“. . . and so you see, with all those extra rooms, Heygate says we can come to him any time. And Underwood says the same, it would be jolly. Like school, but better, because there are no masters frowning at you.”
Sophia understood at last, and said what she saw he most hoped to hear: “Of course you must stay with your friends when they invite you.”
“They always invite me,” Edward said eagerly. “But I felt I ought to come to you, my first duty being to my family.”
Sophia did not like hearing of herself as a duty, but she knew her brother’s heart. There was nothing insufferable here, only the conflicting pulls of love, half-comprehended by a schoolboy.
“I think,” she said, “you ought to go to your friends whenever they ask. I am content here with my garden and my newsprint and Frederick and Captain Croft both write regularly, you know.”
Her reward was a sudden, rare hug from her gentle, retiring brother. “You are the best sister anybody could conceive,” he declared with heartfelt sincerity.
And two days later she waved at him as he climbed onto the mail coach, which would take him to Leeds where Sir Robert Heygate would arrange to meet him.
Thus leaving Sophia once more to her solitary life, unaware of how much interest the villagers took in her because of George Forsham’s visits.
The days passed one much like another, and by the time the roads had cleared enough for walks, winter was nearly over.
When George reappeared again after a winter of his sister’s insufferable cronies and the cold scorn of Phylida, he was more tortured than ever by hopes and doubts.
These increased when Sophia welcomed him with her customary friendly ease. And though he watched her minutely for signs that she might be setting her cap at him (how would he know?) he could not bring himself to put forward the question that he had been revolving in his mind all winter long.
And so, at the end of his call, he trod home again, baffled as to how to go on. Sophia finished cooking a meal, cleaned the cottage from top to bottom, and sat down to catch up on all the news she had missed. It seemed that the days of the Terror were over, but this fellow Bonaparte was still rampaging about, which inevitably drew the Navy to the Mediterranean. She hoped to see mention of the Swiftsure, that she might guess where her letters had reached.
Things might have gone on in this manner indefinitely had not Sir Ralph’s cook’s daughter, in the village to make purchases for her mother, called on her great-aunt, the village postmistress, the day the winter’s post was collected by Sophia.
“La,” said the niece as she watched Sophia put a thick packet of string tied letters into her basket, then walk out to continue her shopping. “Who would think that her brothers would be such letter writers?”
“Oh,” her great-aunt said, laying a finger beside her nose. “I mention no names. I insinuate nothing, for I will say this, Miss Wentworth is as polite as can be, and not putting herself above her company, as do some I could name. But at the same time, a body has eyes and ears, and cannot help what she sees and hears.” And to her niece’s round eyes, she said, “Between ourselves, it seems that Widow’s Cottage is receiving a great deal more notice than it ever did in Widow Colbert’s day, between the young squire’s walking that way, and the arrival of letters from the Admiralty on which the name is not Wentworth.”
This was exactly the kind of gossip that enlivened an otherwise tiresome day of toil for the niece, who carried it back to Sir Ralph’s, and repeated it to her mother. This individual found it highly entertaining for the space of five minutes, then promptly forgot about it, until spring set in at last.
By then George had resumed his weekly habit in so regular a train that he became careless, and was consequently seen not only by a shepherd and a farmer, but also by the squire’s boot boy on the way to the cobbler.
By late April it was fairly well known by those beyond the green baize door that the squire’s son was walking out in secret with the female at Widow’s Cottage, and so toplofty was the squire’s wife—so obviously above her company—that the shared joke through the entire countryside was the richer.
Then one fine Sunday in May, when Sir Ralph’s cook chanced to meet the Forsham housekeeper at a local wedding, they sat apart for the comfort of a gossip in the way of acquaintances for fifty years. After they had thoroughly canvased all their wide acquaintance, Sophia’s name came up in her turn.
“Wentworth?” the cook repeated. “Is that not the same young female who has got a secret correspondent in the navy?”
“Secret correspondent?” the housekeeper exclaimed in accents of horror, hands raised, then she leaned forward eagerly.
“My own daughter has seen them herself. Why, this Croft fellow writes two love letters to every one she receives from her brother, according to the postmistress. And here’s the squire’s son walking over there every chance he can get, with flowers, gifts, and jewels. It’s said she won’t accept of Master George lest he become squire himself, and meanwhile is hanging out for an admiral.”
“What?” The housekeeper raised her hands in delightful horror. “And there she sits in Church of a Sunday, prim as a Methody!”
From lips to ears the gossip swelled deliciously into scandal, until at last Mrs. Forsham’s dresser overheard a scrap of gossip in the servants’ hall, and carried it straight to her mistress.
Thus, a fortnight later, when Sophia had turned out all her furniture to scrub out her floors, she looked up in amazement as a powdered footman drove an elegant closed carriage directly toward the cottage.
Sophia stood at her threshold with her cleaning apron on, her hair bound up in a kerchief, and her worst gown wet to the knees as none other than Squire Forsham’s wife stepped out of the carriage. And, clutching her mittened gloves tight to her chest, she marched up to Sophia, scowled formidably, and stated, “Miss Wentworth, I am to understand? I beg you will honor me with the truth: how long have you been entangled with my son?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Devil take it, Croft has his head a-bandaged, but there he is, at it again. What does he think to do, pen another Roderick Random?”
“Oh, he and Wentworth of the Swiftsure, between ’em scribble away, but at all events, they have something to write about this time, eh? Ha ha!”
The speaker pointed to the new mast being stepped, the workmen banging away at repairs of the forecastle, and the deck strewn with cordage, blocks, barrels of pitch, and carpenter’s tools.
“That they do,” the first voice agreed, to general laughter.
Captain Croft was scarcely aware of the banter. He was equally inured to the stunning heat that caused the white buildings of Gibraltar to reflect back the sun in a blinding glare, and the water in the bay to sparkle with infinite shards of light.
He sat in the cabin of his ship, which was undergoing vast repairs, it having taken tremendous damage from the debris after the explosion of L’Orient at the Nile. Around his head had been tied a bandage, covering a wound from a splinter.
Frederick, having sustained a sword thrust in his arm, had in the immediate aftermath of the battle requested of him to write out everything that had happened in Akoubir Bay.
Now that they were anchored and all reports had been written, Croft had allowed himself the pleasure of another letter, and his mind had gone back to the heat, the smoke drifting over the water, and the faint cries for help as they pulled Frenchman and Englishman alike out of the churning sea. He did not heed the brief bustle at the side as someone asked and was given permission to come aboard by the officer of the watch.
Thus he was startled into the present by the appearance of Frederick Wentworth himself, hat under his left arm, as his right was in a sling. As soon as they were alone in the cabin, he said with the familiarity borne of several years of working and fighting side by side, “Croft, have you been posting our letters under your name instead of mine? Because there’s the devil of a scandalbroth.”
“What is this? Scandalb
roth? I might have, in my haste—I forget . . .”
Frederick held out a letter, his young face uncharacteristically grim.
My dearest Frederick:
If you are still with Captain Croft, I must trouble you to send your letters directly to Edward, who will bring them to me when he can come to visit.
The most vexatious thing! I believe I have mention’d how Mr. Forsham, heir to Squire Forsham, has done me the Kindness to bring the newspapers when his family has finished with them. But Mrs. Forsham is not Agreed that his kindness was Disinterested, and appeared here to accuse me of ill-conduct with respect to her son.
Perhaps she believ’d me only because I was Astonish’d, or she might think I am practicing upon them all with my evil wiles. But she made it plain that she will not countenance my receiving letters from gentlemen unrelated to me—it is her Duty to protect the good name of the Neighborhood.
Believing myself having become Notorious, I have confin’d myself to going into the village only to buy what is Necessary and when I am at church, I am last in and first Out, so that I may walk directly back to the cottage. . . .
“Forsham?” Captain Croft exclaimed as he handed the letter back. “Devil fly away with him! And it was I who introduced them. But I had known him for a slow coach, more interested in his horses than in company. ‘Entanglement’? What does that mean? Who would have thought that younker would turn into a cursed rake?”
Frederick lifted a shoulder, looking away in embarrassment as he muttered, “Sophia would never do anything wrong.”
“Of course she would not. That damned young hound Forsham is entirely to blame, is my thinking.”
Croft hesitated, recognized that Frederick had only lately come to the age of noticing such things, and—aware of the ever-listening ears beyond the open skylights of his ship—said only, “Well, well, let us take a turn on the deck. I find myself in need of a breath of air.”
On the quarterdeck, Croft could walk on the windward side and everyone must keep their distance. Frederick followed him in silence, musing that he had known his friend through how many cruises? He had seen Croft keep his temper under drunken first lieutenants, capricious captains, hellish weather, and under fire, but he could not recollect ever seeing him white-lipped with anger.
They reached the taffrail, beyond which seabirds swooped and dived, and a cable’s length away, voices rose as a party of seamen stepped a new mast into a captured French 74.
Croft turned, and regarding his young friend, said in a low voice, “Wentworth, I would like to marry your sister.”
Frederick was startled into exclaiming, “How is this?” He blushed crimson, then said more quickly, “Capital! Er—is this something Sophia wants?”
“I cannot say,” was the honest answer. “The truth is, I’ve been turning it over in my mind since I first saw her. But she was full young, and I had no prospects—only a humbug would speak under those circumstances. There will be prize money out of the battle at Akoubir Bay, and, well, I thought I would put it to the touch when next we met—and this just determines me to go at ’em, as Nelson says. Never mind the maneuvering, go up and offer her my hand, everything honorable. If I have your blessing.”
“Of course—of course,” Frederick said in haste, recollecting that he was in some wise the head of the family. But such matters were as ships hull-down on the horizon—far beyond his knowledge. “Though Sophia has been her own mistress since our mother died.”
“I know that,” Croft said, thinking that ‘mistress of herself’ really meant going it alone, for he had recognized in those long letters, in spite of their determinedly cheerful tone, what a solitary existence she really led. But her brothers were in many ways still boys, and did not seem to notice. Until now he had not thought it his business to say anything.
But that was over, he thought, scowling at the idea of that fool George Forsham preying on her solitary condition. Well, he now had leave to clap a stopper over that.
“Thank you.” He shook Frederick by the hand, and said nothing more, noticing that his clerk, the bosun, and the carpenter stood in view, waiting for his attention.
His aching head forgotten, he set about winding up the ship’s affairs.
Within a week Croft petitioned the admiral for leave, and on that being promptly granted (the admiral finding it convenient to send along with official dispatches some captured French finery to his wife) he climbed aboard the next packet for England.
During that long journey he reread all of Sophia’s letters, trying to hear her voice. He had wanted to say something all this time, but until this recent battle, he had not had the wherewithal to speak. Every wave, every shift of wind made him impatient, and he walked the deck, scowling up at the trim and gritting his teeth against pointing out adjustments of sail to wring more speed from the packet.
But the recalcitrant winds were no proof against them. He arrived not long after the New Year, when England was still in the grip of celebration over the glorious victory of Nelson’s Battle of the Nile.
In London he was able to arrange his prize money with his agent. Then he set out in a post chaise for Somerset.
Eventually he arrived in Taunton, and changed horses at an inn where he was well known from the days when he’d stayed with his uncle.
He had planned during his long journey how it would be—sweeping up in his full dress uniform to restore honor to poor, solitary and friendless Miss Wentworth, even if he must fight the blackguard who had wronged her. But what he found so right and true in his imagination over the weeks faltered as he jounced over the ruts in the lane to Widow’s Cottage.
He had reduced Miss Wentworth to a small, forlorn figure in his mind, falsely accused by the villainous squire’s wife, but when he drew up before Sophia’s cottage the wispy, forlorn maiden of his imagination vanished like smoke after a broadside. Here was Miss Wentworth, strong and upright, smiling with surprise. That smile ignited his heart in a way that made breathing difficult.
His hands shook. His neck heated up and then unaccountably chilled as he climbed down. He scarcely noticed the post boy talking, consequently it was Sophia who—after an inquiring glance as Captain Croft’s red face—said, “Yes, yes, do walk the team, please.” And to Captain Croft, “Unless you are bound somewhere?”
“I—I . . .” He gazed into her expectant gaze, and the honest welcome he saw there enabled him to stutter into speech, though far less forcefully than he had intended. “This Forsham. The squire’s son—”
Sophia did not hide her disappointment. So he had not come to call upon her after all? “I am sorry to tell you, but I believe he is still in London. But you will find out the details when you call at the manse.”
“I don’t wish to call at the manse.” He mashed his hat against his side, and shifted from one foot to the other. “I came to—that is, I had it in my head to—are you well, Miss Wentworth?”
“Very well, thank you.” Sophia gazed up into his face, puzzled at his disjointed words and his thunderous brow. Despite these confusing signs she was so very delighted to see him standing there on her doorstep, she shook off her own questions and said, “Pray step inside, Captain Croft.”
His painfully anxious expression eased. He ducked his head and walked into the neat little parlor with its few sticks of furniture, and Frederick’s ceramic on the mantel. He walked to it, touched it, and turned. “I was by when he bought this trumpery thing. He insisted that blue would be your favorite color, though the potter’s assistant claimed that ‘ladies’ all preferred rose, and yellow, and white.”
“Frederick knows that I am partial to eggshell blue,” Sophia said, clasping her hands tightly under her apron, as she tried to comprehend that Captain Croft was actually standing right there in her cottage, large as life.
“I shall remember that,” he said, smiling as he gazed searchingly into her face.
That same sense of warmth that she remembered from the assembly filled her heart as she met his gaze
, and she was vaguely aware of a sense of giddiness she could not explain as she said, “May I pour you some dandelion wine? Or offer you—”
“Nothing, nothing.” He carefully set his hat upon the corner of the table, from which it promptly fell unnoticed to the floor. He spread his hands as he slowly chose his words. It was vital to get it right, to not misspeak. “Your letter. It said—upon my word, how can I put this? That rantipole George Forsham. He did you an ill turn?”
“Oh! Poor George!” She laughed. “The trouble was entirely due to his mother, who chose to meddle in what did not exist. He was sent away for wanting to make me his wife, which until Mrs. Forsham troubled herself to come here and accuse me, I hadn’t the least notion was in his head. Nor would I have agreed even if he had gained the courage to put the question.”
Captain Croft stared at her, his plans for a dramatic rescue withering in the bright sunlight of her simple words. But his heart still pounded against his ribs, and his palms felt clammy. He wanted so badly to close the distance between them, but he must speak right. It was very important to speak right. “I came to see you. And to call him to account. But of course I am dashed late.”
Sophia gazed at those steady eyes, a new idea blooming—was it possible that he, too, glowed with candlelight whenever they saw one another?
Before spring, she had never considered herself in any romantic light. Her life was to be useful, devoted to her brothers. But after Mrs. Forsham’s stunning accusation, she had had a long time to think about the possibility that not everyone thought her unmarriageable. And then her mind homed directly to her precious letters, and how terrible it would be not to get them.
How terrible life would be if she lost this little connection to Captain Croft.
“You are not late at all,” she said slowly. “You are always welcome to me.”
The honesty in her countenance, the simple words, heartened him. He stepped toward her, one hand out-held. “Miss Wentworth, I am a sailor, and plain-spoken. And we never have much time to dawdle—it’s touch and sail, tide waiting for no one. I came to offer myself, if you’ll have me. I cannot promise much, and I am willing to wait as long—”