Regency Christmas Wishes. Carla Kelly

      ‘She’s likely long-married,’ Owen said.

      ‘Aye.’ He hesitated to say more so Owen filled in.

      ‘But you’re going to cross the Atlantic and find out, aren’t you?’ the surgeon asked.

      There it was, laid out before him, the very thing Jem wanted to do. Owen knew.

      ‘Better see a tailor right away and get yourself a civilian wardrobe,’ Owen said as he stood up and held out his hand.

      Jem shook his hand. ‘Don’t tell anyone. I’m ashore on half pay, but I’m not certain Admiralty House would be happy.’

      ‘Why not?’ Owen asked as they headed to the main floor again. ‘We’re at peace, and that unpleasantness with the colonies is long over.’ He took a good look at Jem. ‘You want to go back, don’t you, and not just for Miss Winnings.’ It was a statement, not a question.

      ‘I don’t know what I want,’ Jem replied frankly. ‘I liked living in Massachusetts Colony, but when you’re ten years old and your parents pull all the strings...’ He shrugged. ‘Don’t say anything.’

      ‘I’ll be as silent as an abbey of Trappist monks,’ Owen assured him. ‘Bon voyage, friend. Let me know at what longitude your jaw ache ends.’

      James took himself to his tailor in the Barbican, who opened his ledger to Jem’s previous measurements and congratulated him on maintaining an enviable trimness.

      ‘It’s easy enough to do in southern latitudes, when you sweat off every ounce of fat,’ Jem said.

      Of nightshirts and smallclothes he had an adequate amount. Shoes, too. He assured his tailor that three suits of clothes would suffice, and he could use his navy boat cloak. He reconsidered. As much as he loved the thing, one look would give him away immediately as a member of the Royal Navy, which was perhaps not so wise. He could store his Navy uniforms with Mrs Fillion.

      His order complete and promised in two weeks, Jem went next door for a low-crowned beaver hat which struck him as faintly ridiculous, even though the haberdasher assured him he was now à la mode. He knew he was going to miss the added intimidation of his tall bicorn, but as Teddy Winnings had told him once—how was it he was starting to remember their conversations?—he was already tall enough.

      He paid a cautious visit to the harbourmaster to inquire about any outbound ships headed for the United States. He knew the harbourmaster as a garrulous man. To his surprise, George Headley didn’t even blink when he mentioned wanting passage to a former enemy country.

      Headley leaned closer. ‘This is a special mission, isn’t it?’ he whispered. ‘My lips are sealed, of course.’

      ‘Good of you,’ Jem said in the same conspiratorial tone, hoping the Lord Almighty wouldn’t smite him dead for deceiving a good, if chatty, man. ‘The less said, the better my chances are that none of Boney’s spies will hear.’

      The harbourmaster nodded, his eyes grave, and gestured toward a fair-sized vessel at anchor in the harbour. ‘Captain, the Marie Elise is headed to Baltimore, I believe. Would you like me to hail a waterman to take you out there?’

      A mere half hour later, he sat in the captain’s cabin, drinking Madeira and then forking over passage money.

      ‘We’ll sail for Baltimore on or about the middle of October,’ Captain Monroe said. ‘We’re looking at a seven-week passage, give or take.’ The Yankee gave Jem a shrewd look. ‘You’re a seafaring man.’

      ‘I am,’ Jem said. ‘Royal Navy. It’s private business.’

      The captain nodded, obviously not believing a word of that, and sounded remarkably like the harbourmaster. ‘My lips are sealed. You’ll only be a short distance from Washington, D.C. How is it you already sound slightly American?’

      ‘Many people on the Devonshire coast have a similar accent,’ Jem hedged, ‘but you are right. I was born in the colony of Massachusetts.’

      ‘We two countries need to get along, eh?’

      ‘Indeed we do. I’m lodging at the Drake. Send a boy around when you’re ready to lift anchor,’ Jem said.

      ‘You’ve been away a long time from Massachusetts?’ Captain Monroe said as he walked topside with a fellow captain, showing him all the courtesies.

      ‘Twenty-seven years,’ Jem replied, as he sat in the bosun’s chair to be swung over the side to his waiting boat. He wouldn’t have minded scrambling down the chains, but he couldn’t ignore the American captain’s kindness.

      ‘A lot has changed, Captain,’ the Yankee said as he motioned for the crew to swing him over now.

      I hope not everything. Or everyone, Jem thought as he went over the side and waved to his American counterpart. Is it too much to hope that Theodora Winnings remains the same?

       Chapter Three

      James made a note in his log—personal logs were a habit not easily broken—to let Owen Brackett know when next they saw each other that his jaw stopped aching at Latitude North thirty-eight degrees, four minutes, Longitude West forty-eight degrees, forty-six minutes, roughly the middle of the stormy Atlantic.

      The passengers aboard the Marie Elise were a disparate lot, some Americans heading home, a French emigré or two and Englishmen who were no more forthcoming about their reasons to travel than he was. He had a private chuckle, thinking that some of them might have been what the harbourmaster thought of him, spies or government emissaries.

      The crossing was rough enough to keep many of the passengers below deck during the early days of the voyage. Jem had no trouble keeping down his meals, and less trouble standing amidships and looking at oily, swelling water hinting of hurricanes.

      He only spent two days in the waist of the ship before Captain Monroe invited him to share the quarterdeck. Jem accepted the offer, scrupulously careful to stay away from Captain Monroe’s windward side. From Monroe’s demeanour, Jem knew the Yankee appreciated the finer points of quarterdeck manners.

      Captain Monroe apologised in advance for some of his passengers. ‘Hopefully they’ll stay seasick awhile and not pester you with gibes about Englishmen who couldn’t fight well enough to hang on to the colonies.’ He laughed. ‘And here I am, making similar reference!’

      ‘I’ll survive,’ Jem said, and felt no heartburn over the matter. ‘We need to maintain a friendship between our countries.’

      ‘From what you tell me, the United States might be your country, too,’ Captain Monroe pointed out. ‘D’ye plan to visit Massachusetts during this visit?’

      ‘Perhaps. We’ll see.’

      Mostly Jem watched the water, enjoying the leisure of letting someone else worry about winds and waves, especially when it proved obvious to him that Captain Monroe knew his ropes. He felt not a little flattered when Lucius—they were on a first-name basis soon—asked his opinion about sails and when to shorten them.

      Even better than the jaw ache vanishing was the leisure to recall a much earlier trip in the other direction. He stared at the water, remembering that trip when he was ten years old; he’d been frightened because so-called patriots had torched the family’s comfortable Boston house. He remembered his unwillingness even then to leave the colony where he had been born and reared and now faced cruel times.

      Looking around to make certain he was unobserved, Jem leaned his elbows on the ship’s railing, a major offense that would have sent one of his midshipmen shinnying up and down the mainmast twenty times as punishment. Most painful had been his agonized goodbye to his big yellow dog with the patient, sorrowful eyes and the feathery tail always waving because everyone was a friend. ‘I want another dog like you, Mercury,’ he said quietly to the Atlantic Ocean.

      Papa