Chapter Seventeen
Hannah Whittier celebrated her eighteenth birthday at sea, wrapped in her cloak and sitting on the deck grating, watching the mountainous waves throw the Bonny Jean up and down its troughs.
The other passengers were below, suffering through various levels of seasickness, and she knew the crew wondered at her endurance.
She said nothing to enlighten them on her own late career with the Royal Navy.
She eyed the lookout several times, wondering what they would think if she climbed the rigging and sat there.
It was far above the deck and away from everyone—not that her mind would be any clearer for its distance from others.
Even after a month at sea, she could not put consecutive thoughts together without hearing Daniel Spark’s carefully spaced words, “I do not love you.”
She dreaded sleep, because it only meant the words repeated endlessly, the articulation so relentless that it woke her, shivering, into a night sweat.
Hannah stared out at the gray water, deckled with white caps that marched in endless rows across the whole face of the ocean. I have learned so much since June, she thought.
I can pick oakum, climb a rigging, spy for ships, help patch broken bodies, and I discovered that I love a man’s touch.
I have also learned that it may be entirely possible to die of heartbreak.
She welcomed the idea, knowing it was far superior to living another sixty or seventy years without Daniel Spark.
She bore him no ill will for his declaration.
Obviously she had mistaken the depth of his feelings for her. He couldn’t have been more plain in his rejection of her love.
And now she was eighteen.
“Happy birthday, Hannah Whittier,”
she said.
If she were home, she would have her birthday dinner served on the special red plate, and it would be all her favorite foods.
She frowned.
What was the mealshe used to like so much? She could not remember. Papa would honor her by reading the Bible verses that told of Hannah, beloved wife of Elkanah, and mother of Samuel. Beloved wife.
“Oh, God, I cannot bear it,”
she said, her voice loud. She looked around quickly, to be sure that no one heard, but her cry was carried away by the wind that blew toward England.
She followed her usual pattern and did not go below until dinner, which she ate in silence, or pushed around her plate, depending on whether she remembered to tell herself to eat.
She must have forgotten to remind herself that night because Captain Trask shook his head at her.
“Miss Whittier, you will waste away before we raise Boston, if that is the best you can do.”
She managed a smile.
“Oh, I am as healthy as a horse. I have it on good authority.”
“Not if you continue your present course,”
he argued.
“And we have another month at sea.”
She went to her cabin then, grateful to close everyone out once more.
Ordinarily she would go to sleep as soon as she could, hoping to outwit the nightmares.
Sometimes it worked; other times she woke before light, her cheeks wet with tears.
Tonight would be different, she told herself.
She had planned a special event for her birthday.
The letter from Daniel Spark had come just before the Bonny Jean prepared to tack from Portsmouth Harbor.
Someone pushed it under her door as she lay in the berth, staring with dull eyes at the deck above.
She recognized Daniel’s precise handwriting, small and up and down from years of writing cramped log entries.
She made no move to pick up the letter; several days passed before she did more than walk over it on her way to and from the main deck.
When she finally retrieved the letter, she debated one entire evening whether to throw it overboard, then decided against it.
That would require the effort of going on deck again, and she was weary.
She tucked it in her dressing case under her clo and out of sight.
Perhaps in years distant from this one she would look at the envelope and use it as a good lesson in not making mountains out of molehills, if she really needed any reminders.
She knew she would never open it.
That kind of pain went beyond anything she had the stomach for.
But as each day dissolved into another one like it, her curiosity grew.
She felt anger at first, rage so strong that it left her shaken, when she considered that he felt it necessary to smite her again, this time with words on paper.
This emotion was followed by sorrow that he thought her so dense that she needed further explanation.
As her birthday neared, she decided she would read the letter, reasoning that it was impossible to feel any worse than she already did.
Perhaps if she could begin to make fun of her own folly, she would recover eventually.
She took out the much-trampled letter and placed it on her pillow, then turned away, her hands over her eyes, as she remembered his head on her pillow once.
After a few minutes, she took a deep breath, sat down in the berth, and picked up the letter.
The wax seal was already shattered from all the times she had trod on it.
She drew out the letter and held it until the cabin grew so dark that she had to light the lamp.
By the unstable tight of the swaying lamp, she opened the pages and spread them out.
Her heart stopped in her breast as she stared at the salutation.
“Daniel, what has thee done?”
she whispered. She held the letter closer, reading out loud.
“Beloved,”
she began, her lips scarcely able to form the word.
“If I know you as well as I think I do, you are somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic right now, and you have deliberated for some weeks on whether to read this.”
She looked up from the words. Daniel, thee knows me too well. She looked back at the letter and continued.
“Of course, any other woman would have thrown this overboard. Hannah, I am relying upon the fact that you are not like any other woman.”
Of course I am not, she thought, a wooden smile on her lips. Any other woman would not have flung herself so trustingly at thee. Any other woman would have known better than to believe thee. Put it down to my youth.
“My conduct last night was inexcusable,”
she continued, and nodded in agreement, “but if it had not been dark I could not have said such hurtful things to you. You would have known I did not mean them.”
She paused again, feeling an odd buoyancy that bumped against the wall of pain that had formed around her heart. She pulled the letter closer to her eyes, wishing that the sea would be still for a moment so the lamp would stop swaying.
“As I went about refitting the Clarion in Portsmouth, you were never far from my thoughts. In fact, you consumed me. It’s hard to argue with a harbor master over kegs of salt beef when all you want to do is hurry home and make ferocious love to the woman there.”
“Daniel,”
she said out loud. Her hands started to shake and she could not read the words until she composed herself.
“My dilemma is this, beloved. I began to think about your list again, especially that part that seems to be causing us such grief right now. Do I need to write it? He will place my welfare above his own.”
Why did I ever tell him about that? she asked herself for the thousandth time. Why did I ever think that I could list the qualities of the man I would marry? Was I so stupid once? She returned to the letter.
“Late one night, when I should have been reconciling the ship’s manifest, it occurred to me that you had created, with that single, innocent stipulation, a dreadful conundrum. It is this: if you place my welfare above your own, you will marry me, because I need you so badly. But if I place your welfare above my own, I will not marry you.”
“My God!”
The words were torn from her lips as she leaped to her feet and threw the letter across the cabin. Just as quickly she dropped to her hands and knees to retrieve it, sitting on the deck because her legs had not the strength to help her rise.
I belong to the most suicidal of professions, even in peacetime,”
she read.
“You know, as few women do, how doubly dangerous it is during war. I’ve already outlived the normal life span of a man so long at sea. Every voyage now is like fluttering a red flag in the path of death. I cannot be so callous with your heart, my love. It is because I love you so much that I cannot marry you. I have truly placed your welfare before my own, and this, I believe, is what any woman needs.”
“Then I was a fool, Daniel,”
she whispered.
“Why can’t thee be selfish, like other men?”
She dragged her eyes back to the page.
“I hope you will marry someone else, Hannah,”
she read.
“Whatever you do, and wherever the years take you, please know there was a man who loved you too much to marry you. Yours, now and always, Daniel.”
Hannah sat where she was, far beyond tears.
“Thee has met the only stipulation that matters,”
she said, staring down at the letter, “and look what it has done to us!”
The Bonny Jean docked in Boston’s crowded harbor a month later, in the middle of a snowstorm. She allowed Captain Trask to escort her to Charleston to the house of her uncle, who stared at her as though she had risen from the dead, and then held her in a tight embrace.
“My brother will be so pleased thee came to thy senses and did not remain in England,”
he said when he could speak. She was up most of the night, telling them the story of the Dissuade, the fight with the Bergeron, and her narrow escape from matrimony. She had not the strength to tell the whole story; that uld keep for Mama’s ears alone.
In the morning, in a thicker cloak, and with a footwarmer at her toes, she kissed the Whittiers goodbye and went on to Nantucket, where she arrived as night was falling. She was the first person off the ferry and had to be reminded to return and retrieve her dressing case. She smiled her thanks to the ferryman, crossed the gangplank, and found herself on firm ground again. Where I will stay, she told herself, ignoring the pain that washed over her because she was used to it now.
She thought she would remain unnoticed as she hurried through the snow toward Orange Street, but one man on horseback—was it the postmaster?—recognized her and spurred his horse ahead. When she turned onto her street, Mama was running from the front door, her arms open wide, Papa right behind. With a cry of her own, she dropped her dressing case and was swallowed up in their embrace.
She was too tired to tell the story all over again, but she did, tucked up in her own under the eaves with Mama holding her hand, and Papa seated close by on a stool.
“He broke the engagement, so I came home,”
she concluded, looking at her father. She knew better than to look at Mama, who would know there was more, much more, to the story. Papa was content that she had come to her senses. Trust him, by the end of the month, to set forth any number of ideas on a more suitable husband, she thought as she watched the relief settle over his features.
“My little daughter has returned,”
he said and kissed her cheek.
“Mama, let us leave her alone to sleep now.”
He touched her under the chin, in a familiar gesture from her childhood.
“Think how many people will want to hear this story again!”
She sighed.
“Is Adam Winslow about?”
Papa shook his head.
“He is in the Caribbean serving as number one on his uncle’s brig.”
He rubbed his chin.
“Whatever deficiencies Captain Spark may have as a lover, he certainly taught Adam seamanship! I think if you send Hosea a letter, he will see that Adam gets it when they return from Barbados.”
“I will do it tomorrow.”
Mama kissed her fingers, but did not let go of her hand.
“Thee will do it when thee feels like it.”
She looked up at her husband.
“My dear, I will be along in a moment.”
He left them then, closing the door quietly. Hannah stared straight ahead until Mama took her by the chin and gently turned her face toward the light.
“I do not believe for a single instant that what thee has told us any resemblance to the actual facts,”
she said, her voice soft, her eyes concerned.
“Adam told us how much the captain loves thee. What has happened? Can thee tell me?”
Hannah shook her head.
“It can wait until morning, Mama.”
She down in the bed and closed her eyes.
“I am not going anywhere.”
When Papa left for the store in the morning to sell a little merchandise and spread the news of her return among all his customers, Mama climbed the stairs to Hannah’s bedroom and refused to leave until Hannah had poured out her whole misery into her lap. Mama’s fingers shook, too, as she read Daniel Spark’s letter. A thoughtful look on her face, she set it aside and took herself to the window.
“Thee must write to him, Hannah. Thee must tell him font>….”
“Tell him what, Mama?”
Hannah interrupted.
“That I cannot live without him? I was willing to give up everything I hold dear for him, and it was not enough. No, Mama, I will not write to him. I will forget him.”
“Can thee?”
Mama asked. I do not think thee can.”
“I have to,”
Hannah replied.
Mama looked at her for a long moment, then kissed her.
“Very well, Hannah. Thee can try.”
She did try, and it was a wonderful act that fooled almost everyone. Hannah made herself eat, but it all tasted the same. By sheer force of will she put on weight until her clothes fit again. While Mama was pleased by this outward sign of recovery, she was not content, and told her so one snowy day in January while they kneaded bread on the kitchen table.
“Hannah, thee could almost pull off this deception but for one thing,”
she mentioned casually as Hannah greased the bread pans and stared out the window at the icicles that hung just above the ground.
“Thee said something?”
Hannah asked, and then realized that her mother had caught her.
“Precisely, my dear. Thee hears not above one word in ten, and if thee does not go to the east window to stand all evening tonight, as thee has done since returning, I will be amazed!”
Hannah said nothing.
“Why the east window, my dear?”
Mama asked. ‘The view is nothing but Godspeed Wilkins’ front door.”
Hannah set down the bread pan.
“Because it faces toward England. And if I turn a little south, then I can imagine Daniel cruising off France or Spain. I know it is cold on the blockade. I hope he is warmly dressed.”
Her voice was breathless, as though she disclosed too much for her own comfort. Without another word, she lifted her cloak from the hook by the back door and let herself out into the snowy afternoon. She walked to the end of the kitchen garden, ragged now, snow-covered, empty of fruit, bereft of yield. Almost like me, she thought as she stared at the empty cornstalks and listened to them crackle against each other. If thee had married me, Daniel, I would probably be carrying thy child by now. I would have taken such care of this evidence of thy love, and when thee returned from the blockade, we would have such joy.
She smiled bleakly to herself. And now I talk to cornstalks, and stare out east windows, and ignore Mama’s conversation. I wish spring would come. Perhaps Hosea will want me to come to Charleston this year. I could help with the little one, and perhaps the sailmaker is still single. But this time I will travel overland to Charleston, and not by water. Never by water again. And if I am truly careful, whoever I marry will never know how much I ache inside. Only Mama will know.
It was useless to pretend to Mama now, so she dropped all her attempts. If it caused Papa pain to see her stand by the window night after night, or shake her head over food that held no interest for her, she was sorry, but it could not be helped. She worked in the kitchen in silence, and watched the icicles gradually grow shorter. Then the day came when they dripped steadily, and disappeared. Spring was here.
“Papa, I would like to go to Charleston,”
she announced over dinner one night when the sky was still light with spring, and the front door open to the smell of lilacs all over Nantucket.
“Can thee book me passage on a mail coach?”
“Of course I can, Daughter,”
he said, his face lighting up with love for her, and anxiety that went deeper than concern.
“You mean to visit Hosea?”
She nodded and smiled.
“I think I am overdue there, and I did promise his wife that I would help with the baby.”
“It seems so long ago,”
he said, his voice wistful.
“It is so long ago,”
she agreed.
“But I am not dead to duty, Papa! I still should get to Charleston.”
When she left the next week, Mama clung to her longer than usual as she kissed her goodbye. Hannah laughed and tried to pull away from the strength of her mother’s embrace.
“I will be back!”
“I do not think I will see thee soon,”
Mama said, and her lips trembled.
“But if I do not, please know I love thee and all thy decisions. God keep thee, Hannah Whittier.”
It gave her food for thought as the mail coach rolled through the spring morning toward Boston, and something to think about beside Daniel Spark for a change. I must write Papa and tell him to keep an eye on Mama, she resolved.
Boston became New York, and then New Jersey, and then Pennsylvania as April slipped into May as they traveled south. The road was terrible in places, and merely dreadful in others, necessitating frequent layovers that stretched the limits of everyone’s equanimity except Hannah’s. Each day was much like the next to her, she reflected as she watched the other riders so impatient over delays. I am going nowhere to see no one, really, so what is another day on the road?
Virginia bloomed with dogwood and hawthorn. She breathed deep of the scented air and felt peace settle over her for a moment. It went away quickly enough, but it was nice to know she could feel something still.
They rolled into Richmond for the noon meal, and the food was better than usual. No matter how good the food, she did not dawdle over it. A veteran of the coach by now, she was first back to the coach so she could claim a seat by the window. She looked out with interest, wishing she knew which house belonged to John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and one of Papa’s heroes. And was that the spire to St. John’s Church, where Patrick Henry had spoken of liberty or death?
“Pardon me, Lady Amber, but is this seat taken?’
Her heart stopped, then started again. She continued to stare out the window, but she wasn’t seeing anything this time. Her breath came in little gasps and she felt herself getting light in the head.
“The last time you did that you were watching a flogging, and I distinctly remember pushing your head between your knees, Hannah. I’ll do it again if I have to.”
“Say my name again,”
she said, her voice almost inaudible to her ears.
“Hannah.”
It was a caress.
She turned from her stare out the window to see Daniel Spark smiling down at her. He took off his hat, an elegant low-crowned beaver hat, and waited for her response.
“Pl-Please sit down,”
she stammered.
“I know there are others, but I am sure there will be room for ....”
Her voice trailed off as she stared at him.
“Excellent!”
He sat next to her and tapped on the side of the coach with his walking stick. She heard the whip crack as the coach sprang forward.
Hannah half rose in her seat to look out the window.
“But ... the others!”
she exclaimed.
“I have paid them a ridiculous sum of money to reain behind and wait for the coach I was following you in to change horses,”
he explained, sounding perfectly reasonable.
“They were a bit disagreeable at first, even with all that money, until I told them it was a matter of the heart.”
He took her hand and twined his fingers through hers, pulling her back down beside him.
“Americans are so absurd.”
Hannah rose in stupefied silence, looking down once to make sure that it was Daniel Spark’s hand she held, and that her wits had not finally wandered away for good.
“It’s your hand,”
she mumbled.
“I’d recognize it anywhere.”
“Well, yes. It’s attached eventually to a shoulder that really cries out to be leaned upon. Ah, excellent, my dear. Actually, if you don’t mind too much impertinence so soon after lunch, I would rather put my arm around you. I seem to recall that you fit so well there. Better and better.”
It required no great strength of will to slip her arm around behind him, and he smiled as she patted him to make sure he was real.
“It’s really me. Hannah.”
he insisted.
“If you have any doubts ....”
He kissed her then, pulling her onto his lap as the coach rolled along through some of Virginia’s prettiest unappreciated scenery. One kiss led to another, and another, until she was rosy with whisker burn. He stopped finally to rub his chin.
“I’ve been traveling some pretty terrible roads to catch up with you,”
he said.
“That last inn ran out of hot water before I could even lather up.”
He touched her red cheek.
“You should have told me I was hurting ”
He grinned.
“If I was.”
She did not waste time with words, but kissed him instead until he was breathless and breathing hard. Then she held herself off from him and gently touched his face with the back of her hand. The little gesture sent tears to his eyes.
“I am not going to disappear, Hannah,”
he managed finally.
“Thee did before,”
she reminded him as she arranged herself more comfortably on his lap.
“I was a damned fool,”
he replied, placing his hand possessively on her hip.
“Your mother pointed that out to me in her letter.”
“Her letter ....”
Hannah began. Her eyes widened.
“My mother wrote thee a letter?”
“Well, to be more specific, she sent copies of the same letter to the Blockade Fleet, the Admiralty House, my brother’s estate in Kent, my home in Dorset, Mama’s town house in London, and one to the Prince Regent for good measure,”
he said, and grinned at the startled expression she knew was on her own face. He hugged her close.
“I wonder ... I must ask her someday if she sent one to Napoleon, on the odd chance that I was languishing in one of his prisons awaiting execution.”
“Did you keep a copy?”
Hannah asked.
“I have the one from the Blockade Fleet.”
He tugged off her bonnet and tossed it across the coach.
“It’s such a hindrance to fine kissing, Hannah. I have it on good authority that the other letters are on their way to becoming collectors’ items. Lord”
She took in that piece of news and allowed him to lean forward and rest his head against her breasts.
“Hannah, she told me plainly that if I wanted to be noble and self-sacrificing, I was to do it with someone else’s daughter.”
“Mama wouldn’t say boo to a goose,”
Hannah marveled, unbuttoning her pelisse so the buttons would not dig into his face as he rested against her.
“Well, she did, and so did your father, when I met them in Nantucket a month ago!” he said.
“You didn’t!”
“I did! How do you think I knew where you were?”
“Was I hard to find?”
He kissed her.
“You would ask such a question of the man who raised the Azores in a fog bank from the deck of a sinking ship? Of course, I did have to stop in Washington.”
He winced at the memory.
“I would blush to call it a capital city, but Lord Erskine, our ambassador, assures me that it will improve. Hannah, those pigs in the streets really must go.”
“Washington?”
she asked. The mail coach was getting so warm that she removed her pelisse entirely.
“Yes, my love. Which reminds me ....”
He set her careully off his lap and rapped on the side of the coach again. It rolled to a stop and he opened the door.
“Sir, perhaps you would turn this vehicle back to the District of Columbia?”
In another moment they had started back up the road they had just traveled.
“Lord Erskine assured me that he could take care of any legalities concerned with our marriage, and I have a notarized letter in my pocket from your father, giving his consent to our nuptials. I think all that remains is for us to collect the documents from Lord Erskine this afternoon and present our bodies before some magistrate and say ‘Yes,’ or ‘Hell, yes,’ or maybe ‘It’s high time.’ ”
“Daniel, I love thee,”
she said softly.
“I know, my love, I know,”
he whispered as he pulled her close again.
“My feelings are precisely as I expressed in that letter. I still love you too much to marry you, but it seems the entire British navy, my regent, and my relatives will flog me around the fleet if I cannot come up to scratch and do my duty.”
“Not to mention my mother,”
she added. Her hands trembled as she cupped them about his face and looked deep into his eyes.
“I know exactly what I am getting into. I can wait in Dorset for the war to end, but when it does, thee must promise me to leave the sea for good.”
“Done, madam,”
he said and turned his face to seal the promise with a kiss in each palm.
“After we return to Dorset, it’s back to the blockade for me. We’re in for some rough years yet ....”
She put her finger to his lips and shook her head.
“They will be years thee will look back on with great joy, my love. I can make that happen for thee, and thee for me.”
“Done again, madam,”
he said as tears shone on his cheeks.
“Promise me one thing, though.”
“Yes?”
she asked as she wiped his face with her sleeve.
“No more lists, my love. Well, nothing beyond shopping lists for trips into the village, or perhaps Christmas presents.”
Her arms were around his neck then, her lips against his.
“Thee won’t mind if I write over and over, ‘Hannah loves Daniel’?”
“Hannah,”
he said, and it said the world.
Conversation seemed as much an encumbrance as her bonnet and pelisse that they dispensed with it for a lengthy spell. When they finally decided that words might be better, considering that they hadn’t actually married each other yet, Hannah sat up and smiled into her dear love’s somewhat glazed eyes.
“Tell me something, Daniel.”
“Anything,”
he murmured as he rebuttoned her dress.
“Does thee have something against the South?”
He looked at her, a question in his eyes.
“It seems that in the company of the British Navy, I am doomed never to see Charleston!”
THE END