Blackwell's Homecoming (Blackwell's Adventures Book 3) Read online

  Blackwell’s Homecoming

  by

  V.E. Ulett

  Blackwell’s Homecoming

  Copyright © by Eva Ulett 2014

  Published by Old Salt Press

  Old Salt Press, LLC is based in Jersey City, New Jersey with an affiliate in New Zealand

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  ISBN: 978-0-9922636-7-6

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand.

  Cover design by Broos Campbell

  The Heroism of a Maori woman by Angus McBride, and Polynesian clubs and insignia of rank, from 'The History of Mankind', Vol. 1, by Prof. Friedrich Ratzel reproduced by arrangement with Bridgeman Art Library.

  Interior design elements by Sabrina Frontiero

  Publisher's Note:

  This is a work of historical fiction. Certain characters and their actions may have been inspired by historical individuals and events. The characters in the novel, however, represent the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  One

  The cob given Captain Blackwell by the Nelson Arms was a used up, scarred, pot-bellied disgrace of a beast. Captain Blackwell wondered, as the horse plodded head down toward his home at Merton, whether the insolent wags at the inn meant to suit beast to man. He was still merely a post-captain at his advanced age. Vice-Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, for whom everything in those parts was named, had been made post at twenty, and vice-admiral at forty-three. Like the pitiful animal, Captain Blackwell was knocked about and had seen his share of active service.

  Yet he did not feel quite ready for the knacker’s yard. Captain Blackwell had retained a finer figure later into life than many of his fellows, thanks to an experience in the islands of the Pacific that had changed his diet and activities drastically for a time. He’d also come away from the Great South Seas tattooed across his buttocks and loins, making him a curiosity in the Royal Navy, and earning Captain Blackwell the nickname of Black Savage. He knew about it, of course, though none were bold enough to call him so to his face. And as his son was also in the Service, they distinguished them by Black Savage the Elder and the Younger.

  Needless to say Captain Blackwell was proudest of this son who had just passed for lieutenant, he’d left Aloka celebrating in London. Captain Blackwell had been summoned home to attend his daughter’s first London season. “Do come, if you can, just for the first balls and routs. If we go in with a show of force to begin, and give them to understand she isn’t an unprotected girl no one cares for, why, then if you must leave again I am sure we will manage tolerably,” his wife Mercedes had written. The Black Savage was commanded to appear to affright the beaux. Captain Blackwell was perfectly willing to comply, aside from the fact that he could refuse Mercedes nothing.

  The dejected cob had brought him in its shuffling pace at last to Merton. He approached the house over a bridge spanning the Wandle river. When Mercedes had let the house of Emma Hamilton on their return from the Pacific, a great attraction, alongside its proximity to London, was a netting Lord Nelson had constructed where the house fronted the river to prevent his daughter Horatia from tumbling in. Captain Blackwell’s children had been small then, and not yet grown into the ciphers they’d now become to him.

  Captain Blackwell had hoped, as always, to meet Mercedes first when he came into the house from the stable yard. He walked through the kitchen, grunting a greeting to the one-eyed, former Navy cook already about his business at the early hour, imagining the joy on her face when he would appear. It was always the same, a constant delight to Captain Blackwell. But it was his eldest son he met in the passageway, who’d appeared from his first floor rooms in breeches and stockings, with his stock hanging untied about his neck.

  “Edward, there you are, son. How do you do?”

  “F-F-Father.” Edward stuttered, and turned his intense blue gaze to the wall.

  “No one was in the mews, son, and the Nelson’s nag wants attention. Scare up McMurtry or Mr. Martinez, won’t you?”

  Edward turned abruptly from Captain Blackwell and retreated into his rooms.

  Captain Blackwell hardly had time to feel confounded, to hear in imagination those ugly phrases “idiot” and “half-wit”, for Mercedes called out to him.

  “Jim! Jim!”

  She did not launch herself from midway downstairs into his arms as she’d done on previous occasions, but Mercedes was yet light on her feet and she ran down quickly to greet him. Captain Blackwell was not disappointed in that tender look he’d been thinking of, nor in the feel of her in his arms, nor in the delightful sensations she caused him.

  “Tio Severino is out riding with Emma. They shall return soon and he will see to the Nelson’s horse.”

  “Ah, good. In that case...” Captain Blackwell nodded to his son. Edward lingered just inside the doorway, swaying back and forth. “Your mother and I have a few things to discuss upstairs.”

  He put his arm round Mercedes’ waist, steering her along, and did not notice the glance Edward and Mercedes exchanged.

  Once inside her bedchamber they did not make it to the bed, he had her up against the bedpost where he lifted her skirts.

  “What the deuce is this?”

  “Bloomers, Jim,” she said, “its cold in this country you’ve brought me to.”

  “I should think you’d be warm enough with all these petticoats you have on.”

  “You can take them off me.”

  Blackwell would have liked to take them off her with his teeth, but he wasn’t as young and supple as he used to be. She was generous in their intimate relations. He liked those positions best that gave him a full view of her, and what he was doing to her. Sometimes she would cover her face with her hands, when pleasure overcame her. But aside from that Mercedes never tried to hide or withhold her body from him. On this occasion she did move his hands from her breasts to lower down, which turned out well for both of them.

  “Can we get in bed now?”

  “Certainly, sweetheart.”

  They took off the rest of their clothing and lay down in Mercedes’ bed together. Something about their encounter troubled him, and he suddenly said, “Have you not lost a deal of flesh, Mercedes?”

  “Most men complain of their women growing old and fat.”

  “Oh, I ain’t complaining, it is only—”

  “I may be somewhat reduced, but I would not say a great deal of flesh. And I daresay I shall be better now you are here to relieve my cares. I hope you have not had the devil’s own time getting away?”

  “It helps when the commanding officer is one’s father-in-law. Admiral Gambier was only too willing to put a jobbing captain in my place. No, sweetheart, do not be concerned. He seemed sincere in his well-wishes, even good natured, no easy feat on blockade duty. Now tell me of these cares I am to relieve you of.”

  Mercedes turned with a sigh under his encircling arm, so that her back was to him. “No more than the usual domestic dust ups, but I am so glad you are home.”

  She was probably the only one in his household who was glad of his return.

  “You worry over your children, no doubt.”

  Mercedes did not answer and in a moment Blackwell realized she was asleep. He hoped he had not tired her unduly with his attentions, it was only nine o�
��clock in the morning. Perhaps she had not been sleeping well, in her preoccupation over Emma coming out and Edward’s…well. And then she truly frightened him, for Mercedes was suddenly covered in a sheen of sweat. Had it happened earlier during their intimacy it would not have shocked him so. She was lying there asleep, dashing the moisture from her face in unconscious movements with the sides of her hands.

  “Mercy, sweetheart,” Blackwell said, leaning over her.

  “Leave me alone, can’t you? For once.”

  Blackwell lay back, shocked.

  “Hell and death,” Emma Blackwell said, returning from her morning ride and finding she had to stable her hunter with the horse from the Nelson Arms.

  “Easy, girl,” was Severino Martinez’s only comment as he moved off to attend to the horses.

  Mr. Martinez was a family retainer, in the way Captain Blackwell’s old steward McMurtry now was. One of Mr. Martinez’s duties was to act as groom and attend Emma on her solitary rides. Mr. Martinez had a fierce appearance still, but such an old man could not be supposed to have protected her from much of anything. Fortunately there was little to fear in the surrounding countryside, and the other servants—chiefly disabled seamen—were disgraceful horsemen. Besides, Emma had a fondness for Mr. Martinez, as her mother’s family friend, a man of few words and no nonsense whatever.

  She walked into the house and sought Edward in his rooms.

  “What are you about at this hour with your stock all ahoo?” Emma asked. Edward was hunched at this desk reading Herschel’s ‘Astronomical Observations relating to the Construction of the Heavens’. “Has not Mama been down?”

  “He’s home.”

  “I was afraid of that, when I saw that sorry cob from the Nelson Arms. They will give him the most disreputable beasts. And he will not utter a word, but oh how he roars at home.”

  Emma had come round Edward’s desk and was tying his stock for him. Her father’s presence in the house always made her feel small, just a girl and of little consequence, the least of God’s creatures. How many times had Captain Blackwell greeted her, “How do you do, Emma?” after a considerable absence, and not even waited to hear her answer.

  “I don’t know why she endures him,” Emma said, an oft repeated lament. “She is lovely and dashing enough still to have her choice of smart London men. Instead she’s shackled to that...sailorman.”

  “Don’t make her choose between you,” Edward said. “She is surpassing fond of him. No one knows why.”

  Edward went back to studying the drawings of nebulae that accompanied Herschel’s paper, preferring the mystery of the cosmos to the more earthly and mundane.

  In an upstairs bedroom on Greene Street Aloka Blackwell had unveiled the mystery of what lay beneath the fine evening gown of a Frenchwoman he’d met in Ranelagh Gardens. Aloka gazed upon very white skin and a quantity of red hair, as he held the woman’s legs against his chest. He had a Polynesian’s aversion to body hair and he could wish the woman would not throw her arms over her head in that ecstatic way, exposing great muffs of it in her armpits. Aloka watched the woman intently, until the trembling of her thighs and the clenching of her body spoke to him, and he let out a great war whoop.

  He was just recovering and beginning to consider how to extricate himself, when there was a slamming of doors downstairs.

  “My husband!” the woman cried.

  Even at nineteen Aloka was not foolish enough to waste time protesting she had said she was a widow woman. He snatched up his clothes and dressed double quick. In spite of the second floor bedchamber—a height as nothing to a seaman—he would have been out the window and safe away had not the woman grabbed at his ankle for some unaccountable reason as he sprang from the sill. It overset him. He fell headlong, twisted, and landed on his back, the wind quite knocked out of him. Aloka rolled over, pressed against the side of the house, just as the man and woman set up a great screeching over his head.

  He’d left behind his midshipman’s top hat, and he was so knocked up at first he was obliged to crawl away. Aloka considered, as he recovered and was able to walk upright once more like a man, the loss of the scraper was not grave. He had his commission in his pocket, and would have to come down upon his father for a lieutenant’s rig in any case. Aloka directed his thoughts and steps toward Merton.

  Two

  The Blackwells were an awkward foursome at supper, with many more such meals in their immediate future. Mercedes had never been a chatty woman, but her company was the most welcome to Captain Blackwell. The secret desire of his heart was to have her back aboard with him. Just her, as it had been in the days before their children arrived. They were to launch Emma into society and if a decent man could be found for her, Captain Blackwell did hope and trust to realize his wish. In the not very distant future he would reach flag rank, and no one could dictate to an admiral in the matter of carrying a wife. Once he would have defied the Admiralty over that particular, but then Emma had come along. A man-of-war was no place to raise a lady, no one could argue with that. Emma had come between them in a way the Admiralty never could have done.

  “Those were the best fried potatoes I ever had, Mercedes, I thank you,” Captain Blackwell said. She always prepared one or two of his favorite dishes herself when he was home.

  “I’m glad you liked them.”

  Mercedes rose from her chair, preparing to leave Captain Blackwell to his port. Everyone else stood too. Edward never stayed with Captain Blackwell after supper unless Aloka was at home.

  “Emma, I’d like a word, if you please,” Captain Blackwell said.

  Emma took a seat again at table, folded her hands and looked down at them in her lap. She was not merely pretty. Emma was beautiful, and she had a mature womanly shape, more buxom and much taller than her Mama.

  “I’m concerned for your mother. How has she been of late?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Does she eat enough? She seems thinner to me, and weary. How is she of an evening? Does she sit up with you and Edward or retire early?”

  “She’s just as she’s ever been. She reads a great deal of an evening, and we talk, she and I and Edward. Sometimes Edward reads from his articles, and tries to explain the heavens to Mama and me.”

  “Well, I’m glad of it. I must rely upon you, Emma, to send to me if she were unwell. Edward is no use in such matters.”

  A contemptuous look crossed Emma’s face. “He is of much more use than you suppose, Father. He hardly stutters except when you are by. And if Mama is thin and weary, perhaps it is because you importune her so.”

  Captain Blackwell was not quite sure he heard her aright, for he could hardly believe she could be such a bold faced chit, suggesting what he thought she was suggesting. They stared at one another with unconcealed displeasure. Captain Blackwell was on the point of telling Emma she hadn’t noticed her mother’s health because she was a froward ill-natured brat, when there came a knock at the dining parlour door.

  A tall man in the King’s coat walked in, followed by Aloka with a wide grin upon his face.

  “Father, I do beg your pardon for bursting in upon you. May I present Captain Lord Cochrane. Sir, m’father Captain James Blackwell.”

  The gentlemen exchanged bows and handshakes, and Captain Blackwell turned to present Emma. Her aspect had changed entirely; from the disagreeable child to a woman that was stunning, and meant to be. Captain Blackwell had seen such a look on Mercedes’ face, and he glanced quickly between Lord Cochrane and Emma.

  “Your lordship, may I present my daughter, Emma Blackwell.”

  Lord Cochrane moved nimbly round Captain Blackwell and took Emma’s hand, expressing himself delighted to make her acquaintance in the most gentlemanly, modest manner. Mercedes and Edward came back into the dining parlour, having heard the commotion, and a new round of introductions took place.

  Mercedes came over to stand at Captain Blackwell’s elbow, from where she whispered in his ear.

  “Ah, yes
. McMurty! McMurtry, where is the villain? There you are. Glasses and a bottle of …”

  “The Lafite with the long cork, if you please,” Mercedes interjected.

  When the wine glasses were brought in and filled Captain Blackwell said, “Ladies and gentlemen, raise your glasses, if you please. I give you Lieutenant Blackwell!”

  “Lieutenant Blackwell!” the rest cried.

  Round the table, at that moment, there were truly happy faces.

  In a short time, after Mercedes had given the newcomers supper and only the ladies had this time withdrawn from the dining parlour, the glow of pride and happiness in his son’s step had vanished. Captain Blackwell felt instead a greater mix of uncertainty and dread than he’d experienced in many a long day in the professional line. Aloka was all fierce and eager attention, as Lord Cochrane unfolded the Admiralty’s intention to allow him to direct a fire ship attack against the French in the Basque Roads.

  His lordship, in his soft Scottish voice, explained how he’d protested his appointment was inappropriate, without the commander in chief’s knowledge, and over the heads of many more senior captains. The First Lord of the Admiralty would not hear it, calling him back the day following his refusal, and representing to him the exigency for the nation. Captain Blackwell thought Lord Cochrane put too fine a point upon that last.

  “Their lordships seem to acknowledge all the enemy’s vessels may be driven upon the Isle of Oleron by sending fire vessels to the eastwards of the Isle d’Aix. You’ve served some time in the Channel Fleet, under Admiral Gambier, sir,” his lordship said to Captain Blackwell. “How do you think this plan shall fall upon him?”

  “Not the least well, to be truthful.”

  “Not the least well, what an understatement,” Captain Blackwell told Mercedes as they prepared for bed. “He has a perfect horror of this explosion and fireship type of warfare. I don’t know but what I am of one mind with Gambier this time. I hope that don’t make me timid and old maidish.”