Chapter Thirty-Three
“How blasted hard is it to string a hammock?” Harry was at his wit’s end with all the incompetence on this bloody ship. “And what sort of useless sailors have the Admiralty saddled me with if they all struggle to tie a decent knot?” Out of the seven hundred hammocks that had been delivered to the main deck yesterday, only two hundred fifty were secured in situ below it. “We have less than a blasted week before we set sail for Calais and at this rate, we won’t be bloody well ready!”
Lieutenant Gregson was wearing his semipermanent startled expression again as he tried to stutter a response. “Nobody is slacking, Captain—but there are only so many men you can have working in such a confined space together.”
“I suppose that’s going to be your pathetic excuse for the lack of powder and fuses on the lower gun deck too?” When Harry had expressly asked for that all to be ready today too. “I thought you were an experienced officer, Gregson? This isn’t good enough!”
“Lieutenant—if you wouldn’t mind giving us a moment.” Like a mother hen, Simpkins came to Gregson’s rescue by marching to Harry’s cabin door and ushering the startled fellow out. As the door slammed shut, his right-hand man folded his arms and glared. “If you don’t want to be the first captain in naval history to have a mutiny before you’ve left the dock, then you might want to curb your bleedin’ temper!”
“I beg your—” Before his outraged bluster became words, Simpkins began to jab the air between them with his finger.
“You are being an unreasonable pain in the arse! So unreasonable, I’m this close to telling you to shove your job where the sun don’t shine and walking myself.” He held his finger and thumb an inch apart. “Therefore, I strongly suggest you either take the thorn out of your paw, accept it’s over, and start behaving like the sort of captain who deserves his crew’s respect, or you go to bloody London to try and sort things out with that woman of yours! Whichever it is, you need to stop torturing the rest of the world because she chose to leave you! Although frankly, with the way you are behaving lately, I don’t blame Georgie in the slightest!”
Simpkins slammed out and left Harry fuming that Georgie had even been mentioned when as far as he was concerned, her name was banned.
Forbidden!
Taboo!
He didn’t want to talk about the treacherous siren any more than he wanted to think about her. When she’d upped and left on the afternoon post the same day as blasted Flora returned, without so much as a by-your-leave before he arrived home!
What sort of woman came apart in his arms before dawn and then abandoned him without a proper goodbye before dusk? Especially when only a few hours before, he had practically begged her to stay with him! He had dared to bare his heart, dared to be selfless and to do the unthinkable for her because he loved her so much, and she had as good as thrown it all back in his face. It was history repeating itself all over again and he was kicking himself for his galling, gullible stupidity. When he knew better than anyone that sailors and sirens did not mix!
Instinctively, his fingers reached for the letter he’d carried with him since he had found it on his nightstand. The short, sharp, dismissive missive that hadn’t so much as broken his heart for the second time but bludgeoned it irretrievably to mush. Yet he couldn’t bear to part with it when the damn thing deserved burning on the fire!
Dear Harry,
Now that our time together has reached its natural conclusion, please forgive me for stealing away like a coward, but I hate goodbyes. I wanted to thank you for giving me the opportunity to be your governess and, more importantly, the honor of being your friend. Please try to keep yourself safe and do your best not to sail into trouble while you achieve all the well-deserved accolades and promotions and enjoy all the great adventures which have always been your destiny. For what it is worth, I already know that you will forever be my greatest adventure, and I shall always fondly remember our time together without the slightest hint of regret.
With love,
Georgie
He must have read the damned thing at least a thousand times already, and yet it still cut him to the quick. Because he had begged her for forever and she had responded with goodbye.
In blasted impersonal writing.
The curt knock made him jump. “You’ve a visitor, Captain.” As his cabin opened, he stuffed the letter back in his waistcoat and tried to look like a busy man studying his charts.
“Hello, Henry.” How bloody typical of fate to send him the first woman who had made a fool out of him while he was still nursing the gaping wound left by the second.
“Elizabeth.” Ingrained politeness made him force a smile, but it wasn’t the least bit sincere. “What brings you here?” Although he suspected already that it was the challenge he presented. Elizabeth had never been good with the word no, and she had always measured her self-worth in the amount she was coveted. This was the third time she had turned up at his ship like a bad penny since Georgie’s betrayal, despite him already giving her the shortest of shrifts twice.
“I find myself at a bit of a loose end with Francis gone to Dartmouth for a month.” She took the chair opposite with a butter-would-not-melt-in-her-mouth smile. “I thought you might be lonely and in dire need of some friendly company too while your charming fiancée remains away.” A stark reminder that he still hadn’t found the courage to announce the termination of his fake engagement to his superiors and comrades yet.
Because announcing it was as good as admitting to himself that it really was all over between him and Georgie and, heaven help him, despite her abrupt departure and callous letter, the remnants of his bludgeoned heart refused to give up all hope. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, after all, and according to my sources, you’ve been working on this ship all the hours God has sent this last week.” Her predatory gaze wandered to his bed. “Is it true you have even been sleeping here?”
As the very last thing he needed was her turning up here in the middle of the night, he denied it. “Of course not. Flora would kill me if I missed a family dinner. They are sacrosanct, as far as she is concerned.” In truth, he had slept here for five of the last seven nights, so his blasted sister likely would kill him if he didn’t go home tonight, and now that Elizabeth was on the prowl again, it probably made sense. “Which I am afraid I was just about to leave for… I do apologize.” He stood and, as he had hoped, she did too. She even allowed him to usher her halfway to the door before she turned and blocked his path.
“Well, if you ever do want some company…” Her hand brushed his sleeve. Lingered. “I would still very much like for us to pick up things where we left off.”
“From where you left me for another man, you mean, then married him before you had the decency to tell me?” Ingrained politeness only went so far, and her touch repelled him now.
“It’s not as if I had any choice!” For the first time, her flash of anger seemed genuine.
“Don’t tell me that your vice admiral blackmailed you up the aisle?” Lashing out with sarcasm felt good. “You poor thing.”
But she lashed out too, whacking him with her reticule and stamping her foot. “But I was blackmailed, idiot! Your horrid grandfather made it plain that he would ruin me if I didn’t marry Francis!”
“What?”
“He knew we’d had an… indiscretion…” Of course he had! “And he threatened to make it public unless I set you free.”
“I don’t believe you!” The admiral had made no secret that he disapproved of Harry’s engagement and had done his darndest to talk him out of it, but it was inconceivable that his own flesh and blood would stoop to outright sabotage. “But then you always did have a tenuous relationship with the truth!”
“Well, he did!” Elizabeth bristled, indignant. “And if you don’t believe me, ask my husband—because he had a promotion dangled as a reward for doing right by me so long as it was done fast. How else do you think a self-absorbed fool like Francis would have made vice admiral?”
As Harry couldn’t argue that Barrett-Hughes was a fool, he strode to the door instead and flung it open, outraged at her lies, yet hugely unsettled by them. “We are done, Elizabeth. We were done four years ago when you married your idiot. I accepted it was all over then and you have to accept it now, so please never darken my door again.”
No sooner had she stomped away across the quayside did he himself leave. He was sick and tired of this bloody ship today. Furious at Simpkins for mentioning Georgie and outraged at Elizabeth for… well, everything. That woman was a lying, cheating, poisonous serpent and if his grandfather had sent her packing—which he did not believe for a second—then he had likely done Harry a favor! A bloody underhanded, cruel, and hurtful favor, but still one he should probably be grateful for.
An indiscretion indeed!
He sincerely doubted that unfaithful tease had ever experienced a pair of cold sheets in her life! Before him! After him! Or, it would seem, while engaged to him!
He silently seethed for the entire journey across the Sound to Cawsand and on the uphill walk home, then slammed into the house, ready to snap at the first person who dared mention the slamming, only to be met by complete silence.
“Hello!” Why the hell was nobody here when he desperately needed to shout at someone? “Hello!”
“Harry?” His sister’s voice came from her study. “Thank goodness you are finally home. Your dog’s constant howling for you is enough to try the patience of a saint!”
“Cuthbert isn’t my dog!” As he practically bellowed that from her doorway, her head snapped up, surprised. It surprised him, too, because Flora had been bent over a ledger, apparently totting up a row of numbers.
“I beg to differ, brother.” Because of course the damned puppy had toddled over from his bed beneath her desk and already had his paws on Harry’s knees while his scruffy little tail wagged so fast it blurred. “Dogs are like children. They are a responsibility that you cannot simply ignore for days on end. The poor thing has missed your sourpuss dreadfully, although heaven only knows why.” She wafted an imperious finger that reminded him too much of their mother’s. “Pick him up and give him some love.”
“He is not my dog!” But even so, he picked the adoring puppy up and tickled his floppy ears. It was instantly soothing. “He only exists because you neglected your responsibility to take proper care of your blasted dog.”
Flora rolled her eyes, jotted down a number in the miraculously well-ordered ledger, then laid down her quill. “So what has got your dander up today, baby brother?”
“Everything—and nothing.” Like the surliest of children, he plonked his backside on her desk. “For starters, the bloody Boadicea is never going to be ready on time and according to Simpkins, the crew are close to mutiny because apparently it is my fault that they are all a bunch of useless, lazy idiots who cannot run a bath.” Although now that Cuthbert had forced him to be calm, he was prepared to concede that he hadn’t been the easiest of captains to get along with these last two weeks.
“Are you aware that whenever you mention your new ship, the word ‘bloody’ always precedes it?”
“Harrumph! Now you sound like Geo—” He stopped himself before he accidentally uttered the callous siren’s name.
“Hmmmm…” Flora gave him one of her withering big-sister looks. “Now I suspect we are finally getting to the root of the matter.”
“We are really not.” He rolled his own eyes, praying they looked nonchalant.
“Ada said that the pair of you were sharing a bed.”
“Poppycock!” As denial seemed the gentlemanly thing to do, he did so with gusto. “How the blazes would Ada know that?”
“Because Ada knows everything. Because she said that after she and Tom returned from the birth of their grandchild, you both had a satisfied and soppy glow about you that could only come from nocturnal shenanigans. And because, most importantly of all, she found a long, curly strand of damning red hair on your pillowcase when she changed the bed linens the day Georgie left.” Flora offered him her most sympathetic smile. “Marianne also mentioned that she thought that she overheard the pair of you arguing on that day too, so it doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together. What happened?”
As much as he did not want to have this conversation, Harry recognized that he probably needed to. For all her faults and her flightiness, Flora had always given good advice. “The usual story. I accidentally fell in love with a temptress who didn’t love me quite as much back.”
“You told her how you felt?”
“Twice.” He felt his shoulders deflate. “The first time I think that she pretended not to hear it and the second… well, let’s just say when I asked her to stay, she left.”
“Oh, Harry.” Flora gripped his hand. “I wish you had told me that before now. I’d have been significantly less peeved at your insufferable mood if I’d known that you’d had a heartfelt proposal of marriage refused.”
“I didn’t propose, exactly, but I definitely implied it.”
“You implied it.” She scrunched up her face as if he had done something wrong. “Dare I ask how?”
“It’s private.”
Flora rolled her eyes again. “By that, one can only assume that you were in bed, post shenanigans and…” She wafted her hand, expecting him to continue.
“I don’t remember verbatim the exact words I used, but they were suitably heartfelt and certainly did not deserve the affronted reaction they got.”
“Then obviously they were idiotically male if she ended up shouting at you about them and then hotfooted it away on the afternoon post. I only knew Georgie for an hour or so, but she did not strike me as the unreasonable sort.”
“She is wholly unreasonable. Rebellious, tart-mouthed. Does everything her way.”
All traits which made his blasted sister smile. “I knew I liked her. She sounds perfect for you, so it’s a crying shame you ruined it all with whatever stupid, unromantic thing you said.”
“Actually, if you must know, it was very romantic because I told her that if she asked me not to sail away, I wouldn’t.”
Instead of the poignant sigh he expected, Flora slapped her forehead. “Oh, good heavens above!”
“I also told her that I was prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice—for her.”
“And she didn’t fall at your feet to kiss them in gratitude?” In his hour of need, only his sister would torture him with sarcasm. “Clearly the woman is quite deranged and you are well shot of her! For who wouldn’t want to spend eternity with a burning martyr?” She shoved him unceremoniously from her desk. “Especially when you stipulated that you would only venture onto the bonfire if she asked you to.” When it was put it like that, it didn’t sound quite as romantic as he had originally intended. “And what did she say to such a conditional declaration of love?”
Was it conditional? He was pretty certain it had been selfless. “Something along the lines of it being unfair to her to be the one to scupper my entire career and thereby thwart my destiny.” Harry winced as those ill-considered words finally sunk in. “I made a complete hash of it, didn’t I?”
“No woman wants a husband she has had to nail to a cross before he will put a ring on her finger.”
Harry tickled Cuthbert’s ears while he pondered that. “Then you think I can fix it if I tell her I’d happily resign my commission for her?”
Flora shook her head. “I honestly think that you are approaching your quandary all wrong as, from where I am sitting, there are two things at play here.” At his confused expression, she steepled her fingers on the desk. “The first is how you are going to convince Georgie to marry you after your spectacularly awful doomed-to-fail first proposal.”
“And the second?”
“Is what you actually want to do about the navy. The emphasis is on you there, baby brother, as whatever that is has to come from you. It cannot be someone else’s decision. Someone else’s fault. It is your career and only you know if you are truly happy with the way it is going.” She reached across the table to pet Cuthbert. “Does it honestly fulfill you? Feel like an adventure still?”
“You and your blasted stupid adventures! Not everything needs to be an adventure, Flora!”
“It doesn’t—but not everything should feel like a chore either!” Oh, how he loathed when his reliably illogical sister spouted irrefutable logic! “Does the navy still excite you, baby brother? For that is the crux of this.”
“I’ve got a flagship and in a year or so I’ll be commodore.” Why did neither thing elicit any excitement whatsoever?
“Those are the current circumstances—not the answer.”
She was right. Devil take her. “The problem is, I have been so overworked at the Admiralty, I don’t seem to have the energy to be enthused by my promotion. My feelings for Georgie have only exacerbated that. And, I suppose, have muddied the waters.”
Flora, of course, wasn’t going to let him get away with that tired and convenient explanation. “Your dissatisfaction with the navy began long before Georgie came into your life. I’m not convinced you’ve been happy in it for at least three years, maybe longer. In fact, and please don’t bite my head off because I know you are convinced that the navy is your life, I think you fell out of love with it pretty quickly after the admiral passed. Maybe even before. Hardly a surprise, when it was his dream you were living.” Flora pulled a face, clearly expecting an explosion, and she almost got it.
Except…
“Elizabeth came to visit me on the ship today, and claimed…” He laughed to prepare his sister for how ridiculous it was. “That the old man forced her into abandoning our engagement. Even went as far into threatening to ruin her if she didn’t, and then claimed he promoted her idiot husband as a bribe to marry her instead.”
Flora’s eyes widened—but far too briefly to give him any comfort. “As much as I hate, loathe, and have always despised that two-faced, two-timing gorgon Elizabeth, I wouldn’t have put it past him. You were pretty set on leaving the navy then, as I recall, and he didthreaten to have you thrown in the brig if you took the shore leave you were due to get married.” She frowned, thoughtful. “Then he punished you anyway by taking away your first ship.”
“No—somebody else did.” Harry scoffed at that. “He fought tooth and nail to get me that ship, so it makes no sense that he would threaten Elizabeth with ruination for ruining my naval career, then ruin it for me regardless.”
“Mama didn’t think so. She was convinced it was exactly the sort of lesson the controlling old curmudgeon would have taught you to keep you under his thumb, because he was cruel that way, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“Because it made no sense! The admiral always championed my career. I wouldn’t have been offered a second ship the following year if he hadn’t pushed for it.”
“And thereby guaranteeing your indebtedness to him ever after.” Her lips flattened. “What better way to control you? He was one to rule with an iron fist and didn’t appreciate anyone daring to peek over the parapet to see the alternatives. Just look at how he treated our mother after she went against him to marry Papa. He withdrew her dowry and never wasted a single opportunity to remind her of her mistake, despite the fact that she and Papa were blissfully happy together.” Just as he had constantly reminded Harry of his foolish mistake with Elizabeth. “It never made any sense that a man with all the money he eventually left you would leave his only daughter and her family to struggle with crushing debt rather than put his hand in his deep pockets to alleviate some of it—yet we both know he did that. Worse, he then exploited you by using the family’s debts as a stick to beat you into submission with.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Didn’t he? You never showed an ounce of interest in either the sea or the navy when we were growing up. You preferred cricket and creepy crawlies like Felix and had your heart set on academia like Papa, but once he had convinced you that you could earn enough to help pay the family’s mounting bills, you were a convert. He blackmailed you into the navy, Harry. Took advantage of your innate need to rescue and fix things, then did all he could to mold you into his image.” When he shook his head, it was her turn to scoff. “You began spouting all your plans to make admiral of the fleet at fifteen, and they weren’t the lofty, ill-thought-out plans of a boy, brother. They were solid and sensible plans that only someone with a solid and serious knowledge of the navy could have plotted so ruthlessly. He was living vicariously through you, because the admiral never had what it took to make admiral of the fleet.”
“Of course he did—and he would have been if he hadn’t stayed in Plymouth to fight the war against Napoleon.”
“Now I am going to call poppycock! He stayed in Plymouth because he had rubbed everyone else the wrong way during his short stint at the Admiralty and was asked to leave.”
“What proof do you have of that?”
“Beyond what Mama claimed, I don’t,” said his irritating sister before she prodded him with her finger. “Any more than I have any proof that he blackmailed Elizabeth into leaving you or took away your first ship to teach you a lesson. But it would be easy enough for you to find out with your rank, the connections, and the reputation of always finding all the answers nobody else can.” She sat back and positively glared. “And while you are on that quest for the truth, I suggest you take the woman you so clearly love out of the equation to take a long hard look at yourself to decide what it is that you really want out of life. As it occurs to me that it is long past time you stopped caring about what the admiral wanted and chose your next adventure based on your own dreams, for a change.”