Fair Winds and Homeward Sail: Sophy Croft's Story Page 8

  ’Yes.”

  “—as you need—what?”

  “I said, yes. That is, if it is marriage you are offering.”

  A broadside had deafened and blinded him, or so it seemed for a long breath. Then the sense of her words was borne in on him, and though he was not aware of moving, his hand closed gently around her fingers. “You are saying you would marry me?”

  “I am.”

  “Hey day, that is da—that is capital!” He took a turn about the room, unable to contain the oceanic vastness of joy in this tiny space.

  And she walked with him, holding his hand in both hers, as joy suffused her.

  He had a sudden thought, stopped, and turned. “Your brother gave me his blessing.”

  “You spoke to Frederick about this?”

  He gave a firm nod. “It was he who showed me your letter about that humbug Forsham—but then, least said, soonest mended, ha ha! My point is, Frederick shook me by the hand, and said, go at it, thunder and guns. Like Nelson says, you know.”

  Sophia laughed, thinking that she could never get enough of the captain’s way of expressing himself. Then her joy dimmed. “Of course he must be at our wedding, but when can we see him again? And then there is Edward and his schooling . . .”

  Captain Croft said earnestly, “This much I know. Frederick Wentworth would a thousand times rather encounter us as Captain and Mrs. Croft, already married, you see, than make us wait. His only concern would be if I can compass a good home for a wife. And though I’ve had a very good start with the recent battle, such things are not always to be counted on. It might be touch and go for a time, I’m telling you true, but we could be snug enough. And I know I will do better.”

  “As you can see here, I am not afraid of being snug, as you call it.” Her heart beat fast.

  He gave another decisive nod. “If you are sure, then by Jupiter so am I. My inclination is to follow Nelson’s rule, and go right at ’em.”

  “Thunder and guns,” she said, laughing with another fierce heart-leap of joy.

  He cast his mind outward to the admiral waiting, and to his duties. “When can you . . . that is, what would be an appropriate measure of time to, ah, to wind up your affairs?”

  She put up her chin. “If it comes to that, I can be ready in half an hour.”

  “Spoken just like a sailor,” he declared, and with this encomium of highest degree, he took her by the shoulders and kissed her. Then let her go, peering into her face.

  She gave a breathless laugh and kissed him back.

  CHAPTER NINE

  In fact it took Sophia considerably less than half an hour.

  Her first thought must be of her younger brother, but she knew a satisfactory solution lay there. She penned a letter to Edward to acquaint him with her intentions, in every expectation of his being surprised, of his rejoicing on her behalf.

  At least as satisfactory was the knowledge that he would regard himself as no longer duty-bound to return to Widow’s Cottage because Sophia was there. He could spent his holidays with his friends.

  She also penned a short letter to the Squire, formally relinquishing the cottage. After that she cast a glance about, knowing that she could walk away from her few rough furnishings without a care. They engendered no dear memories. Those were wrapped in silk and housed in her trunk—and in her heart.

  It was the work of a moment to wrap her few keepsakes in cloth. For lack of space her clothes had either remained in her trunk, or had been hung on a clothes peg. She whisked these into her trunk, and the new reality of her life first set in as she watched the post boy and Captain Croft lift it onto the back of the carriage.

  And so she turned her back on that cottage. She was still aware of joy, but it simmered under the surface: above it, she watched the familiar path roll away and out of her life forever, her sensations a little numb. The first great change in her life, when her mother had died, had also left her numb, for all at once the well-worn tread of daily duties had vanished and each step was in a new direction.

  But then she had been locked in grief, the future an incomprehensible darkness.

  Now the future was equally incomprehensible, but she hugged the idea to herself. She would soon be a married woman, though no one had expected such a future for her anymore than she had herself.

  She stole a glance at the tall man seated beside her, and once again encountered his smile, which felt like someone had pulled down handfuls of sunlight and splashed them over her.

  She was so wrapped in her happiness she was never aware of the village shopkeepers and passers-by stopping to watch the coach roll through the village, the captain’s buttons a-glitter, his epaulettes gleaming. Chief among them was the postmistress, agog to see the young lady who had fascinated the squire’s son swept off by a dashing naval captain, and as soon as the dust settled behind the wheels, she bustled off to the bakery to talk it over with the baker’s wife.

  “Didn’t I say it?” she exclaimed. “She was always holding out for an admiral.”

  The baker’s wife, whose brother was a purser on a first rate man-of-war, said knowledgeably, “That was a captain, and no admiral.”

  The postmistress sniffed at this quibble. “He’ll be an admiral yet. You mark my words.” And she bustled back in search of a more satisfactory auditor with whom to exclaim and surmise.

  Unaware of the talk spreading behind them like the feathering wake of a fast frigate, Sophia and the captain sat side by side in the carriage, smiling at each other.

  As they talked about small things, both Sophia and the captain felt as if they existed in a dream, yet for her each breath brought the delight of something new. Each bump and sway of the carriage, the stippling of sunlight through tree branches, the cry of birds, all struck her with profound meaning. The world, in appearance so familiar, had changed forever.

  For him, the happiness attendant on Miss Wentworth’s emphatic “Yes,” her kiss, her readiness to entrust herself and her future to him made him heady with sensation. Delight foremost, though he was aware of it as conditional, not yet attained, for it was now his task to win for her all the comforts that she deserved. To find her a home, and of course to marry her with all the respect due to his lady.

  Though they talked from time to time, it was random conversation, and neither was aware of long silences between these slight remarks as each had so much on which to reflect.

  But the horses plodded on, only thinking of their bran mash waiting in their stable, and the wheels turned steadily, until Captain Croft, looking out, recognized the outskirts of Taunton in the ochre light of the fading day.

  Dreams of the future must wait. He must attend to this moment.

  For Sophia, the dream vanished when the innkeeper’s wife stood in the doorway, looking Sophia up and down, taking in her ringless hand and the garb of an unmarried female. Her brow drew together, and she had it on her tongue to ask where the Young Person’s maid was, and to point out that this was a respectable house, when her husband pushed past her, saying loudly, “Will that be two rooms, then, Captain Croft? Yes, yes, the best rooms for a hero of the Nile.”

  “Yes,” Captain Croft said, drawing Sophia’s hand within his arm. “For me and Mrs. Croft to be, directly we get to Portsmouth.”

  Mrs. Innkeeper’s face cleared. The best cowslip wine must be brought out to drink the health of the happy couple.

  Up in the little parlor between the two bedchambers, the captain and his new betrothed sat at last before a good fire, eating the dinner brought by the innkeeper’s daughter.

  By then the two had become conscious of their new roles, both anxious to do right by the other, without quite having the way of it. When he saw that she was as uncertain as he, a great part of his nervousness abated, concern growing in its place.

  She must have everything right. He would be scrupulous in that regard, and he conscientiously offered to carve the meat, in the best manner of the Captain’s Cabin aboard a frigate, and helped her to the b
est piece.

  He liked the neat way she responded, without any fal-lal airs or pretense at fainting dead away when a potato skidded away from him and plopped on the tablecloth, startling an oath out of him.

  She simply reached out, stabbed the potato with her fork, then put it on her plate as neat as a midshipman.

  Her own uncertainties melted away under his broad smiles of clear approval. They fell to contentedly. For dinner conversation he described in detail the battle that he’d half-written down before his precipitate departure.

  Her interest and her ready understanding of terms, obviously gained from his and Frederick’s letters, delighted him. As for Sophia, the little kindnesses he performed without thought, from rising to hold the door for the daughter with her tray, to offering Sophia the better cut of meat first, reassured her that her decision, though so very sudden, was the right one.

  When the food was taken away, and they sat in chairs side by side before the fire, he took in her neat gown, the pretty curve of her neck under her ear, and the little curl escaped from her hair, and reflected that after all, she was not a midshipman. Though on shipboard they often joked that taking in a new lieutenant was very like a marriage, with the close quarters of a frigate, but he contemplated the awareness that taking a wife was a vastly different thing.

  He began to wonder if she understood that. Justice demanded that he make certain, but the Articles of War had not a word to say about the etiquette of taking a wife.

  Nevertheless, he squared himself to duty, aware that it felt very like that first moment before the commencement of battle.

  “Miss Wentworth, I am thinking that I came at you like smoke and oakum. It answers on the stage, and in songs. But here I am, removing you from the only home you know, and what if you should think that we do not suit, after all?”

  He forced himself to meet her steady gaze. “Perhaps you may think that you would wish to wait. My life is not a settled thing. Far from settled. My home is where I lay my head, which most often is in a hammock at sea. What kind of a life is that to offer, when I might be at sea for months on end?”

  At first she had been afraid that he had changed his mind, that he thought her too young, too old, too anything but what he wanted in a wife. Unmarriageable, they had said.

  But when he spoke, there was that in his steady gaze, and the way he leaned a little toward her, and the tight grip of his hands together, that reminded him of Gregory’s young men.

  She understood the real question now. “But it was not so abrupt as you think, Captain Croft. That is, I believe I have Mrs. Forsham to thank, for until she accused me of something else, I had not thought at all in that way. That is, not about poor George.” She smiled, without affectation or a pretense at maidenly fragility, for she had never learnt such arts. “It was you I thought about. I wished we had danced together all through the Bonfire Night ball. I wished I could get letters from you every day. In short, I wished it had been you wanting to marry me, not George Forsham.”

  He smiled broadly, struck his strong palms on his knees, and said, “Well, well, to hear that makes me happy, Miss Wentworth.”

  “And I am happy, too, Captain Croft.”

  He gazed back at her in a daze of happiness. “So where do we go from here, Miss Wentworth? Wentworth. Do you know, when I hear your name, in truth it is your brother brought to mind. And in my own home, why, I am not inclined to formality. Comfort is all I ask for.”

  “It is the same for me,” Sophia said.

  They smiled again at each other, each delighting in the other’s ready agreement, and then he spoke again, to make clear his meaning, for he had a little confession to make. “Sophia?” He tried out her given name. “May I call you that?”

  “Certainly,” she said. “That is, I am used to it from my brothers. But what would you prefer I say to you?”

  “Well, then, the first thing to mind is ‘Croft’ will do. I have heard nothing else since I was a nipper sent off to sea once my father died, and before that I shared my Christian name with two cousins. Hearing my name in your voice is better than ‘prince’ or ‘king,’ is what I’m thinking.”

  She laughed. “I like the sound of Captain Croft, and some day, I will like the sound of Admiral Croft the better.”

  “And I find in me a hankering to call you something that is yours and mine alone, and does not put you in mind of your brothers, capital fellows though they be, the both of them. Sophy has a fine sound to it. It is a comfortable name, a dear name.” And when she did not demure, he reddened a little and admitted, “The truth is, I have been thinking of you as Sophy these several months.”

  She laughed. “I like it very much.”

  o0o

  By the time they reached Portsmouth, she had come to love the sound of ‘Sophy’ and wondered that she had ever been able to compass being anything else. It was a fine name for a new state of being, said as it was in his own warm voice, a little husky no doubt from his time at sea commanding men in high weather and battle.

  Rather than leave her alone in a hotel while he saw to his naval as well as personal affairs, Captain Croft found her lodging in a neat little room rented by the wife of a captain who had had little luck in prize money, and who had no other interests from which to gain funds. She eked out a living by letting rooms to the wives and families of officers.

  Mrs. Follett was a cheerful soul when she was not fretting over the price of plaice. Her conversation revolved around her four sons, two of whom were captain’s boys far away at sea, one a purser’s mate aboard an Indiaman, and the fourth, who came over sick at the sight of the heaving billows, had been put to clerk in the victualler’s office.

  The women who regularly gathered with her, each with her work in hand, tended to talk mainly about their children, and Sophy discovered that she would much rather have dealt with the boys, noisy as they might be, than to listen to their mothers worry over them and brag about them by turns.

  But she kept that to herself. There was plenty to interest her in Portsmouth; every time a ship sailed into the harbor, there was always news to be had, and a swarm of seamen about, bringing with them tales of other parts of the world. Sophy, who had never expected to see the ocean, found herself longing to step aboard a ship herself.

  Captain Croft was given leave to go up to London, where he not only obtained a special license, but he executed business for Sophy, arranging her small inheritance so that it was added to Edward’s share, so that if he must hire a house he would have the means. If nothing else, she knew when he went up to Oxford he would have need of it.

  CHAPTER TEN

  On his return, Captain Croft was met with orders to proceed to Great Yarmouth, preparatory to North Seas duty.

  Rather than toil overland, he agreed to command a ship for a fellow captain, who would meet them at Yarmouth. They would leave directly the morning after the wedding.

  Snow fell gently the day Sophy and Captain Croft, accompanied by Frederick’s old friend Lt. O’Malley and Lady Bickerton, the wife of the new assistant to the port admiral, went off to St. Thomas of Canterbury Cathedral.

  At first Sophy was intimidated by Lady Bickerton, an older woman beautifully dressed in satin of the latest style. Sophy usually gave little thought to clothes, but she felt very dowdy in her by-now much-worn gown that Frederick had helped her make up. But Lady Bickerton proved to be a calm, well-spoken woman, obviously fond of Captain Croft.

  They arrived at the cathedral, and were conducted to a small room off the transept altar where the ceremony was to take place. The gentlemen removed greatcoats in one area, the ladies their wraps in another.

  Sophy was laying down her umbrella when Lady Bickerton touched her wrist above the buttons on her gloves. “Miss Wentworth,” she murmured. “The captain, a very dear friend of my husband’s, and well-regarded by everyone, I might add, honored me with the information that your dear mother died when you were very young.”

  Sophy dipped her head in a slight cur
tsey.

  “Well, then, I felt that in addition to acting as a witness, I took the liberty of suggesting that I might act in place of a mother. In case you . . . had questions about what we might call the duties, or the responsibilities of marriage.”

  Sophy felt a blush rising, but shook her head and smiled. “No one ever told me directly. In fact, I never thought to be married, until the captain came into my life. But however, I spent several years after my mother’s death taking care of boys, and, well, they do not lower their voices when talking about things that interest them. I think—I think I know pretty well what to expect.”

  Lady Bickerton cast a quick glance at the gentlemen, who were in conversation with the vicar as they talked over the license. She said to Sophy, “I am delighted to find so sensible an attitude. May I say, it is just what I expected of a young lady with the good taste to choose Captain Croft? But there might be a few things about being the wife of a gentleman in the service that I can put you in the way of, should you have an interest.”

  Sophy recognized the kindness in her face, and assented.

  And so, while the gentleman concluded their business with the vicar, Lady Bickerton talked about the navy from the female point of view, giving Sophy an eye into many matters that hitherto she had never considered, much less experienced.

  Sophy was thanking the lady when the gentlemen turned as one body. Captain Croft approached, hand out-held, his ready smile brightening his face and his eyes.

  It was time.

  Sophy was mainly aware of the rapid tattoo of her heartbeat, and the warm strength of the captain’s hand closing over her fingers.

  Then she heard and was comforted by the familiar rise and fall of the ritual words, her voice sounding in her ears so distant, like someone else’s. It occurred to her that she spoke the same words that her mother had spoken once, and her mother before her, and her mother before—reaching back and back.