Chapter Eleven
Andrew eyed the guardian. ‘Mrs Mary Hale is an inmate at this institution. Aye or nay?’
‘What right do you—’
‘Aye or nay?’ Andrew snapped, already tired of this man.
‘Aye.’
Challenge me and regret it, Andrew thought. ‘She is the widow of my late, excellent sailing master, Edward Hale, who died at the Battle of the Nile thirteen years ago. I want Mary Hale immediately remanded to my care.’
‘You have no right.’
‘I have every right.’ He narrowed his eyes, and the guardian took a step back. ‘She is destitute. I am relieving England of the obligation to care for her.’
He turned, looked deep into Rosie’s lovely eyes and took a bold chance.
He raised her gloved hand to his cheek. ‘Right, my dear? We need a housekeeper, and I want her to be Mrs Hale. I owe her husband a debt, one I can repay, at least in part, by offering his widow more pleasant surroundings than this dung heap.’
He knew Rosie wouldn’t fail him. She hadn’t failed him in the mail coach when she saw him at his worst. She hadn’t failed him during lonely nights, when she held his hand. In daytime she sat beside him with her knitting, which was more soothing, more normal, than he could ever explain.
She didn’t fail him now. ‘We do need a housekeeper, my love,’ she told him. ‘You have told me much about Mrs Hale. She will be welcome in our home.’
Oh my goodness, Rosie, he thought, as she leaned against his shoulder, requiring his arm to go around her.
He returned his gaze to the guardian. The man’s eyes bulged like a mackerel’s.
Now for the final menace of a fleet action, he thought.
‘If you choose not to relinquish her, I can and will take the matter directly to the Navy Board,’ Andrew said, committing a perjury he thought wasn’t out of line, considering his life for the past few years.
‘My ship sails in mere days and you are wasting my time. Well, sir? Are we done?’
To his relief, he saw defeat written all over the guardian’s fat face. ‘She is in the kitchen next door, my house.’
‘We will remove her from it now.’
‘But…but…she is my cook and housekeeper!’ the guardian sputtered.
Andrew looked around the corridor. ‘I see any number of women who will probably be happy to assume those roles. They can devour scraps from your table. Good day.’ Oh, why not? ‘I’ll give a good report of you to the prime minister.’
‘The prime minister?’ Fred asked when they were outside again and the air was breathable. ‘I had no idea you are a confidante of Spencer Perceval.’
‘Neither does Perceval.’
Andrew felt Rosie’s shoulders shake, so he tightened his grip. ‘Don’t you dare look at me,’ she managed to say as they headed toward a smaller house of grey stones. ‘If I start to laugh and find myself unable to stop, it will be your fault entirely.’
‘You’re already scolding me like that imaginary wife of mine would. Horrors,’ he said with a straight face, which only made her stuff her hand against her mouth to keep from laughing.
‘You two are a menace to law and order,’ Frederick said, which made Andrew’s shoulder start to shake, too.
All mirth ended as they stood in front of the guardian’s house. ‘Let’s make quick work of this,’ Andrew said. ‘If the guardian thinks about what just happened, we might be in trouble.’
Fred nodded. ‘Let’s find the servants’ entrance.’
‘Lead on, sir.’
Down the back steps they went, frightening a kitten huddled there and looking no more prosperous than any of the inmates of the Ashburton Workhouse. Without a word, Rosie scooped it up. ‘You’re coming with me,’ she said. ‘No argument.’ The little morsel cuddled closer.
Andrew didn’t bother to knock. In moments they stood in the kitchen, and there was Mary Hale, turning in fright to look at them and dropping the spoon in the pot.
‘Mrs Hale’ was all he said.
Her response would have ripped his heart apart, if Rosie hadn’t put her hand on his back as Widow Hale sobbed and flung herself into his arms. Both her skin and her hair were greyer than he remembered, telling him more than words about her life in recent years.
‘How? What?’ was all she could manage.
Frederick Harte kindly helped her sit down. She tried to get up, saying something about the stew burning. ‘Let it burn,’ he said, even as Rosie moved the pot off the stove.
Andrew condensed his prison escape down to the needfuls, concluding with ‘I recently learned you had fallen on hard times. You’re coming with us. This is Frederick Harte and his daughter Rosie, who live near Endicott. How quickly can you pack?’
Rosie took over then, helping Mary to her feet. ‘I’ll assist you. Now,’ she added, then glanced at Andrew. ‘See there, sir? I’m learning how to move things along smartly, as I believe you nautical types say.’
‘Smartly, indeed,’ he told her, secretly delighted.
Mary looked from him to Rosie, and turned into the lady he remembered, as no-nonsense as her late husband. ‘This way, my dear,’ she told Rosie. ‘I won’t take a minute.’
It barely took that. There was hardly time for Fred Harte to clap him on the back and declare ‘Remind me never to cross you! Are all navy men so fierce?’
‘Aye, in the performance of duty,’ Andrew said, his eyes on the door where his two favourite women in the world had vanished. ‘Fred, I have an idea for Mary Hale. I know I am presuming, but tell me what you think.’
When he finished, Fred Harte gave him another clap on the back, this one threatening his wind. ‘Sorry, lad,’ the farmer said when he staggered under the friendly blow. ‘I forget you’re still recuperating.’ He leaned in closer. ‘I was thinking along these lines, too.’
Andrew was spared a reply when not one but three people appeared. Mary carried a small bundle and moved fast, tugging a young girl along. ‘There is a butler-looking fellow headed this way. Let’s go,’ Rosie said.
‘Um, Mrs Hale,’ Andrew started, looking at the little girl clinging like a burr to Mary’s skirt.
‘Matilda Madigan is my granddaughter,’ Mary said, her voice calm. ‘You remember my Sadie, don’t you?’
Who wouldn’t remember Sadie? She was a jolly, practical child. He knew she had married a foretopman. ‘Certainly, I do. But…’
‘Typhus took Sadie.’ The widow brushed away tears. ‘Her Thomas died in a prison on the Spanish coast. We don’t know the details.’
Oh, God. Andrew closed his eyes and took an involuntary step backward. Could Sadie’s husband have been in that cell next to theirs? He opened his eyes when Rosie took his hand in a firm grip. ‘Come now,’ she said softly. ‘Come now.’
That was all he needed. He eyed Mary Hale’s small bundle. ‘You didn’t have time to…’
Mary was equal to the moment. ‘Edward’s last, incomplete log and my Bible,’ she said. ‘One dress. Get us out of here.’
Fred got them out of there. Rosie threw her cloak around Mary’s thin shoulders.
The servants’ door opened and the butler-looking fellow stood there, perhaps—the more fool he—ready to stop them.
Oh, Lord, he was easy meat. Andrew knew he had not forgotten how to do his determined face, the one that even intimidated captains who thought they knew better about a ship’s trim during a fleet action.
He raised his forefinger and that was enough. The man stopped in his tracks.
‘Get in the back with Rosie,’ Fred ordered, as he pulled the little girl up beside him, and Mary Hale followed her, nimble and determined.
Andrew saw a flash of black stockings and trim legs as Rosie climbed aboard to sit with him in the bed of the gig. He wrapped his hand-me-down boat cloak around both of them and pulled her close as Fred chirruped to his horse and they left the workhouse behind.
‘Nothing like a boat cloak to keep you warm, even a shabby one,’ he said. There was no question where his arm belonged—around Rosie’s shoulders. To his utter delight, she burrowed in close, her head on his chest.
‘She shared a room with two other maids, crammed into one bed,’ she told him, her voice low and full of emotion. ‘Matilda slept on the floor. I wouldn’t treat a dog like that. Oh. This kitten! Why did I do that?’
He laughed when she held out the kitten. ‘Because you’re a kind soul,’ he assured her. ‘Hang on. Your father is not going to waste a minute getting us back to his farm.’
Sitting in the back of a gig, close to a woman he more than admired, was a prime moment to move along whatever this was.
He knew it, but damn if he wasn’t comfortable and warm and asleep in minutes.
His last coherent thought was Rosie’s low-voiced ‘Silly man. You’re a terror to workhouses. ’ He gave up a losing battle and slept.