by Carla Kelly
She got up, too, following him out of the family quarters and past the lodgers’ dining room. She paused at the door to the sitting room, hoping he might be inclined to spend a few minutes there with her. To her disappointment, he continued to the stairs.
He seemed reluctant to go upstairs. “Are you still reading to Matthew and the others?” he asked.
“Oh, yes. Robinson Crusoe has made himself a canoe now.”
“Is Matthew being helpful?”
“He is. Gran is making him a shirt that fits him, and he went into transports when she tried the sleeves on him. Imagine what he will do when she finishes it!”
He went up a few steps. “Could I ask you a favor? It’s a brazen one, but maybe you could humor an old seadog.”
“Anything.”
“Call me Oliver. I never hear my name spoken, and it’s a nice one. Good night now.”
Oliver. Nana said it under her breath so no one could hear, as she finished her duties that evening and went to bed. Because Matthew had taken Sal’s alcove next to the scullery, Sal was sleeping in her bed. Nana eased herself next to Sal, careful to make sure she was asleep, and whispered “Oliver” again.
By the time her eyes grew heavy enough for sleep, reality had crowded into the bed with them. She couldn’t call a post captain by his first name, not in a million years. She would just be encouraging something destined to go nowhere, even if he did like the sound of his name and he said he was her friend. She tried to imagine a world where first names were never spoken, and couldn’t. She noticed the captain did not even call his mates by their first names, but only Mr. this or that. These were people with whom he must have been on the closest terms, and the dignity of his office didn’t allow the intimacy of first names.
Still, she liked the way he called her Nana, even though she wasn’t entirely certain he realized he was doing it. Before he came to stay at the Mulberry, she had thought it was high time to abandon her baby name. She changed her mind; the sound of it on Captain Worthy’s lips warmed her heart. Maybe he did know what he was doing, she decided. She did not think he called her Nana when there was anyone else present.
Such contemplation was fruitless. With a sigh, Nana closed her eyes.
She woke early and hurried to help Gran in the kitchen, stopping only for porridge, because her grandmama insisted. With Matthew’s help, she and Sal had breakfast ready on the sideboard before the early-rising auditors had time to fret and start examining their cutlery. She knew Henri Lefebvre would be among the last in the room. He seemed unconcerned about time, probably because he was on holiday. Besides, he had told her yesterday that the best light for painting came when the sun was up, but not too high. But the captain would be there.
“Good morning, Captain,” she said, as he came into the room.
He frowned, sat where she indicated and took a sip of the coffee she had already poured for him. “So it’s to be ‘Captain,’ eh?”
“I don’t think I can call you anything else, sir.”
He said nothing more about the matter, but she could see the disappointment in his eyes.
Chapter Nine
The wind blew raw from the northwest, setting the water dancing in Plymouth Sound. The only ship venturing out was another sloop of war, with shortened sails.
The sailing master sat beside him in the hackney, his eyes also on the sloop. “I wouldn’t chance it. Must have important dispatches.”
Oliver nodded, his mind on the sloop, but his heart on Nana. She hadn’t walked him to the hackney this morning, but then, the weather was foul. He shifted uneasily, because he knew that didn’t matter. She had walked with him yesterday, even though she had to hold down her skirts in the high wind. She hadn’t even minded when he took her arm, declaring she needed more ballast. The difference was the sailing master, who had gone earlier yesterday. Nana knew better than to intrude when others were present.
He knew he was thinking it, so he forced himself to let the thought swirl around in his brain like brandy in a snifter: Nana knew her place. He doubted it was anything Gran had ever said—not Gran, who loved Nana so well. Perhaps Miss Pym had let Nana know—probably since she was a little girl of five and new at school—that the world was going to treat her differently.
Suddenly he hated Lord Ratliffe with a fervor he usually reserved for the French. Damn the man! Why couldn’t he have left Nana alone to spend another two years at Miss Pym’s, and then provided his daughter with a respectable dowry that would have made her pretty face appealing enough for an accountant, or possibly a naval surgeon? Maybe even a master shipwright or an Admiralty secretary? How difficult would it have been to have done the right thing?
At least Mr. Brittle knew better than to talk to him when he obviously didn’t have much to say. By the time they arrived at Union Street and began the descent to the docks, Oliver forced himself to think about the Tireless. With any luck, he still had not quite a week and a half when only a hurricane would be excuse enough to keep him from weighing anchor and pointing the bow toward Spain again. Another ten days to try to convince himself that what he had always believed was still true: that single men were the lucky ones.
The wind didn’t keep Mr. Childers from stepping the new mast, as he had promised. Encouraged by the bosun and crew, Oliver had even lent a hand with the lines to raise the mast. It was a small enough thing, but he knew his men liked it when he shared their work. Everyone was quiet as the mast swung upward and then settled into its well in the hold with a pleasant thump. It looked bare as a bodkin now. By afternoon, the yardarms would be hanging again, and the rigging would follow.
His mood turned filthy then, when Mr. Childers came up to him, rubbing his hands and smiling. “Captain Worthy, I have the best news.”
“The war is over?”
“One could wish. This is almost as good. My shipwrights tell me the Tireless will be seaworthy in less than a week. Four days, I think.”
“Good God.”
“We’ve thrown all the extra help we could into your little beauty here and trimmed a whole week off my estimate.”
Damn Childers. Oliver looked at the man, smiling and pleased with himself. He had done exactly what Oliver had wished for, when he limped into Plymouth with his frigate two weeks ago.
Call me the greatest actor in the world, Oliver thought, as he smiled and clapped the shipwright on the back. “That is the best news I have heard in weeks,” he lied. “Mr. Childers, you are to be commended.”
“Two and a half weeks! I didn’t think we could do it, Captain.”
“Is she sound?”
“As a roast, sir. She’ll be tight as a drum. Throw any simile at her.”
“Then I am pleased as punch,” Oliver said. It was a feeble joke, and never had he meant something less, but Childers laughed until he had to sit down on a pile of rope to recover himself.
Oliver had to grasp at straws. “I wonder…will the victuallers have completed their work in four days? What about water?”
Mr. Ramseur, standing nearby, spoke up. “I have made all those arrangements, Captain. All we’ll need is a favorable wind.”
“That’s…. uh…that’s excellent, Mr. Ramseur,” Oliver said. He plowed past his own misery then and concentrated on his crew. “This will leave one quarter of the crew still unable to make any shore leave.” He turned to the shipwright. “Mr. Childers, if I release that last group right now for four days’ shore leave, will you still be able to bring the Tireless in on time?” Please say no, he begged in his mind.
“I can, Captain, I can, especially since you had the wisdom to release the foretopmen first, and save the gunners for last. The topmen are back, and they’re the ones I need to help with the rigging. Good of you to plan ahead, sir.”
Ah, yes, good of me, Oliver thought sourly. I’m a naval prodigy. He turned to his second mate and spoke with more force than necessary, all things considered. “Don’t just stand there! Release the rest of the crew. Then send a dispatch for Mr. Proudy to return at
once. Then you’d better give yourself three days, starting the moment you’ve done the above.”
Mr. Ramseur tried to protest, but Oliver overrode him. “Nonsense! Isn’t there someone named Dorie in Kingsbridge you’re desperate to see?”
His mate colored promptly, but nodded.
I wish I had your courage, Oliver thought. Or at least your optimism that you won’t be fish food in a fortnight. He took out his watch, and affected a kindlier tone. Mr. Ramseur didn’t deserve to be barked at because he was in love and human. “Release those men now, sir. I’ll write to Mr. Proudy myself. You can be in Kingsbridge in no time if you move your ass.”
Without another word, Ramseur saluted and ran onto the Tireless. Mr. Childers chuckled. “Were we ever that young?”
I never was, Oliver thought. I’ve had all the answers since I was a midshipman: never fall in love, because it would be a cruelty. I was dead wrong and I am a twit.
He didn’t feel like eating luncheon with Mr. Childers or anyone else. He spent the afternoon with the purser, reconciling the stores with the lists, and then on deck, watching the yardarms swung into place. His attention was diverted once in the afternoon by Mr. Brittle, who handed him a spyglass and directed him to look at the hill above the dry dock.
“It’s that Frenchman,” his sailing master said, amusement in his voice. “He’s been there all week. And if he’s not there, he’s by the Cattewater, and then at the Hamoaze.”
“People have odd avocations,” Oliver said. He found Lefebvre in the glass and watched him, sitting on a rock and sketching. “It’s funny, Mr. Brittle. I am so used to these waterways that I forget the beauty. Still, I suppose it’s a release from painting red-faced squires and children disinclined to sit still.”
He collapsed the glass and returned it to his sailing master, but looked toward Lefebvre again, a speck now on the slope above the harbor. I wonder if he would do me a portrait before I sail, he thought. He remembered the sketch Nana had showed him of the scullery maid. Maybe Lefebvre would dash off a drawing of Nana. He could do it discreetly, so she wouldn’t know and be embarrassed by a post captain’s foolishness. He could tack it next to his compass and look at her lovely face every time he opened his eyes. It would be some consolation.
Weary and out of sorts, he returned to the Mulberry long after eight o’clock. He knew that Nana usually watched for him, so he straightened up when he left the hackney and squared his shoulders. No sense in looking like a forlorn hope.
Could Lefebvre capture that smile, and the way her eyes seemed to light up? He thought maybe he liked her best that morning he had watched her sleep on the cot outside his door, her eyelashes so long and her absurd freckles. I could pretend that I was sleeping by her. Lord Almighty, I am an idiot.
She was waiting for him. He managed a smile that didn’t get near his eyes, and let her take his boat cloak, as usual. He didn’t fool her for a moment.
“What’s wrong, Captain?” she asked, her own eyes troubled. “Didn’t they step the mast?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said too quickly. Everything was wrong. Maybe he wouldn’t say anything. It was just too hard to speak the words that would remind him of his duty and ruin his stay at the Mulberry. It might even make her sad for a while. He didn’t know for sure. All he knew was how sad he felt.
“There is good news, actually.” He took off his hat and set it carefully on the newel post. “Mr. Childers is a remarkable shipwright. The Tireless will be ready for sea in four days—ten days ahead of schedule.”
He didn’t know what to expect, but she astounded him by gasping and then giving a deep sob that he felt right down to the pit of his stomach. She dropped his cloak, put her hands to her face and took several deep breaths, until she gained some control over herself. She picked up his coat—he had been too dumbfounded to move—and draped it carefully over the banister, next to his hat.
“We’ll miss you, Captain,” she said, not looking him in the eye, which wasn’t like her at all. “Let me go hurry along dinner. It might need more warming up.”
She didn’t invite him to walk with her to the kitchen, but turned almost blindly and went down the hall, touching the wall as though to guide herself. As he watched, scarcely breathing, her shoulders began to shake and her head went down. She paused for a moment, bending forward to place her hands on her knees. It lasted just a second. She went into the kitchen.
He sat down on the steps, horrified at what he had seen. He felt more gawky and foolish than Mr. Ramseur; younger than Matthew, his powder monkey; older than the oldest one-eyed, one-legged tar begging in the Barbican. He sat there a long moment, until he reminded himself that post captains didn’t sit on stairs and act like fools in love. He had made up his mind years ago, and he knew beyond any reckoning that to be married and present such news would be infinitely worse.
He wouldn’t say anything to her. It was war and ships went to sea. The two of them would overlook what just happened the same way they had both overlooked that ill-advised embrace in the hall a few days ago. If he didn’t say anything, she wouldn’t. Hadn’t he decided that Nana knew her place? So did he.
He took his cloak and hat upstairs and lay down on the bed with his hand over his eyes. A few minutes later, there was a knock. He didn’t speak; it wasn’t Nana’s knock.
“Captain Worthy?”
Sal stood outside his door. With a sigh, he got up and opened it.
“Gran says dinner is ready.” She looked at him, a question in her eyes.
He had snapped at Mr. Ramseur earlier, but he’d be damned if he’d frighten a scullery maid. “I’ll be right down,” he told her, willing himself to be calm. “Is everything all right in the kitchen?”
He expected an honest answer from a little girl, and he got one. “No. Nana won’t come out of her room and Matthew is moping,” she said, her voice troubled. “You’re going to sea?”
“It’s what I do,” he said patiently.
“You’ll take care?”
“Aye, I’ll do that, too,” he told her. “I like a whole skin, same as you, Sal.”
She smiled at that. It seemed to reassure her, but then, she wasn’t more than ten and had no idea what ships at sea, and the men who sailed them, really did.
Gran’s excellent chicken and noodles, thick and full of peas the way he liked it, was gall and wormwood. He ate because he had to, all the time wishing Nana would come out of her room and sit with him. He had so few days left to see her. In three days he would have his sea trunk and private stores transferred back to the Tireless. By all rights, he should be aboard now.
Over pudding, he informed Matthew that tomorrow he would be required back on the frigate. He could tell the powder boy was disappointed, but knew better than to express it.
Oliver lingered as long as he dared over the pudding, even asking for a second helping he didn’t want, in the hope that Nana would come out. To his relief, she did. He wasn’t brave enough to look too closely, but her face was pale, though composed. Her eyes were stark and red, and he knew she had been crying, but she sat with him, saying next to nothing, while he burbled on about the work ahead, in the frantic days before a ship put to sea.
He was silent then. He wanted to tell her how much he would miss her, but he held back. There was no point in offering encouragement. She seemed to understand, and gradually relaxed enough to smile at a feeble witticism he forgot as soon as it left his lips. I’ll get through this, he thought. It’s far better that she never have an inkling of the depths of my love.
She spoke finally, seeming to choose her words carefully. “Gran told me what you have done for us with your solicitors,” she said. “I’ve never heard of such kindness, but believe me, we are grateful.”
I would do more, if I dared, he thought. “It’s a small thing, Nana.”
“Gran says she’ll continue your arrangement only until that time when we’re on our feet again,” Nana said. “Mr. Lefebvre tells me he sees more ships going in and o
ut, and I think the war is going to give us more custom here.”
“Monsieur Lefebvre is right.” He pushed back his chair and stood up. The room was suddenly too small and Nana too close. “I’ve arranged for the hackney to pick me up at five o’clock tomorrow morning, so I won’t be here for breakfast.”
“I’ll have some food for you to take along,” she said.
“You needn’t.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s really all I can do, though, isn’t it?”
He wasn’t entirely sure what she meant, but it seemed to tax her to the limit. With a brief look into his eyes, she got up quickly and went back into her room.
He felt like an old man as he climbed the stairs to his room, stood at the door a moment and then went up another flight to knock on Henri Lefebvre’s door. He could see a light under the door, but it was a long moment before the door opened.
The artist stood there, his shirtsleeves rolled up. If he was surprised to see Oliver, he did not show it.
“Come in, come in,” he said. “Excuse the mess. It’s a condition of the work I do.”
Oliver nodded. He looked at the table, covered with sketches of the view of the Hamoaze, a sight he was familiar with. He went to the table, as Lefebvre hovered at his elbow, as if to protect his drawings.
“You’d enjoy the view from my quarterdeck, as we come into the sound,” Oliver told him. He looked closer. “Is that the Tireless?”
“Oui, Captain.”
“She looks so small.” He picked up the sketch. “My world. Some days, you’d be welcome to it.” He set it down and turned to face the artist. “You should come to Plymouth in spring, when the hills are green and the sheep multiplying.”
“Perhaps I shall. Capitan, may I help you?”
No one seems to want me around, Oliver thought. Not Matthew, not Nana, and not this Frenchman. “Yes, you can, if you would. Could you make a sketch of Miss Massie for me? She’s so charming, and I’d like something to remember her by.”
Lefebvre smiled. “That I can do.”