Marriage of Mercy Read online

  ‘Do you have a gift for something, Grace?’

  ‘Quimby Crèmes,’ she said promptly and he laughed.

  ‘I love wind and angles!’ His expression was thoughtful. ‘And now I make you rush downstairs and hope I haven’t done a runner.’

  Grace stood up, wrapping her shawl tighter around her. There was still a chill in the April air. She held out her hand to Rob Inman.

  ‘Up you get, sir,’ she told him. ‘I am going back to bed and you are returning to the sofa. Before I tread the stairs, I will visit the kitchen and ask Emery to bring you some porridge. I cooked it last night and sugared it well, so it will go down much easier with cream, rather than cream by itself.’

  ‘You intend to feed me back to health?’

  ‘It is not a mere intention,’ she told him, pinking up because he did have a nice smile. ‘It is a promise.’

  Chapter Ten

  Perhaps Rob Inman’s hillside encounter with the goodness and hospitality that was Lord Thomson had unnerved him sufficiently. He made no more attempts to ‘do a runner’, as he expressed it. Grace was wary enough not to expect too much, but she did find herself looking forward to the parolee’s cheerful good morning from the breakfast room each day.

  Grace knew she was a good cook. She couldn’t have had a happier charge than her parolee, who grew healthier by the day. The proof came after a visit by the village surgeon, who thumped Rob’s chest, listened to his heart, probed at the additional flesh covering his still-visible ribs—so Emery informed her—and pronounced him sound as a roast.

  ‘Grace, this is a signal triumph,’ the doctor told her, as he walked down the stairs, Rob following behind and buttoning his shirt. ‘All latent signs of scurvy are gone. He tells me he sleeps all night and his legs no longer look skinny as a marsh bird’s.’

  ‘I am certain that is more than Gracie ever wanted to know, sir,’ Rob said in good-humoured protest.

  ‘Then I shan’t mention that your piss is a right fine yellow again,’ the doctor said. ‘Ah, yes, I thought that would stop you, you rascal!’

  ‘Nothing is sacred for a parolee,’ Grace said, amused more than embarrassed, since the parolee had such an easy way about him.

  ‘True, Grace,’ he said. ‘My life is certainly not my own.’

  She stopped smiling, because he was serious. In quick time, he heaved a small sigh, glanced out of the window as if looking for something he could not see, then returned to the present, as if determined to make the best of things. She didn’t know what to say.

  * * *

  She thought about the matter through luncheon, which Rob ate with his usual gusto, even though he returned only monosyllables when Grace tried to make conversation.

  Exasperated, she tapped her spoon against the glass to get his attention. The gesture made him smile.

  ‘Aye, Gracie,’ he said, ‘I’m paying attention.’

  ‘No, you’re not. You’re miles away and I am getting weary of you!’ she declared. ‘You’re worse than a bored child.’

  He startled her by slamming his hand on the table. The glasses jumped; so did she.

  ‘How would you feel if a man you admired had to die so you could be in a warm place with food?’ he snapped, his face red, his lips a tight line.

  Grace leaped to her feet, feeling the blood drain from her face. Hotheaded, her first instinct was to snap back and assure him her life was no holiday on the seashore. Some kindlier angel of her own nature seemed to hush her then. She was silent in the face of his terrible loss and at such a price.

  ‘I apologise,’ she said finally, when her own temper subsided. ‘I should have thought before I spoke. Let me leave you alone for a while.’

  Perhaps his own kindlier angel was hard at work, too, because he sighed. ‘Nay, Grace, sit down.’ He looked into the distance, a place she had no wish to visit, because she had spent an hour of her life in Dartmoor and that was enough. ‘Why did you pick me?’

  Because I hadn’t a brain in my head, she thought, irritated again. Calmer in another moment, she sat down, but not as close as before. ‘I can’t answer that.’

  ‘Nor should I have asked.’ He returned to that distant landscape, then visibly roused himself. ‘Give me something to do, then,’ he told her. ‘Anything.’

  She considered the matter calmly. This parolee was obviously her trial to bear, and she had to do better. ‘Very well, sir. Since you are mine until this war is over, apparently, we are going to the bakery.’

  * * *

  Quimby was no more than a mile away, but she couldn’t help but notice how he flagged as the village came in sight.

  ‘Maybe this wasn’t a good idea,’ Grace said, slowing down and feeling her own guilt at rushing him.

  ‘It’s an excellent idea, Gracie my keeper,’ he assured her. ‘How will I ever get strong again if I don’t exert myself? Uh, is the bakery on this side of the village?’

  Thankfully, it was. ‘Right there,’ she told him, ‘where all the people are.’

  He eyed the small crowd with some wariness. ‘Are the natives friendly?’ he asked, only half in jest, from the sound of his voice. ‘When we were captured off Plymouth Sound, the Royal Navy paraded us through the streets of Plymouth. Ever have a chamber pot dumped on your head, Gracie? I thought not.’

  She gasped. ‘They didn’t!’

  ‘They did, on more than one street.’

  ‘That’s terrible!’

  He chuckled. ‘We thought so, too.’

  ‘Surely you were allowed to wash when you got to Dartmoor.’

  ‘My, but you have an exalted opinion of a prison,’ he told her. ‘They really aren’t that accommodating.’

  She hadn’t meant to pull such a long face, but he had noticed.

  ‘Buck up,’ he said, still eyeing the citizens. ‘I don’t see anyone with a pitchfork.’

  Pitchforks, no, but she couldn’t overlook the wary faces as she came to the bakery. He’s harmless, she wanted to tell them. He’s not so different from us: just an ordinary man caught in an extraordinary situation.

  The afternoon was warm and the door to the bakery stood open. Grace took a deep breath of yeast and spices, which never failed to put the heart in her body. She smiled at her neighbours. ‘This is my parolee, Captain Duncan. He’s a good man and he’s far from home.’

  Her words sounded silly to her ears. What was she thinking?

  ‘And you know me,’ she added almost unnecessarily, because they did know how far she had fallen. Those of her own social sphere didn’t concern themselves with her on any level now. Standing there, Grace suddenly realised she preferred it that way.

  ‘Aye, we know ye!’ someone called, the words cheerful. Others laughed and stepped away from the door to let them enter.

  Her parolee let out a quiet breath when they entered the shop. Mrs Wilson stood behind the counter, arranging two loaves of potato bread in a string bag for the vicar’s maid of all work. Her eyes lit up when she saw Grace. ‘Well, there now,’ she said in her gruff voice. ‘Look what you dragged in.’

  Grace laughed. ‘He won’t eat much and I promise to take care of him. May I keep him?’

  Everyone in the shop laughed. Rob relaxed noticeably.

  ‘Only until the war is over, Gracie,’ Mrs Wilson said. ‘So you’re Captain Duncan? I wondered when she would bring you here.’

  ‘Aye, I’m Daniel and I’m bored, Mrs Wilson,’ he said frankly.

  Mrs Wilson called over her shoulder, ‘Mr Wilson! Front and centre! Gracie’s brought us another stray!’

  ‘Another one? Mrs Wilson, has she harboured other felons and miscreants of the American variety?’ Rob teased.

  ‘Cats, mostly,’ the woman replied, ‘which I admire, because we’re free of mice.’

  ‘I’m hardly that useful,’ Rob said.

  Mrs Wilson shrugged. ‘You’re a man, I don’t expect much.’

  Grace had to turn away because she knew she could not hide her smile, or her relief. Mrs W
ilson was treating her prisoner like every other man who entered the shop.

  ‘All right, you two, no more wrangling,’ Grace scolded with mock severity.

  ‘My thought precisely,’ Mrs Wilson said. ‘Time to make yourself useful, young man.’

  She had opened her mouth to give him orders when Mr Wilson came into the bakery from the storeroom, a sack of flour on his shoulder. Like his wife, he shook hands with Rob Inman. His eyes were lively with curiosity. He stood there with the heavy sack on his shoulder as though it weighed nothing, listening to Grace explain her parolee’s presence in the bakery.

  ‘He’s bored of the dower house, but I must accompany him everywhere he goes, Mr Wilson,’ Grace explained. ‘If I don’t, Lord Thomson will shoot him on sight, according to the parole. Since he is my responsibility, I want Mrs Wilson to put him to work.’

  ‘What better place to regain your strength than a bakery, eh, Captain?’ Mr Wilson asked. ‘Lead on, Mrs Wilson!’

  Mrs Wilson set Rob to work at the bread trough, stirring the mass of flour as Grace added more, then poking and prodding at it with the heels of his hands until it turned into bread dough. Mrs Wilson supervised, watching the dough and then watching the captain. Grace had already set herself to work at a smaller trough, preparing a batch of Quimby Crèmes, alert for the tinkle of the shop bell, so she could serve customers.

  Grace hardly had to pay attention to her own labours; they were second nature. She found herself touched by Mrs Wilson, a no-nonsense woman who never suffered fools gladly. When Rob started to flag, she ordered him to sit down and crack walnuts as Mr Wilson took over at the trough. It was done so smoothly that Rob never had a moment to be embarrassed about his weakness.

  Grace couldn’t help her feeling of relief. Good, she thought, as she rolled out the dough. Let us send you back to your Nantucket healthy and alive. Thirty pounds a year, Gracie, she reminded herself. You can tolerate even an American for thirty pounds a year.

  * * *

  They made the walk to Quimby every day that week, and then the next, as Rob’s strength gradually returned. It became his job to add flour to the big troughs where Mrs Wilson and Grace kneaded the yeasty dough into bread. Mrs Wilson was never shy about splitting open at least one hot loaf a day, slathering on butter and handing him the heel, after she discovered how much Rob liked that slice. At first Mrs Wilson dared him with her eyes to make much of what she did. Once she saw that he earned that heel and more by relieving Mr Wilson, who suffered silently from arthritis, Rob Inman became a welcome part of her day.

  Grace wished that the residents of her little town could understand that Captain Duncan—she had to think of him as Captain Duncan—was not a man to fear, even though he was American at heart, if not by birth. The Wilsons saw his kind character revealed every day in small ways. Grace wanted others to see this, too, but maybe it was too much to ask of folk who had known a generation of war.

  After the Wilsons, Quimby’s children were the next to succumb to the American prisoner’s curious charm. It didn’t happen right away. When they walked from the dower house to Quimby, the children often delighted in calling him ‘Foul Yankee,’ or chanting, ‘Prisoner, prisoner’.

  Rob took it all in his stride, though, wearing an amused half-smile on his face, while Grace wanted to thrash each child. Once he had even gently squeezed her shoulder, telling her to cool off. ‘Gracie, Gracie, this is nothing,’ he murmured, his lips close to her ear. ‘Remember the chamber pots?’

  The change came when he did a kindness to Bobby Gentry. The boy’s father had not returned from Trafalgar, never to even know he had a son. It was the smallest kindness. Grace watched the whole event from the bakery window.

  The week had been a stormy one, with rainfall marring the beauty of Devon in late June. The rain had cancelled most of the bonfires lit all over the shire, to celebrate the end of war and the arrival of the Allies in London, and no one was happy about it, especially the children. They took out their disappointment on Rob Inman, pelting him with mud as they walked to Quimby. When Grace tried to stop them, Rob just shook his head and good-naturedly told her to move away so she wouldn’t be a target, too.

  He had been sweeping out dried mud in the shop, while Grace arranged the week’s stale bread in the bin, ready for the poor of Quimby tomorrow. She looked up to watch Bobby Gentry coming for his mother’s weekly loaves. He was picking his way through the puddles in that light-hearted way of children. This time, he misjudged the depth of a puddle and sank to his knees.

  ‘Bobby!’ Grace exclaimed. Through the window, she watched him check his pockets in growing alarm, scrabbling in the mud. ‘I think he lost his penny.’

  Rob leaned the broom against the counter, his eyes on the little boy in such distress. ‘Then there’ll be no bread in Bobby’s house this week?’

  ‘And little else.’

  ‘Find me a penny, Grace,’ he said, holding out his hand to her without even taking his eyes from Bobby, in tears now.

  Without a word, she took a penny from the change box and gave it to him. He was out of the door moments after his fingers closed over the coin.

  Grace watched, a lump in her throat, as Rob skirted the larger puddles, then walked directly into the one where the little boy was mired. Without a word, he picked up Bobby Gentry and set him on comparatively dry ground, then returned to the puddle, running his hand in the mud, his face firm with concentration, until he held up the penny from the till.

  Bobby clapped his hands, his own mud and misery forgotten when he saw the penny. Rob handed him the coin, then made him stand still as he took out a handkerchief and wiped down the boy’s trousers and shoes. Grace noticed with a pang that the captain was barefoot now, his old shoes trapped in the mud.

  Bobby had noticed the same thing. His lip began to quiver again, until with a comical face, Rob began to root around in the mud again, searching for his wretched shoes. He brought them out of the mud hole with a crow of triumph that made Bobby laugh. When the little boy came inside the bakery for his stale bread, Grace took the penny with a flourish and returned it to the change box. Mrs Wilson insisted on adding half-a-dozen Quimby Crèmes, an unheard-of luxury for the Gentry household.

  * * *

  The captain’s ruined shoes remained outside the bakery door that evening as they walked home. ‘I’ll write to Mr Selway in Exeter and send him a tracing of your foot, so you can have new shoes,’ Grace said. ‘I should have done that weeks ago.’

  ‘No hurry,’ Rob said. ‘It’s summer.’

  * * *

  In the morning, his muddy shoes were gone and he went barefoot.

  * * *

  Two days later, they had been replaced by a new pair of shoes—not fancy, but respectable, such as a workman would wear—with a cryptic note stuffed in them. ‘We liked Bobby’s da.’ That was all. The American held the shoes in his hands for a long moment, then spent a longer moment in the back room, until Mrs Wilson began to mutter, ‘What a soft touch he is’, even as her own eyes glittered with tears.

  The children of Quimby never teased Rob again as he walked into town with Grace, especially after Bobby Gentry—one of the original tormentors—walked beside the captain and took his hand.

  What won over Quimby entirely was the day Lady Adeliza Tutt nearly came to an untimely end in the bakery.

  Chapter Eleven

  Not that anyone had any real love for Adeliza Tutt—quite the contrary. She had worn out many a welcome in Quimby. But she was the widow of Barnabas Tutt, a local butcher. Tutt might have started as a butcher, but he’d had a knack for property. His prodigious acumen had earned him a fortune and a knighthood from the Regent, who had borrowed extensively and found this a convenient way to pay the debt. Until that event, the Tutts had been as common as ditch water. They still were, but Lady Tutt had been ‘elevated’, and she let no one forget it.

  Rob had asked about Lady Tutt after other Quimby residents had begun to thaw, following his rescue of Bobby Gentr
y. ‘Some people are warming to me, but not her,’ he commented, once her ladyship was out of hearing.

  Lady Tutt had declared in round tones for everyone in the bakery to hear that she couldn’t imagine why loyal English folk like the Wilsons would tolerate his presence. Wasn’t he a pirate, after all?

  ‘A privateer, Lady Tutt,’ Grace had said. ‘There is a difference.’

  Lady Tutt had fixed her with a lengthy stare. ‘Grace Curtis, we all know you have slipped, but you’re going too far to champion someone your father never would have even noticed.’

  ‘It’s not you, Rob,’ she said later, as they walked home, hoping he hadn’t heard, or didn’t understand, Lady Tutt’s comments directed at her. ‘She’s pretentious. I suppose that happens to people elevated to a title, rather than born to one. You’re fair game.’

  ‘I certainly am,’ he replied cheerfully.

  * * *

  Maybe Rob saw Lady Tutt’s continuing disapproval as a challenge. Grace smiled at his obvious attempts to please the old ruin. He couldn’t even coax a smile from Lady Tutt’s companion, a mousy creature with one sole aim in life: to remain employed without suffering too many slings and arrows from an exacting employer who considered herself vastly superior to everyone.

  ‘Should I tell Lady Tutt how divine she looks in…in… What is that dreadful colour she wears most often?’ Rob asked her one morning.

  ‘Puce,’ Grace whispered.

  ‘Sounds vile. Calling it plain brown would be more charitable.’

  ‘I dare say it would,’ Grace agreed as she held out her hand for the slab of dough he had sliced off for the bread pan. ‘Lady Tutt will always prefer the French word.’

  He came closer so no one in the shop could overhear. ‘Maybe I will comment favourably upon the fact that, for a fat lady, she doesn’t sweat much.’

  Grace turned away and put her apron to her mouth.

  ‘You know, if you keep that expression too long, your face will freeze,’ he said.