after our breakfast.” He looked away from the ladies. “I’ve become fond of taking breakfast to him and … and just sitting with him while he eats.”
“Why must he leave so soon?” Grace asked.
“We here have overlooked something that a prime minister dare not do: The Count of Quintanar is the enemy. The fact that I am harboring him could land me in trouble. Some might question my loyalty.”
He heard no argument. “We’ve kept the matter so quiet,” was as close as she came to a protest.
“Mr. Pitt is concerned,” Able replied. They didn’t need to know about Angus Ogilvie’s major role in silencing two traitors to England’s cause only yesterday.
“I can understand, my love, but I don’t have to like it,” Meri said.
“Neither do I.” Able gave Meri his attention. “Forgive the short notice, but could you and Mrs. Perry concoct something special for dinner tonight? We’ll have Angus and Mr. Ferrier, Captain Ogilvie, and Headmaster Croker, if he feels well enough. And the Mercury crew, of course.” He smiled, thinking of Smitty. “I have already commissioned Smitty to escort Mrs. Munro here in Grace’s carriage, if Grace is agreeable to such a loan.”
“Completely agreeable,” Grace said. “I’m glad you invited Captain Ogilvie.”
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 the Mercury, 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. The Mercury is 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, I know the competition vying for your attention in that outsized brain of yours,” she said. “I also know how you feel about