Chapter Eleven #2
The morning was bright and breezy as she and Lydia made their way down the hill towards the centre of Falmouth.
Bella had been too tired and worried to truly absorb the town the day before and she delighted in the bustle of the place, which seemed to gather around them with every step.
The road dipped steeply between crowded houses, giving her brief glimpses of blue water and tall masts beyond the rooftops, while carts rattled past and sailors called to one another further down towards the harbour.
Women wheeled barrows piled with fish, bread, vegetables and all manner of other goods, calling out their wares as they went, and by the time Bella and Lydia reached the busier streets below, she hardly knew where to look first.
Lydia appeared to know everybody. She had barely left her own street before she was stopping to enquire after somebody's mother and receive a lengthy account of a neighbour's bad leg. Bella followed along beside her, increasingly amused. "You know half of Falmouth, Aunt"
"Oh, more than half, I should think. I have been here for years." Lydia waved cheerfully at a man on the opposite side of the road. "That is Mr Pascoe. His wife makes the most excellent seed cake."
Bella laughed. "Do you never miss Hertfordshire, or your family?"
"Oh, sometimes of course. I miss everyone dreadfully when I think about it too much, so I try not to."
They continued down the hill, Lydia pausing to peer into the window of a milliner and comment on the inferiority of this particular vendor's ribbons before they continued on.
"Why did you come here?" asked Bella, observing her aunt from under her lashes.
"Oh, I suppose because it was far away from everyone else.
Goodness, that sounds terrible when I say it aloud.
" Lydia gave a little laugh. "It was only that everyone was so concerned about me.
Everyone had an opinion on where I should go or what I should do, and I suppose I wanted to find my own way and create a new life away from the expectations of my family and, well, the general scandal that had come to be associated with my name. "
Bella had been nodding along placidly, feeling that her aunt's plight matched her own rather well, but she stopped short at the word scandal, causing Lydia to be pulled back a little where she still held Bella's arm.
Lydia laughed merrily. "Oh, my dear, please do not tell me you are unaware of the scandalous story of Mrs Wickham."
"I... that is, I had no notion. I knew that you married young and that your husband was perhaps not well liked by the family, but that is all."
"I was sixteen when I met Wickham and thought myself terribly in love. We ran away together."
Bella stared at her. "You ran away?"
"Indeed, I did. I thought myself the heroine in a romantic novel."
"No one ever said a word. Not Mama, nor Aunt Jane, nor Papa, nor Uncle Charles."
"I suppose they thought it a kindness. Your aunt Kitty would have told you everything in a flash. She did love to gossip." Lydia's smile softened. "Oh, I miss her."
They walked on a few more steps before Lydia continued.
"I suppose the short version is that when I was sixteen, I ran away with a no-good lieutenant called Wickham, whom I thought myself desperately in love with.
It very quickly transpired that my dear Wickham was mostly in love with himself.
After several rather torturous years living in the north and turning the other cheek to his gambling, drinking and more than one whisper about his behaviour with other women, he finally met his end.
He was called out after a dalliance with another officer's wife and died from the wound. And so my life had to begin again."
The information was delivered so matter-of-factly that Bella hardly knew what to think. "I am so sorry. That must have been so difficult. I had no notion. I would not have asked if I had known. I hope I did not cause you pain."
"Oh, my beautiful Bella, there is no pain in it now.
A little regret, perhaps." Lydia squeezed her arm.
"You see, I ran away because I thought I was going on some great grown-up adventure, but really I was running towards something that did not exist and giving up choices I did not know I might one day want. "
Bella waited quietly for her to go on.
"I am happy here," Lydia continued. "I have built a good life, I have good friends and I like to think I do a little good too.
But perhaps I might have liked to marry again, or have children, and after my first marriage, none of that ever seemed possible.
" She glanced at Bella. "You must remember that, my love.
Wanting to be responsible for your own happiness is no bad thing, but every action has consequences, and the consequences of yours could have been very dire indeed. "
With that, Lydia walked on briskly, leaving Bella to hurry after her.
???
After they had visited the printer and a few other shops where her aunt had errands to run, they made their way down to a street close to the harbour where there was a tea shop Lydia favoured.
A hazy cloud had covered the sky and Bella marvelled at the way the shifting light was reflected in the water.
Earlier it had appeared a clear azure blue, while now it had taken on a darker, almost inky hue.
As she was peering down towards the harbour, she noticed Captain Harwood standing a few yards away.
His light hair blew in the sea air and the fine, chiselled planes of his face were taut with concentration.
The man beside him was, in a word, filthy.
He wore a tattered coat and his face was streaked with grime.
A pipe was clasped between too few yellow teeth as he listened with rapt attention to whatever the captain was saying.
When Captain Harwood passed him a small envelope, the unkempt man grasped it quickly, tucked it inside his coat and turned away towards the harbour.
"Are you coming, Bella?" her aunt Lydia called from behind her, one hand already on the door of the pretty tearoom.
The establishment seemed almost comically out of place on a street otherwise made up of shipping offices and warehouses. Its bow window was painted a cheerful lemon and filled with little cakes beneath glass domes, while a hand-lettered sign above the door announced it as The Kettle & Keel.
Bella tore her eyes from the captain and turned to her aunt.
Whatever had he been about? Surely nothing respectable.
The man was skulking about with an obvious n’er do well and handing him what?
Money? Instructions? Government secrets?
Her mind jumped quickly from treachery to piracy and/or smuggling as she tried to reconcile what she had seen.
She heard a noise behind her and realised with a jolt that Captain Harwood was moving in their direction.
Lydia spotted him and let out a squeal of delight. "Captain Harwood!" she called through the open doorway, waving with enthusiasm. "You must come and join us."
The captain looked towards them and, for the briefest moment, appeared as though he might pretend not to have heard. Lydia, however, was not a woman easily ignored.
"Captain!" she called again. "Do stop skulking about the harbour and come and have some tea."
This time there was no escape. George crossed towards them, one brow slightly raised, and Bella found herself suddenly very aware of his height and the taut line of his shoulders stretching his coat.
Could this man be a dangerous criminal? There was certainly something about him that made her skin prickle uncomfortably.
"Mrs Bennet," he said as he reached them, making an elegant if slightly stiff bow.
"Lydia, please. You make me feel ancient when you call me Mrs Bennet. And you remember my niece, Miss Bella Bennet, of course."
His eyes moved to Bella and one eyebrow twitched. "How could I forget?"
He took her hand and bowed over it. Even through the fabric of their gloves, the touch of his fingers seemed to leave a patch of warmth behind that made her want to rub the spot he had touched once he released her.
There was something about the low rumble of his words and the intensity of his gaze that made her suddenly conscious of her own body, and she looked down at her slippers in an effort to escape it.
"Well, come along then," said her aunt Lydia. "We cannot spend all day standing in the street. I am dying for a good cup of tea and a currant bun. Come now, Captain, you may escort me."
Captain Harwood looked between the two women before him and, with the smallest sinking of his shoulders as his only sign of his resignation, offered Lydia his arm.
Bella followed them into the little shop, trying to dampen the ridiculous impulse to turn around and leave the establishment before either of her companions noticed her escape.
They settled at a small table covered with a pretty cloth, and Lydia immediately monopolised the conversation, flitting from subject to subject and speaking of people Bella had never met.
Captain Harwood nodded and offered the occasional remark in all the right places, but said very little of consequence, while Bella sat quietly picking dainty pieces from a slice of lemon cake and sipping a steaming cup of Earl Grey.
Her mind continued to turn over the exchange she had witnessed outside the shop, however, and eventually some rebellious part of her decided that it could no longer live in ignorance.
She interrupted her aunt's diatribe on the current state of the local postal service to say, "And what is it exactly that you do, Captain, now that you are no longer in His Majesty's service?"