“I… do recall that he took a pride in being thorough,” she managed to remark. “He said once that a miscopied figure could lose a ship.”
Mr. Leigh’s eyes warmed, though he did not presume to claim more intimacy than memory allowed. “Exactly so. He used to stand over the schoolmaster’s globe, pointing out every reef and rock upon which we should all fracture ourselves if we did not mind our sums.”
The Admiral chuckled. “That is Charles. Had he not drowned, he would have been an Admiral twice over by now and I should be the one obeying his commands.”
There was a brief, companionable silence while cups were adjusted and crumbs swept discreetly from the cloth. Then Mr. Leigh spoke again, a shade more thoughtfully.
“At school,” he said, “Larkin was seldom alone. He kept company, as boys will, with a small circle. There was a Singleton a year ahead of us—Alastair Singleton. The two of them were much together. Did he maintain the friendship?”
There it was again. Singleton. The name struck Elise like a blow delivered beneath the ribs.
She had seen it written in tight, official script upon Admiralty paper. She willed her face to stillness.
“Yes, you mentioned before. I have heard the name,” she said, setting down her cup with great care lest it rattle, “but my husband did not speak often of his schoolfellows. The war scattered so many to different paths.”
It was not wholly a lie. Charles had spoken of comrades in fragments, never the whole.
Across from her, Mr. Leigh’s gaze rested on her for a heartbeat longer than politeness strictly required. It was not an impertinent stare; rather an assessment, as though he were taking soundings in a tricky channel.
“Quite so,” he said at last. “Time and circumstances make strangers of us all.”
The Admiral snorted. “Nonsense. Once a man has shared bad beef and worse biscuit at sea, he never forgets the fellow who suffered beside him. But you are right in one thing, Leigh—war scatters us.”
Elise bent her head over the teapot, busying herself with the utterly unnecessary task of straightening its handle. Her mind, however, was not upon porcelain. It darted instead to the reports she had seen. Reports in which the name Singleton had become a stain upon the page.
A friend of Charles?
The thought made her stomach queasy. It was irrational; of course, naval officers and army men had intersecting circles. Yet she could not help the instinctive recoil. Her world had narrowed so much—with every loss, every betrayal—that any new link to those secret, dangerous currents felt like another thread binding her to a past she had imagined safely buried.
Mr. Leigh interrupted her thoughts. “I hope,” he said, “that my mentioning it has not given you pain, Mrs. Larkin. I would not willingly disturb any memories you would rather leave undisturbed.”
For an instant, truth tugged at her tongue.
You have no idea which memories you disturb, sir. You tread very near dangerous ground.
She folded that impulse away with the same discipline with which she did everything.
“It has been some time. I am happy to remember him and know any friend of his.”
The Admiral launched into a tale of a long-ago inspection at the Navy yard, misplacing half the details and inventing the others. Elise listened with the patience of familiarity, guiding him back when he wandered too far. Mr. Leigh added questions and acknowledgements—never in a way that diminished the old man, but with a subtle reinforcement that allowed the Admiral to maintain the authority he so cherished.
From time to time Elise caught Mr. Leigh’s eye. He always looked away first, though never abruptly. There was a courtesy in him that made his very reticence somehow gentle.
Half an hour passed before Elise rose. Mr. Leigh was quickly to his feet.
“I must return to the school,” she said. “They will be looking for me.”
“Too soon, far too soon,” the Admiral complained. “But I shall see you on Friday?”
“As always,” she replied warmly.
She gathered her bonnet and tied her cloak. “I will see myself out. It was a pleasure, Mr. Leigh.”
He bowed deeply, the gesture precise—another one of his small contradictions, as though his manners had been learned in a world slightly different from the one he now inhabited.
Elise departed down the lane. The air was cool, the day mild. She ought to have felt peaceful. When she reached the bend where the lane curved toward the sea, the faint unease returned—a small, prickling shadow along the edge of her thoughts.
CHAPTER 5
