The Storm-Grey Sea

Chapter Eleven - Four Bells in the Morning Watch

He smiled at her and laid his remaining hand on hers, squeezing them tightly. "Oh, my darling girl, don't look at me so, or you will be the death of me."

Neither one of them laughed at the pun. Rosalind dared her father to make another such jest as she glared firmly up into his face.

"Come, Rosalind, we must think seriously. Imagine I had been killed - where would that leave you?" he asked. "What would become of you then, hm?"

He put his hand on her cheek and Rosalind, with his palm warming her to her very core, wondered which answer to give him. There was, of course the rational answer, the one her mind had constructed since, as a child, she had grasped both the concept of death and the nature of her father's life.

She could have answered that she would inherit his wealth and his property, and so live her days as an independent, well-to-do woman. That was the answer any person of any intelligence would have given, for it was unequivocally true; Rosalind was her father's only child and his heir by both right and by the will he had drawn up when she was but weeks old.

But in reality, Rosalind had a very different answer.

"I cannot imagine it," she replied.

It was true, for in every imagining of Rosalind's future life, she had always saved the pride of place for her father. She had never imagined marriage, or children, or a husband who would take her away from Taunton. Her mind stubbornly refused to admit any such life without her father and, in her more fanciful moments of her childhood, had fantasized about a shared death in the face of an enemy; Rosalind, leaping before a musket to draw fire off her mortally wounded father, the pair of them dying at the same moment in shared heroics and the glorious sound of battle.

That had, of course, been the ridiculous notion of a twelve-year-old who missed her Papa dearly, and had heard stories of his bravery, but the emotion remained: Rosalind could not imagine herself without her father.

"Then try to, for me," said her father. "Try to imagine where you would be left. If I were to die in action - and no, do not give me such a look, it is highly possible - you would inherit everything I have to offer."

Rosalind could hear the hesitation in her father's voice, the edge of unhappiness, the way his tone grated against his throat as he spoke.

"Everything I am is yours, which is a concern that is especially advantageous where money is concerned," he said, and for a moment the mood lightened as his voice took on an air of gentle self-ironizing. "But suppose I fell into debt, suppose my prize agent suddenly defaulted, and you were left a pauper. What would become of you then?"

"Perhaps my Uncle Marlowe-" she began.

"Your Uncle Marlowe can hardly be trusted with himself, let alone with maintaining a well-bred and handsome lady in the style to which she has become accustomed," snapped her father. His distrust of his brother was both notorious and well-earned which had, naturally, given Rosalind a predisposition to dislike her Uncle Marlowe.

"I could take a place as a...governess," said Rosalind, though the idea of growing old and wan in caring for a richer woman's children made her long for that noble death of her childhood dreams.

"A governess? That is far beneath you, my girl," he said. Both knew it was true. She had had a governess, it was too far beneath her station to become one herself. "No. What I am asking, Rosalind, is some security. Not now, not for years, but some time before I die, I should like to see you..."

He did not need to finish the sentence for Rosalind to know what he meant. She could feel her father's apprehension in the air, could read his fears in the hands that wound close around hers, could see his hopes in the way they creased the corners of his eyes. Most importantly, she could see all that fierce love in his eyes, the way they held hers and scorched her skin.