Mrs. McVinnie's London Season (39 page)

Again that uncertainty
filled his face. “I wanted to apologize to you, Jeannie, first of
all,” he said.

“
None
needed,” was her quiet reply. “Even if we do not completely
understand each other, let us remain friends.”

“
So it
shall be.” Bartley turned back to Larinda. “And I came to tell you
that we are leaving this afternoon for Portsmouth.” Larinda burst
into tears just as Edward threw open the parlor door, waving the
sextant about. Bartley looked from one to the other, his blue eyes
filled with confusion and then a sudden joy that took Jeannie’s
breath away. Oh, Bartley, she thought as she watched him, you are
far gone, and it is high time.

He produced a
handkerchief and grasped Larinda firmly by the back of the neck.
“Blow, lassie,” he ordered. She did as he said, and then sobbed
into the handkerchief as he looked on in amazement, his face redder
than his regimentals.

Edward regarded the
tempest before him with an expression of disgust. “Oh, Larry, do
dry up! I want to show Captain MacGregor what I have learned this
morning. Sir, do come outside for a spell, please.”

By now, Larinda was
sobbing in good earnest on Bartley MacGregor’s shoulder and his
arms were about her.

Edward tugged at
Bartley’s kilt. “Please, sir, that only encourages her.”

Larinda wrenched
herself away from Captain MacGregor and glared at her brother. “Go
away, you wretched monster,” she sobbed, and then buried her face
in the handkerchief again.

“
Nay,
lassie, nay,” said Bartley as he took her hand. “I would like you
and Edward, and Jeannie too, to see me off this afternoon from the
Couched Lion. We leave at five.”

Larinda renewed her
outpouring of misery and Edward stared at her in dismay. “Larry,
you look like a ripe tomato.” He laughed and poked her. “I don’t
think there are enough cucumbers in all of London to take the red
out of your eyes before five o’clock a year from now.”

Larinda wiped her nose
and glared at her little brother, her voice low and filled with
anger. “Edward, if you don’t go upstairs right now and take that
ugly hunk of scrap metal with you, I am going to tell Aunt Agatha,
and she will pack you back to Suffolk.”

The threat seemed real
enough to Edward. Muttering something about sisters being the
eleventh plague of Egypt, he clutched the sextant close to his
chest, shook his head at Bartley for encouraging this folly, and
left the room.

Larinda’s tears
subsided as soon as Bartley sat her down close beside him on the
sofa. He looked at Jeannie helplessly, and she could only smile
back, invent some little errand that demanded her immediate
presence in the bookroom, and shut the doors of the sitting room
behind her.

When she returned
fifteen minutes later, Larinda was smiling in a misty fashion as
Bartley MacGregor held her hands. They looked up when she entered,
but Bartley did not rise this time.

“
I
have convinced Miss Summers to write to me in Portugal,” he said to
Jeannie.

“
Every
day,” she added, and gazed up at him with an expression just a
degree or two shy of worship.

“
Nay,
lassie,” he protested. “Such a waste of good paper and
ink.”

“
Not a
bit of it,” Jeannie exclaimed. “Only think on, Bartley. You will
have more mail than the entire regiment. They will envy you and
call you a devilish dog with the ladies.”

Bartley considered the
issue. “It is a pleasant thought,” he agreed. He turned back to
Larinda to say something more, but it never got out of his
mouth.

The sitting-room door
banged open and Edward threw himself into the room, his face white
and his eyes staring out of his head. He looked from Larinda to
Jeannie, and then with a wail of his own ran to Jeannie and buried
his face in her skirts.

Her arms went around
him. He was shaking even as he sobbed.

“
Edward, what is the matter? Good heavens, laddie!”

Edward was bereft of
speech. He could only shake his head and burrow deeper in her
dress, as if to hide himself.

And then she knew.
Jeannie grasped him by the shoulders and shook him until he stopped
sobbing. “There, laddie, now,” she said, her voice quiet but filled
with command. “The sextant.”

He opened his eyes
wide. “I didn’t mean to, Jeannie, I didn’t!”

She sucked in her
breath, her own voice unsteady. “What didn’t you mean to do? Oh,
Edward, speak.”

He covered his face
with his hands as Larinda hurried forward and knelt beside him, her
face as white as his own.

He gave himself a shake
and took the much-used handkerchief that his sister offered without
a word. He wiped his eyes and looked at Jeannie, such desperation
on his face that her heart sank into her shoes and stayed
there.

“
I
just wanted to get a perfect reading, Jeannie, that was
all.

I climbed out onto the
roof and ….” He began to shake again. Jeannie took a firm
grasp of his arms. “Jeannie, I dropped the sextant. It’s in pieces
on the walkway.”

“
E
dward, no,” she whispered, and knelt
beside him, clutching his shoulders.

He stared back at her,
and the terror in his eyes went straight to her heart like a bolt
flung from a crossbow. There were a thousand words she could have
showered upon him, each more cutting than the last, but not one of
them came to mind as she hugged Edward to her and he sobbed in her
arms.

“
Bartley, go see,” she said over her shoulder.

MacGregor turned on his
heel and ran out the door. He came inside much slower, the ruins of
Caleb Matthew’s lovely sextant in his hands.

“
I
couldn’t find all the mirrors,” he said as he held it out to
her.

Jeannie sat on the
floor and cradled the sextant in her lap, looking it over, feeling
the tears start in her eyes. The wreckage was complete, the
instrument twisted and broken. There was nothing they could do to
repair it. She touched it hesitantly, as she would a wounded animal
found dying by the side of the highway.

Edward dried his eyes,
but every now and then a shudder shook his frame. “Uncle Summers
will kill me,” he said, his voice filled with shock.

“
I am
sure he would like to,” Larinda said frankly as she touched his
shoulder. “But I do not think it will come to that. Oh, Edward, how
could you!”

Edward shuddered and
tore his eyes from the sextant. “I only wanted to make him proud.”
The word caught in his throat like a bone, and he could not
continue until Jeannie took hold of his arm. “Proud of me, Larinda.
Oh, Larry, I wanted him to know that I was ready to go to sea.”

Larinda sighed. “We’ll
be fortunate indeed if he does not send all of us packing back to
Suffolk.”

“
Don’t
make matters worse, Larinda,” Jeannie said quietly.

After another moment,
Bartley helped Jeannie to her feet. “I don’t see how you can make
this one right with the captain, Jeannie me light,” he said in an
undertone to her. He managed a crooked smile in Larinda’s vicinity.
“I feel a very churl to leave you all at this delicate point, but I
have a post chaise to catch at five o’clock at the Couched Lion.”
He rested his hand for a moment on Edward’s head. “You’ll come
through, laddie. After all, if worse comes to worst, you can take
the king’s shilling and sign on as a drummer boy for Spain. Think
of it. You can learn a foreign language in only a couple of
weeks.”

Jeannie stamped her
foot. “Bartley, I’ll thank you to keep your precious advice to
yourself,” she declared, and softened her words by holding out both
of her hands. “Do be careful, Bartley. I’ll be thinking of you. As
I always do,” she added.

He smiled and kissed
her cheek before she could duck away.

“
There, now! I’ve always wanted to do that. You take care of
yourself.” He turned to Larinda and words failed him. He could only
look at her, his heart in his eyes, and then grab her, kiss her
full on the lips, and run for the door.

Larinda put her fingers
to her lips and stared after him, too startled to cry. She wandered
to the door and watched Bartley MacGregor rush down the front steps
and into the street, leaving the door swinging wide. She stood
there a moment more and then came into the room again, her face
white, her eyes large and filled with tears.

Jeannie regarded her
for only a moment, figured that love could wait, and then devoted
her attention to Edward, who was struggling with his own agony.

He took the sextant
from her and made an attempt to straighten the scale back into the
index arm. As he bit his lips and exerted all his strength, the
drum and vernier fell onto the carpet and rolled under the sofa.
With a sigh, he set down the battered instrument. “Maybe Captain
MacGregor is right,” he murmured. “Mrs. McVinnie, I have a sudden
patriotic urge to serve our king in a foreign climate.”

Jeannie hugged him to
her once more. “Not a bit of it, laddie,” she said, crossing her
fingers and hoping that she sounded more confident than she felt.
“But do go upstairs right now. I think it would be better if you
let me tell him first.”

He nodded, sighed again
heavily, and started for the door. He stopped and stood absolutely
still, an inarticulate sound coming from his throat.

As Jeannie looked at
him in surprise, she heard the carriage at the front steps, the
murmur of deep voices, the door slamming hard, the heavy footsteps
coming up the front walk. She closed her eyes and wished herself
far away from Wendover Square as Captain Summers stalked into the
sitting room, threw off his boat cloak, and dropped into a
chair.

Larinda, Edward, and
Jeannie stared at him, and he stared back. When no one said
anything or even moved, he looked from one to the other.

“
Has
something happened?” he asked at last. “You look as though you have
seen a ghost.” He tried to smile, but the effort failed him. “I
know I am not Adonis, but I will not bite.”

He said no more when
they still did not respond, but his eyes fell upon the battered
sextant lying on the sofa. Edward began to edge toward the
door.

“
Move
and you’re a dead man,” he said, and his voice held such menace
that Jeannie felt her heart skip a beat. She forced herself to move
toward Edward, to stand in front of him.

“
And,
by God, don’t hide behind that woman’s skirts,” the captain
continued, rising from the chair.

Edward gasped, but he
moved away from Jeannie, clasped his hands behind his back, and
stood in the center of the room, shaking like a leaf. He closed his
eyes as the captain came toward him, and then opened them when his
uncle passed him and went to the sofa instead.

He picked up the
sextant and cradled it in his arm like he would a child, touching
it, running his fingers down the crooked lines that used to shoot
the sun. With a curious laugh that made Jeannie cringe and Edward
sob out loud, he held the telescope to his eye. He laughed again,
and there was just the tinge of hysteria in his voice.

Summers must have heard
it too, because he took a deep breath, and when that wasn’t
sufficient, another one, and another. His face went from red to
white, and Jeannie forgot her own fear and hurried toward him.

“
Will,
perhaps you had better sit down,” she advised, and took his
arm.

He shook her off and
went to the chair again by himself, passing Edward as though he
were not there. He sat there, resting his elbows on his knees,
watching Edward, saying nothing, until Jeannie wanted to shake him.
Instead, she held her head high and twisted her fingers
together.

“
Edward,” he said at last, and Edward looked at him, the tears
streaming silently down his face.

“
Sir?”
he said, his voice only the approximation of speech.

“
I
have counted to ten twenty times now, and I am still no less angry
than I was when I began.”

Edward hung his head
and Jeannie felt her heart break.

“
Look
at me, Edward, and pay close attention.”

Edward raised his eyes
again.

“
You
must be callous indeed to have no regard for what that sextant
means—meant—to me. Go to your room now. I’ll deal with you later. I
am afraid what I would do if I tried to deal with you now. Get out
of my sight.”

Without a word, Edward
ran from the room. Larinda, her own face a mirror of her brother’s,
followed him. Jeannie stared at the carpet, afraid to move, but
more afraid to leave Will Summers alone. After a moment more of
contemplating the pattern in the carpet, she raised her eyes to
Will Summers’ ravaged face.

He stared back, and
gradually his complexion returned to its normal color. After
another moment, he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, as
if unable to meet her gaze anymore.

Jeannie continued her
perusal, wondering how it was possible for one middle-aged man to
look so old. Do I look that old? she thought. Have my own troubles
made me someone I wouldn’t recognize if I looked in a mirror? If
they have, then I may have missed the point of life.

“
That
was terrible of me,” he said at last.

A moment ago, she would
have agreed with him, but she could not now. She pulled up a chair
beside him. It wasn’t close enough, but he had given her no leave
to sit on his lap. “No, Will, it was justifiable.”

“
That
still doesn’t excuse it.”