The Admiral's Penniless Bride (3 page)

Dratted peace had slowed down the entire economy of Plymouth, so there was no demand for even the lowliest kitchen help in the hotels, she discovered, after trudging
from back door to back door. One publican had been willing to hire her to replace his pots-and-pans girl, but one look at that terrified child’s face told Sally she could never be so callous. ‘I won’t take bread from a baby’s mouth,’ she said.

‘Suit yourself,’ the man had said as he turned away.

Evensong was long over and the church was deserted. She sank down wearily on a back pew. When her money had run out two days ago, she had slept in Bath’s cathedral. It had been easy enough to make herself small in the shadows and then lie down out of sight. St Andrew’s was smaller, but there were shadows. She could hide herself again.

And then what? In the morning, if no one was about, she would dip her remaining clean handkerchief in the holy water, wipe her face and ask directions to the workhouse. At least her small son was safe from such a place.

There were several prayer books in their slots. Sally gathered them up, made a pillow of them and rested her head on them with a sigh. There wasn’t any need to loosen her dress because it was already loose. She feared to take off her shoes because she knew her feet were swollen. She might never get them on again. She made herself comfortable on the bench and closed her eyes.

Sally opened her eyes with a start only minutes later. A man sat on the end of the row. Frightened at first, she looked closer in the gloom at his close-cut hair and smiled to herself. She sat up.

He didn’t look at her, but idly scratched the back of his only hand with his hook. ‘The Mouse still hasn’t turned up.’

‘You have probably waited long enough,’ Sally said as she arranged her skirt around her, grateful she hadn’t
removed her shoes. ‘I don’t know what the statute of limitations is on such a matter, but surely you have fulfilled it.’

He rested his elbows on the back of the pew, still not looking at her. ‘Actually, I was looking for you, Mrs Paul. The waiter informed me that you left your valise in the chair.’

‘I suppose I did,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing in it of value.’ She peered at him through the gloom. ‘Why did the waiter think I was your responsibility?’

He glanced at her then. ‘Possibly because earlier I had told him you were my cousin, and we were on the outs, and I was hoping to get into your good graces by buying you dinner.’

‘That was certainly creative, Admiral,’ she said.

‘Dash it all, how am I supposed to approach a single female I have never met before?’ he said. She couldn’t help but hear the exasperation in his voice. ‘Mrs Paul, you are more trouble than an entire roomful of midshipmen!’

‘Oh, surely not,’ she murmured, amused in spite of her predicament. She glanced at him, then stared straight ahead towards the altar, the same way he stared.

There they sat. He spoke first. ‘When you didn’t come out of St Andrew’s, I thought you might not mind some company.’ His voice grew softer. ‘Have you been sleeping in churches?’

‘It…it’s a safe place.’

He hadn’t changed his position. He did not move any closer. ‘Mrs Paul, my sisters are still meddlers, my chef is still on strike, I can’t get any builders to do what they promised, the house is…strange and I swear there are bats or maybe griffons in the attic.’

‘What a daunting prospect.’

‘I would honestly rather sail into battle than deal with any of the above.’

‘Especially the griffons,’ she said, taking a deep breath.
Am I this desperate? Is he?
she asked herself.
This man is—or was—an admiral. He is either a lunatic or the kindest man in the universe.

‘What say you, Mrs Paul?’ He still didn’t look in her direction, as though afraid she would bolt like a startled fawn. ‘You’ll have a home, a touchy chef, two dragons for sisters-in-law, and a one-armed husband who will need your assistance occasionally with buttons, or maybe putting sealing wax on a letter. Small things. If you can keep the dragons at bay, and keep the admiral out of trouble on land, he promises to let you be. It’s not a bad offer.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ she replied, after a long pause in which she could have sworn he held his breath. She just couldn’t speak. It was beyond her that anyone would do this. She could only stare at him.

He gazed back. When he spoke, he sounded so rational she had to listen. ‘Mrs Paul, The Mouse isn’t coming. I want to marry you.’

‘Why, Admiral? Tell me why?’ There, she had asked. He had to tell her.

He took his time, exasperating man. ‘Mrs Paul, even if The Mouse were to show up this minute, I would bow out. She’s a spinster, and that’s unfortunate, but she has a brother to take care of her, no matter how he might grumble. You have no one.’ He held up his hand to stop her words. ‘I have spent most of my life looking after England. One doesn’t just chop off such a responsibility. Maybe it didn’t end with Napoleon on St. Helena and my retirement papers. Knowing your dilemma, I cannot turn my back on you, no more than I could ever ignore a sister ship approaching a lee shore. You need help. I need a wife. I don’t think I can make it any plainer.’

‘No, I suppose you cannot,’ she murmured, but made
one final attempt to make the man see reason. ‘Admiral, you know nothing about me. You truly don’t.’ It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him, but she found she could not.
Coward
, she thought.

He looked at her then, and his face was kind. ‘I know one thing: you haven’t wittered once about the weather. I suppose marriages have started on stranger footings. I don’t know when or where, but I haven’t been on land much in the past twenty years.’

‘I suppose they have,’ she agreed. ‘Very well, sir.’

S
ally didn’t object when the admiral paid for a room at the Drake for her, after suggesting the priest at St Andrew’s might be irritated to perform a wedding so late, even with a special licence. And there were other concerns.

‘I must remind you, sir, I’m not The Mouse. I cannot usurp her name, which surely is already on the licence,’ she pointed out, embarrassed to state the obvious, but always the practical one.

Admiral Bright chuckled. ‘It’s no problem, Mrs Paul. The Mouse’s name is Prunella Batchthorpe. Believe it or not, I can spell Batchthorpe. It was Prunella that gave me trouble. Prunella? Prunilla? A coin or two, and the clerk was happy enough to leave the space blank, for me to fill in later.’

‘Very well, then,’ Sally murmured.

She was hungry for supper, but had trouble swallowing the food, when it came. Finally, she laid down her
fork. ‘Admiral, you need to know something about me,’ she said.

He set down his fork, too. ‘I should tell you more about me, too.’

How much to say? She thought a moment, then plunged ahead. ‘Five years ago, my husband committed suicide after a reversal of fortune. I ended up in one room with our son, Peter, who was five at the time.’

She looked at the admiral for some sign of disgust at this, but all she saw was sympathy. It gave her the courage to continue. ‘Poor Peter. I could not even afford coal to keep the room warm. He caught a chill, it settled in his lungs and he died.’

‘You had no money for a doctor?’ he asked gently.

‘Not a farthing. I tried every poultice I knew, but nothing worked.’ She could not help the sob that rose in her throat. ‘And the whole time, Peter trusted me to make him better!’

She didn’t know how it happened, but the admiral’s hand went to her neck, caressing it until she gained control of herself. ‘He was covered in quicklime in a pauper’s grave. I found a position that afternoon as a lady’s companion and never returned to that horrid room.’

‘I am so sorry,’ he said. ‘There wasn’t anyone you could turn to?’

‘No,’ she said, after blowing her nose on the handkerchief he handed her. ‘After my husband was…accused…we had not a friend in the world.’ She looked at him, wondering what to say. ‘It was all a mistake, a lie and a cover-up, but we have suffered.’

Admiral Bright sat back in his chair. ‘Mrs Paul, people ask me how I could bear to stay so many years at sea. Unlike my captains who occasionally went into port, I remained almost constantly with the fleet. We had one
enemy—France—and not the myriad of enemies innocent people attract, sometimes in the course of everyday business on land, or so I suspect. My sisters have never understood why I prefer the sea.’

‘Surely there are scoundrels at sea—I mean, in addition to the French,’ she said.

‘Of course there are, Mrs P. The world is full of them. It’s given me great satisfaction to hang a few.’

She couldn’t help herself; she shuddered.

‘They deserved it. The hangings never cost me any sleep, because I made damned sure they were guilty.’ He looked into her eyes. ‘Mrs Paul, I cannot deny that I enjoyed the power, but I have never intentionally wronged anyone.’

Too bad you were not on the Admiralty court that convicted my husband
, she thought.
Or would you have heard the evidence and convicted, too?
She knew there was no way of knowing. She had not been allowed in the chambers. Best put it to rest.

‘I have the skills to manage your household,’ she told him, when he had resumed eating. ‘I’m quite frugal, you know.’

‘With a charming brogue betraying your origins, could you be anything else?’

‘Now, sir, you know that is a stereotype!’ she scolded. ‘My own father hadn’t a clue what to do with a shilling, and he could outroll my
rrr
’s any day.’ She smiled at the admiral, liking the way he picked up his napkin with the hook and wiped his lips. ‘But I am good with funds.’

‘So am I, Mrs P.,’ he said, putting down the napkin. ‘Napoleon has made me rich, so you needn’t squeeze the shillings so hard that they beg for mercy! I’ll see that you have a good allowance, too.’

‘That isn’t necessary,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ve done with
so little for so long that I probably wouldn’t know what to do with an allowance.’

He looked at his timepiece. ‘Past my bedtime. Call it a bribe then, Mrs P. Wait until you see the estate I am foisting on you!’ He grew serious quickly. ‘There is plenty of money for coal, though.’ With his hook, he casually twirled a lock of her hair that had come loose. ‘I think your fortunes have turned, my dear.’

It was funny. The hook was so close to her face, but she felt no urge to flinch. She reached up and touched it, twining the curl further around it.

‘My hook doesn’t disgust you?’ he asked, startled.

‘Heavens, no,’ she replied. ‘How did you lose your hand? And, no, I’m not going to be frippery again and suggest you were careless.’

He pulled his hook through the curl, patted it against her cheek and grinned at her. ‘You do have a mouth on you, Mrs Paul. Most people are so cowed by my admiralness that I find them dull.’

‘I am not among them, I suppose. After your taradiddle about being my cousin, I think you are probably as faulty and frail as most of humanity.’ She sat back, amazed at herself for such a forthright utterance. She had never spoken to Andrew that way, but something about Charles Bright made him a conversational wellspring as challenging as he was fun to listen to.

‘Touché!’
He looked down at his hook. ‘I was but a first mate when this happened, so it has been years since I’ve had ten fingernails to trim.’

She laughed. ‘Think of the economy!’

He rolled his eyes at her. ‘There you go again, being a Scot.’

‘Guilty as charged, Admiral.’

‘I wish I could tell you it was some battle where
England’s fate hung in the balance, but it was a training accident. We were engaged in target practice off the coast of Brazil when one of my guns exploded. Since it was my gun crew, I went to lend a hand.’ He made a face. ‘Poor choice of words! The pulley rope that yanks the gun back after discharge was tangled. I untangled it at the same time it came loose. Pinched off my left hand so fast I didn’t know it had happened, until the powder monkey mentioned that I was spouting. Mrs P, don’t get all pale on me. We had an excellent surgeon on board, almost as talented as the smithy who built me my first hook.’

‘You never thought about leaving the navy?’

‘Over a hand? Really, madam.’

‘How do you keep it on?’

She was hard put to define his expression then. She could have sworn there was something close to gratitude in his eyes, as though he was pleased she cared enough to ask such a forwards question.

‘Apart from eight-year-old boys, you’re the first person who ever asked.’

‘I’m curious.’

‘I’ll show you later. There’s a leather contraption that crosses my chest and anchors to my neck.’ As she watched, he tilted his head, pulled at his neckcloth and exposed a thin strap. ‘See? If ever my steward is gone or busy, you might have to help me get out of it. Are you any good at tying neckcloths?’

‘I’ve tied a few,’ she said.

‘Good. You might have to tie more. Beyond that, I’m not too helpless.’

‘Helpless is not a word I would ever use in the same breath with your admiralness.’

‘What a relief that is, Mrs P,’ he said. ‘Where were we?’

‘Something about you?’

‘Ah, yes. I was born forty-five years ago in Bristol. My father was a successful barrister who could not understand why I wanted to go to sea. He made arrangements and I shipped aboard as a young gentleman at the age of ten. My older sisters are Frances—I call her Fan, or Fannie—and Dora, who follows where Fannie leads. Both married well and both have outlived their husbands, which means I am ripe for meddling from them.’ He shuddered elaborately.

‘Any interesting avocations, now that you are retired?’

‘Not yet. Mrs Paul, your eyelids are drooping.’ He stood up. ‘I will retire now and leave you to your chamber. Do you think nine of the clock tomorrow morning is too early to bother the vicar at St Andrew’s?’

‘I should think not.’ She looked up at him, a frown on her face. ‘You don’t have to go through with this, you know.’

‘I believe I do.’ He bent down then, and she thought for one moment he was going to kiss her. Instead, he rubbed his cheek against hers, and she smiled to feel whiskers against her face. It had been so long. ‘Mrs Paul, you need help and I need a wife. I promise you I will cause you no anxiety or ever force myself on you without your utmost consent and enthusiasm, should you or I ever advance this marriage into something more…well, what…visceral. Is that plain enough?’

It was. She nodded. Then he did kiss her, but only her cheek.

‘Very well, then, Admiral. I will be an extraordinarily excellent wife.’

‘I rather thought so,’ he said as he went to the door and gave her a little bow. She laughed when he kissed his hook and blew in her direction, then left the room.

‘You are certainly an original,’ she said quietly. She sat at the table a few minutes longer, eating one of the
remaining plums, then just looking at the food. It was only the smallest kind of stopgap between actual dinner and breakfast, but she had not seen so much food in front of her in years. ‘What a strange day this has been, Admiral,’ she whispered.

She didn’t sleep a wink, but hadn’t thought she would, considering the strangeness of her situation. She spent much of the night debating whether to tell her future husband that her married name was Daviess, but decided against it, as dawn broke. He knew her as Mrs Paul, and what difference could it make? She had resolved several years ago not to look back.

When the ’tween-stairs girl made a fire in the grate and brought a can of hot water, Sally asked for a bath, hoping the admiral wouldn’t object to the added expense on his bill. When the tub and water came, she sank into it with pleasure.

She left the tub after the water cooled. With a towel wrapped around her, she pulled out the pasteboard folder from her valise and extracted her copy of the marriage lines to Andrew Daviess, and his death certificate, reading again the severe line: ‘Death by own hand.’ Poor, dear man. ‘Andrew, why didn’t you think it through one more time?’ she asked the document. ‘We could have emigrated to Canada, or even the United States.’

With a sigh, she dried herself off and stood a moment in front of the coal fire. The towel fell to the floor and she stood there naked until she felt capable of movement. She looked in the mirror, fingering her stretch marks and frowning over her ribs in high relief when she raised her arms. ‘Sally, you’ll eat better at Admiral Bright’s estate,’ she told her reflection. ‘You are just an empty sack now.’

She was in no mood to begin a marriage with someone she did not know, but there didn’t seem to be anything else to do. She dressed quickly, wishing she had a better garment for the occasion. She shook out a muslin dress from the valise, one she had worn many times, and took it and the pasteboard folder downstairs. She left the dress with the parlour maid, asking that someone iron it for her, then let herself out of the Drake.

It was still early; no one was about in the street except fishmongers and victuallers hauling kegs of food on wheel-barrows. From her life in Portsmouth as Andrew Daviess’s wife, she knew he had been efficient in his profession, even up to the shocking day he was accused by the Admiralty of felony and manslaughter in knowingly loading bad food aboard ships. In the months of suspended animation that followed, she had seen him shaking his head over and over at the venality of his superior, whom he suspected of doctoring the all-important and lucrative accounts to make the errors Andrew’s alone. He could prove nothing, of course, because his superior had moved too fast.

And finally Andrew could take it no longer, hanging himself from a beam in their carriage house, empty of horses since they could no longer afford them and pay a barrister, too. He left no note to her, but only one he had sent to the Lord Admiral proclaiming his innocence, even as his suicide seemed to mock his words.

Now the whole matter was over and done. She knew that by marrying the admiral, who had no idea what a kettle of fish he had inherited and with any luck never would, her life with Andrew Daviess was irrevocably over.

When she arrived at St Andrew’s, the vicar was concluding the earliest service. She approached him when
he finished, explaining that in another hour, she and a gentleman would be returning with a special licence.

‘I am a widow, sir,’ she said, handing him the pasteboard folder. ‘Here are my earlier marriage lines and my late husband’s death certificate. Is there anything else you need from me?’

The old man took the folder and looked inside. ‘Sophia Paul Daviess, spinster from Dundrennan, Kirkcudbright-shire, Scotland, age twenty-two years, 1806’. He looked at Andrew’s death certificate, shaking his head, so she knew he had read the part about ‘Death by his own hand’. He handed the document back. ‘A sad affair, Mrs Daviess.’

‘It was.’

‘And now you are marrying again. I wish you all success, madam.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ She hesitated. ‘For reasons which you must appreciate, I have been using my maiden name, rather than my married name.’

He walked with her to the door. ‘I can imagine there has been some stigma to a suicide, Mrs Paul.’

If you only knew
, she thought. ‘There has been,’ was all she said.

‘Those days appear to be ending. I’ll look forwards to seeing you again in an hour.’ The vicar held out his hand. ‘If you wish, I can enter this information in the registry right now, so you needn’t be reminded of it during this next wedding.’

It was precisely what she wanted. ‘Thank you, sir.’

As she returned to the Drake, she looked up to the first storey and saw the admiral looking out. He waved to her and she waved back, wondering how long he had been watching and if he had seen her leave the hotel.

When she came up the stairs to the first floor, he opened
his door. ‘You gave me a fright, Mrs Paul, when I knocked on your door and you weren’t there. I reckoned you had gone the way of The Mouse, and that would have been more than my fragile esteem could manage.’