Louise Gouge - The Captain's Lady

“Yes, Lady Marianne.” The footman bowed and left the room.

“Blevins will attend you, Captain Templeton.” Marianne kissed Papa’s cheek again. “Enjoy your afternoon, Papa.” She shot a meaningful look at Jamie. “I am going to the garden to read.”

Gliding from the room with a well-practiced grace, she met Blevins in the entry hall and gave him instructions regarding Captain Templeton. “I believe the bedchamber at the end of the third floor is best. Do you agree?” With the room’s clear view of the garden, Jamie would have no trouble knowing when she was there.

“Yes, Lady Marianne. I shall see to it.” Blevins, of medium height but seeming taller due to his exceptionally straight posture, marched on sticklike legs toward the drawing room, his gait metered like a black-clad soldier who heard an invisible drummer.

Seated on the marble bench beneath one of the barren chestnut trees, Marianne drew her woolen shawl about her shoulders and tried to concentrate on the words in her prayer book. But at the end of each Scripture verse, she found herself beseeching the Lord to send Jamie to her. As a guest in their home, he could visit her here in the garden without impropriety. Anyone looking out any of the town house’s back windows could see their actions were blameless.

After a half hour passed, Marianne shivered in the early spring breeze, closed her book and stared up at Jamie’s window, willing him to look out so that she might beckon him down. Perhaps he did not know they could meet here without censure. Yet had Papa not requested her assistance in making him feel welcomed? Tapping her foot on the flagstone paving in front of the bench, she huffed out an impatient sigh. She had told him she would be in the garden. Why did he not come?

A rear door opened, and Marianne’s heart leaped. But it was John, one of the family’s red-and-gold-liveried footmen, who emerged and approached her with a silver tray bearing a tea service and biscuits. “Begging your pardon, Lady Marianne, but Blevins thought you might like some refreshment.” John set the tray on the marble table beside her. “May I serve you, Lady Marianne?”

“Thank you, John. I can pour.” Perfect. An answer to prayer. “I should like for you to inform my father’s guest that he has missed his appointment with me. Please send Captain Templeton down straightaway.”

“Yes, Lady Marianne.” The ideal footman, John bowed away, his face revealing no emotion.

In a short time, Jamie emerged from the house. But instead of striding toward her with all eagerness, he walked as if facing the gallows, looking beyond her toward the stables, the hothouse, the treetops, anywhere but at her. By the time he came near, Marianne had almost succumbed to tears. Instead, she stood and reached out both hands to greet him.

“Jamie.” His name rushed out on a breath squeezed by joy and misery.

“You summoned me, Lady Marianne?” He stopped far beyond her reach and bowed. “I am at your service.”

She clasped her hands at her waist and laughed softly, but without mirth. “Such a cold tone to match a cold day. Where is the warmth that once graced your every word to me?”

For several moments, he stared at the ground, his lips set in a grim line and his jaw working. He seemed to compose himself, for at last he lifted his gaze to meet hers.

“My lady, I beg your forgiveness for my inappropriate conversations with you last summer.”

“But—”

“Please.” He raised his hand in a silencing gesture. “I will not betray the trust of Lord Bennington by arrogantly presuming an equality that would permit us…permit me…to pursue a lady so far above me.” For an instant, a sweet vulnerability crossed his eyes, but then all light disappeared from his face, replaced by the same blank expression John or any of the household servants might employ, a facade that bespoke their understanding of status and position. “You must not ask me to do that which would dishonor you, your family and my faith.” He gave her a stiff bow. “Now, if you will excuse me, my lady.” Jamie spun around and strode back toward the house with what seemed like eagerness, something clearly lacking when he had come to meet her.

The last time Jamie had felt such grief was beside his mother’s grave in Nantucket some sixteen years ago, when he was a lad of nine, struggling then not to cry. Now his jaw ached from clenching, and his chest throbbed as it had when a young whale had slammed him with its tail, trying to escape his harpoon. No, this was unlike any pain he had ever endured aboard his uncle’s whaling ship. He could not seem to pull in enough breath, could barely manage to climb the wide front staircase without clutching the oak railing.

In the third floor hallway, a footman cast a glance at him, and one eyebrow rose. Jamie stiffened. He was no fainthearted maiden who swooned over life’s injuries. He’d seen the harm he’d just inflicted upon Marianne…Lady Marianne. Yet despite the pain pinching her fair face, she had not swooned. Or had she? Perhaps after he tore himself from her presence, she’d succumbed to her distress.

With some effort, Jamie drew air into his lungs and strode down the hallway, bursting into the elegant bedchamber assigned to him. He ignored his friend Aaron’s shocked expression and dashed to the window to peer down into the garden where he’d left her. There she sat beneath the leafless tree, staring straight ahead, her shawl carelessly draped over the stone bench.

Pain swept through him again, but this time for her. How brave she was. No tears. Even at this distance he could see her composure. Was this not one of the reasons he loved her? As he had prayed, her unfailing good sense prevailed. She knew their romance was hopeless, and would not protest his declaration that it must end. See how she clutches her prayer book. Perhaps even now she is seeking God’s consolation. His parting admonition last year had influenced her as he hoped. Surely now she would cling to the Lord, as he did, to ease the agony they both must endure. No doubt she would manage better than he.

She lifted her gaze toward his window, and he jumped back, chiding himself for lingering there. She would survive the dissolution of their love, but only if he stayed true to his course. If she sensed he might waver, she might pursue him, which would lead to their undoing. No, far more than their undoing. Nothing less than the failure of his mission for the American Revolution.

“You’d best sit down, Jamie.” Aaron tilted his head toward an arrangement of green brocade chairs near the roaring fireplace. “You’re looking a mite pale.” Worry clouded his expression.

“Aye, I’ll sit.” He staggered to a chair and fell into it, clutching his aching head in both hands as warmth from the crackling logs reached him. The itchy collar of his brown woolen jacket pressed against his neck and generated sweat clear up to his forehead, while a cold, contradictory shudder coursed down his back.

Aaron sat in an adjacent chair and clasped Jamie’s shoulder. “You’ve got it bad, lad, no mistake. But you’d best gird up your mind straightaway, or General Washington will have to send someone else to spy on Lord Bennington and his East Florida interests. And by then it’ll be too late for any useful information to reach home.” His bushy brown eyebrows met in a frown. “I thought you’d worked this all out before we sailed.”

Jamie swiped his linen handkerchief across his forehead. “Aye. I thought it, too. Then I saw her.”

“Well, you’d best deal with it.” Aaron sat back and crossed his arms. “I didn’t sail over here to get hanged. My younger brothers aren’t yet old enough to manage my lands, you know.”

His words sank deep into Jamie’s mind, and the unsaid words sank deeper. In truth, now that he’d broken with her, a certain peace began to fill his chest. He lifted a silent prayer of thanks for God’s mercy. Determined to shake off personal concerns, he gave Aaron a sidelong glance and snorted. “If you aren’t keen on hanging, then you’d best quit pestering me and start playing your own part.” He punched his friend’s arm. “Up with you, man. When does a valet sit beside his master? And no more ‘Jamie.’ It’s Captain Templeton to you, and don’t you forget it.”

“That’s the way, Cap’n.” Aaron jumped to his feet. “And I’m Quince to ye, sir. So watch what ye say, too.” He spoke with the affected accent that augmented his guise as Jamie’s valet.

The good humor lighting Aaron’s face improved Jamie’s spirits. Together they could complete their mission and be gone in just over a fortnight. Surely he could evade Lady Marianne for that short time.

Shivering in the brisk breeze, Marianne clutched her prayer book to her chest and stared unseeing toward the back entrance of the house. Over and over, Jamie’s words repeated in her mind: You must not ask me to do that which would dishonor you, your family and my faith.

Dishonor? Did he truly believe loving her would cause such dishonor? Had all his ardent declarations of last summer meant nothing to him? Where was his honor if he broke his promise to love her forever? She could not think. Could not feel. His words hammered against her heart, numbing her to all, even tears, even to the biting March wind.

The memory of his cold facade burned into her like a fire, reigniting her senses. She tightened her grip on the prayer book. How could he cause her such pain? In answer, his face appeared in her mind’s eye. For the briefest moment, she had seen misery there. What his lips would deny, his eyes revealed. He did love her. Of that she was certain. Serenity filled her heart, and she dared to cast a gaze upward toward his window. She gasped. There he stood, looking directly at her. Then he was gone.

Marianne’s heart soared like the song of a nightingale, and warmth swept over her despite the wind. Oh, yes, indeed. Jamie Templeton loved her. And if he thought she would let him slip away because of some misplaced sense of honor, then the good captain had an important lesson to learn. She would begin teaching him this very evening.

Marianne’s father always insisted on supper in the formal dining room with all his family and followers gathered around the table. No one could escape. Even her brother Robert usually managed to appear and stay sober for the meal, after which he would go off with his friends for a night of activities about which Marianne tried not to think…or worry.

That evening as usual, Papa sat at one end of the long oak table, and Mama at the other. In her seat at Papa’s right hand, Marianne was delighted to see he had placed Jamie on his left, a singular honor that she prayed would not grate on her brother, who really should sit beside Papa. While it would be unacceptable for her to speak across the table and address Jamie, perhaps she might comment on his conversation with Papa.

According to his custom, Robert arrived several minutes late, but no hostility clouded his dark, handsome features. Instead, seated beside Jamie, he greeted him as a long-lost friend and insisted nothing would do but that Jamie must accompany him on his nightly exploits.

At Robert’s outlandish proposal, Marianne almost spewed her soup across the table, but managed to swallow and force her gaze down toward her plate. Please do not permit Jamie to go. Her silent prayer was directed to both her earthly and heavenly fathers. Before she could fully compose herself and observe Papa’s reaction to Robert’s plan, the gentleman seated to her right cleared his throat.

“Lady Marianne,” Tobias Pincer said, “how exquisite you look this evening.” As he leaned closer to her, his oily smile and the odors of camphor and wig powder nearly sent Marianne reeling off the other side of her chair. “Do tell me you plan to attend the rout this evening. I shall be nothing short of devastated if you do not.”