by Carla Kelly
He could see something of Nana Worthy in her auburn hair, but there the similarity stopped. Nana was a pretty thing, with those wonderful round eyes of hers, and heaven knows Captain Worthy was a goner the moment he spotted her. From the elegant way she carried herself, to the marble of her flawless skin, to her lovely deep bosom, Laura Taunton was beautiful. He stared at her and resisted the urge to take his own pulse.
“Lieutenant?”
His mate was looking at him.
“I’m sorry, Edward. Just thinking about…Davey, there.”
They walked to his bedside, and Laura rose gracefully to move out of their way. He sat down and took the foretopman’s pulse, even though he could plainly see the man was better and breathing easier. Edward handed him the chart from the foot of the bed, and he reviewed his mate’s nocturnal notes. He looked at the sailor.
“I could stare at charts all day, but Davey, how do you feel?”
“Better. When I swallow, it goes down easier.”
“That dead tissue was pressing ’gainst all yer pipes,” Phil replied, falling easily into the sailor’s own accents. “I don’t know that you’ll be furling sail anytime soon, but you’re not worm food, either. As you were, Lady Taunton, unless these other miscreants would like some hand holding.”
She went to the powder monkey’s cot. “It’s Matthew’s turn,” she told him, which brought a chorus of groans from the boy’s shipmates. Phil laughed, pleased to see the general air of alertness returning to B Ward. He looked at his mate, who was having a hard time keeping his eyes open.
“Edward, I’ll stay here until the orderly comes on duty,” he said.
The mate nodded, then stopped in the doorway. “Lieutenant, when were you planning to use the trocar on the lung in C?”
“Maybe by the first dog watch.”
“Would you call me, sir? I’d like to see the procedure.”
“That I will,” Phil replied. Of course, that’s provided Sir David hasn’t thrown me out of Stonehouse when I tell him I want to hire Lady Taunton, he thought.
He made the rounds of the ward by himself, more and more unsure of what would happen when he went to the administration building. When the new orderly came on duty, he briefed him. He ended up watching Laura. I was a fool to even suggest she serve here, he thought. He motioned to her and left the ward.
She came quickly, to stand with him in the hall. “I can tell you’re having second thoughts,” she said. “I am not.”
“Come with me then.”
They went down the stairs quietly to the ground floor. He opened an unmarked door and led the way into the empty kitchen. Laura looked around, surprised.
“Where is everyone?”
“There hasn’t been a matron or cook in years,” he said. “Block Four gets its meals from Block Three’s kitchen.” He made a sound of disgust. “The men in here never get a hot meal. And all to economize in times of war!”
He pointed to the receipts still tacked on the wall, stained by years of smoke and cooking. “There they are—low diet and moderate diet, menus the Sick and Hurt Board has determined will speed seamen to recovery. They won’t, though. Men are better off staying on their own ships than coming here.”
“That can change,” was all she said. “I wrote a letter this morning to Pierre Gagon, my chef, and another to my solicitor in Bath, asking for a transfer of funds to Carter and Brustein in Plymouth.”
He led her into the compact servants’ hall, with its dust-covered table and chairs, and walls grimy with neglect. “Lady Taunton, I…”
She put her finger up, almost to his lips. “It’s Mrs. Taunton from now on.”
He wanted to kiss her finger, and then her whole arm up to her elbow. He stepped back instead. “This will never work. Let me show you one reason why.”
He opened a door off the servants’ hall, and stepped aside so she could enter. “This would be your room, and a more cheerless place I can hardly imagine. At least there are bars on the window to keep anyone from crawling in. There’s not even a bathing room. Sir David would expect the Block Four matron to stay here, and…”
“…and he—and apparently you—would be certain I would back away from such a place,” she continued, looking around her and not at him. “There’s no lock on that door, either.”
“No. If I asked Sir David for a Marine sentry, he would laugh me out of the building.”
“I would be living in a gloomy, unsafe place.”
He watched, miserable, as she ran her finger over the dusty writing desk and then pushed on the bed frame, which creaked in protest. She stood looking through the barred window for a long time. Her head went forward until she was leaning against the window glass. His heart sank into his shoes. Why had this whole idea seemed so possible, lying in bed with her and talking about his plans, only a few hours ago? He knew he had a reputation for sound judgment. Where had that gone, in the short space of a day or two?
“Are you surrendering already, Lieutenant?”
He looked up, startled. She had turned around and was watching him, and there was something indomitable in her eyes that set every nerve in his body humming.
“There are so many obstacles,” he said bluntly.
She clasped her hands in front of her. “You’re a stingy man,” she said, clipping off her words. “Maybe all men are stingy. Maybe they think no one of the female sex can be useful—truly useful. I say you are wrong, and I intend to prove how wrong you are.”
She came close to him then and gripped him by his elbows, her hands firm and strong. Because they were much the same height, she looked directly into his eyes.
“I want you to tell me why it is so hard to do the right thing.”
Chapter Nine
Laura didn’t know she could dig down so far inside herself. Nothing in her life had ever prepared her to stare deep into a man’s eyes and exert her will. She wanted to run, but he must not think her a weak woman, one who would buckle and fold in such a place as this. Even more, she could not do that to herself. She gathered him to her, so he could not see her own face if she should start to falter in her determination.
His arms came around her and she rested her cheek against his shoulder. “I listened to your plans this morning when it was still dark,” she told him distinctly. “I believed them.”
She held herself off from him in time to see him regarding her with an expression she could not fathom. “I sat with them this morning, I watched their faces and realized I am deep in this war now. Please don’t lose your courage on my account or imagine for one second that I will falter.”
She released him then, unnerved by her own vehemence. She thought of Nana in peaceful Torquay, fighting Napoleon her way by keeping the heart in her husband. I will fight it my way, by keeping men alive to fight him again.
“There it is,” she said simply. “I will go to Sir David and tell him what’s what.”
She could tell that stung Lt. Brittle. He winced, perhaps thinking she was digging at him for doubting. She could reassure him, too. “I’d feel braver if you came, too.” She wasn’t even sure that was true, not the way she was feeling now.
Lt. Brittle nodded. “I’ll happily accompany you, Lady Taunton,” he told her. “In fact, I insist upon it, even though I already know you have had much worse days than the ones I seem to have inflicted on you recently. You might not even need me.”
“It’s true,” she agreed with equanimity, “but I never really understood that, before you made it plain to me. One thing else, sir. No more Lady Taunton. I am Mrs. Taunton now. I don’t mind Laura in private, because I like to hear it. We have not been precisely formal with each other, have we? Is it to be Phil or Philemon?”
How brazen. She had never been closer in mind to any man in her entire life, and she had known Lt. Philemon Brittle less than a week. She could barely comprehend what was happening to her, swept up in an avalanche of feelings mixed in with war and wounds and duty, love for her newfound sister and husband,
and a sense of her own independence and all its possibilities.
“Whichever you prefer,” he told her. “My colleagues call me Phil, but I like my whole name.”
“Then it will be Philemon,” she replied. “Do you know, before I went to sleep last night, I took my Bible and read that little letter from St. Paul again. Had a hard time finding it, I will confess.”
Something in his eyes told her she had touched a chord in him, but his reply was lighthearted. “Stuck between Titus and Hebrews. Family lore says Mama was reading Philemon when her labor pains started.”
“Then thank God Almighty she was not reading Colossians!”
She felt more boulders slide off her back as Philemon laughed, opened the door and became the surgeon again. On his advice, she went back upstairs while he went to Block Three. She couldn’t help watching him from the landing window, as he did his quick walk to Block Three. His jaunty stride of early morning was gone. This time his head was down, as if he was already thinking hard about what waited for him there.
At noon, she helped the orderly with dinner, wondering how sick men could eat that unappetizing mess considered appropriate for wounded invalids. She asked Matthew to help one of his shipmates. Disregarding his own pain, he did as she asked, and rewarded her with a triumphant smile when his mission was accomplished. He didn’t object when she helped him back to his own cot; he was asleep in minutes.
“Good go, Mrs. Taunton,” the orderly whispered. “We’ll give him more duties as his strength increases. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Let’s do that everywhere we can,” she answered, gratified to see the respect in his eyes. “These men are used to much harder work. They need to feel needed.” Don’t we all? she thought, remembering how long the days had seemed after her husband’s death, when a lifetime of nothing to do stretched before her.
An hour into the afternoon watch—she was beginning to recognize the bells—Philemon came to B Ward. He had removed his apron, and wore his uniform jacket again. He smoothed down short hair that didn’t need smoothing, and had tucked his hat under his arm.
“Mrs. Taunton, let us see if Sir David is in a good mood, shall we?”
She took off her apron, wishing she had a dress that wasn’t stained, but happy enough that her hair was tidy under its lace cap.
“I fear I will not impress him,” she fretted as they went down the stairs. She brushed at stains from yesterday’s afternoon at the jetty, spent mostly on her knees.
“You already impress me,” Philemon replied as he held the door open.
“You have to say that,” she joked. “You want a matron. Oh, bother it!”
He stopped, mystified. “Laura, what is troubling you, above and beyond the general fright and panic that we are both feeling at this second?”
“It’s this dress. So many stains, I…”
He took her arm, settling her next to him as he continued walking. “I love females,” he announced to the world at large. “Females understand order in the universe far better than males, and they smell better.”
“You are so clinical,” she scolded. “Call me a lady, at least.” When he laughed, she stopped him. “You said that to put me at ease.”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
They were ushered into Sir David’s antechamber, where they waited at least a quarter of an hour, probably an eternity to a surgeon with more patients than time.
“He knows his game,” Philemon murmured. “I’ll wait him out. I’m not going to abandon you to face him alone. You’ve had too much of that in your lifetime, eh?”
She nodded, immensely reassured by Philemon Brittle’s presence. As casually as if he sat in his office—if he even had one—the surgeon crossed his legs and opened up his case folder, prepared to review his charts.
She watched, amused, as he closed his eyes and went into one of his impromptu naps, his hands relaxing. When the folder started to slide from his lap, she rescued it and put it on her own lap.
She decided then that she loved him: common, sound asleep, completely capable and destined to never leave her mind or heart again, no matter how this interview with Sir David Carew fell out. She had never loved a man before, and the sheer blessing of it made her utter a small exclamation that woke him up.
He sat up, looked around, smiled at her lazily, then closed his eyes again. He stayed that way, giving her time to collect herself, until the door opened and Sir David himself stood there, impatience written on every line of his body and stance.
“Well?”
On contemplation of the matter later, Philemon decided that he should have pitied Admiral Sir David Carew. Once Laura Taunton swept into his office, the man didn’t have a prayer. She was in charge of the interview from auspicious beginning to conclusive end.
She began with a curtsy so profoundly elegant that he could only gape like the pig farmer’s grandson he was. She followed it up immediately by thanking him for the appointment—never mind he hadn’t approved it yet—and the chance to do her part to keep the Dread Corsican Monster from England’s shores by tending Neptune’s Brave Sons.
Good God, Philemon thought. Too bad she cannot stand for office. He moved to the window seat, the better to watch the unprecedented sight of his superior officer in the hands of a master.
Scarcely drawing a breath, Laura segued into a reminder that her father, William Stokes, Lord Ratliffe, even now languished in a Spanish prison. What that had to do with her petition to be a hospital matron, Philemon did not know, but she never gave Sir David a chance to pounce on faulty logic. The man even gave her his own handkerchief to dab at her dry eyes.
She next invoked her brother-in-law, Captain Oliver Worthy, one of the finest commanders of fighting ships, and the sinking of the Tireless. Philemon began to feel a little sorry for Sir David, who stood there with a stunned expression. She had never even given him the chance to seat himself behind his intimidating desk, where he liked to throw down lightning bolts from Mount Olympus.
Too bad for Sir David. She cajoled, she flirted, she begged and she insisted, and twenty minutes later accepted his signed approval of her appointment as matron of Ward Block Four. Siddons, herself, couldn’t have done it better.
Only then did Sir David register his presence in the room. “You? You? I doubt the Navy Board pays your salary to malinger in my office, Lt. Brittle.”
“Not at all, Sir David,” he replied smoothly. “I escorted Lady Taunton here because I have a patient management question for you.”
The last thing he wanted, or needed, was medical advice from Sir David Carew, but if Laura Taunton could put on a show, he could, too. From the looks of her, that performance had worn her out.
“Very well,” Sir David said, pleased, apparently, that his surgeon was stumped. He took the case folder and looked where Philemon pointed.
“Simple, my boy. Use calomel. I always do.”
That is the last thing I would consider, Philemon thought, as he nodded. “Precisely, Sir David. Thank you for your help. I can escort Lady Taunton back to Block Four.”
She was looking worse by the moment, but Laura rallied to give Sir David a breathtaking smile and a curtsy only slightly less deep than the first one. She held the memo from Sir David tight in her fist.
He knew all the signs, especially when Laura gave him a desperate look as they left the office. He hurried her down a hall and into a room with nothing in it, thank God, except a desk, chair and wastebasket. He grabbed the basket and held it in front of her while she vomited. She clutched the basket as he moved her toward the chair and sat her down, holding back her hair that had come loose from her cap.
When she had the matter in hand, he went into another office, where he knew there was a water cask. He came back with a glass of water, dipped his handkerchief in it and wiped her mouth, then handed her the glass. She drank gratefully.
“I’m so embarrassed,” she murmured, setting down the wastebasket.
“No need,” he told her
, toeing it away, and already amused at what the office’s inmate would think when he came back to find someone’s digesting breakfast in his wastebasket. “It’s not the first impromptu emesis basin I have ever held. Laura, you were magnificent.”
She didn’t look magnificent. She looked drained and shaken. He felt in his pockets, but knew he didn’t have any smelling salts. “No hartshorn,” he told her cheerfully. “If you start to see prickles of light, just put your head between your knees.”
He wanted her to laugh, but she didn’t. She sat still, as though unable to believe what she had just accomplished.
“In all my life, I have never stood up to anyone,” she said, her voice a whisper. “Never. I have done what people wanted. Maybe what they expected. Maybe I am not as weak as I thought.”
He touched her arm. “You’re not weak. You never were.” And I will tell you that until you believe it, he thought. I don’t care how long it takes.
“The luncheon hour is about over, Laura,” he said, looking at his timepiece. “Let us vacate the premises.”
She glanced at the wastebasket. “Seems a trifle cavalier to leave that behind.”
“That’s the beauty of, er, some of the body’s less appealing functions, madam matron. They’re so anonymous.”
She was silent until they reached the Trafalgar memorial. “Philemon, I don’t have the slightest idea of what I should do,” she confessed. “You know that.”
“I can suggest a course of action,” he told her. “I will have the kitchens and other rooms cleaned and prepared for you. It will take a few days.”
She nodded. Already he could see that her fear was receding and the practical woman he already appreciated was coming to the fore again. “I will return to Taunton and retrieve Pierre Gagon. I can make financial arrangements and see what I can pirate from Taunton’s kitchens and linen closets.”
“By the time you return, I will have composed a list of duties in the order that I think is most important. There will also be a list of the men and their ailments, and what I think they need in the way of nourishment.”