‘Aye, he did,’ Joe said, astounded again at the resemblance between brother and sister, although he had to admit that the expression was vastly more appealing on Miss Newsome’s face. ‘I told him not to toy with me, but resew that button.’
Should he say more? He knew he should not, but there she was. ‘All joking aside, Miss Newsome, if you had practised such an expression in my wardroom, I would have let the matter slide.’
She laughed, seeing right through his mildest of flirtations in perhaps the most unsuitable moment imaginable. ‘Captain Everard, could it be that you have a softer heart than even Davey described in his letters?’
Good God, had he been served up to the family as a martinet with the heart of pudding in Lieutenant Newsome’s letters home? ‘I hardly know what to say to that,’ he managed.
‘Davey wrote how you never could quite inflict the lash beyond a stroke or two, when probably more was needed,’ Miss Newsome said. ‘Personally, I thank you for that and so did Davey.’
He mumbled something about the idiocy of getting men to follow, when their captain made life unbearable aboard ship. ‘I’ve never been afraid to err on the side of leniency, Miss Newsome, but I do know when discipline is necessary,’ he said in his own defence. ‘I’d rather have a sailor swab an already white deck than suffer the lash.’
He could have added that his ship was known to be a well-disciplined war machine where few men deserted, but it wasn’t necessary to praise himself. He was only going to be here a few more minutes. His Quaker mother, long dead, would have scolded him for puffing up his consequence, had he said more.
But there she was, looking at him with admiration. He did his job as he saw fit and nothing more. He knew it was time to move this conversation along.
‘Let me give you your brother’s uniform and I’ll be on my way,’ he said.
Before she could speak, he went into the hall and retrieved his duffel bag. He had carefully folded the uniform on top, so it came out easily. He set it on the table and Miss Newsome broke his heart into even more pieces by smoothing down the wrinkled wool.
‘I tucked his bicorn beside him before my steward sewed him into his hammock for burial,’ he said. ‘Miss Newsome, I am so sorry.’
She cried again and he patted her shoulder until she drew a shuddering breath and applied his handkerchief to her eyes. ‘See here,’ she said, ‘I have quite ruined your handkerchief.’
‘I have plenty more,’ he told her.
‘I would imagine other families have cried into them.’
‘Aye, they have.’
With a resolution that touched his heart, she returned her attention to her brother’s leather case, which held his shaving equipment, pen and nibs, ink, the Bible, two works of fiction he had passed around for others to enjoy and his private journal.
She picked up the journal and flipped through the pages. ‘Interesting how a life can move along and then it is over and the pages are empty,’ she murmured, more to herself than to him. ‘I will give this to my parents. I don’t have the heart to read it. Maybe later.’
She looked at him in surprise when he unbuckled the sword at his waist and placed it on the table next to the uniform.
‘I left mine back in Plymouth,’ he explained. ‘This is Davey’s sword. And now I had better be on my way.’
‘We had expected you to stay the night,’ she said.
He doubted the Newsomes wanted any such thing. The usual bereaved family was only too happy to see him off, as if his continued presence only made death more real and he was somehow to blame. True, most of his visits had taken place in daylight hours. He glanced out the window, dismayed to see full dark. No matter. Weltby was no more than a mile away and he never minded a walk, he who was usually confined to pacing back and forth on a quarterdeck.
‘Thank you, but, no,’ he said. ‘Your mother will rather have me gone. I understand that.’
Throwing caution to the winds, he stood up and held out his hand, because he already could tell Miss Newsome was a practical sort of female. ‘Shake hands with me, Miss Newsome,’ he said. ‘Please know it was a pleasure to have Lieutenant Newsome serve on the Ulysses. He was a brother to be proud of.’
They shook hands. He appreciated her firm grip.
‘Good luck to you, Captain Everard,’ she said as she opened the door and stepped back. ‘And best of the season to you.’
Season? What season? he almost asked, until he remembered that Christmas was a mere week away. ‘And to you and yours,’ he replied. He had been so long away that he could not recall his last Christmas on land.
It might have been awkward then to stand there, waiting for the maid to return with his cloak and hat, except that carollers stood outside the front door. His exit from the house seemed to signal a burst of music, almost as if they were celebrating his departure from a house of mourning that he had disturbed.
They sounded quite good, harmonising on ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’, as he walked down the steps and stood beside them, digging out a few coins to give the collection. He saw many children and likely parents among that number, supplying volume where needed. He could tell from their sturdy but practical clothing that they were of the same social sphere as his friends from the mail coach. He looked at the boys, seeing them in the fleet in a few years, or marching with Sir John Moore in Spain and Portugal. He averted his gaze; it was not a pretty thought.
He shouldered his duffel again and started back the way he had come. Too bad there were no intelligent men in Kent who should have courted and married such a pretty lady as Verity Newsome.
He shook off the thought, reminding himself that he had fully discharged his duty to his second luff and bore no more responsibility for a young man gone too soon. In Plymouth he had discharged a similar duty to the widow of his carpenter’s mate. He had given her a small sum that he lied and said was Nahum Mattern’s share of prize money gone astray from a mythical fleet action in the Pacific. He had sent two letters to more remote families of able seamen, along with more prize money of a mythical source. He had done what he could.
He counted his blessings that his frigate had only lost four men at Trafalgar. He knew the butcher’s bill was much higher on the ships of the line that did the actual fighting. He didn’t envy those captains.
He stood in the shadow of trees a short distance from the Newsome house until the last strains of ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’ died away in the cold air. He knew he had two weeks before reporting to London for Admiral Nelson’s funeral, without a single clue how to spend leisure time. It was a foreign concept. Perhaps he could catch up on his reading.
Joe enjoyed a good dinner at the Gentleman Johnny, propping a book on navigation against the water jug while he ate shepherd’s pie—two dishes—brown bread with butter—not rancid—and rice pudding with sultanas and figs. He decided against coffee.
He slept well enough, thanks entirely to a bedwarmer with just the right amount of coals in it, well wrapped in flannel. He dreamed, but of nothing more strenuous than hauling down and raising signal flags with amazing speed. Somehow—how curious was the overactive brain—the final signal was ‘brown eyes’. He woke up with a smile on his face.
* * *
Late breakfast was another pleasure: all the bacon he wanted, eggs fried so carefully that the yolks quivered, but remained intact, and toasted brown bread with plum jam. Coffee suited him, well sugared and with fresh cream, another novelty.
His scar hurt less. Too bad he did not have the name