All Dressed in White EPB

by Michaels, Charis

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The phaeton ride to Blair Street required the same balance and white-knuckled grip as their journey to Henrietta Place, but Tessa needed no excuse to hold fast to her husband. She sat immediately beside him, one hand on his leg, the other on his bicep. He cleared his throat every time they made a turn, an intimate acknowledgment of her clenching hands, and Tessa smiled. She was so very happy. She never would have predicted that confessing (or, as Joseph viewed it, “revealing”) the events of the night with Captain Marking would be so . . . liberating, so redemptive. She felt like she’d been trapped in a dark room for a year and someone had thrown open all the windows and unlocked the door.

  When they cleared Whitehall, the traffic thinned considerably, and Tessa began to pepper Joseph with questions about the sale of the guano.

  “Is the buyer an agricultural cooperative?”

  He glanced at her. “Indeed, it is. A collective of landowning farmers throughout the country who have banded together. They buy fertilizer in large lots so they all benefit from lower costs. I sold them our entire first shipment before we’d even mined it.”

  “And they want more? You’ve said there is more guano to be had.”

  He grimaced. “Oh yes. There is more.”

  “What’s wrong?” She laughed. “Are you not excited by the potential?”

  “No, actually, that excites me very much. It’s merely . . .” He steered around an overturned potato cart. “Stoker would call me out for laziness and affectation toward contrived poshness, but the guano mine is hardly my ideal place of employment.” He rolled his neck.

  “Like Vauxhall Gardens is not your ideal night out?” she surmised.

  He harrumphed. “Vauxhall is a palace compared to the guano mine. The island is hot and desolate, and the mining is grueling. The food is terrible, we sleep in tents. The only diversion is reading by candlelight, but the winds preclude it. I dread going back, honestly. Originally, I saw no way around it, but now . . .” He let the sentence trail off.

  “But now?” she prompted. She squeezed his thigh.

  He made a growling noise and glanced at her hand. “But now,” he repeated simply. They made the turn at Ross Street.

  He started again. “I returned to England with what I thought of as my Plan for the Future. I was going to situate you and the baby with noble and stoic detachment—” She giggled and he said, “Clearly I’ve failed at this goal.”

  He went on, “I was going to return to Barbadoes and mine as much guano as I could and turn another profit. With that money, I was going to throw myself into local politics somewhere with potential for an eventual Parliamentary run. I still want those things, but my personal return to Barbadoes may not be, er, strictly necessary.”

  Tessa nodded, working to keep a reasonable smile on her face. She forced herself to raise her eyebrows in mild interest. She would not squeal. She would not clap her hands together. She would not throw herself across his lap and say, Thank God, please never leave England again.

  “Stoker will certainly return to Barbadoes,” he said. “Without a doubt. The mine suited him. He’s good at managing sailors and miners and he’s actually good at the physical work. He’s a prodigiously good sea captain. But me . . . ?” He allowed the question to trail off.

  She was just about to prompt him, But you? when he reined the horses and brought the phaeton to a stop in an alley. A boy darted from the shadows to mind the animals, and Joseph tossed him a coin.

  “Is this Blair Street?” she asked. She reached out her hand to step down, but he grabbed her around the waist and lifted her to the ground. Her skirts whirled around her ankles, the heavy brown wool catching air like springtime cotton.

  “Yes. Just around the corner.” He held out his arm and led her across the bustling street. Tessa had become reasonably familiar with Blackwall that summer—the dock and warehouses, the searcher’s office, and the waterfront—but she knew almost nothing of the crowded streets just two blocks north of the water. Up and down Blair Street, buyers, shipbuilders, insurance brokers, booking agents, mariners, and investment firms catered to the busy shipping traffic of the River Thames.

  She wished for her diary so she could take down the names and trades on the placards beside each door. Her future was still uncertain—hopeful, but uncertain—and she’d learned nothing this summer if not the value of expanding her knowledge, especially about an industry that so fascinated her.

  “The buyers have summoned me only for signatures today, I’m afraid,” Joseph told her. “But we can make an appointment to return, if it pleases you. You may learn the process of how cargo transfers to buyers and how the buyers distribute it to the customers.”

  “I should like that very much,” Tessa said. He was just about to lead them around a crowd of sailors when the boy minding Joseph’s horses gave a whistle.

  “Oy! Gov’nor!” the boy called.

  When they looked back, the boy was bent over the raised hoof of one of the horses. He waved them back with a wild hand. Joseph swore and turned them, but Tessa slipped her hand from his arm.

  “Do you mind if I wait here while you go?” she asked. “I should like to take in the lay of the street. I’ve never ventured this far from the water.”

  “Right,” sighed Joseph, squinting into the alley at his horse. “This shouldn’t take long. I believe this enterprising young man has mistaken me for a patsy.”

  He tightened his gloves and stepped back into the alley. Tessa could not hide her smile as she enjoyed the sight of him walking away. Broad shoulders, long strides, no cravat at all, she’d seen to that. He propped a shoulder on the brick wall beside his rig, waiting for the boy to make his pitch.

  Tessa turned away and ambled the length of two storefronts, reading signs and peering through windows. When a door opened on the third office she stopped and waited, craning her head to catch a glimpse of the office beyond the door.

  “You’ll not regret it, Simon!” bellowed a voice from inside.

  Tessa froze.

  The voice went on, “I’ll call again next week to compare the numbers. Mark my words. No regret!”

  Her heart missed two beats.

  Now a gloved hand extended beyond the open door, an ebony walking stick clutched just below its golden handle.

  Tessa knew well the gloves and the stick. She knew the voice.

  Her father, Wallace St. Croix, hovered in a doorway, right here, right now, a foot from her.

  Every muscle in Tessa’s body went tense, as if a thief had leapt from the alley to rob her.

  Not a thief, she told herself—her father hadn’t stolen from her, he had abandoned her. Worse than a thief, she thought, breathing hard. She felt like the marionette puppet that hung on the edge of Christian’s crib. When she pulled its string, his arms and legs restricted wildly. Tessa felt wildly restricted. She felt like folding herself into a square of brown wool, doubling over until she was inside herself.

  She looked franticly around, searching for a place to hide, but then her brother August emerged from the door, followed by her next brother, Lucas. They were putting on their hats, their faces were obscured, but of course she knew them. She had known them all—from the first note of her father’s voice.

  And now here was her father, stepping beyond the door, still calling to someone inside.

  Her impulse to hide dissolved. The sight of him sent a surge of fresh anger straight to her heart. She would not run or play the victim. She would force him to see her.

  “Hello,” she said. Her voice was weaker than she preferred, but she forced the word out. It was something. It was more than the three of them managed. They stared at her as if she’d dropped from the sky.

  She realized she’d not seen the boys in nearly a year, her father not in six months. And now her anger was mixed, inexplicably, with a shot of joy. Oh, how she’d missed them. The thick, athletic handsomeness of her brothers. The round, stooped stodginess of her father. The confident bell
ow of his voice. Her brothers trailed her father around like ladies in waiting. It was a sight she’d seen a million times, and a million times she’d regarded them with an affectionate shrug.

  There they go. Smart and successful and adoring.

  No longer.

  Her joy evaporated when her brothers turned their faces away. Could they not even look at her? Meanwhile, her father’s watery eyes narrowed and his mouth puckered like the pit of a plum.

  Shame on you, she thought. Shame on you for regarding me like a maid you fired for theft.

  Shame on you for bringing up the boys in the ways of business but teaching me nothing but how to flirt and look pretty and to entrap a man.

  And most of all, most pitiful of all, shame on you for choosing not to know your grandson.

  For how long they stood, staring at each other, Tessa could not say. Eventually, her brother August turned to her and half whispered, half called her name. He sounded as if he was embarrassed to say it out loud. He sounded as if they were meeting in an alley instead of a busy street. She raised her chin a notch.

  “Tessa,” August hissed again.

  “Hello, Gus,” she said at full volume.

  Her brothers had not been present when her parents had disowned her. Wallace and Isobel St. Croix had come to Belgravia alone. Even so, the boys had made no effort to contact her again. They’d disowned her without even looking her in the eye.

  “Where,” asked her father, “is the child?”

  He appeared truly confused, as if he believed Christian would be forever attached to her, along with a sign the stated the date of her wedding and the date of his birth, a mere six months apart.

  “My son’s name is Christian,” she said. “And he is at home. With his nursemaid.”

  Her father glared at her as if she was willfully lying. He looked right and left at the crush of businessmen and sailors maneuvering around them. A boy with a wooden placard and a tall stack of broadsheets had set up business nearby, and her father took her by the arm and pulled her behind his sign. Her brothers closed rank around them. She was walled in by disapproving St. Croix men and a broadsheet boasting the first weeks of the new king’s reign.

  “A nursemaid?” repeated her father. “And who pays for this?”

  Tessa stared at him. Did he really believe her to be destitute? She knew her family wanted to detach from her, but had they also wanted her to suffer? Her churning stomach dropped.

  She said, “My husband, Joseph Chance, provides for us.”

  “Chance remained married to you, did he?” her father asked.

  “Yes,” she said, “he remained.” She tried to find words for how much more he had done, but Joseph’s actions had been a stream of intangibles. Patience, curiosity, support, regret, and acceptance. Today—love.

  “I see the wardrobe he provides,” said Wallace. “Or perhaps he forces penance on you with this dress.”

  Tessa looked down at her brown wool dress. Of course her appearance would be her father’s most relevant measure of her wellness. She had worked so hard to fix the parts of herself that had beguiled one man to impregnate her and another man marry her. In her father’s view, the reform translated only to plainness. There was no redemption in his eyes.

  She almost said this, but her father narrowed his eyes to accusing slits and said slowly, “Would you like to know of your mother?”

  Tessa closed her mouth. She did not expect this. She had assumed that being disinherited precluded information about the state of her mother. The truth was, in spite of everything else, she had missed her Maman. She had called out for her during the agonizing hours of labor; and again, when Christian had been a ravenous newborn who would not suckle. She had seen a pretty purple hat and thought of her mother’s love of violet, about their shared love of shops and pretty things and fashion.

  But what of their shared love of each other?

  Isobel’s love of the family’s reputation and her esteem in the eyes of society had been greater. Tessa had known this.

  And still she asked, “Is . . . Maman well?” Concern edged out bitterness.

  “No, she is not,” her father boasted. His eyes bulged and he held his hands out. His expression said, What did you expect? “She is heartbroken,” Wallace hissed. “Her only daughter is disgraced. Her son-in-law is a stranger, bribed with a dowry to give her child a name.”

  Tessa took a small step back. How foolish it had been to ask. Tears blurred her vision, she felt her throat begin to constrict. The bustle of the street felt deafening, while individual voices and horse hooves grew indistinct. She was underwater. She heard everything from the bottom of a miserable sea.

  “But why are you in Blair Street?” her father went on. “This is rare form, indeed, Tessa.”

  “Joseph has business with a buyer. I’ve come to look on. I am learning the dockyard, if you can belie—”

  Her father gave a snort of disgust. “Looking on? How can your brothers go about their business in Blackwall if they are to fear colliding with you?” His pugnacious frown pulled his entire face downward, like wax on a candle.

  Tessa tried to say she would not acknowledge her brothers in future.

  She tried to say that their business and her business need never intersect.

  She tried to say that, by the way, Christian superseded any disgrace that she had brought on the family—

  But her voice had grown high and thin, her lip quivered. And she did not have the opportunity. Joseph appeared at her side.

  One moment she had been alone with her scowling family, and then Joseph had been there, tucking a broadsheet beneath his arm.

  “Ah, Wallace, imagine the odds. I can see your surprise, but never fear. We won’t be in Blair Street long. Not today. And I wouldn’t worry too much about future encounters. Tessa and the baby and I are looking at property in County Durham. On the North Sea. In Bartlepool.”

  “Hartlepool,” Tessa corrected.

  “That’s what I meant,” said Joseph. “Hartlepool.”

  His lips quirked up, betraying the slightest hint of a smile.

  “Tessa has an interest in the new dockyard there,” he said. “She’s shown quite a capacity for importation. Entirely self-taught, obviously.”

  Tessa looked back at her father and brothers, at their stunned expressions, their distaste, their entire lack of control over anything she said or did. Her tears receded, and she felt a wave of fresh courage. “The future is at St. Katharine, by the way. The West India Docks is on the decline. You might look into it.”

  “Well said,” cheered Joseph and took her by the arm.

  “If we’re all finished here,” he told Wallace St. Croix and his sons, and he shouldered ahead, giving them little choice but to step aside. He steered Tessa into the street.

  She did not look back. She stared down Blair Street, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, feeling shock and pride and gratification.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Joseph gave a weak smile, a smile that answers mundane comments about the weather.

  “But you did not really mean what you said about Hartlepool?” she asked.

  “Oh,” he sighed, leading her around the corner to the buyer’s office, “I’ll need to own property somewhere in the bloody country in order to run for Parliament. County Durham sounds like as good a place as any. Why the hell not?”

  Tessa stopped walking. He looked down at her. He’d said these words casually, agreeably, as if she’d suggested fish for dinner and he’d agreed.

  “Why not?” she repeated softly, her heart in her throat. Truthfully, she felt her heart in her eyes, in the expression on her face. Her heart beamed from her chest.

  Joseph winked at her and then led her into the buyer’s shop.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  It was decided that Tessa and the baby would travel to County Durham by private coach, along with Perry, a detachment of grooms, and a burly sailor named Benjamin who would manage the trunks and glare at a
nyone who dared give them a second look.

  Joseph would remain in London for a fortnight, settle the most pressing of the guano business, and travel to County Durham by sea, reaching Hartlepool a day or two before Tessa and the baby.

  Joseph hated to part ways with her again, but when she had recovered from the shock of his offer, her immediate priority became departing Belgravia as soon as possible. She was determined to relieve the Boyds.

  Joseph was shamed by how uncomfortable she had been. Hartlepool might be a fool’s errand, but he would do anything to make up for allowing her to live on the kindness of relative strangers these last eleven months. If Hartlepool turned out to be a terrible place, or the dockyard held no potential, if she hated it or the baby seemed unhappy, they would return to London and determine some other plan.

  And there was the small matter of the boast Joseph had made to her father. He was determined to follow through. More important, Tessa had discovered the little town herself and she wanted it. Her reasons were plainly stated and made sense. Not an abundance of sense, Joseph noted, but she’d hedged no secrets and offered a line of logic they could both see. It was such a hopeful start.

  And so Joseph had arranged for the coach, arranged for rooms along the journey, arranged for protection and every comfort he could predict. In a fortnight, they would rendezvous. In good weather, he’d need only four days to make the journey by sea, and he planned to leave in time to scout out County Durham for himself. She’d mentioned a “cottage,” but in Joseph’s view, his days of cottage life were long over.

  He arrived early to Belgravia on the day she was scheduled to depart and went over the route and expectations with the coachman and grooms. Tessa and Perry soon convened in the doorway to oversee the loading of the trunks and make tearful good-byes to Sabine and the Boyds.

  Tessa tried once again to convince Sabine to join her, but her friend declined. Everyone held the baby one last time. A debate ensued about the rightful owners of Tessa’s goat. When, at last, the trunks had been secured and the baby had been fed and the goat had been given to the Boyds as a gift, Tessa sought out Joseph among the grooms.