Captain Wentworth's Persuasion (8 page)

The gunner picked up his hand and began to rearrange it.“We carted infantry back and forth for days.”

“Me hears it was something to see.” Both men held warranted ranks aboard ship, but they had only limited opportunities to attain commissioned posts. Along with the pursur and the boatswain, they were part of the standing officers appointed to a ship by the Navy Board.

The gunner turned his cards over.“We took care of the landies; that be for sure. Despite high surf, Lieutenant Boxer disembarked almost seven hundred troops, five field guns, and fifty-six seamen. They breached the palisades entrenched sometime after nightfall.
The spirits and old Neptune himself be with them that day; that be only way they could have survived the landing. Britain must be the chosen people; Bony may as well give up.”

“Chosen people?” Mackenzie, the carpenter laughed loudly. “The chaplain would be disagreeing with you.”

“He
cannot
disagree,” the gunner asserted. He chuckled as he readied his hand to play.“He be an Englishman also.”

Frederick smiled as he moved on. When they spoke of the invincibility of England, that was a good sign. He passed a small group of able seamen, one of whom good-naturedly teased a new landsmen.“You should have been with us in ’01 with Nelson,” the older sailor boasted. Wentworth peered down at them from his position along the railing.“We had twenty-six battleships and seven frigates in the line.The Danes stood no chance.The only thing
they
had was a sixty-six-gun battery and dangerous shoals, but none of it could stop Horatio Nelson.”

Keats, the mast captain, handed the landsman a cup of rum. “Parker panicked when we lost a floating battery and a few other key ships to the shoals, but Nelson had balls. Do you remember what he said, Woods, when old Malcolm told him Parker had ordered a withdrawal?”

Woods guffawed, nearly choking on the spirits they drank to steady their nerves. “You see, Lad, Nelson was blind in one eye. Nelson looked at old Malcolm and said, ‘I have only one eye. I do not see the signal.’”

“
That
was a bloody battle,” Keats proclaimed.

The landsman looked a bit afraid. It was, after all, his first confrontation. “How bloody?”

“Do not be worrying, Lad. Our captain is nothing like Nelson. The Vice Admiral did not care how many we lost, as long as we won the battle. Nearly one thousand left us that day. Of course, the Danes lost more than twice that many. We learned something in those days.Ye will not be exposed to such carnage.”

Frederick strode purposefully toward the men.They started to scramble to their feet, but he motioned for them to remain seated.
“I just wanted to say I am proud to serve with you men. We will engage the Danish by early tomorrow morning. Right now, we are transporting the foot soldiers needed by General Wellesley. Relax as much as you can, but stay alert to changes happening along the Danish line of ships. You each know your job well. If each man attends to his own domain, we will come through this with few problems. Good night, men.”

“Good night, Captain,” a chorus of voices called as he walked away.“A good man,” he heard one of them mutter before he went below deck. Those who were experienced seamen knew how unusual it was for the commanding officer to address them thusly.

The smell of gunpowder filled the air; the British fleet continued to bombard the city of Copenhagen. “How much longer can they hold out?” Harville growled as he surveyed the damage with his spyglass.

“Only the Lord knows.” Wentworth took the glass from his friend and raised it to his eye. “We sent in at least five thousand rounds last night.” He walked to the other side of the upper deck to get a better look.“There are three battleships and one pram sitting dead in the water directly in front of us.”

“Our men are boarding them as we speak. Lieutenant Rushick is leading our contingent.” Harville squinted down at the lowering of the small boats off the side of the ship.

The appearance of the British transports, making their way toward Copenhagen, obviously, came as a nasty shock to the Danish command. Early on, the Danish had taken a frigate and two brig-sloops. Unlike the weather during the 1801 siege of the city, the high surf and the seas calmed right before the attack. “The latest message from Gambier says Danish General Peymann turned down our offers of capitulation.” Harville handed Frederick a message delivered by the communications officer.

“Then we will fight on,”Wentworth offered with a shrug of his shoulders, attempting to force tension from his upper back.“There is something rotten in Denmark. At least, the Bard would agree
with the Prince Regent.” A slight smile turned up the corners of his lips.“At this rate,Thomas, you may marry Milly by year’s end.”

The night brought no relief from the battle. Frederick made only one trip below in the hours since the battle began. He constantly checked on the conditions above and below deck, assuring himself that his men and his ship had come to no harm.“Get some rest, Frederick,” Harville said when he came to check on him. His voice came softly off Frederick’s right shoulder. “The men will be fine; they know their jobs.”

“Just a few minutes more,” Frederick mumbled, searching the horizon for any changes in the siege. The constant bombardment lit up the skyline with explosions; puffy clouds of black smoke followed these as fires sprang up. “The Congreve Rockets appear to be doing their job. Look at the number of fires; the city will never be the same.” He stood, riveted to a spot along the railing, not even turning to acknowledge Harville’s presence.

“You feel the pain of each battle too intensely, Frederick,” his friend concluded with a shake of his head.

“There ought to be a better way of resolving differences. I know I should not want to bite the hand that feeds me, but such destruction—such destruction should not occur. Sometimes I wonder how a God of love can allow it to happen, allow men to make war.” Frederick lowered the glass from his eyes.

“Maybe we should let our womenfolk negotiate the resolution of our differences.” Harville laughed at his own thought.

“It would be a gentler way.”Wentworth turned his attention to his friend. He let down his guard with Harville, who had an unaffected easy kindness of manner, which denoted the feelings of an older acquaintance.

Harville’s countenance reassumed the serious, thoughtful expression, which seemed its natural character. “It is the nature of women to seek common ground with others and to lavish attention on, as well as offer protection to friends and family. A woman cannot forget someone she loves.”

His words brought Frederick pain although Thomas Harville
was perfectly unsuspicious of inflicting any peculiar wound. “I am sure women might argue that we men have always a profession, pursuits, business of some sort or other, to take us back into the world,” Frederick reasoned. “Yet, I will not allow it to be more man’s nature than woman’s to be inconstant and forget those they
do
love or
have
loved. I believe the reverse. I believe in a true analogy between our bodily frames and our mental; and that as our bodies are the strongest so are our feelings—capable of bearing more rough usage and riding out the heaviest weather.”

Thomas took the spyglass from Frederick’s hand and began to search the shore for results of their siege. “Songs and proverbs, all talk of women’s fickleness. But saying something loudly or frequently doesn’t make it so.”

Frederick replied, “Both men and women—we each begin probably with a little bias toward our own sex and upon that bias build every circumstance in favor of it which occurred within our own circle; many of which circumstances, perhaps those very cases which strike us the most, may be precisely such as cannot be brought forward. I suspect that men and women are much alike. But because our circumstances are different, we see the world from distinct perspectives.”

Harville chuckled and clapped Frederick on the back. “Captain, I, for one, need a few hours of sleep; though you might refuse to take time in your quarters, I will take time in mine.” He handed the glass to his commanding officer.“I will see you with the dawn unless you send for me before then.”

“Hopefully, with the dawn, this will all be over,” Frederick mused. Then his friend moved away into the night, and he was alone. Staring out into the darkness, his thoughts returned to Anne Elliot. He would never find a woman to love the way he loved Anne. He wanted a home with her—wanted children with her—wanted to live out his days with her. But his hopes died when her family convinced Anne Elliot to break their engagement. Silently, he pushed the hurt deeper, feeling it in his gut—in his soul. The hurt had lessened over the past year. Now he could compare it to
having a knife plunged deeply into his heart and then twisted; or maybe it was more like a wild animal ripping off his leg at the joint. Swallowing hard, he turned back to the task at hand—trying to leave his love behind. Sometimes he wondered if he should write her to see if she had realized the foolishness of her decision. But he could not bear to be rejected again. Somehow, it was better not to know.

Anne Elliot Wentworth sat dutifully by her husband’s sickbed; the gauntness of his figure frightened her. The doctor assured her repeatedly that Frederick’s recovery seemed inevitable. But Anne’s husband was normally a strong, vigorous man, standing feet braced against the swell of the sea.That same man—the man she loved—was now shrunken and feeble.

“Anne?” The soft pleading of his voice brought her attention back to his face. Under the influence of the strong drug, Frederick could not work out how to open his eyes. “Anne,” he murmured again. Clouded by the laudanum, Frederick’s mind tried to concentrate for more than a few moments at a time; he found himself drifting back into sleep, into nightmares. He dreamed of losing her—
his Anne
—and now he needed to know she was here with him—in this room—guaranteeing the nightmares no longer plagued him. He licked his lips, forcing moisture to his mouth. A flash of memory jolted through his head, and he grimaced with the thought. He spoke her name a third time, and he felt someone sit beside him on the bed.

“I am here, my Love.” His eyes were still closed, and he felt warm lips linger enticingly over his and then pull away.

“So nice,” he mumbled, and a smile tried to make its way to the corners of his mouth.

Anne’s voice held relief. “You are incorrigible,” she teased. She felt calmer at hearing his tremulous words. She reached out to take his hand.“May I get you anything?” She spoke close to his ear.

Frederick forced his eyes to flutter open and to focus on his wife’s face.“Only you,” he managed to say as he searched her countenance.
A stray strand of hair hung down loosely along her face. Frederick wanted to reach out and push it behind her ear, but he could not will his hand to respond.

She rested one arm across his chest and leaned over him. Frederick felt the warmth of her body radiate through him; even though he was injured,Anne still had an arousing effect on him.

She smiled. “Concentrate on your recovery,” she whispered close to his lips, kissing first the corner of his mouth and then his cheek, his temple, and his ear. Frederick demanded that his body respond; he turned his head to the side to properly kiss her. “You have been here for nearly four days,” she explained, and he nodded that he understood. “Rest.” She stroked along his cheekbone with her fingertips.

Frederick could only nod once more as he took in her features—features that others might find nondescript—but features, which beset him for years. At first glance, a person might think
his Anne
unexceptional, but on closer observation a man would be a fool not to see her elegance. Her hair changed color with the lamp lighting from a dark chocolate to strands of gold mingled with red within a mahogany forest. Her skin remained a smooth ivory although she had spent the last six months at sea with him, and her eyes sparked with intelligence and amusement. “Your eyes mesmerize me,” he choked out. “Pools of strong coffee—a man could get lost in your eyes. I thank God every day they rest only on me.”