He heard people whispering around him, and necks craning.Don’t react, Miss Fontaine, he thought.This is all my fault and you are bearing my burden.
The diatribe continued as the curate worked his way through the evil women of scripture, Jezebel prominent. Miss Fontaine sat calmy erect, as if chiselled from marble, unflinching.
Captain Beattie knew he was not a praying man. But he prayed now for God to end this, and seldom had he meant a prayer more.
To his relief, the steam seemed to go out of the doughy scoundrel wearing the robes of an ecclesiastic. He babbled, stumbled and ended with a feeble plea to avoid fornication. Then it was over, to John’s great relief.
‘I will see you now,’ John told Reverend Maddy on their way out. He leaned towards Mrs Moore, who was giving the curate her own disapproving look. ‘Take the others home, Mrs Moore. If you can fix me a sandwich, I’ll take it with me. Tides wait for no man.’
The housekeeper nodded and shepherded her little flock past a row of puzzled onlookers. John waited.
Reverend Maddy was in no hurry. Time was passing. After the last parishioner scurried away, John planted himself in front of the curate.
‘Reverend Maddy, you were wrong to single out Miss Fontaine and me for censure,’ he said firmly, mincing not a word. ‘She has already explained the situation I found myself in. Nothing has changed, because I am ordered to the Channel again and there is still no one but Miss Fontaine to protect my son. I have no relatives younger than fifty, and they are far away, near Edinburgh. I am in the service of the Crown and at the mercy of events.’
‘What’s done is done,’ the curate said, sounding so prim and righteous that John itched to wring the man’s neck. ‘I have merely warned my parish—my parish, Captain, not yours!—of evil lurking in Plymouth.’
‘There is no evil in Miss Fontaine.’
‘My parishioners have been warned,’ the curate retorted.
He stared at the clergyman.I have made matters worsewarred with,He knows what damage he has done and glories in it. Captain Beattie silently wished him to the devil, and soon.
John stalked past the smug curate, wondering if he should have said anything at all.
‘I wonder, Miss Fontaine, if I have done the right thing,’ Captain Beattie told Anna later, as he accepted a stout sandwich in a paper parcel. ‘I am so sorry.’
‘Don’t apologise again,’ she said, keeping her voice gentle in the face of his remorse. ‘It will blow over. I know it will,’ she added, even as her doubts multiplied.
That seemed to help. His eyes lost that hard expression and his shoulders relaxed. She wondered how peaceful he might look in a calm state of mind, perhaps even sleeping.
It was another quick goodbye. Allan grew solemn, but she rested her hands on his shoulders. ‘We’ll be fine, won’t we, Allan?’
To Anna’s delight, the Captain hugged Allan and Pru as well—Pru, who had even less idea what a family was than Allan. He sent the children ahead, then opened his arms to Anna.
‘Kindly give me another of those hugs. We’ll do it with the front door closed this time.’
Anna had no trouble being hauled close until he left nothing to the imagination. She wrapped her arms around him.
Then he was gone, opening the door on the children, who followed him down the steps. Anna stayed inside, wondering how a house could suddenly seem so empty, when only one person was leaving.
She asked that question again when the house was still that night. She found a psalm that her father had liked to read when he was missing Will at sea and took comfort from it.
Morning came with Mrs Moore shaking her awake. ‘Miss Fontaine! We have a problem!’
Chapter Eleven
‘Good heavens, Mrs Moore.’ Anna glanced out of the window to see the sun barely up.
‘He’s waiting downstairs,’ her housekeeper said with panic in her voice, so unlike the Mrs Moore who never faltered.
Anna threw on her clothes and hurried downstairs. Mrs Moore directed her into the sitting room. ‘Oh, dear,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, dear.’
Anna steeled herself to see the curate waiting to pounce again. Instead, she saw a mild-looking man with a leather business case.
‘You are Miss Anna Fontaine, sister of William Fontaine, late of the Royal Navy and current holder of the lease on this property?’
‘I am,’ she said calmly. ‘My brother was deceased after the battle of Trafalgar. If it is a matter of this property’s lease, I am quite able to continue payments.’
