A Homespun Regency Christmas

Captain Michael Lynch never made a practice of leaning on the quarterdeck railing of the Admirable, but it hardly seemed to matter now. The crew—what was left of them—eyed him from a respectful distance, but he knew with a lift to his trounced-upon heart, that not one of them would give less than his utmost, even as he had.

His glance shifted to that spot on the deck that had glared so brightly only last month with the blood of David Partlow, his first mate. One of his crew, when not patching oakum here and there to keep the Admirable afloat, or manning the pumps, had scrubbed that spot white again until all trace was gone. Still he stared at the spot, because now it was whiter than the rest of the deck.

Damn the luck, he thought again. Damn the French who had sailed to meet the Admirable and other frigates of the blockade fleet, gun ports open and blazing a challenge rare in them, but brought about by an unexpected shift in the wind. Most of all, damn the luck that fired the Celerity, next frigate, and sent her lurching out of control into the Admirable.

And maybe even damn Partlow for rushing to the rail with a grappling hook just in time for the Celerity’s deck carronade, heated by the flames, to burst all over him. Another Celerity gun belched fire then, and another, point blank at his own beautiful Admirable, one ball carrying off his sailing master, and the other shattering the mainmast at its juncture with the deck. ‘‘And they call that friendly fire,’’ he murmured, leaning on the railing still as the Admirable inched past able ships in Portsmouth harbor.

There would be an inquiry, a matter of course when one ship had nearly destroyed another. He knew the Lords of the Admiralty would listen to all the testimony and exonerate him, but this time there would be no Admirable to return to. It would be in dry dock for three months at least, and he was sentenced to the shore on half pay. The lords might offer him another ship, but he didn’t want any ship but the Admirable.

Lynch was mindful of the wind roaring from the north, wavering a point or two and then settling into a steady blow. He couldn’t fathom three months without the wind in his face, even this raw December wind.

At some exclamation of dismay from one of the crew, he looked up to see the dry dock dead ahead. Oh, Lord, he thought, I can’t stand it. He didn’t mind the half pay. Even now as he leaned so melancholy on the rail, his prize money from years and years of capture and salvage was compounding itself on ’Change. If he chose, he could retire to a country estate and live in comfort on the interest alone; his wants were few.

The scow towing his ship backed its sails and slowed as it approached the dry dock. In another minute a launch nestled itself alongside. His bosun, arm in a sling but defying anyone but himself to do this duty, stood ready to pipe him off the Admirable. His trunk, hat case, and parcel of books were already being transferred to the launch. The bosun even forgot himself enough to lower the pipe and suggest that it was ‘‘better to leave now, sor.’’

And maybe it will be a young man’s ship then as it once was mine, he thought, stirring himself from the rail. I have conned the Admirable for fifteen years, from the India Wars to Boney’s Milan and Berlin Decrees that blockade Europe. I am not above thirty-six, but I feel sixty, at least, and an infirm sixty at that. With a nod to his bosun, he allowed himself to be piped over the side.

Determined not to look back at the wounded Admirable, he followed his few belongings to Mrs. Brattle’s rooming house, where he always stayed between voyages. He handed a coin to the one-armed tar who earned his daily mattress and sausages by trundling goods about town in his rented cart. It was almost Christmas, so he added another coin, enough to give the man a day off, but not enough to embarrass him; he knew these old sailors.

And there was Mrs. Brattle, welcoming him as always. He could see the sympathy in her eyes—amazing how fast bad news circulated around Portsmouth. He dared her to say anything, and to his relief, she did not, beyond the communication that his extra trunk was stowed in the storeroom and he could have his usual quarters.

He could have told her three months, until the Admirable was refitted, but he didn’t. ‘‘I’m not entirely sure, Mrs. Brattle,’’ he heard himself saying, for some unaccountable reason.

She stood where she was, watching the maid with a critical but not unkindly eye. When the girl finished, she nodded her approval and looked at him. ‘‘It’ll be stew then, Captain,’’ she said as she handed him his key.

He didn’t want stew; he didn’t want anything but to lie down and turn his face to the wall. He hadn’t cried since India, so it didn’t enter his mind, but he was amazed at his own discomposure. ‘‘Fine, Mrs. Brattle,’’ he told her. He supposed he would have to eat so she would not fret.

He knew the rooms well, the sitting room large enough for sofa, chairs, and table, the walls decorated here and there with improving samplers done by Mrs. Brattle’s dutiful daughters, all of them now long-married. His eyes always went first to the popular ‘‘England expects every man to do his duty,’’ that since Trafalgar had sprouted on more walls than he cared to think about. I have done my duty, he told himself.

He stared a long while at the stew, delivered steaming hot an hour later and accompanied by brown bread and tea sugared the way he liked it. Through the years and various changes in his rank, he had thought of seeking more exalted lodgings, but the fact was, he did not take much notice of his surroundings on land. Nor did he wish to abandon a place where the landlady knew how he liked his tea.

Even to placate Mrs. Brattle, he could not eat that evening. He was prepared for a fight when she returned for his tray, but he must have looked forbidding enough, or tired enough, so that she made no more comment than that she hoped he would sleep better than he ate. Personally, he did not hold out much confidence for her wish; he never slept well.

The level of his exhaustion must have been higher than he thought, because he slept finally as the day came. He had a vague recollection of Mrs. Brattle in his room, and then silence. He woke at noon with a fuzzy brain. Breakfast, and then a rambling walk in a direction that did not include the dry dock, cleared his head. He had the city to himself, possibly because Portsmouth did not lend itself much to touring visitors, but more likely because it was raining. He didn’t care; it suited his mood.

When he came back to his lodgings, he felt better, and in a frame of mind to apologize to Mrs. Brattle for his mopes. He looked in the public sitting room and decided the matter would keep. She appeared to be engaged in earnest conversation with a boy and girl who looked even more travel weary than he had yesterday.

He thought they must be Scots. The girl—no, a second look suggested a young woman somewhere in her twenties rather than a girl—wore a plaid muffler draped around her head and neck over her traveling cloak. He listened to the soft murmur of her voice with its lilt and burr, not because he was prone to eavesdropping, but because he liked the cadence of Scottish conversation, and its inevitable reminder of his first mate.

As he watched, the boy moved closer to the woman, and she grasped his shoulder in a protective gesture. The boy’s arm went around her waist and she held it there with her other hand. The intimacy of the gesture rendered him oddly uncomfortable, as though he intruded. This is silly, he scolded himself; I am in a public parlor in a lodging house.

Never mind, he thought, and went upstairs. He added coal to the fire, and put on his slippers, prepared for a late afternoon of reading the Navy Chronicle and dozing. Some of his fellow officers were getting up a whist table at the Spithead, and he would join them there after dinner.

He had read through the promotions list and started on the treatise debating the merits of the newest canister casing when Mrs. Brattle knocked on his door. She had a way of knocking and clearing her throat at the same time that made her entrances obvious. ‘‘Come, Mrs. Brattle,’’ he said, laying aside the Chronicle which was, he confessed, starting to bore him.

When she opened the door, he could see others behind her, but she closed the door upon them and hurried to his chair. ‘‘Sir, it is the saddest thing,’’ she began, her voice low with emotion. ‘‘The niece and nephew of poor Mr. Partlow have come all the way from Fort William in the Highlands to find him! The harbormaster directed them here to you.’’

‘‘Indeed, Mrs. Brattle. I am something of an expert on the matter,’’ he said, regretting the irony in his voice, but knowing his landlady well enough to be sure that she would not notice it. What I do not relish are these face-to-face interviews, he thought, especially my Number One’s relatives, curse the luck.

‘‘May I show them in, or should I send them back to the harbormaster?’’ she asked, then leaned closer and allowed herself the liberty of adding that while they were genteel, they were Scots. ‘‘Foreigners,’’ she explained, noticing the mystified look that he knew was on his face.

He knew that before she said it. David Partlow had come from generations of hard-working Highlanders, and he never minded admitting it. ‘‘Sturdy folk,’’ he had said once. ‘‘The best I know.’’

‘‘Show them in, Mrs. Brattle,’’ he said. She opened the door and ushered in the two travelers, then shut the door quickly behind her. He turned to his guests and nodded. ‘‘I am Captain Lynch of the Admirable,’’ he said.

‘‘May I take your cloak?’’ he asked, not so much remembering his manners with women, because he had none, but eager to see what shape she possessed. I have been too long at sea, he thought, mildly amused with himself.

Silently, her eyes troubled, she unwound the long plaid shawl and pulled it from her hair. He had thought her hair was ordinary brown like his, but it was the deepest, darkest red he had ever seen, beautiful hair, worn prettily in a bun at the nape of her neck.

He indicated the chair he had vacated, and she sat down. ‘‘It is bad news, isn’t it?’’ she asked without any preamble. ‘‘When we asked the harbormaster, he whispered to someone and gave me directions to this place, and the woman downstairs whispered with you. Tell me direct.’’

‘‘Your uncle is dead,’’ he told her, the bald words yanked right out of his mouth by her forthrightness. ‘‘We had a terrible accident on the blockade. He was killed, and my ship nearly destroyed.’’

‘‘Do you write that to all the kin of your dead?’’ she asked, not accusing him, but more out of curiosity, or so it seemed to him. ‘‘All the kin of your dead,’’ he thought, struck by the aptness of the phrase, and the grand way it rolled off her Scottish tongue.

‘‘I suppose I do write it,’’ he said, after a moment’s thought. ‘‘In David’s case, I believe it is true.’’ He hesitated, then plunged ahead, encouraged by her level gaze. ‘‘He was attempting to push off the Admirable with a grappling hook and a carronade exploded directly in front of him. He . . . he couldn’t have known what hit him.’’

‘‘Certainly, sir,’’ she replied. ‘‘He often said what a fair-minded commander you were, and how your crew—and he included himself—would follow you anywhere.’’

These must be sentiments that men do not confide in each other, he decided, as he listened to her. Of course, he had wondered why the same crew remained in his service year after year, but he had always put it down to their own fondness for the Admirable. Could it be there was more? The matter had never crossed his mind before.

‘‘You are all kindness, Miss Partlow,’’ he managed to say, but not without embarrassment. ‘‘I’m sorry to give you this news—and here you must have thought to bring him Christmas greetings and perhaps take him home with you.’’

‘‘I do remember that, Thomas,’’ Lynch said. ‘‘He showed me the letter. Something about in the event of your father’s death, I believe. Ah yes, we were blockading the quadrant around La Nazaire then, same as now.’’

The room seemed to fill up with the silence. He could tell that Miss Partlow was embarrassed. He frowned. These were his lodgings; perhaps the Partlows expected him to speak first.

‘‘I fear you are greatly disappointed,’’ he said, at a loss. ‘‘I am sorry for your loss, and sorry that you must return to Scotland both empty-handed and bereft.’’

Sally Partlow stood up and extended her hand to him, while her brother retrieved her cloak and shawl from the end of the sofa. ‘‘We trust we did not take up too much of your time at this busy season,’’ she said. ‘‘Come, Thomas.’’ She curtseyed again and he bowed and opened the door for her. She hesitated a moment. ‘‘Sir, we are quite unfamiliar with Portsmouth. Do you know . . .’’

He shook his head. ‘‘I couldn’t tell you. Never needed one.’’ Did they want to hire a maid? he wondered. ‘‘Thanks to Boney, I’ve always had plenty of employment.’’ He bade them good day and the best of the season, and retreated behind his paper again as Miss Partlow quietly shut the door.

Two hours later, when Mrs. Brattle and the maid were serving his supper, he understood the enormity of his error. Mrs. Brattle had laid the table and set a generous slice of sirloin before him when she paused. ‘‘Do you know, Captain, I am uneasy about the Partlows. She asked me if I needed any help around the place.’’

He sat a moment more in silence, staring down at the beef in front of him, brown and oozing pink juices. Shame turned him hot, and he put his napkin back on the table. ‘‘Mrs. Brattle, I think it entirely possible that the Partlows haven’t a sixpence to scratch with.’’

She nodded, her eyes troubled. ‘‘She’ll never find work here, so close to Christmas. Captain Lynch, Portsmouth may be my home, but it’s not a place that I would advise a young woman to look for work.’’

He could only agree. With a speed that surprised him, considering how slowly he had dragged himself to the rooming house only yesterday, he soon found himself on the street, looking for the Partlows and hoping deep in his heart that their dead uncle would forgive his captain’s stupidity. He stopped at the Spithead long enough to tell his brother officers that they would have to find another fourth to make up the whist table tonight, then began his excursion through town. It brought him no pleasure and he berated himself for not being more aware—or even aware at all—of the Partlows’ difficulties. Am I so dense? he asked himself, and he knew the answer.

Christmas shoppers passed him, bearing packages wrapped in brown paper and twine. Sailors drunk and singing stumbled past. He thought he saw a press gang on the prowl, as well, and his blood chilled at the thought of Lieutenant Partlow’s little nephew nabbed and hauled aboard a frigate to serve at the king’s good pleasure. Granted he was young, but not too young to be a powder monkey. Oh God, not that, he thought, as he turned up his collar and hurried on, stopping to peer into restaurant kitchens over the protestations of proprietors and cooks.

He didn’t even want to think about the brothels down on the waterfront where the women worked day and night on their backs when the fleet was in. She would never, he thought. Of course, who knew when they had even eaten last? He thought of the beef roast all for him and cursed himself again, his heart bleak.

When it was full dark and his cup of discouragement had long since run over, he spotted them on the fisherman’s wharf, seated close together on a crate. Their arms were around each other and even as he realized how awful was their situation, he felt a tug of envy. There is not another soul in the world who would care if I dropped dead tomorrow, he thought, except possibly my landlady, and she’s been half expecting such an event all these years of war.

He heard a sound to his left and saw, to his dismay, a press gang approaching, the ensign ready with his whistle, and the bosun with a cudgel, should Tom Partlow choose to resist impressment in the Royal Navy. As an ensign, he had done his own press gang duty, hating every minute of it and only getting through it by pretending that every hapless dockyard loiterer that he impressed was his brother.

At his words, the Partlows turned around. Sally leaped down from the packing crate and stood between her brother and the press gang. Even in the gloom, he could see how white her face was, how fierce her eyes. There was something about the set of her jaw that told him she would never surrender Tom without a fight.

The bosun helped up his ensign, who flung off his assisting arm when he was on his feet, took a good look at Lynch, blanched, and stammered his apologies. ‘‘There’s those in the Formidable’s fo’castle who’d have paid to see that, Captain Lynch,’’ the bosun whispered. ‘‘Happy Christmas!’’

Lynch stood where he was between the Partlows and the press gang until the wharf was deserted again. ‘‘There now,’’ he said, more to himself than them. He turned around to see Sally still standing in front of her brother, shielding him. ‘‘They won’t return, Miss Partlow, but there may be others. You need to get yourselves off the streets.’’

She shook her head, and he could see for the first time how really young she was. Her composure had deserted her and he was embarrassed to have to witness a proud woman pawn her pride in front of practically a stranger. He was at her side in a moment. ‘‘Will you forgive me for my misunderstanding of your situation?’’ he asked in a low voice, even though there was no one else around except Tom, who had tears on his face. Without a word, Lynch gave him his handkerchief. ‘‘You’re safe now, lad,’’ he said, then looked at the boy’s sister again. ‘‘I do apologize, Miss Partlow.’’

‘‘So you were prepared to wait here all night?’’ he asked, trying to keep the shock from his voice, but failing, which only increased the young woman’s own embarrassment. ‘‘My God, have you no funds at all? When did you last eat?’’

She looked away, biting her upper lip to keep the tears back, he was sure, and his insides writhed. ‘‘Never mind that,’’ he said briskly. ‘‘Come back with me now and we can at least remedy one problem with a meal.’’ When she still hesitated, he picked up her valise and motioned to Tom. ‘‘Smartly now,’’ he ordered, not looking over his shoulder, but praying from somewhere inside him that never prayed, that the Partlows would follow.

The walk from the end of the dock to the street seemed the longest of his life, especially when he heard no footsteps behind him. He could have sunk to the earth in gratitude when he finally heard them, the boy’s quicker steps first, and then his sister’s steps, accompanied by the womanly rustle of skirt and cloak.

His lodgings were blessedly warm. Mrs. Brattle was watching for him from the front window, which filled him with some relief. He knew he needed an ally in such a respectable female as his landlady. Upstairs in his lodgings she had cleared away his uneaten dinner, but it was replaced in short order by the entire roast of sirloin this time, potatoes, popovers that she knew he liked, and pounds of gravy.

Without even a glance at his sister, Tom Partlow sat down and was soon deeply involved in dinner. Mrs. Brattle watched. ‘‘Now when did the little boy eat last?’’ she asked in round tones.

Mrs. Brattle let out a sigh of exasperation, and prodded Sally Partlow closer to the table. ‘‘Then it has probably been another day beyond that for you, missy, if you are like most women. Fed him the last meal, didn’t you?’’

Sally nodded. ‘‘Everything we owned was sold for debt. I thought we would have enough for coach fare and food, and we almost did.’’ Her voice was so low that Lynch could hardly hear her.

Bless Mrs. Brattle again, he decided. His landlady gave Sally a quick squeeze around the waist. ‘‘You almost did, dearie!’’ she declared, turning the young woman’s nearly palpable anguish into a victory of sorts. ‘‘Why don’t you sit yourself down—Captain, remember your manners and pull out her chair!—and have a go before your brother eats it all.’’

She sat without protest, and spread a napkin in her lap, tears escaping down her cheeks. Mrs. Brattle distracted herself by admonishing the maid to go for more potatoes, and hurry up about it, giving Sally a chance to draw herself together. The landlady frowned at Lynch until he tore his gaze from the lovely woman struggling with pride and took his own seat next to Tom. He astounded himself by keeping up what seemed to him like a veritable avalanche of inconsequential chatter with the boy and removed all attention from his sister until out of the corner of his eye, he saw her eating.

Having eaten, Tom Partlow struggled valiantly to stay awake while his sister finished. He left the table for the sofa, and in a minute was breathing quietly and evenly. Sally set down her fork and Lynch wanted to put it back in her hand, but he did nothing, only watched her as she watched her brother. ‘‘ ’Tis hard to sleep on a mail coach,’’ she said in a low voice.

He didn’t know why it should matter so much to him, but he felt only unspeakable relief when she picked up her fork again. She ate all that was before her like a dutiful child, but shook her head at a second helping of anything. Weariness had stamped itself upon all the lines of her body. She seemed to droop before his eyes, and he didn’t know what to do for her.

Mrs. Brattle came to his aid again. After the maid had taken the dishes down the stairs in a tub, his landlady sat next to Sally Partlow and took her by the hand. ‘‘Dearie, I have an extra room downstairs and you’re welcome to it tonight,’’ she said. ‘‘Tom will be fine right here on the captain’s sofa. Come along now.’’

She was pleading with him, and it pained him that he could offer her so little comfort. ‘‘I know you didn’t, Miss Partlow,’’ he assured her, even as Mrs. Brattle helped her to her feet. ‘‘Things happen, don’t they?’’

It sounded so lame, but she nodded, grateful, apparently, for his ha’penny wisdom. ‘‘Surely I will think of something in the morning,’’ she told him, and managed a smile. ‘‘I’m not usually at my wit’s end.’’

‘‘I don’t imagine you are,’’ he commented, intrigued by the way she seemed to dig deep within herself, even through her own weariness. It was a trait he had often admired in her uncle. ‘‘This will pass, too. If you have no objections, I’ll think on the matter, myself. And don’t look so wary! Call it the Christmas present I cannot give your uncle.’’

After she left, he removed Thomas’s shoes, and covered the sleeping boy with a blanket, wondering all the while how someone could sleep so soundly. He sat by the boy, asking himself what on earth David Partlow would have done with a niece and nephew thrust upon him. Tom could be bought a midshipman’s berth if there was money enough, but Sally? A husband was the obvious solution, but it would be difficult to procure one without a dowry.

He spent a long time staring into his shaving mirror the next morning. His Mediterranean tan had faded to a sallow color, and nothing that he knew, short of the guillotine, would have any effect on his premature wrinkles, caused by years of squinting at sun and sails and facing into the wind. And why should I ever worry, he considered, as he scraped away at his face.

He had waked early as usual, always wondering if he had slept at all, and moved quietly about his room. When he came into his sitting room, Tom Partlow was still asleep. Lynch eased into a chair, and gave himself over to the Partlows’ dilemma. He knew she could not afford to purchase a berth for Tom, and oddly, that was a relief to him. Life at sea is no life, laddie, he thought, as he watched the boy. After all, you might end up like me, a man of a certain age with no more possessions than would fit in two smallish trunks, and not a soul who cares whether I live or die.

But I did have a mother once, he reminded himself, so I did. The idea hit him then, stuck, and grew. By the time Tom woke, and Sally Partlow knocked on the door and opened it for Mrs. Brattle and breakfast, he had a plan. Like some he had fallen back upon during years of toil at sea, it had holes a-plenty and would never stand up to much scrutiny, but it was a beginning.

On his words, Mrs. Brattle performed an interesting juggling act with a teapot, recovering herself just before she dumped the contents all over the carpet. She stared at him, her eyes big in her face.

Here I go, he thought. Why does this feel more dangerous than sailing close to a lee shore? ‘‘Miss Partlow, it is not in the nature of a suggestion. I have decided to visit my mother in Lincolnshire and would no more think of leaving you to the mercies of Portsmouth than, than . . . writing a letter of admiration to Napoleon, thanking him for keeping me employed for all these years!’’

She opened her mouth to protest, but he trod on inexorably and felt himself on the firmer deck of command. ‘‘If you feel a burning desire to argue, I would not recommend it. I suspect that your uncle has funds on ’Change. Once the probate is done—and I will see that it is going forward—you should have funds to repay me, even with interest. Until that moment, I won’t hear of anything else.’’

He returned to his eggs with what he hoped was the semblance of serenity. Miss Partlow blinked, favored him with a steady gaze, and then directed her attention to the egg before her. ‘‘Captain Lynch, I suppose we will be happy to accompany you to . . . where was it? Lincolnshire?’’ she murmured.

They finished breakfast in silence. He knew that Mrs. Brattle was almost leaping about in her eagerness to have a word in private with him, so he directed Tom and Sally to make themselves useful by taking the dishes belowstairs to the scullery. To his amusement, the Partlows seemed subdued by his plain-speaking, a natural product of years of nautical command.

His landlady was not about to be vanquished by his idle wit. ‘‘Captain, I am certain there are those of your crew who think you were born fully grown and stalking a quarterdeck! I am not numbered among them. I am not to be bamboozled. Captain, is this a good idea?’’

She gasped again and sat down. ‘‘You would take two perfect strangers to visit a lady you have not seen in twenty-two years? Captain . . .’’ She shook her head. ‘‘Only last week I was saying to my daughter that you are a most sensible, steady, and level-headed boarder, and wasn’t I the lucky woman!’’

And that is putting too kind a face upon it, he decided, as he sat down after noon in the post chaise with the Partlows, and they started off, with a call to the horses and a crack of the coachman’s whip. Even after all these years—and there had been so many—he could not recall the occasion without a wince. It was more a declaration of war than a falling out.

He looked up from the contemplation of his hands to see Sally Partlow watching him, a frown between her fine eyes. ‘‘What is it?’’ he asked, clipping off his words the way he always did aboard ship. As he regarded the dismay on her face, Michael regretted the sharpness of his inquiry.

‘‘I . . . I didn’t mean any disrespect,’’ she stammered. ‘‘I just noticed that you looked . . . distressed,’’ she concluded, her voice trailing off. She made herself small in her corner of the chaise and drew her cloak more tightly about her.

And she did not intrude again, through the whole long afternoon. He heard her sniff once or twice, and observed from the corner of his eye that she pressed her fingers against her nose several times; there were no tears that he could see. She put her arm about her brother with that same firm clasp he had noticed yesterday. When Thomas drifted to sleep, secure in his sister’s embrace, she closed her eyes as well, with a sigh that went directly to his heart.

I have crushed her with my grudging generosity, he realized, and the revelation caused him such a pang that he longed to stride back and forth on his quarterdeck until he wore off his own irritation. But he was trapped in a post chaise, where he could only chafe and wonder how men on land ever survived such confinement. I suppose they slam doors, kick small objects, and snap at well-meaning people, as I have done, he decided, his cup of contrition full. He couldn’t think of a remedy except apology or explanation, and neither suited him. Thank God my father forced me to sea years ago, was the thought that consoled him. He found himself counting the days when he could be done with this obligation to the Partlows, which had forced him into a visit home that he knew he did not want.

The time passed somehow, and Sally Partlow was obliging enough to keep her eyes closed. Whether she slept, he had no idea. Darkness came even earlier than usual, thanks to the snow that began to fall as they drove north toward Lincolnshire. Inwardly he cursed the snow, because he knew he could not force the coachman to drive on through the night and end this uncomfortable journey. When after an hour of the slowest movement he saw lights ahead, he knew the driver would stop and insist that they spend the night.

The village was Firch, the shire Cambridge, one south of his own, but there was no budging the coachman, who looked so cold and bleak that Michael felt a sprinkling of sympathy settle on the crust of his irritation. It was an unfamiliar emotion; he almost didn’t recognize it.

‘‘Very well.’’ He joined the man outside the carriage, grateful for his boat cloak and boots. He noticed the other carriages in the yard, and made the wry observation that Christmas continued to be a challenge for innkeepers. ‘‘Can you find a place for yourself?’’ he asked the coachman.

He feared the man was right. With no allowance for argument, Lynch told the Partlows to move along smartly and follow him inside. He started across the yard, leaning against the snow and wind, and wondering as he had before on the Portsmouth docks if they would follow him. He slowed his steps, hoping they would catch up with him, but they did not, hanging back, not wishing—he was sure—to trouble him beyond what they were already doing.

Hoping for the best, even as he suspected the worst, he asked the innkeep for two rooms and a parlor. ‘‘Sorry, Captain,’’ the man said, properly cowed by what Lynch suspected was the height of his fore and aft hat and gold braid, if not the look on his face. The keep glanced beyond him, and he felt some relief that the Partlows must have followed him inside.

‘‘Sorry, sir,’’ the keep apologized. ‘‘Then you and your lady’ll have to have’’—he hesitated, as if trying to determine the relationship—‘‘the boy on a pallet in your room, I’m thinking. There’s no parlor to be had. Once you take that room, there won’t be another for anyone else, it’s that full we are.’’

Lynch was too embarrassed to look at Sally Partlow so he ignored her and followed the keep’s wife up the narrow stairs to a room at the back of the inn. Again he listened for the Partlows behind him, because he knew that only the weather outside was keeping them tethered to his side.

The keep’s wife apologized for the size of the room, but he could find no fault with the warmth from the fireplace and the general air of comfort in small places that he was used to, from life aboard a man o’ war. When the woman left the three of them, Sally removed the plaid about her head, shook the flakes into the fireplace, and put the shawl on the narrow cot.

He knew he would dread dinner in the common parlor, but he did not, even though the setting was not one he was accustomed to. No matter how rough his life at sea, his infrequent sojourns on land, in whatever port of the world, had always meant private parlors and deference. He sat at the long table next to Sally, and followed her lead, passing the common dishes around to the next diner, and engaging, eventually, in small talk with the farmer to his left, an act that would have astounded his late first mate. He decided to enjoy conversation about crop prices, and even yielded far enough to tell a sea story.

He never embellished tales, and he did not now, so he was amazed that anyone would care to listen to his paltry account of life at sea. Maybe he was trying to explain himself to the Partlows; he didn’t understand either, beyond a sudden need to offer some accounting of himself.

When dinner concluded, he could beat no retreat to a private parlor; before he could say something about sitting for a while in the public room, Sally told him that she was going to settle Tom upstairs in bed. ‘‘It was a long day, sir,’’ she murmured, and he realized with a start that it was only the second thing she had said to him since his unkindness at noon.

I suppose it was a long day, he thought as he watched her escort her brother upstairs, her hand upon his back, her motion on the stairs so graceful that he felt like a voyeur. He went into the public room, content to prop his booted feet by the fender and enjoy the warmth of the fire. He even leaned back in the chair and called it a luxury.

He had thought that his hearing was going after years of cannonading, but he knew her steps on the stairs when she came down later. Before he could say anything—had anything occurred to him—she was out the door and into the snow. He debated a moment whether to follow—surely she would never leave her brother behind—then rose, pulled his cloak around him, and head down, went into the snow after her.

He could barely see her in the dark, but he watched her pause at the fence beyond the high road. The wind swirled the snow, but she raised her face to it, as though she hated super-heated rooms as much as he did. He walked across the road to stand beside her.

The candor of her words startled him, until he recalled her uncle, who never feared to tell him anything. ‘‘Who does, Miss Partlow?’’ he asked. ‘‘May I remind you that you can repay me when your uncle’s funds on ’Change are probated.’’

‘‘Uncle Partlow sent his money home for my father to invest.’’ She hesitated, then took a deep breath and forged on. ‘‘My father had no more notion of wise investments than a shoat in a piggery.’’ He could hear the tears in her voice then. ‘‘He wrote such glowing letters to Uncle Partlow, and truly I think Da believed that he could recoup his losses. Year after year he thought so.’’ She sighed and faced him for the first time. ‘‘We are objects of charity, Captain. What will you do with us?’’

The look on her face told him that was exactly what she expected him to say, and her assessment of him bit deep. She did not flinch or try him with tears, but merely nodded and turned back to the fence to lean upon it again, accepting this news as though he told her that snow was cold and winter endless.

He leaned on the fence, same as she, and stared into the snowy field. ‘‘I have not,’’ he agreed, perfectly in charity with her as though they were of one mind. What happened just then between them he never could have explained, not even at a court of inquiry convened by the Lords Admiral themselves.

‘‘Not out here in the snow. Your feet would freeze before I finished my tale of family discord, love unrequited, and blood in the orchard,’’ he replied, turning toward the inn. He shuddered in mock terror and was rewarded with a small laugh.

Funny, he thought, as they ambled back together, but I have never made light of this before. Could I have made too much of it through the years? Surely not. He stopped her with one hand and held out the other one to her, which she took. ‘‘Let us be friends, Miss Partlow,’’ he said, and shook her hand. ‘‘If you will help me keep my temper among my relatives, all of whom may wish me to the devil, I will figure out something for you and Thomas to do that won’t involve the slave trade.’’ It sounded so lame, but he had nothing else to offer that was remotely palatable. ‘‘Come, come, Miss Partlow, it is Christmas and we just shook on it. Have a little charity.’’

She laughed, and he knew he was backing off a lee shore. ‘‘This could be a Christmas of desperate proportions, sir,’’ she joked in turn, and his relief increased. ‘‘Oh, very well, then!’’

Once inside, he told her that he would remain in the parlor and give her time to prepare for bed. She thanked him with that dignity he was becoming accustomed to, and went upstairs. When he retired a half hour later, the room he shared with the Partlows was dark and quiet. By the light of glowing coals in the hearth, he undressed and lay down with a sigh, content to stare at the ceiling. His years at sea had conditioned him to brace himself against the ship’s pitch and yaw, but the only movement was Tom sliding closer, seeking his warmth. He smiled and stretched out his arm and the boy curled up beside him. He slept.

Nightmare woke him an hour later or so, but that was not unusual. He lay in bed, his heart pounding, his mind’s eye filled with explosions and water rising and the ship—his first ship, well before the Admirable—slowly settling in the water: the usual dream, the usual time. After the moment of terror that never failed him, he closed his eyes again to let the dream fade, even though he knew he would not sleep again that night.

He opened his eyes in surprise. Miss Partlow had risen from her cot and was now perched on the side of his bed. Without a word, she wiped his face with her handkerchief, then pinched his nostrils gently with it until he blew his nose. His embarrassment was complete; not only had she seen his tears and wiped them away, she had made him blow his nose like a dutiful child.

‘‘I would have been all right, Miss Partlow,’’ he said in a whisper, unwilling to add Thomas to the audience. ‘‘Surely I did not cry out. I . . . I don’t usually.’’

So he had cried out. The devil take her, he thought. He wanted to snap something rude at her, as he had done innumerable times to his steward, until the man never came into his quarters, no matter how intense the nightmare. But his steward was dead now, and he held his tongue in time.

She stared at him as if he had suddenly sprouted a dorsal fin. ‘‘And so why was I nice to him?’’ she whispered, after a moment in which she was obviously wondering what he was saying. ‘‘Captain, you mustn’t throw out the bairn with the bathwater! He had his failings but he was my da.’’ She rested her hand for too short a moment on his chest. ‘‘Have you never heard of forgiveness, this far south?’’

He must have dreamed the whole matter, because in the morning, Miss Partlow made no mention by blush or averted eyes that he had roused her from her bed. She was seated by the window, Bible in her lap, when he and Tom trooped downstairs to the common washroom, leaving her to complete her morning toilet in the privacy of the chamber. When they returned, she was still seated there, but her marvelous hair was now captured in a bun and she wore a fresh dress. And she looked at him—he couldn’t describe the look, except that it warmed his heart.

He waited until they were some hours into their journey, and Tom was dozing, before he explained himself. ‘‘You wanted the gory details, Miss Partlow,’’ he began. ‘‘Let me lay the bare facts before you.’’

He told his story for the first time in twenty-two years of avoiding any mention of it, astounded how easy it was to talk to this sweet-faced woman. ‘‘I was young and stupid and hot-headed, Miss Partlow, and quite in love with my brother Oliver’s fiancée,’’ he told her.

‘‘I thought she did, but I may have been wrong.’’ He sighed, thinking of all the years he had hung on to that anguish, and wondering why now it felt so remote. ‘‘At any rate, Oliver found out and challenged me to a duel.’’

He nodded. ‘‘I can’t say that Oliver and I ever loved each other overmuch before, and certainly not since. Twenty paces in the orchard with our father’s dueling pistols. I shot him and ran away.’’

‘‘Worse and worse,’’ she murmured. When he said nothing more, she cleared her throat. ‘‘Possibly you could discard economy now, Captain, and fill in the narrative a little more?’’

He could, but he didn’t want to tell her about foggy days shivering on the Humberside docks at Hull, wondering if his brother was dead, wondering how soon his father would sic the Runners on him, and all the while eating potato peels and sour oats gleaned from ashcans in a city famous for its competitive beggars. He told her, and not even all his years, prizes, and honors could keep the distress from his voice.

As he spoke, Sally Partlow slipped out from beside her sleeping brother and came to sit next to him. She did not touch him, but her closeness eased the telling. ‘‘It’s hard, not knowing what to do,’’ she commented. ‘‘And to be alone.’’ She looked at Tom and smiled. ‘‘I’ve been spared that.’’

And why do you seem unafraid? he wanted to ask her. Your future is even bleaker than mine was. ‘‘The magistrate nabbed me after a week of dockside living,’’ he said instead.

‘‘No.’’ He looked down at his hands where they dangled between his knees. ‘‘I learned that much later from the vicar, who also told me that Oliver from his bed of pain had assured my father that the duel was all my idea, and that I was a hell-born babe, impossible of correction.’’ He clapped his hands together. ‘‘That ended my career as son and brother, and I was invited—nay, urged, at age fourteen—to seek a wider stage beyond Lincolnshire.’’

He could feel Sally’s sigh. ‘‘The world can be a frightening place, eh, Miss Partlow?’’ he said. He hesitated, and she looked at him in that inquiring way. ‘‘Actually, I sometimes wonder if I even shot him.’’

‘‘Well, when the smoke cleared, Oliver was on the ground. I just ran, and do you know, I heard a shot when I was on the edge of the orchard.’’ He shifted in the seat, uncomfortable as though the event had just happened. ‘‘I sometimes wonder if he shot himself after I left. You know, just the veriest flesh wound to paint me blacker than I already was.’’

‘‘My father—bless his nipfarthing heart—did buy me a midshipman’s berth with Nelson’s fleet, even though I was a little beyond the usual age.’’ He couldn’t help a laugh, but it must not have sounded too cheerful, since it made Sally put her hand on his arm. ‘‘In the first and only letter I ever received from him, he said he was in high hopes that I could not long survive an adventure with the Royal Navy.’’ Another laugh, and the pressure of her hand increased. ‘‘Deuce of it was, I did. I hope that knowledge blighted his life, Miss Partlow.’’

On this we will never see eye to eye, he thought. He turned to face her then, sitting sideways. ‘‘I wrote to my mother every time we made landfall, but never a word in reply did she send, Miss Partlow! There is every likelihood that there will be no welcome for me, even at Christmas, even after all these years. And God knows I have wanted Oliver to suffer every single day of those twenty-two years.’’ He wished he had not moved, because she had taken her hand from his arm. ‘‘If that is the case, then Miss Partlow, I’ve put you in an uncomfortable position.’’

‘‘We can go to a workhouse and you can go back to sea, Captain,’’ she said, as calmly as though they discussed whether to take tea in Barton or Fielding. She leaned toward him slightly. ‘‘But to harbor up such bitterness, Captain! Has your life been so horrible since that duel?’’

What a strange question, he thought; of course it has. Under her steady gaze, he considered again, his thoughts directed down an avenue he had never explored before, much less even considered. ‘‘Well, no,’’ he told her finally after he had thought through twenty-two years of war at sea, shipwreck, salvage prizes, foreign ports, exotic women, rum from tin cups, and the odd cat curled and warm at the end of his berth. He smiled. ‘‘I’ve actually rather enjoyed the Navy. Certainly I have done well.’’ He lowered his voice when Tom stirred. ‘‘I doubt that Oliver’s led such an exciting life.’’

‘‘I daresay he has not,’’ Sally agreed. ‘‘Uncle Partlow’s letters were always interesting enough to share with the neighbors.’’ She touched his arm again. ‘‘Think what a nice time of year this would be to let it all go, sir, and forgive Oliver.’’

‘‘You must be all about in your head,’’ he blurted without thinking. ‘‘Never, Miss Partlow. Never.’’ He made no effort to disguise the finality in his voice, which he knew sounded much like dismissal. She sat up straight again and directed her attention to something fascinating outside in the snow.

‘‘Rather a totty-headed one,’’ he growled back, then gave himself a mental slap. See here, he thought, irritated with himself, can you forget for half a minute that she is not a member of your crew and doesn’t deserve the edge of your tongue?

Furious with himself, he looked at her, and noticed that her shoulders were shaking. And now I have made her cry, he thought, his mortification complete. His remorse grew, until he noticed her reflection in the glass. She was grinning, and for some odd reason—perhaps he could blame the season—that made all the difference. I see before me a managing woman, he thought, observing her reflection. We scarcely know each other, and I know I have not exactly been making myself charming. Indeed, I do not know how. She is a powerless woman of no consequence, and yet she is still going to make things as good as she can. I doubt there is another woman like her.

‘‘Miss Partlow, what on earth are we to make of each other? And what is so deuced funny?’’ he asked, when he nerved himself for speech. She laughed out loud as though her mirth couldn’t be kept inside another moment, her hand over her mouth to keep from waking her brother. She looked at him, her eyes merry, and he knew he had never seen a prettier woman. ‘‘I tell you a sad story—something that has been an ulcer all of my adult life—and all you can do is ask me if I really minded the Navy all that much! Drat your hide, I’m almost thinking now that going to sea was probably the best thing that happened! It’s your fault! And you want me to give up my grudges, too? Whatever happened to the . . . the shy commentary of scarce acquaintance? Have you no manners?’’

That was it, of course. ‘‘You do indeed,’’ he replied. ‘‘David would twit me all the day long.’’ He paused to remember, and the remembering hurt less than it had a week ago. ‘‘I don’t know . . . what to think at the moment, Miss Partlow.’’

She was silent a long time. ‘‘We are both of us in an impossible situation, and I say at least one of us should make the best of it. I am determined that you at least will have a happy Christmas.’’

My stars, but you have a way about you, he marveled to himself. ‘‘If I must, I must,’’ he said. ‘‘Can you think of any subterfuge that will explain your presence and that of your brother?’’

‘‘Not any,’’ she said cheerfully. ‘‘Paint us how you will, there’s no denying that while Tom and I are genteel, we are definitely at ebbtide in our fortunes at present. Just tell them the truth, because they will believe what they want anyway. We are objects of charity, sir.’’

Who of us is not, he thought suddenly, then dismissed the notion as stupid in the extreme. I am not an object of charity! I have position and wealth, and every right to be offended by my brother. She is lovely, but she is wrong.

She spoke as though to someone her own age, and not to a little brother with wild ideas, and he knew she was serious. Lynch knew that this woman would never trample on a boy’s heart and cause him pain. He watched them, and remembered a Benedictine convent, more of a hospital, in Tenerife where he had been brought during a terrible bout of fever. From his pallet he could see a carving in Latin over the door. He read it over and over, stupidly at first, while the fever still tore at him, and then gradually with understanding: ‘‘Care must be taken of the sick, as though they were Christ in person.’’ That is how she treats people, he told himself, and was warmed in spite of himself.

‘‘I think we should do that, too,’’ Sally replied, and kissed the top of his head. ‘‘We’ll serve them oatmeal twice a day at least and cut up stiff if anyone asks for hot water.’’

They both laughed, and Lynch wondered if that was their current lot. He wanted to ask them why they were not burdened down by their circumscribed life, or the bleakness of their future, but his manners weren’t entirely gone. And besides, they didn’t seem to be as unhappy as he was.

Sally Partlow was not a chatterbox, he knew, as they drew closer to Lynch Hall. She was content to be silent, and asked only one question as dusk arrived. ‘‘What is your mother like?’’

He was irritated for a moment as she intruded on his own growing misgivings, then had the charity to consider her question. ‘‘I suppose you would call her a frippery lady,’’ he said at last, ‘‘always flitting here and there, running up dressmaking bills, and spending more on shoes than you would ever dream of.’’ He smiled. ‘‘I doubt my mother ever had two consecutive thoughts to rub against each other.’’

They arrived at Lynch Hall after dark. He wished the Partlows could have seen it in daylight. ‘‘I hope Oliver has not changed too much about the place,’’ he murmured into the gloom. ‘‘Do you think anything will be as I remember?’’

He nodded. ‘‘I suppose it does.’’ He thought of the long nights standing watch and watch about on the Admirable, staring at the French coast and thinking about riding back to Lynch Hall in triumph. He never thought much beyond that, and the sour knowledge that Oliver would be dead then, and what was the point in triumph? ‘‘I suppose it does.’’

He was certain his voice had not changed, and he knew in the dark that Sally Partlow could not distinguish his features, but she leaned across the space separating them and touched his face, resting the palm of her hand against his cheek for a brief moment.

And then she was sitting up straight again, as though the gesture, the tenderest he could ever remember, had never happened. Her hand was grasping Thomas’s shoulder as before, and she had returned her gaze to the window.

There were few lights burning inside Lynch Hall when the post chaise drew up at the door and stopped. He remembered nights with lights blazing in all the windows, and he wondered if there was some great shortage of beeswax this year, some wartime economy he had not heard of before.

The coachman said that he would wait there until he was ‘‘sartin, sor, that you’ll not be needing me.’’ Lynch helped Sally from the post chaise. He was prepared to let go of her hand, but she wouldn’t turn loose of him. Or maybe he did not try hard enough. However it fell out, they walked hand in hand up the shallow front steps, Tom behind them. She did release his hand so he could knock.

After what seemed like an age, a butler he did not recognize opened the door, looked them over, informed them that the master and mistress were out for the evening, and prepared to shut the door. Lynch put his foot in the space. ‘‘I am his brother, and we will wait,’’ he said. ‘‘Inside,’’ he concluded, when the butler continued to apply the pressure of the door to his foot.

The butler peered closer, as if to determine some family resemblance, then looked beyond him to Sally and Thomas, who were standing close together on a lower step. ‘‘Pray who, then, are these Young Persons?’’

‘‘If you are who you say you are, then she is in the dower house,’’ the man replied. ‘‘And now, sir, if you would remove your foot, perhaps I can close this door before every particle of heat is gone.’’

Lynch did as the butler asked, but stood staring at the closed door, embarrassed to face the Partlows. He hurried down the steps and took Sally by the arm. ‘‘Miss Partlow, I do not believe there is a more top-lofty creature in all England than a butler! You must have formed such an opinion of this nation.’’

She couldn’t seem to think of anything to call the man, even though Lynch had half a hundred epithets springing to mind as he stood there in the snow. These two are babes, he thought. She is too kind even to think of a bad name, and Thomas, if I know that expression, is getting concerned. Look how closely he crowds his sister. He looked at the coachman. ‘‘Suffer us a little longer, sir, and drive around on the road I will show you.’’

No one spoke as the coachman followed his directions. They traveled through a smallish copse that he knew would be fragrant with lilacs in April. Somewhere there was a stream, the one where he sailed his first frigates years ago.

The dower house was even smaller than he remembered, and lit even less well than Lynch Hall. He took a deep breath, and another, until he felt light-headed. Be there, Mother, he thought; I need you.

The post chaise stopped again. He could see a pinpoint of light somewhere within, and he remembered the breakfast room at the back of the house. Silent, he helped down an equally subdued Sally Partlow. ‘‘I think I am home now,’’ he told the coachman, walking around to stand by the box.

The man, his cloak flecked with snow, leaned down. ‘‘Sor,’’ he whispered, ‘‘I know this trip has been on sufferance for you, wha’ wi’ your standin’ an’ all. No skin off me to take Sally and Tom wi’ me. My missus’ll find a situation for the girl wot won’t be amiss, and Tom can ’elp me at stable.’’

Stables and Christmas, Lynch thought, and damn my eyes for acting so put upon because I have had to do a kindness. The man means well. ‘‘Thank you for the offer, but I will keep them with me,’’ Lynch whispered back.

The coachman did not appear reassured, but after a moment of quieting his horses, he touched whip to hat and nodded. ‘‘Verra well, sor.’’ With a goodbye to Tom and another touch of his hat to Sally, he was gone.

‘‘Or if she will have nothing to do with me?’’ he continued. ‘‘Why then, Miss Partlow, I will marry you promptly, because I’ve compromised you past bearing already!’’

He meant it to sound funny, to lighten what he knew was a painful situation for them both, but when the words left his mouth, he knew he meant them, as much, if not more, than he had ever meant anything. Say yes and then I will kiss you right here in front of Tom and all these trees, he thought, filled with wonder at himself.

‘‘I know I am,’’ she said in such a droll way that his heart lightened, and then sank again when she added, ‘‘But please remember that you are under no real obligation to us, no matter how you felt about my uncle.’’

It was just as well that the door opened then, because he could think of no satisfactory reply; she was right, of course. He turned his attention to the door and the old man who opened it.

After a long moment of observation, the butler smiled and bowed. ‘‘I did not expect this day,’’ he said just as simply. ‘‘Your mother will be overjoyed. Do, do come in.’’ He looked at the Partlows, and Lynch could see none of the suspicion of the other butler in the darkened house. ‘‘Come, come, all of you! Coal’s dear. Let’s close the door.’’

They stood silent and close together in the small entranceway while Simpson—dignified, and yet with a little spring to his step—hurried down the hall. He listened intently, shamelessly almost, for some sound of his mother, amazed at his own discomposure. For the first time in his life, he understood why so many of his men died with the word ‘‘Mother’’ on their lips. He felt a great longing that brought tears to his eyes. He could only be grateful that the hall was ill-lit. And then his mother was hurrying toward them from the back of the house, and then running with her arms outstretched. She threw herself at him and sobbed into his shoulder, murmuring something incomprehensible that eased his soul in an amazing way.

Her eyes roamed him from hat to boot, assessing him, evaluating him. He smiled, familiar with that gaze from a time much earlier in his life. ‘‘I still have all my parts, Mum,’’ he said finally, as he looked her over as well.

She was still pretty, in an older way now, a calmer way than he remembered, but her clothes were drab, shabby even, which caused his eyes to narrow in concern. She was no longer the first stare of fashion that he remembered, not the lady he never tired of watching when she would perch him on her bed while she prepared herself for a dinner party or evening out.

She must have known what he was thinking, because she touched her collar, which even to his inexpert eyes looked frayed. ‘‘La, son, things change. And so have you, my dear.’’ She rose on her toes and he bent down obligingly so she could kiss his cheek. ‘‘Now introduce me to these charming people. Are you brother and sister?’’ she asked, turning to the Partlows.

She tucked her arm in his and indicated the Partlows with a nod of her head. ‘‘Come along, my dears, to the breakfast room, where we will see if Simpson can find a little more coal, and possibly even another lamp. In fact, I will insist upon it.’’

This is odd, he thought, as they walked arm in arm. He remembered being a little taller than his mother when he left at age fourteen, but he fairly loomed over her now. The gray of her hair did not startle him, and then he remembered that the last time he saw her, she wore powder in her hair. It was another century, he thought in wonderment. How much had happened in that time!

As his mother sat them down in the breakfast room, he looked around in appreciation. Simpson was well ahead of the game. Even now he was bringing tea, and here was Cook, her sparse hair more sparse but her smile the same, following him with Christmas cakes. ‘‘One could almost think you have been expecting us, Mama,’’ he said, taking a cup from the butler.

To his alarm, tears welled in her eyes. He held out his hand to her and she grasped it. ‘‘I have done this for twenty-two Christmases, son,’’ she said, when she could manage. ‘‘Oliver and your father used to scoff, but I knew that someday . . .’’ She could not continue.

He sat back in amazement. ‘‘You astound me, my dear,’’ he told her. ‘‘When I never heard anything, not one word from you, I knew that you must be of the same mind as Oliver and Father.’’ He took a sip of the tea, then glanced at Sally, who was watching him with real interest. ‘‘After fifteen years, I quit writing to you.’’

‘‘Every time I reached a port where the natives didn’t have bones through their noses, or cook Englishmen in pots,’’ he replied with a smile. ‘‘Must’ve been two times a year at least.’’

He knew that he wouldn’t have started to cry, if his mother hadn’t leaned forward then and kissed his hand and rested her cheek on it. ‘‘Oh, son,’’ was all she said, but it wore him down quicker than any lengthy dissertation ever could. After a moment he was glad to accept the handkerchief that Sally handed him, and had no objection when she rested her own hand on his shoulder.

‘‘Every week.’’ She said nothing more, but stared ahead with a stony look. ‘‘God help me, Simpson, I left those letters in the bookroom, along with my husband’s correspondence. Did you never see them?’’

Lynch felt more than heard Sally’s sharp intake of breath. She dropped her hand from his shoulder and sat down heavily in her chair. ‘‘Simpson, none of my letters ever arrived here?’’ he asked.

No one said anything. It was so quiet in the breakfast room that Lynch could hear the clock tick in the sitting room. Then his mother sighed, and kissed his hand again. ‘‘Son, if the scriptures are true and we are held to a grand accounting some day, your father may find himself with more debt than even Christ chooses to cover.’’

She spoke quietly, but Lynch felt a ripple go down his back and then another, as in that long and awful moment before a battle began. He couldn’t think of a thing to say, except to turn to Sally and say more sharply than he intended, ‘‘And weren’t you just telling me about forgiveness, Miss Partlow?’’

He nodded, relieved almost not to think of the hot tears he had shed—a man-child of fourteen—wanting her arms about him, when he lay swinging in his hammock over the guns. He thought of all the tears he had swallowed to protect himself from the laughter of the other midshipmen, some of them younger than he, and hardened already by war. ‘‘Mama, was it the vicar? I can think of no other.’’

‘‘My dear son, Mr. Eccles was on his deathbed when he asked me to attend him. Oh, my, hadn’t I known him above thirty years! He was too tired to talk, really, but he said he would not be easy if I did not know that for five years he had been hearing from you.’’

‘‘It was never much, Mama, but I did want to know how you got on, even if you never wanted to speak to me . . . or at least, that was what I thought,’’ he corrected himself.

She stood up, as if the telling required activity, and in her restless pacing, he did recognize the woman of years ago. I do much the same thing on a quarterdeck, Mama, he thought. To his gratification, she stopped behind his chair finally, and rested her arms upon his shoulders. He closed his eyes with the pleasure of it. ‘‘He woke and dozed all afternoon, but before he died that evening, he told me that you were well, and in command of a frigate of the line.’’ She kissed his head. ‘‘He told me a story or two that included David Partlow, and ports from Botany Bay to Serendip.’’ She sat beside him, taking his hands again. ‘‘He never would tell me if you wanted to hear from me or not; indeed, he feared that he was betraying your confidence.’’

‘‘I didn’t know what to think, Mama, when I never heard from you. All I had ever asked of him in letters was to let me know how you were.’’ He squeezed her hands. ‘‘And that he did.’’ He hesitated a moment. ‘‘He told me that Father died ten years ago.’’

To his surprise, Lady Lynch only smiled. ‘‘I thought that at first, too, son.’’ She looked at the Partlows. ‘‘Thomas—does your sister call you Tom? I shall then, too. Tom, you’re drooping! I hope you will not object to sharing a chamber with my son. Miss Partlow . . .’’

‘‘And here I thought he would know nothing of the niceties, after all those years at sea!’’ Mama exclaimed, with a smile in his direction. ‘‘Sally it is, then. My dear, there is the tiniest alcove of a bedroom next to my room, with scarcely a space for a cat to turn around. How fortunate that you are economical in size.’’ She looked around the table, and Lynch could see nothing but delight in her face. ‘‘We will be as close as whelks in a basket, but I dare anyone in Lincolnshire to have a merrier Christmas.’’

She had directed her attention to the Partlows, but he followed them upstairs, leaning against the door-frame of the little chamber he was to share with Tom while Sally tucked her brother in. ‘‘I want my own bed,’’ he heard the boy say to his sister as she bent over him for a good night kiss. ‘‘I want to be home.’’ Don’t we all? Lynch thought, remembering years and years of writing unanswered letters, letters where he pleaded with his parents to forgive him for being a younger son, for being stupid, for being a child who thought he was a man, until the day came when he could think of nothing that warranted an apology, and stopped writing, replacing remorse with bitterness. I was intemperate and wild, he thought, as he watched the Partlows, but these are forgivable offenses. Too bad my father never thought to forgive me, and Mama was never allowed the opportunity.

He thought his cup of bitterness, already full, should run over, but he was filled with great sadness instead. My parents have missed out on my life, he thought with regret, but no anger this time. He remained where he was in the doorway while Sally conferred with his mother in low whispers. He heard ‘‘night-mare’’ and ‘‘mustn’t trouble you,’’ and looked away while they discussed him. I am in the hands of managing women, he thought, and again, he was not irritated. It was as though someone had stretched out a wide net for him at last, one he could drop into without a qualm.

He said good night to Sally there in the hall, standing close because it was a small corridor, and then followed his mother downstairs, where she gave a few low-voiced orders to Cook, and bade Simpson good-night. She took his hand and just looked into his face until he wanted to cry again. ‘‘Have I changed, Mama?’’ he asked at last.

She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. ‘‘Then we will have to enlarge your circle of acquaintance.’’ She pulled him down to sit beside her. ‘‘And you must not look at me as an object of charity, son! I am nothing of the kind.’’

He knew he must only be pointing out the obvious, but he did it anyway. ‘‘Mama, there is little coal in this house, few candles, and I have never seen you in a dress so shabby!’’

But she only smiled at him in a patient, serene way he had never seen before in his parent, and tucked her arm in the crook of his. ‘‘I don’t know that any of it matters to me, son, now that you are home for Christmas.’’

‘‘Why, yes,’’ she replied, even sounding startled at his question. After a moment, she released his arm and stood up. ‘‘My dear, morning comes early, and we can be sure that Oliver will be over soon.’’

Oliver was the last person he thought of when he finally slept, and the first person he saw when he woke hours later. He was dimly aware that at some point in the night someone came into his room and sat beside him, but he could not be sure who it was. He sank himself deep into the mattress and did not open his eyes again until much later, when he heard someone clearing his throat at the foot of the bed.

My, how you’ve changed, was his first thought as he stared—at first stupidly, and then with recognition—at the man gripping the footboards and glaring at him through narrowed eyes. ‘‘Oh, hullo, Oliver,’’ he said with a yawn. ‘‘How are you?’’

Comfortable in the way that only a warm bed and a venerable nightshirt allow, he gazed up at his older brother, and decided that if he had passed the man on the street, he would not have known him. He folded his hands across his stomach and observed his brother. So this was the object of my bitterness all these years, he thought, as he took in a man thin to the point of emaciation, but dressed in a style much too youthful for him. If I am thirty-six, then he is rising forty-four, Lynch thought, and there he is, dressed like a popinjay. Sir Oliver looked for all the world like a man denying age, with the result that he looked older than he was.

To Lynch, it sounded more like a challenge than a question. ‘‘Well, Oliver, I have it on the best of authority that people who are related occasionally choose to spend certain calendar days together. I realize there’s no accounting for it, but there you are,’’ he replied. ‘‘And do you know, even though I am sure no one in the White Fleet believes me, I have a mother.’’ He sat up then. ‘‘Is there some problem with the estate that she must dress like an old maid aunt no one cares about?’’

‘‘—tallow candles cut in half and coal doled out by the teaspoon!’’ He couldn’t help himself; Lynch knew his voice was rising. ‘‘You won’t object if I order more coal and beeswax candles for Mother, will you?’’

‘‘You have indeed,’’ Lynch agreed, remembering with some slight amusement that his brother had no progeny. ‘‘Last night we were even wondering if the manor was inhabited. Scarcely a light on in the place.’’

His brother shrugged, and sat down. ‘‘Why waste good candles when one is not home?’’ He leaned closer. ‘‘And when you speak of ‘we,’ brother, surely you are not married to that . . . that rather common person downstairs?’’

Any manner of intemperate words bubbled to the surface but he stifled them all, determined for his mother’s sake not to continue the fight where it had begun twenty-two years ago, over a woman. ‘‘No, I am not married to her. She and her brother were wards of my late first mate, with nowhere to go for Christmas.’’

To his further irritation, Oliver waggled a bony finger at him. ‘‘That’s the sort of ill-natured charity that makes dupes of us all! I’ll wager you don’t even know them!’’

Better than I ever knew you, he thought, or wish to know you. He got out of bed and pulled down his nightshirt at the same time that Sally Partlow entered the room with a tray and two cups of tea. He wasn’t embarrassed because she seemed unconcerned. ‘‘Your mother thought you two would like some tea,’’ she said, her glance flicking over him then coming to rest on the wall beyond his shoulder. Her face was only slightly pink, and dashed pretty, he considered. He took a cup from her and sat down again, remembering that this particular nightshirt—long a favorite—had been from Bombay to the Baltic and was thin of material. ‘‘And you, sir?’’ she said, indicating his brother. ‘‘Would you like some tea?’’

Oliver shook his head. ‘‘Tea at midmorning smacks of waste and profligacy,’’ he said, so smug that Lynch itched to smack him. ‘‘I ate my mush at daybreak, and will make it last until luncheon.’’

Over the rim of the cup, Lynch glanced at Sally and knew without question precisely what she was thinking. He turned his head so Oliver would not see his smile. I do believe, my dear Sal, that it would not be beyond you to tell my prig of a brother just where to put his mush, he thought. You would probably even provide a funnel.

He feared that Oliver must be wondering at the expression on his face, but his brother was staring at the tray Sally carried. The color rose up from his scrawny neck in blotches. ‘‘I cannot imagine that Lady Lynch would ever permit someone she cannot know to be handling our silver!’’

‘‘Good Lord, Oliver, it’s just that old teapot even I remember,’’ Lynch said, stung into retort. ‘‘I hardly think Sally will . . . will stick it up her skirt and trot to the pawnshop!’’

‘‘That is precisely what I mean!’’ Oliver replied. ‘‘We have had years and years of order and serenity and now you are back one morning with . . . with—heaven knows who this woman is—and things are going to ruin! I am going downstairs directly to tell Mama to count her—my—silverware carefully!’’

Sally gasped. Without a word she picked up the teacup on the tray and dumped it over his brother’s head. Oliver leaped to his feet, his hand raised, but Lynch was on his feet as well, and grabbed his brother’s arm. ‘‘I wouldn’t,’’ he said.

‘‘I don’t blame her,’’ Lynch replied. ‘‘You’re dashed lucky this isn’t the Middle Ages and it wasn’t hot tar! How dare you accuse her of having designs on the family silver?’’

Oliver looked at them both, his eyebrows pulled close together, his face in a scowl. ‘‘I’m going to talk to Mother about the wisdom of houseguests at Christmas,’’ he said primly as he left the room.

Sally stared after him, then looked down at the empty cup in her hand. Lynch smiled at her and sat down. ‘‘You should have a little charity, Miss Partlow,’’ he said. ‘‘Didn’t you tell me only yesterday that it was high time I forgave my brother?’’

He decided that she must not have realized what she was doing, because she sank down beside him on the bed. ‘‘Perhaps I was hasty,’’ she amended. ‘‘I hadn’t met him yet.’’ Lynch shouted with laughter. After a long moment, she smiled, if only briefly. She stood up then, as if aware of him in his nightshirt. ‘‘He may be right, Captain,’’ she said as she replaced both cups on the tray and went to the door. ‘‘I really don’t have much countenance, do I?’’

‘‘Probably not,’’ he agreed, in perfect charity with her, although he was not certain that she appreciated the fact. ‘‘It doesn’t follow that the matter is disagreeable.’’ To his utter delight, she made a face at him as she left the room.

He lay back down, hands behind his head, content to think of Sally, when she stuck her head in the room again. ‘‘Your mother said most particularly that you are not to do what you are doing now! She wants your escort to the vicarage this afternoon.’’

Sally Partlow sighed and put her hand on her hip, which only made him want to grab her, toss her down beside him, and abandon naps forevermore. ‘‘Captain, I believe that one must rise, before one can consider the next rest as a nap.’’

To his relief, Oliver was gone when Lynch made his appearance in the breakfast room. The table was covered with material and dolls, dolls large and small, with baby-fine hair of silk thread, and abundant yarn hair. Sally was diligently embroidering a smile onto a blank face, and even Tom was occupied, pulling nankeen breeches onto a boy mannikin. Lips pursed, eyes narrowed in concentration, his mother—who to his knowledge had never plied a needle in her life—pushed the last bit of cotton wadding into a disembodied leg.

He kissed her cheek, and cleared a little spot for himself at the table, which only brought a protest from Sally, and the quiet admonition of his mother to please eat his breakfast standing up at the sideboard. He didn’t wish to spill eggs or tea on the dolls, did he?

Mystified at the doll factory on the table, he did as he was told. ‘‘Is this one of Oliver’s cottage industries?’’ he asked finally, when he had finished and sat himself at the table.

‘‘La, no,’’ his mother said, as she attached a leg to a comely doll with yarn ringlets. ‘‘Every year he complains when I ask for a few shillings to make dolls for the orphanage. He can be wearing, at times.’’

If he expected to see relief in her eyes, he was doomed to disappointment. With a few expert stitches, she concluded the limb attachment and picked up another leg. ‘‘I suppose Oliver is onerous at times, son, but do you know, his nipfarthing ways at my expense have quite brought out a side of me I never knew.’’ She looked around the table and Lynch could see nothing in her face but contentment. ‘‘When I think how little I used to do with much, and now how much I do with little, it fair amazes me!’’ She patted his arm, and then handed him an empty leg and pushed the stuffing closer. ‘‘And I owe Oliver this revelation of character.’’

‘‘I . . . I suppose I never thought of it that way, Mother,’’ he said, picking up the stuffing. He saw with a frown that his fingers were too large to make any headway on the leg. To his relief, Sally came to the rescue, moving her chair closer until her glorious hair touched his cheek as she expertly worked the stuffing in place with her own slim fingers. I’m in love, he thought simply, as he breathed deep of her fragrance—probably nothing more than soap and water—and tried to think when any woman had stirred him as completely as this one. The deuce of it was, he didn’t think she had the slightest idea of her effect on him.

The thought niggled at the back of his brain all morning as he sat at the table and brought his mother up to date on twenty-two years of his life. He had no need to enlarge upon his experiences, because they were vivid enough with war, shipwreck, illness—which set Sally to sniffling, even though she heatedly denied it when he teased her—salvages, and exotic ports as his topics. Before he brought his recitation to a close, even Simpson and Cook had joined them around the table.

He watched his mother gather the dolls together and motion to Tom to put them in the pasteboard box Simpson provided. ‘‘And now the Admirable is in dry dock and I find myself in a strange position for a seafaring man.’’

Twenty-four hours ago, he would have agreed with her, but now he could not say. ‘‘Let us say, on land and not certain where to go from here,’’ he told her, ‘‘or even what to do.’’ He was deeply conscious of the fact that he was aware of every breath she took, so close there to him.

‘‘That has not been my experience, Miss Partlow,’’ he said, his voice sharp. ‘‘If it has been yours—and I cannot see how, considering your own less-than-sanguine circumstances—then rejoice in it.’’

To his shame, Sally leaped up from the table as though seeking to put real distance between them as fast as she could. If he could have snatched his spiteful words from the air, crammed them back in his mouth again, and swallowed them, he would have, but as it was, Sally only stood by the window, her head down, as far away as the moon.

He kicked himself mentally until he passed through the copse and could no longer see the dower house. In his mind he could still see the calm on Sally’s face, and the trouble in her eyes. It takes a thoroughly unpleasant customer to tread on a woman’s dignity, Lynch, he told himself, and you’ve just trampled Sally’s into the dust. Too bad the Celerity’s carronade didn’t belch all over you, instead of her uncle. She’d certainly have had a better Christmas.

He wanted to cry, but he wasn’t sure that he could ever stop if he started, so he swallowed the lump in his throat and walked until he looked around in surprise, the hair rising on his neck.

He stood in the orchard, barren now of leaves, and any promise of fruit, the branches just twisted sticks. How does it turn so beautiful with pink blossoms in the spring? he wondered. I have been so long away from land and the passage of seasons. He closed his eyes, thinking of summer in the orchard and then fall, especially the fall twenty-two years ago when two brothers had squared off and shot at each other.

Why did I let him goad me like that? he thought. Why did I ever think that his fiancée preferred me, a second son, greener than grass, unstable as water in that way of fourteen-year-olds?

He stood a moment more in thought, and then was aware that he was not the orchard’s only visitor. He knew it would be Oliver, and turned around only to confirm his suspicion. ‘‘Does it seem a long time ago, brother?’’ he asked, hoping that his voice was neutral.

They both smiled this time. Lynch noticed that Oliver was shivering. ‘‘Your cloak’s too thin for this weather,’’ he said, fingering the heavy wool of his own uniform cloak. ‘‘Oliver, why in God’s name do you live so cheap? Is the estate to let?’’

They walked together out of the orchard and Lynch wondered what he was feeling, strolling beside the person he had hated the most in the world for twenty-two years. ‘‘You ruined my life, Oliver,’’ he said as a preamble to the woes he intended to pour out on the skinny, shabby man who walked beside him.

Oliver startled him by stopping to stare. ‘‘Michael, you’re worth more than I am! Don’t deny it. I’ve checked the Funds. You’ve done prodigious well at sea. You aren’t ruined.’’

‘‘And you don’t have a wife who is so boring that you must take deep breaths before you walk into any room she is inhabiting. And someone damned unfeeling enough to . . . to drop her whelps before they’re big enough to fend for themselves!’’

Dumbfounded, Lynch could think of no response to such a harsh declaration, beyond the thought that if Amelia Lynch had been a horse with a broken leg and not a wife with an uncooperative womb, Oliver could have shot her. He had the good sense not to mention it. ‘‘No heir,’’ was all he could say, and it sounded stupid.

Oliver turned on him. ‘‘Oh, I have an heir,’’ he declared, ‘‘a by-blow got from the ostler’s daughter at the public house, for all the good that does anyone. Naturally he cannot inherit. There you are, damn you, free to roam the world, tied to nothing and no one. As things stand now, you will inherit this estate.’’

As they walked on, Lynch felt a great realization dawning on him. It was so huge that he couldn’t put it into words at first. He glanced at his brother, feeling no anger at him now, but only the most enormous pity and then the deepest regret at his own wasted time.

‘‘You were the oldest son and successor to the title, and you won Amelia’s affection—my God, but I wanted her then—and Father’s love,’’ Lynch said. ‘‘Didn’t you get what you wanted?’’

Oliver sighed. ‘‘I discovered after six months that Amelia only loves lap dogs. Father never loved anyone. And Mama, who used to be such a scatterbrain, has turned into the most . . . the most . . .’’

‘‘. . . respected and wise woman in the district,’’ Lynch concluded, smiling at the irony of it all. ‘‘You and Father broke her of bad habits out of your own meanness, didn’t you? And she became someone worth more than all of us. That must’ve been a low blow.’’

The whole conversation was so unbelievable that Lynch could only walk in silence for some minutes. ‘‘So for all these years, you’ve either been wishing me dead, or wishing to change places. And I’ve been doing the same thing,’’ Lynch said, not even attempting to keep the astonishment from his voice. ‘‘What a pair we are.’’

If it weren’t so sad, he would have laughed. Father sentenced me to the sea, and I was the lucky one, Lynch thought. I’ve not been tied to a silly, barren woman, forced to endure years with that martinet who fathered us, or tethered to an estate when just maybe I might have wished to do something else. And Oliver thinks I am handsome. I wonder if Sally does?

He took his brother by the arm, which startled the man into raising both his hands, as though in self-defense. ‘‘Settle down, Oliver. I have an idea. Tell me how you like it.’’ He hesitated only a moment before throwing his arm around the smaller man, enveloping him in the warmth of his cloak. ‘‘I’ve given some serious thought to emigrating to the United States. I mean, since I refuse to die and oblige you that much, at least if I became a citizen of that nation, I certainly couldn’t inherit a title, could I? Who would the estate devolve upon?’’

‘‘Yes! He has fifteen or twenty children at least—or it seems that way when he troubles us with a visit—and as many dogs,’’ Oliver grumbled. ‘‘But I’d much rather he had this estate than you.’’

‘‘Done then, brother. I’ll emigrate,’’ Lynch said. ‘‘At least, I’ll do it if I survive another year on the blockade, which probably isn’t too likely. My luck has long run out there. That satisfy you?’’

His brother hesitated, then nodded, and hesitated again. ‘‘I suppose you can come to luncheon,’’ he said, his reluctance almost palpable. ‘‘I usually only have a little bread and milk.’’

Lynch surprised himself by kissing Oliver on the forehead. ‘‘Yes, indeed. She must have spent upwards of twenty shillings on all those dolls for orphans. What can she have been thinking? Tell you what I will put in writing. I’ll take care of Mother from now on, and relieve you of that onerous burden and expense.’’ He looked at Oliver closely, trying to interpret his expression. ‘‘Unless you think you’ll miss all that umbrage.’’

Oliver turned to walk away, then looked back. ‘‘You’re not going to marry that chit with the red hair, are you? It would serve you right to marry an object of charity.’’

The only objects of charity are you and I, brother, Lynch thought. ‘‘That would please you if I married her, wouldn’t it?’’ he asked. ‘‘You’d really think I got what I deserved.’’

Oliver was still laughing when Lynch turned away. He didn’t hurry back to the dower house, because he knew they would have gone on without him. He sat at the table in the breakfast room for a long moment, wondering if it would be better if he just left now. He could make arrangements with his solicitor in Portsmouth for his mother, and add a rider to it for Sally and Tom, even though he knew that scrupulous young woman would never touch it. In only a day or two he could be back on the blockade conning another ship.

The thought of the blockade turned him cold, and then nauseous. He rested his forehead against the table until the moment passed. He knew that he needed Sally Partlow far more than she would ever need him.

The vicarage was much as he remembered it, but this new man—vicar since his old confidant had died five years ago—had taken it upon himself to organize a foundling home in a small house just down the road. ‘‘My good wife and I have no children of our own, Captain,’’ the man explained, after Lynch arrived and introduced himself. ‘‘This gives us ample time to help others.’’

Lynch nodded, thinking of his own childless brother, who spent his time pinching pennies, denying his mother, and squeezing his tenants. ‘‘It seems so . . . charitable of you,’’ he said, realizing how lame that sounded.

Who, indeed? Lynch thought, turning to watch Sally Partlow bend over a crib and appropriate its inmate, a child scarcely past birth. He watched as the baby melted into her, the dark head blending into her own beautiful auburn hair. He thought of years of war and children without food and beds, left to shiver in odd corners on wharves and warehouses, and die. ‘‘I am tired of war,’’ he said, his voice quiet. I need that woman.

‘‘Perhaps,’’ he told the man as he watched Sally. She has an instinct for the right thing. I wish I did. He sighed. If she turns me down flat, then my sentence is the blockade and I will die.

That, apparently, is the question, he asked himself as he went to Sally. ‘‘Please forgive me,’’ he murmured and without another word took the sleeping child from her. To his deep need and intense gratification, the baby made those small sounds of the very young, but did not even open her eyes as she folded into his chest, too. He felt himself relax all over. Her warmth was so small, but as he held her close, he felt the heat of her body against his hand and then his chest, as it penetrated even the heavy wool of his uniform. He paced up and down slowly, glad of the motion because it reminded him of his quarterdeck. The baby sighed, and he could have wept when her little puff of breath warmed his neck.

He wasn’t aware of the passage of time as he walked up and down, thinking of nothing beyond the pleasure of what he was doing, the softness of small things, the impermanence of life, its little span. What would it have cost me to forgive my brother years ago? Nothing.

Stung by his own hypocrisy, he walked on, remembering the Gospel of Matthew, which he read from the quarterdeck to his assembled crew on many a Sunday, after the required reading of the Articles of War. With painful clarity, he recalled the parable of the unmerciful servant, who was forgiven of a great debt, then inflicted his own wrath on another who owed him a tiny portion of that which had been forgiven. ‘‘ ‘Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee?’ ’’ he whispered to the baby.

He never prayed, but he prayed now, walking up and down in the peaceful room with a baby hugged to his chest. Forgive us our debts, he thought, as we forgive our debtors. How many times as captain have I led my crew in the Our Father and never listened? Forgive me now, Father, he thought. Forgive me, Sally. Forgive me, and please don’t make me go back on the blockade. For too many years I have nourished my animosities like some people take food. Let us now marry and breed little ones like this sweet child, and walk the floor of our own home, and lie down at night with each other. Please, not the blockade again.

He stood still finally. The baby stirred and stretched in his embrace, arching her back and then shooting out her arms like a flower sprouting. He smiled, thinking that in a moment she would probably work up to an enormous wail. It must be dinnertime, he thought. She yawned so hugely that she startled herself, and retreated into a ball again. He kissed her hair and walked on until she was crying in earnest and feeling soggy against his arm. In another moment, the vicar’s wife came to him, crooning to the baby in that wonderful way with children that women possessed: old women, young women, barren, fertile, of high station, and lower than the drabs on the docks. ‘‘The wet nurse is waiting for you, little one,’’ she whispered. ‘‘And did you soak Captain Lynch’s uniform?’’

He stood another moment watching the woman with the baby, then took his cloak from the servant, put it on, replaced his hat, and soon stood on the steps of the vicarage. Sally Partlow waited by the bottom step, and he felt a wave of relief wash over him that he would not have to walk back to the dower house alone, he who went everywhere alone.

She smiled that sunny smile of hers that had passed beyond merely pleasing to absolutely indispensable to him. ‘‘Don’t flatter yourself! I walked home with your mama and Thomas, and then she told me to return and fetch you.’’ She tugged the shawl tighter around her glorious hair. ‘‘I told her that you had navigated the world, and didn’t need my feeble directions. Besides, this is your home ground.’’

He tucked her arm in his gladly, in no hurry to be anyplace else than with Sally Partlow. ‘‘I am thirty-six years old,’’ he said, and thought to himself, That ought to scare you away. Why am I even mentioning my years to this woman? was his next thought, followed by, I have not the slightest idea what to say beyond this point.

They walked on slowly, Lynch gradually shortening his stride to make it easier for the woman beside him to keep up. I’ll have to remind myself to do that, he thought, at least until it becomes second nature.

In far too short a time, he could see the dower house at the bottom of the slight hill. Beyond was the copse, and then the manor house, all dark but for a few lights. It was too close, and he hadn’t the courage to propose.

He shook his head. ‘‘Perhaps we can remember this as the necessary Christmas, rather than the happy one,’’ he replied, then wondered at his effrontery in using the word ‘‘we.’’

She seemed not to even heed his use of the word, as though something were already decided between them. ‘‘Well, I will have food for thought, at least, when I return to the blockade,’’ he continued, less sure of himself than at any time in the last decade, at least.

He had no choice but to stop, too, and then made no objection when she took the fork in the path that led to the village and not the dower house. ‘‘You’re going the wrong way,’’ he pointed out.

‘‘No, I’m not,’’ she said in that unarguable tone that he had recognized in her uncle. ‘‘We’re going to walk and walk until you have told me all about the blockade.’’ She released his arm so she could face him. ‘‘You have told us stories of the sea, and personally I thank you, for now Tom has no urge to follow his uncle’s career! You have said nothing of the blockade, beyond watch and watch about, and you look so tired.’’

‘‘I noticed how you started the other day when your mama did.’’ She took his arm again, this time twining her fingers through his. ‘‘I can walk you into the ground, Michael. No more excuses.’’

You probably can, he told himself. He yearned suddenly to tap into her energy. ‘‘I’m tired. Watch and watch about is four hours on and four hours off, around the clock, day after week after month after year. We are a wooden English wall against a French battering ram.’’

She rested her cheek against his arm and he felt her low murmur, rather than heard it. ‘‘At first it is possible to sleep in snatches like that, but after a few months, I only lie in my berth waiting for the last man off to summon me for the next watch.’’

‘‘I must, I suppose, but I am not aware of it,’’ he said, after a moment of thinking through the matter. ‘‘Mostly I stand on my quarterdeck and watch the French coastline, looking for any sign of ship movement.’’ He stopped this time. ‘‘We have to anticipate them almost, to sense that moment when the wind is about to shift quarters, and be ready to stop them when they come out to play in our channel.’’

‘‘I suppose.’’ He took her arm again and moved on. ‘‘Not only do we watch the coast, but we watch each other, careful not to collide in fog, or swing about with a sudden wind, or relax our vigilance against those over our shoulders who would sneak in under cover of dark and make for shore.’’

‘‘We of the blockade do it.’’ He patted her hand and they walked on into the village, strolling through empty streets with shops boarded for the long winter night. Through all the exhaustion and terror he felt a surge of pride and a quiet wonder at his own abilities, despite his many weaknesses. ‘‘We do it, my dear.’’

He knew she was in tears, but he had no handkerchief for her. I don’t even know the right words to court this beautiful woman, and flatter her, and tell her that she is essential to my next breath, he told himself. I’ve never learned the niceties because they’re not taught on a ship of the line. In the middle of all my hurt and revenge, I hadn’t planned on falling in love. He knew he had to say something. They were coming to the end of the village. Surely Sally did not intend just to keep walking.

To his amazement, she did, not even pausing as they left the last house behind. She kept walking on the high road, as though it were summer. She walked, eyes ahead, and he talked at last, pouring out his stories of ship fevers, and death, and cannonading until his ears bled from the concussion, and splinters from masts sailing like javelins through the air, and the peculiar odor of sawdust mingled with blood on the deck, and the odd patter of the powder monkeys in their felt slippers, bringing canister up from the magazine to the men serving the guns, and the crunch of weevils in ship’s biscuit, and the way water six months in a keg goes down the throat in a lump.

She shuddered at that one, and he laughed and took both her hands in his. ‘‘Sally Partlow, you amaze me!’’ He looked at the sky, and thought he saw the pink of dawn. ‘‘I have told you horrible stories all night, and you gag when I mention the water! If there is a man alive who does not understand women, I am he.’’

Holding her hands like that, he allowed himself to pull her close to him. If she had offered any objection, he would have released her, but she seemed to like what he was doing, and clasped her hands across his back with a certain proprietary air.

‘‘I’m keeping England safe so my brother can squeeze another shilling until it yelps, and . . .’’ He took a deep breath and his heart turned over. ‘‘. . . and you can lie safe at night, and mothers can walk with babies, and Thomas can go to school. Marry me, Sally.’’

She continued to hold him close. When she said nothing, he wondered if she had heard him. He knew he didn’t have the courage to ask again. The words had popped out of his mouth even before he had told her he loved her. ‘‘Did you hear me?’’ he asked at last, feeling as stupid as a schoolboy.

His heart turned over again and he looked up to see dawn. He had told her all night of the horrors of the blockade, and in the telling had come to understand his own love of the sea, and ships, and war, and the brave men he commanded. It terrified him to return, but he knew that he could now. With an even greater power than dawn coming, he knew that because he could, he did not need to.

‘‘Yes, enough to leave the blockade,’’ he said into her hair. ‘‘I will resign my commission with the new year.’’ He waited for such a pronouncement to rip his heart wide open, but all he felt was the greatest relief he had ever known. This must be what peace feels like, he told himself in wonder. I have never known it until now.

She raised her head to look at him then, and he wanted to drop to his knees in gratitude that for every morning of the rest of his life, hers would be the first face he saw. She put her hands on his face. ‘‘You are not doing this because I am an object of charity?’’ she asked.

‘‘Oh, God, no!’’ He kissed her until she started to squirm for breath. ‘‘My dearest love, you are the one marrying the object of charity.’’ He smiled when she did. ‘‘Of course, you haven’t said yes yet, have you? You’re just clarifying things in your Scottish way, aren’t you?’’

‘‘Of course,’’ she replied calmly. ‘‘I want to know precisely where I stand. Your brother will be horrified, your mother will be ecstatic, and Thomas will follow you about with adoration in his eyes. You’ve lived solitary for so long. Can you manage all that?’’

‘‘Actually, Oliver will be ecstatic. I’ll explain later. I wish you would answer my question, Sally, before you start in with yours! My feet are cold, and do you know, I am actually tired right down to my toenails.’’ That was not loverlike, he thought, but it didn’t matter, because Sally was pressing against him in a way that sharpened his nerves a little more than he expected there on a cold road somewhere in the middle of Lincolnshire. ‘‘Where the deuce are we?’’ he asked.

‘‘Somewhere in Lincolnshire, and yes, Michael, I will marry you,’’ she said, then took her time kissing him. When they stopped, she looked at him in that intense way that warmed him from within. ‘‘I love you. I suppose I have for a long time, ever since Uncle Partlow started writing about you in his letters home.’’

‘‘I suppose,’’ she agreed, after that long moment. ‘‘There’s no use accounting for it, because I cannot. I just love you.’’ She held up her hands, exasperated at her inability to explain. ‘‘It’s like breathing, I think.’’

They learned from a passing carter (who must have been watching them, because he could hardly contain himself), that they were only a mile from Epping. It was an easy matter to speak for breakfast at a public house, admire his blooming Sal over tea and short-bread, then take the mail coach back to Lynch. Pillowed against Sally’s soft breast, he fell asleep as soon as the coachman gathered his reins. He probably even snored. Hand in hand they walked back to the dower house. He answered his mother’s inquiries with a nod in Sally’s direction, then went upstairs to bed, leaving his pretty lady to make things right.

She must have done that to everyone’s satisfaction. When he woke hours later, the sun was going down and she was sitting in a chair pulled close to the window in his room, her attention on yet another doll in her lap. He lay there admiring her handsome profile and beautiful hair, and hoped that at least some of their children would inherit that same dark red hue. He chuckled at the thought; she turned in his direction to give him an inquiring look.

To his pleasure, she pinked up nicely. She took up her sewing again, and turned back to the window, even as her shoulders started to shake. ‘‘I can see that you will be a great deal of trouble on land,’’ she said, when she could speak again.

She finished a seam on the little dress in her lap and turned it right side out. ‘‘I think it would be prudent if we don’t settle anywhere close to Lynch, my love,’’ she told him. ‘‘I’m sure Oliver thinks I am a great mistake.’’

‘‘Excellent advice. See that you remember it.’’ They were still debating the merits of a return to the Highlands over a bolt across the Atlantic to Charlotte because he liked the Carolinas, when Mama called up the stairs that dinner was ready.

He took Sally by the arm as she tried to brush past the bed. She made not a single objection as he sat her down next to him. Sally leaned closer to kiss him. ‘‘I thought your uncle told you to beware of sailors,’’ he reminded her, then pulled her closer when she tried to sit up. ‘‘Too late, Sal.’’

‘‘Another one, then. What do you say if after dinner we hurry to the vicarage, where I can ask about the intricacies of obtaining a special license? We can get married right after Christmas, and I will see that you get to bed early every night.’’

She blushed, even as she nodded. He folded her in his arms, and to his gratification, she melted into him like the baby he had held yesterday. He thought briefly of the Admirable in dry dock, then put it from his mind forever. He smiled to think of the Gospel of Luke, another favorite quarterdeck recitation—‘‘and on earth peace, good will toward men.’’