Читать книгу Convenient Christmas Brides - Louise Allen - Страница 15

Chapter Five

Joe enjoyed a good dinner at the Gentleman Johnny, propping a book on navigation against the water jug while he ate shepherd’s pie—two dishes—brown bread with butter—not rancid—and rice pudding with sultanas and figs. He decided against coffee.

He slept well enough, thanks entirely to a bedwarmer with just the right amount of coals in it, well wrapped in flannel. He dreamed, but of nothing more strenuous than hauling down and raising signal flags with amazing speed. Somehow—how curious was the overactive brain—the final signal was ‘brown eyes’. He woke up with a smile on his face.

* * *

Late breakfast was another pleasure: all the bacon he wanted, eggs fried so carefully that the yolks quivered, but remained intact, and toasted brown bread with plum jam. Coffee suited him, well sugared and with fresh cream, another novelty.

His scar hurt less. Too bad he did not have the name and direction of the kind lady who had pressed that jar of goose grease into his palm on the mail coach. He would have sent her a letter of thanks. Maybe in a week he could work up the nerve to clip the sutures.

He sat by the window, looking out at a slight drizzle that seemed certain to dissipate any moment. He wondered whether to stay another night to read and continue eating well, or return to Torquay and bother the shipwright about repairs.

His gaze focused on a young person, head down, cloak-enveloped, pushing towards the Gentleman Johnny. When she looked up, he recognised the young maid from the Newsomes’ home. He poured himself another half-cup of coffee and looked around when the same child approached his table and peered at him, too shy to say anything.

‘Aye, miss?’

She stepped closer, looked at the ceiling and recited, ‘I am to give you this, Captain Everest, and they will not take no for an answer.’ She held out a note.

So he was Captain Everest to a Kentish maid? Hiding a smile, he took it from her and nodded to the innkeeper. ‘Can you find some more toast and jam for this little lady?’

‘I can and will, sir. Come along to the kitchen, Susan.’

He read the note. ‘So you won’t take no for an answer?’ he asked out loud, since the inn’s dining room was empty. ‘What can have happened?’

Dear Captain Everard,

We were remiss in our hospitality to you last night. Would you return and spend a few days here? We’d like to hear stories about our son on your ship. We hope you have time to humour us.

Sincerely,

Mr and Mrs Augustus Newsome

I suppose there is a first time for everything, Joe thought, as he pocketed the note, drained the coffee cup and stood up.

To go or not to go? He had faithfully discharged his last duty to a crew member. He owed the Newsomes nothing more. He shook his head. They owed him nothing, either. Better to let the dog of duty turn around a few times, settle down and go to sleep. They would get on with their lives and he with his.

All the same, he knew he owed the Newsomes a response and it was easy enough to write one because it was the truth. While Susan ate her toast and jam, Joe procured a piece of paper and a pencil from the keep and wrote a reply there in the kitchen. He folded it and held it out to the child. ‘Take this back to the Newsomes, if you please,’ he said and took out a coin. ‘And this is for your troubles.’

His heart sank when her face fell. ‘Sir, I was supposed to bring you back,’ she said.

‘Oh, I can’t...’ he started to say, but stopped when she put down her toast and folded her arms, refusing to take the note or the coin. She was almost as tough as the men he commanded, looking him in the eyes, her gaze not wavering.

He reconsidered. What was a few days, in the larger scheme of things? ‘Very well, miss. Let me get my duffel and pay the keep, since you insist.’

She had a winning smile. ‘Finish your toast,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back.’

Upstairs, he spent one cowardly moment wondering what would happen if he refused to come downstairs. How long would she wait? Deciding such chicken-heartedness was not worthy of an officer and gentleman who had prevailed at Camperdown, the Battle of the Nile and, for God’s sake, Trafalgar, Joe bowed to the inevitable and packed his duffel. He paid the grinning landlord and joined Susan in the dining room.

‘We’d better go now, Susan,’ he told her. ‘Though we’re going to get wet.’

They did, but it wasn’t a trial, because Susan proved to be a charming companion. She had a tongue on wheels and knew something about the occupants of every cottage they passed. By the time they arrived at Chez Newsome, he knew that Mrs Buttars was due to be confined any day, Paddy Bennett liked his rum a little too well, the vicar’s sermons were so boring that several of his parishioners wagered each Sunday on whether they would exceed thirty minutes. And Millicent Overby had got herself into trouble of some sort that Miss Newsome refused to divulge.

‘I want to know what sort of trouble she is in,’ Susan concluded as the house came in sight. ‘Perhaps Miss Newsome would tell you.’

‘I’m not that brave,’ he admitted, even though he wanted to wander out of the maid’s hearing and have a good laugh.

‘But you’re Royal Navy, sir,’ the irrepressible Susan reminded him. ‘You must be a hero because you have stitches.’

He decided that logic was not her strong suit and assured her that anyone could come by stitches in the navy.

She seemed ready to argue, except that the front door opened and Miss Newsome stood there to usher them in. He still hoped that an afternoon of discussion would be enough to satisfy their curiosity about their son and brother. Long acquaintance with grief had informed him that most people needed time to turn catastrophe into acceptance.

He tried to explain this to Miss Newsome as they stood together in the hall, but she wasn’t buying it.

‘Captain Everard, my mother wants you to stay a few days,’ she explained again in her kindly way. ‘I confess she surprised me with her request, but I assure you that Mama, once set on a course, does not usually deviate from it.’

He felt some disappointment at her answer. Somewhere in his brain in a corner not occupied by the alarms of war, he hoped the request had come from Miss Newsome, as well.

‘Please, sir.’

‘I don’t wish to upset her further,’ he hedged. He noticed that Miss Newsome had raised her hand as if to rest it on his sleeve, then lowered it. She smelled divinely of roses.

‘She will be more disappointed if you choose not to stay,’ Miss Newsome told him, then smiled. ‘Let me show you to your room, Captain.’

‘I am being managed by females,’ he protested, but mildly, as she indicated the stairs. ‘First Susan bullies me into walking here and now I must stay on pain of disappointing a lady who I was certain yesterday wished to see me no more. And here you are, looking at me with...’

Good God, someone stop me, he thought, as his neckcloth felt tighter and somehow hot. One just doesn’t blurt out ‘big brown eyes’ to an acquaintance of scarcely twenty-four hours.

To his relief, Miss Newsome laughed at his feeble diatribe. ‘You told us yesterday that you have no pressing engagements of a nautical nature, since your ship is in dry dock,’ she reminded him.

He had the good grace to know when he was defeated and capitulated, thinking of moments when it was better to salute as the ship went down. What did a few days matter?

So there he was, following a managing female up a flight of stairs and admiring her hips in motion under her dress.

I need a holiday far from here, he thought. Perhaps Constantinople or Madagascar.

She opened a door on a room that Joe knew at once must have been her brother’s. ‘Make yourself comfortable, Captain Everard,’ Miss Newsome said. ‘If you would come downstairs in a half hour, Mama would like to pour tea and hear about Davey.’

He managed some pleasantry which must have satisfied Miss Newsome, because she smiled and closed the door after saying, ‘One half-hour, if you please.’

He took off his shoes and set them by the grate, where coal glowed. His stockings came off next, the soggy things. Barefoot, he padded to the window and looked upon Kent in winter, with fields fallow. He saw an oast house in the distance with its distinctive two spires that looked like witch’s hats, where farmers dried hops, in preparation for making beer.

A good dark beer sounded appealing, but he doubted the Newsomes indulged themselves. The bed appealed even more. Taking off his uniform coat, he lay down with a sigh, unbuttoned his trousers and waistcoat and stretched out. Just a minute or two would be enough, he had no doubt. He closed his eyes.