Chapter Ten
Aunt Dorothea had prepared a dinner of roast duck, mounds of potatoes so fluffy and buttery that Rosie swore she saw tears in Andrew’s eyes. There were also green beans strung, dried and reconstituted. But where was her aunt?
‘Where is she, Papa?’
‘Lately, she has been going to her house on Chandler Street once a week,’ he said. ‘She prepares dinner for me before she leaves. All these years…she misses her home.’
I should be here so she can return to her home permanently, Rosie thought. She looked down at her hands, one so recently in Andrew’s firm grip because the ground was fictionally uneven. I do not know where I should be.
Since no one was moving the conversational ball, she picked up the sorry thing, telling her father of Vicar Ewing’s fate, which only turned Papa more reflective than usual. It seemed that the vulture of bad news was flapping all around the table.
‘I should have warned you about that,’ Papa murmured.
‘I heard more in the public house yesterday to explain that wretched turn of events.’ He leaned forward, his elbow just missing the potatoes.
‘Sir William is deep in debt. His younger brother is in trade and is now richer than Croesus, whoever that chap is. It seems that Reverend Milton Keeting, Sir William’s son, cannot keep his grubby hands off parish funds.
To avoid a scandal—according to the stalwarts in the pub—Milton is taking over St. Timothy’s.
In exchange for this atrocity coming our way, his uncle will pay off Sir William’s debts and smooth things over for Milton. ’
‘So I heard,’ Andrew declared. ‘I’m exhausted by all this local intrigue.’
‘It gets better. Milton and his wife are already at Keeting Manor.’
‘Yes,’ Rosie said. She stirred around uneaten potatoes and gravy. ‘Vicar Ewing said they were coming over to the vicarage to measure for new curtains.’
‘She must have recovered then,’ Papa told them.
‘From what?’ Andrew asked.
‘The exhaustion of strong hysterics! Apparently she and Milton were trapped in a post-chaise in that mess of ice and snow that stalled you. I have it from Dotty, who heard it from the housekeeper at Keeting Manor, that someone tried to foist a poor sailor off on them in their post-chaise, because he needed help.’
‘It was our mail coach,’ Andrew said. ‘I was that poor sailor.’
Rosie saw the sadness in his eyes. ‘Rough ground,’ she whispered to him, wanting to take his hand. Papa looked at them both, a question in his eyes. ‘Papa, she told our coachman that she feared they would be murdered.’
Papa laughed, but it was mirthless. ‘Dotty heard it from the housekeeper that she is only now recovering from, er, emotional distress.’
‘I remember Milton,’ Rosie said. ‘He was a slimy lad who made fun of us because we could not afford a private tutor. It appears he has not improved.’
‘That, dear child, is how the world works,’ Papa replied. He glanced at Andrew. ‘Has this been your experience, too, Master Hadfield?’
‘Aye and more’s the pity. Why is it that the worst people seem to suffer no consequences?’
To Rosie’s dismay, the conversation turned Andrew quiet. After dinner, he begged off from playing whist. ‘It’s been a long day,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what will happen tomorrow when I go to the workhouse in Ashburton.’
‘I am coming, too,’ Rosie told him.
‘Should you?’
‘Yes,’ she said, sad he should think he must bear the weight of their sorry world. Maybe that was the price of leadership. ‘Yes,’ she said firmly.
He smiled at that, and she took heart. ‘We’ll take the gig to Ashburton. I will handle the reins. Something tells me that a lifelong sailor probably doesn’t know one end of a horse from the other.’
‘Correct. It’s been too many years since I sat on my father’s old nag and sawed at the reins,’ Andrew said. ‘You will be my coachman, and I promise not to murder you.’
The droll way he said it made her laugh. She touched his arm. ‘What you must think of us?’ she asked, as she followed him to the foot of the stairs.
‘You can’t imagine, dear lady.’
Why ‘dear lady’ should keep her awake half the night, Rosie didn’t understand.
To make her positively grumpy, the bed was cold.
She thrashed about, thinking of Papa wanting her to return home, and Aunt Dorothea yearning to retire to Chandler Street, after all her years of loving service to her brother and nieces.
There was Vicar Ewing, turned out of his parish where people needed him. What would happen to his parish school?
She tried not to think about Master Hadfield, except that was what finally sent her into slumber, dreaming how nice it would be to cuddle with him on a cold night.
That dream had entertained her off and on all year, if she were honest with herself.
This was the first time the cuddling man had a name and face. Rough ground, she told herself.
He woke after midnight, talking out loud, then pleading. She hurried to him, sitting by his bed, holding his hand until he returned to sleep, comforted. She couldn’t help herself. Who will do this when you return to the perils of battle and the sea? Will anyone care as much as I?
Morning brought Papa’s pronouncement that they were taking his son-in-law’s larger gig to Ashburton, because he was coming, too.
He obviously expected no argument, but he was prepared with one and presented it, anyway.
‘See here, Master Hadfield, with your nautical command and my local clout, we can find this woman and extract her from a workhouse. I have an idea.’
‘Which is…’ Rosie prompted.
‘I’m thinking about it, daughter. Some sort of genteel employment?’
‘I’ll never argue the matter,’ Andrew said. ‘My area of expertise does not extend to horses, as your daughter pointed out, and what do I know of shire life?’
‘You will never be a country gentleman,’ Rosie teased, which brought a genuine smile to her houseguest.
‘Never.’
He sounded so decisive this morning, and not the weary man who begged off on whist and went to bed early.
His eyes looked as tired as hers, but she already knew he possessed a reservoir of strength she could only imagine.
I do believe the workhouse is in for a real battle, she thought, basing her supposition on something she couldn’t define.
She put on her warmest cloak and let the sailing master hand her into the gig. The three of them sat rump to rump on the slightly wider seat. ‘Your cloak smells of brine, sir,’ she teased as Papa spoke to his horses and they started to Ashburton.
‘Nice odour, eh?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so only a few days ago,’ she said, thinking of no objection as his arm circled her waist. After all, the man had to stay on the seat, didn’t he?
Ashburton came soon enough. ‘Do you know where the workhouse is, Papa?’
‘I do. Your brother-in-law and I each acquired a field labourer from there.’
‘I didn’t know, Papa. What happened to Pete’s after harvest?’
‘Pete hired him permanently, and he had the good sense to marry the goose girl.’
‘Bravo,’ Andrew said. ‘What about your workhouse labourer, sir?’
‘He wanted to go to New Hampshire, America, so I paid his way. I get a letter every year.’
‘Papa, you are a philanthropist,’ she teased.
Her joking ended when they turned onto Warwick Road, and she saw a dismal pile of grey stones ahead. ‘So grim,’ she said, much subdued.
Papa patted her knee. ‘This is why I sent a workhouse man to New Hampshire. I didn’t want a good man damned by his hedgerow birth to be punished for his poverty in this place.’
Rosie kissed his cheek, grateful beyond measure for such a father. She glanced at Andrew sitting on her other side. Could there be two such excellent men in one gig?
She didn’t think the bleakness outside could be duplicated and worsened inside, but it was, with dirty walls and not much furniture. ‘Rough ground,’ she whispered when they entered the building. She said it quietly enough so Andrew could not hear.
Amazing man, to have such acute hearing. She felt his gloved hand in hers and she took heart.
Papa knew where to go, which relieved her. A workhouse was no place to wander. Her heart broke at the sight of children with lowered eyes and uncombed hair, sitting in silence, waiting for…something. Three bony women dressed in grey sacking huddled together, the middle one weeping.
Papa stopped in front of a wary-eyed man sitting at a high desk, the kind of perch where everyone had to look up. Rosie saw it as another way to humiliate people who, from the looks of them, had been fed a steady diet of humble pie.
‘I must speak to the guardian,’ Papa said, in a voice Rosie wasn’t familiar with.
‘I will see if he is in.’
‘He is in,’ the man holding her hand said. It was also a voice she was unfamiliar with, a voice of absolute command, even beyond Papa’s. It was the voice of someone who knew suffering even more extreme than this. Still, he held her hand. She squeezed his.
‘Who may I say is—’
‘Sailing Master Hadfield and Frederick Harte from Endicott. We are not patient people.’
Rosie felt prickles up and down her back.
No wonder France and Spain were learning how implacable and relentless the Royal Navy was.
As they stood in the dismal corridor, Rosie committed herself.
Even if she never saw him again after Christmas, she wanted the man still holding her hand to know something important.
She stood on tiptoe, one eye on her father, who watched the sad little ones, and leaned close.
‘You may think you are not a hero, Andrew, but you are. Don’t quibble. ’
He smiled at her words, a boyish grin that threw off years of war. ‘You’re a hero, too, Miss Rose Harte. I may have a presumptuous little plan for Mrs Hale, once we spring her from this midden. That is, if others are agreeable.’
The guardian stomped into the corridor, his luncheon napkin tucked in his collar, his eyes blazing, clearly not a man to be disturbed at meals. Rosie knew in her heart of hearts that the guardian didn’t stand a chance. He just didn’t know it yet.