In spite of this change of residence, Lady Charlotte was highly pleased, or so I was told by above-stair servants who had occasion to actually see the esteemed mistress. She had feared her only child might never marry. If Charles left no heir, the estate would go to distant—and undeserving, in her opinion—relatives.
Household rumor also declared Sir Charles had been pressured into the engagement by his mother. Apparently he would have much preferred to remain a bachelor, enjoying the gaming houses and sporting clubs; the pleasures of having a demanding, overweight wife appeared, at best, dubious to him.
A fortnight before the marriage was to be solemnized, Darcy came into the kitchen gardens in the middle of the afternoon when I was harvesting carrots.
“We’re going to America!” he burst out. “Our dream is to come true!”
“Darcy, how?” I gasped, catching his hand in my earth-soiled one.
“Sir Charles’ fiancée is a wealthy woman,” he said. “When they marry, all that is hers will become his. The daughter of a shrewd businessman and well aware of the fact, Maude Bell wants a servant of her own choosing close to her new husband, to watch over both him and her money. A personal secretary will fill her requirements. But since I now hold that position and she perceives me as ‘his man,’ she has ordered Sir Charles to dismiss me, replace me with her cousin, and send me away.” He paused to catch his breath, then continued, “Apparently Maude’s money and his mother’s constant nagging for an heir have proven overwhelming. He’s paying my passage to America. I sail within a fortnight.”
“But you said ‘we,’ ” I pressed, the glittering panorama of my imagined heaven wavering in my mind like a heat mirage.
“I must go alone first,” he said, caressing my coarse hand. “Charles would not agree to pay two passages. But,” he hurried on as my expression must have revealed my dismay. “America is a land of quick wealth. Within months, perhaps even weeks, I will be able to send your passage fare and you can join me. By that time, I’ll have a home prepared for you.”
Two weeks later, on Sir Charles’ wedding day, Darcy sailed for America, and I settled down to wait, resolved in one matter of which he was unaware. When I got to America, I would marry Darcy Pod and make him the best wife a man could have. That was how I would repay him for all he’d done for me.
****
I made the most of the time I spent in service at Blackwell Hall as I waited for Darcy to send for me. As I had learned music and dance from my mother, and poetry and prose from Darcy, I set about to discover and memorize the social graces and skills of my employers.
Although seldom above stairs, I made the most of those rare moments to listen and observe. I studied the dress and mannerisms of Sir Charles’ lady, the furniture and floral arrangements she chose, and even the table settings I sometimes managed to glimpse laid out for formal dinners.
When the master and his wife entertained lavishly, as they frequently did, I mulled over the menus and learned the names of the various dishes and wines. I studied the order of service, the correct method of offering food and drink to guests, even what cigars and port the gentlemen preferred after a hearty meal. Every possible minute I could manage was spent in preparation for the day when I would become Darcy’s lady wife in America.
Letters from Darcy came as often as there were ships to transport them. Although they were never frequent enough to satisfy my constant need for news of him and the land to which he had gone, I savored each line as a connoisseur relishes a glass of rare wine.
He was in the British North American colony of New Brunswick, he wrote. He’d found work in the shipyards of a burgeoning young community named Pine. The village’s main industries were lumbering for export and shipbuilding to provide the vessels to carry its timber products to England and the Caribbean. Fish, salmon in particular, was also exported, although “wood, wind, and water” provided the backbone of the young township’s economy.
He’d bought a bit of land, he wrote later. He and a friend had begun to construct a home on it for us.
He had signed himself as usual, “most affectionately, Darcy.” Then, in a scrawled postscript, he had continued that he hoped I’d like his friend.
He did not identify this person by name, and I was puzzled. Explicit writer that he was, Darcy Pod would not carelessly omit such information. I wondered over this only briefly before drifting off again into fantasies of Darcy and myself in the great green paradise called America.
Ten months after Darcy’s departure, the promised passage fare arrived. I’d almost despaired of seeing him or America when one cool, sunny morning after a May shower I received the much-handled envelope.
I read Darcy’s accompanying letter in the sprouting vegetable garden near the kitchen, beneath a clearing sky full of scudding white clouds. The paper fluttered in my hands and, as I finished reading, I flamboyantly blew a kiss in what I fancied to be the direction of America.
“I love you, Darcy Pod!” I cried. “And I’m coming to you!”
In America I would be reborn. In America all my past hurt and shame would be washed away and I would begin a new life.
The retreating clouds and warm sunshine that had marked the arrival of my passage fare were prophetic, I told myself as I returned to my work in the gray depths of the kitchen. My days in darkness and suffering were about to end.
I didn’t then realize that one’s apparent good fortune could change as swiftly and completely as shadows in the wind.
Chapter Two
Finally, I was on my way. One cold, foggy morning at the beginning of June I caught a ride with an itinerant peddler named Pattie O’Brien. Two years previously, he’d inadvertently facilitated my release from the mines by seducing Daisy, my scullery predecessor, into marrying him. Now, I drove with him in his creaking wagon to the Portsmouth docks.
I sat proudly on the plank seat behind the shaggy pony, a threadbare carpetbag clutched in my hands. In the satchel were two much-mended gray dresses similar to the one I wore, a change of undergarments and stockings, a cotton nightshift grown transparently thin from frequent washings, and the all-important paper that declared I had paid for and was entitled to passage from Portsmouth, England, to Pine, New Brunswick, aboard a vessel called the Maris Stella.
Behind me in the wagon were a sack of food and a cask of water. Old Wicks the gardener at Blackwell Hall had prepared these provisions for me.
“Them sea captains be dreadful mean with victuals,” he’d told me as he stuffed my bag. “When I were a lad, I went to sea. I know.”
I had smilingly thanked him for his kindness. Wicks lived in the past, I remember thinking. Modern ships’ masters were not churls. As the peddler and I lurched along the pot-holed road, I caught the stubble-faced man perusing me quizzically.
“Do I interest you, Mr. O’Brien?” I asked.
“Nay, you puzzle me,” the Irishman said. “Each time I stopped at Blackwell Hall these past years, I’d say to meself, ‘Pattie, lad, there’s a lass as has good sense, a lass who’ll make some man a fine wife one day.’ Then I discover you’re off to America alone…and near penniless, I’ll wager. Why, in heaven’s name, girl, why?”
“I’m going to marry the man I love,” I said proudly. “We’re going to build a new life in America. We’re going to be rich, and I’m going to be a lady.”
For a moment he simply stared at me, then he burst out laughing. “There goes me theory about your common sense. A lady you’re goin’ ta be, is it? In a secondhand bonnet, a mended cloak, and a pair of lad’s work boots? Girl, America is a land of possibilities, not promises. The country alone cannot make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. You have to be willing to work and sacrifice and compromise to make your dreams come even partly true. Me young brother Kevin and me sister Bridgit went out there years ago, and they’re still livin’ in a log shack. I reckon that’s the same kind of home your young man has in store for you. A lady, indeed!” He guffawed.
“Darcy and a friend are
building us a real house,” I said, sticking out my chin. “We’ll live in style, and I will be a lady.”
Pattie O’Brien’s words proved to be only the first of many shadows that would be cast over the sunshine in my soul that foggy June day.
At the Portsmouth dock, I found myself crowded among people as poor and shabby as myself. We were herded into longboats and rowed out to a ship waiting at anchor a distance off shore. Each of us clutched bags and boxes that contained all the worldly goods we were able to transport to America.
But in spite of the cramped conditions of the longboat, the dreariness of the day, and the peddler’s dire words, I experienced no sense of loss at leaving the austere gray edifices and backbreaking work that England had come to epitomize in my mind. Instead, I rejoiced in the vision of a beautiful, green America such as Darcy had described in his letters, and of being reunited with the kindest, most wonderful young man in the world.
As our long boat bumped against the ship, I glimpsed her name on the bow. The Maris Stella was a beautiful craft, freshly painted, and one of the finest ocean-going vessels about the Portsmouth docks that day. I wondered why such a ship was being used to transport poor immigrants, when British manufactured products would have been a much cleaner and more profitable cargo.
I had little time to speculate on the matter. I was prodded by one of the sailors who’d rowed us out to the vessel, and told to get aboard “smart and proper or be left behind.” Having no desire to miss my one chance to America, I scrambled up the dropped rope ladder hanging against the Maris Stella’s sleek side and over her tall bulwarks.
As I stumbled onto the cleanly swabbed deck, my boot caught in the hem of my cloak. I pitched forward and would have fallen had not a pair of strong hands caught me and steadied me on my feet.
“Careful, young woman,” a male voice iced with annoyance ordered. “If you persist in stumbling about the deck, you’ll soon find yourself in the water. And this ship cannot turn about for anyone foolish enough to fall overboard.”
I looked up into eyes as gray and cold as hoarfrost. Their owner was tall, well over six feet, with coal black, curling hair and a face most women would have found breathtakingly handsome. Broad shoulders towered over a body muscularly lean and lithe as an athlete’s in well-fitted tan breeches, white linen shirt, brown leather jerkin, and gleaming knee-high boots.
“Thank you, sir,” I snapped, freeing myself from his hands with a swift, impatient shrug. “I wouldn’t think of falling overboard. I might foul the wake.”
“Sharp-tongued little wench, aren’t you?” he said, as embarking passengers glanced furtively at the stranger and me. “And quite alone, I see. Luckily no poor, innocent man has fallen into your gentle clutches.”
“I’m on my way to be married, sir,” I retorted. “My fiancé is a fine gentleman who knows how to speak to a lady. You could take a few lessons from him, Mr…”
“Captain,” he corrected. “Captain Barret Madison, master of this vessel. Mr. MacIntosh,” he bellowed before I could recover from my surprise. “Take this sweet young thing below and show her the steerage quarters. Perhaps after a couple of weeks under the deck she’ll be less likely to spew insults at her captain.”
“Aye, sir.” A burly seaman seized my arm and jerked me toward the open hatch through which ragtags like myself were descending to the bowels of the ship.
I glanced back at him as he stood against the boom of the mighty vessel. In the fog his silhouette stood out, commanding and virile before the framework of lofty masts and rigging. Then I was pushed into the darkness of the hold.
****
The stench was incredible. Even I, who had lived in the filth of a mining children’s hostelry, found the odor in the depths of the Maris Stella overpowering. The wastes of too many people crowded too closely together, with facilities inadequate for healthy individuals let alone that of the many ill we now had among us, had fouled the dark cargo hold which had been our communal cabin for the past two weeks. To make the situation worse, one or more of the children always seemed to be crying, a man with an ugly cough retched and gagged constantly, and there was usually a woman seasick or sobbing.
I stood and went to peer up at a distant skylight. It was night. Through the opening I could see a sprinkling of stars. The Maris Stella rolled steadily forward, rising and falling with a life of its own. It must be beautiful and clean and fresh up on deck, with the tang of salt air and sea breezes.
I glanced about. In the dim light of the single dirty lantern swaying from a beam, all my fellow passengers appeared too engrossed in their own personal miseries to take any notice of me. I edged my way to the ladder in the darkness at the far end of our quarters.
Moments later, my heart hammering, I gained the top step. Hardly daring to breathe, I eased the hatch open a crack and perused the deck. It appeared deserted. I knew there had to be a helmsman at the wheel, but he would not be able to leave his post to chase after me. My heart beating a tattoo, I pushed the plank cover open.
I’d gained the deck and was pulling in my first lungful of fresh air when a hand seized me and swung me about. The sailor MacIntosh.
“And where would you be goin’, me fine lassie?” he inquired.
“I needed air,” I snapped, wrenching against him. “The stench below deck is suffocating.”
“You know the rules,” he said tightening his grip on my arm. “You’re not allowed up here. You’ll go back where you belong, at once.”
“No!” I swung back on the man and sank my teeth deep into the hand that held me captive.
He yelped out a curse and weakened his grip long enough for me to pull free.
Tripping over ropes and stumbling around water casks, I made a desperate bid for a few more moments of freedom.
Then suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, I was once more seized and flung against a man’s body that on contact felt as hard and unrelenting as any of the barrels I’d been careening into. I looked up to see Captain Barret Madison holding me in a vise-like grip.
“Let me go!” I cried, kicking at him as he held my hands pinioned behind my back. “Let me go at once! I will not go back in that rotten hold…not until I’ve had my fill of decent air.”
“MacIntosh, what’s the meaning of this?” he demanded. “Can’t you be trusted to keep our unwelcome passengers below?”
“I’m sorry, sir. She took me by surprise. She bit me, she…”
“Oh, she bit you, did she? So we have a little bitch on our hands. Very well. I’ll deal with this infraction. You get back to your post before any more of them appear on deck. But mind you, let one more escape, and you’ll learn just how much such occurrences disturb me.”
“Aye, sir.” The seaman hurried back to his post.
“Well, madam, we meet again.” The captain twisted my arm and held me so I could not move without causing myself pain. He looked down into my face, his gray eyes a mixture of smoke and ice. “You’re proving to be more trouble than the few paltry pennies you paid for passage. Perhaps a good keelhauling would be in order.”
“Do as you will, Captain,” I said. “But I will not return to that hellhole alive until I’ve flushed my lungs of its stench.”
“I see.” He released me and thrust me away from him. I stumbled against the bulwarks. “Well?” He swept out an arm to indicate the star-dotted sky and lightly ruffled sea parting its surface as the great ship knifed through it. “Breathe deep.”
Suspicion enveloped me. Everything about him told me Captain Barret Madison was not a man who easily acquiesced to the demands of others. Aware of his appraising gaze pinned on me, I turned to look out over the vast expanse of ocean.
Suddenly America seemed impossibly far away. As I stared out at the dark horizon, a lump rose in my throat. Darcy! Darcy, wait! I’m coming!
“Does he love you?” The question made me start. I whirled to face Captain Madison. He cut a charismatic image, silhouetted against a backdrop of wind-inflated sails and black, s
tarry heavens.
“Of course,” I managed, swallowing hard and trying to suppress the tremble that had come into my voice. “I’m going to marry him.”
“Do you love him?” He came to lean against the rail beside me. His profile was perfect, like one of the heroes in books I’d secretly perused in the library of Blackwell Hall. His shoulders beneath his seaman’s jacket must be broad and powerful.
“Definitely.” My answer was haughty, self-certain.
“Then he’s not simply a ticket to the land of promise?” He glanced over at me, skepticism in the sculptured planes of his face. “You wouldn’t be the first young woman to manage her way out of bondage in England on the coattails of a naïve and newly affluent colonial.”
“I’d never sell myself…not for money—not even for freedom.” After what I’d suffered, after how I’d fought to survive without giving in, his suggestion incensed me. “How dare you say such a thing, you arrogant, despicable bastard!”
“What did you call me?” I was caught up in his arms, my hands pinioned behind my back in an iron grasp.
“I called you a bastard, an arrogant bastard!” My outrage surpassed fear. I knew only blind, reckless fury.
“You dirty little slut! Fresh off the London streets, I’ll wager, any man’s dolly for a bit of coin, and you dare to call me a bastard!”
“Slut?” Fighting with every ounce of strength I possessed, I determined to kill him, to rip him to shreds with my bare hands. “I’ll have you know I’m a sea captain’s daughter, a brave and famous sea captain’s daughter. Captain Morgan Reynolds was a man of honor. I’d do nothing to sully his good name!”
His grip fell from my wrists so suddenly I lost my balance and staggered back against the bulwarks again.
“You’re Morgan Reynolds’ daughter?” he asked. “The Morgan Reynolds?”
“There was only one,” I managed, although his sudden acquiescence left me as breathless as his attack.
Shadows of Love Page 3