Marrying the Captain Page 9

  “Any regrets?”

  She saw only kindness in his expression, which made her heart turn over. “Never. I’ve always known I was illegitimate. Gran never sugarcoats anything.” She dabbed at her eyes again, but she was through crying. “One regret. I wish I had taken my Bath wardrobe to Plymouth, because I could have sold those lovely clothes for food and other things the Mulberry needed.”

  “That’s the spirit,” he said. “You left everything behind?”

  “Nearly, sir. I doubt even the mail coach would have taken me in my shimmy.”

  He laughed. “You’re a dab hand, Nana. I think you’ve inherited Gran’s shrewdness, which is hardly a bad thing. Ever hear from that scoundrel again?”

  “No, thank God.” She knew she could trust him, no matter how he really felt about her disclosure, but she had to ask, “I trust this story I have told you will go nowhere.”

  “No fears on that account. You told Gran and Pete, didn’t you?”

  She nodded. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but it just spilled out.”

  “So the old boy’s in debt, is he?” Captain Worthy asked.

  “I certainly didn’t help his pocketbook,” she said dryly. “I wonder how he plans to resolve his dilemma now?”

  “Good question,” the captain replied. He put his hand to his heart. “Nana, that’s all the excitement I can manage for one night. You’ll have to excuse me.”

  “Certainly.” She got up and opened the door, knowing that he would probably leave the Mulberry tomorrow and take up residence at Drake’s Inn. What else would any man do?

  He stood in the doorway a moment, as though reluctant to leave her, which surprised her. “I’ll be at the dry docks tomorrow. Three weeks of choler and frustration there will make the blockade seem like a visit home at Christmas.”

  She knew she wasn’t imagining things when she noted the wistfulness in his voice. He had no home. She had asked him that first night if there was someone she could send for to help nurse him. Of the two of us, I believe I am the luckier, she thought. Lord, smite me when I whine.

  He did something then that startled her. The captain gently cupped her face in his hands and then touched his forehead to hers, holding it there until they were breathing in unison.

  “Remember this, Nana—not a bit of what happened was your fault.”

  She nodded, treasuring the feel of her head against his, breathing deep of him and the reassurance she felt. “You would still be my friend, then?” she asked.

  “I would be your friend.”

  He went upstairs to his chamber slowly, his feet feeling as though they carried lead weights. As if in weird opposition to his feet, his mind raced backward and forward, as he thought through every word he had written only that afternoon to Lord Ratliffe. He knew he had glossed over the state of affairs at the Mulberry, painting a far rosier portrait of the situation because of his own intuitive uneasiness. He only hoped it was enough.

  He finally decided there wasn’t anything he had written to cause Lord Ratliffe to turn his attention again to his daughter in Plymouth. The biggest problem he could foresee, in his future intercourse with the man, was how to avoid calling him out and shooting him dead.

  In bed, he stewed about that for another hour, wondering if he could appeal to the First Lord and request that someone other than Lord Ratliffe hear his reports from the blockade. He had plenty of time to think up a plausible reason why, considering that he should not have to see the man for another month or two.

  Still, he worried. Maybe he should have painted an even rosier picture of the situation in Plymouth. Lord Ratliffe was surely still on a financial lee shore. Suppose he decided to prey upon his daughter again?

  If he did, what could you do, anyway? Oliver wondered. It was not a thought to send a man comfortably into the arms of Morpheus. He had barely dropped off to exhausted slumber before morning came, and with it, Matthew knocking on his door, bringing breakfast.

  Gran must have decided he was fit enough for bacon, eggs and black pudding, as well as a much smaller bowl of porridge. If only Nana had come along with the food, too, to sit with him while he ate. She was nowhere in sight.

  He had to ask Matthew, and it reassured him to know that Nana had gone early with Pete to the fish market. He took his time dressing, hoping that Nana would return before he had to leave for dry docks. All he wanted was a glimpse.

  When he had given up hope he would see her, he opened the front door to leave, and found Nana sweeping the steps. She looked the same as yesterday; prettier, if anything. The sun was shining this morning, which lent a dull red glow to the auburn in her hair.

  He gestured for Matthew to go ahead, carrying his leather paper case, and looking serious at the importance of his duty. With a half smile on her face, Nana leaned on her broom and watched the boy go. She moved off the narrow walkway so he wouldn’t miss a step.

  “Matthew, you’ll be back here in a few days, if you think Captain Worthy can spare you,” she told him.

  The powder monkey bobbed his head. “Aye, miss.”

  “I’ll come back tonight, if I think the Tireless can spare me.” Oliver wondered at the surprise in her eyes at this simple declaration. Surely she didn’t think last night’s revelation had in any way lessened his regard for her?

  She took a moment to recover. “There you go, quizzing me again,” she chided. “Of course you will be back. Sal has all your shirts in the washroom and I will tell her to hold them hostage, should you decide you prefer another lodging to ours.”

  Not in a million years, he thought. To his gratification, she leaned the broom against the door and walked with him to the waiting hackney. Again he had the same, indescribable feeling of peace, as though this lovely creature were his wife, walking him to the conveyance that would take him back to sea. It was prosaic beyond belief, but he knew the memory would keep him warm this winter on the blockade.

  He looked at the pansies in their pot by the front gate. They appeared none the worse for wear, after his poor, if involuntary, treatment of them.

  “I hope you didn’t have to…to…Who cleaned them up?”

  “I did,” she replied, looking up at him with something close to glee in her brown eyes. “Everything deserves a second chance.”

  She still stood there until he was inside the hackney and the driver was gathering up the reins. “Dinner is at six,” she said as she stepped back and waved.

  Yes, dear, he thought; I’ll be home. He noticed Matthew was watching her, too. “What do you think of her?” he asked.

  Matthew sighed. “Oh, sir,” he said, and nothing more.

  I agree, Oliver thought. Two chowderheads here. Perhaps we’re both safer on the blockade. All we have to worry about there is keeping the French in port, and staying alive as we do it. The fewer distractions from England, the better.

  That was the rub. Less than a week ago, he would have believed it. Now, torn by the simple fact that he had to spend nearly ten hours or so away from Nana Massie, he knew he was lying to himself, which might even be worse than lying to others.

  Nana’s resolve to not think about Captain Oliver Worthy—at least until he returned that evening—lasted less than ten minutes. It might have lasted another fifteen, if only she had sent Sal upstairs to retrieve the rest of his laundry. But Sal was busy washing dishes, so she went instead.

  The captain had left the rest of his whites outside his door.

  He had wrapped some coins into a piece of paper, wound it shut at each end and scrawled “Sal” on it. Nana hefted the paper and smiled. “Captain, you’re too generous,” she said out loud. “Bless you.”

  She picked up the laundry, tucking it over her hip. Her mistake was looking down at his nightshirt, then raising it to her face to breathe in its odd fragrance of brine, mixed with wheat from the poultice, and the pleasant odor of someone else’s body. She thought she detected a hint of bay rum, but mostly it was the smell of ocean salt, which seemed to combine within i
t the sharp tang of tar and something milder, which she decided was just the captain himself.

  Nana rubbed it against her cheek. She knew she had done the right thing last night by telling him so plainly what her father had done. If it did not serve to remind Captain Worthy of her own illegitimacy and utter unfitness for genteel society, then it had reminded her. She wiped her eyes with his nightshirt, grateful, at least, that he had said, “I would be your friend.”

  She knew she would be busy in the morning, and she was. The afternoon surprised her, though, because it brought two lodgers to the Mulberry. One was an artificer, who had come to fix one of the few complicated mechanisms in the rope-works at the dry docks. “Two days at most, mum,” he had told Gran when he came inside the entrance hallway. “I hear you keep a good, simple table.”

  The other was the wife of Daniel Brittle, sailing master on the Tireless. “I daren’t take my man home for five days, even to Torquay, because he would only pine for the ship the whole, livelong time,” Nora Brittle confided as Nana showed her upstairs to a room at the back of the inn. “This way I can see him.” She winked elaborately, and Nana blushed.

  I can’t let this pass, Nana thought, as she added more linen to the room’s washstand. “Mrs. Brittle, may I ask how you heard about the Mulberry? We’re off the main streets.”

  Mrs. Brittle had no objection to a chat. “Dan’s been staying aboard the Tireless, but Captain Worthy suggested we take up residence in your inn. He told my man, ‘It’s quiet, clean and the food takes no liberties.’”

  “That sounds like Captain Worthy,” Nana replied, laughing.

  “You know him, dearie?”

  “A little,” she replied, feeling the blush rise to her cheeks. “He’s staying here, too.”

  Mrs. Brittle opened the wardrobe and hung up her cloak. “Dan says he’s the best man in the Channel Fleet, and he wouldn’t sail with none other.” She looked at Nana, observing her high color. “I was going to say he’s kind, too, but it looks to me like you already know.”

  Nana could only nod, as she felt the heat increase in her face. “He’s been good to us,” she managed to say.

  Mrs. Brittle wasn’t through. “Dan told me only this afternoon, ‘I don’t know what miracles they work at the Mulberry, but they’ve raised Captain Worthy from the dead, like Lazarus!’”

  “The captain did look bow down when he came here,” Nana agreed, remembering a little Plymouth cant that would have sent Miss Pym to her smelling salts.

  “Keep up the good work, dearie!” Mrs. Brittle said as Nana left her to her unpacking.

  Oh, Lord, Nana thought as she hurried down two flights of stairs. He is getting us lodgers. Bless the man. We can open the dining room. When she reached the kitchen, she grabbed Sal around the waist and swung her around. Gran beamed at her from the Rumford, where she was stirring a kettle of soup.

  Nana looked again. They hadn’t had to use that size kettle in more than two years.

  She hugged Gran next, giving her a kiss on the cheek, but let go when the doorbell clanged again.

  “Better get that, Nana. If it’s another lodger, we serve dinner from six to seven!”

  It was two lodgers, representatives from the royal armourer, delivering cannon for the new ship under construction in dry docks. “Just tonight, miss,” the older man told her, as he put down enough coins for them both. “But we’ll be back with another lot next week, if you’ve room.”

  “We’ll have room,” she assured him. Oh my, yes, we’ll make room, if we don’t have it, she thought.

  Captain Worthy came back to the Mulberry at half past six, looking used up and weary. She had been watching for him since six, and opened the door as he came up the walk, moving slowly.

  She stood on tiptoe to take his cloak from him, which he relinquished with a sigh. “Long day,” he told her. “That damage to the stern was so great I’m fair gobsmacked that we even limped into port.” He just looked at her a moment, and then he started to smile. “It appears to me that you’re about ready to dance up and down, Nana. Either you’re really glad to see me, or something good has been going on here.”

  It’s both, she thought. It’s both. “The dining room is open now and there are five lodgers!” she exclaimed. “But you know that already, don’t you?”

  He shrugged, already looking better. “All I did was drop a few hints.”

  Before she even knew what he was doing, he kissed her on the cheek. It was too brief for her to take issue with him; she wasn’t sure she would have, anyway.

  “You deserve some good fortune at the Mulberry,” he told her simply, then turned and started up the stairs. “I’ll be down soon.”

  She watched him go. Before he reached the first landing, he was whistling.

  Chapter Eight

  Nana discovered one problem with more lodgers. Because the dining room was open again, Captain Worthy couldn’t invite himself into their living quarters for dinner. By the time dishes were washed and the kitchen prepared for breakfast, it was too late for more than a smile or a few words on the stairs.

  She told herself it didn’t matter. The captain had a little more than three weeks to see his ship worthy for sea, his men properly housed during the lull and all made ready for a return to the Channel Fleet. She had no place in the scheme of things. Anything else, particularly after her candid conversation about her origins, was just her wishful thinking.

  Or not. She knew he was resourceful, but Captain Worthy exceeded her expectations by solving her dilemma by the next evening’s meal. The solution came in the form of a note delivered to the Mulberry in the afternoon by Matthew and taken directly to Gran, who handed it to her to read.

  “‘Mrs. Massie,’” she read out loud, “‘I regret I am unable to complete my duties at the dry docks in time to arrive at the Mulberry before dinner hours have expired. Would it be too much trouble for you to keep something warm on the hob and let me eat in the kitchen for the next few weeks? Yours, Worthy.’”

  Mine, Worthy, she told herself, when she put down the note and looked at Gran, who was looking back, a serious expression on her face. I know that look, Nana thought. Perhaps I should allay her fears and remind myself that Captain Worthy is busy at dry docks and nothing else.

  “Gran, he already knows about my background. I told him, that night we started Robinson Crusoe.” It hurt, but she added. “You needn’t worry about the captain. He has more sense.”

  “I suppose I needn’t worry,” Gran echoed. She turned back to the veal cutlets she was dredging.

  Nana hugged her. “Gran, I’m not my mother.”

  Gran continued her dredging of the meat more vigorously, until there was a great puff of flour around the pan. “No, you are not,” she said, her voice weary.

  How could I be so unkind? Nana asked herself. “I’m sorry, Gran,” she said simply. “I never knew her, but I shouldn’t be so heartless as to forget that you did. Besides, he simply needs more time at the dock. There can be no other reason.”

  Oliver felt few qualms that night as he arrived at the Mulberry long after seven o’clock. He only hoped he had not been observed in his arrival, because he came not from the direction of the dry dock, but from the Barbican, where Brustein and Carter had their office. He had been too long at sea, where he was used to quick obedience, to understand why two solicitors would take so long to draw up a simple transfer of a minuscule amount of his funds to an account for the Mulberry.

  The figure wasn’t large, just a modest sum to keep the Mulberry in food, no matter how much prices rose as the war deepened. And the better the bill of fare, the more likely the Mulberry would see a steady influx of lodgers. He was no fool. The inn would never have the trade of the large inns closer to the waterfront, but that was no reason to give it the heave-ho.

  David Brustein and Elias Carter had done their best to dissuade him. “Sometimes little businesses are better off gone, Captain, if you’ll pardon me,” Brustein argued. “All you are doing is
prolonging the inevitable. The Mulberry Inn should have closed years ago.”

  They were beginning to irritate him, because he wasn’t used to argument. He was hungry, too, and even more eager for the sight of Nana. He looked at his watch.

  “Gentlemen, is there some part of this reckoning you do not understand? I’ve stated what I want you to do with my own money, and you are giving me grief.” He set his watch on the table between them. “If the second hand sweeps around one more time on this discussion, I will conclude that you are tired of my business. I can remedy that tomorrow morning with a visit two doors down to Wallace and Sons.”

  That’s better, he thought, as Mr. Brustein leaped to his feet, stammering apologies. Oliver pocketed his watch, told them he would explain the matter of funds to Mrs. Massie and left their office.

  Gran would know what to do. Instinct told him she was a careful woman of business, in spite of Brustein and Carter’s opinions. He dared them to keep a struggling inn open as long as the redoubtable Mrs. Massie had.

  And then he was home again, and there was Nana at the front door. He couldn’t believe she was watching for him, mainly because he didn’t think it was healthy for his opinion of himself to dream someone cared that much. He decided she was checking the progress of the wind, which was blowing a gale from the northwest: perfect wind to make for Spain. Thank God the Tireless was in no shape to sail. Not even the king himself could have dragged him aboard right then.

  That is a first, he told himself. Better not let it get around the fleet that Captain Worthy actually preferred a storm in a port.

  He let her take his soggy boat cloak, bending down a little to make it easier. He could have done that himself, and quicker, but he enjoyed the feel of her arms against his back as she took the cloak from him.

  “I’m sorry, but we ran out of veal cutlets,” she told him. “Will soup do?”

  He nodded, scarcely hearing, because all he really wanted to do was look at her, storing up her beauty like a sea sponge took on water.