Her Heart's Captain (6 page)

There was only one hope: time. Time could heal wounds, could help one to adjust to new surroundings, could make one forget injuries to one's pride or prejudices against strangers. Time could change bad first impressions to more favorable second ones. So Jenny and her mother awaited the next batch of letters with that single ray of hope.

But the next group of letters dealt that hope a killing blow. They were devastating. Robbie's words were bleak, and he described his life as one of unrelieved agony. He was always cold and damp, the food was becoming more unpalatable with each passing day, and he'd contracted a fever but had not been permitted to miss a watch. Worse than all the rest, he'd been blisteringly reprimanded by his lieutenant on two separate occasions for infractions which were too insignificant to have warranted attention—indicating to him that the captain's prejudice against him had infected the other officers. He'd been warned that, should there be a third act of misconduct, he would be hauled before the captain. That threat obviously filled the poor boy with terror.

If, after all that, Jenny still nourished in her bosom the slightest vestige of warmth for the man on the dock, one of Robbie's letters obliterated that glow completely. It described his first observance of the practice of ship's discipline known as the Flogging.
This morning
, he wrote,
the entire Crew was assembled on the quarter Deck, with the Marines lined up on the Poop. The Master-at-arms paraded in a Prisoner while we all watched. Then we stood waiting while the Surgeon prepared his Medications. After about half-an-hour, Captain Allenby came on Deck and gave the order to rig the Gratings. The Master-at-arms then read a Statement telling that this poor Devil had stolen some Rum from the Ship's Stores and then had taken a swing at the Officer who'd come upon him. The Prisoner was asked if he had any reasonable Excuse. He shook his Head. The Captain then ordered three dozen Lashes
.

We all had to stand there and Watch. You call well Imagine
my Feelings as I watched the Boatswain's man carry out the Sentence with a Cat-o'-nine-tails. With each Blow, I imagined it might one day be me. I could hardly keep from Shuddering. After nine or ten Blows, the skin broke and the man began to Bleed. It was Horrible. After they took him down, the Surgeon gave him medical Treatment, and we were dismissed. I went Below and was
Sick.

Jenny felt sick herself. How had she ever believed that Captain Allenby was a kind and admirable gentleman? He was an inhuman beast. It was terrifying beyond measure to realize that her beloved brother had to live—especially in his tender years—under the governance of such a monster.

Jenny and Lady Garvin were inconsolable. Robbie's plight was never far from their minds. They waited with painful anxiety for the day they would see the boy again. When the ship returned to England, they would do everything they could to extricate the poor lad from his commitment to Captain Allenby's service. Until then, however, there was nothing they could do but pray for his health and safety.

Jenny offered her mother what little consolation she could, but Lady Garvin was disconsolate. For Jenny, the only consolation came from imagining herself in her brother's straits. On some illogical level of consciousness, she permitted herself to believe that by suffering with him she was expiating her own guilt. Meanwhile, her former feelings of warmth for Captain Tristram Allenby darkened, festered and transformed themselves to a deep, implacable loathing.

Chapter Five

More than six months passed before the
Providential
returned to Portsmouth, and it was November before Robbie was given leave. But he arrived home with the glad news that, since the ship was going into drydock at Buckler's Hard, a shipyard near Southhampton, for repairs, it would be two months before he was due to ship out again.

“Ship out again?” his mother exclaimed, embracing him for the third time. “You'll do no such thing.”

“What are you talking about, Mama?” The boy squirmed out of her embrace. “I
must
ship out again. I'm in naval service now, you know, and have no choice.”

“I don't care. Your uncle must do something. I won't have you going back to serve under that monster.”

“Oh, is
that
what's troubling you? No need to raise a dust,” Robbie said. “Allenby's a beast, of course, but I'm quite used to him. One learns to deal with that sort of thing, you know, in the Navy.”

Jenny and her mother exchanged looks of relief as they accompanied the boy to the dining room. Taller and thinner than before, he seemed to have been starved on shipboard. He'd already informed them that he yearned for “a good landlubber's dinner, with green vegetables, Cook's rich mushroom soup, a thick slice of rare beef and every sort of cream and pastry you can find in the larder.” They watched him as he ate voraciously everything that Cullum laid before him. The boy talked all the while. He had a thousand adventures to relate. He told them about the friends he'd made, the fight with another midshipman who'd taken to bullying the others (which, he bragged, he'd won without half trying), the ports they'd called at and the sights he'd seen. He kept them enthralled for hours on end, and they didn't even think of bed until well past midnight.

When at last she retired for the night, Jenny had much to think about. Whatever her brother's experiences on shipboard might have been, they didn't seem to have done him any damage. He was brown as a berry, and although much thinner, was taller and stronger than he'd been before he'd left. And much matured. He carried himself straighter, took a longer stride and seemed to look at the world with the assurance that comes with the knowledge that one has faced obstacles and conquered them. So sailing with Captain Allenby had not seriously harmed him after all.

Nevertheless, the boy had had only the most unkind words for his captain. There was no doubt at all, he'd reported, that Allenby was a curel, inhuman monster. But Robbie had grown almost philosophical about sailing under him. “One must learn to deal with cruelty in the Navy,” he'd declared grandly. “I'm not a child any longer. I can take care of myself.”

Jenny could only marvel that Robbie had become mature enough to keep from buckling under the stress. The captain's name had come up again and again, always as a sinister, frightening presence looming over the boy's days, yet he'd managed to adjust to it, to find friends, a measure of contentment and a new growth of self-assurance. She was more proud of her brother than ever before. She and her mother would not need to worry about him in future; as he'd said, he was quite capable of dealing with the world on his own.

But she gave the captain no credit for Robbie's apparent well-being. The tales she'd heard of Captain Allenby gave her no reason to soften her feelings of antipathy. He was a man distorted and brutalized by power, the absolute power that a sea captain wields over everyone on his ship. Even her recollections of their meeting now seemed changed in her mind. “
Criminals, if judged guilty, must be made to face the full weight of retribution …
” She remembered those words of his. They had been icy, she now remembered, and she'd seen even then the cold implacability of his eyes.
Then
she'd chosen to disregard it.
Now
the memory came back with different, more ominous reverberations. If ever she met him again, she would not be misled. She'd know him now for what he was.

She was to have that meeting sooner than she thought. Robbie had not been home a week when the Clement carriage rumbled up the drive and Andrea jumped out. She ran up the walk with unladylike haste. “Jenny,” she shouted up the stairs as soon as Cullum had admitted her, “come down at once! You'll never
credit
what startling news I have for you.”

She made Jenny sit down on the sofa of the sitting room before she broke the news. “We're to have a guest,” she announced with barely contained excitement. “A cousin of mine, whom I've never met, but who's quite well known to you. Can you guess?”

“No, I haven't the vaguest idea. A cousin of yours? What's her name?”

“
His
name, if you please. We are speaking of a gentleman. Papa invited him, but he never dreamed the fellow would accept. He never has before.”

“Really, Andrea, you're being very mysterious. How can I have met a cousin of yours that you haven't? I've never gone anywhere without you except to Bath two years ago. Was that where—? No, for Mama contracted one of her digestive complaints right after we arrived, and we hardly ever left our rooms.”

“It was not at Bath,” Andrea said gleefully. “
Think
!”

“Well, the only other time I traveled anywhere without you was—Good
God
! You don't mean—? It
isn't
—?”

Andrea nodded eagerly. “It is! Your
Captain
!”

Jenny turned quite pale. “Captain Allenby? He's coming
here?”

“Yes, at the end of the month. He and his mother, my Aunt Dulcie, are to stay until the New Year. Papa is completely puffed up about it, for Cousin Tris has never before condescended to pay us a visit—that is, not since he was a boy, and that, of course, was before I was born.”

“Captain
Allenby
? Your cousin Tris is Robbie's Captain Allenby?”

“Yes,
truly
! Captain Tristram Allenby of His Majesty's Ship
Providential
. Papa has been speaking of nothing else all morning.”

“Well, really, Andrea,” Jenny said with a small sigh of annoyance, “you could have warned me before. Why didn't you inform me, when I first told you I'd discovered his identity, that he was your cousin?”

“I didn't realize it until today. I've never met my cousin, you know, and Aunt Dulcie uses her title—Lady Rowcliffe. I forgot about her surname. My uncle, Lord Rowcliffe, was Arthur Allenby, but he died years ago. His eldest son, Viscount Rowcliffe, lives in Scotland, and no one ever sees
him
. I've met Aunt Dulcie once or twice—when we've gone to visit at their Derbyshire estates—but the family is really almost unknown to me and never on my mind. When Papa proses on about them, I never pay attention. So when you first discovered your mysterious gentleman's identity, the name didn't sound familiar. It just didn't occur to me that your Captain Allenby and my Cousin Tris were one and the same.”

“Please, Andrea, I wish you would stop calling him
my
Captain Allenby. I've only met him once in my life, and that was for no more than half-an-hour. He probably doesn't even remember me.” She rose from the sofa and began to pace about the room uneasily. “It
is
the most amazing coincidence. And you say he's to stay with you for a whole month?”

“So it seems. Aunt Dulcie wrote that he's bored with London, in spite of the fact that she's arranged all sorts of amusements for him, and to her surprise he seemed receptive to her suggestion that they rusticate here at Wyndham for a few weeks. So they're coming for a prolonged stay. Papa is overjoyed at the prospect of having a man about the house—especially one with whom he can discuss military matters and politics and trade and such things. And Mama is beside herself with excitement, for Aunt Dulcie is a veritable doyen of the most fashionable circle in London and has never before deigned to spend more than two nights under our roof. Mama is planning all sorts of dinners and routs and balls.” She jumped up, grasped Jenny round the waist and spun her around. “Oh, Jenny, isn't it the most thrilling happenstance?”

“Thrilling?” Jenny echoed in repugnance, withdrawing from her friend's embrace. “It can't be so to me. Think how awkward it will be if we meet—”

“
If
you meet? Of
course
you'll meet. Mama is already writing an invitation to your mother for the welcoming dinner.”

“Your mother is most kind, but really, Andrea, you haven't permitted her to believe we'd
come
!”

“But you
must
come. Why shouldn't you?”

Jenny stared at her friend in disbelief. “Haven't you been listening to me for all these months? Your cousin, my dear, has been the terror of our lives. Mama and I have had
nightmares
about him. Robbie has lived under his tyrannical domination for half a year. Surely you don't expect us to sit at the same table with him as if nothing had happened?”

“Well, I
did
think, at first, that you wouldn't like it, but when I mentioned it to Papa, he only laughed. He says all seamen say their captains are monstrous. It's the way of sailors to complain about discipline at sea. He says Robbie will be glad to have this opportunity to gain greater intimacy with his captain.”

“I hope, Andrea, that you're not implying that my brother is a scheming toady, eager to butter up his captain—”

“I'm not implying that at all,” Andrea declared, drawing herself up in offense. “I don't know what's come over you this afternoon, Jenny, but this belligerence is not at all like you. One would think I'd come to announce that we were being invaded by an army of Huns instead of the very delightful prospect of a month of parties and balls at which we can dance and flirt to our hearts' content.”

“
You
may dance and flirt to your heart's content, but I certainly shall not,” Jenny declared firmly.

“You may please yourself, of course,” Andrea said coldly, sweeping to the door with her nose out of joint. “I shall be perfectly content to keep all the young men for myself. Good day, Miss Friday Face. I hope, when I come to collect you tomorrow for our shopping trip, that I find you in a better mood.”

Margaret Garvin's reaction to the news of Captain Allenby's imminent arrival was almost as strong as her daughter's, although she was sorry that, in having to refuse the invitations to the many festivities at Clement Hall, she would be unable to make the acquaintance of the famous Lady Rowcliffe. “It's really too bad that the odious Captain Allenby is her son,” she sighed, “for Lady Rowcliffe knows everyone in London who counts. It would have been so pleasant to be able to gossip with her.”