“What do you think will happen if Sir Thomas marries another woman?” Venetia demanded.
“Like Caroline Jenkins?”
“Yes, like Caroline Jenkins. Who will maintain you then, I ask you? You have had three London seasons, my girl, and not one nibble. I can give you no more. Let me tell you, Flora, if Sir Thomas marries anyone but you, you and I will find ourselves on the high road to ruin. I do not wish to end my days in genteel poverty in some shabby boarding house in Brighton with my spinster daughter and the condescending pity of everyone who knows me.” She rapped on the little wooden table beside her chaise longue with her knuckles. “Flora! Are you attending?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“You had best bait your hook, my dear, before some other angler reels in this prize trout.”
Flora bit back a smile at the thought of Sir Thomas dangling on the end of a fishing line.
“Smile if you like,” Venetia snapped, “you won’t be smiling when Caroline Jenkins and that obnoxious little brat of hers are ruling this roost. Now go to your room and have your maid arrange your hair into something fetching and pinch your cheeks. You look like a ghost.”
Glad to escape her mother’s presence, Flora left the room. But she didn’t return to her own room, nor did she summon her lady’s maid as instructed. Instead, she pulled on her bonnet and tugged a shawl around her shoulders. Making certain she was not observed; she let herself out of the manor by the garden door and hurried toward the forest.
Chapter Four
In the days that followed, Gemma proved herself not only able and willing to take on most of the housekeeping tasks at Hyacinth Cottage, but also an entertaining and informative companion only too willing to educate Callie on the private lives of half the village and everyone at the manor. Callie suspected Sir Thomas had been eager to place the girl in her employ as a spy, but Gemma showed no evidence of loyalty to her former employer.
Callie and Jem sat in the little dining room of the cottage eating their dinner while Gemma ladled soup into their plates.
“Sir Thomas said you want to be a lady’s maid eventually,” Callie said. “Why a lady’s maid; you could be a cook. The meals you’ve made since you’ve been here have been delicious.”
“My mam was a cook, Gemma answered, retreating to the kitchen and returning with a loaf of freshly baked bread. “She taught me as I was growing up. But it’s the lady’s maid who gets to go traveling with her mistress and I’ve a mind to see a bit of the world.”
“I cannot promise you will see much of the world with me. I am afraid my days of traveling the world are behind me.”
“Where have you gone, ma’am, if you do not mind my asking?”
“Let’s see, Jem, we went to the new world, to America and Jamaica, Martinique and Barbados, and the west coast of Africa, and Zanzibar. Never into the Pacific, though. I should have liked to see the tropical islands, there. They say it is beautiful, like Paradise on earth, filled with exotic birds and animals and the weather always fine.”
Gemma sighed. “If I could see but one of those places I’d be in Heaven. Will you tell me about them sometime?”
“Of course, but Gemma, why don’t you eat in here with us?” Callie asked. After years spent in the rowdy democracy that was a pirate ship, the thought of exiling Gemma to a lonely meal in the kitchen seemed ridiculous.
“Oh no, I could not, ma’am,” Gemma told her. “It wouldn’t be fitting. Servants don’t eat with their masters and mistresses.”
“But it is permissible for Mrs. Louvain to bring that little dog to the table,” Callie said.
“Shark bait,” Jem piped up.
Callie laughed. “Shark bait. I thought Venetia Louvain was going to throw her plate at you. Had you called it that once more, I think she would have made you go eat with the hermit.”
“Hermit?” Jem asked.
“Apparently Sir Thomas has a resident hermit who lives in a cave on his grounds.”
“His name is Walter, ma’am,” Gemma told her.
“Walter? I cannot imagine hiring someone to live in a cave and decorate my garden. It must be a lonely life.”
Gemma laughed. “Not for Walter. Girls from the village bring him food and wine. He’s a rogue with the ladies is Walter.”
“A philandering hermit?”
“Aye, young Jenna Brown, the smithy’s daughter, was brought to bed of a baby boy who looks very like him. Her father would have killed him but Jenna swore it was a traveler who seduced her when he was passing through the village. Still, the boy has more than a bit of Walter’s look about him.”
“Could he not be prevailed upon to marry her?” Callie asked.
“I do not think a hermit’s what Samuel Brown had in mind for a son-in-law. Anyway, Jenna said it wasn’t him and he swore he had not left his cave. Had he admitted otherwise, Sir Thomas could have turned him out and refused to pay him. I don’t think Jenna wanted to see him sent away.”
Callie looked at Jem. “Why ruin a perfectly good career as a hermit?”
Jem grinned. “I think I’ll go to see him sometime.”
“Do not let Sir Thomas find you trespassing on his grounds. He might have his gamekeeper shoot you for a poacher.”
“I don’t think he’d punish me, not when he wants so very much to impress you, Mrs. Jenkins.” Jem mimed lifting a lady’s hand to his lips.
“Hush, you, eat your soup.”
Gemma laughed as she returned to the kitchen and Jem and Callie returned to their supper.
On a fine morning in August, Callie and Gemma talked as they walked toward St. Swithin where Callie had a mind to pay a visit to the milliner for some ribbon to trim the bonnet she’d worn trimmed in black since she’d arrived in Cornwall.
“Lavender, I think,” she told Gemma, “or a pale gray.”
“What about a rich scarlet?” Gemma suggested. “’Would look so fine with your hair, ma’am.”
“Would not the village be scandalized if the widow Jenkins put off her mourning so soon after moving to the neighborhood?”
Gemma shrugged. “Your husband’s been gone a good while now,” she said, for Callie had told her, as she’d told the Misses Bates, that the late Reverend Mr. Jenkins had died the year previous.
“True,” Callie agreed. Actually, Kit had only been gone six months, but she didn’t think he’d want or expect her to bury herself in widow’s weeds for years to come. Mourning, he’d always said, was done with the heart, and the outer trappings were for the benefit of others, not for the deceased.
“I have no doubt Sir Thomas would be pleased to see you in bright colors, ma’am.”
“Sir Thomas,” Callie murmured. “He makes me uneasy with his attentions, Gemma.”
Gemma gaped at her. “He is rich and handsome and titled, ma’am. Most ladies would be pleased to find him running after them.”
“No doubt,” Callie agreed.
Since that first invitation to sup at the manor, Sir Thomas Sedgewyck had proven himself a most attentive neighbor always sending footmen with a gift of meat or baked goods or a bottle of wine. Sometimes a bouquet of flowers from his greenhouse was accompanied with a note enquiring after her health.
Nor had his attentions gone unnoticed in the village. As Callie and Gemma entered St. Swithin, the smithy paused in his labors and tugged at his forelock. A small boy playing in the dirt beneath the hooves of the great draft horse his grandfather was shoeing goggled at them as they passed.
“Little Walter, I presume?” Callie whispered.
Gemma giggled. “Not to hear Jenna Brown tell it; but if you ever see Walter, I think you’ll know.”
They walked on past the church where the parson’s wife greeted them warmly. As they neared the bakery, the baker’s daughter saw them and ran into the shop. A few moments later the baker’s wife emerged and pressed a small basket with a freshly baked apple pie into Gemma’s arms.
“Mrs. Travis, you should not,” Callie protested.
“It is a pleasure, Mrs. Jenkins,” the baker’s plump wife assured her.
“This is madness.” Callie shook her head. “Do they imagine I will be Lady Sedgewyck?”
“I suspect they do,” Gemma confirmed. Sir Thomas has not paid so much attention to a lady since his wife died in childbed two years since.”
“What was she like?”
“Her name was Charlotte. I think she must have taken after her father because she did not look like Miss Flora or Mrs. Louvain. She was beautiful with raven hair and emerald eyes. I know Mrs. Louvain wants Sir Thomas to marry Miss Flora but I cannot imagine a lady more different than the late Lady Sedgewyck.”
“All I know is that I’m heartily tired of being the target of Venetia Louvain’s poisonous glares in church and at the manor. I wish Sir Thomas would not invite me to dine there so often. Jem refuses to go. Thank goodness you are here, Gemma, so he can stay at home when I go.”
They reached the dressmakers and Callie paused to admire a dress in the window. “How pretty it is,” she said, “though I do not believe that shade of pink would be very becoming to me. I’ve a mind to have a dress like that, Gemma, if I can find some pretty fabric.”
They entered the shop and the proprietress, Mademoiselle LaSalle, who claimed to be the illegitimate daughter of the Marquis de LaSalle (though Gemma said she was plain Hannah Murphy from Dublin); hurried from her workroom as soon as her assistant told her they’d arrived.
“Madame Jenkins,” she said with the French accent she affected for her customers, “how can I help you today?”
“The dress in the window, mademoiselle,” she said, giving no hint that she thought the woman was anything other than the aristocratic bastard she claimed to be since, after all, she herself was in no position to scorn others for adopting an identity not their own, “I’ve a mind to bespeak one like it for I’ve decided to come out of mourning. But I do not think that pink would suit me.”
“I have a bolt of French silk here, Madame, a beautiful spring green. Let me show it to you.”
She disappeared into the workroom and returned with a bolt of pale green silk, the color of the first leaves of spring, embroidered with tiny garlands of white vines and flowers.
“It’s lovely,” Callie said. “But I think I should be a little more conservative.”
“Of course,” mademoiselle LaSalle acquiesced. “Perhaps an English silk instead.”
In the end, Callie chose a pale blue silk damask, though she could not help reaching out more than once to touch the exquisite French silk the dressmaker had left lying out on the counter. Mademoiselle LaSalle ushered Callie into the workroom where she was measured and promised to send word when the dress was ready to be fitted.
She and Gemma left the shop with ribbons for Callie’s bonnet and a wistful backward glance toward the bolt of silk still spilling in shimmering green folds over the counter.
“It was so pretty,” Gemma sighed.
“It was,” Callie agreed, “but I didn’t even dare ask the price.”
The door of the tavern across the road opened and the man Jem had identified only as ‘Finn’ appeared.
“Gemma, do you know that man?” Callie asked.
“Oh! That’s Finn Blount, ma’am.”
“I have seen him on the beach several times. What does he do?”
“He’s a salvager, ma’am, and a smuggler too. He knows all the secret passages that honeycomb the area and all the hiding places.”
“Jem’s met him; I have not. He told me his name was Finn.”
“Phineas, really, but everyone calls him Finn. He scares me a bit but I think him ever so handsome.”
As the man crossed the street toward them, Callie had to admit that, while not perhaps as handsome as Sir Thomas, Finn Blount was attractive in a far more masculine way that derived nothing from his air and attire.
“Missus,” he said, with a nod of his head as he crossed near them.
“Mr. Blount?” Callie said when he would have gone on his way.
He stopped and turned toward them and Callie saw that, beneath the heavy fringe of dark brown hair, was a pair of startlingly blue eyes set in a tanned face with chiseled features above a chin with a deep cleft.
“Aye, I’m Finn Blount.”
“I am Callie Jenkins. I live at Hyacinth Cottage on the other side of the village.”
“I’ve seen you there,” he confirmed.
“And I’ve seen you on the beach. My son is Jem; I believe you have met him.”
“A lively lad,” he replied, his hard features softening and his mouth curving into the shadow of a smile.
“I hope he is not proving a nuisance.”
“No, he’s a good lad. He loves the sea.”
“Yes, he does. I fear he misses life aboard ship. Has he told you much about our travels?”
“He said your husband was a missionary and you traveled the world.”
“We’ve seen many wondrous places.”
“Ma’am?” Gemma touched Callie’s elbow. “Finn does jobs for Miss Penelope and Miss Sophie. Haply he could fix the broken hinge on the back door.”
“Yes, that is true. Would you come see if you can fix the door for us, Mr. Blount?”
“I’ll come by and look at it if you like,” he promised.
“Thank you, I would be grateful if . . .”
“Mrs. Jenkins, are you on your way home?”
Callie turned to find Sir Thomas’ carriage drawn up in the street behind her. “Gemma and I were just talking to . . .” She looked back to gesture to Finn but he was gone, nowhere to be seen. “Oh, he’s gone . . .”
“May I offer you a ride home?”
“How kind of you, Sir Thomas.”
The coachman climbed down and helped Callie into the carriage and Gemma onto the box before he climbed up beside her and took up the reins.
“I noticed you were speaking with that ruffian Finn Blount.”
“I was. He did not seem like a ruffian, Sir Thomas, he was most courteous. And Gemma speaks highly of him.”
“Perhaps,” he said, his dark eyes fixed on the coachman’s liveried back, “but he’s no fit company for a lady, I assure you.”
Callie did not reply but made a note to herself to speak no more of Finn Blount to Sir Thomas in future.
Chapter Five
A few days later Finn Blount appeared at Callie’s cottage with a rough-hewn box containing his tools. His shaggy dog, Cyrus, trailed at his heels.
“Won’t you come in, Mr. Blount?” Callie said. “We have fresh bread and tea or cider if you prefer.”
“No, thank you, Missus,” he said. “I’d rather just get to work. And call me Finn, if you please, everyone does.”
“Only if you will call me Callie.”
He shook his head and a lock of his brown hair fell down over his forehead. “That wouldn’t be fittin’, Missus,” he told her.
“Please, all my friends call me Callie; and I hope we’ll come to be friends.”
He paused in his examination of the broken hinge and looked at her curiously. “I don’t think Sir Thomas’d approve.”
“Does it matter if he approves or not?”
“Not to me,” he insisted, bending once more to his labors.
“Nor to me.”
He said no more but a tiny smile curved his full lips. “All right, then, as you will, Callie.”
“Thank you, Finn.”
Cyrus barked and Callie looked over to see Jem trying to wrestle a piece of driftwood out of the dog’s powerful jaws.
“Jem enjoys playing with Cyrus so much. Perhaps I should get him a dog of his own.”
“Like Cyrus?” Jem asked, laughing as the dog nearly pulled him off his feet.
“Oh, I was thinking more of a dog like Shark Bait.”
“Shark bait?” Finn asked as he fitted a replacement hinge he’d brought with him into the space left by the broken one.
“Sherbet, Mrs. Louvain’s dog; the first time we
went to dinner at the manor, she said his name was Sherbet and Jem thought she said shark bait.”
Finn laughed. “She can’t have liked that.”
“She did not. The way she looked at Jem, I was glad she didn’t have a knife in her hand.”
“The butcher’s bitch had a litter not long since. Cyrus is the father. I could bespeak one of the puppies for you if you like.”
“Oh yes, Callie, please, please!” Jem begged.
Finn cast a curious glance toward the boy and Callie saw that they’d have to take care around him for it was obvious that not much escaped his attention.
“Very well, son,” she said pointedly. “If Finn would be so kind, perhaps the butcher could save a puppy for you.”
Finn stood and swung the door back and forth on its new hinge. “There you are, Miss . . . Callie,” he amended. “That should work for you now.”
“Thank you, Finn. What do I owe you?”
He waved a dismissing hand. “The hinge was an old one and it was no great work to put it on. Call it a favor for a friend.”
Callie turned at Gemma appeared in the doorway and announced that supper was ready and waiting.
“Well, you’ll take supper with us, I insist. The least we can do is feed you.”
“That I will,” he agreed. “Let me go to the pump and wash my hands and I’ll be along.”
Callie and Gemma watched as Finn walked toward the pump trailed by Cyrus and Jem.
“He seems a nice man,” she said, touched by the patient smile he gave Jem who prattled away at him while he pumped water for Finn to wash with.
“For a ruffian,” Gemma said a touch of ice in her tone.
“Sir Thomas thinks anyone who works with their hands and has to earn their living is a ruffian. Some of the best men I have ever known he would order off his land at the point of a gun.”
Finn and Jem returned and Cyrus curled up in the last rays of the setting sun on the back stoop while they sat down to supper. Gemma, as usual, refused to join them but Callie noticed that she was more attentive than ever, checking constantly to see if any of them, especially Finn, were in need of anything to make their meal perfect.
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