Nicola Cornick, Margaret McPhee, et al (31 page)

He was determined to make it up to her today. He’d explain his
reasons, not just order her around. And he’d brought flowers, too: flowers
could solve almost any dispute with a lady. At least, he remembered flowers
doing the trick with his sisters when they’d had fallings-out with gentlemen.
He studied the bunch of flowers he’d bought earlier in the market: exotic,
star-shaped white blossoms, and scraps of greenery tied up with a red ribbon.
Tentatively he lifted them to his nose to sniff the fragrance. It wasn’t often
he had the chance to smell anything very sweet at sea, especially not when—

‘My lord.’ She paused in the doorway, clearly surprised to find
him here first. ‘Good day to you, my lord. Are you keeping rooster’s hours,
too?’

He jerked his face up from the bouquet, feeling more like some
damned donkey caught nibbling in a flowerpot than a rooster. ‘Ah, no, Miss
Layton. That is, sailor’s hours aren’t much different from a rooster’s. These
are for you.’

He thrust the flowers out to her, and she smiled with unabashed
pleasure. The way her dark hair was sleeked back beneath her plain cap only
made the rosiness of her cheeks all the more apparent as she came towards him,
and he grinned back, glad he’d earned that reward from her.

But instead of taking the flowers she looked past them, then
lower, and frowned.

‘Oh, dear, no,’ she said, shaking her head even as she continued
to smile. ‘Forgive me, my lord, but you’re dusted all over with pollen.’

He looked down. The front of his dark blue uniform coat was
dusted with yellow pollen from the flowers, even to a faint film over the brass
buttons.

He could think of nothing, absolutely nothing, to say that was
acceptable before a lady.

‘Here, now, we’ll dust that away directly,’ she said, drawing her
handkerchief from her pocket. With quick, brisk strokes she flicked the pollen
from his coat, resting her hand lightly on his chest to hold the fabric taut.
He held his breath to keep from shifting, and prayed she wouldn’t feel how fast
his heart was beating so close to her touch.

‘That’s the worst of it.’ She gave his chest one final pat before
she looked up at him. ‘No lasting harm, my lord, not that—Oh, no, it’s on your
nose, too!’

Before he could stop her she’d reached up and dabbed the end of
his nose with the handkerchief, as if she were his nursemaid. He jerked back,
and once again held out the flowers that had already brought him so much
sorrow.

‘These are for you, Miss Layton,’ he said again. ‘To show I meant
no ill yesterday.’

‘How kind of you, my lord,’ she said, smiling shyly as she took
the flowers, though he noted how she held them away from her own dark clothes.
‘Though if anyone should be making amends it should be I. You were trying to
help, and I reacted by being a disagreeable shrew, and—’

‘Not at all,’ he said firmly. ‘I was the one at fault, giving you
orders as I did.’

‘You didn’t mean it,’ she said quickly. ‘I knew that.’

‘Well, at the time I did.’ He cleared his throat, glad she’d
stayed so close to him and hadn’t backed away. ‘But I give you my word that I
won’t again. Since we’re to work here together, as mates—’

‘As mates?’ she repeated, her blue eyes opening wide.
‘Mates?’

‘I don’t intend the word like landsmen do,’ he said hastily. ‘At
sea a mate’s your friend—one who shares your mess and your watch. The fellow
sitting at the next place at meals or in battle, the one you’d trust with your
life.
That’s
what I meant.’

‘Ahh,’ she said softly, and looked down at the flowers in her
hands. ‘Forgive me for not understanding, but I’ve never had anyone like that.
I’ve never worked beside anyone else save my father.’

‘A sister, then,’ he said. ‘I’d consider my brothers as mates,
too, even though we all fought like blazes when we were boys.’

She shook her head, still gazing down at the flowers. She had
extraordinary lashes, dark and thick and brushing over her cheeks. ‘No
brothers, no sisters. I cannot recall my mother, either, she died so long ago.
’ Twas always Father and me and no one else.’

Abruptly she turned away, as if she’d realised too late she’d
volunteered more than she’d meant to. ‘I’ll have to ask one of the servants for
water for these.’

‘They won’t have far to look. There’s more than enough old vases
around in here,’ he said heartily, hoping that would be enough to make her turn
towards him with her usual indignant fire. But instead she kept her back to
him, her shoulders so taut he knew she was upset. Blast. What had he done now?

‘Now, now,’ he said softly, resting one hand lightly on her
shoulder. ‘I told you before, miss, I’d be honoured to serve as your mate.’

At last she turned back to him. ‘You don’t have to say that,’ she
said quickly. ‘I know you’re just trying to make me feel better.’

‘No, I’m not,’ he said, too quickly himself, before he’d thought
it through. ‘That is, I want you to feel better, but that wasn’t my reason for
speaking as I did. I don’t say things I don’t mean. Wouldn’t be honourable.’

That made her smile, though he still had the uneasy suspicion
that she remained close to tears. ‘And you are a most honourable gentleman, my
lord, aren’t you?’

‘I try to be, aye,’ he said, hoping that her tears wouldn’t spill
over. He’d had enough grief and sorrow already for the rest of this life, and
the next with it. ‘I would always be honourable with a mate.’

‘Then I shall promise the same, and mean it, too.’ Her smile
widened, brighter than the sun that was just rising over the harbour. ‘I’d
venture we’ll both be needing a good mate or two before we’re done here in
Naples, my lord.’

He grinned with her, pleased to hear her speak of him as a ‘mate’
like that. ‘Here, now, if we’re going to be mates, then you must leave off
using my title. In this room, between us, I’d rather be no more than James
Richardson.’

‘Oh, my lord, I couldn’t do that, not with you the son of a
peer!’ The look on her face was so deliciously scandalised that he wanted to
laugh. ‘It wouldn’t be proper, my lord!’

‘Would you do it if I called you by your Christian name, too?’ he
asked. ‘That’s proper, between mates.’

She paused, considering, likely balancing propriety against his
proposal. Then she nodded—a swift, decisive dip of her chin.

‘You are right, James,’ she said. ‘Such familiarity would be
proper between—between
mates
, James.’

‘So it would, Abigail.’ After these last grim months of war and
death, how much he enjoyed the uncomplicated pleasure of hearing his given name
spoken by a pretty girl! ‘Abigail it shall be.’

‘I’m glad.’ Suddenly shy, she hurried across the room with the
flowers. Earlier a servant had brought a large silver water pitcher with a
teatray for James, and Abigail carefully settled the flowers’ stems inside it,
spreading the greenery to fill the pitcher’s spout. ‘There. That’s handsome
enough, isn’t it?’

‘It’s not the only thing I brought you, either.’ He turned to
show her the large barrel standing beside him, thumping the wooden top like a
drum. ‘Instead of explaining what I intended yesterday, I have decided to show
you.’

She returned to his side as he prised open the top of the barrel.
‘What’s inside?’

‘Only this.’ He plunged his arm into the wood shavings and
brought out a handful for her to see. The wooden curls were fresh and fragrant,
and to his mind far sweeter and less hazardous than the flowers had been. ‘You
can’t do better than this for packing anything of value for a long voyage.
Perhaps a light swaddling of linen and this would be all you’d need.’

Abigail touched the shavings in his hand, her fingers grazing his
palm with just enough of a touch to make him feel like some over-eager
schoolboy. What the devil was wrong with him, anyway?

‘I suppose this would work,’ she was saying, fortunately unaware
of his thoughts. ‘And so much air amongst the shavings would keep the damp from
collecting, the way it would with wool. As you said yesterday, my lor—that is,
James.’

‘Exactly,’ he said, dropping the shavings back into the barrel.
‘I may not be able to recite much about old Caesar and his ilk, the way you
can, but I do know how to stow a hold.’

‘You should, it being your chosen profession in life.’ She drew
herself up very straight, clasping her hands at her waist. ‘I was wrong to show
such disrespect for your knowledge and experience yesterday, and I’m sorry for
behaving like such a—such a shrew. I hope you’ll forgive me. There. Now that
I’ve said that, we can be proper mates.’

‘I never thought you were a shrew,’ he protested. ‘Not for a
moment.’

‘But I was, which is why I’m offering my apology to you now.’ She
slipped her work apron over her head, briskly tying the strings around her
waist. ‘You’re an officer of the King, and a hero, too.’

That stopped him cold. ‘I never claimed that. Not for myself.’

‘You didn’t have to. Lady Hamilton told me.’ She smiled, her blue
eyes innocent of what she was saying. ‘She said that while the ball next week
is mostly for Admiral Nelson’s birthday, it’s also to honour all the heroic
gentlemen who won the glorious victory at Aboukir Bay. Including you.’

He stared at her without seeing, his thoughts sliding backwards
against his will. They’d won against the French, aye, but how it had happened
wasn’t glorious, and he wasn’t a hero. The battle had been bloody and
unpredictable and filled with fire—more fire than he’d ever seen. And more
death and suffering, too. He’d never experienced anything like the explosion of
the French flagship. A column of fire and thunder, and a thousand men dead in
an instant, scattered to heaven and hell. Throughout it all he’d simply been
following orders, doing his duty, clinging to discipline, fighting and clawing
to stay alive one more day, one more hour, one more minute.
That
was the
way war was: no glory, and no heroes.

‘James?’ she asked softly. ‘My lord? Are you—are you quite well?’

He stared at her. Damnation, how long had it been since he’d
spoken last? How long had he left her there to think the worst of him? And why,
when he needed words most, could he think of absolutely nothing fit to say to a
lady?

She touched her fingers to his arm, as light as could be. ‘You
don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t wish to. Lady Hamilton said that,
too.’

‘Did she?’ he said, his voice sounding flat even to his own ears.
‘What else did she say to you?’

‘That if you’d no wish to speak of the war I should ask you
instead about Christmas.’

‘Christmas?’ he asked, uncomprehending.
‘Christmas?’

‘Yes.’ She felt around her throat until she found the fine gold
chain, drawing it forward so he could see the tiny gold heart that hung there.
‘My father gave this to me our last Christmas together. I suppose that should
make me feel sad, because he died before the next Christmas, but it doesn’t.
Instead it cheers me, and reminds me of the happy time we did have together.’

Struggling to focus on anything other than the horror of Aboukir,
James looked down at the little gold heart, dangling there on the chain between
her fingers. A father’s last gift to his only daughter, a symbol of his lasting
love, engraved with her swirling initials.

‘For once Father and I had decided to leave Oxford for
Christmas,’ she continued, her voice soft, almost husky with remembrance. ‘We
travelled by stage to London, and stayed in a lodging house near the centre. We
walked in St James’s Park and watched the skaters on the canal. We saw the
menagerie in the Tower, and watched puppet plays in the market. On Christmas
Day it snowed, but we went to hear the choir in Westminster, and dined on the
goose and chestnuts our landlady had roasted. The day before we had to return
home, on Twelfth Night, Father gave me this necklace. I’ve not taken it off
since.’

He couldn’t look away from the little heart. ‘I’ve not been home
for Christmas in years,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Last year, when we were stationed
off Gibraltar, my little sister Elisabeth was wed the day after Christmas. I’ve
not even met the fellow she married, and now she’s written to say that she’s
carrying the rascal’s child and heir.’

‘But there were other Christmases, weren’t there?’ Abigail asked.
‘When you were a boy, before you went to sea?’

‘Oh, aye,’ he said, remembering it all. ‘We’d be down in Devon,
of course, at Carrington Woods, and on Christmas Eve Mother would have the
house filled with greenery. The balls would go on most every night until
Twelfth Night. The whole county was invited, it seemed, and no matter how young
we were, we were allowed to stay up as long as we could manage to. It was the
only time of the year that Mother would wear her jewels in the country, and the
only time she’d consent to dance jigs with Father, too, kicking her skirts high
like a serving girl instead of a countess, with the dogs barking all around
her.’

He laughed in spite of himself, the memory of those long-ago
balls wonderfully fresh. ‘Now I realise they’d all had too much of Father’s
special punch, even Mother, but then I thought it was just Christmas making
everyone merry.’

‘Was there snow?’ she asked eagerly, letting the heart fall back
against her chest.

‘Oh, always,’ he said. ‘And an enormous log hauled in for the
great hall’s fire.’

‘Were your brothers there, too, along with Elisabeth?’

‘Oh, aye—down from school and up for mischief,’ he said, thinking
of how cheerfully miserable the four sons of the Earl of Carrington must have
made the lives of the cook and the kitchen maids. ‘Mind, I’m the fourth and
last of us boys. Henry’s the eldest, then Michael, then Marcus, and me. Then
there’s the girls. Maryanne, Barbara and Elisabeth. Quite a crew of mates, eh?’

‘Oh, you are so fortunate,’ Abigail cried wistfully. ‘I always
wanted brothers and sisters. Those must have been merry Christmases indeed.’