Читать книгу Regency Christmas Wishes: Captain Grey's Christmas Proposal / Her Christmas Temptation / Awakening His Sleeping Beauty - Christine Merrill - Страница 19

Chapter Nine

Reticence be damned. Jem took her arm, pulled her toward him and held her while she sobbed. Between breaths that shook her, she murmured something about card games and one losing streak after another. He listened in horror and heard the dreary pattern of a desperate widow gambling at cards, trying to recoup some shred of a formerly prosperous life.

He glanced at Mr Hollinsworth, who seemed involved in sorrow of a different sort, an inward examination. Jem had not known the man a few hours before he had seen him as a jovial fellow, with ready quips. Who was this new fellow?

He held Teddy close on his lap and realised he had not been a callow fool in 1791, infatuated by a pretty face and figure. He had told his story a few times in frigate wardrooms, usually to hoots of laughter, until he had begun to think perhaps he had been a naive boy, recovering from illness, who mistook kindness for attachment of a more permanent nature.

He held her, felt her tears dampening his coat, and understood the nature of what he had felt in 1791, love so deep it shook him even now. ‘Help me, Sir,’ he whispered to that friend of his.

He glanced at Mr Hollinsworth just then to see him nod ever so slightly, his own countenance anything but trivial, or jovial, or shallow or any of those weary adjectives describing someone lightweight.

‘Aye, laddie,’ Mr Hollinsworth said.

He let Teddy’s tears run their course, pressing his handkerchief into her palm. ‘Blow your nose and dry your eyes,’ he said. ‘I will return with you to Green Square and I will buy you. I didn’t come here penniless.’

She didn’t bother with his instruction, beyond wiping her nose, her face stained with tears. ‘You’re too late. She sold me yesterday to William Tullidge. I am only hers until after Christmas. She insisted.’

Mr Hollinsworth gasped. ‘He’s one of the richest men in Savannah. Cotton, land, slaves.’ He shook his head. ‘Influence.’

‘Then I will buy you from him,’ Jem said, undeterred. ‘What did he pay?’

‘Two thousand dollars,’ she said, then looked away, unable to meet what he knew was his own horrified gaze. ‘Do you have that much money?’

He shook his head. He had more, clearly outlined in a legal letter of transfer from Carter and Brustein to any counting house in North America, but such a transfer took months. ‘Not on hand.’

‘Then I am ruined,’ Teddy said. Dignified even in her despair, she got off his lap, straightened her dress and started for the door. She turned back to give him the level gaze that told him he commanded her total attention.

‘Captain Grey, I came here for one reason only. I know there is nothing you can do to save me, at this point.’

‘But I can tr—’

She help up her hand. ‘Stop. Let me speak. I came here solely to see you. I came here to assure my eyes—no my heart—that you are well and whole now. I came here to apologise...’ She gave him a fierce look that closed his mouth again. ‘Deny that you came here for the same reasons only. I dare you.’

She had him. ‘I came here for those precise reasons,’ he admitted, because it was true.

Her hand was on the doorknob now. He knew he had lost, but he had to try once more. He knew what he had to say would brand him forever in her eyes as a fool, but he had to try. He glanced at Mr Hollinsworth for... For what, he had no idea. Support? Compassion? Empathy? And he saw an amazing sight.

Somehow, the little round man seemed to grow a foot taller. His eyes bored into Jem’s eyes, telling him without words that he had a potent ally in this odd quest that had turned into a mission so important that he felt it in his entire being.

‘Listen to him, Theodora,’ Mr Hollinsworth said, and it was no suggestion.

‘Something happened in Charleston,’ Jem began.

Maybe Teddy felt something unusual in the dusty room, same as Jem did. Whatever it was, she walked back and sat on the stool.

‘I learned who you were in Charleston, and it didn’t send me rushing to take ship back to England,’ he said. ‘I stood outside the convent and I must have prayed. Me! I never pray.’

He looked for scepticism in those lovely eyes and saw something else. Eyes still cast modestly toward her bare feet, she smiled.

He couldn’t help his sudden intake of breath. ‘Teddy, that statue,’ he said, and couldn’t think of words, he who had commanded, and fought, and blistered his frigate’s air with admonition.

Total silence filled the room. He watched dust motes dance. Theodora didn’t raise her gaze. She placed her hand near her heart. He waited, barely breathing.

‘You sailed in December of 1790,’ she said. He leaned forward to hear her soft words. ‘In September of ninety-one, a hurricane struck the city.’ Her breath came quicker. ‘The statue outside the convent literally blew away. The winds stripped all the ivy from the buildings. Such a storm.’

As she raised her eyes to his, Jem remembered to breathe. ‘My father commissioned another statue, one in stone this time. I was the model. It was the last thing he did before he died.’ She hesitated.

Now what, he thought. Now what?

‘I think you should challenge William Tullidge to a duel,’ Mr Hollinsworth said, and rubbed his hands with something close to glee.

‘He’ll shoot me dead,’ Jem said immediately. ‘I am a terrible shot.’

The room grew silent again, as the others seemed to expect Jem to say more. ‘A duel is nonsense. I can offer the man a down payment and see if he will wait three or four months for my money to arrive.’

‘Tullidge is impatient and used to matters falling out in his favour,’ Mr Hollinsworth said. ‘I doubt he ever waited a week for a dime owed him.’

‘We have until the day after Christmas,’ Teddy said, dignified as he remembered, but with something else. He could nearly feel her excitement, as though the wheel was suddenly turning in her direction.

‘What about Mrs Winnings?’ Jem asked. He felt sweat dripping down his back as he contemplated staring down the muzzle of a pistol aimed at him. ‘Could she stave him off? What was the nature of this devil’s bargain the two of them made?’

‘Mrs Winnings has finally lost all the money she received for Papa’s store. Her house burned in the fire six years ago,’ Teddy told them both. ‘She gambles at cards...’

‘Badly, I would say,’ Mr Hollinsworth said.

Teddy sighed. ‘She is always certain the next turn of the card will recoup her fortune. I fear gamblers are like that. She staked her house, a poor ruin of a place, mind you, on the turn of the card and lost it.’

‘He played her deliberately, didn’t he?’ Jem asked.

‘Emphatically yes,’ she replied. ‘He’s been eyeing me this past year and more, and it unnerves me. He promised she could keep her house and he would give her two thousand dollars for me.’ She paled visibly at her own words and covered her face with her hands. ‘She was saving me for an emergency, Jem.’

‘That is an unheard-of sum,’ Mr Hollinsworth said, his face pale.

It’s not a penny too high for someone as beautiful as Theodora Winnings, Jem thought, shocked, too, but not as surprised as the printer.

‘I was her insurance against total ruin,’ Teddy said, and bowed her head.

That was all she needed to say. Jem thought about the barrel of that pistol, then dismissed it. He had been on lee shores before, when nothing good was going to happen unless he and his crew exerted supreme effort. His crew had never failed him. He looked around at his crew—Teddy, and a fat printer from somewhere—and grinned at them.

‘Teddy my dear, I can’t explain this, but when I looked at your statue in Charleston I felt some odd assurance that things would work out in my...in our favour. I didn’t even know where you were, but something told me to go to Savannah. I know it’s nonsense, but what is that, measured against a duel to the death with a Southern gentleman?’

His crew laughed, indicating they were as certifiable as he was. Emboldened by their reaction and amazed by his own words, James Grey, usually a thoughtful man who never performed a hasty act, remembered Mrs Fillion’s admonition in Plymouth and decided to have faith.

Further emboldened, he kissed Theodora Winnings’ cheek and told her to go home before she got into trouble with the silly gambler who had controlled a good woman far too long.

‘Heaven knows you are probably in trouble with Mrs Winnings right now,’ he said, as he opened the door for her. ‘What will she do?’

‘She has a silver-backed hairbrush,’ Teddy said with touching dignity. ‘It hurts.’

He stared at her in shocked silence, realising how naïve he was.

‘Too bad I cannot duel with her, too,’ he said, pleased with himself that he controlled the anger threatening him. ‘Do you dare leave her house in the evening?’

‘She goes to her room by nine of the clock,’ Teddy said.

‘I’ll be at Christ Church then.’ He couldn’t help a chuckle, even as he wondered why in God’s name he had any right to be cheerful, not with death by duel on his menu this week. No doubt about it: In the past few months, he had gone through more emotions than Edmund Keene on the Drury Lane stage. ‘The choir has asked me to join them in Christmas carols.’

‘I didn’t know you sang,’ she said.

‘I didn’t either, Teddy,’ he told her, and kissed her lips this time, something he had wanted to do for the past eleven years. ‘There’s a lot I didn’t know, before I ran away to the United States.’

She smiled at that, touched his cheek for a too brief moment with the palm of her hand, and left the printing shop. He watched her hurry away, looking right and left, maybe hoping no one had seen her. Usually a bustling, busy thoroughfare, Bay Street was surprisingly empty. He chalked it up to an unexpected blessing.

‘Well, now, Mr Osgood N. Hollinsworth,’ he began, turning back to face the printer, ‘since you seem confidently sanguine that I should challenge a poor specimen of manhood to a duel, do you have any idea how I can survive it and live happily ever after with the woman I love?’

‘Not one single idea,’ Hollinsworth assured him cheerfully. ‘I have found in life that it’s often best to make up things as I go along.’

‘I wish I found that reassuring,’ Jem replied. ‘Where away?’

‘The residence of Mr William Tullidge, Esquire,’ Hollinsworth replied. ‘You have a date with destiny.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t look so cheerful,’ Jem groused.

‘Have faith, Captain. Didn’t you just say that?’

‘I did,’ Jem replied, his mind resolved. ‘Lead on, sir. What could possibly go wrong?’