Chapter 7
Now more aware of the possible situation, Caroline was quick to realize that Lady Marston barely looked at Mrs. Scott but to glare.
Occasional snubs and slights were to be expected from a lady to her companion on a long, confined, and difficult journey, but this seemed to be more of a settled antipathy.
It was a pity, of course, but Caroline felt the more satisfaction of knowing her guess to be correct.
Anne made a point of including Mrs. Scott—now Sophia to both of them—a little more firmly in their activities of walking, sewing, or occasionally singing along with the harpsichord.
The gentlemen would also take part in this.
Both Richard and Wentworth had fine voices.
Mr. Belvedere was the most likely to make up a fourth for cards with the three ladies, for neither Captain Wentworth nor Richard—although they liked cards—could bear to play whist, piquet, or euchre ad nauseum on hot, lazy days, of which they had several.
Anne and Wentworth did play cribbage at times, for his sister, Mrs. Sophia Croft, had gifted Anne with a beautiful cribbage board.
“The Admiral and I weathered many a bleak afternoon with this game!” she’d told Anne.
“It is quite one of my favorites, and I hope you and my brother will have as many happy hours.”
Cribbage could also be played by four instead of two, when Captain Wentworth was not in the mood.
Mr. Belvedere often partnered with Mrs. Scott when they played, while Caroline paired with Anne.
But Caroline soon put a stop to that. “You simply cannot partner with Sophia every time! Together, you two are unconquerable. I do not know who is manipulating the cards, but it falls uncannily in your favor.”
“That is skill, not trickery,” Mr. Belvedere protested. “Mrs. Scott is a clever player, but I could win with any partner.”
Sophia raised a brow. “Any partner? I see how I am valued.”
“But I called you a clever player, ma’am!”
“Care to place a wager on it?” she asked. “Whether you can win against me with Mrs. Fitzwilliam or Mrs. Wentworth as your partner?”
His eyes kindled, and his mouth and chin suddenly looked firmer, more decisive. “Wouldn’t I? What stakes, ma’am?”
“Five pounds?”
“Oh, no,” Anne said. “Surely we needn’t play high.”
To Caroline, it was not so very high, but then, it was not low either.
She had been at parties where a common wager was five or ten shillings—there were twenty shillings to a pound—or as high as a hundred pounds.
Five pounds could very well be a fifth or sixth of Mrs. Scott’s annual salary as a companion, if she was paid at all.
Even for some tradesmen, five pounds was a monthly income.
“On the contrary,” Mrs. Scott said with a shrug, “I fancy Mr. Belvedere seldom wagers for so little. He must remember that he plays amongst women, who have only access to the funds in our cabins. Will you take my small wager, sir?”
“If you will not regret it,” he said, a little more gently than he was wont.
“Please, I need the distraction.”
“Very well, we shall play two more games. I will partner for the first with Mrs. Fitzwilliam, and for the second with Mrs. Wentworth. If you win both—”
“But that is hardly fair,” Anne protested. “One game could easily change with the luck of the cards. I think several would be required to prove whether the decisive skill is yours or hers.”
“You are clearly on Mrs. Scott’s side, ma’am, but I can hardly blame you. Perhaps we should have a set—she must win two out of three games against me and my partner.”
“Agreed,” Mrs. Scott said. She wrinkled her nose at Anne. “Please don’t think less of me. I was used to wager with the girls at school, and I do have a taste for it!”
Anne sighed. “I myself have no taste for gambling, but I know many women find it exhilarating.”
“Who will you choose for your partner then?” Mr. Belvedere asked.
“I think—if you will not be hurt, dear Mrs. Wentworth, I will choose Mrs. Fitzwilliam as my partner,” Sophia said.
“It is just as well,” Anne replied. “Caroline is more competitive than I.”
“But you must play as well as you can,” Sophia said to Anne. “Indeed, don’t think of the wager at all! I would not like Mr. Belvedere to say my friends—er, my fellow travelers—threw the game against him.”
“As your friend,” Anne said, finally entering into the spirit of the thing, with a small smile, “I shall play as well as I can. I am sure you don’t need that sort of help to trounce Mr. Belvedere.”
“Oho!” he cried. “The gauntlet is thrown.”
They decided to play the set of cribbage games the following day, as evening had already begun to fall and the smells of roasted fish—caught earlier in the day—as well as smoked apricot, boiled green beans, and yeasty dinner rolls proceeded from the galley just behind the dining room.
The cook sometimes used the oven in the dining room as well, although the extra heat was not very welcome on hot days.
If their journey had been midwinter or spring, Caroline was sure they would appreciate the warmth more.
Dinner had been more subdued since the incident with the mail bags.
Caroline was tired of the whole discussion, but Captain Smythe seemed unable to leave it.
The passengers somewhat guiltily discussed other things, but even after a hearty laugh about one of Captain Wentworth’s wonderful stories, the mood was inevitably dimmed by the captain’s anxiety.
He had found absolutely nothing among his men, and it was plain to be seen he looked at Mr. Belvedere with a severe and accusing gaze. It was all the more acute for Mr. Belvedere’s prolonged claim of innocence, as if Captain Smythe would forgive all if he would only confess.
“For it is not,” the Captain said, returning to the subject, “such an easy thing to sneak around a ship! Why, I could leave my cabin, but I daresay, Colonel, you would know if your wife left. Only a person alone in their cabin would do.”
Mr. Belvedere grimaced. “I know, sir! But I am not the only person in a single cabin. There is the ship’s surgeon,” he nodded to that taciturn gentleman, “as well as Mrs. Scott, and I suppose—the maids—”
“No, Minnie and Susan are together.” Caroline thought perhaps Mr. Belvedere was more sensitive to the accusations than he let on, from a few furtive, uncomfortable looks he cast around the party.
But… if he was the culprit, she was more and more inclined to think it a foolish whim than a villainous plot.
“I am glad Minnie is feeling so much better,” Anne said, clearly trying to shift the topic again. It seemed they all took turns doing so at dinner now. “The dreadful sea sickness has left off. It seems quite remarkable to me that the rest of us have not been so ill.”
“It is,” Captain Wentworth agreed. “For first time travelers, including Mr. Belvedere and Lady Marston, you are all top-rate sailors.”
Lady Marston unbent enough to smile at Captain Wentworth.
“I am not a first time-traveler, sir, for I took sail to Jamaica—Port Royal—when I was much younger. I did not experience a day of sickness, except for a horrid period when we were driven by a hurricane. And I was not the only one brought low by it.”
This sparked a discussion of hurricanes, typhoons, and tempests—and also of travel to and from the continent, the Americas, even Cape Town. It was the most cheerful discussion they had had in days, with even Lady Marston interjecting.
“My friend Beaumont had one of the worst Atlantic crossings,” Captain Wentworth said. “No one died, but it took him nine weeks—”
Captain Smythe whistled in horror.
“Exactly, sir. And even worse, he had just been married—or near enough—and the whole time he was fretting like a fly in a tar box.”
“How is one near enough married?” Caroline asked.
“Well, he’d been on leave in Lisbon to recuperate with his family after an injury—his father is an army man and was stationed there.
And what should Beaumont do but fall in love with a lady—the daughter of a fellow officer?
He wrote me a truly stomach-turning letter when he was in the throes of it.
What with one thing and another, they knew it might be years before they were both back in England.
Her parents were for the union, but his were cutting up stiff and the chaplain was his father’s man.
So Beaumont and she signed a civil contract—some of our men are doing that, stationed as they are in these Catholic countries like Spain and Brazil—to make it legal.
I think it’s called a notarial contract in Lisbon, not an option we have at home. ”
“Did they get married in the church when they came back to England?” Caroline asked.
“They did—just this past September. I received another letter from him recently. He is a proud father, and they got the English marriage license a few months after the babe’s birth.
It wasn’t an official marriage in England until they had the church’s blessing, but everyone knew how it was; there’s no complications for the child.
Anyway, he says as how that trip to Boston shall live as the worst in his life—pining for his wife and the days piling up like an actuary’s columns. ”
The captain’s face fell again, and he put his head in his hands. “If I don’t find out what’s happened, I’ll not sail to Boston or Bridgetown or anywhere again. Oh, it fair slays me. The Lady Mary deserves better. I don’t know what I’ve done to have such a blatant—”
“Oh, do stop, sir,” Lady Marston said. “I’m sure we all heartily pity you, but we are sick to death of this! None of us touched your precious mail bags and it is the outside of enough to punish us every evening for it.”
The captain’s nose flared as he took a deep breath. “Apologies, my lady, I’m sure. Please forgive me.”
She inclined her head, but the temporary light-heartedness was not to be recaptured, and indeed, worse was to come.
The first mate came again as the party began to break up, and Captain Smythe’s face blanched. “Don’t tell me there is something else amiss—”
“No, sir, that is—it’s Donny’s bird. It’s dead, sir.”
“Oh, no,” said Anne, “that lovely bird. Poor boy.”
“Yes, ma’am. And I wouldn’t’ve disturbed you just for that, sir. Those Carib birds will die—precious fragile, some of them—and we’ve no idea how old it is, not when it was already at least ten when Henks gave it to Donny. But with the current upset on the ship, the men are feeling uneasy.”
“Of course they are,” growled the captain. “And Donny will be infecting them all with his fears and superstitions.”
“Do you think someone did the bird a mischief?” Richard asked.
“Who’s to say? In the end, it don’t matter if it were a plot or if it weren’t, for it’s the darndest mischance! I don’t like it.”
The party broke up by troubled, mutual accord soon after. Susan came to help the ladies, and Richard again tabulated how many days until they could reach Lisbon… when a nearby scream of rage stopped everything.