Page 20 of Snowbound Regency Christmas
Rosie took over then, helping Mary to her feet. ‘I’ll assist you. Now,’ she added, then glanced at Andrew. ‘See there, sir? I’m learning how to move things along smartly, as I believe you nautical types say.’
‘Smartly, indeed,’ he told her, secretly delighted.
Mary looked from him to Rosie, and turned into the lady he remembered, as no-nonsense as her late husband. ‘This way, my dear,’ she told Rosie. ‘I won’t take a minute.’
It barely took that. There was hardly time for Fred Harte to clap him on the back and declare ‘Remind me never to cross you! Are all navy men so fierce?’
‘Aye, in the performance of duty,’ Andrew said, his eyes on the door where his two favourite women in the world had vanished. ‘Fred, I have an idea for Mary Hale. I know I am presuming, but tell me what you think.’
When he finished, Fred Harte gave him another clap on the back, this one threatening his wind. ‘Sorry, lad,’ the farmer said when he staggered under the friendly blow. ‘I forget you’re still recuperating.’ He leaned in closer. ‘I was thinking along these lines, too.’
Andrew was spared a reply when not one but three people appeared. Mary carried a small bundle and moved fast, tugging a young girl along. ‘There is a butler-looking fellow headed this way. Let’s go,’ Rosie said.
‘Um, Mrs Hale,’ Andrew started, looking at the little girl clinging like a burr to Mary’s skirt.
‘Matilda Madigan is my granddaughter,’ Mary said, her voice calm. ‘You remember my Sadie, don’t you?’
Who wouldn’t remember Sadie? She was a jolly, practical child. He knew she had married a foretopman. ‘Certainly, I do. But…’
‘Typhus took Sadie.’ The widow brushed away tears. ‘Her Thomas died in a prison on the Spanish coast. We don’t know the details.’
Oh, God. Andrew closed his eyes and took an involuntary step backward. Could Sadie’s husband have been in that cell next to theirs? He opened his eyes when Rosie took his hand in a firm grip. ‘Come now,’ she said softly. ‘Come now.’
That was all he needed. He eyed Mary Hale’s small bundle. ‘You didn’t have time to…’
Mary was equal to the moment. ‘Edward’s last, incomplete log and my Bible,’ she said. ‘One dress. Get us out of here.’
Fred got them out of there. Rosie threw her cloak around Mary’s thin shoulders. The servants’ door opened and the butler-looking fellow stood there, perhaps—the more fool he—ready to stop them. Oh, Lord, he was easy meat. Andrew knew he had not forgotten how to do his determined face, the one that even intimidated captains who thought they knew better about a ship’s trim during a fleet action. He raised his forefinger and that was enough. The man stopped in his tracks.
‘Get in the back with Rosie,’ Fred ordered, as he pulled the little girl up beside him, and Mary Hale followed her, nimble and determined.
Andrew saw a flash of black stockings and trim legs as Rosie climbed aboard to sit with him in the bed of the gig. He wrapped his hand-me-down boat cloak around both of them and pulled her close as Fred chirruped to his horse and they left the workhouse behind.
‘Nothing like a boat cloak to keep you warm, even a shabby one,’ he said. There was no question where his arm belonged—around Rosie’s shoulders. To his utter delight, she burrowed in close, her head on his chest.
‘She shared a room with two other maids, crammed into one bed,’ she told him, her voice low and full of emotion. ‘Matilda slept on the floor. I wouldn’t treat a dog like that. Oh. This kitten! Why did I do that?’
He laughed when she held out the kitten. ‘Because you’re a kind soul,’ he assured her. ‘Hang on. Your father is not going to waste a minute getting us back to his farm.’
Sitting in the back of a gig, close to a woman he more than admired, was a prime moment to move along whatever this was. He knew it, but damn if he wasn’t comfortable and warm and asleep in minutes. His last coherent thought was Rosie’s low-voiced ‘Silly man. You’re a terror to workhouses.’ He gave up a losing battle and slept.
Chapter Twelve
Rosie Harte knew she was a careful woman, discreet and cautious because she had been raised that way by a careful aunt and a discerning father. Her love of numbers had translated into modest but steady employment as a clerk in a nautical supply firm. She lived quietly and carefully in Plymouth, a town full of Royal Navy men, residing in the home of her employer.
She was careful with her money, giving her savings to Papa for safekeeping. Women could not bank.
Sitting beside a sleeping man, his arm loose around her, told her worlds about herself, because she knew she wanted more from life than a job and a nest egg, two things few women possessed, and might envy.
For many months, she had felt the urge for more, as she heard from friends her age who were now wives and mothers. Through her employer, she met officers and men of business, sharing tea with one, and good books with others. It was pleasant and gratifying, but little else. Her heart wasn’t engaged.
Not until she had helped Andrew Hadfield through a terrible time on the mail coach, held his hand during nightmares as his mind relived prison and starvation, and now served as his pillow in the back of a gig, had she truly understood love between man and woman. She breathed in the brine of his cloak and the odour that seemed to be his alone—Papa smelled like grain—and knew she wanted him, not as a casual acquaintance, but as husband, lover and father of her children.
And yet, and yet. He was in momentary expectation of a letter that would send him back to sea in this age of constant war. She knew she should forget him. He had made no declaration to her. There might be some tears on her part, but he would eventually be forgotten.
Easy to say, impossible to believe. She wanted to cling to him and tell him that he was the only man she would ever want, need or nurture. Other friends laughed when she shyly asked how they knew that the man they married was the one. ‘Silly Rosie, you’ll know when it happens.’
That was never good enough for someone of her logical mind. How did oneknow? she wanted to ask, but knew they would only laugh all the more. Now she knew, which only made matters worse. She loved a man engaged in a dangerous occupation who would be gone for weeks, months, years at a time. Every rumour of every fleet action at sea would set her life on edge. How did the wives of seamen survive such uncertainty? She had no idea if she was equal to such a life.
