"Let the Widow Eat in the Kitchen," Her In-Laws Said — The Duke Carried His Plate Down to Join Her
Chapter 3
Theme:
Font Size:
24px
In the inside pocket of the duke's black evening coat that night, there was a letter. It was creased and stained and soft with age, and the red wax seal on the back had never been broken. It had traveled 6,000 miles from India to England, and then for 2 years in the duke's pocket from one end of the country to the other.On the front, in a shaky, sloping hand that had been written by a dying man, were eight words:"To my wife, Grace, into her own hands only."To understand that letter, we have to go back. Back to a small, crooked, noisy inn by the harbor in Portsmouth, and a girl with flour on her hands, and a young soldier who walked in out of the rain.The Anchor stood at the bottom of Broad Street in Old Portsmouth, so close to the harbor that the spray came over the wall on stormy nights and rattled against its windows. It was 300 years old, low and crooked and whitewashed, with a sagging roof and a sign of a black anchor that creaked in the wind. Every sailor in the Royal Navy knew it. Most of them had been thrown out of it at least once.Grace Penrose was born in the room above the taproom in the year 1794 and grew up to the sound of sea shanties coming through the floorboards. Her mother died when she was 10. After that, there was only her father, Tom Penrose, a huge, bald gentleman with tattooed forearms who had been a ship's cook for 20 years before he bought the Anchor, and who could not boil an egg without burning it.So, at 10 years old, Grace took over the kitchen. She was good at it, better than good. By 12, she was feeding 60 men a night. By 15, sailors were walking across Portsmouth from the dockyard for her beef and oyster pie, and captains were sending their coxswains down from the big ships at Spithead to fetch her pasties in baskets. She could make a stew out of nothing and a pudding out of less, and she had a laugh that carried across the whole crowded taproom, and every man who drank at the Anchor was a little in love with her.She did not care about any of them. Her kitchen, her father, and the sea outside the window were all she cared about.And then, one wet night in March 1813, a young officer of the 49th Regiment of Foot walked in out of the rain. His name was Frederick Ashdown. He was 23, tall and fair, and laughing with a lieutenant's single epaulette on his red coat, and water running off the brim of his hat. He was waiting for a transport ship to carry his regiment to India, and the ship was late, and he was cold and bored and hungry.Dropping into a seat in the corner of the taproom, he ordered whatever was hot. Grace brought him a bowl of mutton stew and a hunk of bread. He ate it in silence. Then, he asked for another. Then, he asked who had made it.She told him she had."Then, I am going to marry you," said Lieutenant Ashdown, quite seriously. "I've never tasted anything like it in my life. My mother's French cook would weep."