Page 15 of Snowbound Regency Christmas
Endicott wasn’t much of a village, but he admired Christmas wreaths on doors, and even some of the places of business. Rosie directed him toward the public house. ‘I will be across the street in Notions and Sundries. When you finish in here, you can save me from embroidery thread.’
‘I take it you are not a seamstress,’ he teased.
‘Ledgers and numbers are my forte. I know double entry and bottom lines. I do knit, but not well. Give me numbers any day.’
A husband of the seafaring type would never have to worry about you, Rose Harte, he thought with admiration as he entered the pub.You can manage money and probably people.
He knew no one, but the occupants of the pub all seemed to know him. Someone let out a huzzah, and others joined in. He looked behind him, wondering who of importance stood there, and they laughed.
‘Nay lad, ’tis you,’ a drinker said. ‘Farmer Harte told us your story, and now we want to hear it from the hero himself.’
Someone spotted him a tankard of hot buttered rum. A bowl of stew miraculously appeared. He downed both as he told them the whole story. In this second telling, he felt something inside him let go.
‘Now I am here, looking for the widow of my sailing master at the Battle of the Nile,’ he concluded, knowing he needed to find Rosie before she died of boredom in Notions and Sundries. ‘Do any of you know Mary Hale? She is the widow of Edward Hale, and I know she lived here.’
He looked around at men shaking their heads. ‘Sounds familiar,’ someone said. ‘Can’t place it,’ said another. ‘Recently?’ chimed in a third.
No one knew.Blast and damn, he thought, as he stepped outside. At least the sun was shining, even if he wanted to chew nails and spit them out. He turned his face to the sun, remembering the warmth of tropical climates, enjoying the moment.
He looked across the street at a fast-moving woman with a determined look on her face. He could tell Rosie knew something. ‘I thought I was going to have to wade into that pub and drag you out,’ she said, breathless.
He took her arm. ‘What did you learn?’
She took a deep breath and managed a smile, the sly kind that made him wonder about women in general and this one in particular. ‘I learned that I will never embroider, knit well or crochet, but I already knew that. The man I eventually marry—poor fellow—had better be able to afford a dressmaker.’
‘I am certain he will,’ Andrew said, mentally going over his accounts ledger at Carter and Brustein’s. He spotted an empty bench. ‘Over here.’
‘Well?’ he asked when they sat. ‘I came up short in the public house.’
‘I, on the other hand, discovered that the best way to find out about women is in a notions shop.’ She grasped his hand. ‘I learned that Mary Hale lived on Canterbury Street. When her funds ran out, she was taken to the workhouse.’
He shook his head, weighed down with such awful news. ‘Master Hale knew everything in the world about sailing, but he was a babe in the woods over money. Is the workhouse here?’
‘No. It’s in Ashburton, on the way to Exeter.’
‘May we go now? I am ready.’
‘Tomorrow. There is more bad news.’
She turned tear-filled eyes to him, and he was a no-hoping goner.I am the world’s most easily duped man, he thought.I am worse than Master Hale. It took every ounce of discipline he possessed not to wrap her tight in his arms. ‘What in the world…?’ would have to do.
‘You don’t know him, but Vicar Ewing has the living of St. Timothy’s Parish.’
That’s nice, he thought, wondering how this could possibly matter as much as a widow living hand to mouth. ‘And?’
‘The lady behind the notions counter said that Sir William Keeting is turning him out and replacing him with his nephew,’ she said. Bless her heart, she took pity on his blank look. ‘Sir William, a baronet, controls the living of the parish. You can’t imagine how important Vicar Ewing is to us.’ She sat a little straighter. ‘He taught a parish school for pupils such as I. Most of us here have little money and no titles, and so the vicar educated us.’ Her shoulders drooped. ‘Yes, his gout flares now and then, but he is our dear cleric.’
He knew this mattered to Rosie, even as he yearned to snatch Mrs Hale from a workhouse. Rosie looked at him as if he could say the word and solve the dilemma. ‘I am outgunned and outclassed in this matter,’ he told her, his air of capability a myth at the moment. ‘Can anyone help Vicar Ewing?’
‘Perhaps not,’ she said, after a moment’s silence. ‘But I will listen to him and cry with him. This way, Andrew.’
The vicarage was comfortable and timeless looking, built to withstand the wind and rain that often plagued Devon. ‘Rough ground,’ Andrew said as they approached the house, and took her hand. The path was clearly smooth, but she did not quibble.
The vicar opened the door himself, his face serious, until he took a good look at Rosie Harte and ushered them in. Introductions went around. ‘Master Hadfield, stories are circulating about your escape from a prison in Spain in the middle of a raging gun battle,’ Vicar Ewing said, amusing Andrew how fast a modest tale of skinny men escaping a prison could turn into a battle with Boney himself.
Vicar Ewing hobbled over to a chair and gingerly propped his leg onto a footstool. ‘There now, my dear Rosie,’ he said. ‘It is improving.’
Thankfully, Rosie wasn’t one to chat when disaster loomed. She cut right to the source, like Alexander the Great’s bold action with a knotted rope at Gordium. ‘Vicar, the ladies in Notions told me you are being turned out by Sir William Keeting.’
