To Turn Full Circle

by Linda Mitchelmore

  ‘The first thing I want to tell you is he confessed to pushing our ma down the cellar steps. There had been an argument about …’

  ‘Oh, Seth. I’m so sorry. You don’t have to pain yourself telling me what it was about. But at least you know what happened to her.’

  Emma placed a hand gently on Seth’s shoulder.

  ‘I do,’ Seth said. ‘But that’s not all. The second thing he wrote to me about concerns you. But I don’t want to tell you just yet. I’m feeling very undignified at the moment. I’ll show you through to the dining-room – you can wait for me there while I get myself tidied up first.’

  Reluctantly, Emma let him go – wrapped in the sheet. She would have to wait a little longer to hear the rest of what he had to say, wouldn’t she?

  Seth knew he was going to have to go back downstairs soon. He’d already taken far longer than need be. And Emma was waiting for him to give her the news he didn’t really want to tell – or want her to hear. But it had to be done.

  On high alert for the sound of the front door opening and closing – and Emma making her escape because, perhaps, she’d second-guessed what it was Seth had to tell her – Seth examined the cuts and bruises on his face. Cuts and bruises Emma had tended. But no sound of the door being opened and closed came.

  Good, Emma was still waiting for him. A bittersweet thought because he’d promised to tell her everything that was in the letter Carter had written to him. What Emma wanted to do about it he’d leave up to her, and he’d abide by her decision. He’d thought about offering her money – he could afford it, after all – but had changed his mind; the Emma he knew so well would more than likely be too proud to accept it. And in any case, it was akin to blood money Seth realised now – and what price could you put on a mother and a brother, for goodness’ sake?

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Emma waited impatiently in the dining-room while Seth washed and dressed. Had she still been at Nase Head House she’d have breakfasted by now, and her stomach was beginning to grumble embarrassingly loudly.

  When Seth at last appeared – with his hair clinging damply and deliciously to his neck, and looking handsome in a neatly pressed pair of trousers and a pale blue striped shirt, unbuttoned at the neck – Emma leapt to her feet. His wounds didn’t look too bad now, either, in daylight.

  ‘Has Mrs Drew been in yet?’ Seth asked before Emma could say anything.

  ‘No. She was up late last night. I expect she’s sleeping on.’

  ‘Ah yes – up late on my account. I won’t disturb her. And Edward won’t get up until his mother tells him to. He’s a good lad but not the brightest of sparks.’

  Just get on with it, Emma thought. She was becoming impatient now. But she could see Seth was anxious – he kept pushing his hair back off his forehead. She’d help him – get the conversational ball rolling.

  ‘Seth, I think I know what you’re going to tell me. Carter had something to do with Mama and Johnnie falling off the cliff, didn’t he?’

  If he’d pushed his ma down the cellar steps – his own ma – he probably wouldn’t have thought twice about doing it again.

  ‘There’s the shortest of answers to that, Emma. And it grieves me to give it. But, yes. And I’m sorrier than you will ever know.’

  So, she’d been right. She wished she could just leave it at that, but she couldn’t.

  ‘Why?’ Emma asked, her whole being aching with sadness that her mama and Johnnie had lost their lives this way. ‘Why?’

  Seth held Carter’s letter out towards her. ‘You can read it for yourself. The answer’s there. I’ll go …’

  ‘No. Stay.’ She threw her arms behind her back, clenched her hands together. ‘But I don’t want to touch it. Can you put it down on the table? Please.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll find the page that concerns you.’

  When he’d found the right page and finished smoothing out the creases, Emma took a deep breath and walked towards the table. Prison notepaper. Written in pencil.

  She read. And afterwards was silent for a long while. Seth was silent, too, and she was grateful to him for staying and for not saying anything to try and make her feel better.

  ‘He offered to waive the rent if Mama let him into her bed,’ Emma said at last – having to say the words so she’d know they were true. ‘I thought they were your father’s properties?’

  ‘They were. But Carter collected rents for Pa sometimes – if people were slow to pay …’

  ‘Your brother threatened them,’ Emma finished for him.

  ‘That’s the sum of it,’ Seth said.

  ‘And he says here that Mama said she was never going to do that, but it was mere chance they were both walking up on the cliff that day. They exchanged words – whatever he means by that – and she ran away from him, holding Johhnie’s hand as she ran. But she tripped and they both fell … oh, Seth …’

  ‘Don’t read any more. Don’t torture yourself.’

  Emma ignored his advice.

  ‘I already knew the Coroner’s report said there were no marks to indicate that … she’d been interfered with,’ Emma said. ‘But something bad must have been said to make her run from him.’

  ‘More than likely. Emma, I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s not your fault. But I don’t want to think about what Carter might have said he was going to do to her, how Mama would have felt …’

  Emma pushed the pages of the letter across the table. From things Reuben Jago had said that night he was arrested at Nase Head House she’d always wondered if it had been him who had been responsible for her mama’s and Johnnie’s death. But it seemed not.

  ‘I’m sorry you’ve had to read that,’ Seth said.

  ‘I’m glad I have. Not pleased to have read it, of course, but at least I know.’

  ‘And from evidence given at his trial, it seems those who refused Carter were either raped or …’

  ‘Murdered,’ Emma finished for him. ‘Like poor Sophie Ellison as bad as she was about drinking in inns and being free with her body with those she wanted to favour.’

  ‘That was for Sophie to decide. But if you read on you’ll see Carter has written about that, too.’

  ‘No. I don’t want to read it. You can tell me. If you want to, that is.’

  ‘In brief, Emma – because as you can see there are pages and pages of it – Sophie was blackmailing Carter. She’d found out about the smuggling somehow. Carter stole your ma’s amethyst necklace from Pa’s desk and gave it to her to keep her quiet. He told her not to wear it ever in public or Pa would have recognised it. But she did. And she bragged about who had given it to her. One of Carter’s cronies came to the house that night and told him what Sophie was up to in the inn. So he went after her. There was a struggle in the back alley. And he killed her.’

  Seth hung his head, but indicated for Emma to sit back down. She didn’t. She went to him. Put her hands on his upper arms.

  ‘And he probably dropped my mama’s necklace on the way home, which is why Matthew found it where he said he did?’

  Seth nodded.

  ‘Thank you for showing me, Seth. It’s not your fault how your brother is. Was.’

  Emma felt Seth stiffen at the word under her hands. How terrible it must be to have had a brother who’d been hanged. And only yesterday.

  ‘And I’m sorry, too,’ Emma went on, ‘that you’ve got this terrible thing to deal with. It can’t be easy.’

  ‘Like you had to deal with a terrible thing when everyone thought your ma was a suicide and you were shunned and someone desecrated her grave. People thought her a murderess, I suppose, for taking your little brother with her.’

  ‘But now we have the evidence that Carter was up on the cliff that day. He didn’t push her as such – or so he says. Did that come out in
the trial?’

  ‘Not that I’ve been told, no. This letter, I should think, is the letter of a desperate man trying to save his soul before …’

  ‘Going to the gallows,’ Emma whispered the end of his sentence for him.

  Seth was looking so very pained. She ran her hands soothingly up and down his upper arms.

  ‘You don’t have to be nice to me, Emma. You can take your hands away if you want.’

  ‘I don’t want.’ She gave Seth’s arms a gentle squeeze. How muscled they were.

  ‘It’s going to take some getting used to – Carter gone. I’m glad he wrote to me, though.’

  ‘Easing his conscience.’

  ‘No doubt. But at least we both know the truth now.’

  ‘We do,’ Emma said. It was a comforting thought in a strange way. ‘We can cope with what we know, but not with our imaginings.’

  The sun escaped a cloud then and light flooded the room, bouncing off the mirrors, highlighting the sheen of the polished silver. The chandelier glittered overhead.

  With Seth so close, her hands on him, feeling his breath ruffle her fringe as he breathed out, it seemed to Emma as though the past two years had never been. It was as though they’d each just gone out for a little while and come back in and the love between them was still there.

  ‘It’s never going to be easy for us, Emma,’ Seth said. ‘Too many people know too much about us …’

  ‘We haven’t done anything wrong,’ Emma interrupted. ‘Neither you nor me.’

  ‘No. But there’ll be others who will always think otherwise. When drink loosens men’s tongues you hear the truth. They forget then that I’ve kept many men in work these past two years by running the fishing fleet – only honestly this time – even though it was the last thing I wanted to be doing. It was as though I could taste the badness of Pa and my brothers every time I loaded a crabber, or took fish off a trawler. Do you understand?’

  ‘I think so,’ Emma said. Seth looked so sad, so beaten, that it was easy to put his distress before her own. ‘I could so easily have taken the sovereigns Matthew Caunter gave me and moved where no one knew me, where no one would have heard the rumours about my mama. But I didn’t. I stayed and I learned new skills and …’

  ‘You took a shine to Matthew Caunter, didn’t you?’

  ‘He was married, although he couldn’t tell me he was at the time because of his job. But he was a gentleman.’

  ‘You still took a shine to him, though, didn’t you?’

  ‘I don’t deny that. Same as you took a shine to someone I saw you with that night – the night of Mr Underwood’s dinner, I mean. Mrs Prentiss.’

  Seth gently removed Emma’s hands from his arms. He walked over to the dining table, pulled out two chairs – side by side, Emma noticed.

  ‘I ended my association with Caroline Prentiss the very next day,’ Seth said. ‘Come and sit down, Emma. Please.’

  Emma went, thanked Seth when he held the chair out for her to sit.

  ‘As long ago as that?’ Emma said.

  Why, then, didn’t you call and tell me? Emma wanted to ask – but she knew why he hadn’t. She’d told him, through stupidity and jealousy, not to speak to her again, hadn’t she?

  ‘Yes. And then almost immediately afterwards I saw you with Mr Smythe coming out of Rossiter’s with armsful of parcels.’

  ‘Oh, Seth. They were for the children. Did you think …’

  ‘We’re both guilty of doing too much thinking and not enough asking. But that’s Mrs Drew crashing about in the kitchen,’ Seth said. ‘Knowing her, she’ll have heard us talking and will be bringing breakfast in a minute.’

  ‘She was worried about you last night, Seth.’

  ‘And you weren’t?’ Seth said.

  ‘I can’t deny it.’ Emma laughed. She felt almost light-headed with relief that she and Seth had cleared the air of misunderstandings.

  But Seth was looking serious again. She hoped he wasn’t going to tell her more than she would want to know about Caroline Prentiss.

  ‘I’m a fairly wealthy man now, Emma,’ he said. ‘My pa turned his properties and the business over to me when I became twenty-one …’

  ‘So the authorities couldn’t take it from him if he was caught smuggling?’

  ‘I suppose Pa knew his luck might run out sometime, although he was very cunning in how and where and with whom he landed his contraband.’

  ‘And it did run out,’ Emma said, remembering Matthew and his part in it. And how she had been a part of that in providing cover for Matthew, even if he hadn’t intentionally used her. ‘But, when he and Miles have finished their sentences, what then? Will they move back here? Will you let them?’

  ‘They’ll have something to say on the matter, without a doubt. But I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, although goodness only knows I’ve had enough trouble from them to last me a lifetime.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Emma said.

  She knew Seth well enough to know he could be a soft touch. That he probably wouldn’t want his pa and his brother to be homeless. And yet there was a new strength to Seth – as though his backbone had toughened and he was more of a man than before.

  ‘What about Mrs Drew and Edward if your pa and Miles move back in? I can’t see Mrs Drew living happily under the same roof as them. Where would they go?’

  ‘My pa and Miles won’t be moving back here. Not ever. Hilltop is my home now. But you don’t have to worry about Mrs Drew – I’d always provide for her if my circumstances were to change. I couldn’t possibly have managed without Mrs Drew lately. I own most of the row of cottages that your old home is in. She could have one of those. A gift.’

  ‘Oh, Seth, that’s a lovely thing to do.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘What about me, what?’

  Was he going to offer her a cottage to live in? A gift? He’d just said he was a wealthy man, hadn’t he?

  ‘What will you do now?’

  Kiss you, hug you, make love to you. Marry you. Have your babies. All those thoughts rushed into Emma’s head. But she knew she wouldn’t be able to say them. Now wasn’t the time. What would Seth think of her if she did? But she wished with all her heart she could see inside Seth’s head and know what he was thinking. She only hoped it was the same thing she was thinking. But she wasn’t going to beg him for a home to live in. Or for him to marry her.

  ‘Find somewhere to live. I’ve got money and can rent for a while. But I want to start my own business one day.’ Emma clasped her hands together in front of her, rested them on the table. ‘When …’ Emma was about to say ‘when Matthew and his wife took me to Torquay’ but couldn’t. It would hurt Seth if she did, remind him of the time he’d sat waiting for her at Nase Head House and had seen her kiss Matthew, albeit that it was a goodbye kiss. ‘When I went to Torquay once, I thought the puddings and cakes in the hotel where I ate were terrible. Stodgy pastry. Undercooked fillings. Too sweet. I know I can do better than that. With the boat ferry and the train I could get freshly made tarts – savoury and sweet – to the hotels there every day. Further afield even. Exeter. Plymouth. Why not?’

  Emma knew her voice had risen. But she felt excited at the thought, now she’d put her ideas into words.

  ‘A businesswoman?’

  ‘Why not? Women can run businesses you know. Mrs Minifie runs the sweetshop and the Misses Rossiter the department store, so why shouldn’t I run a business of my own?’

  ‘Why not indeed?’

  ‘You sound as though you don’t approve.’

  ‘It’s not for me to approve or not, is it? But I’ve always thought of you as the sort of woman who would want to marry and have children. With whoever it is you choose to marry.’

  With whoever she chose? Didn’t he realise she was
bursting with love for him? That she only really came alive when she was in his company? That if he asked her to marry him right now she’d say yes? And that she’d be happy to have his children? However many he wanted. Emma had told him once that she didn’t want to marry – not yet. Was Seth still taking her at her word? Please, God, if you’re listening, don’t let him do that.

  ‘Whoever I choose to marry, I could do that and be a businesswoman, couldn’t I?’

  ‘Could you?’

  ‘Yes. I want it enough so I’d make it work.’

  ‘And who would look after your children?’

  ‘Who? I could ask Mrs Drew …’

  And at that precise moment Mrs Drew came into the room with a tray piled high with breakfast things – eggs and bacon and fried bread and hog’s pudding. And toast. Three jars of preserves. A jug of coffee and cups and saucers. Emma’s stomach rumbled and she put a hand against it to quieten it. How hungry she was. And how tired suddenly.

  ‘Not taking my name in vain, I hope, Emma Le Goff,’ Mrs Drew said.

  Seth leapt from his chair and took the tray from her, placed it on the table.

  ‘No, Mrs Drew. Emma was just putting your name forward as nanny to her children. Hypothetically, of course.’

  ‘Hypo what?’ Mrs Drew said.

  ‘Hypothetically,’ Seth said. ‘It means Emma’s thinking about the care of her future babies. When she has them. With whoever she has them with.’

  ‘Only one way to have ’em, lovie,’ Mrs Drew said. ‘And I should know ’cos haven’t I got enough of the varmints? Unless I haven’t been looking and it’s all changed since I had the last one.’ She began to pour the coffee, guffawing at her joke. Then she became serious and turned to Emma. ‘You never are, are you, Emma? In the family way?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Emma said.

  ‘Best get married first, lovie,’ Mrs Drew said. ‘You’ve had enough slights and bad-mouthing around these parts to do it the other way.’