Chapter Five

Luke had taken advantage of the time when Sally and Mary Cooper were in the other room. “Aunt Luella, you are welcome to come to my house in Plymouth. Perhaps you shouldn’t be alone in Liddiard.”

“I’m not alone now. I have Mary.”

“Aye, but I mean family. There’s room for you in my house. Mary’s not family.”

If a glare could have cut through lead… “She’s not, Aunt Luella,” he protested, but it was a weak protest. Truth to tell, he was getting a little tired of himself, too.

And there she was, standing in the doorway. He hoped she had not heard that low-voiced exchange, but…He took a closer look at her, startled to see her set expression, with her eyes so wide and her face drained of color.

“Mary?” he asked tentatively. “You don’t look well. Sit, please.”

She did as he said, perching on the edge of a chair, almost as though she would take flight if she heard a disparaging word.

“Mary?” Aunt Luella said. Luke heard all her concern for this small woman, this waif.

Mary seemed to gather herself together. She spoke to him, her eyes boring into his. “Is Sally generally in bed and asleep when you get home?”

He didn’t expect that, and it set him on the defensive. “I have important word, Miss Cooper,” he replied, biting off his words. “It often keeps me from home until late. Sally is in good hands. You shouldn’t think that I leave her alone. Don’t be impertinent.”

She winced at his sharp words, but the stricken look did not leave her eyes. “I care not how you feel about me. Perhaps I am an encroacher.” She sent a fleeting smiling in Aunt Luella’s direction. “It hasn’t been long, but I like it here and I have done some good.”

She returned her gaze to him. “Sally is probably asleep now. Go to her. Push back the sleeves of her nightdress. If she is turned the right way, see if you can look at her back.”

“By God, you are impertinent!” he exclaimed, but he felt a great foreboding as he left the room. He stood a moment in the hall, trying to calm his fears. He opened the door to see Sally curled up with Gargantua. Her sleeve was pushed back, revealing exactly what Mary Cooper noticed – a ring of bruises around her wrist, as though someone much stronger had squeezed her tight, no affection involved.

Shaken, he leaned over her and saw a series of bruises on her back. He wept as silently as he could, but only briefly, because he had no time for tears. He dried his face and returned to the sitting room, well aware of his failure as a father.

“I had no idea,” was all he could say, before he sat down heavily, as though his legs would no longer hold him. Aunt Luella took the candle from him and hurried from the room. While he waited for her to return, he could barely bring himself to look at Mary Cooper, who sat in silence, contemplating her hands.

“What must you think of me?” he finally managed to say.

Bless her heart. She was too kind. “You are a busy man doing a hard job,” she said, as if she wanted to apologize in his place, to spare him any self-recrimination. “I do understand how hard it is to do everything and have no help.”

“ Try to do everything,” he corrected. “I can’t.”

“Who can?” she questioned in turn.

Yes, she was kind, but he didn’t intend to absolve himself so easily. “I should have known…Sally started clinging to me…I suppose she didn’t want to be near Miss Templeton,” he said, shuddered, then turned on himself again. “I am a fool and my daughter has suffered because of it.”

He hoped she would say something else, some kindness to further excuse him. Drat her, she gave him that level-headed, entirely benign look of someone who…. He paused there, forced to acknowledge the obvious: She didn’t know any of them. Even more to the point, she was completely powerless and dependent upon them . He continued the thought, a beguiling one: She knew it, and was willing to risk her own security for someone equally powerless. For Sally.

He surprised himself then. In the middle of his self-recrimination and misery, he saw how lovely she was, and how kind. He wished there was a way to know her better, despite the fact that his daughter and his ships remained his major concern, and she was, by anyone’s reckoning, a complete nobody. Granted, his own social sphere was hardly exalted. Hers was non-existent.

He couldn’t help his smile, rueful as it must have appeared to her. “I have a problem, haven’t I?”

“Life’s full of those, Mr. Wainwright,” she replied, with unmatched serenity. “Sometimes we have to ask for help. I did, and I found it here. Perhaps you can, too.”

R idiculous, he thought, simply ridiculous . Help from a shop clerk one step from total ruin, and an old lady? “Perhaps,” he replied lamely.

Mary Cooper was kind enough to say nothing.

When his aunt returned to the sitting room, her expression as bleak as his, the three of them sat in silence. Luke waited for Aunt Luella to speak first, and she did not fail him, even though he knew he had also failed her by leaving her alone in Liddiard. Good God, she had to be seventy, if she was a day, and he was her only living relative, poor lady.

“Nephew, this is a wretched turn of events,” she said finally, which wasn’t precisely what he wanted to hear.

That was it? Luke knew he needed a solution to his problem. Dash it all, his daughter was being abused, but the business of war edged everything else aside. King, country and the Royal Navy demanded his total attention. Didn’t they?

He glanced at Mary Cooper and saw something in her eyes that suggested – oh, it couldn’t be – that she was smarter than he was. “What would you do, Miss Cooper?” he asked, not disguising his irritation.

“Do you truly want to know, Mr. Wainwright?” she asked in turn, but she was serious, and not sarcastic, as he knew he sounded.

“I believe I do,” he said quietly, even humbly. “I know I do.”

“Were I you, I would leave Sally here with Miss Wainwright and me, fire that excuse for a nanny, and build your ships,” she said.

Drat that woman again, but she must have seen the skepticism in his eyes, even though every word she said was a solution to his immediate problem. “Miss Cooper…” he started.

“Just Mary,” she replied. “I harbor no illusions about my place.”

By God, she didn’t. He strongly suspected that only truth would come out of that mouth. Well, all right then. “Just abandon my only child to an aunt getting on in years – I apologize, Aunt Luella, but you know this is so – and someone I don’t even know?”

He winced inside when he saw massive, but momentary, sorrow in her eyes. “It’s true,” he said.

“Aye, it is, but that is precisely what I recommend you do,” she told him, her words firm. “When matters are better in hand, you can find another, more qualified governess, or perhaps even marry a good lady who will smooth your path, because that seems to be what women are allowed to do. You can go merrily on, building frigates.”

Did he sense a little sarcasm from her? He did, and he knew it was well deserved, if impertinent. Dash it all, she was absolutely right. “I should take your advice?”

“ I would,” she replied, a smile in her eyes.

“I will,” he said. “Done, Mary. I will be in touch.”

Luke steeled himself for the ordeal of telling Sally about the practically spontaneous plan for her to remain in Liddiard. He settled down in the bed beside her cot, where she slept with Gargantua, who apparently adopted her with all the ease that Mary Cooper had moved into his aunt’s home and shop. Personally, he hated cats.

He slept surprisingly well, all things considered, and woke before Sally did, content to watch her peaceful face, relaxed in slumber. Clarissa had a similarly peaceful approach to mornings, allowing them to arrive gradually, and give her time to stretch and contemplate. He saw the same thing in Sally. He smiled, remembering.

For some reason, Gargantua had changed addresses at some point in the night and lay at his feet. As much as he disliked cats, Luke had to admit that his feet were warm for the first time since Clarissa’s death. She had never minded his feet on her legs, another thing to admire about his late wife. Gargantua must have been a living furnace, because he performed his magic on top of the covers.

It pained his heart that the first thing Sally did after opening her eyes was to look around in fear, as if expecting the horrid Miss Templeton to materialize and abuse her for some miniscule infraction.

“No fears, Sal, my dear,” he said. “It’s just you, me and uh, Gargantua.” He held out his arms and she joined him in bed. “Things are going to be different for a few weeks,” he began, then told her of his plan to leave her in Liddiard for a short time.

She appeared relieved at first, then the fear returned. “Is Miss Templeton going to come here to teach me?” she asked. Luke heard all the worry.

“No. She will be making other plans,” he said. “I will find someone else for you.” He thought a minute, wondering how much the maid of all work, and even his cook, knew about what had been going on. How to ask? He settled on a way that even Mary Cooper would approve of, that is, if he was even slightly concerned how Mary would handle this matter. “The maid will stay of course, unless you might like her to find another position. You tell me, please.”

“I…I would like it if she leaves along with Miss Templeton,” Sally told him, confirming another suspicion.

“Excellent. I’ll see that she finds another place to work.”

Sally snuggled closer, reminding Luke of earlier, lovelier days when she had stomped her imperious way to their bedchamber and held up her hands to him or her mama. As he hugged her, Luke knew how much was missing from his life, and hers.

His daughter wanted to placate him. Women, even little ones, seemed to have a sense about that. “Mary said she would teach me some Christmas carols.” She clutched the front of his nightshirt. “You do remember that Christmas is coming?”

God forgive him, but he had forgotten. “A father doesn’t forget Christmas,” he lied. He thought it best rise and shoo her from the room, before he told too many more lies. “But now I have to hurry back to Plymouth.” And fire two odious woman from my employment and see if I still have a cook , he didn’t add. “There’s a ship to build and three frigates to repair. Promise me you will continue being helpful here.”

“I promise, Papa,” she said and kissed his cheek.

“Write to me,” he said, feeling monumentally unsure of himself at this moment, as if he were abandoning his daughter. To his relief, she nodded, after a reminder. “Christmas, Papa.”

After she left the room in search of breakfast, Gargantua trailing along behind her, Luke took a hard look at himself in the small hand mirror someone, perhaps Mary Cooper, had hung over the water basin. A worried man looked back at him, staring long enough to find him wanting in every way.

Accompanied by Aunt Luella, he spent the early morning visiting Mr. Mallard in his counting house, where he made arrangement for funds from Carter and Brustein, his Plymouth firm, to send a modest sum to Liddiard. “Just in case you have any extra expenses,” he said. “Don’t argue.”

Other than give him the fishy eye, she didn’t argue. When they returned to the shop, Sally, under Mary Cooper’s direction – her hands gentle on his daughter’s shoulders – was showing a customer the yarn. Gargantua had worked his way into the window display, which made Luke smile, even if he didn’t like cats.

“We will manage quite well,” his aunt assured him. “Straighten out your own household, and then perhaps we’ll return Sally to you.”

He thought about that when he leaned back in the post chaise an hour later, bound for Plymouth. Perhaps, eh? he thought, not sure if he should be ashamed or amused.

Leaving had been rendered easier by Mary Cooper. When Sally started to cry, he liked the way Mary’s arms naturally enveloped his little one. “Go get your father’s briefcase, my dear.”

Sally nodded and went into the sitting room, giving him a moment to gather himself together. As poor as his management had proved, one thing had never wavered. Perhaps he should mention that to Mary, in case she was inclined to pass judgment.

“I love my daughter,” he said simply. “I never realized how hard leave-taking would be.”

She did something that he knew had to be spontaneous. Before he had a moment to react, she grasped him above the elbows, her touch firm but brief. “I have no doubt of that, Mr. Wainwright,” she said in her quiet voice. “You need a little help right now. That’s all. Good journey to you.”

She was gone before he could say anything, which was just as well, because he had to swallow a few times and compose himself, all because someone had touched him. No one touched him. He laughed when Sally lugged in his briefcase, and made certain to hold her close for a moment, then kiss her cheek. When the post chaise pulled away from the curb, he looked back to see Mary Cooper standing in the doorway. She raised her hand as if to wave, then seemed to change her mind, as if she didn’t want to intrude.

He sat back and closed his eyes, relieved to know that Sally was in a safe place. After a moment, he opened his briefcase, with its ship drawings. There, among the blueprints and his own crude drawings, was a sketch of his daughter done in crayon with a sure hand. Sally smiled at him in her shy way and he smiled back.