We see you, they whispered. We see you and we find you wanting.
Mrs. Sumner appeared at his side, as silent as a wraith. “Papa said that it was behind his favorite picture. But I don’t know which one. I’ve not been in this room before.”
A crashing sound in the corner made them both jump.
“Sorry,” Edgar called from the shadows. “Thought I might start looking. It’s not behind this one.”
James sighed. “The only picture that doesn’t belong is the one of the lady.” He looked up at her.
Mrs. Sumner stepped forward. She looked round the edges of the portrait and then unhesitatingly pressed the edge of the panel on which the painting was framed.
James let out a small gasp as the panel swung back to reveal a large safe, squatting in the wall. In all those years of crawling through the house, disappearing into the walls, he had never thought to look behind the paintings. In truth he had never wanted to touch the lady. She had an indefinable air of mystery to her that he didn’t want to disturb.
Edgar pushed in front of James. “Bloody safe is open.”
Indeed there was nothing inside. But that wasn’t the point.
“What do you expect?” Mrs. Sumner stood back from the panel. “Papa said he took everything when he left.” She shrugged her shoulders and put out a hand to Edgar. “Take me back to the drawing room, please, I still feel quite faint.”
James followed them, lighting their way through the cold dark house with the candelabra. Stepping quietly behind them, with their linked arms, it felt like they were moving forward towards a wedding ceremony. Or even, in the darkness, a funeral.
In the drawing room he shakily placed the candelabra on top of the mantelpiece, his arm shuddering with the effort as his shoulder ached.
Mrs. Sumner sat with a small gasp.
“Was it there?” Lady Stanton asked eagerly, “The safe?”
Melissa’s head whipped to the side.
Mrs. Sumner nodded. Melissa dropped her head and returned to facing the fire.
Lady Stanton gave a delighted laugh. “We’re saved!”
James’ stomach clenched. Saved? Saved by what? His fists curled into bunches.
Mrs. Sumner wriggled further into her seat. “Papa said that the man who won the house from him tossed him out like a dog. He said that the lord had said that that was all he deserved. Poor Papa.” She shook her head. “Luckily we had another house where we could live in London. But it wasn’t easy, you know. When I had Melissa, Papa told me he had written to the lord with the name of our daughter on it to let him know what a bastard he had been. “
“That must be how the old man knew her name!” Edgar said irreverently. “Bloody hell, James!”
James pushed away from the fireplace. He had to leave. Flinging open the garden windows, he walked blindly into the orangery and stood uncertain of which way to go. He turned back to look into the drawing room.
“What’s wrong with the man?” Mrs. Sumner stared at him with shadowed eyes.
“He’s not only got to find Marie, he has to marry her!” Edgar strode across the doorway. James’ eyes were drawn to Melissa, who hunched even further as Edgar passed her.
The roaring in his ears intensified and he didn’t hear Mrs. Sumner’s reply. He was well trapped like a prize bull on a ring. He swung on his heel and, pushing at the old door of the Orangery, stepped into the cool night air. Blindly, he stepped through the mess of the rose garden and onto the lawn. It felt like déjà vu, the grass was taller than ever, grabbing at his ankles as he strode.
“James! James, wait.” He stopped. Cecilia pushed through the grass behind him, lifting her skirts. It looked as if she was floating on a pool of blackness.
She stopped a few feet short of him. James looked away at the sky. Cassiopeia was visible as well as the Great Bear. It had been a while since he had looked for them.
“You have a choice, James,” Cecilia said slowly. “You don’t need to go through with this. I know that you have other land that will support us. We don’t need to stay here. You don’t need to marry Melissa.”
“Don’t you like her?” His voice didn’t seem to be his own. James wanted to shout that he didn’t want her. Her hair didn’t curl like flames across her head. She didn’t smell of intoxicating apple blossom. But the eyes in the portraits glowed like beacons in his mind and the door to the study stood open, just a crack. He eased his aching fingers out of a fist.
Cecilia studied her bunched skirts. “I don’t mind Melissa,” she said slowly. “She seems harmless, and is actually good fun when she is away from her mother. That ribbon she chose for me from you suited me right down to the ground.” Cecilia stopped. James waited. “It’s her mother I don’t like. There is something not quite right about her. She claimed to have been at the same seminary as Mama, but says she cannot remember the names of her teachers—”
James shook his head. “You heard what she said regarding the way Grandfather threw her father out, and where that safe was. It must all be true.”
Cecilia stared at him. “You’ve got to work out if you can stand being married to Melissa for the next thirty years or more, James.” She pointed back at the dark house. “From what I’ve seen lately, you don’t mind her being around, and I know she likes you. Many marriages have been built on less.”
In James’ mind he heard the unanswered screams and whimpers. “Yes, they have.” His voice was a thready whisper.
Turning on one heel, he marched back into the house. Mrs. Sumner, Edgar, his mother and Melissa still sat in the drawing room. None of them had changed position. Edgar moved away from the garden door with a quick stride as he pushed it open.
James looked at no one but Mrs. Sumner. “Do I have your permission to address your daughter?” he asked. He clenched his fist as a forgotten voice from the past floated in the air.
Papa, please don’t use that. Not again. Where is Mama?
James glanced at the door. He couldn’t see into the study from there. It was a good thing. He glanced at his mother. But as ever she was still, the voice from the past had been heard by him and him alone.
Mama rescue me.
Mrs. Sumner put down her glass of sherry. “But of course, my dear man, go ahead.” She smiled and jogged Melissa’s elbow on the settle. “Melissa, go with Lord Stanton, and remember your manners.”
Melissa looked down at her feet and shook her head.
“I said, Melissa, go with Lord Stanton,” Mrs. Sumner repeated. She jogged Melissa’s arm, more roughly this time.
Melissa stood and stared at James. She bowed her head and followed him to the Orangery. James shut the garden door carefully.
James cleared his throat. “Please take a seat.” He swept the soil from one of the cast iron benches beneath the pineapple trees. Melissa sat without a murmur. “Melissa.” He stopped and tried again. “We have come to know each other quite well over the last few weeks,” he said. “I like you very much.”
Melissa did not say a word, her head bowed as she listened.
“I know we have all put you in an awkward position, but would you, could you, do me the honor of marrying me?”
You are not my son.
Melissa still didn’t look at him.
James stared out of the rain lashed window. What was he doing? “I think we would deal well together and I know that you would make a fine mistress of Brambridge estate.”
Who would want a son like you?
Hell and damnation, why didn’t she make it easy for him? Why didn’t she say something? The flames from the drawing room reflected in the glass windows of the orangery, red, as red as Harriet’s hair.
He sat beside Melissa and cupped her chin in his hands. “Melissa, look at me.” Pulling her beautiful head to face him, he gazed into her sea blue eyes, “The first time that I saw you, you stunned me with your beauty.” He paused and swallowed. God help him. “Whilst I feel that we have not had enough time to get to know each other well, I believe
that in time we could come to love each other.”
CHAPTER 15
The clink of the oars against their pins was the only sound apart from the crashing of the waves against the cliffs as Harriet guided a small rowing boat out from Longman’s Cove.
The Rocket bobbed silently on the swell in the middle of the cove. No lights showed on board. A beautiful schooner, with French lines, the large boat was built for stealth and speed.
Harriet pulled hard on one of her oars as the rowing boat met the dark sides of the Rocket. Sculling with one oar, she turned the boat around and alongside the wall of wood. A rope was thrown down to her. As she looked up, Tommy’s face appeared at the railings. Harriet, uncomfortable in her boy’s clothes, climbed aboard gingerly followed by the sailor who had fetched her, and her bale of lace.
“Hello, Master Chance!” Tommy said.
Harriet started. Tommy winked at her.
“Bill’s told me about you being on board. I suggested the name. Seems to me it suits what you are doing.” He kept his voice low.
“Where is he?” Bill called from below decks.
Harriet turned quickly. Bill appeared from a hatchway dressed in his dark jersey and fisherman’s trousers. A dark felt hat shadowed his face.
“Who?”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t know—James, of course. He’s coming with us. With Tommy’s shoulder we are a man down. We’ve been waiting for him for the last while to remember us.”
Harriet gulped, her heart beat faster and her stomach roiled. “I haven’t seen him. I didn’t know he was coming. I would have waited for him of course.” Or she wouldn’t have come at all, most likely. What a goose she was to have undertaken this silly affair.
Bill looked at her askance.
“You won’t tell him who I am, will you? Please Bill. I just want to be…” She stumbled over the words. ‘Master Chance’ this trip. I need to take part in that negotiation. “
“I won’t say anything, Harriet. But neither will I tell him any lies. He’s already been asking questions about the lad who came into the forge.”
It was the best she could expect from Bill. It was evident that Bill knew that she was going to turn his offer of marriage down. The warmth in his gaze had cooled somewhat since their meeting outside the schoolroom.
“Where is he?” Please let him have changed his mind.
“I told him midnight sharp. If he’s not here soon, we will have to go without him. You know that. I’ve looked at the tides and we only have a one hour window to get over the sandbank before Longman’s Cove is inaccessible for us.”
“What time is it now?”
“Three minutes past midnight. If he arrives now, you are the only person who can go and get him.”
“But I…”
“I can’t spare anyone else from the ship as they are all making sail preparations and preparing to pull up the anchor. Unless that is something you can do instead?”
He was harsh, but he spoke the truth; Harriet knew nothing of sailing. And even though she lived on the coast and had been in a rowing boat, this was the first time she had ever been on a large schooner.
“The waves will push you to the shore, and he can row back if you are too tired.”
She knew that Bill was punishing her. But she had to do as she was told. He was the captain and he had suffered her to be on board.
“Light on the starboard bow.” A call came from the stern.
“That’ll be James,” Bill said, then softening his harsh tones, he whispered “And if you manage to pick him up, and he doesn’t work out you are a woman by the time you get back to the ship, I’ll let you negotiate your lace deal.”
Harriet thought that they had already agreed that she would be able to negotiate, but one look at his granite-like face decided her. “Tommy! I need the rowboat. I’m going to pick up Lord Stanton.”
“What? Master Chance! You can’t do that, you’re not strong enough! I’ll come with you.” Tommy made to get down into the row boat but was prevented by Bill, who appeared at his shoulders.
“Whilst I’m on board, I’m captain, Tommy, and I give the orders. Master Chance is to go alone. I need you to help me haul up the anchor.”
As Bill drew Tommy away, the man muttered like a dog chewing a bone.
“At least let me give her me cape.” Tommy threw his cape around Harriet’s shoulders and tweaked up the hood to protect her from the rain and unexpected waves. He patted his shoulder. “If you had not sorted me out, Master Chance, I wouldn’t have been here now.”
Blinking back tears at Tommy’s kindness, and fear of what was to come, Harriet got into the boat and cast off from the Rocket. She would show them all. It was only two hundred yards to the beach, and the current was moving there quickly. And then she could get Lord Stanton to row on the way back.
Expertly she maneuvered the oars into the rowlocks and pushed the boat off from the hull of the Rocket. Immediately she had to pull hard to plough the boat through the water. It was later than she or Bill had realized. Whilst there was a wash that was pulling her towards the shore slightly, she could feel the resistance beginning to start. This was good for coming back, but meant that she would be half-dead by the time she was back at the Rocket.
Knowing that she had to keep up the pretense that she was Master Chance, she heaved on the oars, slowly but surely ploughing through the waves until she reached land, grounding ten yards out. She was more tired than she realized, and she sat for a few seconds with her shoulders slumped as she waited for the bobbing light to reach abreast of the rowing boat.
Harriet stood up, holding grimly on an oar to keep the boat steady, her cape billowing. James appeared out of the gloom, and quickly doused his light. Harriet sat back down quickly, hiding the sudden nervousness she felt by attempting to fit the oar back into its rowlocks again.
Without a word, James pushed the boat off the shingle and, grabbing the sides, flipped his legs in.
“What’s your name, boy?”
Harriet kept her gaze downcast. James was angry. “Master Chance S…s…sir,” she said softly. Good grief. How on earth was she going to stop him discovering her? He would think that she was following him. She still had her own pride left.
“Well then, Master Chance, move over. I’ve one good shoulder and one bad, but together we should be able to row back to the Rocket.”
Harriet swallowed, but shifted over slightly, her breeches rubbing softly against her legs. James picked up one of the oars and, with a muffled count, started to row. She gritted her teeth and pulled on her own oar with the little strength that she had left.
The boat lurched as she rowed out of misstep and she let out a soft moan.
“Are you alright, lad?” James looked forbidding in the moonlight.
Harriet gritted her teeth, shook her head and hunched lower into her cape.
Small waves lapped against the boat as neither of them rowed. Harriet heard the chink of James’ oar in the rowlock as he started to dip it gently into the water again.
“I know of a poem that has just been published in London that should see us right till the Rocket,” he said in a low voice. “If you row in step with it, it should help ease the burden.”
With a surprisingly musical voice, James began “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan, A stately pleasure-dome decree—”
Harriet stared at her hands on the oars. Kubla Khan by Samuel Coleridge, the most famous poem of 1816. She was yet to get her hands on it. Surprisingly the way James declaimed matter of factly as he heaved on his own oar brought the sparkling words to life. And unlike the London Weekly, he knew all the words. Adjusting her hood slightly to listen to James’ voice, she began to row again in earnest.
It took half the time to reach the Rocket than it had taken for her to row to the shore. A kindly hand helped her out of the boat. She collapsed on the deck, wrapping the cape around her in fatigue.
“Look after Master Chance,” James said softly, his eyes searching the de
ck. “And find me Bill.”
Tommy heaved Harriet to her feet and led her to the sloop deck where he gently lowered her to one of the makeshift cots.
“Chin up, Master Chance!” He slipped her a long tubular shaped object, and with a kindly pat, he left her.
Harriet sat, her senses dulled from the physical activity. She fumbled at the package, her stiff fingers scraping at the wrapping. Inside she found a small bottle of brandy. She sat quietly, recovering from the shock as the crew of the Rocket unfurled her sails and lifted the anchor.
“What were you thinking, Bill?” Harriet jumped; the voices came from behind her, lifted in her direction by the breeze.
“You can’t send a mere lad out in a rowboat alone in that weather. Even in dead calm you would normally send two people!”
“He needed the experience, James. He was getting too cocky by half.”
Harriet nearly snorted. If he could know the truth…
“Rubbish, Bill. You don’t do things like that. That could have meant life or death out there, and you know it.” James’ voice was commanding. This must have been how he talked to his men. Bill was obviously feeling the pressure. His reply was plaintive.
“We were watching him all the time, he would have come to no harm. Anyway, he knows these coves the best anyway. Spent his life by the sea, and out in a boat fishing for his family. “
Harriet grunted. Bill was an expert liar. She uncorked the bottle and, whipping her head back, took a deep sip. She coughed and then gargled.
“We both know that wasn’t a mere lad,” James said softly. “Did you think I wouldn’t recognize her in the dark? I would know her anywhere.”
Harriet gasped.
Their voices fell silent.
Bill groaned. “I’ll show you to your cabin.” The men went below and Harriet was left alone on deck.
The night’s sailing was smooth, and as fast as it could have been given the winds and the tides. It took six hours to reach the coast of France near Roscoff where the Rocket dropped anchor in a secluded cove. They waited for dark to fall again, when the Rocket would sail round to the next cove which, although it was more populated, had easier access to move cargo onto the boat.
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