Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to the estate of Patrick O'Brian.
The Grandson
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"Are you sure I shouldn't go and get another wrap for him?" Jack asked worriedly.
Stephen, peering over Jack's shoulder at the peacefully sleeping bundle in the large man's arms, scoffed. "It's a lovely Spring day, brother, and my namesake is nothing if not a hardy little soul."
"But you're certain now? I could be gone and back to the cottage in a trice."
"Stop your fretting," Stephen said as he sat down on the next stone. "If anything he's going to grow over-warm with the way he's swaddled."
Jack smiled, feeling more comfortable with this little mite than he ever had with any babe in his life. As the welcome sunshine soaked through him, easing creaky joints, and the air around smelled of wildflowers and new, rich earth, Stephen rattled off the names of the birds singing in a nearby willow, but Jack scarce paid attention. Gently moving the blankets away from the infant's face, he remarked to Stephen, "He looks like you and all, the poor little doomed creature."
"A truer word was never spoken. The life of a handsome man is a burdensome one. You can't help but wreak havoc, incurring jealousy wherever you go, the splendid quality of one's face distracting from one's more worthy and significant accomplishments, the continual pestilence of fawning females and the like. Tis a wearying life indeed," Stephen explained with mock resignation.
Jack raised an eyebrow. "I believe this is the first time I've ever had reason to question the acuity of your faculties, brother," he said wryly, though his mouth was twitching and possibly the only thing keeping him from laughing raucously was the worry of waking the child in his arms.
"Nonsense. Now, pray let me hold him, Jack."
"I'll not shift him for the world, not when he's sleeping so peaceful like. And it's only fair - he has your name, so therefore I get to hold him first. Besides, you ain't none too sturdy at the moment."
"It's a blackguard you are to hold that against me. And as for names, you yourself were the one to declare him 'decidedly a Stephen'. Was it nothing but a ploy to forevermore make first claim on our grandson then, Joy?"
Jack couldn't help but chuckle, remembering the day only a fortnight ago when the first of his grandchildren to bear the Aubrey name had been born. George and even Brigid had been so befuddled, hesitating to bring the matter up with him, dancing around the subject to near distraction, until he had taken the bull by the horns and simply held his arms out and demanded, "Now hand me young Stephen and be sharp about it. I've already waited too long."
"You are certain you don't mind about the name, now?" Stephen asked, bringing him back to the present. "I know it's tradition for a man's first son to be named for his paternal grandfather."
"Not a bit of it. I had young Jack," Jack said without thinking, cursing himself a heartbeat later as Stephen dimmed and glanced over to where the small headstone reading 'John Aubrey Maturin' rested. Even now, Jack paled to think how his friend had nearly been sunk by the doubly cruel broadside of losing his second wife in childbed and the babe a mere seven days later, and both less than four years after Diana. "And I have my tortoise," he added quickly, hoping to draw Stephen's mind away from darker thoughts. "Good old Testudo aubreii."
"Well, the next one will be a Jack, like as not." Stephen grinned wickedly. "That is if he's not a Padeen," he said.
"The next one might be a girl."
Stephen sighed. "No, a boy. I'm certain of it. I have a feeling I'll have to wait a prodigiously long time before I see our granddaughter."
"Don't be so morose, Stephen. Anyone would think grandsons were worth nothing but a fig, listening to you. And besides, you can't know that for certain."
"Shame on you, brother. Shouldn't you know by now that I always have the right of it?"
"So you said Brigid was having a boy - "
"And did I not also say the two of them would marry all those years ago? You should learn not to doubt me so, Jack."
"So you did." Jack smiled again at the reminiscence. When it was little Brigid whose head was turned by the new midshipman Aubrey about to go to sea, George had come on very superior, dismissing her as a child, a mere slip of a girl. Jack had chastised the boy, heartily embarrassed for the pain his son had caused the daughter of his most intimate friend, and then had apologized to Stephen. "Never mind, m'dear," Stephen had told him. "Young George will soon realize his mistake." And it had turned out to be nothing but the truth, for when George returned from his first voyage two years later half a foot taller, a newly-made master's mate and stood poised to be a positive rake, but one little crook of the much-transformed-Brigid's finger in his direction and he, entranced and with mouth agape, had fallen in line behind her right smartly. And now they had this little lad, who in Jack's estimation would either be the next Nelson or the natural philosopher most fair set to eclipse even that fellow from the Beagle that everyone went on about and the darling of the Royal Society.
"Smugness does not become one, brother," Jack said; all happiness aside, he had no wish for Stephen to have the upper hand merely due to a couple of lucky predictions.
"Smugness does not become me, you mean. I've seen you wearing it often enough for it to fit like a well-tailored glove," Stephen pointed out.
Jack couldn't help but laugh, and, as he and Stephen chatted away and admired their mutual grandson, Jack Aubrey could not recall that he had ever been so happy on land before.
-x-
"He's at it again," George whispered to his wife.
Brigid sighed, took George's hand in her own and laid her head on his shoulder, as they watched her father-in-law from a stone bench not far away. "It will be all right, beloved."
"It's not right!"
"What is right or wrong in this situation? He's well enough otherwise, and we're the only two to know."
"But does it not pain you?"
"A little, perhaps. But he was so desperately cut up by Papa's death. It could be that even he doesn't really think he sees him, and only pretends to in order to feel a small margin of comfort. Mayhap little Stephen will console him and this conversing with the air will wear off naturally."
"And if it doesn't?"
"And if it doesn't, it doesn't. There seems to be little harm to it at the moment, and it cheers him so."
A ways off, Jack laughed suddenly, as if the ghost of his friend had said something terribly amusing.
George kissed Brigid's hand, still locked in his. "I can only hope you're right."