Marriage of Mercy Read online

  The yardman-turned-butler shook his head. ‘It’s regrettable—my tendency to weigh her in the balance.’ He brightened. ‘I know I was unfair. Didn’t she think Yankee Doodle Doughnuts were a grand idea?’

  ‘Precisely,’ Rob said. He grinned at Emery. ‘Confess it, you wish you had thought of it!’

  ‘Guilty as charged,’ Emery said. ‘You’ll turn us into Americans yet!’

  * * *

  For the first time in Grace’s memory, there was a queue forming fifteen minutes before the bakery opened the next morning. She had just returned from posting a letter to Mr Selway—wondering if it was an exercise in futility—and could barely squeeze into the bakery without a stampede behind her.

  ‘Look at them, checking their timepieces,’ Mr Wilson said, when he glanced up from the oven he was tending. ‘I fear that if Mrs Wilson is a few seconds late in opening the door, we will be stormed. Like the Bastille!’

  ‘Aye, sir,’ Rob said. ‘There’s the tinsmith with the cutters. Let the man through.’

  * * *

  ‘You’re working a miracle there,’ Grace told Rob hours later, as they sat in the back, shoes off, stockinged feet up on the same ottoman, resting from the rigours of an entire day spent making doughnuts. ‘Things were sad here, after the Wilsons’ son-in-law died in a battle on some lake called Erie. Did I pronounce that right?’

  He nodded. ‘That was a sharp engagement, so I was told, with blood everywhere on both sides.’ Rob offered her a doughnut and she shook her head. ‘I knew the Wilsons weren’t too keen on having me here.’ He tipped his chair back, a smile of tired contentment on his face. ‘It must be the force of my sparkling wit, character and Yankee know-how.’

  She knew he was joking, but it was true. ‘You’re not like us, and I think it’s a good thing,’ she told him impulsively. ‘I mean…’ She stopped, flustered. ‘I don’t know what I mean.’

  ‘Try, Gracie,’ he said quietly. ‘Your government insists that once an Englishman, always an Englishman. Do you feel that way?’

  ‘I used to, but that was before I knew an American,’ she said, then leaned closer to him. ‘Even if you were born English…and maybe that’s the point.’ He was so close. She wanted to touch his hand. ‘You are an entirely new species—frank, honest, casual and…’

  ‘And?’ he asked, that slow smile on his face, the one that never failed to make her want to hug him.

  ‘…full of yourself and supremely confident,’ she concluded.

  He gave her that slow look, watching her out of the corner of his eye. She wished he would not do that. ‘That is how I seem to you?’

  She nodded, unsure of herself. There was so much she wanted to say. She wanted to ask him how he could be so positive, him a paroled prisoner of war, a man from a background so decidedly beneath her own, someone she would have ignored in her better days. She stood up, fishing for her shoes again. ‘I think democracy must be a great leveller,’ she said, after more thought.

  ‘Aye, Gracie. Once you know that, you can’t go back.’

  * * *

  To Grace’s delight, Quimby’s residents discovered a profound liking for Rob Inman’s doughnuts.

  ‘Look at them,’ Grace whispered, as Mrs Wilson handed out one and two doughnuts, and then a dozen at a time, as the addiction spread.

  ‘I can be modest—’ Rob began.

  ‘No, you cannot,’ Grace interjected. ‘You knew these would be a success!’

  He only grinned at her and returned his attention to the customers, his new best friends.

  Grace watched him joking in his easy way to all and sundry. He had time for everyone.

  You are wasting your time, pining for a quarterdeck again, Grace thought, as she stamped out more doughnuts. With so much charm, you could own Nantucket. She admired his shoulders. You own me.

  When colder wind signalled the arrival of autumn, she helped him take down his improvised Yankee Doodle Doughnuts banner, which had caused a brief stir in Quimby. Fearing the removal of the sign meant the end of the doughnuts, the squire himself shouldered his way to the head of the usual line to ask what was going on.

  ‘Never fear, sir,’ Rob told him. ‘Quimby’s such a genteel village and perhaps my sign is crass.’ He held up his hand. ‘The doughnuts are here to stay.’

  Grace had to turn away her head to hide her smiles at the collective sigh that rose from the small gathering. Satisfied, Quimby’s citizens paid for their purchases and filed out.

  Except for one man. Grace couldn’t help taking a step back, even behind the counter. Nahum Smathers had never come into the bakery before. She had not stood so close to him until now.

  Perhaps dubbing him Ugly Butler hadn’t been entirely correct. True, he was bald and his complexion scarred with pockmarks, but he was as solid as a stone wall, with a certain lift to his shoulders that impressed Grace, in spite of herself. Maybe it was his eyes that made her step back involuntarily: they were as expressionless as the eyes of a great fish she had once seen tangled in a fisherman’s net.

  ‘May…may I help you?’ she asked, wishing the words had come out cool and calm.He shook his head, his eyes on Rob Inman, who was watching him now from behind the table where he cut doughnuts. ‘It’s not just the doughnuts that aren’t going anywhere.’

  She jumped when he slapped a newspaper on the counter. The cat curling around her skirt hissed and moved away.

  Smathers opened the paper and pointed to the article at the top of the fold. ‘Burned your precious capitol, Duncan. You’re an American? You’re a citizen of nowhere.’

  He turned on his heel and left the bakery as Rob, his face white, came around the table and snatched up the paper. Silent, seething, he read the article. Grace watched his expression travel rapidly through scepticism, shock, despair and then grief.

  ‘They burned Washington,’ he said finally. ‘The damned British burned our capitol.’ Maybe he hoped the words would change before his eyes, if he stared at them long enough. Remembering the reading of her father’s will, Grace could have told him that bad news rarely improved on a second perusal.

  She put her hand on his arm, but he shook it off. She had never seen such a wintry expression on anyone’s face, not even her own when, that night, she stared into the mirror and told the woman looking back that Rob Inman, the man she chose, would leave as soon as he could and never choose her.

  He straightened up as Ugly Butler, his back to them as he crossed the street, started to laugh.

  ‘Damn him,’ Rob said, his voice low and burning with anger. Then softer, but no less menacing, ‘Damn you, British.’

  She flinched at his anger, felt her own rise in response, then willed it to subside, unwilling to flay a man who had just received bad news and from a terrible source. She said nothing, but looked at Smathers’s back, as he resumed his typical pose in front of the candlemaker’s shop, watching them, always watching them.

  She felt her own blood boil at the thought of Ugly Butler, except there had been something in his eyes that left her puzzled. She wished she could interpret his expression. She glanced at Rob and looked away, startled to see so much winter in his own eyes.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Rob said nothing on the walk back to Quarle, setting his face resolutely away from the manor house, where Smathers, home now, watched him from an upstairs window. When they reached the dower house, he walked slowly upstairs, his head down.

  In the kitchen, Emery shook his head over the news. ‘Maybe the United States are going to be a short-lived experiment.’

  ‘Best not say anything so dismal to our parolee,’ she advised.

  ‘Maybe he needs to face facts.’

  Gloom down here and gloom upstairs, Grace thought, feeling discouragement settle around her. ‘I feel sorry for him,’ she said, her words pointed.

  ‘So do I, lass, but sometimes…’ He shook his head again.

  I should just leave Rob alone, she told herself, settling down in the kitchen with a ba
sket of mending. Maybe he’d rather not see a British face just now. That line of reasoning lasted no longer than it took her to darn one of Rob’s stockings. She thought of all the lonely hours she had spent behind the ovens, once the Wilsons were upstairs for the night. She had been alone then and she had never liked that kind of solitude. She doubted Rob Inman did, either, considering how gregarious he was. Far more than I am, she reminded herself.

  That was all the resolution she needed. She prepared a bowl of still-warm stew and put it on a tray with a beaker of tea.

  She stood outside his closed door before she knocked.

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘You’re a sore trial,’ she muttered, as she opened the door.

  He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. When she came into the room, he put his forearm over his eyes, which made her heart go out to him. Poor man, you’ve been crying, she thought.

  ‘I told you to go away,’ he said, his voice sulky.

  ‘I chose to ignore you,’ she replied, setting down the tray on the table next to the bed. He had wadded the newspaper and thrown it down beside the bed. She picked it up and sat down in the chair, making herself comfortable.

  With a sinking heart, she read the article, which appeared to have been a dispatch from General Ross, who had truly burned the country’s capital, after routing the ‘so-called army’, as he wrote, at a place called Bladensburg. ‘We were mainly impressed with how fleet of foot the American army was,’ she read silently. ‘Let us be generous to our defeated foe and call that battle the Bladensburg Races.’

  Increasingly agitated, she read of Ross and his officers sitting down to dinner in ‘Little Jemmy Madison’s house’, the table spread for the country’s president, who had fled. ‘We shall have to apologise someday for our rag manners, but we left soon after dinner, since we had set the place on fire. What thoughtless guests we were.’ Churl. I don’t like that man, she thought, reading how the whole region would soon be ablaze, now that the army was going to march next on Baltimore.

  She put down the paper, unable to read more and understanding Rob’s tears.

  ‘Does it bother you, too?’

  Grace nodded, deliberately balling up the broadside again and tossing it toward the unlit fireplace.

  ‘It does,’ she told him in a small voice. ‘I thought… Hadn’t we heard earlier that your country and my country were meeting for treaty talks in Belgium?’

  ‘Aye, lass.’ His arm was back across his face and his words were muffled. ‘And now Britain bargains from a position of strength. Lord, this chaps my hide.’

  ‘They’ll surrender?’

  ‘Not flaming likely. The frontier’s on fire, our seacoast is in ruins and who knows where the government is, but we won’t yield. You can’t give up on a good idea whose time has come. But it’s all so painful. And the deuce of it is, this is six-week-old news! Do I even have a country now?’

  He was crying again. He had tried to suppress his tears, pressing his fingers against the bridge of his nose, but nothing could have stopped his utter misery.

  Grace watched him a moment, her eyes welling, too. He had been so cheerful this morning as they had walked into Quimby, telling her of his plans to return to the sea and maybe some day command his own brig, carrying American commerce around the world. He had joked and laughed with the people of her village, who had come to like him, maybe even trust him. And then Smathers, damn him, had slapped down that broadside on the counter and stood there long enough to gloat, if that was how she should interpret the man’s expression. I hate him, she thought.

  Her heart went out to Rob Inman as he sobbed. There was nothing he could do for his country, even though she knew every fibre in his body yearned to find a way.

  ‘That’s enough of that,’ she murmured as she slipped her feet out of her shoes, removed her apron and lay down next to him on the bed.

  She had no idea what he would do, but she could no longer just sit there and watch his sorrow. After thinking through all the things she could have done and deciding this was perhaps the most foolish, Grace put her arms around Rob Inman and pulled him close to her.

  She knew she had startled him, but in a very few moments, his arms went around her, too, and they clung together. She pillowed his head against her breast, murmuring words that weren’t words until his tears stopped.

  Rob must have realised she was hanging over the edge of the bed. He tugged her back to the centre, his arms still tight around her, and she made no objection. She stroked his back, enjoying the strength there, even though she knew he was at low tide. ‘No need to suffer alone. You won’t always feel so sad,’ she whispered.

  He pulled her closer. She said nothing more, just rubbed his back, then caressed his hair.

  The room was dark now and growing chilly, testimony to the passage of the season from early autumn to the chill of coming winter. ‘Rob, wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if you could get news from America the instant something happens, instead of waiting weeks and weeks?’

  ‘Grace, you’re a cloth head.’

  ‘I know. Go to sleep.’

  In a few minutes, he had relaxed and was breathing deeply, as though her simple grumble—he had heard that tone of voice from her before—had given him permission.

  When she knew he slept, she sat up and unbuttoned his shirt, tugging it out of his trousers, after sliding out his belt. His shoes were already off. He stirred when she unbuttoned the fall front of his trousers, trapping her hand on his crotch until she felt her face flame. He muttered something fierce, then shifted onto his side, freeing her hand.

  She tried to edge off the bed, but his fingers went around her wrist. ‘Grace, don’t leave me. Please.’

  She lay down next to him again. ‘Only because you said please,’ she told him, content to lie beside him again. He returned to sleep. When she was certain he was deep under, she took a handkerchief from her sleeve and gently wiped around his eyes and the tear marks on his cheeks.

  * * *

  Rob Inman was more cheerful in the morning. She woke up to feel him tugging down her dress, which had ridden up around her thighs.

  ‘You’re supposed to still be asleep,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want you to think I had been involved in anything naughty last night, while you were drooling on your—my—pillow.’

  At some point he must have covered them both with his blankets and the room was just cool enough to make her reluctant to rise. Her head was pillowed on his arm. ‘I don’t drool. Your arm is probably asleep,’ she said.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘I should raise my head,’ she told him, even as she made no effort to do that.

  ‘I suppose you could,’ he replied, ‘but then you would expect me to move my arm, wouldn’t you? I don’t want to, Grace. I like the feel of a woman’s hair on my arm.’

  There was nothing to say to that, so she snuggled more firmly into the blankets. ‘I don’t mind working for my living, Rob. What I don’t care for is getting up early.’

  ‘Maybe you’ll be a lady of leisure again some day.’

  ‘When pigs have wings.’

  ‘Grace, I am depending on you to make a brilliant match some day. You know, when you find your own impresario.’

  ‘I repeat what I said about pigs.’

  They lay close together. He sniffed her hair. ‘I don’t know how you do it, but you still smell of cinnamon.’

  He growled suddenly and nipped at her neck. Grace shrieked and leaped out of bed, to stand laughing and barefoot by the door. He smiled back at her, then flopped on his back again and closed his eyes.

  ‘I’m not going to the village today,’ he told her, his voice firm. ‘I can’t bear the thought of the bakery customers smirking and gloating at my ill fortune.’

  She came back to the bed and gave him a good shake. ‘No one’s going to gloat. You’re the cloth head, if you think so. I’m going to the Wilsons’ to make more doughnuts and I don’t trust you here alone. You’ll do a runner.’ />
  ‘I might,’ he said, sounding a little grim.

  ‘You promised you wouldn’t. I have my eye on you, Rob Inman. If that means I sleep in your room every night, too, I will.’ She tried to sound firm, but felt only foolish. ‘So there we are.’

  ‘Grace, you’re the damnedest,’ he said, his tone admiring. ‘What a fishwife! Elaine would have folded like a wet towel before crossing me.’

  ‘I am not Elaine,’ she said simply. ‘I never will be.’

  She hoped she hadn’t hurt his feelings, not after the rude things she had flung at him after their trip to Exeter and which still bothered her. He sat up, his face serious. Silent, she watched his expression change from something close to exasperation to a thoughtful look. He seemed to be examining her from the inside out, taking her words to heart. For the smallest heartbeat, she wondered if he was deciding that very thing, that maybe not being Elaine was all right, too.

  ‘I’ll be in the kitchen getting breakfast,’ she said quietly, not wanting to break his mood. She closed the door behind her and leaned against it for a moment. I would follow you anywhere, she thought. No need for you to know it, though.

  * * *

  Breakfast had been a quiet affair, full of porridge and silent contemplation. When they walked to Quimby, the air was cool. She smelled leaves burning on the Quarle estate. Lord Thomson’s few remaining yardmen were raking the leaves into mounds. This was always her favourite time of year. ‘Are…are there lots of elm trees on Nantucket?’ she asked, shy about the question because it seemed to imply something between them. Surely he wouldn’t take it that way.

  ‘Aye, Grace. You’d never be homesick for elms,’ he said, then amended hurriedly, ‘If you lived there. But the maples! Oh, the maples, so red and glorious. There’s a maple in our front yard.’

  She was suddenly too shy to look at him, because he seemed to be implying the same thing. She stopped. ‘Rob…’

  She wasn’t even sure what she was going to say, but it didn’t matter. He looked around quickly, then took her in his arms. Without asking, he held her close and kissed her long.