LITMIR.BIZ

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of the pew, still not looking at her. ‘Actually, I was looking for you, Mrs Paul. The waiter informed me that you left your valise in the chair.’

      ‘I suppose I did,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing in it of value.’ She peered at him through the gloom. ‘Why did the waiter think I was your responsibility?’

      He glanced at her then. ‘Possibly because earlier I had told him you were my cousin, and we were on the outs, and I was hoping to get into your good graces by buying you dinner.’

      ‘That was certainly creative, Admiral,’ she said.

      ‘Dash it all, how am I supposed to approach a single female I have never met before?’ he said. She couldn’t help but hear the exasperation in his voice. ‘Mrs Paul, you are more trouble than an entire roomful of midshipmen!’

      ‘Oh, surely not,’ she murmured, amused in spite of her predicament. She glanced at him, then stared straight ahead towards the altar, the same way he stared.

      There they sat. He spoke first. ‘When you didn’t come out of St Andrew’s, I thought you might not mind some company.’ His voice grew softer. ‘Have you been sleeping in churches?’

      ‘It … it’s a safe place.’

      He hadn’t changed his position. He did not move any closer. ‘Mrs Paul, my sisters are still meddlers, my chef is still on strike, I can’t get any builders to do what they promised, the house is … strange and I swear there are bats or maybe griffons in the attic.’

      ‘What a daunting prospect.’

      ‘I would honestly rather sail into battle than deal with any of the above.’

      ‘Especially the griffons,’ she said, taking a deep breath. Am I this desperate? Is he? she asked herself. This man is—or was—an admiral. He is either a lunatic or the kindest man in the universe.

      ‘What say you, Mrs Paul?’ He still didn’t look in her direction, as though afraid she would bolt like a startled fawn. ‘You’ll have a home, a touchy chef, two dragons for sisters-in-law, and a one-armed husband who will need your assistance occasionally with buttons, or maybe putting sealing wax on a letter. Small things. If you can keep the dragons at bay, and keep the admiral out of trouble on land, he promises to let you be. It’s not a bad offer.’

      ‘No, it isn’t,’ she replied, after a long pause in which she could have sworn he held his breath. She just couldn’t speak. It was beyond her that anyone would do this. She could only stare at him.

      He gazed back. When he spoke, he sounded so rational she had to listen. ‘Mrs Paul, The Mouse isn’t coming. I want to marry you.’

      ‘Why, Admiral? Tell me why?’ There, she had asked. He had to tell her.

      He took his time, exasperating man. ‘Mrs Paul, even if The Mouse were to show up this minute, I would bow out. She’s a spinster, and that’s unfortunate, but she has a brother to take care of her, no matter how he might grumble. You have no one.’ He held up his hand to stop her words. ‘I have spent most of my life looking after England. One doesn’t just chop off such a responsibility. Maybe it didn’t end with Napoleon on St. Helena and my retirement papers. Knowing your dilemma, I cannot turn my back on you, no more than I could ever ignore a sister ship approaching a lee shore. You need help. I need a wife. I don’t think I can make it any plainer.’

      ‘No, I suppose you cannot,’ she murmured, but made one final attempt to make the man see reason. ‘Admiral, you know nothing about me. You truly don’t.’ It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him, but she found she could not. Coward, she thought.

      He looked at her then, and his face was kind. ‘I know one thing: you haven’t wittered once about the weather. I suppose marriages have started on stranger footings. I don’t know when or where, but I haven’t been on land much in the past twenty years.’

      ‘I suppose they have,’ she agreed. ‘Very well, sir.’

      Chapter Three

      Sally didn’t object when the admiral paid for a room at the Drake for her, after suggesting the priest at St Andrew’s might be irritated to perform a wedding so late, even with a special licence. And there were other concerns.

      ‘I must remind you, sir, I’m not The Mouse. I cannot usurp her name, which surely is already on the licence,’ she pointed out, embarrassed to state the obvious, but always the practical one.

      Admiral Bright chuckled. ‘It’s no problem, Mrs Paul. The Mouse’s name is Prunella Batchthorpe. Believe it or not, I can spell Batchthorpe. It was Prunella that gave me trouble. Prunella? Prunilla? A coin or two, and the clerk was happy enough to leave the space blank, for me to fill in later.’

      ‘Very well, then,’ Sally murmured.

      * * *

      She was hungry for supper, but had trouble swallowing the food, when it came. Finally, she laid down her fork. ‘Admiral, you need to know something about me,’ she said.

      He set down his fork, too. ‘I should tell you more about me, too.’

      How much to say? She thought a moment, then plunged ahead. ‘Five years ago, my husband committed suicide after a reversal of fortune. I ended up in one room with our son, Peter, who was five at the time.’

      She looked at the admiral for some sign of disgust at this, but all she saw was sympathy. It gave her the courage to continue. ‘Poor Peter. I could not even afford coal to keep the room warm. He caught a chill, it settled in his lungs and he died.’

      ‘You had no money for a doctor?’ he asked gently.

      ‘Not a farthing. I tried every poultice I knew, but nothing worked.’ She could not help the sob that rose in her throat. ‘And the whole time, Peter trusted me to make him better!’

      She didn’t know how it happened, but the admiral’s hand went to her neck, caressing it until she gained control of herself. ‘He was covered in quicklime in a pauper’s grave. I found a position that afternoon as a lady’s companion and never returned to that horrid room.’

      ‘I am so sorry,’ he said. ‘There wasn’t anyone you could turn to?’

      ‘No,’ she said, after blowing her nose on the handkerchief he handed her. ‘After my husband was … accused … we had not a friend in the world.’ She looked at him, wondering what to say. ‘It was all a mistake, a lie and a cover-up, but we have suffered.’

      Admiral Bright sat back in his chair. ‘Mrs Paul, people ask me how I could bear to stay so many years at sea. Unlike my captains who occasionally went into port, I remained almost constantly with the fleet. We had one enemy—France—and not the myriad of enemies innocent people attract, sometimes in the course of everyday business on land, or so I suspect. My sisters have never understood why I prefer the sea.’

      ‘Surely there are scoundrels at sea—I mean, in addition to the French,’ she said.

      ‘Of course there are, Mrs P. The world is full of them. It’s given me great satisfaction to hang a few.’

      She couldn’t help herself; she shuddered.

      ‘They deserved it. The hangings never cost me any sleep, because I made damned sure they were guilty.’ He looked into her eyes. ‘Mrs Paul, I cannot deny that I enjoyed the power, but I have never intentionally wronged anyone.’

      Too bad you were not on the Admiralty court that convicted my husband, she thought. Or would you have heard the evidence and convicted, too? She knew there was no way of knowing. She had not been allowed in the chambers. Best put it to rest.

      ‘I have the skills to manage your household,’ she told him, when he had resumed eating. ‘I’m quite frugal, you know.’

      ‘With a charming brogue betraying your origins, could you be anything else?’

      ‘Now,

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