Such thoughts brought the bad memories flooding back. Every meal she had been in agitation, in case some trivial deficiency set him off. The soup was not salty enough — could they not afford salt? Or the wine was not to his taste, or the joint, or there were no nuts. Then there were the occasions when he had sat down at his little desk in the bedroom to work out his accounts.
That was the worst time. It would be quiet for an hour, maybe two, and then he would emerge with two or three bills in his hand. “What does this mean?” he would say. Or, “Why have we spent so much on butter… or currants… or cheese?” And she would try to explain… the hot weather… the dampness in the cellar… but haltingly, stumbling over her words. And he would storm out of the house, slamming every door he passed through, to find a tavern or tap room. Then she would wait, sick with terror, for him to return home. Sometimes he came home a little drunk, but repentant and affectionate. And sometimes… not.
She leaned her head against the wall, shaking, her arms wrapped across her stomach. Even now it lurched in fear, just from the memory. He is dead, she told herself, he is in a Cornish churchyard, and he can never hurt me again. But still she shook from head to toe.
Maria found her there, some time later, although whether hours or minutes Nell could not say, and led her gently to a chair.
“You would feel better for a good cry,” Maria said. “It does no good to keep everything inside you like this, and not have a proper outlet. I have not seen one tear from you, and Nell, that is not usual when a woman loses her husband, whatever the circumstances.”
“I never cry,” Nell whispered. “But I cannot think, and that is the worst part. I have to think what to do and I cannot! My mind will not work.”
“Give it time,” Maria said. “You have to grieve, Nell. Your life has changed, and it takes time to adjust. Let yourself grieve.”
“How do I do that?”
“You will find a way.”
Maria hugged her tightly, but Nell could not respond. She could not move. She was frozen in place, like a waterfall in winter, an illusion of movement captured in solid ice. She appeared to be a living, breathing person but inside her heart was nothing but ice.
11: A Day In Portsmouth
Nathan wished a thousand times over that he had caught the mail coach from London. A post-chaise and four should have made the journey easily in three days, or perhaps two if he were lucky with changes and weather. In the event, luck had deserted him entirely. He suffered every conceivable kind of delay, with every part of the vehicle breaking at some stage, and the horses falling into a great variety of afflictions, such that he could hardly proceed for ten miles without some mishap. They did not overturn, which was the only mercy afforded them, and the whole journey took six days from start to finish, driving him into a frenzy of impatience. He hated unforeseen mishaps with a passion. Order… he must have order and calm, and this journey had none of either.
But he was in time. His cousin lingered on, and had even rallied a little.
“We have a new physician attending him,” his cousin’s wife Jessica told Nathan. “Not that we have any complaint about Dr Sykes, for he has always been extremely thorough which is so reassuring, do you not agree? However, we thought it advisable to have another opinion, and Dr Hay so impressed me with that business with the footman last year. Fixed him up when no one else had the least idea what to do for him, and we all thought the arm would have to come off. Hay is terribly modern, of course, and he brings his sister with him, which I cannot quite like, but there is no doubt that William is at greater ease now, and therefore Mama is, too.”
“I have heard of Hay,” Nathan said. “He has an excellent reputation.”
“Oh, indeed. Everyone speaks most highly of him, and his hospital is doing such good work. Even Mama likes him, despite all his new ideas. He is distantly connected to the Bucknells, and therefore to Mama.”
“Is he not married to one of the Marfords?”
“Lady Harriet, sister to the present Marquess of Carrbridge. Mama likes that, too, of course. She does like a man to have connections.”
Nathan chuckled, knowing of his aunt’s fondness for the nobility. But then she was a duke’s daughter herself, so it was hardly surprising if she preferred her own kind.
He went to see his cousin first, and was shocked by what he saw. William’s skin was grey, and he lay motionless, every breath a rattle deep in his chest. He was asleep, but it did not seem like a natural sleep. Such a healthy, vigorous man he had been, but his chest had always been a weakness. Another man could take a chill and shake it off in a few days, but William would decline into fever and heart-rending bouts of coughing, and be bed-ridden for weeks. Then he would have years of perfect health before being felled by another chill. Yet this did not seem like his usual malady, and perhaps even Dr Hay’s modern methods could not save him this time.
Aunt Amelie was in her usual chair by the fire in the saloon, protected from the strength of the flames by a screen of exquisite tapestry work, the product of her own, much younger, fingers. She sat upright, as always, her back never touching the padding on the chair, despite her advanced years. Five sons she had brought into the world, only to see three of them leave it before her, and now a fourth hovered on the brink. Only Felix remained, if he still lived.
“Ah, Nathan!” she said when he greeted her. “We were worried that you might have encountered some mischief on the roads. You must take care, for all our dependence is on you now.”
Now that he had arrived safely, the grievances of the roads seemed of less moment, so he said, “A few delays, but nothing too serious. Besides, the difficulties of the journey are greatly to our advantage. What would the world come to if one could travel into Yorkshire without a single problem, eh? Why, we should be overrun with the curious and the idle, the inns would be full, the streets would be impassable and one would not be able to hire a postilion for a king’s ransom.”
She did not laugh — Aunt Amelie felt it beneath her dignity to laugh — but her lips moved slightly upwards in what, in lesser mortals, might be called a smile.
“What do you think of him?” she said. “He cannot last much longer, I am sure.”
“William is not well, certainly, but he has recovered from positions almost as dire as this before. You despaired of him five years ago, do you recall? And yet he was entirely well again within a month. Consider, too, that the weather improves every day. Nothing is so conducive towards health as a spell of warm weather and sunshine.”
“Moss says there is rain coming, and an easterly wind.”
Nathan laughed. “Moss is an excellent lady’s maid, Aunt, but I do not consider her much of an expert on the weather. Let her advise you on velvet and lace, but do not let her predict the weather. On my journey north, every ostler and tapboy told the same tale — warmer weather is on the way.”
“Well, if you prefer to listen to ostlers and tapboys and other riffraff… But tell me at once — have you heard any word of Felix?”
“I have not,” Nathan said. “Harry thinks we should advertise again, and I must say—”
“Harry Smethurst!” she said disparagingly. “I have nothing against him, for his family has been in Yorkshire longer than ours, but I would not take advice from him or his father. You could find better friends if you set your mind to it, Nathan. You should have gone to Oxford, as all the Harbottles do. You would have made a very good sort of friend there.”
“I enjoyed Edinburgh, and I must take issue with you regarding Harry. No one could have a better friend.”
“Hmpf,” she said, not at all convinced. “A Squire’s son?”
“You are a grumpy old lady,” he said, planting an affectionate kiss on her lace-capped head. “Harry is a splendid fellow, and I will not hear a word said against him. But what of Felix? Shall I advertise again? Perhaps more explicitly this time?”
“If you think it necessary, although it is humiliating to confess that we have no idea whe
re he is.”
“It was the family which rejected him, remember?” Nathan said gently. “Felix wanted your forgiveness.”
“I shall never forgive him, never!” she said, her voice strident. “What he did was unforgivable. But he is William’s heir, so he must come home now, he must! Nathan, what are we to do if we cannot find him? The position is so… so awkward!”
“We will survive,” he said easily. “William has arranged everything so that I have the power to manage the estate, so there will be no difficulty in that way.”
“But the uncertainty, Nathan! I hate uncertainty.”
“As do we all, but we will manage,” he said. “We will pursue every avenue to find him, but if we fail, there are legal processes to have him declared dead. While that is going on, I shall have the management of the estate. There is nothing to worry about, aunt, nothing at all.”
“Hmpf. You will have to marry,” she said, her eye brightening. “A wife and a nursery full of children, that is what we need. One of the Grayling girls. Lady Anne or—”
“Oh no, not this again! I shall marry when I am ready, aunt — when I find the right woman,” he said, smiling at her. “And it will not necessarily be a duke’s daughter.”
“Well, do not leave it too late, will you? At least tell me that you are thinking about it.”
“I am thinking about it.”
And instantly his mind’s eye was filled with the vision of a certain widow, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. How foolish, for she was not at all the sort of woman he liked, not a cosy, convivial armful, with flirtatious eyes. But she was extraordinarily beautiful… and her serenity was balm to his spirits.
~~~~~
Nell was in no rush to settle the routine household bills, for now that she had Jude’s salary, there was enough money in the locked drawer in her dressing table to settle all of them whenever it suited her. Instead, she spent a little money on herself — a length of bombazine, and some black ribbons and buttons. She might be in mourning, but she need not wear rags.
However, one bill in particular nagged at her like an aching tooth — the solicitor in Portsmouth who presented his compliments to Mrs Caldicott, and would be obliged if she would settle the outstanding amount on her late husband’s account with them to the sum of twenty guineas.
Why would Jude engage a solicitor in Portsmouth? It was a puzzle, but there was only one way to find the answer.
“I shall be out all day tomorrow,” Nell said one evening at dinner. “I am going to Portsmouth with Mrs Flack. Her carriage will be here at eight o’clock.”
“Are you to visit Admiral and Mrs Flack too?” Lydia said.
“No, I have business in the town.”
“Business? What business?” Lydia’s voice was high with surprise.
“Private business,” Nell said firmly.
“May I come too, Mama?” Louis said, and she saw the anxiety in his eyes.
Poor Louis! He had never seemed to be troubled by the family’s difficulties, but then he had always slept through the worst of the rows. He went to bed straight after dinner and nothing woke him before morning. Sometimes he had awoken to find his mother injured and his father gone, but everyone explained it as an accident and he seemed to accept that. He was, perhaps, a little inclined to cling to Nell. If she went out, he would insist on accompanying her, often holding her hand painfully tight. He was terrified that she might have an accident, she supposed. He could not know that the danger of that particular type of accident was now gone.
“Very well, but you must be on your best behaviour. You may take a book to read.”
She had considered travelling on the stage, but Tilly Flack went every week to spend the day with her brother-in-law, the Admiral, and allow her two daughters to play with their cousins, so Nell had no compunction in begging for a lift. Unlike Lydia, Tilly was too polite to enquire as to the nature of Nell’s business in Portsmouth, so they passed the journey agreeably, and Nell’s spirits rose with every mile further from Southampton.
Tilly shared one piece of good news — the formal inquiry in London into the Minerva’s foundering had concluded that it was most likely the result of faulty navigational maps. Local men reported that the particular rock which had been the brig’s undoing was an especially treacherous one, frequently hidden below the surface of the water, and not marked on older maps. Mr Sherrard confessed that, although he obtained updated maps frequently, and all the others he had checked marked the rock, he could not be absolutely certain that there were not older maps in use aboard the vessels of his fleet. Mr Blackwell, the Second Mate, who had commanded the helm at the time, was adamant that he had been following the prescribed course to the very best of his ability, and that no rock was marked on the maps he had seen. The deck boy had been asleep until the collision had woken him, and Mr Ellsworthy, the passenger who had also been on deck, was still too injured to attend the inquiry and besides remembered nothing at all, and so Mr Blackwell’s version of events prevailed, and no blame was attached to Captain Caldicott.
So Nell was let down in the centre of Portsmouth in cheerful spirits. She had on her new gown of black bombazine, a reworked bonnet with splendid black ribbons, and her best pelisse. The latter was a little too warm for the day, but she did not regard the discomfort for the pleasure of knowing she looked well. Or as well as a new widow might be expected to look. Two gentlemen watched her pass by with open admiration, and that too gave her pleasure, even as she chided herself for her vanity.
Mr Blake’s office lay in a discreet side street, one of a row of well-kept terraced houses, some of them taken up by expensive shops — a milliner, two mantua-makers and a boot maker. One house appeared to be an exclusive gentlemen’s club. Mr Blake’s establishment looked no different from the other residential houses, except for a small brass plaque beside the door. ‘Gideon Blake, Solicitor’ was all it said. Nell rang the bell, gave her name to the smartly dressed manservant who answered and was admitted without question, since she had written ahead to announce her visit.
With Louis and his book happily ensconced in an outer office with the clerks and a jar of sugared almonds, Mr Blake received Nell in the sort of book room that would not have disgraced a lord’s London residence. The plush carpets, the highly polished wood and gleaming silver, and the cases of leather-bound volumes bespoke a life of elegance, and an army of well-trained housemaids armed with feather dusters.
“Mrs Caldicott.” He was a dapper little man, perfectly fitted to his surroundings. Not ostentatiously fashionable, but quietly and expensively well dressed. “Pray sit down. May I offer my deepest condolences for your recent sorrowful bereavement. How may I be of service to you?”
Nell was not accustomed to matters of business or finance, and in other circumstances such conversations would reduce her to quivering indecision. This opulent room, however, was exactly the environment in which she had been raised, and Mr Blake reminded her of one of her father’s stewards from many years ago. He was, therefore, only a servant and she was Miss Godney of Daveney Hall, who knew exactly how to deal with servants — politely, but firmly.
“You sent me this bill, Mr Blake. I should like to know the meaning of it.”
He took it from her, but without looking at it. “This, madam, is the bill for services rendered to your late husband by myself and my employees.” He gazed back at her complacently.
“I rather gathered as much, Mr Blake,” she said, sweetly. “What I should like to know is what precisely those services were.”
“Ah, such details are confidential, madam,” he said smugly. “They must remain secret between lawyer and client, as I am sure you will appreciate.”
“Your client is dead.”
“Regrettably that does not affect the position.”
“Does it not? I am sure you will appreciate, Mr Blake, that I cannot sensibly pay a bill for who knows what, without a full reckoning of activities undertaken, expenses incurred and so forth. Why, anybody
could send me such a bill, could they not? A man could present a bill to me, and claim that it is for services provided to my late husband, and perhaps no such services were ever provided.”
Mr Blake’s face did not change, and his tone was urbane. “You cannot mean to suggest that this bill is false?”
“Not at all, Mr Blake. No indeed, I am sure it is all perfectly correct. I merely point out that, without further information, I have no way to distinguish one bill from another, the true from the false. If my butcher presents me with a bill, why then I know perfectly well that I have eaten beef, so there is no difficulty and I will pay the bill without hesitation. But a bill such as this—”
“I understand you,” he said, his smooth composure not slipping in the slightest. “Very well. I can perhaps tell you that Captain Caldicott’s instructions involved the transfer of sums of money. Discreet transfer, if you understand me.”
Sums of money! “How much money?” she said sharply.
“Mrs Caldicott, you cannot expect—”
She got to her feet and whisked the bill out of his hand. “Good day to you, Mr Blake.”
He jumped up too. “Now, let us not be hasty. I am sure we—”
“How much?”
“Two hundred pounds each quarter day.”
“Where to?”
He licked his lips, then sighed. “An attorney in London. I do not know where it goes after that, believe me.”
London. Two hundred pounds every quarter.
“How long has this been going on?” she said.
“Sixteen years.”
For a moment, the world spun and Nell wondered if she were about to swoon. Instead she sat down again, very slowly. As if in a dream, she opened her reticule and pulled out the small purse that contained twenty guineas. Wordlessly she handed it over. In equal silence he counted the coins, took the bill from her, inked ‘Paid in full’ across it, sanded it and handed it back. Still in silence, she folded it, pushed it into her reticule, rose and made for the door.
The Widow (Silver Linings Mysteries Book 1) Page 11
