Читать книгу Regency Christmas Wishes - Carla Kelly - Страница 13

Chapter Two

After a beastly night worrying how long Teddy Winnings had waited for him to reply to her letter, James scraped away at the whiskers on his face, slouched downstairs to the dining room, and settled for a coffee and a roll, which didn’t please Mrs Fillion.

‘I really hope you’re not still troubled over that unfortunate letter,’ she said as she poured him a cup. ‘I worried enough for both of us.’

‘No, no,’ he lied, then repented because he knew Mrs Fillion was intelligent. ‘Aye, I did worry some.’

‘What are you going to do about it?’

He looked around the dining room, wishing there were someone seated who had more courage dealing with Mrs Fillion. He saw none, and he knew most of the room’s occupants. Men could be such cowards.

‘I don’t know,’ he said frankly.

Honesty appeared to be the best policy with Mrs Fillion. She declined further comment, to his relief passed on to her next customer, coffee pot in hand.

He had a headful of things to do, but lying awake nearly all night had pushed one agenda directly to the top of his mind’s disorderly heap. His jaw ached. A man feeling as low as he did could only take the next step, which he did. He drew his boat cloak tight around him and walked to Stonehouse Naval Hospital.

Unwilling to face the nosy clerks in Admin, Jem walked directly to Building Two, where an orderly met him at the door.

‘Where away, captain?’ the man asked, in proper navy fashion.

‘Surgeon Owen Brackett,’ he said. ‘Tell him James Grey would like a word, if it’s convenient.’

The orderly touched his forehead and gestured to a sitting room. It must not have been convenient for Owen, because Jem sat there for at least thirty minutes. Still in a dark mood, he read through the obituaries in the Naval Chronicle, remembering the time he was listed there when his frigate had been declared missing after a typhoon in the Pacific. When the Nautilus finally made port in Plymouth a year later, there had been surprised looks from the harbourmaster. He smiled at the memory.

‘Jem, what brings you here?’ he heard from the doorway.

If Jem had thought he looked tired when he stared into his shaving mirror this morning, he was a bright ray of sunshine compared to Owen Brackett.

‘I thought this damned peace treaty would turn you into a man of leisure,’ he said to Owen as they shook hands.

‘Hardly. Why is it you deep-water sailors have so many ear infections?’ Owen asked.

‘Too many watches on deck in storms,’ Jem replied promptly. ‘If you don’t have time...’

‘I do. What’s the matter?’

Everything, Jem thought. A proposal of marriage I tendered was accepted eleven years ago but I never saw it. ‘My jaw aches,’ he said instead.

Owen gestured for him to come down the hall to his office. ‘Have a seat and tip your head back,’ the surgeon said. With skilled fingers, he probed, asked a few questions with his hand still in Jem’s mouth, and nodded at Jem’s strangled replies.

‘Tense jaw is all. You’ve been gritting your teeth for years,’ he pronounced. ‘It’s a common complaint in the navy.’

‘Surely not,’ Jem said. ‘I don’t grit my teeth.’

‘Probably every time you sail into battle,’ Owen countered.

Jem opened his mouth for more denial, then closed it. The surgeon was probably right. ‘What’s the cure?’

‘Peace. Maybe a wife,’ Owen replied with a smile. He consulted his timepiece. ‘There is a shepherd’s pie cooling below deck in the galley. Join me for luncheon? The ale is surprisingly good here.’

They walked downstairs together, the surgeon talking about gonorrhoea with an orderly who stopped him on the stairs with a question. It was more information than Jem wanted or needed, but he couldn’t interrupt a friend with no spare time, peace or war. Good thing Owen already had a patient wife.

Owen was right about the shepherd’s pie, which had the odd facility of both filling his stomach and loosening his tongue, although that could have been the fault of the ale. A fast eater from years of necessity, he decided to ask Owen’s advice about the letter, while the surgeon served himself another helping.

‘Here I am, the proud possessor of a letter in which a young woman I love, or at least loved, accepted my proposal,’ he concluded. ‘I’m curious to know how she has fared through the years.’

‘You say she is pretty.’

‘Quite, but that’s not the half of it. She was so kind to me.’

Even now Jem clearly remembered the loveliness of Teddy Winnings’ creamy complexion, and the deep pools of compassion in her eyes at first, followed a few weeks later by lively interest when he was coherent and—he hoped—charming. Young he may have been, but he was a gentleman. He had known he was enjoying the company of a young lady properly raised, and behaved himself.

‘Her father ran Winnings Mercantile and Victuallers, a few doors down from the hospital and convent,’ he told Owen Brackett. ‘It was a substantial business, and I imagine she had plenty of young men interested in her.’

‘She’s likely long-married,’ Owen said.

‘Aye.’ He hesitated to say more so Owen filled in.

‘But you’re going to cross the Atlantic and find out, aren’t you?’ the surgeon asked.

There it was, laid out before him, the very thing Jem wanted to do. Owen knew.

‘Better see a tailor right away and get yourself a civilian wardrobe,’ Owen said as he stood up and held out his hand.

Jem shook his hand. ‘Don’t tell anyone. I’m ashore on half pay, but I’m not certain Admiralty House would be happy.’

‘Why not?’ Owen asked as they headed to the main floor again. ‘We’re at peace, and that unpleasantness with the colonies is long over.’ He took a good look at Jem. ‘You want to go back, don’t you, and not just for Miss Winnings.’ It was a statement, not a question.

‘I don’t know what I want,’ Jem replied frankly. ‘I liked living in Massachusetts Colony, but when you’re ten years old and your parents pull all the strings...’ He shrugged. ‘Don’t say anything.’

‘I’ll be as silent as an abbey of Trappist monks,’ Owen assured him. ‘Bon voyage, friend. Let me know at what longitude your jaw ache ends.’

James took himself to his tailor in the Barbican, who opened his ledger to Jem’s previous measurements and congratulated him on maintaining an enviable trimness.

‘It’s easy enough to do in southern latitudes, when you sweat off every ounce of fat,’ Jem said.

Of nightshirts and smallclothes he had an adequate amount. Shoes, too. He assured his tailor that three suits of clothes would suffice, and he could use his navy boat cloak. He reconsidered. As much as he loved the thing, one look would give him away immediately as a member of the Royal Navy, which was perhaps not so wise. He could store his Navy uniforms with Mrs Fillion.

His order complete and promised in two weeks, Jem went next door for a low-crowned beaver hat which struck him as faintly ridiculous, even though the haberdasher assured him he was now à la mode. He knew he was going to miss the added intimidation of his tall bicorn, but as Teddy Winnings had told him once—how was it he was starting to remember their conversations?—he was already tall enough.

He paid a cautious visit to the harbourmaster to inquire about any outbound ships headed for the United States. He knew the harbourmaster as a garrulous man. To his surprise, George Headley didn’t even blink when he mentioned wanting passage to a former enemy country.

Headley leaned closer. ‘This is a special mission, isn’t it?’ he whispered. ‘My lips are sealed, of course.’

‘Good of you,’ Jem said in the same conspiratorial tone, hoping the Lord Almighty wouldn’t smite him dead for deceiving a good, if chatty, man. ‘The less said, the better my chances are that none of Boney’s spies will hear.’

The harbourmaster nodded, his eyes grave, and gestured toward a fair-sized vessel at anchor in the harbour. ‘Captain, the Marie Elise is headed to Baltimore, I believe. Would you like me to hail a waterman to take you out there?’

A mere half hour later, he sat in the captain’s cabin, drinking Madeira and then forking over passage money.

‘We’ll sail for Baltimore on or about the middle of October,’ Captain Monroe said. ‘We’re looking at a seven-week passage, give or take.’ The Yankee gave Jem a shrewd look. ‘You’re a seafaring man.’

‘I am,’ Jem said. ‘Royal Navy. It’s private business.’

The captain nodded, obviously not believing a word of that, and sounded remarkably like the harbourmaster. ‘My lips are sealed. You’ll only be a short distance from Washington, D.C. How is it you already sound slightly American?’

‘Many people on the Devonshire coast have a similar accent,’ Jem hedged, ‘but you are right. I was born in the colony of Massachusetts.’

‘We two countries need to get along, eh?’

‘Indeed we do. I’m lodging at the Drake. Send a boy around when you’re ready to lift anchor,’ Jem said.

‘You’ve been away a long time from Massachusetts?’ Captain Monroe said as he walked topside with a fellow captain, showing him all the courtesies.

‘Twenty-seven years,’ Jem replied, as he sat in the bosun’s chair to be swung over the side to his waiting boat. He wouldn’t have minded scrambling down the chains, but he couldn’t ignore the American captain’s kindness.

‘A lot has changed, Captain,’ the Yankee said as he motioned for the crew to swing him over now.

I hope not everything. Or everyone, Jem thought as he went over the side and waved to his American counterpart. Is it too much to hope that Theodora Winnings remains the same?