Page 36 of Unlikely Heroes
She knew what to do, as sure as she had known what to do in the workhouse. She looked into her friend’s eyes. “Grace, you and little Georgie need to move into my house. We have an empty chamber, since Jean Hubert has flown the coop. If I’m not being impertinent, please at least think about it.”
Grace looked away, her face unreadable. Meridee wondered how badly she had fumbled. “Maybe I shouldn’t have…” she began.
“I accept,” Grace said quickly. “Oh, my, yes. When may Georgie and I move in?”
Meridee let out the breath she had been holding. “Today. Now!” She gathered Grace into a generous embrace. “I have an empty crib. You needn’t bring anything, really.”
Grace held her off. “You’ll need both your cradle and crib, Meridee, and don’t you forget that,” she said. “I can bring along George’s crib.”
Logistics reared its ugly head. “I haven’t room for George’s nanny, and there is Junius Bolt to consider. I doubt your man-of-all-work will take kindly to abandonment.”
Grace supplied a genuine smile. “Meridee, we have been in the middle of a fleet action at my house! Miss Norton gave her notice last week and today is her last day.” She giggled. “She and Junius have been competing for George’s care, and she threw in the towel, if you will excuse a dreadful bit of cant.” She didn’t try to hide her smile, accompanied by an eye roll. “My rascal students across the street have been acquainting me with all manner of low language, but sometimes it fits, doesn’t it?”
“Juniusis your nanny?” Meridee wasn’t certain she had followed that conversation correctly.
“As good as, and maybe better. He does not flinch at smelly nappies. He says he’s smelled much worse in a frigate’s bilge after a long voyage.”
As they all laughed together, the kitchen suddenly felt right, the house not so empty. The three of them reached for the last piece of bread at the same time. Mrs. Perry divided it into three pieces and Meridee slapped on more butter than anyone required, except perhaps Grace, who was nursing her son and eating butter for two.
She noticed Pegeen and motioned her closer. “Pegeen, let me introduce you to Lady St. Anthony.”
Pegeen’s mouth was a perfect o. “A real lady?” she asked, as she dropped a deep and surprisingly elegant curtsey.
“Indeed she is,” Meridee said with a smile. “She has a baby named George. I think, no, I am certain, you could help her.” She turned to Grace again. “All you need are clothes, yours and Georgie’s. Perhaps your crib is the better idea,” she said with a blush. “I know I will need mine again, eventually.”
“Certainly you will,” Grace agreed, sounding more like Grace again, the former spinster who used to be in complete control of her own destiny. “My carriage is out front. Georgie and I will be back here before you even miss us, or bedtime, whichever comes first.”
Meridee saw her off from the front door. She smiled to herself as Grace started to whistle before the coachman opened the door. While Meridee tidied the empty room across the hall from her own, Mrs. Perry banged around in the room off the kitchen, better known as the servants’ dining hall in more grandiose days, even though it wasn’t large. Meridee sent little Pegeen with a quick message to Mr. Ferrier who was teaching the lads how to properly load ballast on small platforms in the stone basin. In minutes there was a swarm of slightly damp boys ready to wrestle the now-extra bed downstairs for Junius Bolt, as the dining hall became his new quarters.
The man in question arrived a mere hour later, bearing his own modest gear, and Grace’s clothing and Georgie’s, telling Meridee as nothing else could how quickly her friend wanted to leave her too-empty house, no matter how grand it was. “More will come later, I do not doubt,” Junius said as those same boys, drier now, carried Grace’s boxes upstairs.
Junius stayed at the foot of the stairs with Meridee. “Mrs. Six, this is a kind gesture on your part,” he told her. “I was beginning to despair.” A sturdy, if aging, veteran of many a naval fleet action in the past century, Junius Bolt had never appeared to be a man easily given to despair. This whole, sad business had added wrinkles to his face and a slump to his shoulders.
She looked closer and thought – hoped? – she saw serenity returning. “Lady St. Anthony and I will help each other through this national emergency,” she said, understanding more fully how hard it must be to remain in a house where a witty, talented, clever fellow had departed. “Nothing is as bleak as a house where one of the inhabitants no longer resides.”
Junius took his leave, declaring he would return soon enough with the lady in question and her son. Meridee pointed the helpful young crew – Ben trailing behind now and up from his nap – toward the kitchen, where Mrs. Perry and Pegeen had biscuits for all.
She stayed where she was, reminding herself that her own missing man was only a channel away, and not on that more distant shore from which travelers, resigned or otherwise, never returned. She felt a chill wind on her heart – no other way to explain it – that sent her into the sitting room to look into the mending basket she had neglected since Able left. She could keep her hands busy, even as her mind raced.
The basket never entirely emptied out, not with little boys or bigger ones with stockings to darn and cuffs to let out. It had become a bit of a family joke. She looked in the basket. “My goodness,” she said. “What mischief is this?”
A small box with a red thread around it nestled between the legs of a pair of Able’s smallclothes, which ordinarily would never find their way into the downstairs sewing basket.What are you up to, husband, she thought, and picked up the box.
Who doesn’t love a present? She opened the box to see a gold locket, heart-shaped, on a plain gold chain. She wondered what damage this must have done to their household expenses, as she opened a note.Meri, if you yearn for me in interesting ways, this will make you laugh, she read to herself, thinking how much she wanted to laugh precisely now.I know it is genteel to leave a lock of one’s hair to a beloved person. You also know I am a bastard with no gentility. Your own very able, Able.
Her face already flaming, she looked around to make sure the boys were occupied in the kitchen and opened the locket. She gasped and smothered her laughter with both hands over her mouth; one wouldn’t do.
“You, Master Six, are a rascal,” she whispered, as she stared down at coarse, curly hair that certainly didn’t come from his head.
The locket and chain tucked nicely down the front of her bodice. When Lady St. Anthony arrived in time for dinner, Meridee still smiled.
Chapter Sixteen
Perhaps it was a conspiracy hatched by Headmaster Croker. Perhaps Master Harry Ferrier had a sixth sense about lonely ladies. The addition of Grace and George St. Anthony to the Six household found itself augmented at dinnertime by Able’s substitute instructor, located by Nick Bonfort, a boy of initiative who still felt sadly neglected.
Master Ferrier came over one night at the dinner hour. He knocked on the door, which little Pegeen answered. Meridee heard her from the dining room, calling out, “Miz Six, I don’t know what to do!”
Meridee put her napkin on the table and rose immediately. Nick rose, too. “Nick, you can keep eating,” she said.
