“
She’s
not worth the trouble, Bartley. She’ll plague you to
death.”
Bartley shook his head,
entirely serious. “Nay, none of that, sir. She’s worth the trouble.
It’s only letters I am interested in now, sir. In a year or so,
we’ll see. Sir?”
“
You
have my permission,” Summers said, and shook MacGregor’s hand. “My
sister will rail and scold, but only remember that I am Larinda’s
guardian, and I am the one you must please. And by God, I am hard
to please.”
“
Very
well, sir. By your leave, is she upstairs? I’d like a word with
her.”
“
Go
on, Captain. And don’t tell me years from now that you weren’t
sufficiently warned.”
Bartley laughed,
tweaked Jeannie’s curl, and took the stairs two at a time. He
returned at a more sedate pace, his face thoughtful. The other
officers and Jeannie waited for him in the taproom. Jeannie stood
up and he clasped her in his arms.
“
Good-byes are the worst of all, Jeannie McVinnie. I still say
Tom was a lucky, lucky man. If you’re feeling charitable, drop me a
letter once in a while.”
He kissed her, shook
Captain Summers’ hand, and joined his fellow officers again. He did
not look back, and Jeannie, wiping her streaming eyes, could only
be grateful.
Summers finished his
ale. “You’ve turned into the veriest watering pot,” he observed.
“Well, come on. Morning comes soon enough, and I must be off
then.”
Jeannie thought she
would never close her eyes that whole night through, especially
with Larinda sniffling and blowing her nose and twisting and
turning about in the same bed, but she did. When morning came, she
felt decidedly optimistic.
Larinda elected to
remain at the inn, rather than accompany her uncle back to the
dock, where the waterman waited to ferry him to
Atropos
. “I
would only see the Dumfries Rifles preparing to board,” she
explained, “and I have already had enough tears for one night.”
But she sobbed anyway
as she hugged her uncle and told him to take care. “I shall miss
you, Uncle Summers,” she said. “I never knew that I loved you
before, but I do, I truly do. Be careful, please.”
He kissed her, and
Jeannie noted a mist in his own eyes, which were the softest green
imaginable. “Jeannie, buy my totty-headed niece a bushel of
cucumbers. Her eyes will be so puffy in London tomorrow that not
even Brummell can get her through this London Season.”
Larinda looked at him
in surprise. “Why, Uncle, I had completely forgotten. Jeannie, did
you remember?”
Jeannie shook her head.
“I suppose it is only getting under way now. Think of all those
invitations, Larinda.” She sighed.
Larinda was silent a
moment, deep in thought. “I think I will take Edward home to
Suffolk. Aunt Agatha can come if she chooses. Jeannie, you may come
with us, of course. In fact, I wish it more than anything.”
“
I
would love to, but I cannot. I am taking Clare home to
Kirkcudbrightshire. I have some ….” She stopped and looked at
Captain Summers. “Some little business to take care of
there.”
“
Bravo
, Jeannie,” he said, and offered her his arm.
“Come now, and smartly, smartly. Your last official act as my
impressed crew will be to support me to the dock.”
They walked arm in arm
to the wharf, where yesterday’s wherryman waited. Jeannie screwed
up her courage.
“
Captain, I need to tell you something ….”
“
Jeannie, I must speak ….”
They both broke off,
laughing.
The captain bowed. “As
a gentleman, I should let you go first, but I will not in this
instance.” He stopped short of the dock and took both her hands.
“Jeannie, I am withdrawing my proposal of marriage.” The stricken
look in her eyes made him falter. “Jeannie, don’t!”
“
But I
love you,” she quavered, and leaned her forehead against his
chest.
“
I
love you, too,” he said, tightening his grip on her hands. “You’d
only be hurt if I married you, because I will not give up the
sea.”
“
I
know that,” she said, her voice muffled against his
cloak.
“
Jeannie, it won’t do. You deserve a happier life than I could
give you.”
She could not look him
in the face. “May I at least write?”
“
Best
not, Jeannie dear. Better you just forget.”
He started toward the
dock again. “There still remains the matter of Edward’s future,” he
said, his voice husky, as if he struggled as much as she.
Her head came up. “I
have made my decision,” she said. “When I return to Wendover
Square, I shall personally escort him to Deptford Hard. Didn’t you
say there was a captain friend of yours there who was bound for the
West Indies?”
“
Jeannie,” the captain said, and it said the world.
She forced a smile to
her face and hoped that her voice was light. “One Jeannie McVinnie
sent you to sea. No reason why this one should deny your nephew.”
She held her hands out in front of her. “He would only run away
over and over, as you did. Let us not waste his time, my
darling.”
In answer, the captain
reached inside his uniform coat and drew out a letter. She took it
from him, noting that it was addressed to Captain Russell Jones,
Calliope
, Deptford Hard.
“
You
had planned this all along, hadn’t you?” she asked, her voice
filled with wonder.
“
Only
if it was your idea. I was prepared to tear it up.”
He kissed her cheek and
then pulled himself away from her before she could take his arm
again. He continued walking backward toward the wherry. “Let us
merely say that I know you well, Jeannie my crew, and maybe myself
a little better. God keep you. Would that I could.”
J
eannie heard the postman’s whistle in front of Galen’s
house as she and Clare hurried down the street toward St. Giles.
She thought a moment about returning, but realized there was no
need. Edward had written a rambling narrative, fresh with tales of
Jamaica and the Leeward Islands, that they had received only
yesterday. Larinda had sent a hurried letter the week before to say
that Bartley was chafing behind Wellington’s barricades at Lisbon.
There had even been a hurried scrawl from Brummell. Captain Summers
never wrote.
“
Clare, whatever it is will keep,” she said as they hurried
briskly along. “We will not get many more lovely days like this,
now that September is here.”
Soon the rains of
autumn will pelt down in earnest, to be succeeded by the sleet and
snow of winter. Another year would come and go, and she would
remain indoors and face the challenge of entertaining a lively
four-year-old. It was a challenge she welcomed. She would teach
Clare her alphabet, and by spring, she could add her letters to the
ones Jeannie sent every week to the
Venture
, care of the
White Fleet, Channel.
The apples at Dardwell
Head were still too green, but Andrew Maxwell stopped his work long
enough to give them two anyway, with the admonition to eat them
slowly or suffer the consequences. Jeannie smiled at him. Andrew’s
wife had died last year. She was glad to see a little light coming
back into his eyes again. She could tell him a great deal about
death. I can tell you, Andrew, that one day you will wake up and
the pain will be only a dull ache. You’ll never forget, but at
least it won’t hurt.
Andrew had walked her
home from church last week. It had been on the tip of her tongue to
invite him in to dinner, but something had stopped her. Perhaps
this next week. Or the one after.
Their walk took them to
the abbey ruins, where they watched the ocean in silence. Soon it
would be cold and windy on the blockade, with mountainous seas and
spray that stung the eyes and scoured the face. And turned men into
hard creatures. Jeannie set her lips in a firm line and took
Clare’s hand again.
They stopped by habit
at St. Giles churchyard. Clare had gathered the last bit of heather
on the way, which she spread around the grave and then tugged at a
weed she had missed last week.
Jeannie stood in front
of the marker and felt all over again that stir of contentment that
had been her first reaction when Galen had walked her there. It had
been a week after she had returned from Portsmouth, pulled her
chair close to his, and told him, in her own halting words, what
had really happened to her that dreadful winter after La
Coruña.
He had sat beside her
in shocked silence, and she held her breath, wondering about his
heart. After a long moment of silence, he rested his hand on
hers.
“
Ah,
Jean, what time we waste. I knew about my heart. How could I not
know? And Tom knew, too. It was to be my last campaign. You
shouldn’t have had to keep such a secret from me.” He thought a
minute more and asked her one question.
“
I
would have named him Kevin,” she had answered, her voice scarcely
audible above the crackle of the fire. She hesitated. “Kevin
William, actually.”
“
Are
there Williams in your family?”
“
No.
It’s just a favorite name of mine, Galen, that’s all.”
And then a week later,
they had strolled to the cemetery, and there was Kevin William’s
name carved on Tom’s stone in companionable association.
“
They’ll keep each other company better that way,” Galen had
said.
After he said that, she
had looked down at the stone and then felt the dull ache finally
leave her.
And here was Clare now,
brushing away a little mud that had splashed on the stone during
yesterday’s squall. Tom and Kevin McVinnie, father and son,
remembered now. After a moment of silence, Jeannie held out her
hand to Clare, thinking to herself that she would invite Andrew
Maxwell to dinner on Sunday.
The house was welcoming
and warm. Mary claimed her little charge and took her upstairs to
change shoes. Galen called to Jeannie from the front parlor.
There was a letter for
her, propped on the mantel. For a moment her heart leapt about in
her breast and then resumed its normal rhythm. It was Larinda’s
handwriting.
She picked it up. “We
heard from Larinda last week,” she mused out loud. “I wonder.”
Jeannie looked at Galen in sudden alarm. “Oh, you don’t think
Bartley or Edward—”
She ripped open the
letter, and a newspaper clipping fluttered down. She snatched it
before it became part of the fuel in the fireplace, and sat by
Galen, smoothing it on her knee. Her hand brushed it once, twice,
and then she held her breath.
The word
Venture
leapt out at her. She sucked in her breath and held closer the
scrap with its tiny printing.
When her breath started
to come in little gasps, Galen looked up in alarm from the letter
he was writing. He grabbed her arm and shook her. “Jeannie?
Jeannie!”
Without a word, she
handed him the clipping and leaned back in her chair, her whole
body numb.
“
Good
God,” Galen said quietly. “Jeannie, I am so sorry. Ah,
Jean!”
She sat in absolute
silence until the quiet began to scream at her. “Galen, it says
‘all hands.’ No survivors? Not one?” He sighed. “That’s what it
means, Jeannie. The Channel’s a tricky place.”
“
But
he’s a good captain ….” Her voice trailed off.
“
And
the ships are small, my dear, so small.” He waited for her to
speak. When she remained silent, he took hold of her hand. “I’ll
tell Clare, my dear, if you wish.”
Jeannie shook her head.
“No. Not now. Maybe not even next week. It can wait.”
She sat another moment,
listening to the clock tick. “That clock is so loud,” she said
finally. By the time she had crossed the room to turn it around,
she knew what she had to do, and quickly, before it was too late to
do one last good deed for Captain Summers.
“
Galen, I’m taking the mail coach to London immediately,” she
said.
It didn’t sound like
her voice, so high and strained and out of breath, as though she
and Clare had run all the way from the cemetery.
“
Jeannie, no,” Galen said. “What can you do there? And isn’t
Larinda in Suffolk?”
“
I’m
not going to Larinda,” she said. “There is someone I must see.”
Jeannie passed her hand in front of her eyes when Galen opened his
mouth to protest. “And don’t argue with me, my dear. I have to go.
Tonight, if I can pack in time. I haven’t a minute to
spare.”
The mail coach was
already lumbering down McDermott Street as she threw some clothes
in a bag. As the horn blew and the whip cracked, she took the
clothes out and folded them more carefully. Tomorrow would do well
enough. She knew that she would lie awake all night staring at the
ceiling, but she had done that before on countless occasions and
she knew she would get through it.
As she packed, she came
across the captain’s emerald. With hands that trembled, she held it
up to the light and admired the flaw that zigzagged through it. She
would save it for Clare. There was no way of knowing the conditions
of Captain Summers’ will. When Clare needed it, the necklace would
be there for her.
If any of her fellow
travelers had thought to make conversation with her on that
interminable journey from Scotland to London, the thought died
quickly. Her face white and set, her eyes boring into the back
coach wall, Jeannie had kept her own counsel.
London was robed in the
glory of early autumn when the mail coach came to its final stop.
It was only a moment’s business to retrieve her bag and step
briskly into the street to hail a hackney.