Marriage of Mercy

With an exasperated groan, he stopped at the top of the stairs. ‘Honestly,’ was all he said and his gaze seemed to take them all in. He did not object, though, when Emery took him by the arm and steered him slowly into his chamber. He looked back at her, a quizzical expression on his face. ‘Miss, I’m being abducted. Granted, it’s happening at glacial speed,’ he declared, which struck her as the funniest thing she had heard in weeks.

Grace laughed out loud, which brought a fleeting smile to his face. ‘Thank the Almighty,’ he said. ‘Glad to know you have a sense of humour. We might need it.’

Emery seemed determined to be of service, which touched Grace. He helped Inman off with his shoes, shaking his head. ‘Lad, it’s been a rough time, eh? No stockings and no shoelaces, and not much leather.’

‘I think the rats were as hungry as we were,’ Inman said. He yawned and looked at Grace. ‘Pardon me, miss, but I’m lousy and fleabitten and not worth an “Ave”. Just give me a sheet and I’ll sleep on the floor.’

Grace shook her head. ‘You’ll sleep on the bed, Captain. Tomorrow’s soon enough for delousing. You won’t object if I cut your hair?’

‘Shorter the better,’ he said after another yawn. He lay down and turned toward the wall, as Emery hitched the coverlet higher and rested his hand briefly on the parolee’s shoulder. ‘Goodnight, all you nursemaids.’

The three of them left the room. Mr Selway spoke first on the landing. ‘Our Captain Duncan seems not to mind taking charge. I think we’ve been told what to do.’

They went down and sat belowstairs while Emery took some food from a basket. ‘Mrs Clyde had me bring over this basket. She said it’s no trouble to prepare a little more for the dower house.’

‘It won’t be until Lord Thomson gets wind of his staff’s philanthropy,’ the solicitor said. He bit into a beef sandwich. ‘Grace. Emery. I do have some modest discretionary funds for the maintenance of Captain Duncan here in the dower house. I was going to hire a cook, but if you will do the honours, Grace, then we can stretch the budget to include our new friend Emery.’

‘I certainly can cook,’ she replied, on firm ground now. ‘And bake. I think that must be why Lord Thomson wanted me here in the first place. I can think of no other reason.’

Mr Selway smiled. ‘Actually, Grace, before he died, he told me he hoped you and the captain would fall in love and marry.’

Grace laughed and then sobered as she remembered the scene in the prison, the one Mr Selway had not witnessed. The captain is dead, she thought with a sudden pang, as the two men chuckled and then conversed with each other. And here is Rob Inman. She had to smile again, thinking of Lord Thomson with real fondness. ‘He was a funny old stick, to get such a notion,’ she told her companions. ‘Pigs will probably fly first, wouldn’t you agree?’

Chapter Five

‘I suppose stranger things have happened, Grace,’ Mr Selway teased. He took another sandwich out of the basket and wrapped it in a napkin. ‘I’m going to that closet off the sitting room that I have dubbed the dower-house bookroom—my, aren’t I grandiose?—to make a careful scrutiny of Captain Duncan’s parole and Lord Thomson’s whimsical will.’ He stood up, nodding to Emery. ‘If Grace agrees, I believe you will be a welcome addition to our staff.’

She nodded. ‘Our staff? What an exaggeration! Mind, Emery, this position only lasts until the war ends and the captain returns to America.’

Emery winked elaborately. ‘If you’re man and wife by then, I can be your butler in the United States. I don’t much fancy the workhouse.’

Mr Selway laughed and left the kitchen. Her eyes merry, Grace finished her sandwich while the old man swept up the crumbs from the table and carefully deposited them in the basket.

‘Mrs Clyde said she’ll give us a pot of porridge with lots of sugar and cream,’ Emery told her.

‘After the captain has been deloused and shaved, I’ll go to the greengrocer’s in Quimby,’ Grace said. ‘He is so thin. I can certainly feed him back to health.’ She shook her head. ‘As for the other matter, we’ll let Captain Duncan decide whom he marries.’

‘Aye, Gracie.’ Emery yawned elaborately. ‘Now, if we can’t think of anything else to rescue, I’ll find my bed.’ He stood up and stretched, then walked to the door off the servants’ dining room.

‘I only wish we could pay you more than the barest pittance.’

‘‘Tis enough. This will be interesting.’

I don’t doubt that for a moment, Grace thought as she climbed the stairs. She opened the door quietly to Rob Inman’s room, listening to his even breathing. She closed the door softly behind her.

A lengthy bath won’t come a moment too soon, she thought, as she went to her own room. He smells worse than a kitchen midden in August. She would probably have to burn everything he was wearing and his bedding, too. The least I can do is return him to America in better shape than Captain Shortland gave him to me, she thought.

She stood in front of the fire in her room, hands outstretched, wondering why she had ever agreed to any condition in Lord Thomson’s will.

‘Emery is right. It will be interesting,’ she murmured, as she folded her clothing on the battered bureau, with its mirror in dire need of re-silvering. ‘Thank God for Emery.’

Grace burrowed under her covers, pulling her knees close to her chest for warmth, missing the yeasty fragrance that permeated the bakery. Grace, at least you are not incarcerated in Dartmoor Prison, she reminded herself. ‘Maybe it’s best not to think about such things,’ she murmured into her pillow.

Her sleep had been troubled. She kept seeing the real Captain Duncan, his eyes closed in death, his silent, stinking men grouped about him. Over and over in her dream, she looked at Rob Inman, then chose him. Why him and no other? She had no idea, but there he was in her mind’s eye as she tossed and turned, waiting patiently as he had probably waited since the Orontes was captured. What else is there to do in prison but wait?

She wasn’t sure what woke her hours later. She wasn’t perfectly convinced that she had even been asleep, not with her mind still filled with the horror that was Dartmoor, contrasted with the unexpected kindness in the eyes of Rob Inman’s shipmates, as she knelt in the odourous straw by their dead leader.

She sat up, listening. There was no mistaking it. Someone was moving down the narrow hallway to the stairs.

Her heart hammering in her breast, Grace threw back her covers and reached for her shawl. She opened her door to see Rob Inman walking quietly down the stairs.

‘Rob Inman, you had better not be planning an escape. You’re taller than I am, but I think I could stop you.’

He stopped and looked around, startled at first, then amused. ‘You probably could,’ he told her, then sank down on the step. ‘I tried to wrestle a rat last week and ended up losing my shoelaces.’

She sat beside him, but not too close. ‘Are you hungry?’ she whispered.

He nodded. ‘If my left leg didn’t smell so bad, I’d probably gnaw on it. D’ye think there’s anything edible in the kitchen besides that old man who thinks he’s a butler?’

Grace put her hand to her mouth to stop her laugh. ‘I think there’s another sandwich or two in the basket. Shall we find out?’

He nodded and tried to rise, then shook his head. ‘Best you go on and save yourself, miss. I think I’m done for.’

‘Spare me the drama,’ she teased as she started down the stairs. ‘Promise you won’t jump parole, and I’ll find you a sandwich.’

‘I can’t make a promise like that,’ he said quickly.

‘You must, on your word as a gentleman,’ she replied just as quickly. ‘You will be shot dead if you break parole. I’m not quizzing you.’

He gave her a long look, as if weighing the very marrow of her bones. ‘If I must, I will. But know this—Captain Duncan may have been a gentleman, for all that he was a bastard. Rob Inman is no gentleman and never was.’

‘I suppose that will have to do,’ she said dubiously, puzzled about this man old Lord Thomson had foisted on her. No, that she had foisted on herself in Dartmoor. ‘But I have questions.’

‘I imagine you do.’ He grinned. ‘And I’m still hungry.’

She found the basket easily enough in the dark kitchen and tiptoed with it upstairs, after pausing a moment to smile at the sound of Emery’s snoring. She handed the captain the remaining sandwich; he waited not a moment to demolish it and look around for more. She followed it with one of her own Quimby Crèmes. The cook at the manor house had obviously visited the Wilsons’ bakery a few days ago. Grace had made these just before the visit to Dartmoor.

‘I could eat more of these,’ he said, his mouth full.

‘You will. I made them,’ she said proudly. ‘My own recipe.’

He looked at her, a question in his eyes.

‘I’m a baker for the Wilsons in Quimby,’ she told him. ‘Well, I was, and I will be again once you are sorted out.’

‘You’re going to sort me out?’ the parolee asked, humour in his voice. He might have been hungry and weak, but he wasn’t slow. ‘How on earth did you end up as Captain Duncan’s keeper?’ He popped the rest of the biscuit into his mouth. ‘If that’s what you are.’

‘I suppose I am, in a way. Your keeper now,’ she mused. ‘The old Lord Thomson—I wouldn’t give you a penny for the new one—used to visit the bakery shop regularly and he liked my Crèmes. He was full of crochets, but I never paid his ill humour any mind.’ She couldn’t help the tears that welled in her eyes and hoped they didn’t show. ‘I think I was almost his only friend.’ She also couldn’t help the way her voice hardened. ‘His own relatives were just waiting for him to die. Shame on them.’