Sails on the Horizon: A Novel of the Napoleonic Wars (21 page)

He dismounted from Pendle in front of the mill beyond the house and with some trepidation walked inside. He found George Brown sitting at an uncluttered desk in a low-ceilinged office off to the side of the building. “Please, sit thee down,” Penny’s father said, half-rising and indicating a chair in front of the desk. “I thank thee for coming.” Charles nodded and sat silently, waiting uneasily for the older man to speak his mind.

“What art thou about?” the miller said after a minute. “What dost thou require of my daughter?”

Charles had known the question would be asked in some form, but he didn’t expect it to be put so directly. He avoided the older man’s steady gaze as he tried to frame in his mind what he should say. The resolve he had built up earlier in the morning to put her behind him wavered, then vanished. He knew what he wanted. He was pretty sure that Penny at least liked him, but he didn’t understand her reluctance. He didn’t understand why she couldn’t just put her religious scruples aside for him. Any normal woman would. Wives followed husbands, not the other way around. But she had once said something about how he should follow his heart, and he knew what his heart required. “I want to marry her,” he said directly, looking her father in the eye. “I want your permission to ask her to be my wife.”

“Art thou serious?” George Brown said, raising his eyebrows. “Dost thou, an officer in the King’s Navy, wish to marry a Quaker woman? Why?”

“Because I love her,” Charles said. The words, once begun, tumbled out. “Because I’m not happy when I can’t be with her. She’s all I think about. She…she brings joy into my life and I don’t know how I’d live without her.”

Penny’s father appraised him thoughtfully. “I can well understand that,” he said. “She brings those things into my life, and the lives of others, too.” The older man took a breath. “I judge thee an agreeable man, Charles Edgemont. I think thee honest and direct and I think thee would be a caring husband to Penny. I am concerned about thy profession, but that is not for me to decide. Still, I do not think that thou fully grasps what thou art asking.”

“There is nothing complicated about what I seek,” Charles asserted.

“Then thou dost not fully know our Penny. We have raised her to be an independent being, one who knows her own mind.” George Brown paused for a moment and shook his head as if in wonderment. “In this I sometimes feel we have been more successful than I ever desired. When she gets an idea into her head…” He left the thought unfinished, then said, “Penny is a person with a great strength in her convictions. She has been both a source of great joy to me and at times a challenge. She would be a trial to thee also,” he said significantly. “More than thou might expect.”

Charles did not know what to make of this, except for the fact that her father was attempting to discourage him. In any event, he felt he understood her perfectly well—or at least well enough. “Are you giving me permission to talk with her?” he said directly.

“My permission is not at issue,” George Brown said with a sigh. “There is one additional concern that I must speak with thee about.”

“What is that?”

“Thou must also understand Penny would pay a heavy price if she agreed to take thee to husband.” Charles opened his mouth to object, but the older man stilled him with a wave of his hand. “She would be disowned by her religion, which she dearly loves. The members of our meeting have cherished and nurtured her from infancy, and to cut her off from them would be cruel. She told me that thou said once that she was asking thee to choose between two things thou loved. Understand that thou art asking the same of her. Now, I ask thee again, art thou certain what thou art about, Charles Edgemont, and what thou require of my daughter?”

Charles tried to digest Penny’s father’s words. Why did it have to be so complicated? If her religion was so important, that was all right with him. Religions were fine so long as they didn’t actually interfere with your life. If she would only be reasonable, she would understand. Penny’s father waited patiently for him to answer. Finally he said, “May I speak with her?”

“That is not for me to say,” George Brown said firmly. “She agreed that I should explain these things to thee and I have done so. I will also relate to her what thou hast said. But hold no hope that she will alter her thinking.” He paused for a moment, as if undecided, then continued. “I propose, Charles Edgemont, that thou put thy feelings aside and seek another woman to wed. One more in keeping with thy way of thinking.” He said in a softer voice, “I am sorry for both of ye, but I see no other path.”

Charles clung doggedly to what few rapidly fading shreds of hope he could find. “I will have to go to sea again soon, probably in a month or six weeks. Will you tell her that?”

George Brown’s mouth hardened into a straight line. “I will tell her everything thou hast said. But do not expect her to seek thee out, Charles Edgemont. I would advise that thou cut the cord with a sharp knife and let the past be past. It would be best if thou didst not trouble thyself or my daughter further. Thy affection is difficult, painful to her…and unwelcome.”

Charles rose, stung by the father’s words. “Please tell Penny that I’m sorry. I never meant to distress her,” he said, struggling to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “Tell her that I respect her choice. I won’t bother her again.”

He made his way slowly toward home, feeling abandoned and despondent at the finality of it. After a time he attempted to convince himself that it was all for the best. There would be other women, he was sure, who would be more than pleased to have him—beautiful, compliant women from more conventional families who would admire his career. The thought did little to ease the emptiness that had settled in his chest.

His mood lightened at the sight of Stephen Winchester’s horse in the paddock by the stables. He gave Pendle to Ezekiel without a word and hurried into the house. He found John, Ellie, and Winchester in the parlor in the midst of being served sherry by the maid.

“Stephen, it’s good to see you,” he said warmly. “What took you to York? Ellie wouldn’t tell me.”

Ellie beamed what was possibly her biggest smile ever while Winchester stammered, “Well, sir,…I…” Then he broke into a broad grin.

“Better bring another glass, Constance,” John said to the maid. To Charles he continued, “We’re to have a new brother-in-law. I’ve given my blessing.”

“Upon my word,” Charles said, beaming. He took Winchester’s hand and shook it warmly. “It’s about time. I was beginning to worry.”

OVER THE FOLLOWING
week, Charles threw himself doggedly into overseeing the repairs and improvements to the manor house and estate that he’d purchased and preparing to go to sea in the
Louisa
whenever she would be ready. He made several trips into Chester to order stores and furnishings that he would take aboard. One day, while he was talking with the foremen supervising work on his house, it dawned on him that there would be no one to live in the place while he was away. Until recently he had hoped that Penny would stay there with numbers of servants and a growing collection of children—his children. Now all that had turned to ashes. That evening, still brooding on the subject, he asked Attwater if he had any family.

“Oh, yes, sir,” Attwater said proudly. “There’s Mrs. Attwater, and we have—” he counted on his fingers—“eleven children still living, most of them grown, though.”

“You do?” Charles said in amazement. “Where do they live?”

“The missus and those that ain’t set off rents a cottage down by Cheltenham, sir. Near Gloucester, like.”

“What would you think of having them live in my house?” Charles asked. “For free, no rent. There’s plenty of room, and they could look after it while we’re away.”

Attwater beamed with pleasure. “That would be wonderful, sir. I ain’t seen my missus never in two years.”

“Well, see to it quickly,” Charles said. “You can take the carriage if you need to.”

“Oh, no, sir,” Attwater said quickly. “I’ll just have someone write to them, like. The missus can have the parson read it to her.”

“I’ll write it for you, if you wish,” Charles said. Then, thinking something was out of place, he asked, “How come you haven’t gone to visit your family before now?”

Attwater eyed him steadily. “You ain’t, haven’t, given me no leave to, sir. Captain Wood, he did. But you ain’t said nothing yet. I expected it was just a matter of time.”

“But I didn’t know…” Charles began. Then, Attwater’s reasoning being beyond him, he changed his mind. “That was my fault, but bringing them to live here should help correct things. I apologize.”

And there was Ellie’s wedding to plan for. She and Winchester were scheduled to marry in the third week of April. Stephen arranged for a small ceremony at St. Michael’s Church, halfway up Bridge Street in Chester, and promptly leased a modest house alongside the road just outside of Tattenall. He and Ellie seemed to be constantly together, surveying their home, shopping in Chester, or exploring the countryside in the carriage or on horseback.

Daniel Bevan arrived by hired coach from his family home near the fishing village of Rhyl in northern Wales on a sunny afternoon in the middle of April. “Well, Charlie,” he greeted his friend with a grin, “anything interesting happen since we last met?” It took Charles late into the night and several bottles of wine to fill him in.

TWO DAYS BEFORE
Ellie and Winchester’s wedding, in the late afternoon, Charles and Bevan were occupying Winchester outdoors near the stables so that Ellie could have some time alone planning the finishing touches for her trousseau—or “trust-you,” as Attwater liked to put it. Daniel Bevan was in the midst of explaining in explicit detail just what difficulties Winchester could expect on his wedding night (which mostly involved headaches, women’s troubles, “not with
that
you aren’t,” and general lack of interest) when Charles started at the sight of a familiar gray mare with its cart racing up the lane. Penny Brown sat alone on the cart bench, snapping the reins and urging the clearly exhausted animal to greater effort. He ran to the drive in time to grab the horse’s halter as she brought the cart to a halt. Penny was breathless and her face flushed. Somewhere she had lost her bonnet, and her hair hung in tangled curls around her face and shoulders.

“Please help me,” she cried from the bench. “They’ve taken Peter!”

Charles went to help her down, and she stumbled against his chest. The contact with her seemed to burn into his flesh. “Who took him?” he asked. “When and where?”

“In Chester, this morning,” she choked. “The soldiers in the navy took him by force and said he was to be one of them. He said he wouldn’t, but they only laughed. And I said they couldn’t have him, he was a Quaker. They only laughed more, and one of them touched me and tried to kiss me. It was horrible!”

So they’re sweeping as far as Chester,
Charles thought.
They must be in a terrible need for hands.
For a moment he thought of the press gangs he’d seen in Liverpool. “It will be all right,” he said, trying to calm her. “We’ll get him back.” To Winchester and Bevan standing nearby he said, “If you’re with me, then uniforms and swords.”

Penny looked up. “Swords?” she said. “I want no bloodshed.”

“No, of course not,” Charles said reassuringly. “Only, well, swords are part of our uniform. They make it more official.” He quickly followed the other two men into the house, yelled for Attwater to ready the carriage, and hurriedly changed. Outside, he approached Penny and said, “You go home. Leave the mare here and take Ellie’s gelding. We’ll bring Peter back safe and sound, I promise.”

Winchester and Bevan emerged from the house as Attwater led the horses and carriage from the stables. “No,” Penny said firmly, “I am coming with thee. He’s my brother and I’m responsible.”

“It’s out of the question,” Charles said directly. “It might be dangerous. I forbid it.”

Penny eyed him through narrowed lids. “Dost thou?” she said evenly. Then she promptly turned, lifted her skirts, climbed into the carriage, and sat down, folding her arms defiantly across her chest.

Charles muttered something about headstrong women under his breath, which she heard but ignored, then climbed up and sat beside her. “Winchester,” he growled, “you’re junior, you drive.” They rode almost the whole way in flinty silence.

They found the sweepings of the press gang where Charles thought they would be, huddled together in a pen out in the open on the old castle grounds. There seemed to be about thirty men and a few boys, frightened and miserable in the chilly night air. He saw an elderly midshipman and two seamen, armed with cudgels, sitting around a table with a lantern and several tankards on it. Charles jumped from the slowing carriage and approached the petty officer, buckling on his sword as he went.

“Who’s in charge here?” he demanded as he neared the table.

“Bugger off, it’s all legal,” replied the midshipman, his back turned and raising his tankard to his lips.

“By God, you’ll stand when you address me,” Charles snapped.

The midshipman, well into his forties, pushed back his chair and stood. “Bugger off, I said,” he snarled, turning. When he saw Charles’s uniform and epaulette, he froze.

“You address me in that tone again, I’ll see you swing for it,” Charles threatened. “Where’s your officer?”

“Yes, sir, I don’t know, sir.” The petty officer struggled to attention, swaying slightly on his feet.

Charles felt rather than saw Bevan and Winchester arrive to stand behind him. “What’s your name and ship?”

“Withers, sir. The
Repulse,
sir.”

“Have you been drinking, Mr. Withers? And what do you mean you don’t know?”

“No, sir. And I just don’t know where the lieutenant is. He went off with some doxy—er, woman—sir.”

“That’s dereliction of duty,” Charles said. “I want to see the boys you’ve impressed.”

“Why, sir?” Withers asked, clearly puzzled.

“Damn your eyes,” Charles growled. “Don’t you ever question my orders. But if you must know, I think you’ve taken a boy I’ve promised a midshipman’s berth to on my own ship.”