Chapter Twenty
‘O ur Navy is frustrating you, Miss Fontaine,’ Admiral Collingwood said as they stood together on the deck of the Queen and watched John and Allan on the quarterdeck of the Swallow , following the struggling Jaunty and Hartford .
‘Sir, I would have liked Captain Beattie to remain here,’ she admitted.
He gave a heartfelt sigh. ‘I have a confession, Miss Fontaine; if even the smallest occasion arises between now and his return tomorrow, I would like John to learn what he can about Captain Tyler and his Navy.’
‘My life used to be simple,’ Anna sighed.
‘He will return tomorrow before noon for your wedding,’ the Admiral reminded her, then laughed. ‘My orders be damned, eh? Don’t tell me you’re not thinking that, pretty miss!’
‘I’m no prevaricator,’ she said.
‘We have put you into an odd situation. Between you and me, Miss Fontaine…’ What, he did not say, because his steward announced dinner. Anna wondered if she would ever know.
‘There is this,’ he told her over dinner in the elegant wardroom. ‘My King has decreed that I will not return to England to see my wife and two daughters.’ He sighed. ‘I am needed here, commanding the Mediterranean Fleet.’
He seemed to want plain speaking, something Anna knew she possessed in great abundance—she was no diplomat. He also seemed not to want sympathy. She weighed both and let her heart decide.
‘Dear sir, I always pray for the Royal Navy every night,’ she told him. ‘I have done that since my own late brother first sailed with Captain Beattie.’
‘I imagine many ladies in England do precisely that.’
The Admiral dabbed his lips with his napkin and gave her his direct attention, an act which would have embarrassed her before John had arrived on her doorstep last January and practically demanded her help, his eyes equally determined. These were not men used to argument or dissension.
Admiral Collingwood wanted a comment? She had one just as frank as his. ‘War has decreed a harsh sentence on you, sir. I will also pray for all of us who miss absent ones.’
‘You touch my heart,’ he said simply.
The strangeness of her situation receded as they adjourned to what would have been a sitting room on land, but which was here a clutter of charts and paperwork on desks overflowing in wire baskets. All you want is your family , she thought, and it saddened her.
‘Are you dreadfully busy tonight?’ she asked the Admiral, even as she wondered where her courage came from to so address him.
‘I am always busy,’ he said, but she heard no rebuke, just a lonely man stating a fact.
She knew what she wanted to do, but first there was Pru to consider. Pru sat on the floor by Bounce, her now-faithful servant, his eyes speaking volumes of his devotion to this new little human. Maybe her idea was presumptuous, but her woman’s heart suggested otherwise.
‘Admiral, at the risk of making a great fool of myself, do you have a basket of mending?’ she asked. ‘When my dear brother was in port, and pacing about the sitting room, I liked to spend quiet evenings darning his stockings and mending holes in his shirts.’
She had his attention. Admiral Collingwood quit pacing and stood there, so she babbled on.
‘Sure enough, he would come and sit down, and I would tell him how my day had gone as I stitched.’ Please let this be right , she thought.
‘It helped him relax.’ She couldn’t help smiling at the memory, which had shifted from pain to a healing reminiscence.
‘I was his little sister again, and I think—mind you, I am not certain—but I think he needed the homely reminder that a good portion of the world darns socks and carries on quietly.’
She stopped. I have made a fool of myself , she thought miserably as he stared at her. But no, it felt right. ‘Do you have any mending, Admiral?’
He stared at her. To her relief, he smiled. ‘You, madam, are the genuine article,’ he said. ‘Wait right here.’
She waited as he went into another room, leaving the door open. She heard him rummaging about and humming. He came out and handed her a basket with a courtly bow.
‘Here you are, m’dear, my tattered clothes and a needle and thread. I hope it matches, but no one will see them. I am a sad case, Miss Fontaine. Darn away!’
Admiral Collingwood made himself comfortable on the sofa, shoes off, and told her about his wife Sarah—he called her Sal—and daughters Sarah and Mary Patience. ‘Who is not patient,’ he said, finger upraised. He laughed softly. ‘She is not impressed by admirals, either!’
Soon enough, he reclined on the sofa, hands behind his head, looking for all the world like a man relaxing after a day at the office.
He slept for an hour at least, which meant she had to put her finger to her lips several times when the door opened and some functionary or other peered in.
Finally, they left her alone with the most powerful man in the Royal Navy, sound asleep as she darned his stockings.
She laughed inside at the crazy oddness of her situation, fairly certain this wasn’t how most brides-to-be spent the night before their wedding.
She watched Pru doze, too, leaning against the magisterial Bounce.
What should I be doing? she asked herself.
I have no idea where I will be living, although I do not wish to be as far away from John as Admiral Collingwood is from his wife , even if I am currently a convenience .
She finished her task, wondering how to wake up an admiral snoring on the sofa, when his eyes opened. He looked about in alarm, as if uncertain why he was stretched out so comfortably and no one hurried about with papers to sign, or orders to issue, or whatever it was an admiral at war did.
‘Do not fear, sir,’ she said quietly. ‘Some people looked in on you, and I made them go away.’ She held up a handful of stockings. ‘Now you have stockings without holes. Granted, some of the thread is colourful, but I work with what I have.’
He smiled at that. ‘Miss Fontaine, you have just said something that I wish every man in the fleet understood. We work with what we have.’ He sat up and gave her that piercing look she suspected had energised or intimidated many a seaman.
‘You are a true original. I wonder if your lucky husband-to-be has any idea how fortunate he is.’
‘I would like to see him now and then, but I’ve never been one to expect much.’
‘My dear, it is past time for you to expect more,’ he told her. He looked up from his contemplation of the pile of darned stockings when the door opened. ‘Now the war intrudes again.’ She saw his weariness, and knew the look was another glimpse at the high price of war.
The peace was over. The tired man snoring on the sofa turned into the Admiral of the Fleet again. He opened a door and beckoned her and Pru, now awake and rubbing her eyes.
‘This is where I stow visiting dignitaries, you know, princes without countries, because this war tends to frown on the rule of headless kings; a pasha or bey from North Africa, or…’ and here he bowed ‘…a lady on the verge of matrimony.’ He chuckled.
‘Of that category, you are the first. Sleep well, my dear.’ Another laugh, this one more light-hearted, as if remembering earlier times, other tides, perhaps even his own wife.
‘It might be your last good night’s sleep for a few days.
’ Oh, yes, he was definitely a Navy man. ‘Hah! How you can blush, Miss Proper!’