Charlotte looked to her sister and then back at the couple whom Adam observed she had called “Uncle Kit” and “Aunt Sophia”.
“If Julia gets a pet name, why can’t I have one?”
Kit laughed and pulled Charlotte to him in a sideways hug. “We can call you passarotta, too, if you’d like.”
“No!”
“Charlotte… your manners,” Olivia admonished.
The little girl lowered her head in shame. “I only meant if Julia is little sparrow, then I can’t be little sparrow, too.”
Kit threw a wink in Adam and Olivia’s direction.
“Hmmm,” he said. “I understand how that might be a problem. We need to find you a name of your own, don’t we?”
With her head still down, Charlotte nodded.
“How about…” Kit made a great exaggeration of thinking, putting a finger to his chin and pausing. Julia stifled giggles and Charlotte looked up wanting to be in on the joke. “How about… gattina? It means kitten.”
“Then I get to be a ‘Kit’ like you!” Charlotte clapped with delight.
“I suppose you do. But I’m not sure if your father would really want you to be like me.”
Adam felt the full weight of Kit’s words however lightly they were spoken.
“Why not?” Julia asked, thankfully oblivious to the undercurrent of tension between her father and her “uncle”.
“Because I had a very misspent youth,” Kit answered.
Adam braced himself for the avalanche of questions from Julia, who was always insatiably curious. Before they could start, he tapped the roof of the carriage. It rolled to a stop.
While he helped Olivia and the girls disembark, Adam caught Kit’s look of surprise before he and Sophia followed.
“We’ll walk the rest of the way to the village,” Adam instructed the driver. “We’ll see you at the Angler’s Arms.”
Little wonder Kit was surprised. With fields on one side and woods on the other, it would appear they were in the middle of nowhere. Even Olivia looked at him curiously.
“I thought we’d begin our journey at the beginning,” he said directly to Kit.
“The woods!” Julia exclaimed. “The woods where you met Mama!”
Olivia covered her surprise before favoring Adam with a look that told him she followed his thinking.
“It’s an enchanted wood. Shall we show Aunt Sophia where the fairies live?”
Adam watched Kit and Sophia exchange a glances before Julia latched on to Sophia’s hand, tugging at it to join Olivia and Charlotte. He waited until they were just out of earshot before addressing Kit.
“This isn’t just the place I first saw Olivia. This is where I met your mother all those years ago,” he said. “Shall we?” He gestured to follow the women and children. Kit nodded.
The two men fell in step, both Olivia and Sophia walking ahead, occupying the girls to give Adam time to tell his son things which were for his ears only.
“This is a story of two parts,” Adam began. “I would not have known the whole of it if not for Olivia. She was the governess for Squire Denton’s daughter by his second marriage. After his death, Olivia came across Constance’s diaries and sought me out. I was thirty-six then. I’d just quit the Royal Navy and started work with Ridgeway.”
“Remind me to ask you more about that,” said Kit. “But tell me first about my mother and how you met her.”
They trudged along the overgrown path. Kit picked his way carefully, using his cane to steady his footing.
“I was barely sixteen,” Adam continued. “Constance was two years older. I admired her from afar – as everyone did. But because of her station, we local boys knew she was destined to marry better than us. Then, one day in early summer, I found her weeping in these woods. She was upset that her debut Season in Bath had not gone well.”
They emerged into an opening through which a small creek wended its way. To the left were the moss-covered stones of a structure, the walled ruins of a small Medieval priory.
“I spoke to her and the unlikeliest romance started. I loved her in the way only a passionate, idolizing youth does and she loved me passionately, too. But, before the end of August, it was over. She no longer kept our assignations and ceased to reply to the notes I hid in a crack in one of those walls.”
Ahead of them, the girls crossed the creek over a low, wooden planked bridge. Olivia and Sophia followed after them.
“Late in August, I returned here hoping to see her, to beg her to continue our affair, when I was set upon. I didn’t know by who at the time, but I suspect it was her father and others. I was held and beaten until I signed the indenture papers pressing me into the Navy, then beaten some more.”
Adam crossed the creek and watched Kit follow with a sudden surefootedness that belied his need for the cane.
“I could barely think straight until I was weeks at sea. I heard nothing more of Constance and, as the years went on, I imagined her wed and hoped her happy.” Adam looked down at the ground. “It never occurred to me I had left her pregnant.”
“You knew nothing for twenty years…” said Kit quietly.
“Not a thing. And I would have remained ignorant still if Olivia had not doggedly pursued the history of it. But, believe me, if I had known…”
Adam left the sentence unfinished. They walked on.
“It couldn’t have made any difference, even if you had,” Kit offered. “Not under the circumstances you’ve just described.”
“I didn’t want you to think I deliberately left her.”
Kit paused at the edge of the woods where the trees thinned out, giving a hint of a lawn beyond. “Thank you, Adam,” he said. “You don’t know how much it means to hear you say that.”
Adam met the hazel eyes of his son, their color so much like his own, and saw another thought occurring to him in them.
“The plaque at the church – to Constance and Christopher. You put that there.”
Adam’s jaw tightened as fought for composure. He took a deep breath before answering.
“It went up on the day Olivia and I married fourteen years ago. We vowed together we wouldn’t let you and your mother be forgotten.”
A silence stretched on between the two men, threatening to become awkward. Adam changed the subject.
“You said you want to know more about my connection with Sir Daniel Ridgeway. You’ve come to the right place. I’ll show you the place on the roof where I had to fight for my life to thwart a cabal of Boney’s spies.”
Kit’s jaw dropped. Adam grinned.
“You’re not the only Hardacre who’s had an adventurous life.”
*
Kit didn’t know why he made the invitation. It was one of many impetuous decisions in his life. But once the words were out of his mouth, he couldn’t take them back.
Now, he and Adam clambered up onto the deck of the Calliope.
They had left Sophia, Olivia, and the girls at the Ponsnowyth Christmas markets with a promise to be back at Bishop’s Wood for dinner – one they both had to swear to as Julia reminded them the next day was the Christmas parade and fair at Truro.
It felt good to have familiar timbers under his feet. He ran a hand over the railing, feeling its shape. He watched his father go over every inch of the deck.
“She’s impressive,” Adam announced.
“Not too small for a Royal Navy man?”
“I must confess that the smallest ship I served on was a sixty-six gunner with a crew of six hundred and eighty,” admitted Adam.
“I short sailed a frigate once,” said Kit. “That was an adventure. But nothing sails as well as the Calliope, although I have hopes for the Clio. My friends and business partners are finishing her refit in Palermo.”
He felt a surge of what he imagined paternal pride must feel like. The Calliope was like a child to him. She had been modified to his specifications – not all of which would necessarily impress the Naval Board – such as the large canno
n hidden amidships, ready to be elevated on deck if need be.
“Would you like see where we hide a thirty-two pounder?” he grinned.
Adam paused in his admiration. “You jest! On a ship this size?”
“That’s nothing, let me show you where we put in the plumbing for the Greek Fire.”
Kit delighted in seeing his father’s shock. “I thought Greek Fire was a myth.”
“I can assure you it’s not. Nothing is impossible when you have a wife as clever as mine.”
He told the story of how he and Sophia met, and their narrow escape from a xebec that led them straight into the path of a savage storm.
The more he talked, the more comfortable he felt in letting Adam know more of his past. But he skirted around his addiction to opiates and spoke about his single-minded revenge against one of the Barbary Coast’s most prolific pirates and how it nearly cost him his life.
By the time he shared the story of Sophia and Laura’s rescue from the harem – which Adam listened to in grim-faced silence – the sun had vanished from the sky.
They climbed down to their small boat and rowed together across the Fal, stroking against the outgoing tide, and settling into a rhythm as though they had been working together for years – like father and son.
Kit had to own to the fact he had not expected much when he was finally persuaded to search out his family connections. His earliest memories were ones of disappointment and rejection. The ones afterwards were so much worse.
He had closed himself off from anything that could make him feel before he met Sophia.
He remembered the conversation they had on the Calliope four years ago when she spoke of missing her parents – they were still strangers then but, deep down, he knew she was the only one.
“I was thinking of my parents. I can barely remember what they looked like.”
“Do you have a special memory of them, a lullaby perhaps? As long as you can feel them, they are never lost to you.”
“It sounds like you speak from experience.”
“I wish that were true. I stopped feeling years ago.”
He and his beautiful, clever bride had been through so much together and now he readied himself for a new adventure with her.
If he had been back in Palermo, he’d have asked the question of his friends, Elias and Jonathan, but Kit had always been a man to trust his gut instinct for better or worse, and his gut told him he would get a more real, less romantic answer from this man who was his father. So he asked it.
“How did you feel when you first learned Olivia was expecting?”
Adam didn’t hesitate. “Terrified. Absolutely bloody terrified.”
“Good. Because that’s exactly how I feel.”
Chapter Eleven
“You’ve never ever had an English Christmas? Not even as a little boy?” Julia’s eyes were wide with disbelief.
Kit fought against laughter while keeping his face exaggeratedly downcast. “No, not ever.”
“Did your mummy and daddy never have Christmas?” Charlotte asked, agog.
Oh, he knew he was playing a dangerous game. He could see in gattina’s eyes she thought Kit’s “mummy and daddy” were the worst people in the world. He could play on it, building more hyperbolic and ridiculous stories, and was tempted to do so. But his relationship with his father was too new to introduce his warped sense of humor.
Indeed, he could feel the tension rising in the carriage where the six of them sat.
“Then you must have been an orphan,” Julia reasoned. “Is that right, Uncle Kit?”
Ah, out of the mouths of babes… something that was both true and a convenient lie. He ran with it.
“I was for a very long time, then I found my family right here.”
“We’re your family now!” Charlotte announced, leaning in to hug Kit.
“You certainly are.”
Behind their carriage, the Ridgeways traveled separately – Daniel and Abigail, their daughter, Marie, her husband, George, and their eight-year-old son, Philippe.
It was two days before Christmas and the streets of Truro were teeming. They left the horses with the ostler at the White Hart Inn and the party from Bishop’s Wood strolled through the markets. Kit was content to walk by Sophia’s side, letting her dictate the pace, until she was called over by Olivia to examine something Marie had found at a stall.
No sooner had Sophia left than Lady Abigail had taken her place, slipping her arm through his. They continued down the street, crossing to avoid the clock tower, shrouded in scaffolding for repairs. Ahead, Adam’s daughters had met some children from Bishop’s Wood estate and were clustered around a puppet show under the supervision of Amy, the maid.
“Am I forgiven?” Abigail asked.
Today, Abigail was the devoted wife, mother, and grandmother, but Kit couldn’t help wondering what the good lady had been like as a young woman – quite a handful, he imagined.
“Madam, who am I to forgive anyone’s sins?”
Abigail laughed, stopped, and looked at Kit, taking his hands in hers. “I knew there was a reason why I liked you, Captain Hardacre – we’re much more alike than perhaps we’d care to admit.”
Kit laughed and kissed Abigail’s cheek familially. “Then heaven help anyone who ends up at cross purposes with us!”
*
Adam looked up at the sky, still bright and blue overhead, but large cumulous clouds gathered to the south. There was a change in the air. Rain, by the end of the day, he guessed.
Daniel approached and clapped him on the shoulder.
“I was hoping to catch you on your own, old friend,” he said. Daniel lifted his chin to where Kit and Abigail strolled arm-in-arm. “How is it going with the young Hardacre?”
“Is that your way of apologizing?”
“Do I need to?”
Adam smiled. “No, you don’t. I have to confess I was annoyed at you and Abigail at first. Then I was concerned. But… thank you. This is a gift I never thought I’d have.”
“Then I’m glad. We’ve known each other for a long time, and I value our friendship. I’d hate to jeopardize it.”
Now it was Adam’s turn to reassure his friend. “We’ve been through too much together, Daniel, to ever let that happen.”
The Truro Christmas parade and pageant celebrating St. George took place every year on the appropriately named St. Nicholas Street, crossing over to King’s Street and High Cross, then to St. Mary’s. It had been a tradition to bring Julia and Charlotte here every year, and it marked the beginning of their Christmas season.
The girls would be given some coin of their own to buy things they needed to make gifts. The following day, they would go to the church at Ponsnowyth and, over lunch, they would exchange gifts then play games late into the evening. Over the next twelve days, there would be a series of parties until the end of Twelfth Night.
How did Kit and Sophia spend Christmas? He’d never thought to ask. After a few minutes, he found Kit examining some nativity figures in a stall. He had picked up a carving of Mary, depicted kneeling over the manger where her newborn son lay.
It was fine work, not only in the carving, but also in the painting where fine brushstrokes gave the Virgin Mother a beatific expression.
Kit put it down, as if embarrassed at being caught with it.
“In Sicily, the chiese madre, the Mother Church, in every town hosts a proper nativity pageant, not this English patron saint stuff. The one in Palermo is the most spectacular,” he said, walking away from the stall. “It’s been so long a part of my tradition I’m going to rather miss it this year.”
“Do you know the story of St. George and the Turkish Knight?”
Kit shrugged. “I’ve heard about it from Julia and Charlotte. In great detail. St. George slays the knight, slays the dragon, and slays the giant then some doctor brings them back to life again. I can’t say I understand it. It’s hardly a Christmas story, is it? There must be some subtlety I’ve missed
in actually fighting Ottoman slavers for the better part of a decade.”
Adam looked at Kit anew. He saw his son withdrawing, threatening to become a stranger once more. He couldn’t let that happen. It would be like mourning him all over again.
“Have you ever thought about settling back in England?”
The response was a laugh. “I get myself into enough trouble on the Mediterranean. How long do you think I’d last in polite English society before I offended some pompous, self-important ass? No, I’ve lived too many years in Sicily to settle back here.”
Sophia waved to attract their attention. “The parade is going to start soon. We should find somewhere with a good view to see it.”
Kit turned to Adam. “I’ll see you at the pageant; you can explain to me why when St. George wins, he loses.”
Adam watched Kit and his wife disappear into the crowd. This was a mistake. He was growing to love a son who was only going to walk away without a backward glance.
*
The martial sound of the drums drew everyone out onto the street for the start of the parade. People were pressed shoulder-to-shoulder. Some had even climbed the scaffolding around the clock tower for a better view.
Kit kept Sophia by his left shoulder, keeping his right hand free to use his cane to shepherd the surging masses past while keeping an eye out for cut purses. They made their way to the end of the parade route where the crowd had thinned.
The wind had increased and it blew at their backs, almost propelling them forward.
A little further down the hill, the White Hart Inn was only a few hundred yards away, but Sophia sat down on a bench.
“We don’t have to stay for the parade if you’re feeling tired,” said Kit.
Sophia reached for his hand and squeezed it. “I’ll be fine when I’ve caught my breath. I’d forgotten how walking in cold weather can take it out of you. But I’d like to stay for the parade.”
Kit sat beside her, happy to take the weight off his right leg.
“A crate arrived from home today,” she said. “I opened the letter from Jonathan and Morwena. Laura has had a little girl. They’ve named her Jemima Louise. Mother and child are well, and father and brother are doting on the new arrival.”
Father's Day (The King's Rogues Book 2) Page 6