‘I’ll not put my interests before Mrs Maguire’s, or let him hurt her.’
James’s pale eyes searched Nathaniel’s face for a moment. ‘Does she know you’re in love with her?’
Nathaniel shook his head, surprised at the journalist’s perception.
‘Are you sure?’
He wasn’t. Each word he spoke and his every action towards Mattie was laden with affection. She would have to be blind not to see it. Nathaniel raked his hands through his hair. ‘It’s no matter, because as things stand I can offer her nothing.’
James nodded and then pursed his lips. ‘There’s something else. I’ve heard whispers that Stebbins is partial to very young female company – if you get my drift.’
‘Good God!’ Nathaniel’s replied, remembering Lily sitting on Stebbins’s lap when Marjorie brought her to the office.
James sat forward and his eyes twinkled. ‘Well then, perhaps that’s all the more reason for bringing Stebbins down sooner rather than later . . .’
The journalist trailed off as Nathaniel’s eyes bore into him.
‘Very well. I’ll say no more about Mrs Maguire.’
‘Good. If the rumours are true about his tastes then I promise you I’ll get you the evidence but, know this, I will never allow anyone to do anything that might harm Mattie Maguire.’
Chapter Nineteen
Mattie carefully poured the willow mixture into a spoon and offered it to Brian. She’d mixed a heaped teaspoon of sugar into the bitter-tasting liquid but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t spit it out. He pressed his lips firmly together and looked up at her for a moment before finally opening his mouth.
‘There’s a good boy,’ she said, as he gulped it down.
Mattie settled him into the crook of her arm and rested her head on the back of the chair. Her eyes drifted to the pile of washing she hadn’t managed to get done, then to the range that needed a good scrubbing with sand to get the grease off.
With Queenie gone and Kate married, the chores were mounting up. Brian shifted and cried out. Mattie kissed his head again, and caressed her cheek against his soft hair. She must have drifted off to sleep because she started awake as the door opened.
Jack stood in the doorway looking down at her with an unreadable expression on his face. As it was Saturday night and there was no work tomorrow, he’d been to the Spitalfield Baths and was wearing his Sunday best. He’d also had his hair cut and beard trimmed. He dropped his bundle of work clothes on the chair, removed his jacket and hunkered down next to Mattie.
‘How’s the lad?’ he asked, looking closely at the child’s sleeping face. ‘Did you take him to the apothecary?’
Mattie nodded. ‘He told me Brian had been tearing around too much and overheated his brain, but young Billy Potter was as right as ninepence on Monday last week and buried on Friday, bless his soul. He started with a sore throat and fever, too, so I took Brian round to Doctor Munroe. He knows what he’s talking about.’
‘What did he say?’
Mattie pressed her lips on her son’s forehead briefly. ‘He said Brian’s tonsils were inflamed and gave me some of his own medicine to keep the fever down. Bless Doctor Munroe; he refused my offer to pay.’
The weather had been hot since mid May so the crop of summer fever was early this year and there were a number of children already struck down in the surrounding streets. Thankfully, most had recovered.
Nathaniel moved a stray lock of hair out of Brian’s eyes. ‘He doesn’t look so flushed.’
‘He’s not. He’s had a coddled egg for tea and I’ve been giving him orange juice as Doctor Munroe advised. I’m sure he’ll be running around the yard again tomorrow,’ she said sending a silent prayer heavenward that it might be so. ‘I had better get him up to bed.’ Mattie shifted forward in her chair.
‘Let me.’ Jack scooped Brian effortlessly off her lap.
Mattie followed him to the top of the stairs and together they settled Brian in his bed, stationing his soldiers alongside.
Mattie reached down and smoothed her hand over the patchwork bedcover. ‘I can understand why Queenie went peculiar because if anything happened to Brian I . . . I . . .’
Jack closed his hand over hers and the warmth from it flowed up her arm. ‘I know,’ he said softly. His jaw tightened and he swallowed hard. ‘A child can be so swiftly taken.’
Mattie felt the pain in his voice and suddenly she understood why there was a trace of sadness in his eyes when he looked at her son.
She slipped her hand out and rested it on his arm. ‘Have you lost a child?’
‘Children,’ he replied. ‘They caught a fever and died within days of each other. Lily was six and Rose just three. My wife followed them to the grave a week later.’
The raw pain in Jack’s voice cut through Mattie’s own heart. She glanced down at her sleeping son and couldn’t imagine how she would draw another breath if death took him from her.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Mattie replied, knowing all words to be wholly inadequate. ‘Was it while you were working abroad?’
He nodded. ‘I didn’t know of their deaths until over a year later. When I heard, I didn’t think my heart could possibly continue to beat. I blamed myself and then God and then . . .’ his eyes darted onto her for a moment then he looked back at Brian. ‘I begged God to take me too.’
‘I know. I know what it’s like. In the weeks after my husband died I wanted to follow him to the grave. Then my lovely boy arrived and I started to smile again.’ She looked back at Jack. ‘But to lose your children as well . . .’
‘Each morning I would wake and drag myself through yet another empty day. The breath still blew in and out of my body, my hair still grew – somehow I survived. At first I hated myself for enjoying the sunshine or laughing. I couldn’t understand how I could take pleasure in anything without them. Eventually, I realised that the best way to remember my two girls would be to live for them.’ His eyes changed subtly as they ran over Mattie. ‘And Marjorie, too.’
‘I’m sure that in time you will find someone who will love you as much as you loved your wife.’
The warmth returned to his eyes. ‘I pray so.’
‘I am grieved by the way things turned out with Kate, Mr Archer,’ Mattie said feeling her cheeks grow warm.
He shrugged. ‘I’m sure you are, but now Freddie will have to put aside his wild ways and live up to his responsibility. I wish them well.’
Mattie cleared her throat. ‘You show a great deal of fine feeling considering how disappointed you must be.’
‘Disappointed?’ He looked puzzled.
Mattie’s cheeks felt as if they were on fire. ‘I mean, I’d need the wisdom of the saints to fathom the girl’s reason for choosing Freddie over you. Surely she can see you’re ten times the man he will ever be.’
‘Me? What made you think I have feelings for your sister?’
‘Well, it seemed obvious from the way you were always offering her a lift on your cart,’ she replied, trying to stop jealousy from sounding in her voice. ‘And I’ve seen you go over and butt in when she was talking to Freddie on more than one occasion. She’s a pretty girl. Why wouldn’t you be interested in her?’
‘I offered Kate a lift to keep her out of Freddie’s way, because I know how much it upset you to see her with him.’
‘Oh!’
Nathaniel’s eyes changed again and a shiver of something very pleasant ran up Mattie’s spine. ‘Your sister may be a very pretty girl but she isn’t you, Mattie.’
He had said too much. But with her standing so close there was no going back and, in truth, he didn’t want to. It was wrong, of course, for so many reasons. He tried to tell himself that if he really did love her he would leave now. But his need to take Mattie in his arms overcame all his good sense and reason.
His hand slid around her waist and he gathered her to him. His eyes ran slowly over her face, taking in every beloved feature, then he pressed his lips onto hers gently.
‘I’m in love with you, Mattie.’
She melted into him and slid her hands around his neck.
‘And I love you, Jack,’ she said breathlessly then gripped his hair, pulled his head down and kissed him again. Her hands worked their way underneath his collar. As her fingers slid over the skin at the back of his neck, Nathaniel longed to feel them caress the rest of his body.
His mind urged him to hold back, to think of the consequences. But with Mattie’s breasts pressed against his chest and her hips against his, his body wasn’t listening. He kissed her harder.
Mattie broke free again. ‘Oh, sweet Mary,’ she all but sobbed. ‘It fair turned me green thinking you loved Ka—’
He stopped her words with his mouth and kissed her again deeply.
‘It was always you,’ he said.
His lips left hers and made their way across her cheek towards her ear then down her neck. Mattie tilted her head as her nails scratched through the rough fabric of his shirt. He nudged aside the neckline of her gown and planted kisses along her collarbone.
‘Make love to me, Jack.’
‘Mam! Mam!’ Brian screamed.
‘Oh, no,’ she said, as she twisted in his arms, clamping her hands around his face and kissing him before tending to her son.
‘Aroon, there, honey,’ she whispered, bending over the bed.
Nathaniel stepped back and raked his hands through his hair.
‘I’ll leave you to settle Brian,’ he said, stepping away from her. He left the room and crashed down the stairs to his room on the ground floor. He strode to the window and threw it open. He unbuttoned his shirt to let the evening air cool his body and stood motionless. He leaned out the window and took in a deep breath as he tried to still the chaotic mix of emotions whirling inside him.
Thank goodness Brian had interrupted before he was beyond thinking. He would have to master his desires, explain everything, ask her to marry him and then leave in the morning to find lodgings elsewhere. She would understand. She must understand.
The handle to his door clicked. Mattie came in with a lamp in her hand. Her eyes flickered onto his open shirt then back to his face.
‘Is Brian all right?’ he asked, hearing the tightness in his voice.
She nodded. ‘He was just shouting in his sleep.’
Setting the lamp on the table, she crossed the room and stopped an arm’s reach in front of him.
‘I love you,’ she said and standing on tiptoes pressed her lips onto his and reached for the shirt buttons he’d yet to undo. Nathaniel savoured the light touch of her fingers but managed to pull himself away.
‘Mattie, stop. Stop. I have something to tell you,’ he said, knowing his hopes and dreams for a life with her crashed to the ground as he spoke the words.
‘I’m wanted by the police.’
‘What?’
‘Embezzlement,’ he replied, flatly. ‘Taking funds from the feed merchant I worked for in Romford. And I haven’t been working abroad, I was sent there by Judge Tindal at Chelmsford Assizes. To Botany Bay in fact. And my real name’s Nathaniel Tate, not Jack Archer. It’s my middle and mother’s maiden name. And I hail from Romford not Hastings,’ he said, all in one breath.
‘What?’ Mattie shook her head and looked up at him as if she never seen him before. She took a step back.
‘There’s a poster outside the police station with my description on it.’
Mattie’s jaw dropped and she stared wide-eyed at him for a moment then and shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t think I heard you right. Your name’s Nathaniel . . .’
‘Tate.’
‘And you’ve not been working abroad, you were a . . .’
‘Prisoner.’
‘And you were transported for stealing.’
‘To Botany bay.’
Mattie’s brows drew together. ‘And you’re an escaped criminal.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And you’ve been working as my head coalman for the last four months!’ Mattie said, looking at him in horror.
‘But I’m innocent!’ Nathaniel replied, as the blood pounded in his ears.
‘Of course you are,’ Mattie said.
Nathaniel racked his finger through his hair. ‘No, I truly am. You have to believe me.’
After a moment’s pause, Mattie smiled softly.
‘I do, because I wouldn’t love you otherwise. But who did take the money?’
‘The chief clerk,’ Nathaniel replied, as a weight lifted from his shoulders.
‘But how is it that you were convicted?’
‘It was my word against the evidence he’d fabricated. He was a respectable pillar of the community while I was nothing but a scholarship boy.’
The hard lines around Nathaniel’s mouth softened a little as he remembered his sister Emma combing his hair at least half-a-dozen times before she’d let him walk the three miles to Fairhead’s double-fronted shop on his first day.
‘My family have worked the land for generations and at first I felt like a pig in a parlour when I joined Fairhead’s – they’re Romford’s main animal feed merchant. It just seemed odd to be sitting at a desk writing orders in the ledger and taking in money, instead of being out in all weathers at the back of a plough. But the senior clerk was friendly and kind and before long I felt at ease with my step up in life. He even spoke up for me when I began to court Marjorie. Her father owned a large farm and had plans for her to marry the squire’s son. My friend persuaded Marjorie’s father that I had good prospects, and after I married, he encouraged me to take on more responsibility. I’d been there four years when just, after Lily was born, he told me Mr Fairhead had opened a new branch in Chelmsford, where he would be the manager. I was to step into his shoes as chief clerk in Romford.’ He gave a hard laugh. ‘I remember how proud my father and sister Emma were when I told them. It was all going so well until one day just before Christmas ’44. Mr Fairhead went to take the winter quarter money to the bank and found the safe empty.’
Outrage flashed across Mattie face. ‘But didn’t you tell the judge all this?’
‘I did, but the court didn’t believe me.’ Nathaniel sighed. ‘And when the court’s officer found twenty pounds buried in my back garden the trial was a foregone conclusion. I was sentenced to seven years transportation. The man I trusted as I would have a brother, who was best man at my wedding and my children’s godfather, who I gave my friendship to, in return destroyed my good name and my family. My father died of a ruptured heart a week after the trial.’
Mattie crossed the space between them and gripped his upper arms. ‘Who is he?’ she demanded. ‘Tell me the name of this godforsaken heathen so I can curse him myself.’
‘Amos Stebbins.’
‘The Mr Stebbins who lives in Mile End Road?’
He nodded. ‘The same.’
Mattie legs felt suddenly very shaky. She reached for the chair beside Nathaniel’s desk and sat down. ‘But he’s been so kind and helpful,’ she said struggling to conceive of Mr Stebbins, with his paunch and fluffy side whiskers, as the scheming villain Nathaniel described. ‘Only last week he told me he was putting Brian’s name forward for a place at St Katherine’s school.’
‘And I’m sure he told you he was only trying to help when he offered to look over your books.’
‘And a right jumble he made of them,’ Mattie replied. ‘It took me over a week to set them right.’
A cynical smile spread over Nathaniel’s face. ‘That’s because the real reason he wanted to look over the accounts was to make sure he got the deeds to Maguire & Son’s at the lowest possible price.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Stebbins plans to set up a railway company and your yard is in the way.’ He told her everything from his meeting with the sexton in Romford to Smyth-Hilton’s visit to York.
‘So you see, Stebbins plans to get his hands on the deeds, then sell the land he’s acquired at rock-bottom prices back
to the Wapping & Stratford railway at a vastly inflated price.’
Mattie nodded slowly. ‘I understand that, but how did you know about the railway?’
Nathaniel took her hand gently in his, then told her about Queenie. When he finished Mattie rose to her feet and paced back and forth, pressing the palm of her hand against her forehead to hold his story in her mind. An image of Amos chucking Brian under the chin flashed in to her mind. White hot fury tore through her. How many nights had she stared at the ceiling trying to fathom how to make ends meet and all the while Mr Stebbins was scheming to take her livelihood. Memories of his insistence that selling the yard was the only option open to her ‘for the lad’s sake’ swirled in her head. And God only knew what he’d done to Queenie.
She spun around. ‘I’ll murder him, so I will,’ she shouted, shaking a fist in the general direction of Mile End Road. ‘The lying swine!’ She bounced on the balls of her feet. ‘Let’s see if his wife still looks down her nose at me for visiting the Virginia Street Mission when it gets around the streets that her old man’s a lying trickster.’ She laughed mirthlessly. ‘I’d like to see him stand up and read the bit about caring for widows and orphans from the Good Book, so I would. I’d tell the whole congregation how he treats widows and orphans.’
‘Now there, Mattie, we can’t show our hand yet,’ he said trying to gather her to him.
Mattie pushed him away.
‘And what about you?’ she asked, tears springing into her eyes. ‘You say you love me with one breath then tell me you’ve lied to me in the next?’
Nathaniel dropped his arms to his side. ‘I’m sorry I had to deceive you, Mattie, but I do love you and I swear that’s the truth of it.’
For several moments anger and hurt tangled together in Mattie’s heart and then a calm cloak of assurance, the like of which she had never felt before, enveloped her. She ran her eyes over Nathaniel’s anxious face and any remaining doubt evaporated. He did love her and that was all she needed.
Perhaps Tomorrow Page 21