Regency Christmas Wishes: Captain Grey's Christmas Proposal / Her Christmas Temptation / Awakening His Sleeping Beauty

His order complete and promised in two weeks, Jem went next door for a low-crowned beaver hat which struck him as faintly ridiculous, even though the haberdasher assured him he was now à la mode. He knew he was going to miss the added intimidation of his tall bicorn, but as Teddy Winnings had told him once—how was it he was starting to remember their conversations?—he was already tall enough.

He paid a cautious visit to the harbourmaster to inquire about any outbound ships headed for the United States. He knew the harbourmaster as a garrulous man. To his surprise, George Headley didn’t even blink when he mentioned wanting passage to a former enemy country.

Headley leaned closer. ‘This is a special mission, isn’t it?’ he whispered. ‘My lips are sealed, of course.’

‘Good of you,’ Jem said in the same conspiratorial tone, hoping the Lord Almighty wouldn’t smite him dead for deceiving a good, if chatty, man. ‘The less said, the better my chances are that none of Boney’s spies will hear.’

The harbourmaster nodded, his eyes grave, and gestured toward a fair-sized vessel at anchor in the harbour. ‘Captain, the Marie Elise is headed to Baltimore, I believe. Would you like me to hail a waterman to take you out there?’

A mere half hour later, he sat in the captain’s cabin, drinking Madeira and then forking over passage money.

‘We’ll sail for Baltimore on or about the middle of October,’ Captain Monroe said. ‘We’re looking at a seven-week passage, give or take.’ The Yankee gave Jem a shrewd look. ‘You’re a seafaring man.’

‘I am,’ Jem said. ‘Royal Navy. It’s private business.’

The captain nodded, obviously not believing a word of that, and sounded remarkably like the harbourmaster. ‘My lips are sealed. You’ll only be a short distance from Washington, D.C. How is it you already sound slightly American?’

‘Many people on the Devonshire coast have a similar accent,’ Jem hedged, ‘but you are right. I was born in the colony of Massachusetts.’

‘We two countries need to get along, eh?’

‘Indeed we do. I’m lodging at the Drake. Send a boy around when you’re ready to lift anchor,’ Jem said.

‘You’ve been away a long time from Massachusetts?’ Captain Monroe said as he walked topside with a fellow captain, showing him all the courtesies.

‘Twenty-seven years,’ Jem replied, as he sat in the bosun’s chair to be swung over the side to his waiting boat. He wouldn’t have minded scrambling down the chains, but he couldn’t ignore the American captain’s kindness.

‘A lot has changed, Captain,’ the Yankee said as he motioned for the crew to swing him over now.

I hope not everything. Or everyone, Jem thought as he went over the side and waved to his American counterpart. Is it too much to hope that Theodora Winnings remains the same?

Chapter Three (#u0127df64-7fd3-5f4e-9620-5c63f7e14f27)

James made a note in his log—personal logs were a habit not easily broken—to let Owen Brackett know when next they saw each other that his jaw stopped aching at Latitude North thirty-eight degrees, four minutes, Longitude West forty-eight degrees, forty-six minutes, roughly the middle of the stormy Atlantic.

The passengers aboard the Marie Elise were a disparate lot, some Americans heading home, a French emigré or two and Englishmen who were no more forthcoming about their reasons to travel than he was. He had a private chuckle, thinking that some of them might have been what the harbourmaster thought of him, spies or government emissaries.

The crossing was rough enough to keep many of the passengers below deck during the early days of the voyage. Jem had no trouble keeping down his meals, and less trouble standing amidships and looking at oily, swelling water hinting of hurricanes.

He only spent two days in the waist of the ship before Captain Monroe invited him to share the quarterdeck. Jem accepted the offer, scrupulously careful to stay away from Captain Monroe’s windward side. From Monroe’s demeanour, Jem knew the Yankee appreciated the finer points of quarterdeck manners.

Captain Monroe apologised in advance for some of his passengers. ‘Hopefully they’ll stay seasick awhile and not pester you with gibes about Englishmen who couldn’t fight well enough to hang on to the colonies.’ He laughed. ‘And here I am, making similar reference!’

‘I’ll survive,’ Jem said, and felt no heartburn over the matter. ‘We need to maintain a friendship between our countries.’

‘From what you tell me, the United States might be your country, too,’ Captain Monroe pointed out. ‘D’ye plan to visit Massachusetts during this visit?’

‘Perhaps. We’ll see.’

Mostly Jem watched the water, enjoying the leisure of letting someone else worry about winds and waves, especially when it proved obvious to him that Captain Monroe knew his ropes. He felt not a little flattered when Lucius—they were on a first-name basis soon—asked his opinion about sails and when to shorten them.

Even better than the jaw ache vanishing was the leisure to recall a much earlier trip in the other direction. He stared at the water, remembering that trip when he was ten years old; he’d been frightened because so-called patriots had torched the family’s comfortable Boston house. He remembered his unwillingness even then to leave the colony where he had been born and reared and now faced cruel times.

Looking around to make certain he was unobserved, Jem leaned his elbows on the ship’s railing, a major offense that would have sent one of his midshipmen shinnying up and down the mainmast twenty times as punishment. Most painful had been his agonized goodbye to his big yellow dog with the patient, sorrowful eyes and the feathery tail always waving because everyone was a friend. ‘I want another dog like you, Mercury,’ he said quietly to the Atlantic Ocean.

Papa had named Mercury, because he was the slowest, most good-natured creature in the colony, even after some Sons of Liberty rabble caught him, tarred and feathered him. If Jem’s tears could have washed the tar away, Mercury would have survived. He never asked Papa how he put Mercury down, but at least his pet did not suffer beyond an hour or two.

Here he stood, a grown man of some skill and renown among his peers, melancholy over a long-dead dog. As with most complicated emotions that seem to surface after childhood is gone, James wasn’t entirely sure who the tears were for.

Contemplating the water through many days of the voyage, Jem found himself amazed at his impulsive decision to bolt to the United States, after reading a mere scrap of a decade-old letter. He knew himself to be a careful man, because he understood the monumental danger of his profession and his overarching desire to see all the officers and seamen in his stewardship as safe as he could make them. Quick decisions came with battle, but this hasty voyage had been a quick decision unrelated to war.

In the cold light of this Atlantic crossing, he justified himself, convinced that the Peace of Amiens, while a fragile treaty, would last long enough for him to make sure all was well with Theodora Winnings and return with Admiralty none the wiser.

Or so he thought. Anything seemed possible, now that his jaw didn’t ache all the time and he was sleeping eight hours instead of his usual four. Until this voyage, he had forgotten the pleasure of swinging in a hammock and reading.

As the journey neared its end, he spent a pleasant evening in Lucius Monroe’s cabin, drinking a fine Madeira; maybe he drank too much. However it fell out, he told the Yankee skipper about Theodora Winnings and the long-delayed letter.

‘Am I a fool for this expedition?’ he asked Lucius.

‘Probably,’ the Yankee replied. ‘She helped nurse you back to health from a malaria relapse?’

‘Aye, she did. I was a stinking, sweating, puking, pissing, disgusting mess.’

‘Then it must be love,’ Lucius Monroe joked. ‘More?’

Jem held out his glass. ‘I never had the courage to ask her why she was even there. There were other women in the ward besides the nuns, but they were all slaves.’

‘Who can understand the ladies?’ Lucius said. He leaned back and gave a genteel burp that he probably would have apologised for a few weeks earlier, before theirs turned into a first-name acquaintance.

Lucius broke the comfortable silence. ‘I’ve been curious about this since you came aboard, James. You tell me you were born in Massachusetts Colony and spent your first decade in my country. How do you feel about it now?’

‘I liked Massachusetts,’ he said finally. ‘I liked the dock people who didn’t mind my chatter, and my friends who took me fishing. My father was next in authority after Benjamin Hallowell, Senior, then serving as Admiralty High Commissioner. Papa let me roam all around the docks.’

He saw by the way the American nodded, that his own childhood had been spent much the same way. ‘You understand, Lucius, don’t you? There is a freedom here that I cannot explain or understand.’

‘Did you come back for another glimpse of that, or of Miss Winnings?’ Captain Monroe asked.

‘I wish I knew.’

* * *

When the Marie Elise docked in Baltimore, James walked down the gangplank, took a deep breath of United States’ air, realised it smelled the same as it did in Plymouth, and laughed at himself. With instructions from Captain Monroe, he arranged passage on a coasting vessel to Charleston, South Carolina.

After an evening of good food with Captain Monroe at the curiously named The Horse You Came In On Tavern at Fell’s Point, and a night at the inn next door, James boarded the Annie, a vessel that deposited him in Charleston a day and a half later, none the worse for wear, even though the vessel was less sound than he liked and the crew even more dubious.

He had stuffed his effects in his old sea bag, which still naturally fit the curve of his shoulder. After a short walk, spent trying to divest himself of the seagoing hip roll, he stood in front of the Magnolia Tavern and Inn, took a deep breath and wondered again what he was doing.

He didn’t bother with luncheon. After dropping his duffel in his room that overlooked magnolia trees with their heady blooms, he walked the route from the dock to Winnings Mercantile and Victuallers. At least, he walked to where it should have been, and stared up at a swinging sign that read South Carolina Mercantile. He reminded himself that things change in eleven years, and opened the door.