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 wheelbarrows. 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