He strode down the hall to find his mother in the drawing room, mending one of his stockings. She stared over the rim of her spectacles, holding the stocking so close it nearly touched her nose. With hair still more brown than gray, she seemed too young to have difficulties with her sight. An ache sliced through his heart as he watched her work. Misfortune was her lot, though she hardly deserved it.
After a few more stitches, she cut the string and sat back. “Ah, my boy. Are you ready?”
He nodded. The servant had already taken his trunk to the hired coach.
“And here I am dawdling.” She folded the stocking neatly and stood. “I thought I had finished these, but I found one hiding in my basket.”
Dominic took it from her and shoved it in his pocket, wishing he could force down his restlessness as easily. “Thank you.”
She reached up to touch his cheek. “Anything for you, Son.”
Mother didn’t cry anymore when he left. She’d always been brave—braver than he was, to be certain. What any captain wouldn’t give for a ship full of men with a will as strong as his mother’s. It would make for the most formidable crew in His Majesty’s navy.
Her arms encircled him, and she rested her head against his shoulder. “Do you know why I named you Dominic?”
He grinned. When he was small, she had often sneaked into his room after the nurse put her boys to bed. She would whisper songs and stories as she rubbed his back, and she always ended with that question. Now she asked it whenever he left.
“No, Mother.” That was his usual answer. And then she would tell him stories about the Irish grandfather she’d named him for.
She frowned at him, then fussed with his brown hair. He should have had the barber cut it shorter. It would be unmanageable before long.
“Your father made me a bargain.”
Dominic blinked. He hadn’t heard this version of the tale before.
“If I didn’t complain about the name he gave his heir, I could name the next child. And then he named your older brother John, so he could fit in with all the other little English heirs of the same name.” She huffed dramatically, and Dominic laughed.
She stepped away to survey her work with his hair. “I so wanted you to be a girl.”
“You’ve kept that back for twenty-six years, and now you see fit to tell me?”
His mother swatted his arm. “Once they put you in my arms, I wished for nothing else but you. I wouldn’t trade you for a dozen girls.”
“Would you trade John, then?”
She shook her head in exasperation, and the sparkle left her eyes. She loved John, shameless dastard that he was. “You mustn’t tease, Dominic. Surely you are above that.”
He ducked his head, trying to rid himself of the simmering in his gut at the thought of his brother. It was the same sensation that rose at any mention of his father. Years had dimmed his indignation but hadn’t removed it.
She smoothed his sleeve. “I named you Dominic because I saw the strength of your grandfather in you, even as a tiny infant. I knew you would distinguish yourself just as he had.”
Dominic couldn’t resist. “And you knew Father would hate an Irish name.”
Her eyebrows raised, but she kept her mouth shut. So loyal, though the man hardly deserved it.
The clock on the mantel struck nine. His orders were to report to the Deborah at ten.
“You’d best be on your way,” his mother said before he could.
“Is there nothing I can do for you?”
She clasped her hands before her. “Not now, but soon.”
He touched her arm. “What is it?” His mother never asked for anything.
She looped her arm through his and marched him from the drawing room. The hallway barely fit the two of them walking side by side. “Someday we will have time to go to London for the Season.”
London? What on earth would she want to do in Town? And during the Season, when the city was overcrowded with people?
“I thought you hated London.” He stopped before the door. The lone footman of the house pulled it open, then flattened himself against the wall to allow them to pass by.
“We must go somewhere to find you a wife, since none of the Portsmouth girls have caught your eye.”
A wife? Dominic’s stomach lurched like a landsman’s the first week at sea. Marriage was the least of his worries. And with the war’s end nowhere in sight, and tension rising in the Americas, he didn’t anticipate a rest from service soon. Unless, of course . . .
“When do you think they will promote you to captain?” his mother asked as they exited the house. “I thought for certain you would have earned it after your last voyage.”
An unexpected, intense pang pulsed through Dominic’s core. These last few weeks he had tried to forget all about the promotion. “It should come soon, I think.” He pasted on a smile. “All in good time.”
“After the promotion, perhaps we can go to London as you wait for your command. A post-captain would be quite the conquest in the marriage mart.”
He kissed her cheek. “Goodbye, Mother. I’ll send word of when you can expect me as soon as I know our orders.” The crew received orders only after they boarded, a naval practice his mother despised.
“Be careful, Son.”
Dominic hurried into the coach and set his hat on the seat beside him. He let his head fall back, wondering if his face was burning like the secret he kept.
Before the door closed, Mother poked her head in.
Dominic straightened, hoping she hadn’t seen his relief. “What is it?”
“I nearly forgot. There is something you can do for me. I wish you to make inquiries while on board.”
Interest piqued, he leaned closer. Thank heavens she hadn’t renewed talk of promotion and Town. “What sort of inquiries?”
“I knew Captain Woodall’s wife when she was a girl,” his mother said, lowering her voice. “Her family lived very near mine before I married. She died a few years ago, leaving behind a daughter. I have thought of that little girl often, but none of my London acquaintances have heard of her in quite some time. They say she vanished soon after her mother’s death, and no one has seen her since, though she should be in Society by now.”
How odd. Families usually pushed their daughters into Society’s brazen lights, not hid them. “Did the captain send her to a school?” That was a reasonable explanation. “Or to kin, perhaps?”
His mother shook her head. “Her only relation is the captain’s mother, who still lives at his house near London.”
Dominic’s eyes narrowed. Very strange, indeed.
“I thought, while under his command, you might ask about the girl.” She wrung her hands. “Not in a forward manner, of course. I wouldn’t want to jeopardize your relationship with the captain. But surely someone on that ship knows something.”
He covered her hands with his. “I will ask, and I will write as soon as I can.” Would she consider inviting the Woodall girl to stay? It would be nice for his mother to have a companion while he was away, and he didn’t think it would take much convincing, seeing as the girl had little family to speak of.
As the carriage pulled away, he pressed his forehead against the window, watching as his mother vigorously waved a handkerchief from the steps of her little house. His little house, legally, but he never thought of it that way. She had originally let the house on her meager annuity from his father’s will, and Dominic had bought it a few years ago with prize money accrued from conquests at sea. He wished he could give her more than a few bedrooms and a cramped living area, but even saving so much of his earnings, he couldn’t afford better. That was why, when the promotion had come, he’d turned it down.