‘Miss Newsome? Are you on a distant planet?’
Startled, she glanced at the captain. ‘I don’t know where I was,’ she said honestly, then knew she must exert herself. ‘Er...well, I would like to know who was convinced or coerced into playing the heroine, Emily St Aubert.’
‘What do you think my second luff would do?’ he asked in turn. ‘You knew him better than I did.’
That took no imagination. She only wished she could have witnessed the diplomacy required. ‘He probably found the biggest, ugliest, hairiest man on the Ulysses to play that dainty French creature,’ she teased in turn.
‘Precisely, my dear,’ he said. ‘The Ulysses happens to rejoice in a cook with a peg leg and a patch over one eye. He hawks continually and we only pray he does not do it over the porridge. You’d have thought he was born for the role. I dare even Mrs Radcliffe herself to find a better Emily.’
Mama burst into laughter, which made Papa tighten his grip on her hand and carry it to his lips for a kiss.
You are a master, Verity thought, as she allowed herself to relax and let Captain Everard carry them all aboard a wartime frigate presenting a comedic version of the first novel she ever stayed up all night to finish, suffering along with Emily and Madame Cheron, and a host of characters transformed somewhat in the HMS Ulysses version because the middle two volumes were missing.
‘And that was that,’ the captain concluded. ‘All the ships in our vicinity on the blockade took turns rowing over for an evening of entertainment, courtesy of your remarkable son, Mrs Newsome. Lord St Vincent himself took me aside and told me how lucky we were to have such a lovely Emily.’
He looked around the sitting room and she saw it through his eyes. A shabby, cosy room—a better word than small—with outdated wallpaper and old furniture. She wondered what he was thinking.
She knew soon enough and it warmed her heart. ‘By God, Mr and Mrs Newsome, you are kind to let me visit for a day or two,’ he said. ‘I can’t recall the last time I was in an actual home.’
Mama’s eyes filled with tears, but Verity felt only relief. She wasn’t crying for Davey this time, but a solitary frigate captain sitting in her parlour and sipping sherry.
‘Davey would want you here,’ Mama said.
And so do I, Verity thought.
‘I’m not certain I have ever met braver people than your parents,’ Joe said, after Miss Newsome’s parents said goodnight. ‘I cannot recall a time when grieving parents have invited me back to talk about their son.’
‘I’ll admit I was surprised, as well,’ she said. She handed him a candle. ‘Goodnight, Captain Everard, and thank you again for agreeing to stay a few days with us.’
She waited for him to go up the stairs before her. When he stood there, she headed towards the kitchen. To his own surprise, he decided to follow her.
‘Wait up, if you please,’ he said. ‘Are there any of those tea cakes left?’
He wasn’t hungry; he wanted to spend more time in Miss Newsome’s orbit. The odd lethargy troubling him since Trafalgar was starting to lift. In telling the Newsomes about Davey’s life instead of his death, he felt more energised, more optimistic. Once the Ulysses was repaired and back to blockade duty, maybe things wouldn’t be so dreary.
‘I confess it,’ he told her as they headed to the kitchen. ‘I love cake. Cake in any form, even stale cake. Cake.’
She smiled as Joe had hoped she would, throwing off some years and cares of her own. ‘Is that the first thing you ask for, when you reach port?’ she asked and, to his ears, she sounded interested.
‘Water first, a big pitcher of it. Clean water that came out of a well and not a wooden keg,’ he said.
‘And then cake?’ she prompted, when he wondered why he was rattling on, at least, rattling on for him.
‘Aye, cake, two or three layers if it is available, with lots of icing, the gooier the better,’ he said and followed her into the pantry. ‘I swear there were times in the South Pacific as a midshipman that I would have killed for cake.’
Miss Newsome laughed and reached for a breadbox. ‘No need for carnage,’ she said as she took out a plate of tea cakes. ‘Will these do?’
‘Aye, they will.’
‘Come then, Captain. The pantry is a little crowded.’
True, it was, but he hadn’t minded proximity to Miss Newsome. He followed her into the servants’ dining room and sat down where she indicated.
Miss Newsome put a plate in front of him and set a place for herself, too. ‘Eat as many as you want, sir, but save one for me. I like the plain icing.’
Since they were small, he set four on his plate, careful to leave several plain cakes for his late-night hostess. She ate with relish and made no comment when he finished his four, eyed the plate and appropriated the remaining four.
She seemed to look for signs he was ready to retire, but saw none. She must have been wondering how to entertain him.
He had the same thought, because he gave a self-conscious laugh and shook his head. ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘I am depriving you of sleep just because I enjoy the novelty of sitting somewhere with no demands on my time: no emergencies brewing, no bosun grousing about shiny new sailors who won’t stop puking every time the ship yaws and no surgeon fretting because we have run low on medicinal spirits and who in God’s name is drinking it?’
Verity laughed at the picture he painted. ‘Now, sir,’ she teased, ‘you come ashore wearing a glamorous cape and a magnificent, intimidating fore-and-aft hat, and expect mere mortals to think your exalted position can be as mundane as our lives are on shore?’
‘Guilty as charged,’ he replied, with considerable aplomb. ‘You cannot imagine the boredom of life on the blockade.’
‘No, I cannot.’
‘Damn me if I didn’t leap with joy when we were pulled out of formation to follow Admiral Nelson to Trafalgar,’ he said, his eyes full of sympathy. ‘Meeting you and your parents, I wish to God he had summoned someone else.’
What could she say to that? He sat before her, feeling tired. Suddenly she picked up a napkin and brushed off the icing, which could have embarrassed him, but didn’t.
He smiled at her. ‘I never was a tidy eater.’
‘Fiddle,’ she said. ‘Icing is ungovernable at times. You had to obey the Admiral. You had no choice, did you?’
‘None.’
‘I assume Admiral Nelson had his pick of frigates and captains and he chose you and the Ulysses because he knew you would not fail him,’ she said.
‘What a battle it was.’
‘One to tell your children some day,’ she said.
‘Or yours,’ he replied. ‘Your brother was valiant to the end.’
He startled himself by leaning across the table that separated them and kissing her forehead.
‘With that, I am off to bed,’ he told her. ‘I certainly won’t burden your parents with much of a visit, in spite of their kind entreaty. I do think that before I leave, you and I should