Page 56 of Unlikely Heroes
Soon it was just the two of them. “Would you like something to eat?” he asked, using the polite form of “you”-usted– in Spanish. He knew he wasn’t ready for the intimate form.“¿Quiere usted algo de comer?”
The count shook his head. “No. Let us talk. You have to know I did not abandon your mother. You have to know.”
He spoke slowly, his voice soft, his Spanish impeccable and courtly. Also obvious was the sadness, particularly in his expressive eyes, those same eyes that Meridee said beguiled her even more than Able’s broad shoulders. He reached for Able’s hand, and Able clasped his again.
“Why were you even in Portsmouth?” Able asked. “I know our nations were not at war in 1775 – quite the contrary – but why Portsmouth?”
“In recent years, I have served the Spanish fleet as principal royal quartermaster,” the count said. He relaxed and managed a smile. “I was a glorified clerk with a title, at least when I was young.”
“Still…”
“Your quartermasters use an efficient counting and recording system that the world would like to copy,” the count said, with a touch of humor. “When that foul Napoleon called England a nation of shopkeepers, I believe he was envious.”
“FoulNapoleon?”
“Make no mistake; many of us hate him, too,” the count said simply. “But that is not my story. As a young man, I was charged by Carlos el Rey with studying this method. I was a mereteniente. To Portmouth I went.” He sighed. “I met your mother on the night of my arrival, when the Spanish delegation was feted by the harbormaster, a man name of Thomas Carmichael.” He smiled then for the first time. “Dios, but she was lovely.”
“What did she look like?”
The count reached into his uniform pocket and took out a small frame, elaborately carved and locked with a simple hasp. “I never go anywhere without it. Here.”
Able took the miniature. “I never thought to see my mother,” he said.
“Open it.”
He could not help his intake of breath. Red-haired and blue-eyed, his mother smiled up at him. He swallowed and swallowed again, but was helpless against his tears. Able bowed his head over the miniature and wept. His father sat up and embraced him. They clung to each other.
“As you can see, I am on the other side of the frame,” his father said, when he could speak.
Able wiped his eyes and looked. He might have been gazing into a mirror. He looked at Mary Carmichael and remembered something Meri had remarked on. She had noticed that after he washed his hair, it seemed to have reddish highlights. Now he knew they came from Mary Carmichael, who fell in love with the Spanish navy’s future royal quartermaster, then a mere lieutenant.
Able handed back the miniature. “How did you know she was brilliant?” he asked, hoping she was at least treated better than he was in the Dumfries workhouse. “Did you happen to find out? I doubt she told you.”
Meri had told him about ladies being advised to hide their lights under bushels, so as not to embarrass gentlemen. “Mama said a lady mustn’t ever show her feelings, especially to men, who are superior in every way,” she had told him once, after a child’s simple card game in which she thrashed him. “I am so bad at that.”
“It happened in odd fashion,” the count said. He sat beside Able his arm around his son. “I swear I was in love at once, but I was young. Who knew? Not I. I was invited to the harbormaster’s office to get my first instruction in Royal Navy accounts and bookkeeping and was sent into the office library. When I opened the door, I saw Mary hunched over a book. She was completely engrossed and did not hear me. I watched in amazement as she turned the pages at what couldn’t have been more than one-second intervals. Swish, swish!”
“I read like that,” Able said. “My wife says it makes her dizzy to watch.”
“You have a wife?” the count asked almost pathetically, like someone hoping against hope for good news and expecting none.
“I do, a wonderful woman, and a wee son.”And you will meet them, he thought, humbled to the dust at the idea. “You sir, I assume you have a wife and children? It’s been many years since my mother…”
The count shook his head. “Neither. I never met anyone else I liked even half so well.”
You poor man, Able thought.Poor man.He shivered inside, thinking how cruel life would be without Meri and Ben, and realized that as harsh as his birth and childhood, his life was vastly richer than his wealthy, titled father’s.
“I am sorry for you,” he said, and meant it with all his heart. “What did my mother say? Did she know you had been watching her?”
“Quite a self-possessed young lady, your mother was. She gave me an arch look and declared that was how she read. She said she remembered everything. I could quiz her if I doubted it. She folded her hands in her lap and gave me a level look – ah, the one I see right now from you – as if to ask, ‘What are you going to do about it, simpleton?’”
They laughed together, then touched foreheads. The count looked away. When he spoke, Able knew he could live to be ninety and never hear anything so wistful. “We couldn’t stay away from each other. I sneaked into her house every night after midnight.”
Able could imagine that. It had taken supreme will to keep out of Meri’s bedchamber during that remarkable four weeks they were under the same roof in rural Devonshire, while he taught her nephews and they mooned about, thinking no one was noticing. For a genius, he sometimes wasn’t so bright.
“It came as no surprise when Mary told me she was with child,” the count said. He looked away again. “This is hard to tell!”
“You must.”
