The Admiral's Penniless Bride (6 page)

‘Try muck.’

The admiral tipped back his chair and laughed. ‘Very well! Muck. I can see that your principal task will be to smooth my rough edges.’

‘Very well, sir.’

Starkey knocked on the door, then opened it. ‘Dupuis wanted me to tell you that dinner is served in the breakfast room. I have covered the scabrous paintings.’ He closed the door, then opened it again. ‘Penelope and Odysseus are gone,’ he intoned. ‘Or maybe she was Venus and he a typical sailor.’

Sally stared after him. ‘This place is a lunatic asylum,’ she said, when Starkey closed the door.

‘Not quite, dear wife. You have a worse task ahead, one I won’t even bother to immortalise on paper. You must find me something useful to do.’

That will be a chore, she thought, as she removed her clothes that night in the privacy of her own bedroom. Starkey had made the bed at some point in the evening and lit a fire in the grate, which took away the chill of the rain that continued to fall.

Dinner had been sheer delight. On short notice, Etienne
had prepared a wonderful onion soup and served it with homely pilot bread, a menu item she remembered well from the days when Andrew would bring home his work and pore over the Royal Navy victual list, as she sat knitting in their tidy bookroom.

She had felt shy at first with Charles, spending so much time in the company of a man she barely knew, but who was utterly engaging. Thinking to put her at ease, he started telling stories of life at sea—nothing designed to horrify her, but stories of travel to lands so far away she used to wonder if they were real, when she was a child. He told them with gusto, describing the purgatory of being a ‘young gentleman’, a thoroughly unexalted position below midshipman, when he was only ten.

She must have looked askance at such a rough life for a mere child, because he stopped and touched her hand. ‘Don’t worry. I will never send our children to sea so young.’

He had continued his narrative, probably not even aware of his inclusion of her in his life, and she knew better than to say anything. She found herself listening to him with all her heart, filled with the pleasure of something as simple as conversation. She realised she had been hungry for it, after years of tending old women who liked to retire with the chickens. A lady’s companion didn’t quite belong in the servants’ hall, and certainly not in the master’s sitting room. There had been too many nights spent in solitude, with too much time to miss her son and agonise over her husband’s ruin. This was different and she relished the admiral’s company.

He had said goodnight outside the door to her chamber. ‘I’m across the hall, if you need anything,’ he said, then turned smartly on his heel, looking every inch the commander, and probably not even aware of it.

You don’t know what else to be, do you?
she thought, closing the door.
As for what I need, it isn’t much, Admiral. When you are destitute, you quickly discover how much you don’t need, or you die.

She sat cross-legged on her bed, bouncing a little, pleased to feel the comfort of a mattress thicker than a bandage. She had hung on to the mirror-backed hairbrush Andrew had given her one Christmas, and applied it, after she had taken all the pins from her hair.

She turned over the brush and looked seriously at her face, noting the anxious eyes and thin cheeks, and wondering again why Admiral Bright had even paused to look at her in the dining room. All she could think was that the poor man was desperate for a wife, and when The Mouse didn’t materialise… Well, whatever the reason, she would do her best to smooth his passage on land.

She was in bed and thinking about pinching out the candle when he knocked.

‘Sophia, I forgot something. Stick your hand out the door.’

Mystified, she got up and opened the door a crack. ‘Why on earth…?’ she began.

He had taken off his coat, removed his neckcloth and unbuttoned his shirt; she could see the webbing of straps against his neck that bound his hook to his wrist. He held out a piece of string.

‘I’m determined to do something about that ring that you kept taking on and off during dinner. Did it end up in the soup?’

What a sweet man you are
, she thought. ‘You know it didn’t! I can surely just wrap some cloth around it and keep it from slipping off,’ she said. ‘You needn’t…’

‘Mrs Bright, I won’t have my wife stuffing cloth in her
ring. What would our unmet neighbours think? Besides, it was my choice for The Mouse. Somehow, it just isn’t you.’

She opened her mouth to protest, but he gently laid his finger across her lips. ‘Mrs Bright, I am not used to being crossed. Retired I may be, but I like my consequence. Hold out your ring finger like the good girl I know you are. Lively now.’

She did as he said. How could she not? He handed her a small stub of a pencil and draped the string across her finger.

‘I don’t have enough hands for this,’ he muttered. ‘Just wrap it around and mark the right length.’

Sally did, touched at his kindness. Their heads were close together, and she breathed in his pleasant scent of bay rum again. ‘There you are, sir.’ She handed him the marked string and the pencil.

He stepped back. She stayed where she was, her eyes on his brace. ‘May I undo that for you?’

‘Why not?’ he said, leaning down a little. ‘Do you see the hole in the leather? Just twist and pop out the metal knob. Ah. Perfect. I can do the rest, but it’s hard to grasp that little thing.’

‘That’s all?’ she asked.

‘Simple enough with two hands, eh? Oh, you can undo my cufflinks, too. This pair is particularly pesky.’

She handed him the cufflinks. ‘Goodnight, sir. Let me know if you need help in the morning.’

He smiled his thanks and went back to his room, closing the door quietly behind him.

She fell asleep easily after that, making it the first night in years she had not rehearsed in her mind all the anguish and humiliation of the past five years. ‘Trust a houseful of naughty cupids and vulgar statues to distract me,’ she
murmured to herself. ‘Lord, I am shallow.’ The notion made her smile and she closed her eyes. ‘Pretty soon I will think I actually belong here.’

She woke hours later because she knew she was not alone in her room. She lay completely still, wondering, then turned over.

Staring at her from the other pillow was a face so wrinkled that her mouth dropped open. He was watching her and grinning, and there didn’t seem to be a tooth in his head. She tried to leap up, but he grasped her wrist and gave it a slobbery kiss.

‘It’s been a long year, missie,’ he said.

Sally screamed.

R
etired though he was, Admiral Bright knew he was destined never to sleep at night with both ears at rest. Not even when he resided on his flagship, and had little role in the actual workings of it—leaving that to his captain—could he sleep calmly at night. No, it was worse then, because his command was an entire fleet and he held even more lives in his hands.

He was out of bed before his wife even finished the scream, looking about for something to help her, from what, he had not a clue. Nothing wrong with his reflexes. By the time she screamed again, he had found his cutlass in the dressing room. Frustrated with a missing hand, he shoved the cutlass under his arm and yanked open the door.

Simultaneously, her door opened, too. He heaved a quick sigh to see her on her feet, even though her eyes were wide with terror, and something more. She threw herself into his arms and the cutlass clattered to the floor. She was
awfully easy to grasp and hold on to, much as he already was beginning to suspect she would be.

‘What in God’s name…?’ he began. He tried to pick up the cutlass, but she wouldn’t turn him loose. He patted her. She felt sound of limb, so he left the cutlass where it lay, and held her close, not minding a bit.

She burrowed in closer, babbling something that sounded like words; her brogue didn’t help. He put his hand on her chin and gave her a little shake, which brought her up short.

‘Hey, now. Slow down. You’re all right.’

He was gratified to know that all his years of command weren’t a total waste. She stopped talking and took a deep breath, then leaned her forehead against his chest.

‘I think I killed him! And he’s so old!’

He blinked. He couldn’t have heard her right. ‘Sophia?’ he asked. ‘What did you say?’

With an exasperated exclamation, she left his embrace, took his hand and tugged him into her chamber. ‘Admiral, he was just…there! His head on the other pillow! I thumped him with my candlestick, but when I took a closer look…I’ve murdered an old man!’

‘Good God,’ was all he could think to say.

She climbed on her bed, affording him a marvellous glimpse of her legs, then flattened out on her stomach and peered over the edge on to the side closest to the wall. She looked back and gestured to him impatiently, so he joined her, lying there with his feet dangling over one side, looking where she pointed. A true antique lay on the floor, tangled in the bedclothes. His eyes were closed and a bruise rose on his forehead.

‘Do you think he’s dead?’ Sophia whispered.

Maybe the old man on the floor heard her, because he groaned and opened his eyes. ‘Was it something I said?’
he managed to croak. ‘You never did anything like that before.’

Bright glanced at Sophia, who stared at the old fellow. ‘Who…who…on earth are you, and what were you doing in my bed?’

The man held up his arm and Bright helped him into a sitting position. ‘Listen here, this is my wife’s bedroom,’ Bright said. ‘I think I’ve a right to know what is going on.’

The man gently touched the knot on his forehead, winced and looked at the two of them, watching him from the bed. ‘This is the right house, and I know this is June 10th. What, pray tell, are you two doing here?’

Bright looked at Sophia, who had gathered herself together into a tight ball on her pillow. ‘My dear, maybe you were right about this being a lunatic asylum.’

The old man began to wave his arms about. ‘For God’s sake, help me to a chair,’ he insisted. ‘Do I have to remind you it is June 10th?’

Sophia took one arm and Bright took the other, and walked him to a chair by the fireplace, where he sat down gratefully. ‘I could use some water,’ he said.

Bright had to smile when Sophia picked up the carafe at her bedside and started to sprinkle the old gentleman with it.

‘No! No! You silly piece! I want to drink it!’ he declared, his voice still weak, but testy. ‘It’s June 10th!’

‘June 10th?’ Bright echoed. ‘Is June 10th the night when lunatics and drooling idiots in Devon come out of the moor? This is a private dwelling and you have accosted my wife.’

The man stared at them, looking from one to the other and back again, like a tennis match in the court of France. ‘This is the manor of Lord Hudley, is it not?’

‘No, it is not. I bought it two months ago from his estate.’

The little man seemed to deflate further before their eyes. ‘His estate? He is
dead
?’ He choked out the last word in a way that sounded almost theatrical.

‘These six months or more,’ Bright said. He pulled up the other chair and gestured for Sophia to sit in it. After a long look at the old man, she did. ‘I believe he died in Venice after too much vino, which landed him in the Grand Canal, with nary a gondola in sight.’

‘That would be totally in character,’ the old gentleman said. ‘I wonder why I was never informed?’

‘Are you a relative?’ Sophia asked.

Even in the dim light, Bright could see that her hands were shaking. He put his hand over hers and she clutched him.

Bright wasn’t sure the old boy heard her. He sat back and closed his eyes again. ‘Hudley’s gone?’

‘I fear so,’ Bright said gently. ‘Now, if you wouldn’t mind tell us the significance of June 10th?’

The little man seemed to gather his tattered dignity about him like a dressing gown. ‘You can’t imagine how I used to look forwards to June 10th.’

‘Perhaps I could, if I had any idea what June 10th
was
.’

‘Hudley held the most amazing debauches here,’ the old man said, his voice almost dreamy. He glanced at Sophia, who glared back. ‘This is
my
bedroom, missy! Hudley always had my favourite Cyprian tucked right in here.’

Sophia gasped. Bright glanced at her, amused, as her mouth opened and closed several times. He looked back at the old fellow, new respect in his eyes.

‘I know this is rude, but how old
are
you?’

‘Eighty,’ he said with some dignity, and not a little pride.
‘I have been attending Hudley’s debauches for forty years, every June 10th.’ His eyes got more dreamy, obviously remembering some of the more memorable ones. ‘Do you know—are you aware—that a Cyprian can swing from the chandelier in the library?’ He held up a cautionary finger. ‘But only one unencumbered with clothing. Small feet, too.’

‘I don’t doubt you for a minute, sir.’

What a prodigious old sprite
, Bright thought in astonishment. He could feel Sophia’s eyes boring into the back of his nightshirt.
I’m going to be in such trouble if I don’t cease this line of enquiry
, he thought. ‘I doubt seriously we will ever need to test the strength of the chandelier,’ he said, knowing how lame he sounded. ‘Perhaps we should introduce ourselves? I am Sir Charles Bright, retired admiral of his Majesty’s Blue Fleet. This is my wife, Lady Bright.’

The old man inclined his head as graciously as though he addressed his retainers. ‘I am Lord Edmonds, and I live in Northumberland.’

No wonder you looked forwards to a visit to Devonshire
, Bright thought.
I would, too, if I lived in Northumberland. You probably dreamed about this all year.
‘I suppose that would explain why you never heard of Lord Hudley’s demise.’

Lord Edmonds was in the mood to reminisce. ‘Sometimes one, sometimes two, sometimes—’

‘That will do, Lord Edmonds,’ Bright interrupted, grateful that the dark hid his flaming face and unwilling to look Sophia in the eye.

Edmonds was unstoppable. ‘You’re a navy man. Don’t tell me you never…’

He floundered, but was rescued by an unexpected source. ‘Lord Edmonds, more to the point right now, how
did you get into this house?’ Sophia asked, her hands folded demurely in her lap now, and looking far too fetching in her nightgown, with hair all around her shoulders.

Thank the Lord the old boy was diverted. Maybe he could also see in Sophia what was not lost on Bright. ‘Simple, my dear. Hudley secreted keys all over the terrace. I found my key—mine is under the little statue of Aphrodite with her legs…well, you know…out by the roses.’

‘Oh,’ Sophia said, her voice faint. ‘And there are keys everywhere?’

‘Everywhere,’ Lord Edmonds agreed cheerily. ‘We never had trouble getting in.’

This was the moment when Charles Bright had his first brush with what one of his captains—after a trying time ashore with a pregnant wife—used to call ‘marriage politics’. The fact that he recognised the moment made Bright’s heart do a funny thing. He knew his ship’s surgeon would call such a thing impossible, but he felt his heart take a little leap. Nothing big, but there it was.
I can laugh because I want to, and this antediluvian roué is harmless
, he thought,
or I can think of Sophia, and that sudden intake of breath. Choose wisely, Admiral.

He took a deep breath, knowing that if he laughed, he might as well have waited another day or two for The Mouse. ‘Lord Edmonds, that worries me. Would you mind spending the night here—in a different room, of course—and walk around the gardens with me in the morning?’ He touched Sophia’s cheek, humbled at her tears. ‘I…I won’t have my wife alarmed like this again.’

He swallowed and looked at the woman making herself so small in the chair next to the old man. ‘My dear, I will never let anything like this happen again.’

She only nodded, because Bright could tell she couldn’t speak. The fear in her eyes reminded him how little he
knew about women. Bright had no qualms about thanking the Lord for small favours to a man who, mere days ago, would have laughed.
I just learned something
, he thought, as he smiled at her with what he hoped was reassurance.
Pray I remember it.

‘I can recall some of them,’ Lord Edmonds said.

‘Very well, then. How about you and I go belowdecks and see if my chef won’t mind providing us some tea? You might as well go back to bed, Sophia,’ he said. ‘I’ll find a bedroom for our…uh…guest.’

‘Oh, no,’ she declared, getting to her feet. ‘I’m not staying up here by myself!’

Etienne didn’t seem surprised by his early morning visitors; Bright hadn’t thought he would, considering the odd hours they were both familiar with from life in the Channel Fleet. He rubbed his eyes, looked Lord Edmonds over, and even provided some ice chips in a towel for the bump on his head.

Sophia had retreated to her room long enough to find a dressing gown as shabby as her nightgown and twist what looked like a wooden skewer into her mass of hair, pulling it back from her face. He found his own dressing gown, and she had kindly tied the sash without being asked.

She stuck right by his side down the stairs, which gave him the courage to drape his handless arm across her shoulder, hoping it wouldn’t disgust her. It didn’t. She let out a long breath, as though she had been holding it, and gave him a quick glance full of gratitude.

They sat downstairs in the servants’ hall for more than an hour, listening to Lord Edmonds, more garrulous by the minute, describe in glowing detail some of the more memorable revelries in the quiet building. As the clock chimed three, he gave a tremendous yawn. ‘I am ready to
hang it up,’ he announced. His eyes turned wistful. ‘Forty years. My dears, when you live in the land of chilblained knees and sour oatmeal, a toddle down to Lord Hudley’s was always an event to look forwards to.’ He winked at Sophia, who by now was smiling. Glancing back at Bright, he said, ‘She’s a tasty morsel. Where did you find her?’

‘In a hotel dining room,’ Bright said, which seemed to be the best answer. Sophia laughed, which told him he had chosen right again.

Lord Edmonds looked at them both, obviously wondering if there was a joke unknown to him, then shrugged. ‘I just need a blanket and a pillow,’ he said, then brightened, ever the optimist. ‘You could let me sleep in the library.’

‘Absolutely not,’ Bright said firmly. ‘My steward has already prepared you a chamber in the room next to me. After breakfast in a few hours, you and I will tour the grounds.’ He held out his hand and wiggled his fingers. ‘I’ll thank you for your key now.’

Lord Edmonds sighed, but surrendered the item. He followed them up the stairs, muttering something about ‘how stodgy today’s youngsters are’, which made Sophia’s shoulders shake. ‘He thinks we are young people,’ she whispered to Bright. ‘Should we be flattered?’

‘I know
I
am,’ he whispered back. ‘Sophia, you must admit he is a prodigious old goat, to think he was going to thrill some Cyprian! Pray God I am as hopeful, at age eighty.’

‘I don’t have to admit anything of the kind,’ she shot back. ‘I hope you two finds lots of keys tomorrow morning!’

He left Sophia at her door and escorted Lord Edmonds to his. He stood in the middle of the hall, uncertain what to do. The evening had already turned into something disturbingly similar to watch and watch about when he was
a lieutenant: four hours on and four hours off, around the clock, at the good pleasure of the gods of war. He looked at Sophia’s door, wondering if she would sleep.

There was a wing-back chair in the hall, rump sprung and removed from one of the bedchambers. He pulled it to Sophia’s door and sat in it, making himself comfortable with his cutlass across his lap. No telling what a randy old goat would do, he reasoned, especially one so intimately acquainted with a ne’er-do-well like Lord Hudley.

He settled himself and closed his eyes.

‘Is that you, Charles?’

She sounded like she was crouching by the keyhole.

Charles, eh?
he thought, supremely gratified. ‘Aye, Sophie, my fair Cyprian.’

She opened the door a crack. ‘I think I am safe enough,’ she said, but he caught the element of doubt in her voice. ‘And I am not your “fair Cyprian”,’ she added, for good measure.

He winked at her and closed his eyes. When she still stood there, he opened one eye. ‘Sophia, it’s been many a year since anyone has questioned me.’

‘I’m not one of your lieutenants!’ she flared.

Temper, temper
, he thought.
It makes your eyes awfully bright.
‘That’s true,’ he said agreeably. ‘You’re oceans prettier. Goodnight, Sophie. If you stand here arguing with me in your bare feet, I will only conclude that war was more peaceful than peace.’