Page 73 of The Cornish Widow

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Harriet woke thenext morning to rain pattering on the bedroom window. She lay for a few minutes in the bed’s comfortable warmth, unwilling to throw the blankets aside and expose herself to the autumnal chill. A glance sideways showed her Lydia almost totally covered by her bedclothes, just the top of her dark head visible.

Then she remembered Jack, and her admission to Lydia last night that she liked him. Which had not been entirely honest. Not about how much she liked him, at any rate. To her surprise, this had not met with the disapproval she’d expected. Instead, Lydia had nodded with decision. “Good,” she’d said. “I like him too, although I should like him better if he were to give up the smuggling when he marries you.”

This had so shocked Harriet she’d been bereft of words for a full minute, and was saved from answering this declaration by the arrival of Bertha, come to tell them dinner was served. She’d had to throw on her dressing gown, that still held a faint aroma of tobacco in its threads, and run downstairs with Lydia to eat, putting off thinking about Jack until later.

Now, lying on her back and listening to the rain, she couldn’t escape the image of him standing with his legs slightly apart on the deck, swaying with the movement of the ship under him. The image was so vivid, she could almost feel the movement herself and, for a worrying moment, feared the return of the mal de mer. But it vanished as quickly as it had arrived.

Instead of lying in bed dreaming about a man she couldn’t have, would in fact be afraid to have, whatever conclusion Lydia had formed, she’d best get up. So she pushed back the covers and set her bare feet on the floorboards. Brrrr. Too cold by half. The water in the jug on the dressing table had chilled overnight so her wash was perfunctory and hurried. She’d leave Lydia in bed a while. No need for the children to rise as early as her and Bertha, not with it now cooling down so much.

The single-handed struggle into her stays overcome, she donned a workaday gown, a clean apron and her lace-up boots and quietly let herself out of their bedroom onto the gloomy landing. Downstairs, Bertha was just finishing sweeping the floor after having lit the fire in the range earlier. She looked up as Harriet came in. “Tea’s in the pot on the range.”

Harriet poured herself a cup and took it to the table while Bertha finished the floor. It seemed she’d been up a while and all the chores Harriet had planned to help her with had been accomplished. She dismissed the guilt for this with a sense of further guilt at the dismissal. Bertha, oblivious to her mistress’s conscience, sat beside her with a thud and poured herself a cup of tea. “Goin’ up to see him then?”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” Bertha wiped her lips on her apron front. “Are you goin’ up to the big house to see him today?”

What should she say? What had she done that had given away how she felt about Jack to her faithful servant?

Bertha placed a pudgy hand, still a little damp from the chores, on Harriet’s. “Don’t look like a frightened rabbit at me, my girl. I’ve known you all your life, don’t you forget. Longer than anyone. I know when I see that look on your face. And I knows it when I see it on the face o’ the man you’ve taken to as well. So, are you walkin’ up there to see him or not?”

Harriet scraped around for words and failed. How had Bertha seen more than she had? Was she right and was Jack as enamored of her as she was of him? On the ship he’d asked to kiss her, after all, but that had come to nothing. Just the merest brushing of the lips before they were disturbed. A gentle kiss. Could she trust him to be gentle in all things? She couldn’t risk repeating what she’d gone through with Ben again. And Jack was a man, after all, with a man’s needs, and Ben had always insisted that his needs be met whenever he required it. Wouldn’t Jack do the same?

That thought cooled her blood.

“No. I’m not running after him. If he wants to see me, then he can come here.”

Bertha slurped her tea. “I’ll lay odds that if you don’t walk up there to see him this morning, then he’ll be down here by teatime this afternoon.”

Laying odds on a man did not sound the right thing to do. Might Bertha be right? Might he be thinking right now of coming down to see her?

Bertha set her teacup down with a bang. “I wouldn’t play hard to get with him, if I was you. He’s a keeper and a gentleman.” She gave Harriet a hard look. “A sight better than the man you married.”

Harriet’s mouth fell open. She’d always been aware of Bertha’s silent disapproval of Ben, but never had it been voiced before.

Bertha nodded. “Don’t look so surprised. I’m not a fool. I saw what was going on when he was home from the army.”

“You did?”

She nodded. “You can’t hide anything from me. I had to hold my tongue though, or he’d’ve given me my marching orders and I wanted to stay close to you and the children. I had to keep quiet and just be glad he wasn’t home often.”

“So everyone knew except Lydia?” Shock cascaded through Harriet.

Bertha nodded. “That girl wouldn’t know a fact if it jumped up and hit her on the nose. She sails through life with her head either in the air or in a book.”

Harriet shook her head. “Not so vague as all that. She asked me about Jack last night before dinner.”

“And you said what?”

“That I like him.” She paused. “I didn’t tell her how much, but she guessed. She said I was to marry him.”

Bertha chuckled. “More sense than I thought she had. Well, I’ll be. Fancy that. And she was right. So you should marry him. He’s head over heels in love with you, but you’re too silly to see it.”

A delicious little wriggle of excitement coursed through Harriet, provoking the strangest of hot feelings in her very core. What might he be offering? Nothing, most likely, although he’d said he didn’t want a mistress. No. She was fooling herself here, and Bertha and Lydia were just as addled. Nothing would come of this. Nothing at all. But a very large part of her was hoping something would.