The Pirate's Widow (4 page)

  
Flora sighed, gazing out the window.
 
“I do not have any friends.”

  
“Oh my God!”
 
Venetia restrained the impulse to fling her crystal scent bottle at the
girl’s head.
 
“How do you expect to tempt
Sir Thomas into matrimony if you go about this way?
 
No wonder he’s sniffing after the first
pretty woman to cross his path.”

  
“Sir Thomas does not care a jot for me,
Mama,” Flora told her mother.
 

  
“How do you know?
 
You scarcely address two words in his
direction.
 
Did you learn nothing from
your sister?
 
Charlotte knew how to
captivate a man.”

  
Flora turned back toward the window.
 
When her half-sister was alive she’d found
herself constantly compared to her, to her own disadvantage.
 
Where Charlotte, the late Lady Sedgewyck, had
been darkly beautiful with smoldering eyes and a curvaceous body, Flora was
tall and thin with mousy brown hair and nearly lashes-less pale blue eyes.
 
While Charlotte had been flirtatious and knew
instinctively how to attract a man, Flora was quiet, withdrawn, with a total
lack of bright conversation.

  
“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.