A lull in the noise and general conversation in the room allowed Sam to hear bustling in the entry hall. When he saw the duchess through the doorway, escorted by Grissom, the innkeeper, he signaled to one of the serving maids to bring the pot of tea he’d ordered. He rose as she crossed the room, and drank in the sight of her as she approached the alcove.
By all rights, a woman of her age should not look so appealing, and yet a brief surge of sexual desire crested and broke like a wave inside him. It was pure stupidity, of course. They were both too old for such nonsense. His only excuse was that he had been without a woman for too long.
But damn it all, she looked good. Without the bonnet, it was easier to study her. Willie’s face still held much of the beauty she’d had at sixteen. Good bones, he supposed. She would always have classic good looks, he imagined, even in her eighties. Her hair was still blond but more honey-gold than the bright guinea-gold of her youth. Were there silver strands among the gold? He couldn’t see any, but she was only two years his junior, and he had more silver in his hair than he’d like.
But it was the way she moved that stirred his loins. A sort of feline grace that drew all eyes to her as she crossed the public room. The skirts of her white dress flowed elegantly as she walked, hinting at the curve of thigh and hip beneath, and the bodice dipped into a deep vee that revealed a tantalizing glimpse of bosom. Even at her age she radiated an irresistible sensuality. Was it a performance, well practiced, or had it always been there, drawing him from the start, all those years ago?
“Duchess,” he said as he held out a hand to her.
“Thank you, Sam.” She took his hand and allowed him to guide her up the two steps to the alcove. When she was seated, she looked up at him and smiled. “I am sorry to have been so long. You have no idea how complicated a process it can be for ladies to dress, even with help.”
“It was worth the wait,” he said as he took the seat across from her. “You look beautiful.”
She chuckled. “Sam! You have become a flatterer.”
He smiled and shrugged, a bit embarrassed that he had spoken his thoughts aloud. He was saved from responding by the arrival of no less than Mrs. Grissom with a pot of tea and a serving girl with a tray of crusty bread and butter and jam. The tea service was obviously her best china—not the heavy blue and white dishes that lined the old deal dressers flanking the fireplace, but delicately thin-walled pieces such as Sam had brought his wife from the East Indies.
“Here you are, Your Grace, a nice pot of my best Bohea. And more ale for you, Cap’n.” Mrs. Grissom and the girl unloaded their trays and arranged everything on the table just so, as if they were in the finest restaurant in London instead of the old Blue Boar in Upper Hampden. “The bread’s fresh baked, and there’s good local butter and my own blackberry jam. If there’s anything else you need, you just ask Lizzie here to fetch it for you.”
The duchess offered effusive thanks and the innkeeper’s wife beamed, bobbed several curtsies, then tugged the girl Lizzie with her as she left them. While Willie set about preparing the tea, Sam marveled at how easily she wore the mantle of her high rank. She truly was a duchess, every inch of her. The blacksmith’s daughter had done very well for herself.
“What brings you to this part of England?” she asked. “I confess I was astonished to see you here.”
“No more astonished than I was to see you. I somehow imagined you never left London.”
“Oh, I sometimes follow the beau monde to Brighton or a country house party. I have just come from one, in fact, and was on my way home when this wretched storm broke through. But this is a charming old inn, is it not? A fine place to stay the night and hope for sun in the morning. And you?”
“I am a more intrepid traveler, I fear. I am simply waiting for the rain to stop and I will be on my way.”
“To…?”
“I am to visit friends who live a bit north of here. But I must say, Willie, that I am delighted to have met you here. It has been such a long time since I’ve seen you.”
“Ten years.”
His brows lifted in surprise. “Sink me, has it been ten years?” Could it really be that long? Yes, it had been 1804, during that long leave after Sarah’s death, before Trafalgar. It was the last time he’d visited London, in fact. He had not even come to town for Nelson’s funeral in 1806. Oh yes, he remembered his last meeting with Willie quite vividly. It was when he learned she had married the Duke of Hertford, and he had barely avoided making a prime fool of himself.
And yet she knew exactly how long it had been. Lord, he hoped the date wasn’t burned in her memory because of his bumbling behavior.
“How have you been, Willie?”
“Very well, thank you.” She looked up from pouring tea and caught his eye. “That was not merely an idle question, was it? Yes, I am indeed very well. I have a good life. I have become quite a respectable widow, you see. But what of you? With the wars over, have you come home to stay a while?”
“More than a while. With Boney confined to Elba, there is little activity for the navy in Europe. And I have no desire to join the war in America. Instead, I have retired.”
“Retired? I rather thought you’d stay on until you’d made admiral, at least.”
“The navy wasn’t my choice as a career, you may remember. I have enjoyed it, though, and would not have missed it. But I’m tired of bouncing about the world and want to plant more permanent roots. I have a little place on the Sussex coast that I am rather fond of. I’d like to live quietly for a while and watch the sun rise and set over green instead of blue.”
“You will miss the sea.”
“Perhaps. Many of my fellow officers are bored to the bone and secretly praying for a new war. As for me, I am ready to enjoy a long peace. To spend the rest of my days on dry land, in Sussex. It’s a fine house with a small park, a view of the sea from the front and the south downs from the rear.” He grinned at her and winked. “Perhaps I’ll become a gentleman farmer.”
She laughed, and the sound took him back to that hayloft in Porthruan, where they had gifted each other with their virginity. It was the same musical laugh. A touch lower in timbre, but still the same. “Do you know anything about farming, Sam?”
“Not a bit. But I can hire people who do, while I sit by my fire with my pipe and my dogs and grow to a crusty old age. But for now, I’m going to enjoy the peace and collect my half-pay—”
“Half-pay? But I thought you retired.”
“One never retires from the Royal Navy, Willie. There is no provision for it. Once you join, you’re in for life. But you can opt to go on half-pay and live as you please until you are called to duty. Then you must report or lose your half-pay, which is precisely what I intend to do.”
For the next half hour she peppered him with questions about his naval experiences, and they talked easily together about the places he’d been, the battles he’d fought, the occasional foray into the East Indies, and the tedious blockade duties that had kept him busy the last half-dozen years.
He watched her closely as they talked. She was still an uncommonly handsome woman. No, “handsome” was too bland a word for the duchess. She was beautiful. Not in that fresh-bloom-of-youth way that had so captivated him as a boy, when she was soft and round and pink-cheeked. Now she had the sort of timeless beauty of antique marble statues he’d seen in Greece. Every plane and angle was perfect, even if etched with a line or two.
And yet, beneath the elegant and no doubt expensively maintained veneer, the pretty young girl he’d once known still lurked, catching him off guard now and then and robbing him of breath: in the way the merest hint of a dimple winked at one corner of her mouth, or the way she tilted her head as she listened to him speak, or the way she wrinkled her nose when she laughed. In such moments, decades rolled away and he was back in Cornwall. In the hayloft with his girl.
He had to wonder if things had gone as they’d planned, if he’d never been taken by the press gang and they
’d married, would she have retained her beauty? Or would she now be haggard and worn out at forty-one, her looks long faded, bowed down by a hardscrabble life of drudgery and childbearing? Or would they have been so happy together that life would never have seemed too difficult?
There was no way to know what might have been, and no way to change the past, so there was no point in dwelling on it. Sam had always been forward-looking, making the best out of what life brought him.
But what was he to make out of this chance encounter? How was he to make the best of it?
“And what of you, Sam? I mean on a personal level. When we last met you had lost your wife. Have you remarried? Had more children?”
He shook his head. “No. I’ve been away too much. I took leave when I could to see Tom, of course.”
“Your son?”
“Yes. But no time for wooing a wife. A blockade captain’s life is not his own.”
“I never understood how an impressed seaman managed to rise to the rank of captain.”
“Mine was not a typical path, I assure you. In fact, my career has been quite out of the ordinary. I have always been a good sailor, as you know.”
She did know. Wilhelmina smiled and remembered the young Sam, scampering about on the cove, more at home on a fishing boat than on shore.
“My natural abilities were noticed and utilized from the start,” he continued. “Once I realized there was no going home for me, that I was stuck in the bloody navy against my will, I decided to make the best of it. I enjoyed the life, learned quickly, and put myself forward at every opportunity. After a few years, I was rated able seaman and made it known that I aspired to the quarterdeck. I was fortunate in my captain, who went against tradition to eventually assign me a midshipman’s rating.”
She poured another cup of tea, only to find the pot empty. Looking about, she caught Lizzie’s eye across the room and lifted an eyebrow. The girl bobbed and hurried off. Wilhelmina wanted to sit here for hours and listen to Sam, to allow that voice, still colored with the long Rs and rolling vowels of Cornwall, to wrap around her like a soothing blanket. But she could see that the rain was easing up and he would be wanting to resume his journey, and she didn’t want to let him go just yet. It was the first time they’d had more than a brief conversation in years, and most of those had been either unpleasant or awkward. Talking together like old friends was something she’d never imagined for them, and she savored every moment. Perhaps if she kept him talking, he would never notice if the rain stopped.
“I don’t know much about how the navy works,” she said. “Achieving a midshipman’s rating was unusual?”
“For an impressed seaman, it certainly was.” He shook his head and gave a soft chuckle tinged with self-mockery. “I was three-and-twenty, the oldest midshipman on board, but I was proud as a peacock, and already mapping out a career as an officer. It was just then that we returned to England, after five long years at sea. And I was bursting my buttons with pride in my new assignment, eager to track you down and lay my paltry little fortune, my hoarded bits of prize money, at your feet.”
Ah. At last they’d arrived at the topic they were bound to address, but she had hoped they would not. It had been inevitable, she supposed. But perhaps it was time they talked it out. “And instead you found me gone.”
He frowned and fell silent for a long moment. When he finally spoke, there was a dark, bitter edge to his voice. “I was so angry when I learned you’d run off with that artist fellow and become…”
“A whore.”
Sam grimaced. “That wasn’t the word I was going to use.”
“I have no doubt my mother used it when she told you I’d gone.” She had flung that word and worse at Wilhelmina when she’d cast her out, accusing her of sharing her favors with the artist, James Benedict, and with Sam and others. Martha Jepp would have no hesitation in using the same language when Sam had come back looking for her daughter.
“You did what you had to in order to survive,” he said, his tone softening. “It took me a long time to come to grips with it, but I understand now. Truly I do, Willie. I want you to believe that.” He reached out and touched her hand briefly. “But all those years ago…Well, when I came home in ’94 a newly rated midshipman, puffed up in a crisp new uniform paid for with my own prize money, the news devastated me. And I lashed out in pain.”
She had been in the theater, holding court in her reserved box, when he found her. It had taken less than an instant to recognize him, and the sight of him had her reeling, this ghost from her past walking toward her.
“So, it’s true.”
He glared at her with such anger that another wave of dizziness almost overwhelmed her. If she had not been seated, she would surely have collapsed. Her emotions were a turmoil of surprise, joy, and shame. Thoroughly dumb-founded, she could not manage to speak.
“I dared not believe it,” he said. “I kept hearing tales of the infamous Wilhelmina Grant and knew that woman, that light skirt, could not be the sweet Wilma Jepp I had known. I had to see with my own eyes that it was not true. And look what I find instead.” His glance had swept over her court of admirers. “The woman I once loved surrounded by men who’ve had her, who’ve paid for the fancy clothes and the fine jewels. Perched up here like a queen in your box, flaunting your indecency for all the world to see.” His mouth twisted, and he looked like he might become ill. “God, Willie. How could you?”
“Sam.” The single syllable had almost choked her. She was sick with joy that he was alive, he was really alive, and devastated that he’d found her like this. He was only half right about the other men in the box. They’d all sought her favors. Only a few had been successful. Wilhelmina Grant was an exclusive item, not easily purchased. Her current protector, Sir Clive Binchy, hovered behind her, his hand on the back of her chair. She could feel him about to make a move toward Sam, but she held up her hand to stop him.
“How could you do this?” Sam asked, the anger in his voice tinged with a plaintive note. “I thought I’d find you in Porthruan, waiting for me. I thought…But instead you’ve come to this? Damnation. Your mother was right. You’re nothing but a—”
Before he could hurl the vulgar word she knew was on the tip of his tongue, a word she had accepted years ago but had no wish to hear from Sam, she quickly composed herself and donned her usual public manner, flippant and condescending.
“Don’t be such a prig, Sam. This is the real world, not that rustic little fishing village in Cornwall. I love all my ‘fancy clothes’ as you so quaintly call them, and my jewels and carriages and more. If you do not like how I came by them, feel free to leave.”
His face fell into a look of such wretchedness it had torn at her heart. But this was for the best. She had to drive him away or she surely would fall apart.
Without another word, he turned on his heel and left.
“I’d hoped you would wait for me.” His voice brought her back to the present.
“I thought you were dead!” Her voice rose, colored with the emotion of that memory. “Your boat washed ashore without you. No one knew what had happened.”
“The press gang commandeered my little boat and forced me to go with them. I told them I was no sailor, just an ordinary fisherman, but they either didn’t believe me or didn’t care. They needed seamen and I looked close enough to one, so off I went, leaving my boat abandoned in the cove.”
“When it was found the next day, empty and shattered against the rocks, we all assumed you’d suffered some sort of accident and drowned.”
“But I wrote you. Once I made land, I sent letter after letter.” At her frustrated sigh, he said, “I suppose your mother didn’t pass them on, did she?”
“No, of course not. She probably burned them.”
They were interrupted by the arrival of the serving girl with a kettle of hot water that she poured into the teapot.
“C’n I gets yer anyt’ing else, Yer Grace?”
“No, thank you, Liz
zie. But could you tell Mr. Smeaton I’d like a word with him? Tell him to bring paper and pen.”
Lizzie nodded, bobbed a quick curtsy, and hurried back to the kitchen with her steaming kettle.
“Paper and pen? Gad, Willie, I hope you’re not going to ask me to re-create those letters for you here and now?”
He looked so abashed that she laughed. “Nothing of the sort, Sam. I just realized that I need to note down some instructions for the staff regarding our return to London. It won’t take a moment, I assure you. I just want to do it before I forget.”
“I am relieved.” He heaved a theatrical sigh. “I couldn’t do it. I’m sorry you never got my letters, Willie. You’d have been devilish impressed.”
She laughed again. “I have no doubt of it.”
“No, really. You would have been. They were damned fine letters.”
“I wish I’d seen them, Sam. You cannot imagine how much I wish it.” She laid a hand over his, and he captured it, lifting it to his lips. The warmth of his skin and his breath against her knuckles sent a wave of such yearning through her body that she almost moaned aloud. She had not wanted a man this badly in a very long time. And because it was Sam, the wanting was even more powerful, all tangled up with first love and heartbreak. As she looked into his eyes, she could feel his desire as well.
“Those letters kept me going,” he said, stroking her fingers, “gave me purpose when I thought I would die of missing you. I wasn’t much good at reading or writing, as you will remember, but soon after being pressed, I was fortunate to find a friend in the master’s mate, a fellow Cornishman. He took me under his wing, taught me everything about the service. He gave me nautical books to read, but when he saw me struggling—I swear the words looked like a foreign language to me—he gave me lessons in reading and writing. If I wanted to rise in the service, he said, I had to be able to compose dispatches and logs, and read and understand contracts and orders and regulations.
“I practiced my penmanship in letters to you. Page after page, filled with details of my life at sea, and full of longing for you. It really is too bad your mother never sent them to you. They were masterpieces, those letters, worthy of Byron himself. No, don’t laugh, they were pure poetry, I swear it.”