He uncorked the flask and handed it to Josiah.
He took gulps and smiled. ‘Small beer with honey. Just like Ma used to give us when we were poorly as boys.’
‘Just so,’ his brother said gruffly, as Josiah took another mouthful of the sweet liquid.
The clock at the end of the ward chimed and Ezra stood up.
‘I’m on shift in two hours so I’d better get meself on the path home,’ he said. ‘I’ll give the ward servant a shilling to get you a hot potato from the barrow for your supper and something for breakfast tomorrow and Sarah will bring your supper when she visits tomorrow.’ Shoving his hand in his trouser pocket, Ezra pulled out a couple of coins and handed them to Josiah. ‘Should you need some extra victuals before Sarah comes.’
‘Thank you, Ezra,’ said Josiah, tucking the coins beneath his pillow. ‘Are you sure you can spare it?’
His brother grinned. ‘Of course, I took it out of your money bag.’
Josiah smiled. ‘Thanks all the same. And will you do something for me?’
‘What?’
‘Have a quiet word with George and Isambard to tell them I’ll be in touch but otherwise could you put it around that I’ve died, so the rector knows,’ said Josiah. ‘If they think I’ve gone they may not keep quite so close an eye on Charlotte.’
‘Seems a sound idea,’ Ezra grinned and tapped his finger against his temple. ‘I’m glad to see that mud gas ain’t scrambled your noddle none.’ He poked his finger at the basket. ‘But stop thinking and eat, you great bone-headed lummox, because troublesome and vexatious though you are it would be a sad world without you in it, Big Brother.’
He and Ezra exchanged a fond look, then his brother left his bedside.
Watching his brother stroll off towards the double doors at the far end of the ward Josiah had to admit Ezra had the right of it. He was no use to Charlotte if he collapsed in the street but, come what may, even if he had to crawl all the way to The Bell in Aldersgate Street this time next week, he would be catching the dawn mail coach to St Albans to marry Charlotte.
***
Martha Hatton, good lady wife of Reverend Edmund Hatton, tilted the list of provisions in her hand to maximise the light from her morning room window. A frown crossed her forehead, etching ever deeper the wrinkle that already sat across her brow.
Whoever thought to build a vicarage where the dayrooms faced full north, she thought not for the first time, obviously had no idea about anything. There was barely enough light at noon, let alone at nine-thirty in the morning. She could have used her glasses, of course, but although she knew vanity was a terrible sin she couldn’t bring herself to perch the metal rims on her nose in front of the servants.
She handed the list back to Mrs Latimer. ‘That seems all in order.’
‘Very good, madam,’ the elderly cook replied, giving what Martha considered an all-too- brief curtsy. ‘Will you require the tradesmen to call mid-week?’
Martha raised her heavy eyebrows. ‘Whatever for?’
‘I thought with Miss Charlotte here you might be entertaining.’
Martha’s short-sighted eyes narrowed.
Servants were to do, not question, she thought.
But the truth of the matter was that servants babbled about their betters. Especially the old cook, who seemed to have a fondness for Charlotte. She’d known her from birth and her sentiment was beyond what was seemly or proper.
‘Miss Hatton’s visit is to be a quiet one,’ she said without thinking and then felt annoyed that she’d added the explanation.
‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ the cook said, ignoring Martha’s disapproving scowl. ‘She used to dance like an angel when her mother played the piano.’
Martha sniffed. ‘Miss Hatton is a grown woman and past such things. She’s soon to be married,’ she said, sending up a prayer of forgiveness for such a falsehood.
Although she quite understood why her father-in-law wanted his shameless daughter out of the house until the full arrangements were made, Martha had barely slept a wink fearing that Charlotte’s condition would become known and ruin Edmund’s prospects in the Church.
Mrs Latimer gave her the there-there smile she sometime bestowed on Edmund. ‘Grown woman she may be, but I doubt Miss Charlotte will ever be too old for dancing.’
A sharp retort rose to Martha’s lips but, as if she knew she were the subject of the conversation, the door opened and Charlotte entered the room.
Martha looked her up and down for a hint of contrition, but Charlotte’s unabashed gaze confronted her instead.
Martha’s eyes slid to her sister-in-law’s middle.
Thank goodness fashion still dictated a high waist, or we would all be ruined.
When Charlotte arrived four days before she had gone straight to her room pleading a headache and nausea from the closed carriage. Wicked though it was to ask for such a thing, as Martha knelt beside Edmund in the bedroom that night, she prayed that the shock of her family’s displeasure and the jolting from the forty-mile journey might resolve the problem but, after a night’s rest, her sister-in-law Charlotte had come down to breakfast with a glow on her cheeks and her eyes clear. It would seem this baseborn child of Charlotte’s was firmly anchored.
‘And here she is, the bride,’ said Mrs Latimer, waddling over to Charlotte.
The cook’s expression changed from sentimental to concern. Forgetting her place yet again, she laid her hand on Charlotte’s arm.
‘What is it, Miss Charlotte?’ she asked, oblivious of her mistress’s censorious stare.
Charlotte forced a smile.
‘It’s nothing, Latty,’ she replied. ‘Just pre-wedding nerves, nothing more.’
Mrs Latimer’s eyes grew dewy. ‘I expect you’re pining for your love.’
A look of such misery crossed Charlotte’s face that a lump formed in Martha’s throat.
Chiding herself severely for her soft heart, Martha reminded herself that the Lord himself had warned that judgment awaited fornicators.
‘I…I truly am, Latty. I truly am,’ Charlotte replied.
The cook squeezed Charlotte’s arm. ‘Why don’t you come down to the kitchen and I’ll find you something nice and sweet, like I used to when you were a little lass.’
Charlotte patted the cook’s gnarled hand. ‘I will.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Latimer,’ Martha said, sharply.
The old woman bent her knees in a curtsy, winced, but then winked at Charlotte as she shuffled out of the room.
As the door closed, Charlotte turned to face Martha.
‘You missed breakfast,’ Martha said, setting aside her accounts book and fixing Charlotte with a harsh stare.
‘I didn’t want to force you and Edmund to eat your breakfast through tight lips as you did yesterday,’ she replied, taking the seat by the fire.
‘How can you hold your head up after the way you’ve behaved?’ Martha placed a hand on her chest. ‘Have you no shame?’
Charlotte gave her a tight smile. ‘No. Not for loving Josiah.’
Drawing a long breath through flared nostrils, Martha let her contempt for her wayward sister-in-law blaze from her eyes.
‘You selfish hussy,’ she said. ‘I cannot begin to imagine how a woman of your background and family connections could throw away your virtue on a man who earns his living grubbing in the ground. And to allow him such liberties with your person! Rolling and coupling like animals. I feel dishonour just thinking about it,’ she went on. ‘And if that were not enough. Now there is to be issue from this abominable union.’ She crossed herself and gave Charlotte her most appalled look. ‘I am not privy to the punishment your father has decided on but, whatever it is, it cannot be too harsh given your disreputable actions.’
As her cheeks reddened, Charlotte lowered her eyes and studied her hands.
‘Ah!’ screeched Martha. ‘At last. Some contrition. Some shame for your lust and sin!’ She grasped the ebony crucifix on her chest and held it toward
s Charlotte. ‘Dear Lord, we ask that—’
‘Have you ever loved a man?’ Charlotte asked quietly.
‘I…I...am…am a married woman,’ Martha replied, somewhat stumped at the strange turn to the conversation. ‘Your brother’s wife.’
Charlotte gave her a wry smile. ‘That’s not what I asked. I asked if you’d ever loved a man? Have you ever loved a man so much that your world is completely in his eyes? The very sound of the voice is like the very air you breathe, and their touch can make you sob with the joy of it? Have you looked at a man without the trappings of wealth and status and known that you want to walk by his side through Hell itself just to have him smile at you?’
Martha’s mouth dropped open as a young man’s face, with the fresh skin of youth and dancing eyes, floated into her mind. Her heart groped for the hidden memory of a redcoat fresh from the tailor and glinting buttons newly sewn in place. A deep longing rose in her chest at the memory of the breath-taking excitement of being swept away in the moment and the glimpse of a dangerous delight.
She shoved the memory away and reminded herself sharply that she was no longer that giddy young woman enjoying her first season. She was the archdeacon’s, soon to be a bishop’s, wife.
She set her mouth into an unyielding line. ‘Don’t think to justify yourself by such fanciful notions as love.’
‘So you haven’t.’ Charlotte gave a mocking smile. ‘I pity you.’
Martha opened her mouth to tell her sister-in-law to keep her pity for herself and the unwanted brat she was carrying, but no words came.
Charlotte rose.
‘I will make no apologies for loving Josiah.’ Charlotte fixed her sister-in-law with a stare that stirred feelings Martha had long hidden, even from herself. ‘And I will do anything and everything to keep his child.’
Chapter twenty-seven
‘You’re lucky, fella, said the booking clerk, a beefy man of about Josiah’s age with ink-stained fingers, peering through the ticket booth window at him. ‘There’s just one outside seat left on Friday’s Flyer.’
It was Wednesday and three days since Ezra had collected him from the hospital and smuggled him back to his house. It was close to six in the evening and he was in The Bull in Aldersgate.
Like most coaching inns, The Bull disembarking and embarking area was a square tackyard surrounded on three sides by the inn where a constant steam of mail and flying coaches arrived and left, along with wagons and carts transporting goods to the city. The stable where the ostler hovered ready to change tired horses for fresh ones was housed on the right-hand side of the yard while the customers’ eating house and ticket booth were opposite with the coachmen’s resting rooms squeezed in between. Above the flagstones on the upper floor of the inns were long galleries which led to the bedrooms.
Josiah was in the largest public room with a roaring fire at one end and a bar at the other, as the coach from Ipswich, another from Norfolk, and the short stagecoaches from Ware, created a hullabaloo around him.
The sawdust-strewn room was lined with enclosed booths and had additional tables and chairs in the space between. Around them passengers with bags around their feet and wrapped in thick coats and scarfs to guard against the November cold huddled over mulled ale or hastily consumed pies and stew
On the far side of the room, crowded around the huge hearth, sat the coachmen, in their distinct buff-coloured long coats. The curly columns of smoke from their long clay pipes spiralled upwards to join the haze already accumulating above the customers’ head. From time to time a roar went up in response to an amusing tale of the highway.
In contrast, farmers in calico smocks, saggy-kneed trousers and battered hats, who had sold their produce to market earlier in the day, stood supping ale and muttering about the weather. The hob-nails of their boots etched lines through the sawdust on the floor as they shifted their feet.
‘If you mind to travel again, you’d be better served to book your seat earlier as next time you might not be so fortunate,’ continued the clerk as his quill scratched across the ledger in front of him.
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ said Josiah.
Having been catching coaches back and forth across the country chasing work for the past ten years, Josiah knew that. He’d have come straight here from St Thomas’s if he hadn’t been holed up half a mile from St Mary’s rectory pretending to be dead, which is why he’d had to wait until darkness had fallen before slipping Cherry Cottage and walking the two and a half miles to London and further on to Aldersgate.
It was also two and a half weeks since Charlotte had been sent from the rectory, so he could wait no longer. Her condition would now be becoming obvious, and his fears for her and their child’s wellbeing increased each day as he knew her family would use any means to protect the family’s name and reputation.
With this in mind, from the moment he’d come back to consciousness a week ago, he’d eaten everything his brother and Sarah brought him. He’d supplemented their generous supplies by getting Fred, the ward servant, to fetch him a pie from one of the street vendors each day. In addition, he’d spent most of the day exercising his underused muscles, pushing himself a little further each day, knowing every step he took brought him closer to making Charlotte his wife. He’d also decided to keep the beard that the weeks in hospital had furnished him with. If he was whisking Charlotte away from under her family’s nose, looking unlike his usual self might have its advantages.
‘Well, anyways, that’ll be four shillings,’ said the clerk, stamping a ticket with his company’s mark.
Josiah handed over two florins and the clerk added it to the box beside him.
‘The Wonder leaves at a quarter to seven prompt, so be sure you’re there,’ he said handing Josiah his travel docket.
Shoving the ticket in his inside breast pocket, Josiah stepped aside and glanced around.
He spotted what he was looking for; the inn’s express post boys loitering around at the other side of the bar. Well, boys was a bit of a contradiction. Dressed in scarlet, they were a hard-bittern, wiry bunch of individuals who spent their lives in the saddle and were well past the bloom of youth.
Although they didn’t work for the coach companies, they could be found in any coaching inn in the provinces as, once the mail coach had delivered the post to a regional town, the post boys then transported it to the surrounding towns. However, London being the hub of country’s commerce and trade, the capital’s post boys earned their keep by dashing urgent correspondence up and down the country. They, like the coach companies, had a clerk and The Bull’s was sitting tucked behind a desk with a sign advertising their services hanging from it.
Squeezing his way through the inn’s crowded waiting room, Josiah made his way over to him.
The post boys’ scribbler, a balding man in his early forties puffing a clay pipe, looked up as Josiah stopped in front of him.
‘I need to carry a letter to St Alban’s tomorrow,’ he said.
‘In stages or—’
‘No, just one man to travel the whole way,’ Josiah replied.
The clerk cast a critical gaze over Josiah for a moment then, grasping the bowl of his pipe.
‘It’ll cost you,’ he said, jabbing the damp end of his pipe at him
‘How much?’
‘It’s twenty-two miles at a penny ha’penny a mile plus a shilling for a change of horse at Barnet,’ the clerk replied.
‘Very well,’ said Josiah, handing over three shillings and nine pence out of his limited funds. ‘I need a discreet but dependable man.’
The man behind the desk grinned. ‘To a young lady I’m guessing.’
‘To my wife-to-be,’ Josiah replied.
The clerk looked him over again, then stuck his pipe back in his mouth.
‘Ball!’ he called out of the side of it.
A sandy-haired individual of middling height and sharp cheekbones put down his tankard and stood up.
‘I’ve got a job for you,
’ said the clerk, nodding at Josiah.
Ball sauntered across.
‘Where to?’
‘St Albans, tomorrow.’ Taking the rider’s arm, he moved him out of earshot of the clerk and fellow post boys. ‘But you have to hand it to the person it’s addressed to, no one else.’ He took out a florin and held it aloft. ‘Do you understand?’
Ball took it. ‘I do.’
Reaching into his inside pocket again, Josiah took out the letter he’d written to Charlotte.
‘This is for Miss Hatton,’ he said, offering it to Ball. ‘She’s a young lady of about this height.’ He indicated just below his ear with his hand. ‘Slender and with chestnut hair, green eyes and a sweet disposition.’ The postal rider took the letter. ‘She is living with her brother who is the archdeacon and who a is a fat, balding windbag and his wife, who has a pinched face and looks as if she hasn’t had a square meal in weeks. On no account are you to give it to them. Their residence is in the cathedral cloister, but I ask that instead of the front door you go to the servants’ entrance. Ask for the housekeeper, who has known Miss Hatton since she was a child and holds her in great affection, then ask her to quietly summon Miss Hatton.’
‘I understand,’ said Ball. ‘You can rely on me, sir.’
Trying not to dwell on the things that could go wrong between now and Charlotte opening his letter, Josiah gave the post boy a grim smile.
‘I hope so,’ he said. ‘I most sincerely hope so.’
Hearing the coach wheels crunch over the gravel, Charlotte went to the window. She kept her eyes on her brother’s coach until it turned out of the drive and then left her room.
Martha and Edmund had gone over to see Sir Hubert d’Apremont, the local squire, for tea. Although Charlotte had been included in the invitation, Martha had sent to say she was indisposed with a chill and would not be coming. Although after being confined to the vicarage for over a week she would have welcomed to chance to socialise, Charlotte was heartily relieved not to have to spend another afternoon in her sour-faced sister-in-law’s company.
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