Convenient Christmas Brides

Chapter Three

Joseph Everard raised his hand to knock, but the door opened before he needed to. He found himself looking at an older female version of his second luff, down to lively eyes and curly black hair.

‘You bear a remarkable resemblance to your brother,’ were the first words out of his mouth. He could have smacked his forehead for his idiocy when those brown eyes, so like Davey’s, filled with tears.

‘I’m sorry. That was clumsy of me,’ he said. ‘I am Captain Everard of the White Fleet, your late brother’s commanding officer. May I come inside?’

‘Of course you may,’ the woman said quickly. ‘How clumsy of me! You’ll think we never have visitors.’

‘Not at all, Miss... Miss Newsome, is it?’ he asked. ‘I didn’t actually arrive in a coach and four with post boys, did I? I like to take the mail coach and so I walked from Weltby.’

She ushered him inside, let him unsling his duffel like the common seaman he suddenly felt himself to be, then helped him from his boat cloak. With a start, he realised he was being organised by a woman used to management and, by God, it felt surprisingly good. With the heavy cloak slung over her arm, she handed it to a maid who had stopped at the sight of so much naval splendour, here in quiet Kent.

Or maybe it was the crosshatch of black stitches that still ruined whatever looks he had imagined were his. He had taken off the blamed plaster in hope that the air might prove more useful to its healing. He might even apply goose grease tonight as he prepared for bed back at the inn.

‘Your hat, Captain?’ Miss Newsome said and held out her hand.

He doffed it and gave it to her, hoping that his hair wasn’t sticking up on the side. He had never given his wretched cowlick much thought before, but for some reason, it mattered, standing in the hall of David Newsome’s childhood home. At least he had the good sense not to lick his fingers and try to tame the thing. Certainly there were worse physical afflictions.

His bicorn overwhelmed the maid, who gave him a plaintive look. ‘Just rest it on its side,’ he told her. ‘It won’t bite.’

The girl grinned at him and darted away, in spite of the fact that his boat cloak threatened to trip her.

‘I...er...assume you don’t see too many navy men in Weltby,’ he said, wishing he knew more about polite conversation. ‘At least the servants don’t.’

‘No, indeed, Captain Everard,’ Miss Newsome said, her eyes on his stitches. ‘A Trafalgar souvenir?’

Joe knew better than to say that the same flaming mast that crashed to the deck and killed her brother managed to shoot a splinter through his cheek. ‘Aye, it was. Should’ve healed by now, but for several weeks the surgeon couldn’t decide whether to suture it or leave it alone. He finally decided to stitch me up. Consequently, I am not as far along the path of recovery as I could wish.’

He couldn’t think of anything else to say. Miss Newsome gestured towards the hall. ‘My parents are in my father’s book room. Y-you could bring Davey’s effects to them, if you please.’

‘I will.’

He walked beside her down the hall, pleased not to have to shorten his stride to accommodate her. He was on the tallish side, but so was Miss Newsome.

She was dressed in black, a daunting colour for most females, except that it became her, with her pink cheeks, pale face and black hair. She was by no means thin, but he found her pleasant shape more to his liking, anyway. She looked practical and kind, which he found soothing.

‘My father is an accountant and estate manager for Lord Blankenship, who owns numerous properties in Kent and East Sussex,’ she said. ‘I have lived on this estate all my life.’

‘It must be a fair property in the springtime,’ he said, wincing inwardly at his paltry supply of conversation.

Either it passed muster, or Miss Newsome was even kinder than he suspected. ‘It’s glorious in April, when the lambs are new,’ she said. ‘Here we are.’

They stopped before a closed door and she tapped lightly. He heard no reply—years of bombarding could do that to ears—but she opened the door and gestured him inside.

He knew a book room when he saw one. His own chart room aboard the Ulysses was tidier, mainly because space was more of a premium on a frigate and demanded economy.

His eyes went immediately to the map of the world, where the Newsomes had traced his lieutenant’s travels with pins and thread. With a pang, he saw how few pins there were and how the enterprise ended at the coast off Spain known as Trafalgar. His own world map in his cabin crisscrossed the oceans many times, and touched on all the continents except Antarctica, proof of nearly thirty years at sea. Where had the time gone?

After Miss Newsome’s introductions, he executed a workaday bow, which was the only kind he knew, and sat in the chair Mr Newsome indicated. In double-quick time a servant arrived with afternoon sherry and almond-flavoured tea cakes.

The sherry was dry the way he liked it and the tea cakes moist and flavourful, two adjectives that his steward had never thought to associate with ship’s fare. Joe could have eaten them all.

Instead, he held out the handsome leather case that Second Lieutenant Newsome had brought on board the Ulysses a bare eight months ago. He could have told the Newsomes that the other officers had chuckled over the unscratched leather and working clasps, perhaps trying to remember when they had been that young and green. He chose to say nothing.

‘I put your son’s second-best uniform in my own duffel,’ he said, ‘as well as his sword. I will leave those with you.’

‘Where is his best uniform?’ Mrs Newsome demanded.

Surprised, Joe wondered if she thought he had sold it, or given it away. Might as well tell her, even though he knew it would hurt.

‘He wore it on deck for the battle, ma’am,’ he told her, dreading the way her face paled. ‘We all dress for battle on my ship.’ He swallowed the lump in his throat. ‘He is wearing it still, a credit to King and country.’

Mrs Newsome burst into tears and threw herself into her husband’s arms. Oh, Lord, I made a mess of that, Joe thought, as Mr Newsome began to weep. Alarmed, Joe looked at Miss Newsome’s expressive face as she dissolved in tears, too.

There they sat, Mr and Mrs Newsome locked in a tight and tearful embrace, with Miss Newsome suffering alone, no one’s arms around her.

Captain Everard knew he was famed throughout the White Fleet for his unflappable demeanour in battle and the deliberate way he went about plotting courses and thinking through all possible outcomes of a fleet action. Not an impulsive man, he was also noted for the ability to move with real speed when events dictated.

He did so now, moving close to Miss Newsome as she sat in solitary sorrow on the loveseat. He pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her as she sobbed into his uniform, convinced that had there been another family member present, his action would not have been necessary.

Recent years had acquainted him with too much suffering, too much sorrow, too much pain. To say that holding Miss Newsome close was the least he could do was a regrettable statement of fact. He wanted to do more. He wanted to bring back the son, brother and second lieutenant who had showed such promise. He could do nothing but hold Davey Newsome’s sister and let her cry.

He would have managed well enough, if her arms hadn’t gone around him and if she hadn’t begun to pat his back, and then hold him close until he cried, too. He was sick of war and death and knew in his soul that Trafalgar was not the end of the struggle for world domination, but merely one step along the way. Damn Boney anyway.

Chapter Four

Her parents still wept. Miss Newsome pulled away first, but did not leave the circle of his embrace. She sniffed back more tears and he gave her his handkerchief, hoping he had not committed some massive social blunder. He had visited many bereaved families—too many—but this was the first time he had cried, too, and held a grieving sister close. Perhaps an explanation was in order.

‘Miss Newsome, I do not generally... Well, I do not...’ That is pathetic, Joe, he thought. ‘No one should be alone in sorrow.’

She blew her nose, then endeared herself to him for ever by resting her forehead against his arm for the smallest moment. ‘Begging your pardon, Captain, but you were alone, too,’ she said softly. ‘Let us go into the hall and leave my parents to their grief.’

She picked up her brother’s leather case and took it with her. In the hall, she motioned towards a door that opened into a small but charming breakfast room. She set the case on the table, took several deep breaths and opened it. Her lips trembled as she took out David Newsome’s few possessions. She held up the strip of rolled cloth that held his scissors, some thread, a thimble and needles, and managed a smile that touched Joe’s heart.

‘I gave my little brother a brief tutorial on how to sew on a button,’ she said, before replacing it in the case.

She seemed to be in control of herself again, so Joe knew he could do no less, himself. God, how he hated to deliver bad news.

‘I must inform you that he was terrible at sewing,’ Joe said, which brought what appeared to be a genuine smile to her face. ‘He showed up in the wardroom one evening for dinner with a button sewn on with black thread on his white shirt. I told him to do better, in no uncertain terms.’

‘Did he look at you with those big puppy-brown eyes and appear wounded beyond belief? Sort of like this?’ she said and turned the expression on him.

‘Aye, he did,’ Joe said, astounded again at the resemblance between brother and sister, although he had to admit that the expression was vastly more appealing on Miss Newsome’s face. ‘I told him not to toy with me, but resew that button.’

Should he say more? He knew he should not, but there she was. ‘All joking aside, Miss Newsome, if you had practised such an expression in my wardroom, I would have let the matter slide.’

She laughed, seeing right through his mildest of flirtations in perhaps the most unsuitable moment imaginable. ‘Captain Everard, could it be that you have a softer heart than even Davey described in his letters?’

Good God, had he been served up to the family as a martinet with the heart of pudding in Lieutenant Newsome’s letters home? ‘I hardly know what to say to that,’ he managed.

‘Davey wrote how you never could quite inflict the lash beyond a stroke or two, when probably more was needed,’ Miss Newsome said. ‘Personally, I thank you for that and so did Davey.’

He mumbled something about the idiocy of getting men to follow, when their captain made life unbearable aboard ship. ‘I’ve never been afraid to err on the side of leniency, Miss Newsome, but I do know when discipline is necessary,’ he said in his own defence. ‘I’d rather have a sailor swab an already white deck than suffer the lash.’

He could have added that his ship was known to be a well-disciplined war machine where few men deserted, but it wasn’t necessary to praise himself. He was only going to be here a few more minutes. His Quaker mother, long dead, would have scolded him for puffing up his consequence, had he said more.

But there she was, looking at him with admiration. He did his job as he saw fit and nothing more. He knew it was time to move this conversation along.

‘Let me give you your brother’s uniform and I’ll be on my way,’ he said.

Before she could speak, he went into the hall and retrieved his duffel bag. He had carefully folded the uniform on top, so it came out easily. He set it on the table and Miss Newsome broke his heart into even more pieces by smoothing down the wrinkled wool.

‘I tucked his bicorn beside him before my steward sewed him into his hammock for burial,’ he said. ‘Miss Newsome, I am so sorry.’

She cried again and he patted her shoulder until she drew a shuddering breath and applied his handkerchief to her eyes. ‘See here,’ she said, ‘I have quite ruined your handkerchief.’

‘I have plenty more,’ he told her.

‘I would imagine other families have cried into them.’

‘Aye, they have.’

With a resolution that touched his heart, she returned her attention to her brother’s leather case, which held his shaving equipment, pen and nibs, ink, the Bible, two works of fiction he had passed around for others to enjoy and his private journal.

She picked up the journal and flipped through the pages. ‘Interesting how a life can move along and then it is over and the pages are empty,’ she murmured, more to herself than to him. ‘I will give this to my parents. I don’t have the heart to read it. Maybe later.’

She looked at him in surprise when he unbuckled the sword at his waist and placed it on the table next to the uniform.

‘I left mine back in Plymouth,’ he explained. ‘This is Davey’s sword. And now I had better be on my way.’

‘We had expected you to stay the night,’ she said.

He doubted the Newsomes wanted any such thing. The usual bereaved family was only too happy to see him off, as if his continued presence only made death more real and he was somehow to blame. True, most of his visits had taken place in daylight hours. He glanced out the window, dismayed to see full dark. No matter. Weltby was no more than a mile away and he never minded a walk, he who was usually confined to pacing back and forth on a quarterdeck.

‘Thank you, but, no,’ he said. ‘Your mother will rather have me gone. I understand that.’

Throwing caution to the winds, he stood up and held out his hand, because he already could tell Miss Newsome was a practical sort of female. ‘Shake hands with me, Miss Newsome,’ he said. ‘Please know it was a pleasure to have Lieutenant Newsome serve on the Ulysses. He was a brother to be proud of.’

They shook hands. He appreciated her firm grip.

‘Good luck to you, Captain Everard,’ she said as she opened the door and stepped back. ‘And best of the season to you.’

Season? What season? he almost asked, until he remembered that Christmas was a mere week away. ‘And to you and yours,’ he replied. He had been so long away that he could not recall his last Christmas on land.

It might have been awkward then to stand there, waiting for the maid to return with his cloak and hat, except that carollers stood outside the front door. His exit from the house seemed to signal a burst of music, almost as if they were celebrating his departure from a house of mourning that he had disturbed.

They sounded quite good, harmonising on ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’, as he walked down the steps and stood beside them, digging out a few coins to give the collection. He saw many children and likely parents among that number, supplying volume where needed. He could tell from their sturdy but practical clothing that they were of the same social sphere as his friends from the mail coach. He looked at the boys, seeing them in the fleet in a few years, or marching with Sir John Moore in Spain and Portugal. He averted his gaze; it was not a pretty thought.

He shouldered his duffel again and started back the way he had come. Too bad there were no intelligent men in Kent who should have courted and married such a pretty lady as Verity Newsome.

He shook off the thought, reminding himself that he had fully discharged his duty to his second luff and bore no more responsibility for a young man gone too soon. In Plymouth he had discharged a similar duty to the widow of his carpenter’s mate. He had given her a small sum that he lied and said was Nahum Mattern’s share of prize money gone astray from a mythical fleet action in the Pacific. He had sent two letters to more remote families of able seamen, along with more prize money of a mythical source. He had done what he could.

He counted his blessings that his frigate had only lost four men at Trafalgar. He knew the butcher’s bill was much higher on the ships of the line that did the actual fighting. He didn’t envy those captains.

He stood in the shadow of trees a short distance from the Newsome house until the last strains of ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’ died away in the cold air. He knew he had two weeks before reporting to London for Admiral Nelson’s funeral, without a single clue how to spend leisure time. It was a foreign concept. Perhaps he could catch up on his reading.

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.’