Roberta and Captain McNab boarded the train almost as the last passengers, and she was able to stand at the opened window to wave goodbye to her husband as the train pulled away. He walked along with her carriage until it gathered speed, when she saw rather than heard above the bellowing of the locomotive his words of farewell on his lips. She could not deny herself a tear or two as his tall form on the platform faded away.
“Here, M’Lady.” Captain McNab was ready with a white handkerchief to catch them.
Roberta was pleased to accept it. “Thank you, Captain. How foolish you must think me.”
“Nay, M’Lady. ‘Tis but expected. Ye have been married not a fortnight, and are now bound fer different ends o’ the country.”
“Yes. That is true, but I hardly expect we will be separated long.”
That thought seemed to end the urge for conversation with them both, and Roberta sat silently looking out the window as the train made its way through the localities and suburbs of the city. It seemed that they both felt the mere sitting in the moving carriage had established the need for honest deliberations after many weeks of activity that had brought them close to recognition and execution by their French enemies.
How could Roberta justify herself returning home as a new wife when she had left Scotland with such a strong resolve not to consider accepting any offer from Lord Bond at all? But to suppose she could refuse him and stand unfeeling aboard the Medusa and watch the rest of them set off on a desperate venture into France once more took no account of her senses of duty and of comradeship. Of course, she could now see that Lord Bond had been banking on that for many weeks.
He had trapped her. But did she, at the present moment, regret being so trapped? No longer, she felt. The distasteful way he had expressed his love when they were first married seemed like a bad dream after his tender and enraptured attentions to her last night. Perhaps his behaviour before had been a result of his apprehensions for their coming perils in France. He had been entirely different in the safety of Tiverton House in the warm familiarity of London. Perhaps he would not demand the earlier attentions she despised ever again.
But what of his adultery with Elise? She had formed an intention to make her demands for fidelity known to him once they returned to London, but she had not attempted any such discussion. The very idea had closed his mind. Men protected one another in maintaining adultery in the husband as a natural behaviour. Such a fortress of privilege would not be overturned by a conversation or two. She told herself that she had only postponed such a conversation until she had learned how to break through his disinclination.
The Great Northern Railway main line wended through almost two hundred miles of English countryside and habitations on its way to reach the city of York. Even a train placarded as “in express service” must make stops at the more prominent cities along the way to allow more passengers to join and others to leave off the journey. Unlike a mail coach, it did not make stops for rest, for new horses, and for refreshment every ten or twenty miles, and she could understand how that might make older travellers hold forth that the new thing was at a disadvantage over the old.
When lunch time neared, the train stopped at Newark upon Trent in Nottinghamshire for long enough that those desirous of availing themselves of the packed lunches peddled from a handcart on the platform could buy what they wished. Roberta had insisted on paying for a hamper designated for First Class passengers, which contained potted pheasant, gooseberry pudding, fresh rolls and butter, several kinds of cheese and biscuit, and two small decanters of wine.
“I hope that will be sufficient, Captain,” Roberta said, feeling embarrassingly close to being a very extravagant and fraudulent lady. This was, in point of fact, the first time since her marriage that she had made her own way as a member of the nobility of England. It felt like a schoolgirl lark that was bound to be discovered and punished. She almost wished she had the company of Elise Timmins for the journey, who had the audacity to dare any convention and the cheek to carry it off.
“’Tis a fine feast, M’Lady. I shall feel poorly treated back at the Officer’s Mess of the 92nd if you should make a habit of sic extravagance.”
Roberta smiled. “I think our trials this past month have earned us some small rewards, Captain. I am glad that you are here to partake of them―I would be too bashful on my own.”
After the luncheon was dispatched and Roberta had given the lad, whose job it was to collect the empty hampers, tuppence―the poor creature looking as if he had no sustenance save the leavings he found within―they passed more than a somnolent hour trying to keep their eyes alert to the views beyond the carriage windows. Eventually Captain McNab decided to provide a topic of conversation that might keep them from even more stupor, and began to speak about the Highlands and the 92nd Regiment of Foot.
“So you have been a soldier for ten years, Captain?”
“Aye, ten year an’ seven months, near aboot. I started wi’ the ferst battalion in Portugal, an’ then, after a bout o’ sickness, were sent back to help train the new third.”
“And it is ready for war?”
“Barely, but I am given to un’erstand that we will be sent south this winter to join the Field Marshal’s army in Kent.”
Roberta could not help but emit a gasp.
He put out a hand to her. “What ails thee, M’Lady?”
Roberta shook her head. “It is nothing. Your words reminded me that the Field Marshal has requested my father to go to Kent to supervise the laying of military railways. Lord Bond and I have been attempting to have a younger engineer appointed instead.”
“Yer father is nay an auld man, but service in arms is a task fer a younger, wi’ health eno’gh to waste.”
“I have asked the Lords of the Admiralty to speak with the Field Marshal and impress upon him how much the shipyards need him. We will be hard pressed to have all our spitefuls at sea before the French launch their invasion.”
“Ah, I’m sure he will be sympathetic, M’Lady.” He relaxed back into his seat. “What month do ye hear that cude be―there is na one man in the Horse Guards who would hazard a guess.”
“I’m sure they all want the soldiers in place and ready long before the French arrive, but what Lord Bond’s observations have shown―as you must have seen for yourself―is that their steamships cannot be ready for sea service until late summer next year.”
“Aye, one canny Colonel gave me a verra funny look, an’ said I should know more than he did. But ah had the misfortune of spendin’ mah time in Antwerp as either an errand boy or a prisoner o’ the gunners. ’Twere you, M’Lady, who made it a success.”
Roberta laughed. “And that, I must admit, was a fool’s luck. I would be afraid to be near him if Fouché ever learns who la Américaine really was.”
They both enjoyed the triumph, but after the conversation lapsed, Roberta had to admit to herself that should she wake in the wee hours of the night, the thoughts in her head would go astray and explore all the frightful things that could have happened if Lady Fortune had looked the other way. From that topic she brought her mind to a recollection of all the plans she had started for the vessel destined now to become HMS Antiochus, and where they must be altered to fit them to the knowledge she now possessed.
If it were not for her predilection to build ships in iron instead of oak, as other shipyards did, the task would be impossible. A wooden ship had to be built slowly to allow every timber to cure into its position over a matter of months or else risk an invasion of dry rot. Roberta’s spitefuls and her newly ordered battleship Antiochus were to be iron built in yards where the shipwrights had been building iron barges, small steamers, and composite ships, with iron frames wood planked, for some years. She felt reasonably sure she could hold to that impending deadline―it was her marriage that afforded her the most concern.
Had Lord Bond given her a purely reassuring answer when she had asked about the letter from his father? Was there nothing of importance to her within? She doubted it. Was the Marquess possessed of a blind fury or an anger of disappointment? Would her husband be able to sway this opposition? She had no yardstick with which to judge.
She had at first thought it a boon that she was spared the journey to Devon and possible unpleasantness there, but it had burdened her with one weakness that might undo all her good fortune at a single stroke. She had not met her father-in-law and consequently had formed no opinion of her own of his good and bad qualities. She was obliged to accept the judgment of others as sound, and since not all the opinions agreed, could not tell what weight to give them.
She had learned much from Lord Bond’s Aunt Caroline, the Dowager Countess of Silchester. Not that the lady had spilled any family secrets, but her reactions to Lord Bond’s lofty pronouncements very often implied the opposite to his words. While a noblewoman might judge her words very carefully, a Countess—particularly a dowager countess—was never required nor accustomed to masking her feelings.
She had hinted that her brother might well attempt to end the marriage, while Lord Bond had assured her that he was unlikely to do any such thing. She did not want to adjudicate the disparity but her inner feelings suggested that her aunt was closer to the truth.
Roberta felt certain about the power of a well-connected nobleman with friends in both the House of Lords and the Church. He would be well-nigh indomitable, but what did canon law allow? She knew very little of the Church’s laws of marriage and its termination; most collected from conversations with others who knew little more than she. Should she seek out a counsellor to discuss these matters with? She surely had scant reason for such inquiries, since she possessed nothing but the words of others and her fears to entertain them.
How bold a champion would her husband be if such battle lines were drawn? He seemed to be pleased with her; perhaps even a small measure in love, if she dared question such a thing. But whether that would be enough to armour his resolve when threatened with disinheritance, for such must be the father’s weapon, she felt too timorous to question. She herself had hardly entered the marriage with much resolve―if truth were told she had felt something of a virgin sacrifice upon an altar of blind fate all through the marriage ceremony. Was her own mind now more certain of her―? No, she dare not make such explorations into dangerous territory. Her own mind was becoming a wilderness of confusion.
She was lucky at this point as their train slowed down to enter another city and she was able to escape her thoughts by having regard for the scenery of small houses, crowded roads, and bustling crowds. Captain McNab seemed equally glad for the interruption, and they exchanged mere polite conversation while the train was stopped. This lasted only until their departure for York when he seemingly found more pressing thoughts to inspect. As a consequence, they barely spoke another word for almost an hour until the train slowed in the environs of York and they had to prepare themselves for the change of trains to the York, Newcastle, and Berwick Railway.