Jamie bent low on Puck’s back and urged him to a full gallop, taking care not to plow into people walking or driving carts on their way home from a long summer day’s work. At least he did not have to stop to ask directions. In his early morning rides with Moberly and Bampton, he had seen Portsmouth in the distance, some five or six miles over numerous hills from Bennington Park. Late at night, from his bedchamber window, he could see the flickering lights of the growing naval town and Southampton to the west, where he must make arrangements at one of the public wharves for the Fair Winds to dock. Now that Bennington had informed him the ship was ready to sail, he would have to follow through on those plans, and the sooner, the better. Yet this evening, God had clearly shown him his work in England had not yet been completed.
Mindful of the danger he’d put Puck in a few weeks earlier, Jamie slowed the horse when the road rose over the hills, then gave him his head when they descended. As always, Puck seemed to enjoy their outing. Jamie wished he could say the same for himself this time.
Portsmouth had all the clutter of a town growing so fast it kept popping its seams. Some semblance of planning appeared in the residential area Jamie passed through. Fine brick homes and straight, tree-lined streets graced these outer edges. But that quickly gave way the closer Jamie got to the narrow, winding streets along the waterfront, where he hoped to find Robert.
Jamie prayed good sense would prevail, yet he had a foreboding that he’d find his friend already “three sheets in the wind,” as they said in Nantucket, especially since Jamie had no idea where to find him, giving Moberly more time to drink to excess.
A typical navy town, Portsmouth boasted in what should be its shame—countless taverns large and small, and countless immodestly dressed women calling to sailors or any passing man in decent clothing to come into their lairs. Again, Jamie had cause to pray, for Robert had confessed an occasional visit to such places before he’d placed his trust in Christ. If Jamie found him returning to his old haunts, he’d beg Moberly on Miss Kendall’s behalf not to return to such a vile custom.
In his many years among seafaring men, whether whaler, sailor or merchant, Jamie had learned that self-righteous preaching never accomplished anything. In the first few taverns he visited, he ordered a drink, then asked the serving wench about Moberly. Everyone in Portsmouth knew Bennington’s second son, but he’d not been that way. Jamie paid his coin and left the rum on a table. In each place, he noticed how quickly someone grabbed his abandoned tankard. Finally, a clear-eyed wench who seemed entirely too young for her occupation said Moberly had been there, but had moved on to the Stowaway, unless he’d changed his mind.
Jamie hooked a finger under the girl’s chin and stared into her pale blue eyes. “God loves you, child. I will pray He will show you a more worthy profession.” He pressed a silver coin into her hand and enjoyed the shock and, perhaps, conviction covering her sweet face.
Outside, he took Puck’s reins from the boy he’d engaged to tend him, paid the lad a coin, and continued down the street. This evening was becoming very expensive for a sober man who generally held on to his money. How much might it cost a drunkard whose pockets were filled with his father’s guineas?
The Stowaway stood two blocks in the distance. As Jamie jostled his way through the masses, he saw a young man struggling to free himself from several sailors with clubs. Press gang. Jamie’s heart hitched thinking of the terror he’d felt as a lad when the warning came that the British navy had sent out ruffians to gather crew members for their ships. Torn away from friends and family without warning, given no chance to say their goodbyes, the hapless victims seemingly disappeared, some never to return. Jamie looked closely to see if the young man was from Bennington’s village. If so, he would intervene, warning the sailors of the earl’s displeasure and reprisal. But the lad was not familiar, and although Jamie pitied him, he felt the Lord’s prompting to continue on his mission.
Rain began to splatter the dust at his feet. The shoes would be ruined, all right. He’d never be able to talk Quince into cleaning them up, and it would be dangerous to ask the earl’s valet how to do it. Greyson already eyed Quince as if he were an inferior servant. No need to give him reason to learn Quince employed servants of his own back home.
Ducking into the tavern just as the heavens opened in a deluge, Jamie saw Moberly seated in a corner, his back to the wall. He looked up and met Jamie’s stare. But instead of a sullen or angry greeting, he gave a lazy smile and beckoned to him. Apparently, the drink had already done its job. As evidenced by the expression on his face, Moberly was feeling nothing but mindless bliss, from which he would come crashing down in the morning.
Ignoring the smells of sweat, rum and cooking cabbage, Jamie wended his way through the roomful of drinking men, and sat adjacent to Moberly. “You’re a hard man to keep up with.”
“Ha.” Robert tossed down the last drops in his tankard, then lifted it toward a wench serving the next table. “When you can, Betty.”
“Right away, milord.” The plump woman left the other men, common sailors who apparently knew who Moberly was, for they made no complaint. Well past her prime, she gave Jamie a sliding look up and down and puckered her lips suggestively. “My, aren’t you a pretty one. What can I do for you, milord?”
“I have all I need, thank you.” He gave her a little smile, remembering Christ’s kindness to women like this one, even as revulsion churned within him.
After she left the table, Jamie studied his friend, who closed his eyes and rested his head against the wall. “Miss Kendall sends her best wishes.”
Moberly glared in his direction with unfocused eyes. “How dare you mention her name in a place like this?” His words were slurred, but his anger came through.
“How dare you come to a place like this when you have the love of such a good woman?” Jamie had never truly crossed his friend, and questioned just how far he should go. If he’d learned nothing else in the country, he’d learned not to speak rudely to the aristocracy. Yet these were the words God had given him, and he would not back down.
Rage reddened and creased Moberly’s cheeks, and narrowed his eyes. “He laughed at me.” He pounded the table, splashing rum from the fresh tankard the wench had brought. “All I have done, working like a fiend to prove myself to that old goat, and he laughs at me. Said I am not fit to be a minister.”
Jamie prayed his next words were from the Lord. “And so you promptly go out and prove him right. You’re not fit to be a minister.”
Thunder crashed overhead and a bolt of lightning lit the street, turning the raindrops into a million fireflies. Jamie would haul this sorry sinner out into the deluge if not for the lightning. As it was, he hoped the lad caring for horses here had taken Puck to the tavern’s stable. What had Moberly done with Gallant? Jamie had more than one creature to care for this evening.
“Grace...” Moberly stared vacantly across the room.
“Now who’s saying her name unsuitably?” Jamie’s temper was rising, and he longed to pummel this man who seemed all too willing to abandon his faith.
“No, I do not speak of Miss Kendall.” Moberly’s voice sounded weary. He ran his finger around the rim of the tankard, but did not drink. “Grace from God. The prodigal son and all that. But when I returned home, my father never noticed.” He slumped on the table, propping his head on one hand. “I’ve always wondered why the older brother became so angry. Did not everything belong to him? All the younger son wanted was his father’s approval. Yet, in our family, ’tis the third son who’s all the rage now because, like our august father, he fights for king and country.”
Jamie could not quite follow Moberly’s musings, but conviction for his own self-righteousness cut into him. He’d been willing to dispense grace to the young wench at the other tavern, but not to his fallen friend. Give me words, Lord. “Our fathers are human, even one as exalted as yours.”
Robert’s stare bored into him. “Did your father treat you like worthless baggage?”
Jamie shrugged but held his gaze. “No. My father died when I was six.”
Moberly snorted. “Fortunate you.” He put his head in both hands. “No, I do not mean that. Forgive me.”
The rain abated somewhat, and Jamie decided they’d leave when it slowed a bit more.
“You’re right, Templeton.” Moberly gave him a crooked grin. “I am not fit to be a minister. But, as you have said, we’ve all sinned and come short of the glory of God. And—” he held up his index finger to stress his point “—as you also said, God will be a father to me. I will never, as long as I live, ever expect anything else from Bennington.” He shoved the tankard away, put his hands to his temples and blew out a long breath that nearly knocked Jamie over for its smell of secondhand rum. “Lord, forgive me. Why did I drink all of that? And so quickly. And without anything to eat.” He belched and placed a hand over his mouth.
In the dim daylight of the tavern, Jamie could see Moberly’s face grow pale. “Come. I’ll take you home.” He gripped his friend’s arm to pull him to his feet.
“Oh, no.” He shrugged away. “Cannot go home drunk.” He leaned away and deposited the contents of his stomach into a cuspidor beside the table.
Jamie wiped Moberly’s face with a handkerchief and grasped him again. “Come on, then, we’ll get you sober.” He began to move the two of them toward the door.
Moberly’s lucidity seemed to have passed. “Shall we sing a song? How ’bout ‘Rule, Britannia’ or ‘God save the king’?” He staggered along beside Jamie and would have fallen without support. “Rule, Britannia—” For a drunk, his baritone was not bad.
The sailors in the room lifted their tankards high and joined his song.
Jamie swallowed a retort. He and nearly every other American had suffered far too much of Britannia’s rule. “I heard a new song. ‘Amazing Grace.’ Do you know it?” They reached the door none too soon for him with all that riotous singing behind them.
Moberly stopped and shook his head, as if trying to clear it. “No, but it sounds like an excellent song. Will you teach it to me? Perhaps Marianne can play it on the pianoforte. She is very good at playing, you know.”
Jamie chuckled. No, he hadn’t known that. He would have to ask her about it once this debacle was over. So many things he did not know about her, and so little time to learn it.
Outside, the rain slowed to a drizzle. The stable boy informed them that their horses were safely sheltered behind the tavern. Paying out yet another coin, Jamie started in that direction. On the way, he noticed a watering trough newly filled with rainwater. “Come along, my friend.” He tugged Moberly toward it.
Robert must have guessed his plan, for he dug his feet into the mud. “Oh, no, you don’t.”
“Oh, yes, I do.” Jamie gripped him around the waist and forced him forward, plunging his head into the cold trough and holding him there for a few seconds before releasing him.
Moberly came up gasping. And laughing. He tried to force Jamie into the trough, but slipped in the ankle-deep mud, grabbing Jamie’s arm and pulling him down, too.
The two of them sat there in the mud for a few moments, then both burst out laughing. Jamie’s new gray jacket and breeches were stained with splotches of brown and black dirt, and the buckles on his new shoes might never regain their shine. Indeed, neither the clothes nor the shoes would ever be fit for fine company again. But somehow, that no longer mattered to him.
What did matter was getting Moberly home and tucked into bed without the earl seeing him in this condition.