked.
“Somewhere in Lincolnshire, and yes, Michael, I will marry you,” she said and took her time kissing him. When they stopped, she looked at him in that intense way that warmed him from within. “I love you. I suppose I have for a long time, ever since Uncle Partlow started writing about you in his letters home.”
“Preposterous,” he said, even as he kissed her once more.
“I suppose,” she agreed after a long moment. “There’s no use accounting for it, because I cannot. I just love you.” She held up her hands, exasperated at her inability to explain. “It’s like breathing, I think.”
“Oh, Sally,” he said and kissed her again, until even the air around them felt as soft as April.
They learned from a passing carter (who must have been watching them, because he could hardly contain himself), that they were only a mile from Epping. It was an easy matter to speak for breakfast at a public house, admire his blooming Sal over tea and shortbread, and then take the mail coach back to Lynch. Pillowed against Sally, he fell asleep as soon as the coachman gathered his reins. He probably even snored. Hand in hand they walked back to the dower house. He answered his mother’s inquiries with a nod in Sally’s direction and then went upstairs to bed, leaving his pretty lady to make things right.
She must have done that to everyone’s satisfa
ction.
When he woke hours later, the sun was going down and she was sitting in a chair pulled close to the window in his room, her attention on yet another doll in her lap. He lay there admiring her handsome profile and beautiful hair, and hoped that at least some of their children would inherit that same dark red hue. He chuckled at the thought. She turned in his direction to give him an inquiring look.
“I thought I would prophesy, my dearest,” he said, rising up on one elbow.
“I almost shudder to ask.”
“I was merely thinking that a year from now it will probably still be watch and watch about.”
She put down her needlework and he recognized that Partlow glint in her eyes. “You promised me you were going to give up the blockade.”
“I am! Cross my heart! I was thinking that babies tend to require four on and four off, don’t they? Especially little ones?”
To his pleasure, she pinked up nicely. She took up her sewing again and turned back to the window, even as her shoulders started to shake. “I can see that you will be a great deal of trouble on land,” she said when she could speak again.
“I’ll do my best.”
She finished a seam on the little dress in her lap and turned it right side out. “I think it would be prudent if we don’t settle anywhere close to Lynch, my love,” she told him. “I’m sure Oliver thinks I am a great mistake.”
“I’m open to suggestion,” he said agreeably and then shifted slightly and patted the bed. “Let’s discuss it.”
She shook her head. “Not from there! My uncle Partlow always told me to beware of sailors.”
“Excellent advice. See that you remember it.” They were still debating the merits of a return to the Highlands over a bolt across the Atlantic to Charlotte because he liked the Carolinas, when Mama called up the stairs that dinner was ready.
He took Sally by the arm as she tried to brush past the bed. She made not a single objection as he sat her down next to him. Sally leaned closer to kiss him. “I thought your uncle told you to beware of sailors,” he reminded her and then pulled her closer when she tried to sit up. “Too late, Sal.”
She seemed to feel no melancholy at his admonition. “I am tired, love! I do not plan to walk all over Lincolnshire tonight. “
“Let me make a proposal, dearest Sal.”
“You already did, and I accepted,” she reminded him, her voice drowsy.
“Another one, then. What do you say if after dinner we hurry to the vicarage where I can ask about the intricacies of obtaining a special license? We can get married right after Christmas, and I will see that you get to bed early every night.”
She blushed, even as she nodded. He folded her in his arms, and to his gratification, she melted into him like the baby he had held yesterday. He thought briefly of the Admirable in dry dock and then put it from his mind forever. He smiled to think of the Gospel of Luke, another favorite quarterdeck recitation—“and on earth peace, good will toward men.”
“Happy Christmas, Sally,” he whispered in her ear as goodwill settled around him like a benediction and peace became his second dearest companion.
ay attention, Sarah, you silly, she told herself as she stood before General Clauzel—was it Bertrand? Did enemies have first names?—and tried to follow his French.
He was speaking slowly and distinctly for her benefit, eyeing her thoughtfully when he finished. He sighed and motioned for his orderly to come forward with quill and ink. He spread out the piece of paper before him, regarded her again—and not unkindly—and began to write.
He scratched along on the paper as if he had all the time in the world, and then looked up. “Your name, mademoiselle, all of it, please.”
Wake up, Sarah, she scolded herself. This will never do. Only a half-wit would doze off on her feet in the presence of so august an enemy. “You can sleep when you’re dead,” her brother James used to joke when she complained of exhaustion among the mounds of red tape in the library.
The library! At the thought of it and of James, tears sprang to her eyes. They were large brown eyes, and quite her best feature besides her marvelous English skin and tidy figure. She had not slept in two nights because of what happened at the library. Every time she closed her eyes she relived the experience.
Sarah bit her lip and glanced at the general, who was watching her with a certain male trepidation that knew no language barriers. Had he been a German or a Russian, she would have stifled her tears at all expense to herself, but since he was French and this was Spain, she allowed her tears to well up in her eyes, magnifying them, and then spill onto her cheeks. She sniffed, stifled a sob, and was not at all surprised when General Clauzel leapt to his feet, took her in his arms, and patted her back in the foolish fashion men have attempted ever since Adam first consoled Eve over her sudden change of address.
Sarah let him console her and went so far as to rest her blond head against his chest. He smelled divinely of too much cologne, good French perfume that she had not smelled in years. Clauzel’s careful embrace was a decided improvement over that of the old priest into whose care she had surrendered the still-warm James, and who had thought to comfort her, too.
Because General Clauzel was French, he knew what to do with his hands, despite his own discomfort. Sarah allowed him to pat her back because she was tired and in desperate need of someone to lean on, and because he was so comfortable and she needed that safe-conduct in the worst way.
At last Sarah made a movement and he released her.
She scrubbed at her eyes with hands that shook, in spite of herself, and accepted the general’s handkerchief.
“Merci, mon general,” she said in precise French. “Excuse my womanly weakness. These, sir, are trying times.”
He nodded. “They are, mademoiselle. Please be seated.”
She sat, and he returned to his side of the desk. He glanced behind him at his adjutant. “Mon Dieu, is it December twenty-second already? Where has 1812 gone?” He looked at Sarah expectantly as he dipped the quill in the ink pot one more time.
“Sarah Brill Comstock,” she said. “Lady Sarah,” she amended.
She spelled Brill for him, overlooking the fact that he left the “h” off Sarah.
The general finished writing, leaned back, and allowed his orderly to sprinkle the page with sand. When the sand was back in the bottle, he took the safe-conduct and waved it slowly.
“There it is, my dear, safe-conduct from Salamanca to the Spanish border, preferably Ciudad Rodrigo.”
Now that the deed was done, Clauzel allowed himself a touch of humor and began to tease her. “That means no side trips to Madrid to admire the paintings—the ones we have left there—or no jaunts to Seville to sketch those smelly gypsies. You are to take the most direct route southwest to Ciudad Rodrigo. The border and Portugal are not far, ma chère.”
Sarah nodded, her eyes on the safe-conduct. “As you wish, mon général.”
“You will, of course, leave immediately.”
Sarah nodded again, resisting the urge to grab the paper and sprint for the nearest exit, scattering soldiers before her. Instead, she took the pass and blew on it for a moment to make sure the ink had dried, hoping that she exhibited true British phlegm and that he could not see the beads of perspiration forming on her upper lip in that cold room.
“There is not a healthy horse to be had in all of Salamanca,” the general said. “Your countrymen have seen to that in their—shall we say?—precipitate retreat. I can offer you a plug only, and there is no guarantee that someone else will not take it from you. But I do recommend that you hurry.”
She nodded, suddenly worn out with translating Clauzel’s impeccable French. With a slight smile his direction, she followed the orderly into the hallway.
After James’ shocking murder, the French had moved her to the university itself. Her protests at being separated from her clothes and other possessions had met only with a roll of the eyes, Gallic expressions better left untrans
lated, and laughter. She thought never to see her bandboxes again or the sturdy trunk that had traveled just that summer from Kent to Lisbon and then east over hot, shimmering roads to Salamanca in the wake of Wellington’s army.
But there they were now, taking up the better part of the windowless little room. Sarah dropped on her knees in front of the trunk and pulled it open, pawing through her petticoats and chemises to the bottom. She pounded on the trunk in frustration. The money was gone. All she had remaining were the few coins in her reticule that the guards had somehow overlooked.
She sat back and waited for fear to wash over her.
It did not. She felt nothing. She had felt nothing since James had staggered back from the archive doorway, his chest covered with blood, his eyes unbelieving, even as he shook his head in amazement, said, “Bless me, Sarah, what a plaguey turn of events,” and then died in her arms.
The cold floor roused Sarah from her reverie. She touched the massive ring on her thumb, encircling it with her whole hand. While the breath was still sighing out of James’ body and the soldiers still stood, transfixed, in the archive doorway, she had whisked the signet ring with the family crest off James’ finger and crammed it on her thumb. There had to be something to take home to Papa.
“I will get it home, Papa,” she said out loud. “I promise.”
She looked over the clothes that had seemed so important to her only two days ago. She shook out her riding habit and, after a careful look around, closed the door behind her and hurried into the outfit. She pulled on two layers of stockings and glanced about her again.
The soldiers had piled James’ possessions against the far wall. She hunted through his clothes, holding her breath against the familiar smell of the Caribbean lime cologne that he had favored, until she found his wool hunting shirt and pulled it on over her habit.