A Haven on Orchard Lane

by Lawana Blackwell

  “We’ll take it to a jeweler in Exeter. But what of this place? Can you imagine living here when it’s rebuilt?”

  “I can imagine that easily.”

  They kissed again. “July? The cottage should be finished, and you would have the summer break for our honeymoon. I assume you’ll want to resume teaching?”

  “Yes,” Rosalind answered. “But there won’t be enough time to journey to India unless I resign.”

  His green eyes met hers. “India? If you’re unable to sit backward on a train, I fear such a journey would make you miserable.”

  “But it’s been your dream.”

  “A person should have more than one dream. I would love to explore the Continent with you. Wouldn’t you like to see Paris? Rome?”

  “Very much,” she replied. “But are you certain you’ll not have regrets later?”

  “I’ve come to realize I’ve romanticized India because of my family. But I carry them in my heart. Geography has nothing to do with that.”

  She touched his clean-shaven face. “You’re a good man, Jude.”

  “I hope so,” he said, smiling back at her. “But what do you say? If we packed lots of ginger biscuits, could you bear two to three hours on a Channel steamer?”

  “Two to three hours? I can bear that.”

  In front of the cottage again, Mrs. Deamer kissed Rosalind’s cheek. “Your mother will be delighted.”

  “She wasn’t in on this?”

  “I want to ask her formally,” Jude said. “After. It would have put her in an awkward position had you turned me down.”

  You knew that wasn’t going to happen, Rosalind said to him with her eyes. She fingered the ring in her pocket on the return walk, too caught up in a wave of euphoria to add to the discussion of a European honeymoon.

  “Thomas Cook tours are the best,” Mrs. Deamer was saying. “Tickets, currency exchanges, meals—they handle it all for you, yet allow some time for exploring on your own.”

  When they reached the porch of the yellow cottage, Mrs. Deamer turned to say, “I’m flattered to be included in this happy occasion. But I’m going upstairs. It should be family now.”

  Her mother sat upon the parlor sofa, knitting her fourth, perhaps fifth, blue blanket. “How was your walk?”

  “Quite eventful,” Rosalind said.

  Jude walked over to the side of the sofa and knelt.

  Her mother set her knitting into her lap and smiled at each of them. “I expect you have something to say to me?”

  “Rosalind has consented to be my wife, Mrs. Ward. May we have your blessing?”

  With eyes shining, Mother replied, “You shall always have my blessing.”

  Epilogue

  SATURDAY, 12 AUGUST, 1899

  The birthday cake rose three layers, a mountain of flour and butter, currants and sugar, nutmegs and cloves, eggs and almonds, candied citron and lemon peel, beneath peaks of white icing.

  “That’s the most marvelous cake,” Charlotte said to Coral in the kitchen.

  “Marvelous,” Mrs. Deamer echoed.

  “Now you see why I wanted to bake it here?” Coral said. “It would have fallen apart on the train.”

  “She helped me put together the sandwiches as well,” said Mrs. Meeks.

  “We cooks must stick together,” Coral said to her.

  She was more than a cook, however, as the proprietor of Shipsey’s Fine Confections and Pastries on Exeter’s Queen Street, and the wife of one Patrick Teague, who kept books for her and three other establishments. They lived above the bakery with their fourteen-year old son, James, who was accompanying his Teague grandparents on a visit to Wales.

  “Your wife is an artist,” Charlotte said to Mr. Teague in the garden, where Rosalind directed men arranging chairs.

  Mr. Teague placed a chair at the end of a semicircle and smiled. He was as tall as Coral was short but with the same strawberry-blond hair.

  “She has a shrewd head for business as well. Did she say to you that her own brand of tinned biscuits are to debut by Christmas?”

  “Wonderful! And no, she did not.”

  “I knew I should have married her when she asked me,” Noble Clark said, hoisting another chair from the stack.

  Coral’s husband straightened. Charlotte exchanged worried looks with Jude.

  And then Mr. Teague laughed. “Sorry, mate, but you’re not her type.”

  Mr. Clark winked at Charlotte.

  She wagged a finger at him, relieved that the former Amy Hugo had not yet returned from visiting her family in town. But then, after sixteen years, Amy surely knew her husband’s quirks.

  Mr. Clark had found his own unlikely success, sour notes and all. In fact, those were his claim to fame at the Vaudeville Theatre in London’s West End. Charlotte and Mrs. Deamer had caught his act in a musical comedy two years ago. He would appear onstage with a cello, played with startling competence, and belt out modern tunes.

  Years ago, the management had figured out to have him serenade a comely actress, thereby stopping the patrons from pelting the stage with fruit. Even those in the cheap seats respected women. This was no longer necessary, and audiences cheered at his appearances, even sang along.

  The memory of his butchering “Lead, Kindly Light” during Charlotte’s first visit to Saint Paul’s made her smile. Had it really been nineteen years ago?

  I’m actually seventy! Charlotte said to herself. Apart from swollen knuckles and a lower back which had to be coddled, she did not feel old.

  You’ve been most kind to me, Father. Most kind. Every year, bad memories faded while new ones were created. She could hardly wait to see what surprises the next century held.

  “Mother?”

  Rosalind stepped to her side. Her daughter seemed not to have aged at all but for faint lines at the corners of her eyes. A checked teal-and-white serge summer gown with a wide tan belt complemented her slim figure. Upon her mahogany pompadour perched a wide-brimmed straw hat with ostrich plumes.

  “We have forty chairs from the guildhall,” Rosalind said. “Should we bring some from the kitchen and dining room?”

  “Forty should be more than enough.”

  Her daughter looked doubtful. “When is the train to arrive?”

  “In an hour.”

  “Does she know?”

  “I doubt it. I suppose I should stop by and ask.”

  “When has that ever been of any use? She made her own bed, Mother.”

  “Still, may I steal Jude away early?”

  Her daughter sighed but then wrapped an arm around her for a sideways embrace. “But of course, Mother. You can’t stop trying to bring out the best in people, can you?”

  Charlotte patted her cheek and walked over to the cake table. Alice and Beth, ages seventeen and fourteen, were pinning purple and green crepe paper streamers in loops around the edges of the cloth while Jinny’s grand-pup Lottie watched from a patch of sunlight.

  They were lovely girls, Alice with her father’s wheat-colored hair and her mother’s half-moon eyes, Beth with Rosalind’s brown hair and the Pearce cleft chin. And both with a faint olive patina to their complexions.

  Charlotte had had to learn, years ago, that every grandmother considered her grandchildren the brightest ever born, and that boastings to fellow members of Saint Paul’s auxiliary were not welcome.

  “Your decorations are very nice,” she said.

  “Is it time to bring out the cake, Grandmother?” Beth asked.

  “Not until after lunch, I’m afraid.”

  “I don’t mind,” Alice said. “I want everything to stretch out as long as possible, because it’s your special day.”

  Beth nodded, and Charlotte thought, Not only are they bright but kind.

  Ten minutes later, she sat beside Jude in his two-seat phaeton behind a pair of red Cleveland bays, Pete and Peggy.

  “I’m quite happy to be pulled out of chair duty,” he said, taking up the reins. “I suppose it’s the mathematician i
n Rosalind that makes her want them arranged so precisely.” He looked at Charlotte sideways. “In strictest confidence, mind you.”

  “‘Seal up your lips, and give no words but mum,’” Charlotte said. “From Henry VI.”

  He chuckled. Her son-in-law had gained a little weight since marrying Rosalind and shed some hair. More important, though, his laugh lines were deeper.

  When Mr. Blyth, the tobacconist, passed on eight years ago, Jude bought the shop and expanded Pearce’s Books. Amos White became his assistant full-time, and fish scales stopped showing up in odd places.

  Jude flicked the reins, and the horses clip-clopped past trees loaded with waxen green apples. Snowy cumulous clouds with ragged edges floated overhead.

  “The sky is beautiful today,” Charlotte said.

  “I forget to look up,” Jude said. “A hazard of working indoors. But just think: If clouds formed only on one small spot on earth, multitudes would pay to visit there.”

  Charlotte looked at her son-in-law. “I have thought that myself.”

  He tapped his temple. “Great minds, eh?”

  She laughed and patted his sleeve. The party would be grand, but better yet, in the scheme of things, were the heart connections with family and friends.

  While helping her from the carriage in front of the Fletcher cottage, he asked in a tone that begged refusal, “Shall I come with you?”

  “Only if you wish,” she replied with a droll smile.

  “Um . . . I should keep the horses company.”

  Sabrina Fletcher answered the door with a hopeful expression that faded straightaway.

  You get the face you deserve, Charlotte thought. Bitterness had a way of seeping through the pores, tightening the eyes, pulling the mouth downward.

  Dashed hope had ravaged the woman’s looks even more so. It was not for Danny and Albert she pined, but Teresa, who, at fifteen, escaped her suffocating affection by marrying a young farmer she had met on May Day. They raised sheep and two small children fourteen miles away in Musbury, visiting but rarely.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Fletcher,” Charlotte said, moving forward so that the woman had no choice but to stand aside. This was not for the neighbors’ amusement.

  In the parlor, she turned and said, “Mr. Pearce and I are on our way to meet Danny and Albert’s train. Will you come with us?”

  Her frown deepened. “Why should I?”

  “They send funds to keep you from the widows’ home. Does that mean nothing?”

  “Only for their father’s sake. I could move in with Teresa’s family any day I choose.”

  When pigs fly, Charlotte thought. “Life is short, Mrs. Fletcher. You’ll want to have people to love in your old age.”

  Mrs. Fletcher’s eyes clouded, but from her mouth came, “Whatever would we have to say to each other?”

  “You could say how proud you are of them, to begin with.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  That raised Charlotte’s ire. “Better still, you could beg forgiveness.”

  “They should beg my forgiveness! I hear things! Once, twice a year, they visit you, their sister, their parents’ graves, but never once do they stop by to ask how I’m faring!”

  Enough, Charlotte thought. “They’re not likely to do that until you apologize for the cruelties you inflicted upon them.”

  “How Christian of them! Supposing I was stricter than I ought to have been at times. It’s hard work, tending family! What happened to turning the other cheek?”

  “Turning the other cheek is what has kept you in this house,” Charlotte said with great restraint. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”

  “Perhaps she’ll change her mind one day,” Jude said as they set out again.

  “That’s been my prayer,” Charlotte glanced back at the cottage. Mrs. Fletcher skirted away from the window.

  What a sad little life.

  And mine could have been likewise.

  How utterly foolish, to be unable to ask forgiveness. To allow pride so much importance when it was the sorriest of companions in old age.

  Danny and Albert disembarked from the train, Danny, age twenty-nine, clad in conservative summer tweeds and a felt homburg hat, and Albert in tan linen with a straw boater atop his copper hair. They set their satchels on the platform to embrace Charlotte and even Jude, trading greetings until Jude said, “Let’s catch up on the way, shall we?”

  They were great successes. Jude and Rosalind had played no small part in that, having funded their fees at University College after Mr. Fletcher passed from an aneurysm. Danny, a solicitor, was attached to Mr. Miller’s practice, and Albert was an insurance underwriter for Lloyd’s of London.

  “I’m to be on my own soon,” Albert twisted around to say from beside Jude in the front seat. “Danny’s found a more appealing flatmate-to-be in Mr. Miller’s niece.”

  Charlotte turned to Danny next to her. “Julie Miller? I met her last visit. She’s a lovely girl.”

  “The wedding is to be at Christmas. Please say you’ll come.” Danny cuffed his brother’s shoulder. “And I wanted to be the one to give her the news.”

  “Um . . . sorry. Forgot,” Albert said.

  “A Christmas wedding will be great fun,” Charlotte said.

  Four carriages with horses lined the lane, and two wagons. Mrs. Deamer waved from the porch and walked out to meet them.

  “What a sight for sore eyes you are!” she said to the boys as they traded embraces.

  While she retained the title of housekeeper, she was more of a companion, the housework taken care of by Lynette, the day maid Charlotte had hired in 1882, shortly after purchasing the cottage from Mrs. Hooper, now deceased.

  This was made possible when the newlywed Roger returned the money she had lent him, in return for her signing a letter drafted by Mr. Lockhart, agreeing never to mention him in any future interview. That was the last thing she would wish to do, but the money was welcome in any case.

  Charlotte’s three favorite men and Mrs. Deamer accompanied her around the cottage. She heard the strains of “Hearts and Flowers” as they turned the last corner and discovered that the house chairs had been moved into the garden for the members of the Port Stilwell Orchestra.

  “Rosalind’s idea?” Charlotte asked Jude.

  “The girls’, actually,” he replied.

  “I love this.”

  Guests milled about chairs and refreshment tables, setting down dishes to applaud her. Rosalind and the girls advanced. Because the party was planned, Charlotte did not expect to be as struck with emotion. Tears blurred her eyes, and she was glad for Jude’s supporting arm.

  You are the most blessed woman on earth, she said to herself.

  “Come, Mrs. Ward, let’s join the celebration,” Albert said.

  “He can’t wait to get to the food,” Danny said to her, and his brother mugged a face at him.

  Charlotte laughed. Some things never change. “Yes, let’s.”

  Lawana Blackwell has thirteen published novels to her credit, including the bestselling GRESHAM CHRONICLES series, set in the countryside of late nineteenth-century England. She and her husband live in Texas.

  Books by Lawana Blackwell

  A Haven on Orchard Lane

  A Table by the Window

  THE GRESHAM CHRONICLES

  The Widow of Larkspur Inn

  The Courtship of the Vicar’s Daughter

  The Dowry of Miss Lydia Clark

  The Jewel of Gresham Green

  TALES OF LONDON

  The Maiden of Mayfair

  Catherine’s Heart

  Leading Lady

  www.lawanablackwell.com

  Sign up for announcements about upcoming titles.

  Twitter: RevellBooks Facebook: Revell

 

 

  .Net