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She thought of Ace constantly. Throughout the day, as she did her unpleasant tasks, she talked to him in her mind.Ace, where are you? Come back to me, my love—I need you!Sometimes she thought she heard or felt his spirit replying to her, “Wait for me, Josie. I’m coming back to you.” Then she wondered if perhaps she was losing her mind.
At night, lying on her uncomfortable pallet, she was free to focus entirely on her thoughts of him. She remembered each time he had kissed her. She reminisced in detail each time they had been intimate. Her hands would slide down her own body, and she would pretend it was he who was touching her most secret places.
She remembered one time in particular—right before they had all left for Worthington—when Ace seized her in a deserted hallway at Clover House. Pulling her into the shadows, where they could not easily be seen, he directed her hands downward.
Initially, he made her touch his manhood from outside his clothing. But then, at her curious, hesitant touch—for she had never touched a man’s private parts before—he groaned, “Josie, I cannot stand it.” He loosened his breeches and guided her hand up and down on him, until he climaxed. Then, buttoning up his breeches, he kissed the hand that had so pleasured him.
Night after night at the Ship and Anchor, Lady Josephine thought back on that scene, and others equally arousing. She would imagine Ace was again in her arms. And in her imagination, she still had hands as soft as silk which he loved to kiss, and long, wavy hair he loved to stroke.
Once she moaned aloud, her memories were so vivid. Another one of the serving maids yelled from the other side of the room, “Pipe down over there, will ye? There’s some of us what needs our sleep.” Embarrassed, Lady Josephine was careful thereafter not to make any sound, although she fantasized about Ace just as much as before.
* * *
By this time, Paddy had returned from London, with instructions from Lady Hermione to keep looking for Lady Josephine and Ace. He joined Charley, who was staying at the Silver Dolphin, an inn close to the harbor. There, they tried to lay out a plan. But they had no idea where to start their search.
Tired of the Silver Dolphin, they walked about the harbor area, looking for another cheap, comfortable place to eat. The Ship and Anchor had a sign outside that said “Best Ale in Town,” so they ventured in there.
Sitting among a crowd of other men at the bar, they ordered bread and cheese, along with a couple of large mugs of the Ship and Anchor’s home-brewed ale. Paddy was just about to set a few coins down on the bar to pay, when he looked over at a doorway that seemed to lead to the back kitchen.
“Charley,” he said in a low voice, “is it that I’m seein’ things? For that woman carrying trays of mugs from the kitchen looks an awful lot like Lady Josephine, if you gave her back some hair.”
Charley looked over. “Blimey, Paddy, I think you’re right. But what would Lady Josephine be doing in a place like this, with her ’air shorn off like a sheep?”
“I dunno, Charley. But it’s her. It’s definitely her.” Charley stood up and was about to call out, “Lady Josephine!” But then a plump lady, probably the landlady, stuck her head out of the kitchen and called, “Martha, when you’re through putting those away—”
“She called her ‘Martha,’” Paddy said in puzzlement.
“Maybe she’s ’iding ’er aye-denti-tee,” Charley surmised. “We’d better call her ‘Martha,’ too.”
So Charley leaned over the bar and called, “Martha? Is it you?”
Lady Josephine looked up, startled. When she saw Charley’s and Paddy’s faces, she smiled widely. Walking over to them, she said in a low voice, “I get off work for an hour after the midday crowd leaves. I could meet you down the street—there’s a church there. I’ll be sitting in the church. No one will see us or bother us there.”
A few hours later, the three of them were seated in the pews at the church, ready to assume positions of prayer if anyone else should stop in. “Lady Josephine, what happened to you? And Ace—we’re looking for him, too. He’s disappeared completely. I just came back from London. He’s nowhere to be found in London, either,” Paddy whispered.
Lady Josephine told them of the Earl’s treatment of her. They were shocked.
“Is that how ye lost yer hair?” Paddy asked.
“The Earl’s sister did that to me, after they found me with Ace….” Lady Josephine seemed embarrassed to tell them that she and Ace were caught in an intimate scene.
Paddy said, “Ah now, don’t be worrying about telling us. Sure, haven’t we known for months that Ace is sweet on you? In love with you, actually. So it’s only the natural thing that eventually you and he...got close.”
Charley added, “Your secret is safe with us, my lady. And to tell you the truth, we’ve never seen Ace so in love with a lady before. So we ’aveto find ’im for you.”
These words warmed Lady Josephine’s heart. So his friends had known all along, and they approved of her for him. That made her suddenly very happy.
But she needed to bring them up to date on what had happened to Ace. “The Earl—you know he’s an admiral? Well, he had a gang of men take Ace prisoner and carry him out of the house. And then the Earl told me they were a press gang for the Navy, and Ace had been forced onto a ship—”
At this point, Lady Josephine started to cry. She could hardly bear thinking about this part, much less talking about it. “He’ll have to be a sailor for five years—five years! And the ship has left for somewhere in the West Indies. It will be years before I see him again!” She broke down into sobs.
An old lady came into the church to pray. She spotted Lady Josephine in tears, and she came over to the pew to “ask if she could help in any way.”
Paddy dismissed her quickly. “Poor girl, she’s just lost her auld grandmother and she’s grievin.’ She’ll be all right.”
As the woman moved down the aisle away from them, Paddy murmured, “Nosy old hag. But look, we’d best get out of here and let Lady Josephine go back to her job.”
“Let’s meet again here at the same time tomorrow,” Lady Josephine said, drying her tears. “I have a few ideas, but I want to think them through before sharing them with you.”
