Harry woke with a start when Cuthbert licked his nose.
He lifted the warm bundle of fur from his chest and deposited him back on the mattress where he had been forced to allow the puppy to sleep. “Yours is very definitely not the face I want to be waking up to.”
Thanks to Cuthbert’s talent for hogging the bed, and despite confession supposedly being good for the soul, Harry had still slept fitfully. It was impossible not to think of Georgie when she was mere yards away in her own bed, and he still wasn’t convinced that he had done the right thing in telling her how attracted he was to her. There hadn’t been any time to gauge her reaction to his revelation after Ada had interrupted their little tête-à-tête. Once Ada started asking questions, there was no stopping her, and before he knew it, it was bedtime.
He had tried to leave the puppy downstairs to sleep, of course, because he was a man who had to sail away and really couldn’t own a dog. He had even made a comfortable bed for the thing in the sittingroom, but Cuthbert was having none of it. He also flatly refused to sleep in with Norbert. Something Harry found out an hour after he had gone to bed at the same moment he learned Norbert knew how to open doors. One minute he had been staring up at the ceiling, yearning to snuggle up with Georgie, and the next, when his door knob turned and he sat bolt upright praying that it was her, it had been the giant, shaggy hound who had stomped in with the gangly Cuthbert dangling from his jaws, clearly irritated that his own slumber had been disturbed. He deposited his needy son on Harry’s mattress, then promptly left. He even managed to pull the bedchamber door firmly shut to ensure that his spawn did not escape to bother him further.
As the puppy had instantly curled up into a ball and closed his eyes as soon as it burrowed against him, Harry felt mean trying to evict him and had reluctantly let him stay.
“Do not get used to this, dog.” Suddenly annoyed at everything, he wagged his finger at Cuthbert as he padded to his washstand and sloshed cold water into the bowl. “You’ve had a whole night to settle in and today you need to choose one of the children to glue yourself to forevermore.”
The animal tilted his head as he watched Harry sluice his upper body in the cold water and soap, clearly fascinated at the strange ritual, then half jumped, half fell off the bed to come sit by his feet, staring up entranced while he shaved.
“It is an important day today.” Why he was compelled to make conversation with a dog was beyond him, but he went with it. It was an important day and it wouldn’t hurt to reaffirm all that he had to do in it. “I’ve got to sail to blasted Plymouth while the cocks are still crowing, I’ve got to meet with the supervisor of the useless layabouts on the bloodyBoadiceaand then I’ve probably got to dismiss him andfind a replacement. Then somehow, in around five blasted weeks, I’ve got to get that ship in a fit state to sail, so wish me luck.”
The list of things that still needed to be done was longer than both Harry’s arms put together. It wouldn’t be so bad if they were small and niggly tasks but some—like fitting the copious numbers of bunks that would be needed for the seven hundred and fifty men who would need to sleep on them—were massive jobs. Massive problems, too, if all the rope and hammocks hadn’t yet been ordered! “Then I’ve got to learn how to sail the damn thing while also teaching the crew how to, so that will be fun. A lot can go wrong on a one-hundred-twenty gunner, so I can’t say that I’m looking forward to July.” It wasn’t just the training maneuvers he was dreading. He was dreading August too as that would also signal the return of Flora and the departure of Georgie and that was something he did not want to have to contemplate regardless of his need to resist her. Somehow, life currently felt better with her near. A problem which would, hopefully, resolve itself once he found his naval feet and enthusiasm for sailing again.
“But as Nelson said, duty is the purpose of an officer and all private considerations, no matter how painful, must give way to that. Or words to that effect, Cuthbert, so I don’t have any other choice.” Harry sighed in resignation and must have sounded so miserable that the puppy gave him a soulful, sympathetic stare before he licked his toes.
“You’re a good dog, Cuthbert—but don’t tell anyone I said so.” In case that gave Cuthbert false hope, he felt obligated to clarify. “But don’t get any ideas of staying with me because His Majesty’s navy might well tolerate a cat on board a ship—but a giant, mad, future Norbert they will not.” He bent to tickle the dog’s ears as he toweled the last of the soap from his face, and that was when he saw his dress breeches. Or to be more precise, what was left of his dress breeches!
Something had tugged them from the chair he had laid them on and ripped them to shreds. Tiny pieces of what had once been the left leg of the supremely comfortablenewerbreeches Simpkins had had made behind his back were now scattered across his bedchamber floor like confetti on a trail that led back to the bed. Another long but ragged ivory strip, which may or may not have once been part of the waistband, lay atop the patchwork eiderdown where he had allowed the puppy to sleep.
“Cuthbert! What have you done!” Harry picked up what was left of the only pair of dress breeches he possessed that did not strangle his wedding vegetables and then shook the rags at the puppy, incensed. “I take everything I just said back! You are a bad dog, Cuthbert!” And today—the most important day in his career so far—was already a bad day, and it hadn’t even started.
It was safe to say that Georgie hadn’t had the best first official full day as the children’s governess in Cawsand. The change of location and the weeklong break in their routine meant that they had completely forgotten most of it. Worse, she was so distracted by the captain’s confession last night that she was an atrocious and short-tempered teacher. So disorganized, overemotional, and preoccupied, it was as if she had never taught a lesson in her life.
She had tried teaching them outside to begin with, and when that proved near impossible, she had tried to teach them inside. Then, run ragged and so confused by it all, she had decided to write the entire day off and had reasoned some fresh air and some vigorous exercise on the beach was the answer. For the children to let off some well-needed steam and to give herself some space to try to organize all her jumbled thoughts and emotions into something resembling order.
He thought her attractive.
A siren.
The sort of woman he could never sail away from if he allowed himself to fall head over heels in love with her.
Her!
And yet he was still going to sail away.
Because for all his pretty words, he wouldn’t allow it because his military career was, and always would be, his one true love and she couldn’t compete.
She knew that she should really be relieved by that, as being shackled to a military man was her worst nightmare and not something she would ever do after her miserable and nomadic childhood and the way her mother had suffered. But instead, she was upset. Disappointed. In him. In herself. At irony, for tempting her with the most unsuitable man possible. At fate for its impeccably awful timing. That all those things irritated because if she couldn’t be relieved at her lucky escape, then at the very least, she should be angry at him for falling so short of what she deserved.
Except—
He had been trying to be noble. He had been trying to do what he thought was best, for her as well as him. She had seen that as plain as day in his dark, stormy eyes when he had acknowledged that being shackled to a sailor was a miserable existence. Just as she had witnessed the war going on in them because he wanted her but was too much the officer and a gentleman to just have her the once—even if she’d undoubtedly let him.
What a stark difference that was from Lottie’s recent experience with an employer. Her friend had had to physically defend herself from that ignoble libertine’s unwelcome advances and had been dismissed as a result. Both Portia and Kitty had similar experiences, and the flagrant abuse of female employees was so widespread thatMiss P taught classes on it to try to keep her protégés protected. She supposed she should be grateful that the captain—Harry—was cut from a different cloth. Despite all the inevitable new awkwardness his honesty had created, she still felt safe under his roof and she still had her job. She had to focus on those positives and put all the rest to one side.
For the sake of her sanity and her foolish heart.
Why couldn’t they have met a year ago, six months ago, before he had been offered a promotion he could not refuse? Then, if what he had claimed was right, he’d have become so besotted with her that he would have become lax in his duties and wouldn’t have got this wretched promotion at all. Wouldn’t that have been wonderful? Even if he stayed with the navy but worked at the Admiralty, that would have worked. His charming house in Hanover Square was a long way from a soulless barracks, and she would have loved the opportunity to make a life there with him. A stupid and fanciful notion which the part of her that had always hankered for hearth and home, love and family, already mourned disproportionately when it had never really been in the cards.
But now, when her temporary position here ended as she had always known it would, she would leave with a hole in her heart and a bittersweet memory of a great love that might have been. All combined with the worry that he could be anywhere in the world, sailing directly into the worst trouble on his flagship. Trouble he might not sail back from.
“I caught a crab!” Grace ran toward her, holding her bucket aloft. “Isn’t he beautiful?” She tried to stop just shy of Georgie, but still ended up crashing into her.
She smiled at the bounty and tried to look impressed despite the dull black crab being smaller than her palm. “He is indeed.” Tomake the girl smile, Georgie took the bucket and showed the contents to Cuthbert, who hadn’t yet made his mind up about either the sand or the children, so hadn’t left her side since they had arrived at the beach an hour ago. “Isn’t he lovely?” The puppy gave it a tentative sniff and backed away as soon as one of the crab’s pincers snapped out of the water. “Now go return him to the rock pool you found him in, in case his mother is missing him.”
