little Avon March; Tots and Ogilvie at the sheets; Davey’s tending to Spanish wounded.
“’Not one Rat failed to do his duty,’” she read. “’Sir B would be proud of them, as I am.’”
There was more: Admiral Calder had not engaged the enemy a second day, but sent the Mercury further south, with news of the action to Admiral Nelson. “’We delivered that dispatch to the admiral’s secretary, and couldn’t return to the Mercury fast enough to avoid hearing Nelson’s outrage that Calder gave up too easily. For a small man, Nelson has powerful lungs.’”
Junius nodded. “Once I served with t’admiral, a captain then. Aye, he does.” He shook his head. “Mark ye, there’ll be a court martial coming Calder’s way.”
The note was nearly done. Able had run out of paper so he had resorted to the margins. She turned the note sideways then upside down to read it. “’We had the satisfaction of harrying Admiral Villeneueve’s fleet back to Spain. Invasion from France is averted for now. All my love. Burn this letter.’”
Meridee looked down at Able’s first war letter to her. She wanted to put it under her pillow, so she could read it over and over. Instead, she balled it in her fist and tossed it in the Rumford. The note crackled and disappeared.
Silence reigned for long moments in the kitchen. She felt a chill, even in early August, and rubbed her arms. “We are in for a long war, are we not?” she finally asked the room in general. She saw slow nods from these friends who knew ships and men far better than she did.
After some conversation of a consoling nature – Did she look that sad? Probably – the others returned to their duties, leaving her alone in the kitchen. She thought through the letter again, smiling to herself at the little ribald drawings she had hidden from the others, then wondered about the postscript she had kept to herself. She had no eidetic memory like Able Six, but it was short and she remembered. I learned something about my father.
Able came home a week later when she least expected him. It was the middle of the day; class was in session and she and Mrs. Perry had left Ben with the increasingly capable Pegeen. Now and then there was no substitute for a ramble through the Portsmouth market. She and Nick had decided they were in the mood for cod that night.
She never feared the market with Mrs. Perry close at hand. Sailors who might have been inclined to attempt impropriety – this was Portsmouth, after all – gave her a wide berth after a snarl from Mrs. Perry. Meridee had protested this once to Able, preceded by a statement that she was matronly now. “My waist isn’t what it used to be, and my breasts aren’t so perky. I’ll never see twenty-five again,” she had said early one morning in the privacy of their bedchamber. “I do hate to take Mrs. Perry away from other duties. Couldn’t I go by myself?”
Her husband grinned into his shaving mirror. “Meridee-luscious, have you actually taken a good look in the mirror lately? C’mere.”
She obliged him, thinking him silly, and looked into his mirror. He wiped some of the soap off his face and spoke directly into her ear, which set her nerves humming. “You have only grown more beautiful, Mrs. Six. I barely trust me around you.”
That conversation had landed them back in bed in jig time, considering that he only had a towel around his waist and her shift was remarkably portable. “You will go to the market with Mrs. Perry or not at all,” he said afterward in most unloverlike tones, as he wiped the rest of his shaving soap off her neck. And so she did.
“We’ll fry the cod the way we like it, add some potatoes and gorge ourselves,” Meridee said as they walked home. They stopped at Ezekiel Bartleby’s bakery because it was on the way, ready for petit fours that Nick liked too well. Smitty, as well, but he was at sea.
Ezekiel wore a broad smile as she selected the petit fours. “Better add some more, Mrs. Six,” he said most cheerfully. “Ye’ve got two more men at home.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder to his back rooms. “Make it three. You know Captain Ogilvie likes’um, too. He’s sleeping now but I predict he’ll be dining with you tonight.”
Meridee gasped and dashed to the door. She stopped. You