Chapter Fourteen
I can do this, I can do this, Rosie thought as she smiled through the afternoon, making things as easy as she could for the man she loved, a man governed by duty, who was leaving in the morning via post-chaise. She knew he would not declare himself now.
Papa was surprisingly grim at the news. ‘Andy, we will miss you.’
‘I will miss you, too,’ her man said. ‘All of you.’
Papa insisted on delivering the sailing master’s note to Reverend Ewing himself, informing the cleric that if he was serious about Stonehouse, a post-chaise would meet him in the morning at the vicarage.
He came back scowling, plopping himself into a chair in the kitchen, where Rosie folded the same napkin over and over.
‘Daughter, those awful Keetings were already in residence! Reverend Ewing is trying to pack. I told him to be here by nightfall. I hope he doesn’t mind the little chamber off the sitting room.’
Dinner tasted like weeds and ashes, which faintly surprised Rosie. She ignored it, pleased to see Mary Hale so animated. You will fit in well here, Rosie thought, happy to see her far removed from the desperate-eyed escapee from the workhouse. I wish I could smile. Andy is leaving.
Would this evening never end? Curled up in her favourite chair in the sitting room, she knitted and listened to Andrew explain life on the blockade of the French and Spanish coasts. She heard the eagerness in his voice, and knew where he really wanted to be, despite the danger.
A farmer dropped off Reverend Ewing and his dog, just as Papa was taking little glances at his timepiece, something he always did before he stretched and announced that it was time for bed.
‘I could not stay there,’ the cleric said, by way of apology. ‘I trust there is room for my dog in Stonehouse.’
‘The convalescents will love him,’ Andrew said.
‘I am not surprised you could not stay there another minute,’ Fred said. ‘We have long known how worthless all of Keeting’s offspring are, up to and including our new and unwanted vicar. Now the brother who indulged in trade has paid off Sir William’s debts, and his son will be vicar forever.’
Papa set them laughing next. He declared that perhaps he would begin attending church with the Methodists. ‘They are probably rascals, but I hear they sing well! Beg pardon, Vicar.’
‘Not vicar anymore, Mr Harte. Call me Reverend Ewing.’
‘If I must.’ Papa leaned back in his old rump-sprung chair. ‘I know you too well to think you would have said anything mean to the usurper of your living. I would have.’
‘Well, I had a moment…’ Reverend Ewing replied. ‘I asked the Keetings if they knew that the Royal Navy hero who has been charming all Endicott was the same fellow they refused to rescue from the mail coach in their post-chaise that evening Rosie came home.’
‘I am no hero,’ Andy said firmly.
‘Stuff and nonsense,’ the farmer said, unperturbed.
‘I watched you rescue our kind Mary Hale here from the workhouse. Now you have found fitting employment for Reverend Ewing, someone we will miss.’ He leaned closer in that conspiratorial way that Rosie remembered from precious moments in her childhood, when he gave her all his attention.
‘I stopped at the pub on the way home. What did I learn but three of the young labourers have left to join the navy. Face it, Andy, you are Endicott’s hero. ’
‘I give up. I surrender,’ the sailing master said. ‘Good night to all you rascals!’
Rosie wanted to escape upstairs to her bedchamber for a good cry, but lingered as Andrew thanked her father for his kindness. ‘I suppose I will never know an ordinary Christmas, but this has certainly been one to remember. Reverend, we’ll leave early.’
‘You are welcome here anytime,’ Papa said. ‘Isn’t he, Rosie?’
All she could do was nod and smile. She left the room when the others gathered around the sailing master to wish him well on future voyages.
To her dismay, she realized she was beyond tears, which would have been a cleansing relief.
It was time to resign from clerking at Gooding’s Maritime Naval Stores and return home.
She never wanted to see the ocean again.
Her troubled heart raised another objection. What if, after some fleet action or other disturbance, he needed someone to comfort him? ‘Who will hold your hand then?’ she asked the silence.
Rose waited all night, listening for Andy to mumble or cry out.
To her dismay, she heard nothing. Lying in bed, she gathered her scattered thoughts.
Only days ago, all she wanted was silence, which meant he was on the mend and didn’t need her.
But after her stupid mistletoe and their kiss in the meadow, she wanted an excuse to go to him at night, as she had before.
There was no excuse, and she could not do it.
Not that she didn’t want to get into bed with this man she knew—knew!
—she loved; she did. Blame Aunt Dorothea, who, years ago, gently explained the rules of courtship and marriage, none of which seemed to apply in this time of war and turmoil.
Rosie stayed in her bed, wide awake, regretting every moment of her indecision.
Some instinct told her that Master Andrew Hadfield would never come to her bed.
Another instinct assured her that he wanted her precisely as much as she wanted him.
In her practical mind, heartache was a word fit only for bad novels.
But what else was this feeling except heartache?
Her heart ached because she knew he would not make the move.
He had spoken several times about his trade, and the misery it extended to other innocents—Mary Hale and Matilda Madigan, for example.
‘Drat your hide, you’re too good a man, Andy,’ she whispered into the dark. ‘You think you are sparing me from a sad life. Did you ever think that my life is going to be a barren desert without you?’
She closed her eyes as dawn came, only to be shaken awake what seemed like minutes later by…by Mary Hale?
‘Wake up, Miss Harte! You’ve overslept and Master Hadfield and Reverend Ewing are about to leave!’
Rosie sat up, shook her head to clear the fog and leaped out of bed. ‘Why didn’t my aunt…?’
‘She didn’t know what to do,’ Mary said as they hurried down the stairs. ‘My dear, she doesn’t understand what it is to love a navy man, and I know you love Master Hadfield.’
Rose ran past the mirror in the hall, determined not to look at it because she knew her hair was a fright and her flannel nightgown so old that Methuselah’s wife probably wore it.
She dashed past Aunt Dorothea in the entry way, not even slowing down for the gravel of the driveway. The chaise was already moving.
‘Stop!’
She knew that voice of command. She had heard it only the day before yesterday in the workhouse. The post-chaise rider did precisely that as Andy flung open the door. He grabbed her and held her close, speaking softly as only a sailing master could, at rare times. ‘I’ll be back.’
‘When?’
‘I don’t know. Kiss me quick. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. I’ll stay at the Drake tonight, and we sail the day after Christmas.’ He held her off for moment. ‘I will be back,’ he said, then kissed her with all the energy of his heart, mind, body and soul. She knew it.
Rosie stood there, hardly feeling the cold gravel biting into her bare feet. The man she adored put his hand on her head like a benediction, then left her.
Mary Hale and Aunt Dorothea shepherded her into the house.
‘I love him,’ she said simply. ‘I truly do.’
Dorothea and Mary Hale sat close to her, part of that great sisterhood who knew what it was to love a man.
Suddenly, she didn’t want them there. Both had actually known the physical love of husbands, and she had nothing.
She sobbed out that horrible fact, then regretted making them sad for their own losses.
‘I can’t say anything right. Forgive me. ’
When she dared look, she saw two women she knew she could never hate. Dorothea took her hand. ‘My dearest darling, my little brother knew before any of us.’
‘Papa?’ she asked in disbelief. ‘Surely not.’
‘He’s in the cattle byre. Go talk to him. Um, here are your dressing gown and slippers, you wild woman.’ Aunt Dorothea kissed her cheek. ‘He has something to tell you.’
Rosie grabbed her robe and picked her way to the byre, where Papa contemplated one of his placid cows chewing her cud.
‘Papa, what do you have to tell me?’ she demanded.
As she stared at the indecision on his face, she understood a great truth. This man she admired and who always did the right thing, was probably picking his way through life the same as she was. She knew uncertainty, and she saw it on his face, too.
‘Two things. That first morning, I told Andy Hadfield a real whopper.’
‘Papa?’
‘I told him that the inn was full up and he would have to stay with us.’ He sighed and looked at the cow.
‘He did tell me you said that, Papa. It was a lie?’ She tried to collect her thoughts. ‘You…you barely knew him then, Papa. Why would you do that?’
She watched his eyes and saw sudden longing. She took his hand and held it to her cheek.
‘It’s this way, dear one,’ he said. ‘That first night when you insisted he should stay, there was something in the way you looked at him.’
She remembered her concern for a man utterly wasted. What else? ‘What…what could you possibly have seen?’
Papa took a deep breath. ‘There was something in your eyes that reminded me of a time when your mother—God rest her—looked at me that way.’
‘Oh, Papa.’
‘There is this, also, which you need to know. The next day, he and I were chatting, and I asked him what he wanted for Christmas, since he was staying with us.’ He smiled at the memory.
‘I had to coax it out of him. I prodded a bit.’ He took her hand.
‘He told me all he wanted was just once for a pretty lady to see him off at the dock. Just once.’
He patted her hand as she cried, then gave her his handkerchief.
‘Give it a good blow, Rosie dear, then go pack.’ He took out his timepiece.
‘There will be a post-chaise here in about thirty minutes. I arranged it yesterday, after that unwanted letter from the Navy Board arrived. I know! I know! I am not impulsive. Well, except when I am.’
‘I don’t know where to go, what dock…’ She calmed herself and remembered. ‘He just told me he would be at the Drake tonight. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and he sails on the twenty-sixth. My goodness. I must pack.’
She hurried to the door of the byre, then stopped. ‘Papa, I haven’t even wrapped your present. There should be stockings over the fireplace. The carolers are coming by this evening. There’s no wassail.’
‘I doubt the carolers will sound any better than they ever do,’ he said, and she heard all the good humour. ‘Go on now, if you want to lose your virtue in a Plymouth hotel.’
‘Papa, you are trying me… If I have to, I’ll propose to him.’
He grinned. ‘Your mother did that, God rest her.’
‘Mama? I didn’t know that! Papa, I love you.’