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“Retired? I rather thought you’d stay on until you’d made admiral, at least.”
“The navy wasn’t my choice as a career, you may remember. I have enjoyed it, though, and would not have missed it. But I’m tired of bouncing about the world and want to plant more permanent roots. I have a little place on the Sussex coast that I am rather fond of. I’d like to live quietly for a while and watch the sun rise and set over green instead of blue.”
“You will miss the sea.”
“Perhaps. Many of my fellow officers are bored to the bone and secretly praying for a new war. As for me, I am ready to enjoy a long peace. To spend the rest of my days on dry land, in Sussex. It’s a fine house with a small park, a view of the sea from the front and the south downs from the rear.” He gri
She laughed, and the sound took him back to that hayloft in Porthruan, where they had gifted each other with their virginity. It was the same musical laugh. A touch lower in timbre, but still the same. “Do you know anything about farming, Sam?”
“Not a bit. But I can hire people who do, while I sit by my fire with my pipe and my dogs and grow to a crusty old age. But for now, I’m going to enjoy the peace and collect my half-pay-”
“Half-pay? But I thought you retired.”
“One never retires from the Royal Navy, Willie. There is no provision for it. Once you join, you’re in for life. But you can opt to go on half-pay and live as you please until you are called to duty. Then you must report or lose your half-pay, which is precisely what I intend to do.”
For the next half hour she peppered him with questions about his naval experiences, and they talked easily together about the places he’d been, the battles he’d fought, the occasional foray into the East Indies, and the tedious blockade duties that had kept him busy the last half-dozen years.
He watched her closely as they talked. She was still an uncommonly handsome woman. No, “handsome” was too bland a word for the duchess. She was beautiful. Not in that fresh-bloom-of-youth way that had so captivated him as a boy, when she was soft and round and pink-cheeked. Now she had the sort of timeless beauty of antique marble statues he’d seen in Greece. Every plane and angle was perfect, even if etched with a line or two.
And yet, beneath the elegant and no doubt expensively maintained veneer, the pretty young girl he’d once known still lurked, catching him off guard now and then and robbing him of breath: in the way the merest hint of a dimple winked at one corner of her mouth, or the way she tilted her head as she listened to him speak, or the way she wrinkled her nose when she laughed. In such moments, decades rolled away and he was back in Cornwall. In the hayloft with his girl.
He had to wonder if things had gone as they’d pla
There was no way to know what might have been, and no way to change the past, so there was no point in dwelling on it. Sam had always been forward-looking, making the best out of what life brought him.
But what was he to make out of this chance encounter? How was he to make the best of it?
“And what of you, Sam? I mean on a personal level. When we last met you had lost your wife. Have you remarried? Had more children?”
He shook his head. “No. I’ve been away too much. I took leave when I could to see Tom, of course.”
“Your son?”
“Yes. But no time for wooing a wife. A blockade captain’s life is not his own.”
“I never understood how an impressed seaman managed to rise to the rank of captain.”
“Mine was not a typical path, I assure you. In fact, my career has been quite out of the ordinary. I have always been a good sailor, as you know.”
She did know. Wilhelmina smiled and remembered the young Sam, scampering about on the cove, more at home on a fishing boat than on shore.
“My natural abilities were noticed and utilized from the start,” he continued. “Once I realized there was no going home for me, that I was stuck in the bloody navy against my will, I decided to make the best of it. I enjoyed the life, learned quickly, and put myself forward at every opportunity. After a few years, I was rated able seaman and made it known that I aspired to the quarterdeck. I was fortunate in my captain, who went against tradition to eventually assign me a midshipman’s rating.”
She poured another cup of tea, only to find the pot empty. Looking about, she caught Lizzie’s eye across the room and lifted an eyebrow. The girl bobbed and hurried off. Wilhelmina wanted to sit here for hours and listen to Sam, to allow that voice, still colored with the long Rs and rolling vowels of Cornwall, to wrap around her like a soothing blanket. But she could see that the rain was easing up and he would be wanting to resume his journey, and she didn’t want to let him go just yet. It was the first time they’d had more than a brief conversation in years, and most of those had been either unpleasant or awkward. Talking together like old friends was something she’d never imagined for them, and she savored every moment. Perhaps if she kept him talking, he would never notice if the rain stopped.
“I don’t know much about how the navy works,” she said. “Achieving a midshipman’s rating was unusual?”
“For an impressed seaman, it certainly was.” He shook his head and gave a soft chuckle tinged with self-mockery. “I was three-and-twenty, the oldest midshipman on board, but I was proud as a peacock, and already mapping out a career as an officer. It was just then that we returned to England, after five long years at sea. And I was bursting my buttons with pride in my new assignment, eager to track you down and lay my paltry little fortune, my hoarded bits of prize money, at your feet.”
Ah. At last they’d arrived at the topic they were bound to address, but she had hoped they would not. It had been inevitable, she supposed. But perhaps it was time they talked it out. “And instead you found me gone.”
He frowned and fell silent for a long moment. When he finally spoke, there was a dark, bitter edge to his voice. “I was so angry when I learned you’d run off with that artist fellow and become…”
“A whore.”
Sam grimaced. “That wasn’t the word I was going to use.”
“I have no doubt my mother used it when she told you I’d gone.” She had flung that word and worse at Wilhelmina when she’d cast her out, accusing her of sharing her favors with the artist, James Benedict, and with Sam and others. Martha Jepp would have no hesitation in using the same language when Sam had come back looking for her daughter.
“You did what you had to in order to survive,” he said, his tone softening. “It took me a long time to come to grips with it, but I understand now. Truly I do, Willie. I want you to believe that.” He reached out and touched her hand briefly. “But all those years ago…Well, when I came home in ’94 a newly rated midshipman, puffed up in a crisp new uniform paid for with my own prize money, the news devastated me. And I lashed out in pain.”
She had been in the theater, holding court in her reserved box, when he found her. It had taken less than an instant to recognize him, and the sight of him had her reeling, this ghost from her past walking toward her.
“So, it’s true.”
He glared at her with such anger that another wave of dizziness almost overwhelmed her. If she had not been seated, she would surely have collapsed. Her emotions were a turmoil of surprise, joy, and shame. Thoroughly dumb-founded, she could not manage to speak.