Marrying the Captain
Author
Carla Kelly
Reads
15.6K
Chapters
21
Prologue
After five years in Plymouth following her 1803 expulsion from Miss Pym’s Female Academy in Bath, it still burned Nana Massie to be an Object of Charity.
She closed the door to the Mulberry Inn behind her and looked down at the hand-lettered placards in her hand. In these hard times of war, made harder for Plymouth by the blockade of the French coast, the innkeeps at the bigger inns closer to the harbor still had no objection to the placards, even though everyone knew there was no need for them, because there was no overflow of clientele.
We Massies are engaged in a great deception, Nana told herself as she hurried toward the harbor, blown along by the stiff November wind. She glanced back at the Mulberry, knowing Gran would be watching her from an upstairs window. Nana waved and blew her grandmother a kiss. This grand deception is for my benefit entirely, she thought, and I am hungry.
She was cold, too, even though she wore Pete’s cut-down boat cloak and two petticoats under a wool dress. She knew Gran was knitting her a cap to cover her short hair, and it wouldn’t be done a moment too soon. After a look of deep worry when Nana returned from the wigmaker last week with short hair and a handful of coins for the more pressing bills, Gran had turned straight to her knitting.
Even though Nana could see one small frigate bobbing in anchor at the harbor below, Gran and Pete both had insisted it was time to take placards to the large inns. Time meant noon, when the inns would be serving dinner. Those two old conspirators knew the keeps and cooks would see that their darling Nana ate.
The sailors were seldom allowed off the warships, but the officers and petty officers were usually free to go ashore and stay in Plymouth’s inns. Many ships meant more officers. If the larger inns were full, some could be persuaded to stay at the Mulberry on far-distant Gibbon Street, if there was a placard announcing the little inn’s existence.
Nana almost turned around after she passed St. Andrews Church. The matter was hopeless because the admiral of the Channel Fleet, in his wisdom, had decreed that his warships would not leave their watery stations for anything except dire emergency. They were to be revictualed at sea—with food and water—and remain there, because of Boney and his threats.
One frigate in the harbor. Nana stopped and nearly crammed her signs in a bin, then reconsidered. Gran would be devastated if she returned from the harbor unfed, and would see right through a lie to the contrary.
Besides, the wind carried the fragrance of sausages from the Navy Inn, her first stop. Nana wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and let the wind coax her along.
There was a sausage for her at the Navy Inn, with a crunch when she bit into it that nearly brought tears to her eyes. She went through the charade of protesting when the keep insisted on wrapping an extra one in oiled paper, then hurried to the Drury Inn, where she left another placard and sat down to potato soup with hunks of ham and onion, bubbling in the broth of cream flecked with butter.
The keep even handed her a pot of it to take along, declaring the soup would just sit around, uneaten and unappreciated, if she didn’t take it back to the Mulberry. Maybe Gran or Pete could have it, if Nana was full. She accepted it with a smile, even as her face burned from shame.
At Drake’s Inn, the bill of fare was pasties, as she had hoped. Mrs. Fillion, the keep, insisted she eat one quickly, before it went bad, then packaged two more for her, all the while complaining about an admiral so mean-spirited as to keep his ships from Plymouth and make life a trial for the quayside merchants.
“Well, we are at war, Mrs. Fillion,” Nana ventured.
Mrs. Fillion sighed. “You’d think in the year of our Lord 1808 we could have figured out some way to abolish such stupidity.”
She took a placard, but gently informed Nana that the Drake had already received the frigate’s surgeon, both lieutenants and captain.
She slid another pasty on Nana’s plate. “At least we’ll have Captain Worthy when he returns from Admiralty House in London in a day or two. His sea chest is already here.”
“That’s his frigate in the Cattewater?” Nana asked.
“Aye. The Tireless, a thirty-four, and bound for dry docks,” the keep said. She snorted. “Not even an admiral can figure out how to repair a frigate in the Channel.”
Nana glanced out the window and let Mrs. Fillion run on, declaring how she would run the war and the Royal Navy, if put in charge. Maybe the rain would stop by the time the keep ran out of words.
It didn’t. Mrs. Fillion handed her a bag to hold the pasties and the other food Nana had accumulated. “Just return it next time you’re in the Barbican, dearie,” she said. She shook her head. “I wish I could send you Captain Worth, but we need the trade. He’s not a bad-looking man, if you could get him to smile. ’Course, nobody’s smiling much.”
At least I never ask for anything, Nana thought as she excused herself and started for the Mulberry. There was food enough for supper now. She paused to look at the Tireless, noting the listing main mast, and what looked like canvas draped across the stern. “Dry docks for you, Captain Worthy.”
And who knows what for me? she considered. She couldn’t help but think of her father, William Stokes, Viscount Ratliffe, and his devil’s bargain, which had sent her fleeing back to the safety of Plymouth, Gran’s protection and more uncertainty.
“I may be hungry now,” she whispered, “but if you think I ever intend to change my mind, dear Father, you’re as wrong now as you were five years ago.”
Her anger—or was it fear?—made her speak louder than she intended. As a child of Plymouth, she knew the prevailing winds were speeding her words to the French coast. No one could hear her. Beyond Gran and Pete, she knew no one cared.
