“No, Papa. Don’t go.” Christian grinned and patted his father’s face.
“We’ll be together soon.” Everett kissed his son and held him to his chest. Bettina embraced them both. The worry in Everett’s eyes didn’t give her the assurance she desperately needed. She kissed him firm on the lips as their son squealed.
* * * *
Next morning’s light slanted across the manor’s rear yard. Bettina leaned against the open door frame, Christian in her arms. Everett had left an hour earlier for Plymouth in a post-chaise.
“I do hope he’ll be back before Christmas.” Mrs. Camborne stood beside her. “I don’t care for this business at all, not at all. I can barely fathom Hollis dying here, and now this.”
“November, it should be.” Bettina nuzzled her son, dazed by the hurried events and worried sick about Everett’s peril. She watched Frederick and Oleba dip wicks into a pot of bubbling mutton fat in the yard. The meaty stench wafted around them. To save money, Bettina insisted they make their own candles, as Maddie did.
“I wish Uncle Everett had taken me.” Frederick hung the fat-coated wicks on a rack to dry and be dipped again. “This is messy. I’d like to see those pirates. Slay them with swords.”
“You think of the adventure, not the terrible danger.” Bettina’s words snapped out harsh. Her throat thickened. She turned and carried Christian back inside.
Mrs. Camborne followed and stroked her shoulder. “We’re capable of handling matters, aren’t we, dear? Come help me finish the morella cherry jelly.”
Bettina glanced around the dining hall, cold and dreary even in late August. The manor felt so much emptier with Everett gone. “You are right, we must keep busy.”
“You see how resilient Frederick is, after learning of his father’s death. Not that anyone could mourn such a man, forgive me for saying.” The older woman took Christian from her. “You look pale, dear. Maybe you need to lie down for a bit.”
“I am fine.” Bettina hoped her nausea was just upset over Everett’s venture. She didn’t tell him, in the midst of the upheaval, that she suspected she was again with child.
“You have visitors, Aunt Bettina.” Frederick strode in with three skinny blond-haired children. Dory’s siblings shuffled before her, scratching at their dirty, torn clothing.
Bettina smiled and bent down. “Welcome. Have you come to learn?”
“No, to eat,” the oldest boy said with a shy grin.
“We will do both.” Bettina turned to Everett’s mother. “Muffins and jelly, and warm water to wash, please. I must find the hornbook with the beginning lessons.”
The woman gave her an uncertain glance. “Oh … very well.”
“We must do this. There are no charity schools in this parish, and the Sunday schools teach religion mostly.” Of course the food provided an even greater service in this instance. Bettina urged the children toward the kitchen. Her energy resurfaced, and she pushed back the worries that prickled her.
* * * *
The November damp aching through her bones, Bettina watched Dory’s little brother scrawl his name on a scrap of paper at the kitchen table. His blond hair shimmered in the firelight. He held the paper up with a grin in his less-angular face.
“So well done, young man.” Bettina patted his hand. She gave him an extra barley biscuit. He’d already wolfed down a vegetable stew. “You may be finished for the day.”
The child scampered out. Bettina stretched back in the chair and took a deep breath.
“You are so good to those children,” Mrs. Camborne said as she smeared bacon grease over the skin of the rabbit Morley had caught. He brought it to them in thanks for the reading lessons Bettina gave him. The older woman scooped turnip stuffing from a bowl and filled the rabbit’s cavity, then jabbed skewers to bind its legs. “Oh, why haven’t we heard from Everett?”
“It is barely the three months. We should soon.” Bettina clung to the assurance that she’d see Everett any day. She’d written to Mr. Hobart, but there had been no news. She trailed a finger through the crumbs the child had left on the table. The smell of raw meat turned her stomach. “Mrs. Camborne, I have to tell you something. I wanted to make certain.” She longed to be telling Everett. “I am expecting another baby.”
“Oh? How delightful. Please, I keep insisting you call me Rose.” Rose wiped her hands on her apron, stepped over and kissed Bettina’s cheek. “A surprise for when Everett returns. We must travel to Bodmin to purchase material for baby clothes. I thought you seemed lethargic in the mornings.” She wiggled her slim shoulders nearer to the fire. “I can never seem to get warm enough anymore.” The heat on her back wafted the scent of lavender around the room.
“This baby will wear the same clothes Christian wore. I do not need anything new. The price of everything is too dear.” Bettina stretched her arms over her head. She was still unmarried, and dreaded to bring another child into this precarious world. In France, men like Robespierre—in power one moment and condemned the next—were executed. Many women had also suffered the cruel blade of the guillotine.
“Of course, we must conserve money. How silly of me.” Rose flipped up a hand and returned to her food preparation.
Bettina picked up the shirt she was sewing for a New Year present—tiny stitches that kept her mind from dwelling on ships and pirates. “I hope this will fit Everett. He may have lost weight so long away from your cooking.” The needle trembled in her fingers.
* * * *
The baby kicked inside her. Bettina caressed her abdomen. Christmas was a week away, and Everett still wasn’t there to share it with her. “Your father will be here soon, little one. Both my little ones.” She snuggled on the settee by the bedchamber fire and put Christian’s hand on her belly to feel the movement. His eyes widened and he laughed. She and Rose spent most evenings sewing stuffed animal toys for him to open on New Year. Rose knitted Frederick a cap and scarf.
“Next year you will have a little brother or sister. Your Papa will be proud, oui?” Bettina sagged against the brocade cushion, feeling sluggish. Her fretting over Everett and the advancing pregnancy gave her little sleep at night.
“When’s Papa coming home?” the child asked for the hundredth time.
“Any moment, mon petit.” She framed his face and kissed between his eyes. “I wonder if your grandmother has supper prepared. I should go down and help her.”
There was a light knock on the door. “Come in,” Bettina said.
Oleba entered. “There’s a Mr. Hobart here to see you, Mrs. Camborne.”
“Mr. Hobart? So late? Perhaps he has news of Everett. But he could have written.” Bettina lumbered to her feet and led Christian to the maid. Swishing her sack dress around her, she hurried down the stairs. Her pulse increased under the loose fitting dress that no longer hid her condition.
“What a surprise, Mr. Hobart,” she said, approaching the man standing in the front hall. “I cannot remember you coming out to Cornwall. Did you receive my recent letter asking about Everett’s progress?”
“Yes, I did.” Hobart smiled, but the lines creasing his mouth and forehead disturbed her. “Is there somewhere we can talk … privately?” He leaned on a cane, his eyes furtive.
Bettina searched his face. She did not like anything she saw, but the man was probably exhausted from travel. “Certainly, here in the parlor.” She twisted the doorknob and opened the door with a jerk. “Would you care for any refreshment?”
“No, no, thank you.” Hobart sat with difficulty, favoring his injured leg. He grimaced and squeezed the tip of his cane. His long jaw drooped. “I won’t mince words, Mrs. Camborne. The news I have is … yet there aren’t words sufficient to describe it.”
“A business failure? But Everett is on his way home, yes?” She sat and gripped her hands together. The baby kicked again. “It is so cold in here, I should start a fire.”
“Please don’t bother.” Hobart’s mouth was tight, his once merry eyes looked about to burst f
rom his face. “The ship Everett boarded was transporting gold from West Africa. But on their way back they were attacked, not by these English pirates, but a French Naval warship….”
“Mon Dieu. But Everett, he is all right, is he not?” Bettina’s insides churned and the baby objected. Her nails bit into her flesh.
“The small frigate escorts were no match for the French cannons. We were trying to keep a low profile, to not draw attention. They fired on our ship … sank it. I’m afraid—I wish to God I didn’t have to tell you this. The Admiralty said everyone was lost.” He hung his head and turned away from her. A gurgling sob erupted from his throat.
“No, Willard, you must be wrong. There is a mistake, obviously.” Her voice was strident. A heaviness tumbled down on her like pelted stones.
“The Admiralty has checked as well as they could, given the hostilities and the danger.” He raised his head, his cheeks scarlet, his eyes full of tears. “But it seems that every person was … drowned or killed. God help us, I’m so sorry.”
“Mais non! What about the baby? He will never see the baby. This cannot be true.” Bettina’s voice shrieked higher in pitch. She pressed on her abdomen as if the truth wriggled inside her. Her heart seemed to shove up her throat and she gasped for breath. She lurched to stand. Hobart stared up, her shock mirrored in his eyes. The room seemed to spin around her, hurtling her out of balance.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Flashes of dark and light, and angry screams swirled around in a fog. Bettina heard crying, a sound resembling a wounded animal. She pried open her eyes. Rose sat in a nearby rocker, creaking back and forth, weeping into her hands. Bettina’s head throbbed; she couldn’t lift it from her pillow. But she remembered the dreadfulness. Her friends didn’t think she did. The Admiralty decreed it—Everett was presumed dead.
Bettina drifted in and out of a torpid sleep. Rose drifted in and out of the room. People pushed broth and cups of hot tea at her. To please them, she ate and drank a little. Her only effort was using the chamber pot. She desired oblivious slumber, where she didn’t have to think. Still, her dreams pricked and poked at her with images of Everett’s smile, and she could hear the timbre of his voice. Time melted into a blur as she buried her sorrow by hiding under the covers.
“Maman?”
Startled, Bettina opened her eyes to Christian, who studied her with a puzzled expression. His brown eyes were the same as hers. His growing smile—so like Everett’s—jarred her senses.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Camborne, but Master Christian insisted on seeing you.” Oleba stood back in the doorway. Her voice was mellow, but her smile conveyed pity.
Bettina blinked and strained to sit up and shake off her inertia. The room seemed to tilt around her for an instant. She gripped the mattress. “It is all right, Oleba, you may leave us.” Her voice rasped out over a thick tongue.
Christian held out his small hand where he cradled an apple slice. “Maman, you eat.”
Bettina shuddered and reached out her arms to embrace her son and kiss his warm cheek. “Yes, I will eat … later.” The boy giggled as she nuzzled his neck to luxuriate in the fragrance of his skin.
The baby kicked at that moment. Life marched on all around her and she knew she had to return to the living.
After soaking in a hot bath, Bettina dressed and brushed her hair. In the looking-glass she saw a woman far older than two and twenty. Her gaunt features no longer fresh, her eyes were faded and bruised around the edges.
The door creaked open. “May I come in?” Maddie stepped into the bedchamber, her mien tentative. “I asked ’bout you every day. I be sure you’d come out of it, been near on two weeks. How do you feel?”
“Maddie, I….” Bettina dissolved under her friend’s sympathetic gaze. She dropped the brush. Her chin sank to her chest, her eyes filled with tears. In a rustle of skirt, Maddie hurried beside her. Bettina wept on her shoulder—a shoulder that smelled like the kitchen comforts of the inn. She wept so hard, the sobs wrenching her body, that she feared she would lose the baby in a torrent of water.
“Oh, child, you be havin’ a right to cry,” Maddie said softly as she stroked her hair. “If anyone ever did.”
“What will I do … without him? How can I…? I do not believe he is gone.” Bettina hated to let loose her deepest fears, it gave them power over her. “I cannot believe it.”
“Just let them feelings all out. Such a grievous shame for this to happen.” Maddie continued to hold her like a child wrapped in her strong arms. “I’ll bring you up some lemon balm to calm that sorrow in your mind and heart.”
When her crying eased to whimpers and the tears dried up, Bettina straightened with a gasp and squared her shoulders. She dabbed at her blotchy eyes with one of Everett’s handkerchiefs. “I have no time to pity myself. I have two children depending on me.”
* * * *
In crackles of tissue paper, Frederick unwrapped his New Year gift in the library. He dragged out the blue scarf and cap his grandmother had knitted. “Thank you, Grandmother.” His tone was dull, like his gaze had been since he learned of his uncle’s ‘disappearance’.
“It is lovely, Frederick.” Bettina sat in Everett’s desk chair, Christian in her lap. She refused to let anyone speak of death and no one would wear black. But the year 1795 stretched out before her, long and uncertain and still edged in fog.
The fire sizzled with the turf and furze they now used to save the cost of coal.
Rose knelt before Frederick and slipped the scarf around his neck. “It matches your eyes, dear.” Her eyes looked huge in her thinning face; her words sounded forced and brittle.
“More presents?” Christian squeezed his stuffed pony to his mouth.
“No more presents, mon fils.” Bettina sprinkled sand on the letter she’d written to Hobart in London. She asked him to check again with the Admiralty for information about Everett’s ship. She shook off the excess sand. Her persistence was strained at the seams, along with her abdomen.
She shifted her son to her knees and pulled more paper out of the desk drawer.
“What are you writing now, dear?” Rose groaned as she stood.
“More progressive lesson plans for the children.” Bettina kept her mind occupied. Helping the children gave her a feeling of accomplishment.
“You can’t continue teaching in your advanced condition. Decent women don’t flaunt themselves at this time of breeding.” Rose sounded weary and looked fragile as a twig.
“I do not mind. It will keep me busy.” Bettina set Christian on his feet.
“Where’s Papa?” the little boy asked.
“Oh, I suppose it doesn’t matter.” Rose wrung her hands and drifted from the room.
“Papa is far away at sea.” Bettina caressed her son’s cheek.
Frederick scowled. “You shouldn’t lie to him.” He jumped up and rushed out.
“Everything is fine, he will come home.” She spoke to the closed door, tears heavy behind her eyes. “The weather is bad now. In the spring, it will improve.”
Clasping her son’s hand, she left the room and walked with him down the hall to the kitchen. She wanted to check on Rose. Goosebumps formed on Bettina’s arms when she hurried through the dining chamber. They only bothered to heat the library and kitchen, and the two rooms in the servants’ quarters on this floor.
Rose stirred boiling laundry over the kitchen fire. Her skinny arms shook with the effort. They’d been forced to let their laundress go. Bettina pored over ledgers, trying to keep the household accounts in order. The money Hobart sent from the business was sparse and she knew it wouldn’t last much longer.
If Everett had a bank account anywhere, Bettina couldn’t access it. She’d have to admit to his mother they were never married. Her pride was a tattered rope she bound around her fears.
* * * *
Bettina shuffled papers on the library desk. The crooked scrawl on the scraps was evidence that Dory’s siblings had learned the
basic skills of reading and writing. If it helped them find a better occupation when they matured, she’d accomplished that at least. She stretched their resources, and the children’s bellies, with meals of pease porridge.
“What does your solicitor say?” she asked Rose. Peder had ridden down in the February drizzle and brought back two letters from the inn. Bettina fingered the correspondence in her lap, which posed a severe problem.
“He says they’ll need to invest my small stipend from Sam’s estate in the war to keep the funds going.” The woman crackled the pages. “I hate to do that. But I’ve spent much of it giving Lew money to feed the horses. What did Mr. Hobart write?”
Bettina sighed and stared into the hearth flames. She thought of her first time in this chamber, when Everett sat behind this very desk, unsure of hiring her as a tutor for his nephew. She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Mr. Hobart would like to buy Everett’s share of the business. As if there is no hope of him ever returning.” She rubbed her hands over her cheeks.
“I know you have hope, dear.” Rose stepped close. “I find my hope waning, as awful as it seems.” The woman turned away and muffled a sob.
“The business is not what it was before the war, unfortunately. He will send out a solicitor with papers for you to sign, if it is acceptable.” Bettina said it quickly, but the words still burned her mouth.
“For me to sign? You are his wife, don’t be silly.” Rose clicked her tongue, her scrawny form lost in a rumpled dressing gown.
“I hate to confess this.” Bettina put her hand on her belly where the baby wriggled and kicked. Gas burbled up her throat. “Mr. Hobart knows now, and you must know as well. Everett and I … we were never married. We waited for the papers to be processed confirming Miriam as deceased, since she was missing for more than seven years.”
“But he divorced her, you told me.” Rose gaped at her; her lower lip quivered. “You must be delirious in your condition, your grief.”
Betrayed Countess (Books We Love Historical Romance) Page 36