Marrying the Captain Page 22

  “It’s just us, sir,” she said cheerfully. “I am Mrs. Oliver Worthy, and I believe my husband is your prisoner.”

  She knew her French was adequate. Maybe all those years at Miss Pym’s would amount to something after all. “Sir? Is there something else we need to present to you?”

  Pete handed her a canvas and tar-covered pouch, which had been lowered along with the chest. She gave it to the colonel, who still stared at her.

  This will never do, Nana thought. “I insist on being taken to my husband at once, General.” She didn’t think he was a general, but enough years in Plymouth had taught her that elevating anyone’s rank was a prime tool of flattery.

  The French officer was no exception to the rule. He recovered himself and bowed again. “Madame Worthy, Colonel Jean Baptiste San Sauvir, at your service.” He placed his hand over his heart. “I am yours to command.”

  I doubt that, she thought, as she returned his bow with an even better curtsey. She was grateful there was no way the colonel could see how her heart hammered against her rib cage.

  San Sauvir offered his arm, and she took it. He paused for a few words with his soldiers, who appropriated the ransom chest, then ordered the crew and Pete to remain where they were.

  “Oh, no,” Nana said. “Monsieur Pete Carter stays with me. He is my husband’s valet and I will not be dissuaded in this.”

  The colonel bowed again, and motioned Pete forward. “I would never wish to incur the wrath of Captain Worthy.”

  “I doubt you would,” she said in English. “He’s a tough customer.”

  The crew of the jolly boat laughed, stopping immediately when the bosun’s mate glared at them. They sat down on the wharf, surrounded by French soldiers, as the colonel led Nana and Pete toward what had formerly been a convent, but which now bristled with cannon.

  “This is a far cry from the Barbican,” she told Pete, as they climbed the steps.

  Pete grinned at her. “Nana, there appears to be more of the rascal in you than I ever knew.”

  “Maybe my mother would be pleased,” she said.

  The muskets leaning up against a statue of the Virgin Mary seemed strangely out of place inside the convent, but so were the cannonballs stacked inside the chapel, she noticed as they passed. Rows of tents lined the interior courtyard. Someone less reverent than most had strung a clothesline from a cross to another statue opposite.

  Her heart beat faster after they mounted another flight of stairs to what must have been the nun’s cells, each with a sentry outside the door. The captain of the guard appeared, saluted and handed Colonel San Sauvir a set of keys.

  He turned a key in the lock, swung open the door and bowed. “Do go in, Mrs. Worthy,” he said, gesturing. She heard a chair turn over in the cell, as though someone had leaped up. “You, too, Mr. Carter. I’ll allow you a few minutes and then I will return.” He ushered them in and closed the door behind him.

  “Nana!”

  Oliver, bearded and shaggy, grabbed her. She clung to him, trying to hold as much of him at once as she could, even as he buried his face in her hair and then kissed her neck.

  “What on earth are you doing here?” he murmured, then made an answer impossible when he kissed her.

  If she had planned to scold him about not telling her the truth of Lefebvre’s disappearance, she forgot, in the simple pleasure of embracing the man who had her heart and was the father of her baby. She held him off from her then, assessing him. Other than appearing shaggy, he looked none the worse for wear.

  “I’m well enough,” he said, answering her unspoken question. “The colonel likes to have a fourth at cards. I am quick to pick up games, even if I detest them. Pete, why the devil is she here?”

  Pete scratched his head. “Captain, please believe me when I tell you I had no idea of this stubborn streak. She wouldn’t hear of anything else.”

  Oliver led them to his cot and they sat down. “I had thought some member of the Admiralty or representative from Whitehall would deliver the ransom,” he said. “You do have the ransom.”

  “Yes, sir,” Pete said, and then was unable to keep the disgust from his voice. “Lord Rat himself is even now on the Tireless, too cowardly to get into the jolly boat with us, for this transaction.”

  Oliver must have decided she wasn’t close enough, because he pulled her onto his lap. “I can’t say I am surprised, Nana.” She settled against him and he rested his chin on her head. “He’ll get more than a shaking down from me, when we’re back on the Tireless.” He looked at Pete then. “How does my ship look?”

  “Fine, sor, as orderly as you please. The crew says Mr. Ramseur is doing a capital job.”

  “That’s a relief.” Oliver looked at the door. “Now we need to get our little colonel back, so we can return to my ship. It may not need me, but I miss it.”

  He set Nana on the cot and went to the door, just as a key rattled in the lock and it swung open. Colonel San Sauvir entered the cell, this time holding the papers that had accompanied the ransom. The sentry came with him.

  Colonel San Sauvir bowed and sat in the only chair in the room.

  “Colonel, is the ransom amount as Marshal Soult dictated?” Oliver asked, returning to his perch on the cot.

  “Indeed it is,” he replied. “Twenty thousand good English pounds.” He looked at the paper in his hand. “There is one difficulty, though.”

  “Surely nothing we cannot solve right here,” Oliver said. “I have a ship that needs a commander, and my wife really isn’t accustomed to captivity.” He spoke lightly.

  The colonel shook his head. “As to that, Captain, perhaps you need to look over this letter. It’s from your government, I might add.”

  Oliver rose and took the letter, scanning it quickly. As Nana watched, his face paled. He read it again, then handed it back. There was no mistaking the tremor in his hand.

  “You can’t mean this.”

  The colonel shrugged. “These are the terms, Captain Worthy. Who am I to argue with the Emperor Napoleon and your government? I am no fool.” He looked at the letter, then directly at Nana.

  “Madame Worthy, perhaps you did not know—the ransom is here, yes, but since you must be representing the government, you must be detained until your husband returns to England and then General Lefebvre-Desnouettes is escorted to France.” He smiled at her. “Once this is done, and barring any further difficulty, you should be eligible for release in a few months. It might be longer. Who can say?”

  Nana stared at him, then at her husband, who was shaking his head in disbelief.

  The colonel did not meet either gaze, but returned his attention to the document. “It appears a Lord Ratliffe was to have been the hostage. How kind of you to come in his place, Mrs. Worthy.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Stunned, Oliver stared at the colonel. “You would do that?”

  The colonel only shrugged again and held out the letter. “I am only following the orders of your government. Surely you can ask no more of an enemy combatant.”

  “No, I cannot,” Oliver agreed. “I refuse to leave without my wife, though, so it appears that both of us will be your guests. There will be no exchange for Lefebvre-Desnouettes.”

  The colonel gestured with the letter again. “You would go against the express wishes of your own government?” He shook his head sadly. “I know what the penalty for treason is in France. Zip! One slice of Dr. Guillotine’s remarkable engine. Tell me, do the English still hang, draw and quarter treasonous offenders?”

  “They do indeed,” Oliver said. “That is why I appeal to your humanity. I cannot leave my wife behind, but I know I must do my duty.”

  “Then, sir, I would say you have a dilemma,” the colonel said serenely.

  Nana had heard enough. She didn’t look at Oliver.

  “Colonel, I will consider this opportunity in your custody as a way to improve my French.”

  “Nana!”

  She put a hand on her husband’s arm.
“Oliver, I think we should discuss this in private. Colonel, would you mind withdrawing?”

  Colonel San Sauvir was happy to go. In fact, he sprang up with the alacrity of one half his age and bulk. “With pleasure!” He went to the small barred window. “I fear this discussion has already gone on too long. I would not dream of releasing you, Captain Worthy, with night approaching so fast.”

  “I’m certain you wouldn’t,” Oliver said sarcastically.

  “Now, dear,” Nana said, increasing the pressure on his arm.

  “Very well, Colonel,” Oliver said at last. “Please see that my men are housed and fed tonight.”

  “I would never consider anything else, Captain. Do excuse me now, so I can make arrangements.”

  “This is a fine how-de-do,” Oliver said when the door closed. He put his arm around her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “If I had known any of the conditions, I never would have made it so convenient for my…for Lord Ratliffe…to jump ship.”

  She was relieved that her husband preferred philosophy over anger. “I have to wonder if he ever would have summoned up the courage to get into the jolly boat, even if you hadn’t offered him such a useful substitute,” he mused.

  “Captain Dennison did mention rumors about his early naval career,” she said.

  “More than rumors, Nana love,” Oliver said. He glanced at Pete. “You’ve heard them, too, I suppose.”

  “How he took his ship out of a fight in the West Indies and left the Resolve to its fate? More than rumors, Nana,” Pete said.

  “And now he’s done the same to us, damn his eyes,” Oliver said. He settled back against the wall and gathered her closer. “I can’t leave you here, Nana.”

  “You must.” She relaxed against him, but roused herself again. “By the way, why did you and Pete keep such a deep, dark secret about Henri Lefebvre? Couldn’t you trust me?”

  To their credit, Oliver and Pete looked at each other, abashed. “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she told them.

  “It does, Nana,” Oliver replied.

  She watched his discomfort and thought he would say no more. He held her more firmly. “I wasn’t going to tell you this, but there is an odd connection between Henri Lefebvre and your father.”

  Nana listened, amazed, and then ashamed, as he told of finding a drawing of her by Lefebvre on Ratliffe’s desk in Admiralty House.

  “Then they had a connection,” she said and put her hand to her mouth as she took the next leap. “Is my father a spy? Oh, Oliver!”

  “I think, at the very least, that he served as a conduit for both Lefebvres to exchange information. Now that we know it is Lefebvre-Desnouettes who is to be exchanged, it must not take place. Perhaps it’s just as well that your father showed the white feather so this can’t go forward,” Oliver told her. “And then there is the matter of information I gleaned from Señor Rodriguez.”

  “No one knows in England if ye learned anything, sor,” Pete commented, from his perch on the end of the cot.

  “I did.”

  He kept his voice soft, as though the room was packed with agents of the French. “Before he died in my arms, he handed me a sheet of paper—information directly from Marshal Soult himself—that Rodriguez intercepted.”

  Nana turned to look at him. “They didn’t find it?”

  “No, thanks to Gran.”

  She stared at him. “You’re quizzing me.”

  “Not at all. Remember when I left? Gran gave me another wheat poultice for my ears. They’d been bothering me, so I wore it ashore around my neck when we came to fetch off Rodriguez. When he handed me the sheet, I rolled it up quicker than you can say Jack Robinson and slid it into the poultice.”

  “My word,” Nana said. She looked at the table, where the poultice lay. “No one suspected?”

  “No. Not that they didn’t strip me and check all my body openings.” He winced. “Yet another reason to detest the French. I didn’t say anything, of course.” He touched his face. “The bruises are gone, but I did lose a tooth in the service of King George. I may send a bill to Bonaparte.”

  She hugged him and eyed the poultice again. “You just…just leave it there?”

  “Sometimes the best place to hide things is in plain sight. I even talked our friend Le Colonel into letting his cook set it in the warming oven, when my ears ache.”

  “Well, I’m fair gobsmacked,” Nana said, which made her husband laugh and make some remark about Miss Pym putting her in the corner of a room and leaving her there for half a day, if she had said that ten years ago.

  She was serious soon enough. “So you can leave, and probably Pete, but not me?”

  “It sounds that way. You heard him. He’s a bureaucrat at heart and stickler with that damned piece of paper. It states I alone am to be exchanged for Lefebvre-Desnouettes, with a surety left behind.” He tightened his grip on her. “I’m not leaving without you. What kind of man would abandon his wife to a French prison?”

  “The kind who follows orders,” she reminded him.

  “Nana, don’t,” he said, and she saw how that tack pained him.

  “Several months here, sor?” Pete interjected. He looked at Nana with an expression she remembered from years ago when she was small and caught in some misdeed. “Nana, ye need to take ye’re own advice about sharing information.”

  “Nana, are you in some sort of trouble?” Oliver asked.

  “I-I’m not certain I would put it quite that way,” she said, stalling.

  “Nana, you’re already surprising me by even being here in Spain,” Oliver said. “I thought I had spliced myself to a calm and biddable wife.”

  “Ordinarily I am precisely that,” she said. “My bigger problem is that I love you.”

  She had hoped he might laugh at that, but he only sighed and pulled her closer. He kissed her ear. “Told you it wasn’t a good idea.”

  “Nana. If you don’t tell him, I will,” Pete warned.

  “Oh, very well,” she said, and lowered her voice. “That last visit of yours. Well…” She paused, suddenly shy. There Oliver was, looking at her with a frown, and there was Pete. “Some months in Spain might be cutting it a little close.” She paused again, wishing her husband wasn’t so dense. “You’d probably prefer your son or daughter to be born on English soil, wouldn’t you?”

  He stared at her. “Well, damn me, I’m fair gobsmacked this time,” he said softly. He turned his face into her shoulder.

  They sat that way until Pete cleared his throat. “I have an idea,” he said.

  “That’s a good thing,” Oliver said frankly, “because I’m all out of them.” He tightened his grip on her. “I won’t leave Nana.”

  “Maybe you don’t have to.” Pete looked at her, as if sizing her up. “Nana, we’re about the same height. Wrapped in my cloak, and if it’s dark enough, who’d be the wiser if you left instead of me?”

  She could think of all kinds of reasons to object, but something in Pete’s eyes told her to save her breath.

  “I could put on your dress and cloak, and you could cover me up in the cot there,” Pete said, looking at Oliver for objection. He shrugged. “I suppose there are better plans, but I can’t think of any.”

  “Nor I,” Oliver agreed. “Damn, but it chafes me Lord Ratliffe isn’t brave enough to do his own work!” He considered the matter. “After Nana and I leave, anyone looking in would think you were Nana, distraught and unable to rise.”

  “Hopefully long enough for you to get back to the Tireless,” Pete said.

  “What would the French do to you, Pete?” Nana asked. “I couldn’t bear it if something happened.”

  Pete sidestepped her question and addressed Oliver. “You know the colonel. How close would he look?”

  Oliver considered the matter. He had rested his hands on her belly, just as she did. The warmth of his fingers put the heart back in her

  “Maybe not close at all.”

  “But what would he do to Pete when he
discovered the deception?” she asked again. “I don’t want something terrible on my conscience. I couldn’t live with it.”

  “It might not be your decision,” Pete replied.

  “Let’s ratchet up some guilt for the colonel,” Oliver said finally. “I think he will be back. Could you work up some tears, Nana love? Really gusty ones?”

  She didn’t think it would be hard at all, considering the way she felt at that moment, and told him so.

  “I can tell him that I realize I must leave my wife behind, as repugnant as that is. All the time, you can be crying as loud as you please, Nana. I’ll beg him to let Pete and me leave just at sunrise. The sooner we’re away, the sooner the matter will be resolved. Don’t most men find a woman’s tears unnerving?”

  “We don’t have many other weapons,” Nana admitted.

  “I can almost wager he’ll be so upset he’ll send his aide—a real slow-top—to see us away. If we can clear the beach before anyone notices, we have a chance.” Oliver looked at Pete. “What will happen to Pete is an unknown, and we cannot change that.”

  “Bravo,” Pete said softly. “Get Nana to the Tireless and stop Lord Rat from any more mischief.”

  Oliver put his hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Isn’t this where you’re supposed to tell me you are no longer subject to navy requirements and remind me you can do as you please?”

  “Maybe I was wrong, sor. You know I’d do anything for Nana.”

  “So would I, Pete. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

  The plan didn’t require much strategy beyond listening for the colonel’s footsteps and working up an ocean of tears. Just the sound of footsteps in the corridor—never mind if it was the colonel or not—was enough to start her tears bubbling up from that part of her brain where terror was firmly in charge.

  When Oliver stood up and nodded to her, she threw herself into his arms, clinging to him and wailing as though the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were stamping impatiently outside the door, instead of one overweight French colonel.