The Admiral's Penniless Bride (21 page)

You needn’t apologise for anything
, Charles thought. His arms felt too heavy to hold the letter, but little remained now to read. He continued, and broke his heart in the process: ‘When you told me to get out, please be assured I left as fast as I could. I only took with me what I came with, so all your possessions remain in this house. Whatever you choose to believe, believe this: I love you with all my heart. I will never trouble you again, but please know that wherever you go in the world, there is one woman who will always love you. I suppose that is my cross to bear. Your dreadfully inconvenient wife, Sarah Sophia Paul Daviess Bright.’

An arrow pointed to a postscript on the back. He turned it over to read, ‘Please, please do not dismiss any of the servants. I know you complain about tripping over them,
but they have nowhere to go. My sins should not reflect upon them. S.B.’

He bowed his head over the letter, folding it even smaller because he could not bear to see her familiar handwriting. He had become so used to it, from all their days in the bookroom, when she patiently listened and questioned, then spent most of her evenings writing his story. It was all in ashes now, much like his marriage. Disgusted with himself, he looked in her dressing room again. All her beautiful clothes were hanging there in silent reprimand. He went to the burgundy dress, his favourite, and sniffed the fabric. It smelled like her. He stood beside it a long time.

Before he left the room, he went to the desk again. There was another sheet of paper there, folded like the letter, and with Sophie’s familiar handwriting, but yellowed with age. He read her note: ‘Before Andrew took all the incriminating documents to Sperling, I kept back this one—I suppose I was not as trusting as my husband. We showed it to a barrister, but he said it would have no value in a court of law, since the defendant’s wife had procured it.’

He opened it, seeing the familiar invoice form from the victualling yard that had crossed his own desk thousands of times. What Sperling had done became perfectly obvious to him, but Sophie was right. No judge would ever allow the admission of such a document. Poor Sophie. Poor, naïve Andrew.

The letter and document in his hand, he went downstairs, then down the next flight to the servants’ hall. Well, that explained where everyone was. From Minerva the youngest, to the two old tars he had rescued from the docks and employed in yard work, they sat there, silent and watching him. Starkey was at their head, looking so pleased with himself.

Charles drew himself up and minced not a single word. ‘You all know what has happened. Lady Bright has left. I don’t know where she has gone, but I need to know. If any of you have even the slightest clue, please tell me.’

He looked around, hopeful. His servants looked back, silent.

‘Does anyone know? None of you saw her leave?’

Silence still.
That is Sophie
, he thought.
She made sure no one knew anything, so I could not turn my wrath on them.

‘Very well. Go about your duties, please. Starkey, I’d like a word with you. The beach.’

It was more than a word. It was many words, none of them spoken until his long-time servant had read Sophie’s letter. Starkey tried to stop, but Charles thrust the letter back in his face. ‘Read it, damn your eyes!’ he shouted, not caring if the wind sent his words back to the house, where his staff was already frightened.

When he finished, Starkey tried to rise from the driftwood stump, the same one Sophie had sat on when they made their way to the beach so many times that summer. Charles clamped his hook against his servant’s shoulder, caring not the slightest when the man winced.

‘What made you think to meddle in my affairs?’ he asked, when he had regained some control. He lifted his hand and Starkey rubbed his shoulder.

‘You didn’t know anything about her, sir.’

Charles nodded. ‘True. Tell me something, Starkey. Did you really think I needed your help with a wife?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then explain yourself.’

Starkey was silent. Charles looked at him. ‘Tell me what you did. All of it.’

Starkey looked down at his shoes.

‘All of it!’ Charles shouted.

Starkey couldn’t speak fast enough then. Words tumbled out of him as he told Charles of visiting the vicar at St Andrew’s Church, and seeing the parish record listing Andrew Daviess as Sophie’s husband. ‘I remembered him. I figured you were being diddled, sir. That’s it! Honestly! I went to Admiralty House and they were glad to hear what I had to say.’

‘Did you mention this matter to anyone else?’

Starkey hung his head even lower. ‘Your sisters,’ he muttered.

‘Good God! What were you thinking?’ Charles ex claimed.

‘I told them what had happened and swore them to secrecy. I…I…knew the Admiralty was going to come down hard on Lady Bright.’ He began to cry then. ‘I told them…oh, God, I told them to be patient. That they would have their brother back again soon.’

Charles closed his eyes, speechless.

‘I’m sorry, sir! I’m sorry!’

Charles took a moment to collect himself. ‘Starkey, you have fed me a mean dinner, on top of the generous helping of remorse I can lay claim to, for my own actions. There is a strong possibility that Andrew Daviess is innocent. I remember Edmund Sperling. Lord Edborough had given him various positions at Admiralty House and none of them took. The man was hopeless. I intend to inquire into Sperling’s business, Starkey, but first I must find my wife.’

Starkey nodded. ‘I can go to Admiralty House and—’

‘I think not,’ Charles said. ‘What you can do is clear out your rooms and get out of my sight. I’ll give you your year’s wages, but damned if I’ll furnish you a character, since you have none.’

He said it kindly enough, but he meant every word. Starkey opened his mouth to protest, but Charles just shook his head. After another moment’s reflection, he turned on his heel and made his way back to his house—full of servants, but more empty than a beggar’s bowl.

C
harles wasted no time in sending out his yard staff to look for Sophie. They were resourceful seamen, down on their luck because peace has interfered, but they knew Plymouth as well as anyone. She hadn’t been gone too long, and it was three miles to the Barbican, the seaport’s centre.

‘You know what she looks like,’ he told them. ‘Describe her. Ask around. She’s probably going by the name of Sally Paul again.’
God knows she isn’t using my name
, he thought.

He took his pride in his hands and walked next door to Lord Brimley’s estate, unburdening himself to the old man, who was surprisingly sympathetic. He thought long and hard about stopping to see Jacob Brustein. Carriages were coming and going from the manor, but he decided against troubling him with news that a friend of his dear Rivka was gone from his life. He could tell Jacob later, when all the mourners had returned home.

The servants crept around quietly while Charles paced
the floor in the sitting room, choosing that room to worry in, because he had a clear view of the road. Maybe he was as naïve as Andrew, God rest his soul. He hoped to look up and see Sophie walking down the long drive, ready to return and give a second chance to a man who didn’t deserve one.

By nightfall, he knew she wasn’t coming. Starkey was gone, so he instructed his remaining yardman to build a bonfire on the beach. He sat there until Leaky Tadwell appeared, cheerful, interested, and ready to sell him more smuggled liquor.

‘That’s not it, Leaky. My wife is gone,’ Charles said, almost surprising himself with his willingness to confide in a complete scoundrel.

‘Scarpered off, did she?’ Tadwell asked. Charles was surprised at the degree of sympathy in his voice. ‘You probably do need more spirits. I can lay me mitts on a Fogale Milano that will make you disremember that you ever had a wife.’

‘Leaky! No!’ Charles sighed. ‘I…I broke her heart and she left me.’

‘Begging your pardon, Admiral, you have a lot to learn about gentry morts. She was a pretty thing.’

This was not going well, but Charles had no intention of scaring away a perfectly good source. ‘Leaky, it’s this way: you know everyone in Plymouth.’

‘Devonport, too,’ Tadwell added.

‘Devonport, too. I want you to make discreet inquiries. Here. I’ve written a description of her. Just ask around. If anyone has seen her, let me know.’

Tadwell took the sheet and looked at it doubtfully. ‘Can’t read, Admiral. Otherwise, it’s a great plan.’

Charles counted to ten and took back the sheet. ‘I’ll read
it to you. “Looking for a woman calling herself Sally Paul, or Sally Daviess”. Can you remember that?’

Tadwell gave him a wounded look. ‘Pray continue, Admiral. I ain’t in me dotage.’

‘Indeed not. She is nine or ten inches taller than you, Leaky. Her hair is brown and so are her eyes. She is of slim build, but not markedly so. She has the most wonderful Scottish accent.’

Tadwell nodded, and repeated what Charles told him. ‘I remember all that, sir, from my earlier glimpse of her. But how else does she stand out? A lisp or a cackling laugh, like ol’ Nosey?’

Charles shook his head. ‘No, nothing like the grand duke. She’s a quiet woman who will do nothing to draw attention to herself.’

Tadwell took off his greasy watch cap and scratched his hair. ‘You’re not making this easy, Admiral.’

‘I know, Leaky. Do your best.’

So it went, the rest of that dismal autumn. He wrote to Dundrennan, and other Lowland cities and towns in Scotland, begging for news of such a woman. Nothing. The yard men returned empty-handed. Leaky Tadwell ranged the coastal towns, coming back with no news. When Charles thought to visit Jacob Brustein, the knocker was off the door. A note to David Brustein in Plymouth enquiring about Jacob’s whereabouts informed him that his father had gone to visit a daughter in Brighton.

By Christmas, he could no longer fool himself. Sophie Bright was true to her word, Charles had to admit, even though it caused him unbearable anguish. She had said she would not trouble him again and she meant it. He spent one long evening in the bookroom, writing letters to Dora
and Fannie, explaining the situation and begging to just let him alone.

His Christmas present to Miss Thayn was to offer her the title of housekeeper, which she accepted. Miss Thayn’s present to him was to ask for two days off so she and Etienne could be married. He gave his consent most willingly, even though he could not overlook the envy he felt at another couple’s happiness.

When the Dupuis returned from Plymouth, he gave Madame Dupuis the keys to his manor, keeping only the key to his wine cellar, which he took belowstairs, settling in for the month of January in a single-minded attempt to drink the shelves bare. He only glared at Etienne when his chef tried to coax him upstairs for meals, and was impervious to his new housekeeper’s tears. He drank and wallowed, drank some more, grew shaggy and started to stink.

His rescue came from a wholly unexpected source, one he never could have imagined, which was why he probably paid attention.

The day had begun much like the ones preceding it. He woke up in the wine cellar, his mouth dry and his stomach sour. His head was lying in someone’s lap, someone soft. For a small heartbreak of a moment, he thought it must be Sophie, come to save him from himself. When his vision cleared, he saw it was his sister, Dora, she who lived in Fannie’s shadow and who had never in her life issued an opinion of her own.

‘Dora?’ he asked, hardly believing his eyes.
‘Dora?’

‘The very same,’ she replied, cradling his crusty head in her arms. ‘Charles Bright, It’s Time To Stop.’

Charles tried to smile at her, but his lips were cracked and starting to bleed.
There you go, speaking in capital
letters
, he thought, remembering how he had described her to Sophie. He cried, uncertain whether they were a drunkard’s tears, whether it tore his heart to think of his wife, or whether this was real relief that his sister had come to save his life.

He knew he was disgusting, but she held him close, crooning to him, wiping his tears with a lace handkerchief that smelled of lavender and other civilised things. He rested in her arms, thinking of how she and Fannie had looked after him when their mother died, he still a small lad, not even old enough to go to sea.

‘Fannie?’ he asked finally, hoping that one-word sentences could suffice, since he couldn’t manage more.

‘We Have Had A Falling Out,’ she said, her voice as gentle as her fingers in his greasy hair. ‘She thought you should suffer, especially after the way you treated us. I begged to differ. Politely, though, always politely.’ She laughed, sitting on the floor in that cellar slimy with his vomit, holding him close. ‘What a shock that was to her system! We parted and I came here. From the look of things, not a minute too soon. Charles, let me help you upstairs. We have some work to do.’

She could no more lift him out of the cellar than turn cartwheels down St James’s Street, but a loud halloo brought the yard men running. They carried him to his bedroom, Dora right behind, admonishing them to have a care. He thought to protest when she stripped him naked and had the yard men help him into the tub, where she rolled up her sleeves and washed his hair first. She scrubbed away a month of filth from his body, scolding him all the while in her soft voice, the one that he used to think so irritating, but now was the sweetest sound he had heard in months.

All five feet of her, Dora cleaned him up, dried him off and popped him into a nightshirt. He was asleep before she tiptoed from the room.

He had slept around the clock and woke up ravenous. Dora shook her head at all his suggestions for the meal he wanted—a loin of beef the size of a dinner plate and a pound or two of potatoes—and spooned consommé down him instead, followed by toast and tea. After a day of this stringent regimen, she enlisted Minerva and Gladys to carry up the beef and potatoes. She watched every bite he took, looking at him over her knitting. The pleasant click of her needles soothed his battered heart. He slept again.

The room was empty when he woke up. One of the little maids must have brought hot water, because the familiar brass can stood on the washstand next to the basin. His hook was nowhere to be seen, but he didn’t need it, anyway. What he needed was to see if he could stand up again.

Mission accomplished, after several tries, one of which sent him lurching towards his dressing room. He made a course correction that would have pleased his first sailing master, dead these many years, and managed to tip enough hot water into the basin to scrape away at his face.

It wasn’t a good job. His month-long growth needed kinder attention than he could provide, but it would do. He patted on the bay rum, wincing when it collided with the little nicks he had administered in his pursuit of a smooth face again. Still, the effect was creditable. Now, where were his clothes?

Dora knocked and came into his room when he was sitting on his bed, contemplating his hook and harness, which someone had stashed in his dressing room. She was
a quick learner. ‘Now you’re armed again,’ she said when she snapped the last clasp into place.

He never knew her to make a joke before, and it warmed his heart. To show his gratitude, he even let her button his shirt.

She told him luncheon was being served in the breakfast room today, and allowed him to take her arm as he escorted her to the table. When he finished eating and folded his napkin, she cleared her throat.

‘Charles, it is time you visited Admiralty House.’

‘Dora, along with your other attributes, you are also a mind reader.’

Two nights later, Charles was installed in a handsome bedchamber at Dora’s town house on a quiet side street near St James’s Park.

‘Stay as long as you like,’ Dora told him, handing over a front-door key. ‘My servants are as old as I am, and I wouldn’t dream of keeping anyone up to await your return, should you choose to visit a Den of Dissipation.’

‘I think I will confine my efforts to Admiralty House,’ he said, pocketing the key. He sighed and looked out the window.

‘I can come with you, if you like,’ Dora said, her lip trembling.

You would fight tigers for me, sister
, he thought, and it humbled him. He kissed her forehead. ‘Dora, you’ve done everything I need. I couldn’t ask for more. I’m in your debt for ever.’

He left the next morning while the other inmates still slept, and walked through St James’s Park. Snow had fallen in the night, and the bare trees reminded him of Sophie’s little book of sonnets, which she had left behind
with everything else he had ever bought her. Until he went down to the cellar for a drink and never came up, he had been working his way through the sonnets.

‘“Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang”,’ he murmured, looking at the small lake. He knew the sonnet by heart, but had no wish to continue. He did anyway, settling in his mind that he might never see Sophie Bright again. ‘“To love that well which thou must leave ere long”.’

He continued east across the park to Horse Guards and Admiralty House, smiling to see it, thinking of all the times he had strode its halls, first as a lieutenant seeking a ship when none was to be had, on through the intense, gory years of his captaincy, and then the exalted state of his admiralty, when all doors opened to receive him. He was one of the anointed, one of the chosen, in the same league—well, no one was—with Horatio Nelson himself. What was it worth to him now? Less than dust.

By the time he approached the familiar entrance, London was open for business. He was dressed in his civilian clothes, but felt some small twinge of pride when he was recognised at once by the captains who waited for an audience, much as he had done. He revelled a moment in genuine happiness, greeting old friends and hearing new tales of a much slower peacetime navy, one not destined to shower down the honours and terrors of the long war. Charles smiled to himself to see young captains chafe at inaction.
Be careful what you wish for
, he thought.

His request to speak to the First Lord brought an immediate response. He scarcely had to wait a moment in the First Lord’s office before he was bowing to Lord Biddle and then shaking his hand. Pleasantries were awkward; it was obvious that old Biddle knew very well what had transpired in Admiral Bright’s private life. At least he kept
his opinions to himself, dancing around them by asking about his manor and other approved subjects.

When the only safe topic left was the weather, Charles held up his hand. ‘My lord, I have no desire to encroach upon your valuable time. May I ask, is Lord Edborough available? I have something particular to ask him.’

Biddle shook his head. ‘Charles, you have missed him by mere months! He retired just before Christmas.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘You are in luck, actually. I saw him only yesterday at Lord Brattleton’s crush in honour of his whey-faced daughter. Don’t laugh; it was purgatory. I believe you will find him at his residence.’ Biddle looked in a drawer and extracted a memo pad, scribbling on it. ‘Here is his direction.’

‘Thank you. Before I visit him, I would like to look at the transcripts of the trial of Andrew Daviess, supervisor of the Portsmouth victualling yard. It was in March of 1811, I believe.’

Lord Biddle sat a long moment, choosing not to meet Charles’s glance.

‘I am certain the transcripts are here, Lord Biddle,’ Charles insisted, when the silence stretched on too long. ‘I have every right to see them. I was there.’

‘I cannot produce them.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘They no longer exist.’

‘Oh.’ His heart dropped to his ankles as Charles continued to regard the First Lord, whose face had turned quite red. ‘They just disappeared? Took a powder? French leave?’

‘Precisely.’ The First Lord leaned forwards across his desk, his expression forced and hearty now. ‘Charles, you
know as well as any of us how the world works. There is no record of that trial.’