Page 74 of Unlikely Heroes
A sidelong glance at Meri earned a wink from his proper wife.
Taking breakfast to his father had quickly become a ritual both men enjoyed. The count was no early riser. He was also no aficionado of trooping downstairs for breakfast, when a servant could bring it upstairs. Such a custom told Able everything he wanted to know about his father’s opulent life, when he wasn’t at sea. Truth to tell, he enjoyed taking Mrs. Perry’s good food upstairs after Smitty had crossed the street for lessons or work on theMercury, and the room was theirs.
He let his father eat before he brought down the mallet on his visit. His father finished with a pleased sigh. “I shall have to teach Mrs. Perry how to make paella,” he said, “provided we can keep Ben from counting the grains of rice and stacking them in bundles of thirty.”
There was no other way to say it but blurt it out. “Padre, I spoke with England’s prime minister yesterday. He is most adamant that you leave England immediately.”
The count took it well. “I was wondering when I might come to his attention,” he said, after a long silence.
“You hadn’t, not really. I was, shall we say, encouraged to disclose your presence in my house. Mr. Pitt informed me that others might find out. You would hang as a war criminal, and I would hang for sheltering you. That is all I know.” He didn’t mean to sound so curt, but the matter was stark. “I am sorry, but this is war. We cannot escape it.”
The count took a final sip of his chocolate and dabbed at his lips. “I see the necessity for my removal,mi hijo,” he said. “No te preocupes.”
“Gracias. TheMercuryis nearly read to sail,” Able said. “We’ll cast off tomorrow.”
“I would like to have stayed longer,” was the count’s wistful reply. “I was just getting to know you.”
It was too much. Able gathered the breakfast dishes, pausing in the door to say, “Padre,I love you.”
“And I you, my son,” his father replied. Able heard all the sorrow. “We are puppets in the hands of an ambitious man, damn him.”
Able shook his head when Meri took the tray from him downstairs and asked if he wanted to play with Ben. He said something, tears in his eyes, and left her standing there.
He knew the walk to Haslar Hospital to alert Davey Ten would shake off the cobwebs. It gave him time to remind himself that there was a war raging too close to his loved ones here in England; that he had managed twenty-nine years without his father, so what were a few years more until the war ended; that his life of hard things was still a life of hard things and nothing could change that.
He derived no consolation from the words of commiseration circling around his head from his spectral mentors. What did they remember of love and loss? “Leave me alone,” he told them out loud.
“Oh, no.”
He felt Meri’s arm through his. “Slow down, my love.”
“I didn’t mean you, Meri,” he said. “I would never say that to you.”
“Dearest, Iknowthe competition vying for your attention in that outsized brain of yours,” she said. “I also know how you feel about me.” She smiled. “But do slow down, please. I had to run to catch you.”
He did as she commanded, relieved she had not left him alone. “Mrs. Perry is consoling Ben because he wanted to come along. I told him you would take him aboard theMercurythis afternoon to make up for it.” She nudged him. “Don’t make me a liar, Able.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” he said, and nudged her back. “I’ll take you aboard, too, if you’d like.”
“Not this time,” she told him. “Maybe next year. If theMercurywere to bob about, I’ll puke, sure as the world. Where away?” She peered around his arm to see him better. “Is that correct?”
“You’re the perfect sailing master’s wife,” he assured her. “Where away? To Haslar to tell Davey’s surgeon that we’re sailing tomorrow.”
“May I come along?”
“I’d be miserable if you didn’t.”
God bless his wife. Gradually he slowed down until they strolled along the Gunwharf, then past warehouses and up the incline to Haslar. Her quiet presence calmed his brain. The hard things were never so hard when Meri was close.
Davey took the news with his quiet smile. Able saw no fear in his face.
“Ask your surgeon if he can spare some capital knives for your kit,” Able added. “No worries, Davey. Should you need to use them, I’ll be right by your side.”
He told him about dinner that evening. “You can bed down in the sitting room later and we’ll all walk to the Gunwharf together in the morning. I want my crew around me.”
Chapter Thirty-three
They sailed the next morning on a fair wind to Spain. Meri and Ben saw them off, along with Ezekiel Bartleby, and all the students and teachers from St. Brendan’s. The count was already stashed below, amused at the whole business. Able knew his father was more at home on a splendid Spanish three-decker, but he bore with good grace this humble setting of a yacht captained by a bastard and manned by workhouse lads.
