Chapter 22
One bright, cold afternoon, a few days into the New Year, George arrived. As ever, he burst into the room without ceremony, the scent of mud and horse clinging to his clothes, and frost gilding the edges of his overcoat.
“Thom, I need to talk—” He paused, gazing about the room, his expression disdainful. “Well, isn’t this domestic.”
Thomas half-rose, his eyes darting in some alarm from George, to Micha, to Sheba.
But then Hope looked up from the map she was studying and said sternly: “It is not domestic. It is the Isla Tortuga, a den of iniquity.”
There was a long silence, filled with far too many tensions, and, surprisingly, George was the first to break it, some hint of a man Thomas had not seen since Edward’s death stirring in the shadows of his eyes.
“Is it now?” He unbuttoned his coat and tossed it aside.
“And who might you be, to frequent such a place?”
“Nancy Blood. Captain Nancy Blood.”
Micha coughed to cover something Thomas was sure had to be amusement, tore the top leaf from his sketchbook, and displayed it to the room.
Wanted, it said, for treacherie ypon the high seas, piracie, iniquitie and sundrie other villanies too vyle to mentioune.
And then a picture of Hope, delineated in heavy black lines to look like a poor-quality woodcut.
“Hope,” said Thomas, with another anxious glance at Sheba. “This is my brother George.”
“Known in these parts,” added George quickly, “as Blackhearted George.”
Hope eyed him appraisingly. “Anyone could be known as Blackhearted George.”
“No they couldn’t.” George dropped to his knees on the rug beside her. “Because it is a name earned through black deeds, and I would gut like a rabid cur any who crossed me.”
Hope looked impressed. “Oh. Tell me of your black deeds. Thomas will not allow me to commit any. I have been a pirate since December, and not a single prisoner has walked the plank.”
“Then I say we keelhaul the lubber, strike the Jolly Roger, and begin plundering the Spanish Main at once.”
Sheba sent Thomas a small, private smile and went back to her book. “Ousted by my own brother,” he said, reassured and laughing a little. “How very typical.”
“Do you mind terribly?” asked Hope.
“Not at all, I don’t think I was cut out for piracy.”
“You can be the local governor,” she offered, magnanimously.
“Why, thank you.”
“And then we shall capture you and hold you for ransom.”
“Ah.” Thomas’s face fell. “Must you?”
“Yes, I am sure you are deeply corrupt.”
Thomas looked to his brother for help, but George was busy turning over the coffee table and dragging it into the centre of the room. “Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Later, old boy, later. The tide waits for no man. And bring grog!” He lowered his voice.
“Or tea, as I believe some people foolishly call it.” George, Thomas realised with sudden joy, was looking far better than the last few times he had seen him.
His face was still marked by weariness and dissipation, but his eyes were clear. “And hardtack.”
“You mean . . . biscuits?”
“Aye!”
Thomas surrendered with good grace and nodded at his housekeeper, patiently standing nearby. “As you wish, but please be nice to poor Mrs. Allen. She is not to be menaced by pirates.”
Poor Mrs. Allen told them, in no uncertain terms, she thought they all belonged in Bedlam, and that they were not to break anything.
They broke a few things, a vase, a chair, and a table leg, but George dismissed these as inevitable casualties of the pirate life.
They terrorised the high seas for most of the afternoon and a good part of the evening, captured the Spanish silver train, unearthed buried treasure, thwarted a mutiny, overthrew Thomas, and turned Port Royal into a republic and pirate haven.
Micha, who had watched the adventures unfold from his window seat, his pencil long stilled over his paper, at last threw his sketchbook aside, joined the navy, rose through the ranks sufficiently to claim command of the HMS Dining Room Table, and came to Thomas’s rescue.
Thomas, who had been sitting quite contentedly in the bilge, writing Sunday’s sermon, found himself the subject of several hairsbreadth ’scapes and sudden reversals of fortune, and came very close to being forced to walk the plank over shark-infested waters on no less than six separate occasions.
Following a pitched sea battle with an entire pirate fleet, ably led by Captain Nancy Blood and her loyal minion, Blackhearted George, Commodore Dashwood and Governor Mandeville found themselves marooned on a desert island, and the saga came to its natural end.
“What happens after?” asked Hope, pink-cheeked from the exertions and dramas of piracy. “Do you expire slowly of privation and tropical disease?”
“Of course not,” said Micha. “I build us a cabin, of wood and leaves and . . . things. Like Robinson Crusoe.”
“I learn to catch fish and hunt wild game,” added Thomas.
“We eat mangoes that taste of dusty sunlight.”
“Drink from mountain streams as clear as glass.”
Hope glanced between them, her expression a little bit quizzical. “You could be rescued?”
Micha laughed, lost in the moment, and Thomas, heedless, was laughing too. “We don’t need to be rescued. We live happily ever after.”
“That seems fair,” said Hope, into the sudden silence.
She and her mother departed not long after, as the hour had grown late, and Micha, George, and Thomas attempted to return the rectory to something like proper order before Mrs. Allen came back in the morning and saw the mess.
The nonsense that had made them comrades through the afternoon had fled, leaving them strangers again.
Thomas tried desperately to think of something he could say that would bridge the chasm between his last remaining brother and the lover he could not acknowledge.
George smoothed his hair back into civilised order. “Charming child. I suppose you’ll wed the mother?”
“Well . . .”
“The marquess won’t like it, of course, but he fades with every passing day.
Do what you will—there’s nothing he can do to stop you.
” His hand came down on Thomas’s shoulder, warm and steady, but heavier than Thomas found entirely comfortable.
“Take your happiness, Thom. And the devil can take our father.”
“George, I—”
“I should go.” Micha’s voice cut through him like a blade. “I have things to do.”
George’s eyes flicked his way, as if he had only just remembered the other man was still present. “Yes, you should.”
Thomas opened his mouth to protest, but Micha simply nodded and fled, the door crashing closed behind him.
George crossed the room to the sideboard, where there was a decanter of brandy, almost two-thirds full. He poured himself a glass, and then merely stood staring at it, tilting the liquid back and forth, lost in thought.
“George,” said Thomas. “George. I do not intend to marry Sheba.”
His brother’s eyes lifted reluctantly from the glass, as if they had trouble focusing on anything else.
“But you’re not a man to keep a mistress.
Is it because of her past? Or because I tried my luck with her?
She’d have none of me, Thom. And if it’s a question of money, when the title’s mine, you can have all you want. ”
Thomas drew in a steadying breath. “I care for her, very much, but I have no wish to marry. She has no such expectations.”
“Women always have expectations.”
“Not in this case.”
George lifted the glass, then sighed and put it down again. “I shouldn’t drink this. I want it too much.” He strolled back into the centre of the room. “Apologise to her for me, won’t you? It don’t mean a damn, of course. I’m a beast, I know I am, but maybe she’d like to hear it.”
“You are no beast, but I’ll gladly deliver the message.”
George made an abstract gesture of gratitude and slumped into a chair. “You might want to take that drink, old man. I have some things to tell you.”
“Are you well, George?” Thomas had no wish to drink either and perched anxiously on the edge of the sofa. “You seem to have found some measure of peace.”
“Some measure of it, perhaps. I don’t know.
Trying not to drink. Hell on bloody earth.
” George reached into an inner pocket of his coat and pulled out a tattered bundle of papers.
“I found this among Edward’s things.” Thomas reached out to take it, and George pulled his hand back.
“It’s going to shock you, Thom. I’m sorry. ”
A chill crept over Thomas’s skin. “Show me.” George let him take the book, which was little more than a bound pamphlet, printed on cheap paper by a careless hand. The blurred frontispiece read: The Gentlemen of London, for the Year 1862. “I don’t understand? What is it?”
“Read it.”
Thomas let the pages fall open where they would and cast his eyes, somewhat uncertainly, over the words that appeared before them.
Mr. B. Wils-n, No. 27 St. Giles. This pretty gentleman is somewhat plump, but fair of face, and possessing every requisite to make an agreeable bedfellow.
He performs all paces in a pleasing manner.
Thomas glanced at his brother, still bewildered, a faint sense or premonition of sickness swirling within him. “I still don’t understand?”
But George only exhorted him with a wave of his hand to read on.
Thomas turned the page. Mr. K. R-ssell, Titchfield Street.
An impressive stallion, near thirty years of age, a Yorkshireman by birth, rather lusty, with the strength to perform whatever labour may be requested.
It is a pity he has received no education; however there are some who derive great relish from a certain coarseness of manner and vulgarity of expression that may be well served in his arms. He is also celebrated for the dexterity with which he yields a birchen rod for the gratification of those gentlemen who have occasion for this activity to raise the fire of Alexander in their veins.