A convenient arrangement: Three festive Regency romances!

In The Captain’s Christmas Journey by Carla Kelly, Captain Everard is escorting Verity to her governess job—and for propriety’s sake that means a convenient engagement!

In Louise Allen’s The Viscount’s Yuletide Betrothal, Eleanor advertises for a “suitable” gentleman to pose as her betrothed over Christmas.

And in Laurie Benson’s novella, Juliet’s One Night Under the Mistletoe leads to a marriage of convenience with handsome former love Lord Montague...

“A lovely, whimsical tale with unforgettable characters and richly detailed prose and lots of Christmas magic thrown in. The story of long-lost lovers finding each other against all odds proves a powerful one.”

—RT Book Reviews on “Captain Grey’s Christmas Proposal” in Regency Christmas Wishes

“An enchanting, enjoyable and tender hearted historical romance about second chances, convenient arrangements and everlasting love.”

—Goodreads on The Earl’s Practical Marriage

“A very beautiful fantastic book by an author who never lets us down, truly utterly adored from start to finish.”

—Goodreads on An Unexpected Countess

CARLA KELLY started writing Regency romances because of her interest in the Napoleonic Wars. She enjoys writing about warfare at sea and the ordinary people of the British Isles rather than lords and ladies. In her spare time she reads British crime fiction and history—particularly books about the US Indian Wars. Carla lives in Utah and is a former park ranger and double RITA® Award and Spur Award winner. She has five children and four grandchildren.

LOUISE ALLEN loves immersing herself in history. She finds landscapes and places evoke the past powerfully. Venice, Burgundy and the Greek islands are favourite destinations. Louise lives on the Norfolk coast and spends her spare time gardening, researching family history or travelling in search of inspiration. Visit her at louiseallenregency.co.uk, @louiseregency and janeaustenslondon.com.

LAURIE BENSON is an award-winning Regency romance author, whose book An Unexpected Countess was voted Harlequin’s 2017 ‘Hero of the Year’ by readers. She began her writing career as an advertising copywriter. When she isn’t at her laptop, avoiding laundry, Laurie can be found browsing antiques shops and going on long hikes with her husband and two sons. Learn more about Laurie by visiting her website at lauriebenson.net. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook.

Convenient Christmas Brides

The Captain’s Christmas Journey

Carla Kelly

The Viscount’s Yuletide Betrothal

Louise Allen

One Night Under the Mistletoe

Laurie Benson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07419-3

CONVENIENT CHRISTMAS BRIDES

The Captain’s Christmas Journey © 2018 Carla Kelly The Viscount’s Yuletide Betrothal © 2018 Louise Allen One Night Under the Mistletoe © 2018 Laurie Benson

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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Praise for the authors of Convenient Christmas Brides

CARLA KELLY

‘A lovely, whimsical tale with unforgettable characters and richly detailed prose.’

—RT Book Reviews on ‘Captain Grey’s Christmas Proposal’ in Regency Christmas Wishes

LOUISE ALLEN

‘Allen writes Regency romances that always become favourites.’

—RT Book Reviews on The Earl’s Practical Marriage

LAURIE BENSON

‘Delightfully unexpected plot twists, with lively dialogue and witty repartee […] a charmer.’

—RT Book Reviews on The Unexpected Countess

Table of Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Authors

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

The Captain’s Christmas Journey

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

The Viscount’s Yuletide Betrothal

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

One Night Under the Mistletoe

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Extract

About the Publisher

The Captain’s Christmas Journey

Carla Kelly

To my parents.

Chapter One

‘Buck up, Captain Everard,’ he told his reflection in the mirror. ‘You promised you would do this, so to Kent you will go.’

Joseph Everard, post captain, Royal Navy, turned around to stare hard at Lieutenant David Newsome’s paltry heap of personal effects on his desk, wishing he could make it go away. It remained there unmovable, another sad testament to the fleet action now called Trafalgar. That one word was enough to convey all the horror, the pounding and the fire, which combined to create the most bittersweet of victories, with the well-nigh inconceivable loss of Vice Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson.

Had anyone been interested, Joe could have explained his reluctance to deliver David’s effects in person. It wasn’t because his second luff had done anything amiss, or behaved in any way unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. True, he was young, but weren’t we all, at some point?

Joe had done this sad duty many times before, whenever possible. He should have been inured to the tears, the sadness and the resentment, even, when a mother, father or wife had stared daggers at him, as if he was the author of their misery, and not Napoleon. Left to his own devices, Joe Everard would happily have served King and country patrolling the seven seas and engaging in no fleet actions whatsoever. He had never required a major, lengthy war to prove his manhood.

They were all puppets in the hands of Napoleon. Now that war had resumed, after the brief Peace of Amiens, Joe saw no shortcut to victory for years.

Something worse explained his reluctance for this distasteful duty, something Lord St Vincent, or as he had been then, Captain John Jervis, had described one night.

They had come off victorious in some fleet action or other—they tended to blur together—and Captain Jervis and his men were moping about in the wardroom. The wounded were tended and quiet, and the pumps in the bowels of the ship had finished their noisy job.

‘Look at us,’ Captain Jervis had remarked to his first lieutenant, an unfortunate fellow who died the following year at Camperdown. ‘There is nothing quite as daunting as the lethargy that victory brings.’

No doubt. Trafalgar, a victory as huge as anyone in the Royal Navy could ask for, dumped a full load of melancholy on Joe Everard’s usually capable shoulders. Why one man should die and another should not was a mystery for the ages, and not a trifling question for a mere post captain who had done his duty, as had every man aboard the HMS Ulysses, a forty-eight-gun frigate. He and his crew of well-trained stalwarts had babied the Ulysses through the storm the next day, limped into Torbay and remained there waiting a final diagnosis from the overworked shipwrights.

He and his officers had travelled from Torbay to Plymouth to sit in the Drake and drink. They talked, played whist and cursed the French until they were silent, spent and remarkably hung over. Joe couldn’t release anyone to return home to wives, but the wives could come to Plymouth.

More power to you, he thought, as he had listened to bedsprings creaking rhythmically and wished he had found the leisure, or perhaps the courage, to marry.

After a week, the verdict was a month to refurbish and repair in the Torquay docks. He released his officers to their homes for three weeks and cautiously gave his crew the glad tidings, wary that some might not return and truth to tell, hardly blaming them if they did not. His sailing master, a widower with children in Canada, had no objection to staying in Torquay for the repairs. Such a kindness gave Captain Joseph Everard no excuse to avoid the condolence visit to Weltby, Kent, where Second Lieutenant Newsome’s parents and one spinster sister resided.

Since England apparently still expected every man to do his duty, Joe sent a note to Augustus Newsome, explaining the reason for his visit and hoping he would not upset the family by returning their son’s belongings in person. He added a postscript stating when he could be expected in Weltby.

He chose to take the mail coach from Plymouth to Weltby, mainly because he enjoyed the sight of ordinary folk going about their business, almost as if the war raging at sea was happening on Mars. He could listen to idle chat and observe people not poised on the edge of danger possessed with that peculiar thin-faced, sharp-featured look that all men at war seemed to wear as a badge of office.

He hadn’t reckoned on the power of Trafalgar. Joe never thought of himself as a forbidding fellow, but truth to tell, an ordinary ride on the mail coach would have been a silent one. Maybe he did look like a man who had no wish to talk. God knows he had frightened a decade’s worth of midshipmen.

But Trafalgar had loosened people’s tongues and heightened their curiosity. If the spirits of the deceased hung around for a while, as Shakespeare claimed they did in Romeo and Juliet, Joe had to imagine Admiral Nelson would have enjoyed the praise heaped on him by England’s ordinary citizens.

Joe thought he might be troubled to talk about the battle recently waged that was still giving him sweating nightmares in December, but he wasn’t. The other wayfarers were genuinely interested in the contest of the British fleet against the combined forces of France and Spain.

They even wanted him to explain his ship’s role, which also surprised him, because the newspapers had sung the praises—well deserved—of Mars, Victory, Agamemnon and Ajax, ships of the line with stunning firepower.

But, no, they had questions about the service of the battle’s four frigates and he was flattered enough to explain the frigates’ role as repeaters on such a roiling scene, with smoke obscuring battle signals. ‘We read the flags and passed on the messages, where we could,’ he said. ‘It meant moving about and coming in close so other ships of war could read Nelson’s flags.’

It sounded simple enough, but the reality was timing movements and darting about to avoid obliteration, which nearly came when the French Achilles’s powder magazine exploded and rained fire on the deck of the much smaller Ulysses. That was when David Newsome died, struck by a flaming mast. Joe paused in his narration and bowed his head, which gave the old lady next to him silent permission to hold his hand, the first such gesture he had felt in years. No one ever touched the captain.

‘It was a battle never to be forgotten,’ he said, when he could speak. ‘Our foe fought valiantly, especially the Spanish, but I do not think Boney will beat us now.’

The old lady still held his hand and Joe didn’t mind. ‘Then hurrah, Captain,’ she said quietly. The other travellers nodded.

When she did release his hand, she looked with sympathy at his face. ‘Does it hurt?’ she asked.

Joe touched the plaster on his cheek that covered black stitches from a splinter that missed his eye by a quarter-inch. ‘A little,’ he said. ‘My Trafalgar souvenir.’

She rummaged in the bag at her feet and drew out a ceramic jar. ‘Goose grease,’ she said. ‘Rub it in at night. Won’t scar so bad.’ She smiled at him. ‘A handsome fellow like you doesn’t need a reminder of battle, does he?’

He took it with thanks and turned predictably red, grateful none of his officers was there to chuckle at their captain. ‘It’s not as though I could forget, ma’am, but if you say it will prevent scarring, I believe you.’

He wondered if a traveller would comment upon his mail-coach journey, since they seemed to be settling into a certain camaraderie he found endearing. Sure enough, a little boy posed the question, curious why he was in a mail coach. Didn’t the Royal Navy pay better than that?

The child’s embarrassed mother tried to shush her son, but Joe laughed. Since they were all so plain spoken and kind, he felt no distance from them.

‘It’s this way...your name...’

‘Tommy Ledbetter,’ the boy announced. ‘I am five.’

‘Tommy, I like to travel by mail coach,’ he said. ‘I like to sit here and watch people like you going about your business in an England I hardly ever am privileged to see, as I serve on the ocean.’

Tommy looked around. ‘We’re not much,’ he said, which made the vicar sitting next to the boy smile and the old lady chuckle.

‘You’re England,’ Joe said. ‘That’s enough for me.’

Chapter Two

‘When will the mail coach arrive, Verity?’ Mama asked for the tenth time since luncheon. ‘I hope he does not expect too much from us.’

‘Mama, I am certain he will do what is proper, in such circumstances,’ Verity soothed.

‘Does he have any idea how much we are suffering?’ Mama asked in a voice close to a whine, but not quite.

Verity knew herself to be practical, a trait she had acquired from her father. Still, it was a good question and she knew her mother was in pain from the loss of Davey; they all were.

‘I expect Captain Everard has a considerable idea of suffering, Mama,’ she replied. ‘Quite possibly he does this sad duty often. I imagine it takes a toll on him, too.’

She could tell her mother had never considered this angle of mourning, so consumed had she been with her own loss of a beloved son in October. Perhaps the workings of time on even the most tragic of events would spread its unique balm. Verity could hope, anyway, because she suffered, too.

Verity had suffered another loss not long after Trafalgar, one that ranked low, compared to Davey’s death, but which caused her anxiety of another sort. Barely had they digested the news of his death when Lord Blankenship, the marquis who employed her father as his estate manager, had informed her that her services were no longer required as teacher in the entirely satisfactory school where she had educated tenant children, much to her delight and their gain.

Lord Blankenship, a kind enough fellow, had hurried to assure her that he did not question her abilities. The issue was a personal one. He informed her that an impoverished relative had petitioned him for employment, because the creditors were circling his wounded finances like wolves and all was not well.

‘He claims he can teach and blood is still thicker than water,’ Lord Blankenship said. ‘I had my secretary write this morning that I will employ him in your position, starting after Yuletide. I will give you a small supplement and any sort of reference you could wish, Miss Newsome. I trust you will understand.’

What could she do but assure him she understood? Because he seemed to expect it, she also pasted a pleasant smile on her lips and told him not to worry about her. He left her classroom relieved and justified; she seethed inside, angry because the world was not a fair place for ladies.

Her father had taken her dismissal with remarkable calm; her mother, in agony over Davey’s death, heard her not at all. Mama did question her two weeks later, when Verity stayed home from what would have been a school day. When Verity told her again, Mama patted her hand. ‘You can mourn here with me, Daughter,’ she said. ‘Besides, you do not need to earn your bread. Papa is able to provide, as long as he is alive.’

After then, what? she wanted to ask her parents. Papa earned a modest living that had sufficed, probably because for all of Mama’s flyaway airs, she had a remarkable ability to rein in expenses. The Newsome household probably even resembled the taut ship that Davey, in letters home, said Captain Everard ran.

Now Davey was dead, a promising career gone. In the course of things, he likely would have married and set up his own household, which, he had assured her, would always have room for his only sibling, should she never marry, as seemed the case now.

As she waited for Captain Everard’s arrival on that late December day, Verity chafed on several accounts. The death of her brother had rendered her as sorrowful as her parents, who mourned their son and comforted each other. She mourned her brother feeling much more alone, sorry for his passing above all, but sad that his death had diminished her own future.

The matter seemed dismal beyond belief, but for her parents’ sake, she stifled her emotion; they had enough to worry about. David Newsome, as bright and promising a lad as anyone in Weltby had known, had been consigned to the deep off the coast of Spain, fish food and out of reach. She also stifled her unreasonable anger that Admiral Nelson’s body had been returned to England in a keg of spirits, to be buried in the coming January with high honours in St Paul’s Cathedral. Everyone else was slid off a board into the sea. There was no grave where Mama could plant flowers.

I want what I cannot have, Verity thought, as she went to the sitting room, the better for her to spot a post chaise pull up and deposit a captain with a box of all that remained of David Newsome, Second Lieutenant, late of the HMS Ulysses.

Papa had said they could offer the captain a bed for the night and so they would. Perhaps he could tell them something of Davey at sea, before her dear brother faded from everyone’s memory except the memories of the three people who had loved him best.

She forced her unproductive thoughts to the sitting room, which had been decorated for Christmas with only a modest wreath over the fireplace. Mama had decided that ivy garlands on the banister in the hall were too much this year. Verity had waged a polite battle with her mother that resulted in the removal of the black wreath from the front door. The thing had grown more distasteful by the hour to Verity.

Braced for Mama’s tears, she had removed the odious wreath and thrown it in the compost heap. To her relief Mama only nodded, sniffed into her ever-present handkerchief, and let the matter rest. Verity wondered if she dared search for ivy, because the banister cried out for it.

Any day now, she knew she had to take some interest in her wardrobe, considering that, following Christmas, she was to show herself at Hipworth Hall near Sudbury in Norfolk. Relief expressed on his homely face, Lord Blankenship had announced that he had found her employment as an educationist to Sir Percy Hipworth’s children. Lord B. had informed her that Sir Percy was a baronet of some pretension, but nevertheless a ‘good fellow, once his bluster is stripped away’. His offhand remark that the Hipworth children were no better or worse than you might expect did not ease Verity’s mind.

The promised salary was adequate, but only just, and Sir Percy’s letter had also included passage on the mail coach. ‘He says he will have a dogcart there in Sudbury for you, which I consider a good beginning,’ Lord Blankenship had told her.

To Verity it seemed like the barest of courtesies. Had her future employer expected her to walk with her baggage to wherever Hipworth Hall found itself? Suppose it was raining or sleeting?

Verity Newsome, you are feeling sorry for yourself, she scolded. Positions of any kind for ladies of a certain age—hang it all, you are nearly thirty—didn’t spring forth unbidden from the brow of Zeus. True, she could remain at home in idleness, but that had even less appeal to a capable woman. To Norfolk she would go.

Dusk was fast approaching. She told her worries to go on holiday until she felt more inclined to deal with them and returned her attention to the window.

And there he was. Not for ordinary mortals was the bicorn of a post captain, which made the man walking up the lane with a swinging stride appear considerably taller than he likely was. He wore a dark cloak and had slung a duffel on his shoulder. She smiled because he looked like a man home from the sea and maybe not too happy about it.

The smile left her face. He carried a smaller grip, one she recognised. Davey Newsome had come home, too.

Chapter Three

Joseph Everard raised his hand to knock, but the door opened before he needed to. He found himself looking at an older female version of his second luff, down to lively eyes and curly black hair.

‘You bear a remarkable resemblance to your brother,’ were the first words out of his mouth. He could have smacked his forehead for his idiocy when those brown eyes, so like Davey’s, filled with tears.

‘I’m sorry. That was clumsy of me,’ he said. ‘I am Captain Everard of the White Fleet, your late brother’s commanding officer. May I come inside?’

‘Of course you may,’ the woman said quickly. ‘How clumsy of me! You’ll think we never have visitors.’

‘Not at all, Miss... Miss Newsome, is it?’ he asked. ‘I didn’t actually arrive in a coach and four with post boys, did I? I like to take the mail coach and so I walked from Weltby.’

She ushered him inside, let him unsling his duffel like the common seaman he suddenly felt himself to be, then helped him from his boat cloak. With a start, he realised he was being organised by a woman used to management and, by God, it felt surprisingly good. With the heavy cloak slung over her arm, she handed it to a maid who had stopped at the sight of so much naval splendour, here in quiet Kent.

Or maybe it was the crosshatch of black stitches that still ruined whatever looks he had imagined were his. He had taken off the blamed plaster in hope that the air might prove more useful to its healing. He might even apply goose grease tonight as he prepared for bed back at the inn.

‘Your hat, Captain?’ Miss Newsome said and held out her hand.

He doffed it and gave it to her, hoping that his hair wasn’t sticking up on the side. He had never given his wretched cowlick much thought before, but for some reason, it mattered, standing in the hall of David Newsome’s childhood home. At least he had the good sense not to lick his fingers and try to tame the thing. Certainly there were worse physical afflictions.

His bicorn overwhelmed the maid, who gave him a plaintive look. ‘Just rest it on its side,’ he told her. ‘It won’t bite.’

The girl grinned at him and darted away, in spite of the fact that his boat cloak threatened to trip her.

‘I...er...assume you don’t see too many navy men in Weltby,’ he said, wishing he knew more about polite conversation. ‘At least the servants don’t.’

‘No, indeed, Captain Everard,’ Miss Newsome said, her eyes on his stitches. ‘A Trafalgar souvenir?’

Joe knew better than to say that the same flaming mast that crashed to the deck and killed her brother managed to shoot a splinter through his cheek. ‘Aye, it was. Should’ve healed by now, but for several weeks the surgeon couldn’t decide whether to suture it or leave it alone. He finally decided to stitch me up. Consequently, I am not as far along the path of recovery as I could wish.’

He couldn’t think of anything else to say. Miss Newsome gestured towards the hall. ‘My parents are in my father’s book room. Y-you could bring Davey’s effects to them, if you please.’

‘I will.’

He walked beside her down the hall, pleased not to have to shorten his stride to accommodate her. He was on the tallish side, but so was Miss Newsome.

She was dressed in black, a daunting colour for most females, except that it became her, with her pink cheeks, pale face and black hair. She was by no means thin, but he found her pleasant shape more to his liking, anyway. She looked practical and kind, which he found soothing.

‘My father is an accountant and estate manager for Lord Blankenship, who owns numerous properties in Kent and East Sussex,’ she said. ‘I have lived on this estate all my life.’

‘It must be a fair property in the springtime,’ he said, wincing inwardly at his paltry supply of conversation.

Either it passed muster, or Miss Newsome was even kinder than he suspected. ‘It’s glorious in April, when the lambs are new,’ she said. ‘Here we are.’

They stopped before a closed door and she tapped lightly. He heard no reply—years of bombarding could do that to ears—but she opened the door and gestured him inside.

He knew a book room when he saw one. His own chart room aboard the Ulysses was tidier, mainly because space was more of a premium on a frigate and demanded economy.

His eyes went immediately to the map of the world, where the Newsomes had traced his lieutenant’s travels with pins and thread. With a pang, he saw how few pins there were and how the enterprise ended at the coast off Spain known as Trafalgar. His own world map in his cabin crisscrossed the oceans many times, and touched on all the continents except Antarctica, proof of nearly thirty years at sea. Where had the time gone?

After Miss Newsome’s introductions, he executed a workaday bow, which was the only kind he knew, and sat in the chair Mr Newsome indicated. In double-quick time a servant arrived with afternoon sherry and almond-flavoured tea cakes.

The sherry was dry the way he liked it and the tea cakes moist and flavourful, two adjectives that his steward had never thought to associate with ship’s fare. Joe could have eaten them all.

Instead, he held out the handsome leather case that Second Lieutenant Newsome had brought on board the Ulysses a bare eight months ago. He could have told the Newsomes that the other officers had chuckled over the unscratched leather and working clasps, perhaps trying to remember when they had been that young and green. He chose to say nothing.

‘I put your son’s second-best uniform in my own duffel,’ he said, ‘as well as his sword. I will leave those with you.’

‘Where is his best uniform?’ Mrs Newsome demanded.

Surprised, Joe wondered if she thought he had sold it, or given it away. Might as well tell her, even though he knew it would hurt.

‘He wore it on deck for the battle, ma’am,’ he told her, dreading the way her face paled. ‘We all dress for battle on my ship.’ He swallowed the lump in his throat. ‘He is wearing it still, a credit to King and country.’

Mrs Newsome burst into tears and threw herself into her husband’s arms. Oh, Lord, I made a mess of that, Joe thought, as Mr Newsome began to weep. Alarmed, Joe looked at Miss Newsome’s expressive face as she dissolved in tears, too.

There they sat, Mr and Mrs Newsome locked in a tight and tearful embrace, with Miss Newsome suffering alone, no one’s arms around her.

Captain Everard knew he was famed throughout the White Fleet for his unflappable demeanour in battle and the deliberate way he went about plotting courses and thinking through all possible outcomes of a fleet action. Not an impulsive man, he was also noted for the ability to move with real speed when events dictated.

He did so now, moving close to Miss Newsome as she sat in solitary sorrow on the loveseat. He pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her as she sobbed into his uniform, convinced that had there been another family member present, his action would not have been necessary.

Recent years had acquainted him with too much suffering, too much sorrow, too much pain. To say that holding Miss Newsome close was the least he could do was a regrettable statement of fact. He wanted to do more. He wanted to bring back the son, brother and second lieutenant who had showed such promise. He could do nothing but hold Davey Newsome’s sister and let her cry.

He would have managed well enough, if her arms hadn’t gone around him and if she hadn’t begun to pat his back, and then hold him close until he cried, too. He was sick of war and death and knew in his soul that Trafalgar was not the end of the struggle for world domination, but merely one step along the way. Damn Boney anyway.

Chapter Four

Her parents still wept. Miss Newsome pulled away first, but did not leave the circle of his embrace. She sniffed back more tears and he gave her his handkerchief, hoping he had not committed some massive social blunder. He had visited many bereaved families—too many—but this was the first time he had cried, too, and held a grieving sister close. Perhaps an explanation was in order.

‘Miss Newsome, I do not generally... Well, I do not...’ That is pathetic, Joe, he thought. ‘No one should be alone in sorrow.’

She blew her nose, then endeared herself to him for ever by resting her forehead against his arm for the smallest moment. ‘Begging your pardon, Captain, but you were alone, too,’ she said softly. ‘Let us go into the hall and leave my parents to their grief.’

She picked up her brother’s leather case and took it with her. In the hall, she motioned towards a door that opened into a small but charming breakfast room. She set the case on the table, took several deep breaths and opened it. Her lips trembled as she took out David Newsome’s few possessions. She held up the strip of rolled cloth that held his scissors, some thread, a thimble and needles, and managed a smile that touched Joe’s heart.

‘I gave my little brother a brief tutorial on how to sew on a button,’ she said, before replacing it in the case.

She seemed to be in control of herself again, so Joe knew he could do no less, himself. God, how he hated to deliver bad news.

‘I must inform you that he was terrible at sewing,’ Joe said, which brought what appeared to be a genuine smile to her face. ‘He showed up in the wardroom one evening for dinner with a button sewn on with black thread on his white shirt. I told him to do better, in no uncertain terms.’

‘Did he look at you with those big puppy-brown eyes and appear wounded beyond belief? Sort of like this?’ she said and turned the expression on him.

‘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.

Chapter Five

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 and direction of the kind lady who had pressed that jar of goose grease into his palm on the mail coach. He would have sent her a letter of thanks. Maybe in a week he could work up the nerve to clip the sutures.

He sat by the window, looking out at a slight drizzle that seemed certain to dissipate any moment. He wondered whether to stay another night to read and continue eating well, or return to Torquay and bother the shipwright about repairs.

His gaze focused on a young person, head down, cloak-enveloped, pushing towards the Gentleman Johnny. When she looked up, he recognised the young maid from the Newsomes’ home. He poured himself another half-cup of coffee and looked around when the same child approached his table and peered at him, too shy to say anything.

‘Aye, miss?’

She stepped closer, looked at the ceiling and recited, ‘I am to give you this, Captain Everest, and they will not take no for an answer.’ She held out a note.

So he was Captain Everest to a Kentish maid? Hiding a smile, he took it from her and nodded to the innkeeper. ‘Can you find some more toast and jam for this little lady?’

‘I can and will, sir. Come along to the kitchen, Susan.’

He read the note. ‘So you won’t take no for an answer?’ he asked out loud, since the inn’s dining room was empty. ‘What can have happened?’

Dear Captain Everard,

We were remiss in our hospitality to you last night. Would you return and spend a few days here? We’d like to hear stories about our son on your ship. We hope you have time to humour us.

Sincerely,

Mr and Mrs Augustus Newsome

I suppose there is a first time for everything, Joe thought, as he pocketed the note, drained the coffee cup and stood up.

To go or not to go? He had faithfully discharged his last duty to a crew member. He owed the Newsomes nothing more. He shook his head. They owed him nothing, either. Better to let the dog of duty turn around a few times, settle down and go to sleep. They would get on with their lives and he with his.

All the same, he knew he owed the Newsomes a response and it was easy enough to write one because it was the truth. While Susan ate her toast and jam, Joe procured a piece of paper and a pencil from the keep and wrote a reply there in the kitchen. He folded it and held it out to the child. ‘Take this back to the Newsomes, if you please,’ he said and took out a coin. ‘And this is for your troubles.’

His heart sank when her face fell. ‘Sir, I was supposed to bring you back,’ she said.

‘Oh, I can’t...’ he started to say, but stopped when she put down her toast and folded her arms, refusing to take the note or the coin. She was almost as tough as the men he commanded, looking him in the eyes, her gaze not wavering.

He reconsidered. What was a few days, in the larger scheme of things? ‘Very well, miss. Let me get my duffel and pay the keep, since you insist.’

She had a winning smile. ‘Finish your toast,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back.’

Upstairs, he spent one cowardly moment wondering what would happen if he refused to come downstairs. How long would she wait? Deciding such chicken-heartedness was not worthy of an officer and gentleman who had prevailed at Camperdown, the Battle of the Nile and, for God’s sake, Trafalgar, Joe bowed to the inevitable and packed his duffel. He paid the grinning landlord and joined Susan in the dining room.

‘We’d better go now, Susan,’ he told her. ‘Though we’re going to get wet.’

They did, but it wasn’t a trial, because Susan proved to be a charming companion. She had a tongue on wheels and knew something about the occupants of every cottage they passed. By the time they arrived at Chez Newsome, he knew that Mrs Buttars was due to be confined any day, Paddy Bennett liked his rum a little too well, the vicar’s sermons were so boring that several of his parishioners wagered each Sunday on whether they would exceed thirty minutes. And Millicent Overby had got herself into trouble of some sort that Miss Newsome refused to divulge.

‘I want to know what sort of trouble she is in,’ Susan concluded as the house came in sight. ‘Perhaps Miss Newsome would tell you.’

‘I’m not that brave,’ he admitted, even though he wanted to wander out of the maid’s hearing and have a good laugh.

‘But you’re Royal Navy, sir,’ the irrepressible Susan reminded him. ‘You must be a hero because you have stitches.’

He decided that logic was not her strong suit and assured her that anyone could come by stitches in the navy.

She seemed ready to argue, except that the front door opened and Miss Newsome stood there to usher them in. He still hoped that an afternoon of discussion would be enough to satisfy their curiosity about their son and brother. Long acquaintance with grief had informed him that most people needed time to turn catastrophe into acceptance.

He tried to explain this to Miss Newsome as they stood together in the hall, but she wasn’t buying it.

‘Captain Everard, my mother wants you to stay a few days,’ she explained again in her kindly way. ‘I confess she surprised me with her request, but I assure you that Mama, once set on a course, does not usually deviate from it.’

He felt some disappointment at her answer. Somewhere in his brain in a corner not occupied by the alarms of war, he hoped the request had come from Miss Newsome, as well.

‘Please, sir.’

‘I don’t wish to upset her further,’ he hedged. He noticed that Miss Newsome had raised her hand as if to rest it on his sleeve, then lowered it. She smelled divinely of roses.

‘She will be more disappointed if you choose not to stay,’ Miss Newsome told him, then smiled. ‘Let me show you to your room, Captain.’

‘I am being managed by females,’ he protested, but mildly, as she indicated the stairs. ‘First Susan bullies me into walking here and now I must stay on pain of disappointing a lady who I was certain yesterday wished to see me no more. And here you are, looking at me with...’

Good God, someone stop me, he thought, as his neckcloth felt tighter and somehow hot. One just doesn’t blurt out ‘big brown eyes’ to an acquaintance of scarcely twenty-four hours.

To his relief, Miss Newsome laughed at his feeble diatribe. ‘You told us yesterday that you have no pressing engagements of a nautical nature, since your ship is in dry dock,’ she reminded him.

He had the good grace to know when he was defeated and capitulated, thinking of moments when it was better to salute as the ship went down. What did a few days matter?

So there he was, following a managing female up a flight of stairs and admiring her hips in motion under her dress.

I need a holiday far from here, he thought. Perhaps Constantinople or Madagascar.

She opened a door on a room that Joe knew at once must have been her brother’s. ‘Make yourself comfortable, Captain Everard,’ Miss Newsome said. ‘If you would come downstairs in a half hour, Mama would like to pour tea and hear about Davey.’

He managed some pleasantry which must have satisfied Miss Newsome, because she smiled and closed the door after saying, ‘One half-hour, if you please.’

He took off his shoes and set them by the grate, where coal glowed. His stockings came off next, the soggy things. Barefoot, he padded to the window and looked upon Kent in winter, with fields fallow. He saw an oast house in the distance with its distinctive two spires that looked like witch’s hats, where farmers dried hops, in preparation for making beer.

A good dark beer sounded appealing, but he doubted the Newsomes indulged themselves. The bed appealed even more. Taking off his uniform coat, he lay down with a sigh, unbuttoned his trousers and waistcoat and stretched out. Just a minute or two would be enough, he had no doubt. He closed his eyes.

Chapter Six

‘Verity, it is one hour since you directed Captain Everard upstairs,’ Mama said. ‘I am past ready to pour tea and listen to stories about Davey. You are certain you told him one half-hour?’

‘Positive, Mama,’ Miss Newsome said. ‘I’ll knock on his door.’

Verity went upstairs and stood outside the door a moment before she worked up the nerve to knock. She tapped and listened. Nothing. A second knock yielded the same result, so she turned the handle quietly and peered inside.

Captain Everard lay spread out on the bed, trousers and waistcoat unbuttoned and neckcloth askew. He was barefoot. He had somehow tacked his stockings to the fireplace, hung there to dry. He looked completely relaxed, flat on his back, hands spread out, snoring softly.

She had seen Davey sleep a time or two, but never a full-grown man with whom she could claim no relation. He intrigued her because he was handsome in a rugged sort of way, not like a solicitor or country gentleman who did nothing more strenuous than tend to other people’s genteel business.

This was a man of the sea; she could tell by the fine lines around his eyes caused by exposure to scouring winds and salt water. His hair was ordinary brown, but with flecks of grey in it. One of Davey’s letters had referred to Captain Everard as the Old Man, but she doubted him much over forty. When she remarked on it to her father, Augustus Newsome had told her that was the common navy term for captain. ‘And that, dear daughter, exhausts my entire knowledge of the maritime profession,’ Papa added.

She had no business to stand there gawking. Strange how he could look capable, even as he looked vulnerable. She watched his expression, which seemed to change as he lay there. He frowned, he sighed audibly, spoke as though he were giving an order, then settled back into deeper slumber. She hadn’t the heart to wake him.

Before she left the room, she quietly put a few more lumps of coal in the grate, then covered him with a light throw from the chair by the fireplace. Perhaps she shouldn’t have tucked the coverlet by his side, because as she straightened up, he opened his eyes, hazel ones, and looked at her as if he wondered where he was.

‘Captain, I didn’t mean to...’

‘’Pon my word, Miss Newsome, I never oversleep.’

They spoke at the same time, stopped, laughed, then spoke again. ‘Beg your...’

‘Such rag manners, ’pon my word.’

He put up his hand finally, but beyond that, remained as he was, stretched out and comfortable. Verity thought that singularly charming, for some reason.

‘I obviously overslept, Miss Newsome,’ he said, not moving. ‘Please extend my apologies to your mother and tell her I will be down directly.’

Verity made an executive decision. ‘Stay where you are, Captain. You look comfortable and would probably go back to sleep if I left you alone.’ She went to the door, grateful she had not closed it. ‘We keep country hours, so dinner is at six.’

He laughed softly, turned over and went back to sleep as she stood there.

* * *

Awake, alert and with his hair combed—he did have an amusing cowlick—Captain Everard presented himself downstairs at six o’clock. With a bow, he greeted them and said, ‘Now, where was I?’, which made Mama laugh, a sound Verity had not heard since news of Davey’s death.

Dinner was sheer delight, somewhat to Verity’s surprise. Captain Everard’s first impression as a cut-and-dried, strictly business sort of man was perhaps not accurate. Had oversleeping in a soft bed rendered him more casual? He asked a few questions about Papa’s business and even seemed interested when her father launched into detailed description of his duties as chief steward of Lord Blankenship’s various holdings in this part of Kent.

‘I noticed oast houses,’ Captain Everard said, as he passed the beef roast to Verity. ‘Do you make your own beer on the property?’

‘We call them hop kilns here in Kent,’ Papa corrected. ‘And, yes, we do. If you have time tomorrow, I could take you to our brewery.’

‘I will go gladly,’ Captain Everard said. ‘Please tell me it is a good, dark beer with a woody taste.’

‘I can do that, sir,’ Papa said and beamed at Verity. ‘You could come, too, my dear, even though I know your opinion of beer.’

‘I might,’ she replied, surprising herself.

The ease with which Captain Everard inserted himself into their house impressed Verity, because he made it simple to include her brother into the dinner-table discussion in a way that caused her mother no pain. After a few well-placed questions, Mama started talking about Davey’s early education at the hands of the local vicar and the way he wore them down with his patient but firm insistence that the seafaring life was the career for him.

‘When he came aboard Ulysses, his excellent scores on his lieutenancy exams and good references from his captain convinced me that we were lucky to have David Newsome,’ the Captain said over the final course of fruit and nuts. ‘And so it proved to be. He was an apt student of the sea.’

They adjourned to the sitting room, since no one in the Newsome household had enough puffed-up consequence to leave the gentlemen with cigars in the dining room and the ladies engaged in idle chat elsewhere. Verity watched Mama, pleased with her eagerness to learn more of Davey’s short life on the water and hoping she would not overexert herself.

She shouldn’t have worried. Captain Everard had no trouble in reading the signals either, telling her worlds about his care of his own crew.

‘Please, Captain Everard, tell me everything you remember about my son,’ Mama said, once they were seated and she had taken out her mending.

Verity watched as the Captain’s demeanour turned thoughtful, and then amused. ‘I have such a story for you,’ he said.

Mama and Papa both leaned forward, eager as young children prepared for a treat of epic dimensions.

‘If you looked in David’s leather case, Miss Newsome, you found volumes one and four of The Mysteries of Udolpho,’ he said, settling back.

‘But no two and three,’ Verity said.

‘Nowhere in sight. We were suffering through months of blockade duty off the coast of Spain.’ He passed his hand in front of his face. ‘It’s beyond me to describe the tedium of the blockade so I will not attempt it. Morale was lower than a dungeon cell in the Tower of London. David tapped on my door one night and asked for a moment’s time.’ He chuckled at that. ‘Hell’s bells—beg pardon, ma’am—I’d have given him all the time he wanted, anything for a diversion.’

And we here in England take your efforts and our safety for granted, Verity thought, as she picked up her knitting.

‘He said he wanted to write a play for the crew to perform, based on Udolpho,’ Captain Everard continued. ‘I asked him what he planned to do about the two missing volumes, and he just waved his hand and said, “That’s a mere trifle.”’

Mama pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. ‘He said that often enough at home. Nothing daunted him.’

Verity watched the captain observe her mother, as if assessing her and not wanting to cause her undue anxiety. He must have liked what he saw, because he continued. ‘The scamp called it The Mystery of Udolpho on Short Rations, or Better Two Volumes Than None. Signor Montoni, the villain of the piece, looked and behaved remarkably like Bonaparte.’

‘Who played our hero, Sue Valancourt Brown?’ Verity asked.

‘Can you doubt?’ the Captain teased. ‘Your irrepressible brother.’ He sighed. ‘I was asked to play Emily St Aubert’s father, so was mercifully allowed to die early in this masterwork. Perhaps he assumed that, as captain, I had more important things to do, although I did not.’

Mama and Papa chuckled at that. Verity’s eyes filled with tears as they held hands, something she had not seen in months. It was as if Davey’s death had stifled all normal emotions. But here they were, holding hands as she remembered from earlier, happier times.

Captain Everard was looking at her parents, too. He smiled, but she saw no joy in his eyes. She wondered what a man like him thought of settled lives and domestic hearths, and the everyday sameness of a routine life. Did he envy it? Would it bore him? Heaven knew nothing appeared likely to ever change her ordered, quiet life.

‘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.

Chapter Seven

‘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 gather some ivy. Your sitting room looks a bit bare, don’t you think?’

Verity stared at him. He gave her a wink, then touched his dessert plate and planted some icing on her nose.

‘I’m an early riser and ivy awaits, Miss Newsome. Goodnight.’

Chapter Eight

‘I am starting to remind myself of every stereotype about the Royal Navy that I ever heard of,’ Joe told his shaving mirror before breakfast. ‘You dog, you.’

He tried to let dismay at his casual behaviour last night exact its obvious toll, but all he felt was pleasantly tuned up. He had slept well for the first night in ages. He knew tackling ivy and chatting with Miss Newsome would not be onerous.

She waited for him in the breakfast room, still dressed in sombre black, but with high colour to her face. ‘Good morning, Captain Everard. I trust you slept well?’

‘Better than any night in recent memory,’ he replied as he eyed the bacon all lined up like good soldiers on the sideboard. ‘I am about to embarrass myself here.’

‘I asked Cook to fry extra bacon. Have all you want.’

He took her at her word and finished by overburdening his plate with enough eggs to maintain proper balance. Two slices of toast continued the symmetry. He sat down and eyed her single baked egg and one slice of bacon.

‘Miss Newsome, you will dry up and blow away with that short ration,’ he commented.

‘Hasn’t happened yet,’ she said, placing a napkin in her lap. She got up and added two more slices of bacon. ‘You’re right. I don’t want to blow away.’

Joe tried to be proper and cut his bacon. A glance at Miss Newsome picking up her bacon gave him leave to follow suit and made her laugh.

‘I’ll tell you a story on me, Captain,’ she said, wiping her lips. ‘A mild-mannered fellow, Weltby’s solicitor, started visiting me. Papa assured me he was interested, so I humoured him. Here is the odd part: For two years he showed up Tuesdays, ate breakfast with us, of all things, and sat silent in the sitting room until he left for work. He stared at me; it was unnerving. Breakfast?’

Two years? What is wrong with the men of Kent? he thought as he happily dispatched a fried egg.

‘After two years, I decided there would never be an offer of marriage, which, truth to tell, I found reassuring,’ she said. ‘Perhaps he liked the food. One morning I picked up my bowl of porridge and said, “Sir, I am taking our peculiar courtship to an entirely new level.”’ She laughed out loud. ‘I drank the milk from the bowl. He ran out of the house and was never seen again.’

Joe leaned back in his chair and joined her laughter. ‘Miss Newsome, you two would never have suited.’

‘Precisely. Answer me this: Captain, would you cry off if the lady you had been courting for two years suddenly drank from the porridge bowl?’

‘In the first place, I cannot imagine such a scenario,’ he said. ‘In the second place, two years? You can drink from that vase of mums over there, if you wish. I am indifferent to the matter.’

It was her turn to laugh and promise him she had no such plans. ‘Mama did lament that I would probably never have another such opportunity,’ Miss Newsome told him. ‘Opportunity for what, I should have asked her.’

He finished breakfast with Miss Newsome, pleased with her easy manner and good humour. There she sat in full mourning, vibrantly alive.

‘Mama has been resisting my hints that the house needed more greenery to properly celebrate the season,’ she told him as they started to walk down the fence row to the nearest copse. ‘When I suggested you and I might go hunt the wild ivy before you left, she practically leaped about in agreement. I swear I do not know what has got into her.’

‘I’m grateful she let me tell her about her son,’ he said, transferring the basket to his other arm so he could steady her on an icy patch. Well, it looked icy to him.

‘We have all been too silent since your letter.’ She stopped. ‘How many of those do you write, sir?’

He considered, knowing the butcher’s bill would startle her. ‘Let me think: I have been a post captain for eight years. Before that I was a captain. Before that, first lieutenant for a captain who never could bring himself to write such missives. Probably more than two hundred, Miss Newsome. Fleet actions are a nasty business, but so are accidents and illnesses.’

‘You poor man. And we only had to receive one.’

‘It’s not the same,’ He knew the personal loss he suffered with each death, whether the sailor was a second lieutenant like David Newsome, or an able seaman. Joe was the man in charge, until a battle or disease reminded him he was no such thing. ‘It’s not the same.’

He looked into her eyes and doubted she believed a word of it.

‘Thank you for your sacrifice.’ She hurried on ahead, either giving him a moment to grieve, or her such a moment. Perhaps it was both.

He joined Miss Newsome at a stone wall which had once formed the back of a crofter’s cottage, from the looks of it. She simply stood there, staring at the ivy.

‘Miss Newsome?’ he said cautiously. ‘I’d offer you a penny for your thoughts, but I suspect I know them.’

She turned around, startled, then relaxed. ‘Perhaps not. This is the time of day when class begins in the school for tenants’ children that I used to teach.’

‘I had no idea,’ he said. ‘I assumed you lived quietly at home.’

‘I educated children for five years,’ she said and he watched her eyes soften. ‘Lovely children.’

‘May I ask...?’

Her eyes hardened then. ‘Lord Blankenship, who employs my father, informed me that he had a poor relation needing work. I was released and another put in my place.’

She pursed her lips together and frowned. Joe knew if this were his misfortune, he would be swearing and throwing things about. Obviously Miss Newsome was better equipped for ill fortune than he was.

‘But, sir, here is holly, with berries properly red. You cut there and I will hold this end.’

He did as she asked, struck by the fact that a woman of Miss Newsome’s obvious calibre would even consider work. When he finished, she deftly wound the length of ivy into the basket he had set down.

‘Lord Blankenship has found me similar employment in Norfolk,’ she said. ‘I am to go there on the mail coach after Christmas.’

‘I confess I do not understand why you need employment,’ he said, then knew he owed her an immediate apology for inserting himself in family matters that were none of his business. ‘Beg pa—’

‘Oh, please, not that,’ she interrupted. ‘Perhaps we Newsomes appear more genteel than you think.’

‘I never thought...’

Shut up, Joe, he told himself. Admit your interest, at least to yourself.

She indicated a rustic bench and sat down, giving him leave to do the same.

‘Papa is an estate manager of several large properties,’ she said, ‘but we fall far short of gentry. What is your background, sir, if I may ask?’

‘You may. My father was a solicitor in Cornwall,’ he said. ‘My mother was of the friendly persuasion.’

‘My goodness, a Quaker,’ Miss Newsome said. ‘What did she think of your profession, if I may be so bold?’

‘She died before I went to sea. My father remarried and his new wife was happy to see me gone. She brought several hopeful offspring to the connection’, he said, leaving it at that.

Miss Newsome gave him a sympathetic look, which took him aback. No one had ever looked at him that way. ‘No fears, there, Miss Newsome,’ he hurried to explain. ‘Her indifference moved me quickly into a career for which I am entirely suited.’

‘And I am suited to education,’ Miss Newsome said. ‘Lord Blankenship was kind enough to find me that position. I considered a bolt to Boston, United States of America. My uncle there said he would help me.’

‘But why...?’

‘Must I earn my bread?’ she finished. ‘Sir, David was supposed to make the family fortune as an officer with prize money. He promised me on his last visit home that I need not worry about my spinster state, because he would always support me. Trafalgar changed that and here I am, heading to Norfolk when Christmas is over.’

‘You have no other relations?’

‘None, Captain Everard, except that Boston uncle. How fortuitous that I enjoy teaching.’

What could he say to that? If Miss Newsome had only until after Christmas to celebrate with her parents, he had no business intruding on family intimacy. He stood up and reached for the basket of coiled ivy.

‘I will take my leave, since you have so little family time remaining,’ he said. ‘I wish you well in your future plans.’

Good God, that sounded stiff. Life was simpler at sea.

‘Sir, have you never in your life met a practical female before?’ she asked.

‘Not one as resourceful as you, perhaps,’ he hedged. ‘Botheration, Miss Newsome, but I must know: Why are you not repining that you are a single lady of...of...?’

‘Nearly thirty,’ she said, with that lurking smile of hers he was beginning to enjoy, if the truth were told.

‘Very well, nearly thirty,’ he said, as he floundered in deep water. ‘Davey was to have been your saviour. You are heading to godforsaken Norfolk and...’

He stopped, because she was laughing. ‘Captain Everard, why do men think women cannot be resourceful?’

‘Why indeed? I stand corrected,’ he told her promptly and offered his arm, which she took. ‘All the same, I will leave this afternoon.’

They walked to the house in silence. He stopped at the door before she could open it. ‘I have to tell you: I was thinking that you would have made an excellent lieutenant on any ship I have commanded.’

Miss Newsome had a hearty laugh. He felt a mixture of pleasure and ease, just listening to her. The other sensation startled him: what a pity he hadn’t time to pursue an interest with Miss Verity Newsome.

Chapter Nine

Verity reached for the doorknob, but it was pulled from her grasp.

‘Daughter! We are at sixes and sevens!’ her mother declared, taking her by the arm as if to haul her inside. ‘Come along. There is this letter to you from Sir Percy of Hipworth Hall.’

‘Perhaps he is wishing us good tidings,’ Verity said, too pleased with present company to wish to bother with her future employer right now.

‘No. Read this,’ Mama said as she thrust the letter into Verity’s hand.

‘Surely it can wait until we get inside the house,’ she said, wishing her mother could show a little more countenance around company. Mama had already opened the letter. What must Captain Everard think of them?

‘Very well,’ she grumbled. ‘My, what poor handwriting.’

Mama snatched it back. ‘Daughter, it says quite plainly that he wants you to arrive before Christmas. He wants you in three days!’

Verity took it back, squinting at the spidery handwriting, blotched as if the writer never put pen to paper, or had less patience even than Mama. ‘Such poor handwriting. I can’t read it.’

‘Hand it to me,’ Captain Everard said. ‘I have some proficiency with illegible handwriting, as found in various logs.’

Verity gave him the letter gladly. For a moment in her heretofore self-reliant life, she wanted someone to solve her problem for her. It was a new sensation and not unwelcome.

‘That’s it. He wants you in three days.’ He handed the letter back to her. He looked over her shoulder at the letter he had just returned. ‘And look here: Either this reads, “My life is in peril”, which I cannot credit, even in Norfolk, or “My wife is nonpareil”.’ He shrugged as she laughed.

‘Perhaps he wrote, “My wife is feral”,’ Verity quipped and they laughed together, which seemed to her ears a most delightful sound.

Mama would have none of it. ‘Verity. Captain Everard. Do be serious!’

Captain Everard seemed disinclined towards soberness. ‘My mother once declared me a feral child when I slurped soup from a spoon, or, heaven forbid, picked up my cereal bowl and drank the milk.’

Another slow wink and Verity laughed some more, which did not please Mama. ‘Verity, this is a house of mourning,’ she reminded her daughter.

‘I know.’ Verity felt some contrition, until she remembered how much Davey would have enjoyed this exchange. ‘Davey would have tossed in his tuppence-worth, too, Mama, you cannot deny.’

‘No, I cannot,’ Mama said after a moment’s reflection. The notion seemed to calm her. ‘My dear daughter, you must be on your way tomorrow.’ She looked at Captain Everard with apology in her expression. ‘We so wanted to keep you here with us for a few days, sir.’

So did I, Verity thought, hopeful her disappointment didn’t show on her face. She was too old to moon about over a possibility that no one had offered.

Mama wasn’t done. ‘And now I must send my child on the mail coach through stormy weather and deep snow by herself to a remote location and a questionable set of strangers.’

Verity couldn’t help noticing the interesting way Captain Everard’s dimple in his cheek could disappear and reappear when he was amused. Once those distressing black sutures were a thing of the past, he could almost be considered a handsome fellow. She saw before her a solid man, probably not inclined to flights of fancy, which made her wish for another day in his company, before he returned to war and she to her less sanguine future.

There stood Mama, her lip quivering. Verity put her arm around her mother. ‘Dearest, you know I have no qualms about solitary travel on the mail coach.’

Me, oh, my. It wasn’t going to be enough. Verity tried again, unwilling for their brief guest to see Mama in hysterics. ‘You know as well as I do that people are at their best during Christmastide.’

She held her breath, hoping Mama would proceed no further than with tear-filled eyes. Where was Papa?

Her help came from an unexpected source, considering. As she watched in big-eyed amazement, Captain Everard took her mother’s hand in his.

‘Mrs Newsome, would you feel more comfortable if I agreed to escort your daughter to Norfolk? It’s not that far and I am at leisure for nearly two complete weeks.’

‘Sir, I really don’t want to—’ she began to say, but Mama overruled Verity’s sensible reminder on the tip of her tongue that the mail coach any time of year was not generally regarded as a gypsy caravan ready to steal away unwary children or oblivious spinsters.

‘Captain Everard, that would relieve me greatly.’

‘Oh, but...’

Captain Everard clinched the matter with a single, inarguable sentence. ‘Mrs Newsome, Miss Newsome: I would be honoured to perform one last service for my second lieutenant.’

What could she say to that, especially when Mama threw herself into the captain’s arms? And here was Papa now, coming out of the book room, ledger in hand, only to look up in surprise when Mama explained that Davey’s captain had kindly agreed to escort their sole remaining child to the wilds of wintry Norfolk.

Papa astounded her by putting a spoke in the wheel of Mama’s enthusiasm.

‘I am not convinced of the propriety of this,’ he said.

‘Papa, I am perfectly safe on a mail coach,’ Verity reminded him. ‘Only last summer I went from here to Brighton to see my aunt. Alone.’ She bowed to necessity. ‘If I must have an escort, I cannot think of a better one than a post captain in the Royal Navy.’

‘I don’t think it is proper,’ Papa insisted, which made Verity want to sink through the floor with embarrassment. To her further dismay, Captain Everard’s stunned expression changed to one verging on amusement. What must he think of them?

‘What would you suggest that we do?’ the captain asked. ‘I feel inclined to agree with you that she should not travel alone and...’

‘Captain Everard, I will be thirty years old in March,’ she said. ‘Thirty. Older than some bottles of wine.’

‘You look considerably younger,’ he replied, then addressed her father. ‘Sir, what would you do if a pretty lady who barely looks four and twenty argues that she is safe on the mail coach?’

‘Overrule her, naturally,’ Papa replied.

‘Papa!’ Verity exclaimed, at a loss.

There they stood. Mama whispered in Papa’s ear. He brightened, nodded, avoided Verity’s glance and spoke to the captain.

‘Captain Everard, would you consider something a little radical?’

‘As long as it does not involve mayhem.’

‘You are all hopeless,’ Verity said.

‘Just careful, daughter,’ Papa replied. Verity saw the love and concern on his kind face. ‘Captain, would you agree to... Augusta, what does one call such an ad hoc proposition?’

‘An Engagement of Convenience,’ Mama said, as calmly as if she had suggested a turn about the garden to look at roses in July.

‘What?’

Silence reigned supreme in the Newsomes’ hall, Verity too stunned to say more, Mama and Papa nodding at each other in evident satisfaction and Captain Everard... She could not define his expression.

Papa recovered first. ‘I would have no objection to that,’ he said. ‘What say you, sir?’

Verity tried again. ‘But...but... Papa, besides being unheard of, this isn’t necessary.’

Drat Captain Everard. Why did he have to lean close enough to whisper in her ear?

‘Beg pardon, Miss Newsome,’ he whispered. ‘Too many years around big guns have made me slightly hard of hearing. Could it be that you do not wish an engagement that would be temporary in nature?’

‘Oh, I...’ Hands on her hips, she glared at him. ‘See here, sir, this is unnecessary.’

‘I think it would please your parents,’ he said.

The captain turned to her father. ‘As I see it, such an engagement would suffice for the trip to Norfolk. I can escort your daughter to Hipworth Hall, assure Sir What’s-His-Name that this is my fiancée and I am headed back to sea. Perfect.’

‘Have you all lost your senses?’ Verity asked, which meant the three of them started to laugh.

Captain Everard made it worse by taking her hands in his. ‘It’s completely unexceptional. You’ll get to Norfolk, your parents won’t worry and...’

‘Captain!’

Then he delivered the statement she had no argument against.

He squeezed her fingers gently. ‘...and I can do a final service for an excellent officer gone too soon.’

‘Oh, but—’ she said, even though she knew the matter was now closed.

‘Perhaps you had better...er...pack.’

He smiled then, a huge smile that transformed his face. If she hadn’t been so irritated with him, she would have enjoyed the sight.

‘Or rather I should say, go and pack, my dearest love.’

Chapter Ten

They left at the ungodly hour of six in the morning. Joe had no difficulty with early times. From the looks of his soon-to-be travelling companion and sudden fiancée, the matter was thornier. Miss Newsome was obviously not a cheerful riser.

‘I gather you are not a lark,’ he said and regretted his good cheer the moment the words tripped off his lips like happy sprites and crashed to the floor, victims of a frown and a pout.

She did have lovely lips, full and nicely chiselled. Wiser now, he knew better than to venture another comment, positive or negative. Some people needed an hour or two to accustom themselves to a new day. On the other hand, he felt like a wrung-out rag after eleven in the evening. Make that ten. She would find out soon enough.

Over breakfast, the Newsomes and Joe discussed the matter of an engagement ring while Verity ignored the three of them. She turned her attention to her baked egg, but soon gave up. Breakfast might be her favourite meal, but this morning it was gall and wormwood.

‘I don’t have anything even for short loan,’ Joe confessed.

‘You can tell anyone who asks that this is a quite recent engagement and you haven’t a ring yet,’ Mama said.

Verity raised her eyebrows. Obviously she was not one to indulge in prevarication.

He couldn’t disagree with her reluctance. ‘Perhaps, Mrs Newsome, but too many lies require extreme vigilance in keeping a story straight.’

‘And you know this how, Captain?’ Verity asked, all sweetness.

‘Miss Newsome, my darling, affianced dear, I was eight years old once, as hard as that is to credit. I recall a painful spanking from my mother.’

Good God, where was his conversation coming from? Not a single member of his crew would recognise him.

Miss Newsome seemed to take pity on him then. ‘Very well. We can say it is an engagement of recent origin,’ she conceded, after a sigh of theatrical proportion.

‘Which is precisely true,’ Captain Everard said, keeping his expression bland. ‘Only a mere ten hours ago I was a free, unencumbered man.’

Miss Newsome burst out laughing. She looked in the captain’s eyes and he gazed back, perfectly calm. This was no fleet action, but he was beginning to enjoy himself.

‘Oh, for goodness sake. We’ll be late,’ she said. ‘Eat your eggs, Captain.’

‘I’d better be Joe to you, Verity,’ he told her.

* * *

It appeared that a fair number of Weltby’s citizens were either travelling this morning, too, or liked to see people off on a journey. To Joe’s eyes, most seemed to have no specific purpose at all.

‘Does everyone in Weltby bail out at Christmastime?’ he asked, genuinely puzzled. ‘What do you make of this, Mr Newsome?’

Augustus Newsome regarded the crowd and turned back to Joe with a bland expression containing the hint of apology to it, which roused Joe’s suspicions.

‘I mentioned to a few people in the village yesterday that you were a genuine Trafalgar hero, come to offer personal condolences to us about Davey,’ he said.

‘No hero. I was merely attending to my duty.’

Mr Newsome continued to beam at him, so Joe tried another tack. ‘We weren’t doing anything glamorous,’ he said, as the crowd gathered closer. ‘Frigates serve as repeaters in a large ship-to-ship engagement as Trafalgar was. We were just doing our job.’

He didn’t mean to raise his voice, but there was Verity’s hand on his arm. Her touch calmed his heart, something he needed at that exact moment, because Trafalgar felt too real again.

He dug deep and thank God the coachman was climbing into his box. ‘The real heroes are those of you who give us your sons,’ he said quietly. ‘I mean that with all my heart.’ He touched his chest. ‘Thank you from the bottom of mine.’

Goodness gracious, now his audience was sniffing.

‘Are ye bound back to war, sir?’ someone in the crowd asked.

‘Aye, but first I have agreed to escort Miss Newsome to Norfolk,’ he said, happy to change the subject.

Knowing looks passed from one to another, which made his face feel warm. He knew small villages because he came from one, where people shared all news because nothing important ever happened. He looked for kindness and charity in those eyes, and did not look in vain. They could imagine all they wanted over someone who was obviously a village favourite, from the kind looks coming Miss Newsome’s way. No need for him to explain himself further.

‘It is one last service I could perform for my second lieutenant,’ he said. ‘I do it with pleasure. Good day. I believe the coachman would like to keep to his time.’

He held out his hand for Verity and helped her up, where four travellers already on the coach looked back at them. One rotund little fellow moved as close as he could to the window, but the space remaining was scarcely adequate.

Miss Newsome seated herself next to the window and he squeezed in beside her.

‘I wish I didn’t have to keep explaining myself,’ he whispered to her. ‘I didn’t reckon it would be this hard.’

‘Easily dealt with,’ she whispered back. ‘Put your bicorn in my lap and your head against my shoulder and go to sleep.’

‘I’m not tired,’ he whispered back.

‘I am. Be quiet and pretend.’

‘There’s no room for my arm,’ he said, feeling like a pouty child.

‘Put it around my shoulders,’ Miss Newsome replied. Was the woman never at a loss?

She was right. He eased his arm around her shoulders and gained enough space to wedge himself into the tight space. But his head on her shoulder? They were much the same height, so the theory was sound enough. He tested cautiously, and actually found himself relaxing. Maybe he hadn’t slept as soundly last night as he had imagined. Maybe he hadn’t slept well in weeks.

* * *

He woke up several hours later, looking around in surprise because he had actually relaxed. Miss Newsome was knitting and chatting with a woman about her age seated across from her, from the looks of her about ready to give birth.

Without raising his head from its admittedly comfortable resting place—thank goodness Miss Newsome wasn’t a skinny thing with bones everywhere—he managed a sideways glance at the little man crowding him, also asleep and leaning against him.

Such a dilemma: if he sat up, the porky fellow would likely wake up, too. Joe doubted too many men had leaned against Miss Newsome, which he privately discovered was a pleasant thing to do.

‘I could sit up, but I would wake up the man leaning against me,’ he whispered to Miss Newsome.

‘Let him be, then,’ she said. ‘I’m having no trouble knitting and you are not a burden,’ she replied. ‘In fact, if I may speak plain, I like the fragrance of your cologne. So does Mrs Black. Mrs Black, let me introduce Captain Everard. Joe, Mrs Black is the wife of a joiner and headed home after a week visiting her sister.’

‘Pleased to make your acquaintance,’ he said, ready to laugh at the incongruity of the situation, but happy to have his notion confirmed about the interesting people one could meet on the mail coach.

‘Same here,’ Mrs Black said. She shifted a little and winced, obviously finding not a single bit of comfort in her gravid state. ‘We’ve been wondering, your wife and I, where you got that fragrance. She said you’re newly back from Trafalgar.’

‘Oh, but...’ Miss Newsome began saying. ‘I should explain...’

Oh, worse and worse. Mrs Black was labouring under a not surprising misapprehension, since he had made himself at home against Miss Newsome, with his arm around her shoulder and his fingers drooping perilously close to her bosom. Joe didn’t know a great deal about social niceties, but he strongly suspected that even a fiancé would not sit this way. Mrs Black had made the logical connection. If he said anything, fiancé or not, she would probably be aghast.

‘I was at Trafalgar and newly back,’ he said quickly. ‘I haven’t had enough time to tell Verity all my stories.’

He could explain to Verity later why he was continuing an understandable error. ‘My crew had an opportunity to relieve the officers of the captured Ildefonzo of some personal possessions. I am the dubious beneficiary, but I like lemon, too.’

‘Poor, deluded men,’ the joiner’s wife said in sympathy. ‘Couldn’t you stop the looting?’

‘Joe... Captain Everard...was unaware of it,’ Miss Newsome said, as smoothly as if she lied every day. ‘You can see that he had a dreadful wound to his face.’

‘That’s the whole story,’ Joe said, well aware that it was fiction—calling it a story was no stretch. He had bought the cologne at Gibraltar, where they docked for enough repairs to limp them home. ‘Spoils of war, Mrs Black, and nothing more.’

Apparently satisfied, Mrs Black continued her own knitting and Verity returned to the sock in her lap. Considering discretion the better part of valour, Joe pretended to be asleep.

* * *

When they arrived in Whistler, he happily escorted Mrs Black from the mail coach and wished her well with her upcoming blessed event. She touched his heart by kissing his cheek and thanking him for his role at Trafalgar.

‘Please tell Mrs Everard how mindful England is of her family’s sacrifice,’ she said.

‘I will,’ he said and that was no lie.

He helped Verity down next because the coachman had announced a noon stop. He laughed inside at the contrition on her face and waited for her apology, which wasn’t long in coming.

‘Captain, I had no idea she would assume we were married,’ she whispered. ‘I never had a chance to mention our engagement and I didn’t want to embarrass her.’

Her lips nearly tickled his ear and he found the sensation beguiling and far from unpleasant. ‘No fears, Verity,’ he said. ‘If the others on the coach continue their journey, we have no choice but to continue the charade.’

‘It’s perhaps regrettable, but no hardship,’ Miss Newsome said. ‘We looked even more casual than an engaged couple, didn’t we?’

‘Decidedly ramshackle on my part, but I have to say that your shoulder is comfortable.’

‘And your arm around me equally so,’ she said quietly. ‘But that is travel on the mail coach, eh?’

Chapter Eleven

The charade continued, because the round man remained aboard.

‘There is one problem with lying,’ Verity whispered as they tried to make themselves comfortable for the continuation of the journey.

‘Only one?’ he teased.

‘Wretched man,’ she said with some feeling. ‘We have to remember our lies so we do not misspeak.’

‘Heaven forbid,’ Joe said, enjoying this journey more by the minute. Blockade life bored him so badly that even this gentle misdemeanour amused him excessively. Still, a man should explain himself.

‘When we followed Villeneuve and the Bucentaure from Toulon, and thence to Trafalgar, you could have sliced our enthusiasm with a sharp knife and made a sandwich of it,’ he whispered. ‘Every one of us happily traded the boredom of the blockade for sea action.’

‘Even my brother?’ she asked without a falter.

‘Especially Davey. He was eager for action. That is life at war.’

Her tears did not surprise him. He put his arm around her and touched her head until she rested it on his shoulder this time. Her bonnet poked his eye so he removed it and placed it in her lap. Nothing was easier than inclining his head against hers and giving her his handkerchief.

He met the sympathetic looks of the new riders on the mail coach with honesty, or as near as. ‘I am Captain Everard. I served at Trafalgar and my dear...wife’s brother died under my command,’ he said. ‘Forgive us, please.’

He would have told the simpler lie, but the silent little man had not quitted the coach. What else could he do? The engagement of convenience that had seemed so plausible and foolproof in the Newsomes’ sitting room had not lasted for the smallest portion of the journey.

The other riders nodded in sympathy and spoke quietly among themselves, content, apparently, to leave the Everards alone. The round fellow gave them a benign glance and settled back with his book again.

‘Dear wife?’ his incorrigible helpmeet whispered after she blew her nose.

‘Only the best for me, my heart,’ he whispered back, wondering where this gleeful streak was coming from. This earned him a little dig in his ribs, which further strengthened the reality that not one single midshipman on the Ulysses would recognise this side of their Captain. He would have to tell that to Verity when they had a moment alone.

Verity had relaxed against his shoulder, which touched his heart for some strange reason. Maybe she trusted him; more likely she was simply tired.

* * *

As the afternoon wore on, he became aware that the mail coach was travelling slower and slower. A glance out the window explained the matter. The rain that had started falling after their noon stop had turned into sleet and then slush.

Slower and slower, and then a stop. He looked out again, surprised at the gloom, then realised that he had returned to sleep as well, Verity tucked close to him and his head against hers.

He sat up carefully, not wanting to wake her. He heard the relief in the coachman’s voice when he announced they had arrived at Chittering Corner, where they would stop for the night. The other riders left the coach quickly, leaving them alone, which bothered Joe not a bit. With any luck, the silent rider had found his destination, which would simplify the rest of the trip. He gave his head a mental slap. What about the others who had heard his ‘dear wife’ remark?

Please, Lord, let them be from Chittering Corner and walking home now, he thought. It wasn’t too much to ask.

Joe touched Verity’s shoulder, feeling shy even though they had spent most of the afternoon cuddled close in sleep. She woke up and looked around, but stayed in his loose embrace.

‘Where are we?’

‘Chittering Corner,’ he said. ‘This is our stop for the night.’

‘Somehow I thought we would travel through to Norfolk.’

‘Unlikely, even in good weather,’ he told her. ‘Your strength does not lie in geography or navigation. I should have found that out before we became, ahem, engaged.’

She smiled at that, a sleepy smile that touched his heart again. Her eyes were heavy-lidded anyway, a feature he had not thought to find so attractive.

‘Let us venture inside and seek a couple of rooms,’ he said. ‘I can make arrangements.’

Joe stepped from the mail coach and felt the mud ooze over his shoes. Whoever cleaned shoes in this inn would be busy tonight, he decided. Luckily it was but a few steps to the inn, somehow appropriately named the Noah’s Ark. He held out his arms for Verity.

‘I’ll carry you,’ he said hopefully in his captain’s tone of voice.

It worked. She took one look and didn’t argue. She put her arms about his neck and let him carry her the short distance to the Ark. The coachman’s assistant slogged behind with luggage.

The inn was crowded with other travellers from early coaches and he wondered if there would be a room for Verity. He knew he could sleep anywhere. Oh, no. He saw familiar faces smiling at him, even leading him to the desk where the innkeeper waited.

‘Captain, these riders tell me that you fought at Trafalgar.’

‘Aye, sir, as did many others in the fleet. Is there possibly a room left?’ he asked.

The keep leaned over the desk. ‘There would not have been, but for the generosity of these,’ he said. He gestured to the little traveller and the clergyman Joe recognised. ‘This man and this man said they would make themselves comfortable in the public room so you and your wife could have the last room. It’s the least we can do for a hero and his wife, who probably seldom sees him.’

The older fellow nodded. So did the round, silent gentleman. Caught and trapped.

Joe looked around at Verity, who gave the slightest shrug of her shoulders, indicating she had no idea how to get out of this mess, either.

He could try. ‘Perhaps my...wife, uh, my wife could share this room with another lady who would otherwise be discommoded.’

‘Look around, Captain. It’s just us men tonight.’ The keep chuckled. ‘Between you and me, sir, the ladies are always smarter about these things.’ He held up that single key. ‘You have a room at the inn,’ he said with a laugh. ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John could tell you how hard that is to come by at this season! Cost you three shillings, and that includes dinner. Come, sir, and take it.’ He added a leer to the laugh. ‘How often are you ever on land long enough to get reacquainted with this little lady you married? Three cheers for the Navy!’

What have I done? Joe asked himself as he pocketed the key in the middle of enthusiastic applause.

Chapter Twelve

I daren’t laugh, Verity thought. She wanted to in the worst way. She had not a single doubt that Captain Everard would treat her with the greatest respect, no matter what others imagined would be happening behind that door, but she couldn’t help smiling, which only encouraged the innkeeper.

‘See there, Captain? Mrs Everard is smiling!’

Soon everyone was at least grinning, except for the captain, who had a stricken look on his face, as if wondering how what had begun as a simple plan had turned into this.

The innkeeper didn’t know when to stop, apparently. ‘Cheer up, Captain Everard,’ he said. ‘I imagine it has been a long time since you have been ashore, to say the least.’

‘You cannot imagine how long it has been,’ the captain said. ‘I scarcely can.’

Verity had to give the captain his due. He took a deep breath and crooked out his arm. ‘Come, my dear.’

‘Shall I send my wife upstairs directly with a dinner menu?’ the keep asked.

‘Please do,’ the Captain replied. ‘We would like to eat at six.’

The innkeeper bowed. Verity let Joe lead her out of the lobby, but not before she heard one of the wags from the public room make some not-so-silent comment about Captain Ever-hard. The captain sighed and tightened his grip on her arm.

I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, she thought, even as she wanted to sink into the floor.

He was utterly silent on the stairs and down the hall to the sole remaining empty room in the inn. She had to give him credit for a steady hand with the key in the lock. A glance at his face showed her a man with high colour on his face and grim, tight lips.

He opened the door, ushered her inside and stood there, looking as uncertain as the most callow youth to be found anywhere civilised society existed.

‘Captain Everard, you probably thought it would be a simple matter to escort me to Norfolk, didn’t you?’ Verity said as she removed her bonnet, fluffed her hair and looked around.

The Noah’s Ark was true to the sign creaking in the wind outside: no more than two at a time would fit in this room. The bed occupied most of the space, with a begrudging amount of room left over for a small table, two chairs and a fireplace. She opened the door on a tiny closet. A washbasin and stand filled the rest of the room. There wasn’t even room for a three-legged dog to turn around and lie down.

And there stood Captain Everard, looking positively stricken. Now what? Verity thought. As she stood there, bonnet in hand, all she wanted to do was laugh.

She sat down carefully on the bed, then leaped up when it squeaked. It more than squeaked; it seemed to shriek, as though every wooden peg was protesting years of abuse ranging from overweight occupants to amorous lovers.

She didn’t want to look at Captain Everard, but the room was too small to ignore a fairly tall, sturdy fellow wincing at the sound and probably wondering how far it would carry. She couldn’t help herself; she started to laugh.

She sat down in what she hoped was a quieter chair, leaned forward to let her forehead touch the table and gave herself over to mirth. She laughed as quietly as she could, too old at nearly thirty to care what anyone thought.

She suddenly heard a massive squeak from the bed and turned around to see Captain Everard lying there, his legs hanging over the edge, laughing along with her. He finally pressed his hand to his stomach and declared, ‘Oh, stop! One of us has to stop or neither of us will.’

It took a moment. Every time she thought of the humour of the situation, Verity laughed a little longer. At last her good humour dwindled down to a hiccup, which set off the Captain again, for some reason. When he was finally silent, Verity looked at him lying there relaxed and felt her heart grow oddly tender.

She knew next to nothing about Captain Everard’s life, except that it had to be an exceptionally difficult one, with constant war and deprivation. Impulsively she reached out and touched his leg, which she instantly regretted. What a forward thing to do.

He only opened his eyes and smiled. ‘This is nice,’ was all he said.

‘We should tell amazing lies more often, I suppose you will say,’ she teased.

‘I’m no liar and neither are you.’ He started to sit up, then rethought the matter. ‘I suppose I am fair amazed how people assume this or that. Everyone assumes we are married. Tell me, Miss Newsome, do we look married?’

His question set her off again and she laughed. ‘We rather do,’ she said when she could speak. ‘Look at you, flopped there!’

‘No, no, I mean before now,’ he said. ‘I suppose we are of roughly the same age and there we were on the mail coach, sleeping like puppies in a pile.’

‘I suppose,’ she agreed, deciding to stop fretting over their situation. They would be in Norfolk tomorrow and he would have finished his obligation to his late second lieutenant.

She noticed a slip of paper under the door and picked it up. ‘Here we have the dinner bill of fare,’ she told the Captain, whose eyes were closed now.

Heavens, whoever put this here must have heard a lot of laughter, she thought, which made her smile instead of worry what anyone thought. We are only one night in Chittering.

‘Read it aloud,’ he said, without opening his eyes. ‘If anything contains beets, that is an automatic nay from me.’

‘They’re good for you,’ she said, which earned her one open eye and a sour expression. She read the bill of fare. They debated a moment over shepherd’s pie or roast beef and decided on the pie, with barley-broth soup first and custard last.

His eyes closed. In a moment he was snoring softly, which touched Verity’s heart; he evidently felt comfortable. His arms were stretched out, his hands open. She saw no tension in him.

Feeling shy but hungry, Verity covered him with a light blanket and went downstairs with the menu. She reminded herself that she had always been forthright and no-nonsense and nothing had changed. Still, she had to steel herself to approach the innkeeper and hand him the menu.

‘We would like these items,’ she said.

‘At six o’clock?’ he asked, smiling at her, which told her all she wanted to know about who had put the menu under the door and heard their laughter.

‘Yes, please,’ she replied, ready to be formal, but governed by an imp of her own. ‘You’re probably wondering what was so funny.’

‘Not at all, Mrs Everard,’ he told her and she saw something wistful in his eyes now. ‘War is war. Sometimes you need to laugh.’

His artless comment brought tears to her eyes, but they weren’t tears of sorrow, for a change. She felt a kinship she had not anticipated and good will, which reminded her forcefully of the season, which sorrow had dismissed as too much to manage this Christmas.

Happy Christmas to me, she thought, and Happy Christmas to Captain Everard.

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