‘Ah, yes. I found the perfect house. It overlooks Plymouth Sound, and it came completely furnished. It does require a little … well, a lot … of repairs. I think the former owner was a troll with bad habits.’
Mrs Paul laughed. ‘So you were going to marry this poor female who has cried off and carry her away to a ruin?’
Bright couldn’t help himself. He wasn’t even sure why he did it, but he slipped his hook into the ribbons holding Mrs Paul’s bonnet on her head. She watched, transfixed, as he gave the frayed ribbon a gentle tug, then pushed the bonnet away from her face, to dangle down her back. ‘Are you sure you won’t reconsider? I don’t think you will be bored in my house. You can redecorate to your heart’s content, sweet talk my chef, I don’t doubt, and find me a tailor.’
‘You know absolutely nothing about me,’ she said softly, her face pink again. ‘You don’t even know how old I am.’
‘Thirty?’ he asked.
‘Almost thirty-two.’
‘I am forty-five,’ he told her. He took his finger and pushed back his upper lip. ‘That’s where the tooth is missing. I keep my hair short because I am a creature of habit.’ He felt his own face go red. ‘I take the hook off at night, because I’d hate to cut my own throat during a bad dream.’
She stared at him, fascinated. ‘I have never met anyone like you, Admiral.’
‘Is that good or bad?’
‘I think it is good.’
He held his breath, because she appeared to be thinking. Just say yes, he thought.
She didn’t. To his great regret, Mrs Paul shook her head. She retied her bonnet and stood up. ‘Thank you for the luncheon, Admiral Bright,’ she said, not looking him in the eyes this time. ‘I have had a most diverting afternoon, but now I must go to the registry office here and see if there is anything for me.’
‘And if there is not?’ It came out cold and clinical, but she didn’t seem to be a woman searching for sympathy.
‘That is my problem, not yours,’ she reminded him.
He stood as she left the table, feeling worse than when he waited for The Mouse. She surprised him by looking back at him in the doorway, a smile on her face, as though their curious meal would be a memory to warm her.
‘That is that,’ he said under his breath, feeling as though some cosmic titan had poked a straw under his skin and sucked out all his juices. It was an odd feeling, and he didn’t like it.
With each step she took from the Drake, Sally Paul lost her nerve. She found a stone bench by the Cattewater and sat there, trying to regain the equilibrium that had deserted her when she was out of Admiral Bright’s sight. The June sun warmed her cheek and she raised her face to it, glorying in summer after a dismal winter of tending a querulous old woman who had been deserted by her family, because she had not treated them well when she was able and could have.
Let this be a lesson to me, Sally had thought over and over that winter, except that there was no one to show any kindness to, no one left that being kind to now would mean dividends later on, when she was old and dying. Her husband was gone these five years, a suicide as a result of being unable to stand up to charges levelled at him by the Admiralty. The Royal Navy, in its vindictiveness, had left her with nothing but her small son, Peter. A cold lodging house had finished him.
She sobbed out loud, then looked around, hopeful that no one had heard her. Even harder than her husband’s death by his own hand—mercifully, he had hanged himself in an outbuilding and someone else had found him—was her son’s death of cold and hunger, when she could do nothing but suffer alone. She had been his only mourner at his pauper’s unmarked grave, but she had mourned as thoroughly and completely as if a whole throng of relatives had sent him to a good rest.
There was no one to turn to in Dundrennan, where her late father had been a half-hearted solicitor. The Paul name didn’t shine so brightly in that part of Scotland, considering her father’s younger brother, John, who had joined American revolutionaries, added Jones to his name and become a hated word in England. This far south, though, it was a better name than Daviess, the name she had shared with Andrew, principal victualler to the Portsmouth yard who had been brought up on charges of pocketing profit from bad meat that had killed half a squadron.
She had no other resource to call upon. I could throw myself into the water, she told herself, except that someone would probably rescue me. Besides, I can swim, and I am not inclined to end my life that way. I could go to the workhouse. I could try every public kitchen in Plymouth and see if they need help. I could marry Admiral Bright.
She went to the registry first, joining a line by the door. The pale governess who had shared a seat with her on the mail coach came away with nothing. The bleak expression on her face told Sally what her own reception would be. The registrar—not an unkind man—did say Stone-house Naval Hospital might still be looking for laundresses, but there was no way of knowing, unless she chose to walk four miles to Devonport.
‘It’s a slow season, what with peace putting many here out of work. You might consider going north to the mills,’ he told Sally. When she asked him how she would get there, he shrugged.
Dratted peace had slowed down the entire economy of Plymouth, so there was no demand for even the lowliest kitchen help in the hotels, she discovered, after trudging from back door to back door. One publican had been willing to hire her to replace his pots-and-pans girl, but one look at that terrified child’s face told Sally she could never be so callous. ‘I won’t take bread from a baby’s mouth,’ she said.
‘Suit yourself,’ the man had said as he turned away.
* * *
Evensong was long over and the church was deserted. She sank down wearily on a back pew. When her money had run out two days ago, she had slept in Bath’s cathedral. It had been easy enough to make herself small in the shadows and then lie down out of sight. St Andrew’s was smaller, but there were shadows. She could hide herself again.
And then what? In the morning, if no one was about, she would dip her remaining clean handkerchief in the holy water, wipe her face and ask directions to the workhouse. At least her small son was safe from such a place.
There were several prayer books in their slots. Sally gathered them up, made a pillow of them and rested her head on them with a sigh. There wasn’t any need to loosen her dress because it was already loose. She feared to take off her shoes because she knew her feet were swollen. She might never get them on again. She made herself comfortable on the bench and closed her eyes.
Sally opened her eyes with a start only minutes later. A man sat on the end of the row. Frightened at first, she looked closer in the gloom at his close-cut hair and smiled to herself. She sat up.
He didn’t look at her, but idly scratched the back of his only hand with his hook. ‘The Mouse still hasn’t turned up.’
‘You have probably waited long enough,’ Sally said as she arranged her skirt around her, grateful she hadn’t removed her shoes. ‘I don’t know what the statute of limitations is on such a matter, but surely you have fulfilled it.’
He rested his elbows on the back of the pew, still not looking at her. ‘Actually, I was looking for you, Mrs Paul. The waiter informed me that you left your valise in the chair.’
‘I suppose I did,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing in it of value.’ She peered at him through the gloom. ‘Why did the waiter think I was your responsibility?’
He glanced at her then. ‘Possibly because earlier I had told him you were my cousin, and we were on the outs, and I was hoping to get into your good graces by buying you dinner.’
‘That was certainly creative, Admiral,’ she said.
‘Dash it all, how am I supposed to approach a single female I have never met