by Carla Kelly
She smiled bleakly to herself. And now I talk to cornstalks, and stare out east windows, and ignore Mama’s conversation. I wish spring would come. Perhaps Hosea will want me to come to Charleston this year. I could help with the little one, and perhaps the sailmaker is still single. But this time I will travel overland to Charleston, and not by water. Never by water again. And if I am truly careful, whoever I marry will never know how much I ache inside. Only Mama will know.
It was useless to pretend to Mama now, so she dropped all her attempts. If it caused Papa pain to see her stand by the window night after night, or shake her head over food that held no interest for her, she was sorry, but it could not be helped. She worked in the kitchen in silence, and watched the icicles gradually grow shorter. Then the day came when they dripped steadily, and disappeared. Spring was here.
“Papa, I would like to go to Charleston,” she announced over dinner one night when the sky was still light with spring, and the front door open to the smell of lilacs all over Nantucket. “Can thee book me passage on a mail coach?”
“Of course I can, Daughter,” he said, his face lighting up with love for her, and anxiety that went deeper than concern. “You mean to visit Hosea?”
She nodded and smiled. “I think I am overdue there, and I did promise his wife that I would help with the baby.”
“It seems so long ago,” he said, his voice wistful.
“It is so long ago,” she agreed. “But I am not dead to duty, Papa! I still should get to Charleston.”
When she left the next week, Mama clung to her longer than usual as she kissed her goodbye. Hannah laughed and tried to pull away from the strength of her mother’s embrace. “I will be back!”
“I do not think I will see thee soon,” Mama said, and her lips trembled. “But if I do not, please know I love thee and all thy decisions. God keep thee, Hannah Whittier.”
It gave her food for thought as the mail coach rolled through the spring morning toward Boston, and something to think about beside Daniel Spark for a change. I must write Papa and tell him to keep an eye on Mama, she resolved.
Boston became New York, and then New Jersey, and then Pennsylvania as April slipped into May as they traveled south. The road was terrible in places, and merely dreadful in others, necessitating frequent layovers that stretched the limits of everyone’s equanimity except Hannah’s. Each day was much like the next to her, she reflected as she watched the other riders so impatient over delays. I am going nowhere to see no one, really, so what is another day on the road?
Virginia bloomed with dogwood and hawthorn. She breathed deep of the scented air and felt peace settle over her for a moment. It went away quickly enough, but it was nice to know she could feel something still.
They rolled into Richmond for the noon meal, and the food was better than usual. No matter how good the food, she did not dawdle over it. A veteran of the coach by now, she was first back to the coach so she could claim a seat by the window. She looked out with interest, wishing she knew which house belonged to John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and one of Papa’s heroes. And was that the spire to St. John’s Church, where Patrick Henry had spoken of liberty or death?
“Pardon me, Lady Amber, but is this seat taken?’
Her heart stopped, then started again. She continued to stare out the window, but she wasn’t seeing anything this time. Her breath came in little gasps and she felt herself getting light in the head.
“The last time you did that you were watching a flogging, and I distinctly remember pushing your head between your knees, Hannah. I’ll do it again if I have to.”
“Say my name again,” she said, her voice almost inaudible to her ears.
“Hannah.” It was a caress.
She turned from her stare out the window to see Daniel Spark smiling down at her. He took off his hat, an elegant low-crowned beaver hat, and waited for her response.
“Pl-Please sit down,” she stammered. “I know there are others, but I am sure there will be room for ....” Her voice trailed off as she stared at him.
“Excellent!” He sat next to her and tapped on the side of the coach with his walking stick. She heard the whip crack as the coach sprang forward.
Hannah half rose in her seat to look out the window. “But ... the others!” she exclaimed.
“I have paid them a ridiculous sum of money to reain behind and wait for the coach I was following you in to change horses,” he explained, sounding perfectly reasonable. “They were a bit disagreeable at first, even with all that money, until I told them it was a matter of the heart.” He took her hand and twined his fingers through hers, pulling her back down beside him. “Americans are so absurd.”
Hannah rose in stupefied silence, looking down once to make sure that it was Daniel Spark’s hand she held, and that her wits had not finally wandered away for good. “It’s your hand,” she mumbled. “I’d recognize it anywhere.”
“Well, yes. It’s attached eventually to a shoulder that really cries out to be leaned upon. Ah, excellent, my dear. Actually, if you don’t mind too much impertinence so soon after lunch, I would rather put my arm around you. I seem to recall that you fit so well there. Better and better.”
It required no great strength of will to slip her arm around behind him, and he smiled as she patted him to make sure he was real. “It’s really me. Hannah.” he insisted. “If you have any doubts ....” He kissed her then, pulling her onto his lap as the coach rolled along through some of Virginia’s prettiest unappreciated scenery. One kiss led to another, and another, until she was rosy with whisker burn. He stopped finally to rub his chin. “I’ve been traveling some pretty terrible roads to catch up with you,” he said. “That last inn ran out of hot water before I could even lather up.” He touched her red cheek. “You should have told me I was hurting ” He grinned. “If I was.”
She did not waste time with words, but kissed him instead until he was breathless and breathing hard. Then she held herself off from him and gently touched his face with the back of her hand. The little gesture sent tears to his eyes. “I am not going to disappear, Hannah,” he managed finally.
“Thee did before,” she reminded him as she arranged herself more comfortably on his lap.
“I was a damned fool,” he replied, placing his hand possessively on her hip. “Your mother pointed that out to me in her letter.”
“Her letter ....” Hannah began. Her eyes widened. “My mother wrote thee a letter?”
“Well, to be more specific, she sent copies of the same letter to the Blockade Fleet, the Admiralty House, my brother’s estate in Kent, my home in Dorset, Mama’s town house in London, and one to the Prince Regent for good measure,” he said, and grinned at the startled expression she knew was on her own face. He hugged her close. “I wonder ... I must ask her someday if she sent one to Napoleon, on the odd chance that I was languishing in one of his prisons awaiting execution.”
“Did you keep a copy?” Hannah asked.
“I have the one from the Blockade Fleet.” He tugged off her bonnet and tossed it across the coach. “It’s such a hindrance to fine kissing, Hannah. I have it on good authority that the other letters are on their way to becoming collectors’ items. Lord”
She took in that piece of news and allowed him to lean forward and rest his head against her breasts. “Hannah, she told me plainly that if I wanted to be noble and self-sacrificing, I was to do it with someone else’s daughter.”
“Mama wouldn’t say boo to a goose,” Hannah marveled, unbuttoning her pelisse so the buttons would not dig into his face as he rested against her.
“Well, she did, and so did your father, when I met them in Nantucket a month ago!” he said.
“You didn’t!”
“I did! How do you think I knew where you were?”
“Was I hard to find?”
He kissed her. “You would ask such a question of the man who raised the Azores in a fog bank from the deck of a sinking ship?
Of course, I did have to stop in Washington.” He winced at the memory. “I would blush to call it a capital city, but Lord Erskine, our ambassador, assures me that it will improve. Hannah, those pigs in the streets really must go.”
“Washington?” she asked. The mail coach was getting so warm that she removed her pelisse entirely.
“Yes, my love. Which reminds me ....” He set her careully off his lap and rapped on the side of the coach again. It rolled to a stop and he opened the door. “Sir, perhaps you would turn this vehicle back to the District of Columbia?”
In another moment they had started back up the road they had just traveled. “Lord Erskine assured me that he could take care of any legalities concerned with our marriage, and I have a notarized letter in my pocket from your father, giving his consent to our nuptials. I think all that remains is for us to collect the documents from Lord Erskine this afternoon and present our bodies before some magistrate and say ‘Yes,’ or ‘Hell, yes,’ or maybe ‘It’s high time.’ ”
“Daniel, I love thee,” she said softly.
“I know, my love, I know,” he whispered as he pulled her close again. “My feelings are precisely as I expressed in that letter. I still love you too much to marry you, but it seems the entire British navy, my regent, and my relatives will flog me around the fleet if I cannot come up to scratch and do my duty.”
“Not to mention my mother,” she added. Her hands trembled as she cupped them about his face and looked deep into his eyes. “I know exactly what I am getting into. I can wait in Dorset for the war to end, but when it does, thee must promise me to leave the sea for good.”
“Done, madam,” he said and turned his face to seal the promise with a kiss in each palm. “After we return to Dorset, it’s back to the blockade for me. We’re in for some rough years yet ....”
She put her finger to his lips and shook her head. “They will be years thee will look back on with great joy, my love. I can make that happen for thee, and thee for me.”
“Done again, madam,” he said as tears shone on his cheeks. “Promise me one thing, though.”
“Yes?” she asked as she wiped his face with her sleeve.
“No more lists, my love. Well, nothing beyond shopping lists for trips into the village, or perhaps Christmas presents.”
Her arms were around his neck then, her lips against his. “Thee won’t mind if I write over and over, ‘Hannah loves Daniel’?”
“Hannah,” he said, and it said the world.
Conversation seemed as much an encumbrance as her bonnet and pelisse that they dispensed with it for a lengthy spell. When they finally decided that words might be better, considering that they hadn’t actually married each other yet, Hannah sat up and smiled into her dear love’s somewhat glazed eyes. “Tell me something, Daniel.”
“Anything,” he murmured as he rebuttoned her dress.
“Does thee have something against the South?”
He looked at her, a question in his eyes.
“It seems that in the company of the British Navy, I am doomed never to see Charleston!”
THE END
A well-known veteran of the romance writing field, Carla Kelly is the author of twenty-six novels and three non-fiction works, as well as numerous short stories and articles for various publications. She is the recipient of two RITA Awards from Romance Writers of America for Best Regency of the Year; two Spur Awards from Western Writers of America; a Whitney Award for Best Romance Fiction, 2011; and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Romantic Times. Carla’s interest in historical fiction is a byproduct of her lifelong interest in history. She has a BA in Latin American History from Brigham Young University and an MA in Indian Wars History from University of Louisiana-Monroe. She’s held a variety of jobs, including public relations work for major hospitals and hospices, feature writer and columnist for a North Dakota daily newspaper, and ranger in the National Park Service (her favorite job) at Fort Laramie National Historic Site and Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site. She has worked for the North Dakota Historical Society as a contract researcher. Interest in the Napoleonic Wars at sea led to a recent series of novels about the British Channel Fleet during that conflict. Of late, Carla has written two novels set in southeast Wyoming in 1910 that focus on her Mormon background and her interest in ranching. You can find Carla on the Web at: www.CarlaKellyAuthor.com.
