And here she was in a bookshop, poring over book after book until she stopped, turned to him in triumph and said, ‘Aha!’
He took the little volume from her and glanced at the spine. ‘Shakespeare and his sonnets for an old lady?’
‘Most certainly,’ his wife said. ‘I will love them until I die, and surely I am not alone in this. Have you read them, sir?’
He wished she would call him Charles. ‘Not in many years,’ he told her. ‘I am not certain that Shakespeare wears well on a quarterdeck.’
She surprised him then, as tears came to her eyes, turning them into liquid pools. ‘You have missed out on so many things, haven’t you?’ She had hit on something every man in the fleet knew, and probably few landsmen.
‘Aye, madam wife, I have,’ he said. He held up the book. ‘You think it is not too late? I am not a hopeless specimen?’
She dabbed at her eyes, unable to say anything for a moment, as they stood together in the crowded bookshop.
He took her arm. ‘Sophie, don’t waste a tear on me over something we had no control over. I saw my duty and did it. So did everyone in the fleet.’ He paused, thinking of Lord Brimley’s young son, dead these many years and slipped into the Pacific Ocean somewhere off Valparaiso. ‘Some gave everything. Blame the gods of war.’
She is studying me, he thought, as her arm came around his waist and she held him close. I try to comfort her and she comforts me. Did a man ever strike a better bargain than the one I contracted with Sally Paul? Bright handed back the book. He gave her a shilling and returned to the post chaise, unable to continue another moment in the bookshop and wondering if there was any place on land where he felt content.
Maybe he was not so discontent. He watched his wife through the window as she quickly paid the proprietor, shook her head against taking time to wrap the sonnets in brown paper and hurried back to the chaise.
‘I’m sorry to delay you,’ she said, after he helped her in. ‘I don’t intend to be a trial to a punctual man.’
He held out his hand for the book. ‘Do you have a favourite sonnet?’ He fanned the air with the book. ‘Something not too heated for a nice old lady?’
To his delight, she left her seat on the opposite side of the chaise and sat next to him, turning the pages, her face so close to his that he could breathe in the delicate scent of her lavender face soap.
‘This one,’ she said. ‘Perhaps Mr Brustein will want to read this one to her: “Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws, and make the earth devour her own sweet brood…”’ She shook her head. ‘It’s too sad.’
He brushed away her fingers and kept reading. ‘Sophie, you’re a goose. This is an old man remembering how fair his love once was, but that doesn’t mean he’s sad about the matter.’ He kept reading aloud, thinking of the woman beside him, wondering how she would look in twenty years, even thirty years, if they were so lucky. I believe she will look better and better as time passes, he thought. ‘Sophie, Mrs Brustein cannot argue with this: “Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong; My love shall in my verse ever live young.”’
Charles looked at his new wife, the hasty bargain he made without much thought, beyond an overpowering desire to keep his sisters from meddling in his life. Shakespeare could say it so well, he told himself. You will always be young, too.
She looked at him in such an impish way that he felt the years fall away from him, too, much as from the sonneteer. ‘There, now,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t Shakespeare read better at forty-five than he did when you were ten and forced?’
She was teasing him; at the same time he was wondering if he had ever felt more in earnest. I will frighten her to death, he thought. This is a marriage of convenience. ‘You know he does!’ Charles handed back the book. ‘You and Mrs Brustein can sniffle and cry and wallow over the verses, and I doubt a better day will be spent anywhere.’
Sophie tucked the book in her reticule. He thought she might return to her side of the chaise, but she remained beside him. ‘Perhaps when we finish the sonnets, we will graduate to Byron. I will wear thick gloves, so my fingers do not scorch from the verse,’ she teased. She nudged his shoulder. ‘Thank you for buying this.’
‘Anything, my dear wife, to further our connections in the neighbourhood,’ he said. ‘After years of riotous living coming from that house we laughingly call home now, we have a lot of repair work to do.’
As the chaise stopped in front of Madame Soigne’s shop, he knew he had been saved from blurting out that he would prefer she read to him. A man can dream, he told himself, picturing his head in Sophie’s lap, while she read to him. A pity Shakespeare never wrote a sonnet about old admirals in love. No, well-seasoned admirals. I can’t recall a time when I have felt less ancient.
She hesitated in the doorway, hand on the doorknob, and looked back at him, which must have been his cue to join her and provide some husbandly support.
‘Cold feet, madam wife? I expect you to spend lots of money. In fact, I am counting on it.’
Still she hung back. ‘A few days ago, I didn’t even have any thread to sew up a hole in my stockings.’ She let go of the doorknob. ‘You know, if I go to a fabric warehouse and buy a couple of lengths of muslin, I can sew my own dresses.’
Charles put her hand back on the doorknob. ‘You don’t need to! Don’t get all Scottish on me.’ He turned the knob and gave her a little boost inside, where Madame and her minions stood. From the look of them, they had nothing on their minds except the kind of service it was becoming increasingly obvious that his wife was not accustomed to. Sophie looked ready to burst into tears.
He took her about the waist with his hooked arm, which gave him ample opportunity to tug off her bonnet with his bona fide hand and plant a kiss on her temple. ‘You can do this. Be a good girl and spend my money.’
He left her there, looking at him, her face pale. He turned to the modiste, who was eyeing Sophie with something close to disbelief. ‘She’s Scottish and doesn’t like to spend a groat. Whatever she agrees to buy, triple it.’
‘Charles!’
He liked the sound of that. He tipped his hat to her and left the shop.
When he returned, all measured for shirts and trousers and coats, Sally was waiting for him inside the shop, calmer now and drinking tea. She watched him through the window with Madame Soigne.
‘I don’t know how one man can appear so pleased when he knows I have been spending his money,’ she commented.
The modiste looked through the window, where the admiral was getting out of the post chaise. ‘How can you tell he is pleased?’ she asked, squinting. ‘He looks rather stern to me.’
‘The way his eyes get small and kind of crinkle,’ Sally said. ‘The lines around his mouth get a little deeper.’
‘If you say so,’ Madame replied dubiously. She brightened. ‘Bien, you would know, would you not? He is your husband, and you have had years and years to study him.’
Good God, Sally thought, setting down the cup with a click. I have known the man three days and she thinks we are an old married couple? This is a strange development. ‘I…I suppose I have,’ she stammered, not sure what else to say.
The door opened. She felt a curious lift