Chapter Eight

Amos realized how sad it was to walk into an empty house. When in port and he had some time, he lived with his stepmother in Groton, Connecticut. She always had a cheery word, whether he was back from a six months voyage or a trip to the pub. He was never alone aboard the Betty Bright , either, because of close quarters and the nature of his work.

This was different. He was in a strange country, a strange village, and had suffered through a strange dinner than never happened, because the people inside Tifton Manor were vipers. He wanted––needed––someone to talk to, at the very least. At the very most, he needed someone to soothe his heart. There. He admitted it to himself.

Either Madeline or her mother had left a lamp burning in the kitchen, so he didn’t feel entirely cast away…and look, under a cloth was a loaf of bread and jar of jam. He set aside the cloth, saw the note, and pounced on that. He was more starved for companionship right now than any food he had missed.

A s kind as her mother is, please let it be from Madeline , he thought. He looked to the signature first and sighed with relief. He sat down, propped his feet on an opposite chair, and read her note. It was prosaic beyond belief, except there was a small matter that flew into his heart and lodged there.

D ear Captain , he read, We hope all went well tonight. Mama has a little more Christmas sewing, but I will be by in the morning to finish tidying. I found your grandfather’s pasteboard box where he stored the letters he couldn’t send because of the war, and those few he dictated to me when he could no longer write with a steady hand. You’ll see the box upstairs. I miss him. Yours sincerely, Madeline .

After such an uncomfortable evening, Amos was inclined to grasp at straws, so grasp he did, noting that she signed only her first name. He followed an arrow, turned over the note, and his heart settled itself in his chest again, because, well, because.

He smiled and re-read her postscript, running his finger lightly over the writing. We didn’t have time to wash the bedding, so what you have is some of ours. Call me silly, but I tried out both beds and decided on the one you might like. That’s the bed I made up. MT

As he thought, he made himself a jam sandwich. There was a pitcher of water and a glass by the dry sink, so he drank deep. His neckcloth came off, to be left on the rail at the bottom of the stairs.

The pasteboard box on the dresser practically called his name, but he sat on the bed first. He glanced at the pillow. His heart and soul were touched by what he saw: an indentation of someone’s head, as if Madeline had made the bed, then wanted to make sure again that it was the right one. He settled himself into her little well of pillow comfort.

He closed his eyes and slept. The letters would wait. He wanted, needed, to treasure this moment of kindliness after a terrible evening.

He woke up to a soft morning, as sun streamed in the window. With hands behind his head, Amos took a mental inventory as he thought through favorite such mornings in more exotic places than Ashfield, Hampshire. Usually he began with Tahiti, then moved to forested realms and mountains reaching down to the sea in America’s Pacific Northwest where a mighty river named Columbia flowed into the ocean. Mornings on the Spanish Main were noisy with birds calling to each other, and monkeys offering rebuttals.

He went farther this time and imagined a morning in his own bedchamber in Groton, Connecticut, where the family lived when Papa married his second wife, Catherine Ince. Family lore testified that Papa carried her across the threshold, then left her weeping there three days later for a voyage to take rum to Bristol. Stepmama still lived in Groton, even though more of their business was transacted in Boston, Massachusetts, these days. She laughed now about those early tears, but before Amos left on this voyage to England, she told him, “Hurry back. I don’t like an empty house.”

Grandpa’s house was empty, and Amos knew what she was really saying: Empty can mean lonely. He heard a clock ticking somewhere. He shook off that lonely feeling by imagining himself carrying Madeline upstairs to this bedchamber. The mere thought of it got him downstairs to cold water in the bathing room off the kitchen. To his relief, the sudden chill dragged his mind back to the business of the sea, and his own mandate to spend no more than two or three more days here. He simply couldn’t stay longer, when he had a fleet to resurrect.

He wasn’t so certain he liked the notion. Not at all.

Mama seemed to be spending more time than usual finishing up that last Christmas dress. “You’ll have to get that bedding back to Number Fourteen on your own,” she said serenely. Amazing how Mama could speak so distinctly, with two or three pins in her mouth.

It was no chore, really. The sheets and pillowslips folded down to neat little packages, and the blankets were manageable. Still, it was a chore to go up the three steps to the front door, and Madeline couldn’t get the key from her apron pocket.

Since she doubted Amos Foster was a morning layabout, Madeline knocked. The captain opened the door, smiled at her predicament, smiled wider when she said “Thimble,” and relieved her of the blankets. Without a word, he took them upstairs. She thought to follow with the sheets, but shyness intervened. It was different in the house when they were cleaning it. Now someone lived here, a single man. She left the sheets at the bottom of the stairs and knew she had no business lingering.

He came downstairs soon enough. “Good morning, Miss Tifton,” he teased. “How do you do? Lovely weather we’re having.”

What he said struck Madeline as hilariously formal, and she laughed and curtseyed. In turn, he bowed, and any shyness left her. “You found the letters?”

He gestured to the sitting room. “I am enjoying them, and also my early poor attempts at correspondence. He was kind to save them. Stay a minute.”

She needed no more invitation than that, and followed him into the sitting room. He had made himself at home in his grandfather’s armchair, and the paper clutter around the chair took her back to those days when Walter Ince ruled his little domain sitting there. The thought made her dab at her eyes with her apron, which caught his attention.

“You have good memories here,” he said, and it was no question.

“The best ones. Mama and I loved to bring over meals and sit and listen to his stories about people he knew. Mostly he talked about the eccentrics here in Ashfield. He would clear his throat most dramatically, then raise his hands as if outlining his words: ‘Ashfield, the village where your business is everyone’s business.’”

He indicated the footstool close to the chair, which made her dab her eyes again. “What’s the matter, Madeline?” he asked, then seemed to know. “Did you usually sit there?”

She nodded and wiped her eyes. She gestured around him. “This stool, the paper clutter that drove Mama to distraction. Captain Foster, I miss him.”

“Please call me Amos,” he said. “People call me Captain Foster because they must. I like to hear my name.”

“Everyone calls me Maddie. I…I think I prefer Madeline, because I am no child,” she said, knowing that something between them was changing. She liked it, even though it frightened her a little, because she wasn’t used to change in the unvarying chores and challenges of her life. He didn’t need to know that. Better change something else: the subject. “Wh…what have you read here?”

“I glanced at my poor and na?ve letters, but I have been reading the ones he never mailed, when I was a lot older.” He grinned at her, which made her smile back. Some grins were infectious, apparently. “Between you and me, I think I know more about the goings on of Ashfield than people who live here.”

“He was a keen observer,” she noted, happy to be on more solid ground again. “Remember, your business is my business.”

“I wish I knew more about him. Speaking of business, did he ever tell you what business he was involved in, if any of that is true and not just an Ashfield rumor? Whatever it was, set him crosswise with his own family, I gather.” He indicated the clutter. “In all this, he speaks so movingly of the land.”

“He may have mentioned it to others, but little came to our ears here,” she said, then brightened, as a similarity struck her. “Actually, it was water, same as you, except much, much narrower. Something to do with a system of canals throughout England. He mentioned that a few times.”

“I imagine people have lost fortunes over such schemes. Or made fortunes.”

“You know more than I do. I imagine you got quite an earful last night at Tifton Manor.”

She meant it in jest as idle conversation, but his face darkened. He looked at her, as if measuring how much he wanted to say to someone also related, and with the same last name.

“I shouldn’t have asked. It is none of my business,” she said quickly, wanting that stricken look on his face to go away, and knew she had caused it. “I should go…”

“No, most emphatically no,” he said. He held up his hands and dropped them in his lap, as though there weren’t sufficient words to convey anything. “I should be ashamed to admit this, but I am baffled. My crew would never believe that. They think I know everything.” He shook his head. “I don’t.”

Madeline knew better than to say anything. Beyond sewing lovely frocks for women of Ashfield, she and Mama did not mingle in society. No door ever opened to them, and they had not the means to move away. Still, this kind man––what told her he was kind escaped her, except that she knew he was––deserved her attention. On impulse, she reached over and touched his arm, just a small touch. She knew that wasn’t good manners, but he need a human connection.

It was enough. “Madeline, I ran away before dinner even started. Yep, sidled out of the room and darted away.”

She gasped. He rolled his eyes. “I would never tell this to anyone else.”

“Then why me?”

She hadn’t meant to be so personal, but seriously, why her?

He touched her hand briefly, almost as briefly as she had touched his arm. “I feel comfortable with you,” he said softly. He managed a slow wink, which made her rosy up. “And you will never, ever breathe a word of this to my crew, who think I am a fearless leader.”

“Cross my heart,” she vowed. “I already know the Tiftons are mean and small.”

Simply put, she gave him permission to crawl out from under this boulder of shame. “They…they were going at each other, hammer and tongs, over the fact that Mr. Tifton––Peter––had a drunkard brother and how…how your mother tried to foist herself on them. And then that…that vile woman turned on me , because I had the nerve to be an American!”

“My mother did not foist herself on anyone,” Madeline said in a soft voice. “She came here asking for very little. She had in her possession a letter from…from my father, something about an inheritance coming to him from another relative. It wasn’t much beyond two hundred pounds annually, but it was owed to Mama, since she was his widow.”

“I’ll wager your mother never saw a penny of it,” he managed to say.

“We have no proof of that letter. Right there on the doorstep––we never even crossed the threshold––Mrs. Tifton snatched that letter and ripped it to pieces.” Madeline put her apron to her eyes again. “God help us, but every year Mama has to go to Mr. Tifton and grovel for twenty-five pounds a year. She wouldn’t do that if she didn’t have to. And there is Mrs. Tifton, gloating about the matter as Mama grovels. Twenty-five pounds!”

“These are terrible people,” Amos said, after a long silence that made her wonder how many curses and swear words he had to wade through to reach something so innocuous as a merely terrible people . “My aunt––ah, but I am to call her Mrs. Tifton––also wanted to know what my share would be from any inheritance. I assured her we weren’t related, but maybe I would get this house. What else did he have?”

“He used to be landed gentry in Wiltshire,” Madeline said, “the same as Peter Tifton is here in Hampshire. A gentleman who didn’t have to work. I assume he sold all that land and sank the proceeds into canals that were never built.”

“And she never forgave her father.”

“Never,” Madeline said. “I am certain she never set foot here. Her own father!”

She looked down. Captain Foster held her hand so gently. For the first time in her life, she knew she wasn’t alone. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I’ll be praying for you when you have to face the Tiftons in his office and listen to a will.”

The knowledge she wasn’t alone came with another benefit, one that grew slowly until it filled her. “The strange part is that I think I feel sorry for her.”

“You’re a better person than I am,” he admitted.

“No, I’m not,” she assured him. “I’ve been around her longer, is all.”

He untangled his fingers from hers, which came as more of disappointment than relief. Don’t ever let me go , she wanted to tell him, but he obviously knew better.

That was it. He looked at her as perhaps an old brother might look, who wanted to tease her. “Let’s do this: Since I am certain there will never be a huge amount of money from whatever is in that good man’s will, we can joke about it. Ahem, pay attention. Once I am the proud heir to a king’s ransom, what gift would you like from me at Christmas? Make it something grandiose, Madeline. I am certain I will soon be rolling in pounds sterling.”

She laughed along with him. “A palatial estate on riverfront property.”

“Done! Riverfront property for you! And what will you give me?”

“I’ll think of something equally grand, sir, but you must wait.” She glanced at the clock. “It is time for me to screw up my courage and take Amelia’s Christmas dress to her. Good day.”

He gave her a friendly salute as she left, and returned to the letters before she was out of the room.

Mama had ironed and boxed the dress. Madeline sat with it a moment in the circulating library as Miss Cuthbert dusted. She knew Amos had agreed to her imaginary riverfront property, and she should reply in humorous fashion, but she couldn’t, not then. Once he left on the mail coach, she would never see him again. If she decided, for one time in her life, to express herself with honesty and not fear that what she “gave” him would be too much or too little, what did it matter?

“Miss Cuthbert, do you have pen and paper? I need to write a note to Captain Foster. It’s all a tease.”

The librarian handed her both, and directed her to the table and chair where paying customers sat. Madeline looked around, not wanting to usurp anyone. The room was empty, except for the two of them.

“Very well, then,” she said, thought a moment, and wrote: Captain Foster, my gift to you is the sure knowledge that wherever the sea takes you, there is someone of no importance or acclaim in Ashfield who is always going to wish you well .

It needed no signature, so she wrote, Yours Sincerely, Happy Christmas . She blew on the note, folded it, addressed it and didn’t know what to do next. She scanned the row of books until she found one that she knew no one ever checked out, Fox’s Book of Martyrs . To be certain, she looked at the pasted page opposite the frontispiece that listed all checkouts and returns. Perfect. This book hadn’t been checked out since 1798.

She tucked the note inside, ready to retrieve it later and keep it. She could put it in a wooden box of hers and treasure forever the thought that a man had once held her hand, and maybe even almost looked like he wanted to kiss her.