She rose as he hurried to her and kissed her soundly. They nearly ran up the stairs. Grace glanced up, then returned to her entries in the ledger, her shoulders shaking with amusement. ‘I wish I had a pound note for every baby that begins on my third floor,’ was her comment.
Anna felt her face grow warm, feeling what seemed dangerously close to envy. To her heart and mind came aglimpse of Captain Beattie as she had never seen him, joyful and eager to bed a wife.There was a wife, she reminded herself.I know he loved her. He said as much.
The greater lesson, the one that changed her, came a day later, when she was alone at the desk and a captain came in. He bore himself well, as they all did, but no amount of rank or experience could disguise his pain. His young lieutenants grouped around him, looking concerned.
This was an officer on his last legs; Anna sensed it. She thought of Captain Beattie. Would his final moments be like this, too? Alone, except for young officers inadequate to the moment?
She beckoned them forward as Grace had taught her, even as chills marched down her spine. The captain collapsed halfway across the lobby. Before he fell, he looked into her eyes. She saw a man in need.
She knelt beside the captain and pulled him close, his head in her lap. Without a thought to propriety, she cradled him in her arms. In that moment, she knew she would never again hang back. Every man keeping her, Allan and Pru safe from a continent in turmoil became her responsibility.
No help materialized; Anna knew it was already too late.
‘I’m here,’ she told the captain. ‘I’m here.’
‘You are England,’ he whispered, then closed his eyes in death.
Anna bowed her head over him, as if shielding him from the previous confusion, and now the great silence. She shielded him until she was forced to relinquish him to others. She stood quietly in the lobby, then slowly walked downstairs, seating herself on the lowest tread, silent about what had happened not only to the captain, but also to her.
Her employer joined her later, sitting beside her. Anna looked at her.
‘Grace, we must write to Captain Beattie,’ she said. ‘He needs to know how we are doing.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I am now ready to fight Napoleon in my own way, too.’
Chapter Thirteen
The Channel was its usual windy grind of restless waves funnelled between a continent and a large island. Winter might be wearing out, but spring was a reluctant maiden.
‘She’s a tease, this Channel,’ Captain Beattie remarked to his new first luff after breakfast of coffee, ancient toast and highly suspect cheese, accompanied by curses from his steward, who took mouldy cheese personally.
As painful as Lieutenant Fontaine’s death had been, John did not hesitate over Will’s replacement. He had anticipated it for months, knowing that Will would soon be moving to his own command, and none better. Sadly, war had outfoxed them.
Second lieutenant Thomas Marsing had moved competently into Will’s former place. A Welshman with dancing dark eyes, Tom knew when to be serious.
‘Sir, I will never fail you, even as Will never failed you,’ Tom promised, and his captain had no doubts. John knew how to nurture leaders.
Captain Beattie understood the aloofness of command, and the demands of a hard service. He appeared on deck during long night watches, when no captain usually roamed. It became a matter of course for Tom to follow him onto the quarterdeck.
Sometimes they spoke; sometimes they didn’t. Lately, John found himself deep in thought, relieved that Allan was in a safe mooring on Covent Street. However, instinct told him that Reverend Maddy was a troublemaker. His only consolation was the knowledge that Anna Fontaine would never be cowed by such a fool as that curate.
On this voyage John frequently lingered on the quarterdeck, leaning his elbows on the rail and gazing towards Plymouth, wondering at his audacity in thrusting himself, Allan and Pru onto Anna. His chagrin mellowed into a pleasant reminiscence of a charming woman, and damned if she wasn’t pretty, too, in a calming, serene way.
He thought of Cathy, destined for a brief life, something he’d been aware of when he’d married her. He knew he loved her still, but wasn’t there a time limit on wholesale grief? Such were his quarterdeck musings, invariably followed by the utter folly of thinking that his life during war was his own. His only solace was the knowledge that his son was safe.
The monotony ended when a Fast Dispatch Vessel dropped off a message from Admiral Collingwood himself, master of the Mediterranean Fleet, commanding theSwallowto sail with all dispatch to Gibraltar. John nodded at his admiral’s sketchy handwriting: ‘I have a job for you, Captain Beattie,’ he read. He turned over the note. ‘I also have mail on theQueen, for you miscreants aboard theSwallow.’ Mail. Thank God.
They made Gibraltar three days later. There was something about the Rock that drew even maritime veterans to it. Gibraltar was the door to the Mediterranean—Italy, Greece and North Africa. Since Trafalgar, the Royal Navy could rove almost anywhere.
‘Back again, Mr Marsing,’ he said to his first luff. He pointed to theQueen, Admiral Collingwood’s flagship. ‘There is mail aboard. Come with me, and you can take it back.’ He couldn’t help laughing. ‘You’ll be the most popular man on theSwallow.’
‘Aye, sir!’ Tom said, with the same enthusiasm. ‘May I ask, what does the Admiral have in mind for us?’
‘Your guess equals mine,’ he said. ‘Maybe we’ll rove about the Mediterranean. Better that, than to the blockade.’
‘Even if we have to deal with Americans here?’ Tom asked.
‘We’ll manage the Americans,’ he replied. ‘At least we speak the same language. I think.’ It was a Royal Navy joke. Nautical upstarts from the former colonies had made treaty recently with pirates from Tripoli, who had disrupted their new-found trade in the Mediterranean. So far as anyone knew, the treaty was holding. Who knew about the Americans?
Once aboard theQueenthat afternoon, John was met by the bosun, who saluted and handed off a mail bag. ‘This is your personal correspondence, Captain Beattie,’ the bosun added, handing him a smaller pouch. ‘Lieutenant Kelso will see you to the Admiral.’
