by Carla Kelly
As did many things in life, the matter came down to money. Bluntly, he had it and she didn’t. A visit to Cardiff in September had found him sitting across the desk from Susan Jenkins Davis in her closet of a bookroom, staring at her banking statements showing a paltry balance, thanks to the tiny pension from her late husband.
“Suzie, you’re at your last prayers and I won’t have you living here in genteel poverty,” he said, through with dodging and weaving the issue like Gentleman Jackson.
Ah, but she was still a Jenkins, so she gave the matter one last stab. “Tommy, you could move back here to Cardiff.”
“I think not, Sister,” he replied, but gently. “I’m fond of Plymouth, and I have bought a lovely place with a view of Sutton Harbor. You’ll have your bedchamber and your own sitting room.” He took both her hands in his. “And I will not have to worry about you, dear heart. Humor me and manage my domestic affairs. What do I know about living in a house?”
She finally agreed, probably because each foray through her tattered accounts was more frightening than the one before. She certainly did not need to oversee the little brother who had fought for years at sea and who could take care of himself.
A month later, she’d moved into his new house. Her last feeble attempt to dissuade him only made him laugh.
“Me, marry? Suzie, who in the world wants a sailing master set in his ways?”
T
“Bored, Tommy? Do this little thing: I have wrapped the brush and comb set that the former owner left here. Either deliver it in person—it is a mere four miles to Haven—or take it round to the posting house. Mrs. Poole can afford whatever the charge will be.”
Packaged addressed, he wrapped his boat cloak tighter and braved the treachery of slick streets in autumn rain. If he mailed the package, time would remain for a walk to Devonport to observe good ships being dismasted and placed in ordinary, now that Napoleon was far away and peace reigned. Of course, such a sight wasn’t one to foster a cheerful mood.
The rain let up after the package was safely on its way. He stared at the ships long enough to mangle his heart, the one that still wanted to be at sea.
“Peace is a humbug,” he announced to a seagull eyeing him from the mainmast of a frigate—gadfreys, it was the HMS Thunderer—doomed to lose its masts in a day or two.
He sighed. “I am still bored.”
CHAPTER ONE
U
“There must be some mistake. How in the world am I to pay for this package?” Mary Ann Poole asked herself in dismay as she stared at the note her landlord had tacked to her front door.
Since yr were at worke, I paid ta man, he had written—dear Mr. Laidlaw, whose grasp of English was a loose hold, indeed. We can sittle up this evling.
She hadn’t ordered anything. Any extravagance through the post was far beyond her means.
Such news was the last straw in a week of last straws. Mary Ann wanted to plop herself down on the bench by her home, drum her feet on the pavement, and throw a royal tantrum, such as she had seen today at the home of Lady Naismith, where she worked. True, she was Lady N’s secretary and in the bookroom with the door closed, but the argument was loud and long. She was too frightened by all the noise to open the door even a crack to see if Lady’s Naismith’s spoiled daughter threw the fit or if her little boy did the honors. Thank goodness her own daughter Beth had better manners.
“My head aches,” Mary Ann said as she stood up, removed the note, and entered her home.
Beth looked up when Mary Ann came inside. She held the open package in her hands, and Mary Ann saw what looked like a carved ivory brush and comb set.
Mary Ann kissed the top of her daughter’s head. “Did school dismiss early, or am I late again?”
“Late again, Mama,” Beth said. “Is Lady Naismith being unreasonable?”
More than unreasonable, Mary Ann thought, but you don’t need to know that. The subject was easy enough to change. “‘Unreasonable’? Is that a new spelling word for this week?”
Beth nodded. “So are ‘quality’ and ‘inestimable,’ but unreasonable seemed to fit. After all, I am only seven,” she concluded, satisfied she had made her point and logic was on her side.
The unwanted brush and comb forgotten a moment, Mary Ann wished with all her heart that her late husband were there to enjoy Beth and her wit, which reminded her of his own. Drat you for dying, my dear, she thought for the umpteenth time.
“So you are only seven,” she said. “I don’t doubt that before bedtime, you will find a way to use both words in a sentence.”
She sat down beside her daughter, because she couldn’t continue to ignore the expensive-looking comb and brush. She picked up the brush from Beth’s lap, turning it over to admire the delicate filigree. Her own hairbrush was serviceable beech, with boar bristles, left behind by her husband when he left for Spain with Sir John Moore’s army.
Beth held the ivory comb, equally carved along the top. “Mama, does this belong to a princess? Ha!” She held it high in triumph. “It is of inestimable quality. I did it!” She leaned against her mother and giggled.
“I predict you will someday be the first woman admitted to the Royal Academy for… for… something or other.”
Mary Ann set down the brush and picked up the box that the set had arrived in. She looked at the brown paper, putting two torn edges together. “Mrs. M. Poole, plain as day. I am certainly M. Poole,” she said. “I can see why you opened it, Bethie, but this can’t be ours.” She looked closer at the address itself, squinting, because the hour was late and Beth had been taught not to lay a fire without her mama or Mr. Laidlaw present. Coal was dear, after all. “Fifty-two Dinwoody Street. Oh dear. That is the error.” She held it up so Beth could read it. “I suppose Dinwoody looks like Carmoody at least a little. Maybe they were rushed at the posting office.”
“Should we take it ’round to Dinwoody Street?” Beth asked. She avoided Mary Ann’s gaze and spoke in a small voice. “I should have looked carefully, but Mama, I have never opened a package before and I wanted to.”
“I suppose you have not,” she said, wondering just how many prosaic events Elizabeth Poole would be denied because of their poverty. She could be philosophical as she pulled her daughter closer. “Did you enjoy opening it?”
Beth leaned back against her. “I anticipated something wonderful,” she said solemnly, rolling that wonderful word from last week’s spelling list around on her tongue. “It was a mystery, all wrapped in tissue and brown paper.”
She turned around in Mary Ann’s lap to look at her. “Can we put it back in the box and take it to that address?”
Mary Ann tightened her arms around the only blessing that Second Lieutenant Bartimus Poole had been able to give her. “If it is supposed to be a surprise to this Mrs. Poole, we had probably better return it to the original owner so he or she can rewrap it.” She squinted at the return address. “S.M. Thomas Jenkins, 34 Notte Street, Plymouth, Devon. That’s a relief. We’re only a few miles from Plymouth. We’ll take it to … what on earth is S.M.?”
“Sadly Maintained?” Beth teased, and cuddled closer.
Mary Ann laughed. “I prefer Strangely Morbid.” Sitting so close, she heard her little daughter’s stomach growl. “But now I suggest supper.”
Mary Ann waited until after supper and put Beth to copying her letters on her slate before taking a look in the tin box where she kept her monthly funds. The postal stamp on the gift clearly indicated five pence that she now owed her landlord. She took out the coins, thinking of the vicar’s sermon on loaves and fishes. That was well and good for sermons, but only left her wishing she could turn even one pence into a handful of them. Well, the package had to be paid for no matter what.
She left her daughter busy with the week’s spelling words and went next door to the Laidlaw residence, no more grand than her own three rooms. There was a time when she would have laughed behind her hand at such a humble row of houses, but that was back when sh
e was newly married, with Bart’s promising career dangling before them like a carrot before a horse—but no, more like Aesop’s goose, whose golden eggs would keep coming, providing no one killed her.
“Think of it, Mary A,” he had told her before the transport bearing the Fifth Northumberland Foot sailed for Lisbon. “If the late Lord Nelson, son of a vicar like me, can climb to the top, why not I? I aim to come home a general.”
He came home a second lieutenant still, dead at Corunna defending the British army backed up against the ocean by the French. Her share of his battle glory was a tiny pension to support her and their daughter, born a month after his death in Spain.
As she stood in front of Mr. Laidlaw’s modest row of four houses, she envied the kind old fellow the income of three of those, and the living in one of them. In her present state of penury, that income sounded munificent.
If she had once been too proud and notably lacking in humility, those days were gone. Let this be a lesson to you, Mary Ann Poole, she thought now, and not without some humor. She was, despite everything, an optimist still.
Mr. Laidlaw had been kind, but he still needed the pence, which she gave him, after assuring him that she would return the package to the owner and no doubt receive reimbursement. Besides, it would never do for her landlord to know how close she skated to ruin, since he expected three shillings monthly rent.
As Mary Ann lay in bed that night, Beth snuggled close, she wondered just how she was going to tell her child the bad news. Lady Naismith had informed her today that as of Christmas Eve, her services were no longer required.
When Mary Ann, shocked, had asked why, the woman had shrugged her shoulders. “My children think I can find a cheaper secretary,” she said.
“Will you at least provide me with a good character?” Mary Ann asked. “I’ve done all that you required, and done it well.”
The baronet’s widow agreed. She promised to provide just such a letter at the end of the week.
Happy Christmas to us, Mary Ann thought, as she closed her eyes. She tried to remember what it felt like to have her husband’s arms around her. It was years ago now, and even the best of memories begins to fade. It saddened her to think that soon she would have to refer to the miniature of him, proud in his regimentals, to call to mind the lovely man who had married her and promised great things, before Mars the God of War worked his own will.
Mary Ann glanced at the ivory brush and comb set on her bureau, idly wondering what they might bring if she took them to a pawn shop. The notion passed quickly, but not as fast as her conscience wanted. Her father might have been just a clerk in a cloth factory and not a vicar like her father-in-law, but she had learned from an early age that stealing was sinful.
Beth stirred and whimpered in her sleep. Mary Ann kissed her daughter. She thought about the approaching holiday and had only the smallest wish. Please, please let S[trangely] M[orbid] Jenkins pay me back my five pence.
CHAPTER TWO
U
Mary Ann couldn’t return the brush and comb to Mr. Jenkins in Plymouth any sooner than Saturday, when she had her half-day off. To her relief, the weather was precisely right—cool but no rain in sight.
Mary Ann bundled the box and its lovely gifts into a satchel. After a check of Beth’s muffler and coat, they started off. She would like to have had sandwiches with her daughter in Plymouth at a tearoom, but if they hoped to take a hired conveyance home, it was better to eat their bread and butter before they left.
For December, the day was surprisingly mild. Careful to remain close to the road’s edge, Mary Ann matched her steps to Beth’s. As they walked, she reminded her daughter that her father had been part of the Fifth Foot from Northumberland, and he was a champion walker.
“Didn’t Papa ride a horse?” Beth asked as they swung along.
“Aye, he did, but he told me in one letter that he liked to march on foot with his men, too,” she replied. “He would be proud of us.”
And he would, too, Mary Ann decided, as she admired her daughter’s auburn curls, so like her father’s. If there was some moment in the celestial realms when a heavenly curtain ever parted, she hoped Bart knew that their child was well cared for, and that she was doing her best—no matter how paltry it seemed at times. It wouldn’t be too much to ask that he be allowed a glimpse of their daughter.
But what did she know of heaven? She hadn’t the money to have her husband’s body returned to Blyth, Northumberland, or herself and their infant daughter, for that matter. The vicar, overworked because of so many burials in a common grave that day, hadn’t time to answer questions about what happened to a good soldier after death. She had decided by herself that God was merciful and surely allowed glimpses below for residents in His heavenly kingdom. It was serviceable theology and gave her enough comfort to keep going when times were tough. Lately, they were always tough.
But she could worry about hard times later. Today it was enough to be free from that bookroom where she handled Lady Naismith’s financial affairs, wrote her letters because the woman could barely compose a sentence, and wished herself elsewhere. Soon she would be elsewhere, as a matter of fact. But I will not think about that today, she told herself.
Hand in hand, they walked the few miles to Plymouth, past country houses and long lanes with larger manors at the end of them. Road traffic increased the nearer they came to Plymouth, and eventually there were sidewalks.
“Do you know where Notte Street is, Mama?” Beth asked, when they reached that lovely height where Plymouth stretched below, a busy seaport still, even with the war over.
“Not a clue, my dear, but we shall find someone honest-looking and ask.”
Even that could wait. The busy highway turned into a street and then another, until they were in the bustling labyrinth called the Barbican, the old city. Beth looked around, her eyes wide at the sight of buildings three stories high and shop windows with toys and books and ready-made coats and hats.
“That’s it,” Beth said, pointing to a fur muff. “That is what I would like for Christmas this year.”
“You wanted one last year, too, as I recall,” Mary Ann said. She reached in her reticule and handed her daughter a small tablet and a pencil. “Better draw it.”
While Beth sketched the fur muff, Mary Ann wandered next door to a lending library and bookstore. There it was in the window: a copy of Emma, out only a year, cozied up next to Guy Mannering, and the scandalous Glenarvon, by Lady Caroline Lamb, who dampened her petticoats to make them cling and carried on a torrid romance with Lord Byron. Mary Ann had learned a lot by listening to Lady Naismith’s low-brow daughters.
“Mama? Is it to be a book for you this Christmas?” Beth asked. She held out her drawing of the muff, which Mary Ann tucked into her reticule.
“I believe so, dearest.” Mary Ann pointed to Emma. “That one. I should find employment in a bookstore. I could read a book overnight and return it the next day, no one the wiser.”
They laughed together at such nonsense. Mary Ann drew the book cover and added it to Beth’s sketch in her reticule.
For good measure, Beth drew a pair of kid gloves, dyed a gorgeous lavender, declaring, “I will give these to you, Mama,” which meant that Mary Ann had to draw a darling chip straw bonnet for Beth.
They exchanged glances, and Mary Ann was glad for the package that went astray, so they could have a half-day like this in Plymouth. We need to do this more, she thought, which yanked her back to earth and the reality that in a week she would be unemployed, with empty hours on her hands.
But now it was time to smile and hold out her hand for Beth, so they could cross the busy road and find 34 Notte Street.
And there it was, a pastel-blue house, part of a row of houses but nothing like their modest dwelling in Haven. These were two-story symphonies in stone, probably built to mimic Bath’s Crescent Row. Each bore a different pastel shade, with shallow steps leading up to a door under an equally stylish cornice.
“My stars,” Mary Ann said. “Perhaps the S.M. stands for Stunningly Magnificent.” Her reward was a giggle from Beth.
They had found the house, but the issue became which entrance to use. Beside the front steps ran a wrought-iron fence, behind which were more steps leading down to the servant entrance.
“We’re not servants or staff, but we certainly weren’t invited and aren’t expected,” Mary Ann said, eyeing the distance to the front door and a brass knocker. What do I feel like today? she asked herself. A secretary in Lady Naismith’s house, or a widow touring Plymouth with her daughter?
She decided she felt like a tourist. Maybe, on that short trip from the street to the front door, she could pretend it was her house. Those few seconds of dreaming would be enough, even if the footman who answered the door shooed them downstairs.
Her hand in Beth’s, Mary Ann took her time mounting the steps. Beth wanted to use the knocker, so Mary Ann let her.
An older woman opened the door. She was neat as a pin, with a serviceable apron about her middle. Perhaps Stunningly Magnificent Thomas Jenkins employed a housekeeper rather than a butler or footman. Never mind, Mary Ann decided. He was evidently wealthy and could be eccentric if he chose.
“I am Mrs. Poole, and this is my daughter, Elizabeth,” Mary Ann said. She held out the opened package. “This was delivered to our address in Haven, but I’m not that Mrs. Poole.”
She remembered to dip a small curtsey, hoping the housekeeper would invite them in for a glimpse of grandeur within, although it certainly wasn’t necessary. She did want that five pence.
She could see that the woman was mulling over exactly that: whether to just take the package and thank them for their honesty or usher them inside. As it turned out, Beth decided the issue.
