Page 56 of Trouble

For example: speaking up on behalf of Captain Edwards’s slightly neglected children? Amy-approved.

Shouting at a still-grieving man that he was a poor excuse for a father? Probably not.

Captain Edwards’s hands were fists on the table. His eyes were still fixed on Emily. She expected him to be furious at her – to finally dismiss her on the spot – but instead he closed his eyes and let all the air leave him at once. He passed a hand over his brow and through his hair, and then leaned his elbow on the desk, his hand supporting his chin as he surveyed her. Emily couldn’t imagine how she’d ever thought his eyes were boring. Yes, they were only brown, but there was so much contained within them. Right now they were intent,searching; he used them to such effect that she felt as if she had been pinned to her seat. She had never felt so thoroughly caught off guard by the way somebodylookedat her before.

‘Miranda was always the one who dealt with the children,’ he said heavily. ‘She was wilful, and she was brilliant, and she had always wanted to be a mother. She knew how to love .?.?. openly, unashamedly. She was always the one who had .?.?. feelings.’

‘You have feelings,’ said Emily. It came out a lot more accusatory than she had intended.

Captain Edwards looked at her so oddly then that she didn’t know what to make of it. It was almost as if he were too tired for artifice or ceremony. If his face was usually shuttered, right now it was wide open.

She didn’t want him to beopen. She hadn’t even asked to be let in.

‘I had never planned to do this without her,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t know how to navigate it. Everything .?.?. makes sense at sea. There’s an order to life. Even when things go astray, I know what I’m doing – what’s expected of me. Here .?.?. I am adrift.’

Emily forgave him the sea metaphors. He looked so pained all of a sudden that she didn’t think she should count them against him.

‘Why don’t you go back to your ship, then?’

‘Ah,’ said Captain Edwards. ‘That’s .?.?. difficult.’

‘Why?’

‘Because part of me wishes to be there. But it’s not necessarily a place where I will be welcomed with open arms.’

‘And that’s because .?.?. ? Look, I heard what they were saying about you,’ Emily said, dangling the bait.

‘A fair and objective judgement, I am sure,’ Captain Edwards said, closing off slightly, his voice clipped once again. ‘The truth is relatively simple. My primary crime was that I .?.?. interpreted an order as I saw fit. Disobeying a direct order is a case for the court martial, and a sentence of death is not unheard of, but in this case things were .?.?. murky. I did not wish to send my officers to a certain death on an already sinking ship, and so I held them back and engaged from afar.’

This did not seem all that horrifying to Emily, although admittedly, she had never set foot on a ship, and was not up to date on the quirks of maritime law. Captain Edwards sighed thinly.

‘The secondary crime, for which nobody has the slightest bit of proof, is that they think I engaged in a brief liaison with a fellow officer, around six months ago. He was one of the men I refused to send forth to die, you see, which .?.?. complicated matters.’

Emily froze.

She had expected some dull misdemeanour likedisobeying orders, because she had by now ruled out a financial crime due to Fairmont’s evident lack of funds; she had never begun to imagine that it might be so personal in nature.

‘And .?.?. did you? Have a .?.?. a liaison with him?’

‘Yes,’ said Captain Edwards, watching her very carefully. ‘As it happens, I did. I would not have sent him to die regardless, but it did make the entire thing seem quite urgent. Incidentally, the sentenceisdeath for engaging in such activities, but the commodore would not believe it of me and chose not to act based on rumour and gossip.’

This was it. This was the information Emily had been looking for – the secret she could probably exchange for an entire bag of gold sovereigns. There had been no need to go looking for a key, or to snoop through the captain’s private correspondence for clues. He had simply told her, without suspicion or duress. She could go from this room and pack her bag, march straight into the pub on Saturday afternoon to meet Charles, and then be back at home with Amy on Sunday.

The problem was that Emily really had been expecting some bland crime – some breaking of the rules of the Royal Navy that would be scandalous in certain circles, but barely interesting enough for her to follow the basic premise, like this issue with orders interpreted as he saw fit. It would have been terribly easy to give something like that over to Charles to do whatever he wished with it, without feeling even a modicum of guilt. What were the lives of rich fraudsters to her? Why should he not be punished for having everything and deciding to bend the rules anyway?

This was nothing of the sort. It was not even a crime, really, in Emily’s eyes. She truly had never cared to pass judgement on anybody for the private desires of their hearts – it was, frankly, none of her business – and she could not do so now. Besides, even though she had long ago shut up that part of her heart, on the rare occasion that shehadnoticed somebody standing at the loom on the other side of the mill with their sleeves rolled up to their elbows, or passing her in the street in town with an air of confidence about them, theirgenderhad seemed entirely irrelevant.

Captain Edwards was guilty of many things – being too rich, too careless and too oblivious to the broken hearts of his own children – andthosethings he should have been ashamed of. Emily certainly would have been embarrassed, had it been her. But this? A fleeting romance with a fellow officer? In the grand scheme of things, it felt of very little consequence.

The captain certainly did not seem to think it shameful – but he had picked up his spoon again and returned to his stew, and Emily wondered if he were perhaps using it as an excuse to hide his face while he waited for her to speak.

‘What was his name?’

Captain Edwards didn’t look up, but he did relax minutely.

‘Wakefield.’

‘And you called him by his last name?’ said Emily. ‘Romantic.’