“What do you mean by trouble?” The more Georgie heard, the more her horrid, unappealing orange hair stood on end.
“Well, war, obviously,” said Simpkins, as if she were daft. “A first-rate ship has over a hundred guns for only one reason, Georgie, and that’s to blow the enemy out of the water.”
“Oh dear.” Images of the tragic death of Nelson skittered through her mind. “That isn’t good.”
“It isn’t good.” Simpkins beamed. “It’s bloody marvelous! They only entrust those that are first-rate with a first-rate ship of the line. Warships are cumbersome and temperamental brutes who need a steady hand and a quick mind to keep them afloat. But the captain has both those things in spades, so he’ll do fine. Especially with the right crew behind him, and I’ll be one of them. He asked me to be his sailing master again. I’ll reenlist as soon as we get to Plymouth.” Simpkins sighed with satisfaction as he sipped his cocoa. “It’ll be good to get back out to sea. I’ve missed it.”
“But not so good to always be sailing toward trouble, Mr. Simpkins.” Georgie’s vivid imagination had decided to abandon all its scandalous musings of her as the captain’s willing distraction in favor of more macabre prophecies of potential doom. “You could both be killed.”
He shrugged at Georgie’s comment. “Such is a sailor’s life. Sailing toward trouble is what we do, and we all have to die of something. At least the hot kiss of a musket ball or the punch from a cannon is a quick and clean way to go.” He shrugged those grisly ends off as if he was completely at peace with the risks. “And we’d likely have our names chiseled in perpetuity onto a monument somewhere, so that will be nice too.”
“Nice?” Were all military men this mad? “But what about the children?” If the threat of death wasn’t enough to make the captain think twice about going, then maybe reminding him of his responsibilities on land might. “They were entrusted into his care by his sister! Surely he can’t just abandon them at the drop of a hat?” Especially if sailing away from them involved him being blown to smithereens!
“Of course he can. This is the biggest promotion of his career and his sister will understand that. Not that he needs her understanding when she didn’t even have the decency to ask him if she could leave the blighters here. And they’ve still got you, haven’t they?” Simpkins seemed shocked by her outrage. “It’s not as if the little buggers are his.”
As that cavalier response only served to annoy her, and because she was suddenly so unsettled by the bombshell that had just been dropped on her from on high, Georgie decided to try and reason with the captain instead.
As she stalked to his study, irrationally more furious at him for getting promoted than she was with his shore leave she didn’t hold out much hope he would listen. Military men only ever put themselves first, last, and always—even if that also meant they got themselves killed in the process. However, she had to say something. When something was wrong, it was wrong, and not saying so waswrong too. Him going—leaving—now felt wrong. So wrong someone had to fight against it.
She went to hammer on his half-open door, ready to give him what for, but paused when she saw him staring out of his window at the night. His posture told her that while Simpkins was celebrating his master’s elevation, the master wasn’t. She had never seen anyone look quite as lost as the captain did at this precise moment and, once again against her better judgment, she instantly pitied him.
“Might I have a word, Captain?”
He spun around at her question and forced a weak smile. “Of course.” He swept a reluctant hand toward the chair in front of his desk. Then slowly lowered himself into his own seat with a wince as he stared briefly at her awful hair again. As much as her inner Joan of Arc had plenty to say, now that she knew he was troubled, she would start gently. Try to be a diplomat for once, despite it not being her forte.
“I hear congratulations are in order—Commodore.” She had never seen him in uniform before and was unprepared for how good he looked in it. He wore it well. Or perhaps, in this moment, heboreit well, although she had no clue why she thought that beyond the fact that it seemed to be one of the things currently weighing him down. “That is quite an impressive leap, even for someone like you, who is no stranger to early promotions.”
He waved that compliment away, his brow furrowed. “I am not a commodore yet, Miss Rowe, but yes, I suppose it is quite a leap to be given a ship of such gravitas so early in one’s career.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed—hard—and his expression became so grave he looked ten years older than the version of himself she had witnessed sitting in his bathwater not four hours ago.
“I hear things will be quite rushed if you are to get to Plymouth by next week.”
“Yes.” Perhaps she was imagining it, but his eyes were more bothered than thrilled. “There is a lot to organize.” Out of habit, his fingers fiddled with one of the pocket watches strung across his pale cream, brass-buttoned waistcoat, as if that would help slow time in the interim. “I am yet to know how to find enough hours in the next thirty-six hours to do it all.”
“Just a day and a half? So soon?”
He shrugged. Even that seemed to take all his effort. “The interminable journey to Plymouth alone takes a week.” His shoulders slumped some more. “Plymouth has never been the easiest of places to get to. By land, at least.” He forced his frown into blandness again, unconsciously touching the other pocket watch and formalizing his posture as if he were suddenly eager to be rid of her to get on with things. “But you wanted a word?” His eyes fixed on the pile of letters on his desk rather than look at her, and he quickly selected one to slice open and read. An unconscious, or perhaps entirely conscious, gesture designed to let her know that the contents of his missive were more important than anything she might have to say. Yet while that made her inner St. Joan bristle, it set alarm bells ringing in that peculiar, intuitive part of her that was convinced it saw into his soul. Something was very wrong here, but she did not know what.
“I wanted two, actually.” He might want to speed this conversation up, but she needed to do the opposite if she was going to convince him to reconsider leaving straightaway as that niggling voice in her head told her she needed to.
“Firstly, I wanted to apologize for the unfortunate incident with the frog earlier. Had I known Norbert had brought a friend home from the park, I never would have allowed him near the house. Had I also known that you were home, I never would have interrupted your bath as I did, and then inadvertently dragged in the whole householdbehind me. At the very least, I should have knocked before I attempted to relieve Norbert of his contraband.”
He waved that away. “What? And deny everyone such splendid entertainment?” His eyes danced briefly as if he also saw the funny side of the debacle. “That young lady you brought in with you could barely contain her delight at my predicament. I believe she even snorted at one point.”
Her friend had done more than snort. Lottie had snorted, ogled, and then waxed lyrical for ten minutes after the incident on what a truly fine specimen of manhood the captain was. Then, in front of Mrs. Rigsby, her incorrigible friend had reiterated her opinion that Georgie should absolutely use her wiles on him at her earliest possible convenience before somebody else pipped her to the post! “I absolutely must apologize for Lottie. She grew up in a houseful of men and struggles with ladylike behavior.”
“If anyone should apologize for earlier, Miss Rowe, it is that mad dog. Although I suspect he is also entirely unrepentant for either the havoc he wreaked with the frog or the mud he smeared over all my bedsheets.” He forgot to suppress his half smile momentarily, and her silly heart sighed. “How is said frog?”
“Delighted to be back in the Serpentine where he belongs. Felix and I took himwithoutNorbert, who was less than delighted to be left behind.”
“His howling suggested as much.” That amused him too, she could tell, but he pushed it away fast. No sooner had his smile melted than his eyes returned to a missive on his desk, suddenly looking again every inch the single-minded military man who had more important things to do with his time than waste it on a conversation with a governess. “However, I daresay the dog would not have had the chance to kidnap the poor frog in the first place if you hadn’tgone back to wasting almost every hour of the children’s valuable lesson time outside again when you have a perfectly serviceable and well-stocked classroom here in the house.”
“Wasn’t it Wellington who said being born in a stable does not make one a horse?”
“And what has that to do with frogs and your aversion to classrooms, Miss Rowe?”
“That your particular area of expertise is commanding men to do precisely what the navy expects of them and mine is to encourage children to learn in the best possible way. Therefore, I fear that we shall have to agree to disagree on the benefits of confining education to the classroom.”
“If you know enough Wellington to be able to quote him, then you will also know that discipline is the soul of an army—” Now he wasn’t simply misquoting, he was ill-quoting too.
