Mercy wiggled her face under his coat, still half-asleep from her nap in the carriage.
John sat next to them on a wooden mooring post, scanning the wet-stoned quay for any lost pennies.
“Captain Doubiggin is a good man. He treats his crew fair and makes no small effort to keep his ships on schedule.” Sir Walter kept his eyes fixed on the three-masted packet ship, jaw firm. “I have asked him, as a personal favor, to see you receive any accommodations you need.”
“That was…” Simon bit back the wordunnecessaryand said instead, “Thank you.”
“Upon your arrival, Mrs. Fancourt insists you write. She was an anxious woman before you returned, but even more so now that she has someone to worry after.”
“We will get there safely.”
Sir Walter nodded. For the first time, he looked at Simon—his spectacles rain streaked, his expression tight, lips a hard line. “I have court in a couple of hours, so if you have no more need of me—”
“This likely will not do any good.” Simon raked in a breath that stung of salt water and regret. “I am not good at saying things. I am not even good at being a friend.” The loss of yet another person he cared for burrowed deep to the core of him. “But for what it is worth, I wish…I wish for once in my life I had not been a fool.”
Sir Walter stared at him, bobbed another nod, and turned as if he was ready to leave. But he paused and glanced back, eyes as sharp and resolute as Father’s had ever been behind his desk. “If you wish to stop being a fool, Fancourt, stop being one.”
The creaking and rocking of the anchored ship already had turned Mercy’s face ashen. She’d been on board less than thirty minutes on their last journey when the sickness had claimed her.
“Sit here, Mercy. This is our bed.” John guided his sister to the narrow, stacked bunk beds along the wall of their cabin. “Papa sleeps up top.”
“Me belly hurts.”
Simon lit the wall lamp, as the cabin was without windows. The chipped walls reeked of rum-flavored tobacco and mold. The confinement of the tiny room, the lack of natural light already knotted him with tension. “I will find a bucket.” Even when he departed their cabin, the passageway swallowed him like the jowls of a snake, squeezing the life from him.
Fool, fool.The words rang like a chant, rising cold sweat to his brow.
When he returned to the cabin, bucket in hand, the children were already under the gray coverlets. The drawing book lay open in their laps.
Simon wanted to rip it from them. He wanted to tear out the drawings, shred the faces of the ones he’d lost, and feed the pieces to the sea.
But he ducked under the bed with them instead. He listened to John’s pleasure as they discovered the new drawing of Miss Whitmore, then Mercy’s sighing praise, “Her is pretty.”
Simon took the book.
The children glanced at him oddly, startled, but he opened to Ruth’s portrait anyway. His fingers dampened as he eased the paper from the binding.
“Papa, you is tearing it up.”
“No.” He folded the paper. He was not certain what he was doing, what it symbolized in his heart, but he handed it to his children. “This belongs to you now. You will always remember what she looks like.”
“Me can have the other one too?”
“She means Miss Whitmore,” said John. His gaze was heavy, his voice a little wobbly, as if the woman shut up in this book was as important to remember as his mother.
Perhaps she was.
Of course she was.
“I need to speak with the captain.” Simon crawled out from the bed as if it was in flames. He barreled from the room. He slammed the door too hard.
In truth, he had no need to speak with anyone.
He just needed out of that room.
Grinding his teeth, he paced the length of the swaying passageway, blood heating. Another fifteen minutes, the vessel would launch. He would never see Mother again. He would never visit Sowerby House. He would never regain the affection of Sir Walter.
All things he could have left behind.
