Chapter Ten

They arrived in Liddiard long after the noon hour, slowed because of rain mixed with snow. As desperately as he wanted to skip luncheon and get there to begin what he hoped wasn’t a fruitless search, Sally had insisted they stop.

He was prepared to argue with her, and remind her that his housekeeper had sent along biscuits and fruit for them, but Sally taught him another lesson. “Papa, it’s not just for us,” she said. “Don’t you think the post boy and the wheel boy would like to get in out of the rain?”

“You are absolutely right,” he said, and stuck his head out of the window in the door, telling them to stop.

“Thankee, sir,” the post boy said. No boy he, but an older man, he called to the wheel boy, who turned out to be his son. “Thankee from both of us.”

“Thank my daughter,” Luke said. “She has better manners than I do.” Soon they were eating in the public house while Luke and Sally had a private room.

“Well done, daughter,” he said. “You’ll make a kind person of me yet.” He slapped the side of his face and she giggled. “And Lord smite me if I haven’t even asked what you would like for Christmas. I believe it will be here inevitably on the 25 th of December.”

“Papa, you’re a tease,” she replied graciously, and provided him with a generous excuse. “I know you are busy.”

This time, Luke decided not to let himself off the hook so easily. “No father should be that busy. What would you like?”

She pondered the question, reminding him all over again that she was a pensive child, much like her late mother. “I would like for Mary to come to our house and paint pictures.”

“Why that?” he asked in surprise. “Isn’t there something you want, in particular?”

“Papa, your house doesn’t have any paintings on the walls. We need them to help make it a home.”

D amned if you aren’t entirely right , he thought. “So that will make it a home?”

“It’s a start,” she replied, and dabbed her lips. “I’m certain there is more. We’ll know when we see it.”

The sleet let up before they reached Liddiard, much to Luke’s relief, because Sally kept staring out the window and worrying about the postboys. What if I cannot find Mary , kept running through his mind until he had a headache. She was the only illustrator he knew who could turn a drydock into something that would stifle the competition.

He directed the post boy to the Gowers’ public house, then took Sally’s hand and walked down the street to Notions. He sighed to see the heavy lock on the door, a “tribute” to his own instructions a few years earlier, and Mr. Mallard’s efficiency.

“Sally, I have no idea where she is,” he said. “Let’s go see Mr. Mallard.”

They walking to the counting house, a modest affair, compared to Carter and Brustein, where he kept his money in Plymouth. Mr. Mallard offered tea and sympathy, which went down in lumps, but Luke was getting used to lumps. “Put the property up for sale,” he told the counting man. “I’ll entertain any offers.”

“Aye, sir, I will do that.” Mr. Mallard leaned back in his chair. “That little woman who worked here – she set it to rights and turned it into something profitable. We should have no trouble selling it.”

“Do you have any idea where…where Mary Cooper went?”

“No idea, sir. She disappeared.” Mr. Mallard gave him a sympathetic look. “Disadvantaged people like Mary Cooper have a way of vanishing.”

Speak of disappearing…Luke looked around for Sally. Nowhere in sight. Did people simply vanish in Liddiard? It was a small village, one Sally knew better than he did, because she had stayed here with Mary. Luke spent a few more minutes fidgeting, as Mr. Mallard wrote down instructions on how to handle his late aunt’s affairs.

“It’s all in her will, which you have notarized and filed here,” he reminded Mr. Mallard. “We can talk again after the holidays. I expect you will have papers for me to sign.”

“Yes, indeed, sir, in triplicate,” Mr. Mallard said. From the way he rubbed his hands together, Luke knew how much the old fellow enjoyed bean counting.

This was getting him no closer to finding Mary, and now, Sally. He stood a moment, enjoying the watery sunlight like old Gargantua, then started toward Gowers’ Public House.

As he passed Notions, he heard someone tapping on glass. He glanced over, and there was Sally, sitting in the display window, going into whoops of laughter as she teased him from inside the shop. How in the world… He watched, open-mouthed, as she made a wide, sweeping gesture and pointed behind her.

Luke was no slouch. The winter grass was slick, so he walked carefully down the incline behind the bank of houses. There it was, Aunt Luella’s back door. As he approached, it opened and Sally stood there.

He came closer. “How did you know about this?” he asked, then he couldn’t help smiling. “I can tell I will have to get firm with you when you are of age to elope with a worthless man and slide down the ivy at 152 Palmer Lane.”

“Oh, Papa,” she said, sounding generously willing to overlook such nonsense. “I am only six years old.”

“Nearly seven! How did you know about this?”

“Mary made Gargantua an oversized cat door. He used it all the time. I suppose Mary knelt down and reached up to open the door. I’m small. I crawled through.” She giggled.

“Obviously Mr. Mallard had no idea of this,” Luke said. “I wonder….”

“I think Mary was here,” Sally told him. “Every bit of drawing paper is gone, and her whole stash of crayons, even the ones worn to stubs.”

She wasn’t here now. Luke leaned against the open door, defeated. Mary could be anywhere. He knew she was likely to land on her feet, if she was resourceful enough to remember Gargantua’s entryway, but she remained a woman with no one to turn to, not that she would have.

They left the way they came in, after Sally found another of Gargantua’s little yarn balls and tucked it away. “We don’t know where to look for Mary, do we?” she asked as they walked up the slope to the street.

“Haven’t a clue,” Luke admitted. “I suppose we could hire Bow Street Runners and…”

“Papa, look,” Sally said, her voice strangely soft. She pointed.

Same ragged cloak around her, Mary Cooper swept the walkway in front of the Gowers’ public house, where he had sent the post boys to eat and dry off. She swept with her usual vigor, intent, concentrating on getting every scrap relocated to the gutter, doing a good job whether it was a window clean and sparkling with ammonia water, a landscape of rolling hills, or a hurry-up drawing of his own house. She worked for food and a place to sleep, nothing more. One thing more occurred to him, and made him wonder at his own obliviousness: Mary Cooper was kind.

“Mary,” he said. He didn’t think he said it loud, but she looked up, alert, even wary. She gasped to see Sally, dropped her broom, and knelt as his daughter threw herself into outstretched arms. They clung together, Sally in tears and Mary nearly so. Or maybe that was his own clouded view, except that he wasn’t prone to unmanly tears.

He joined them. “We didn’t know where to look,” Sally said as she sobbed, holding tight.

“I’m glad you looked across the street,” Mary joked, not letting go, either. She kissed Sally and held her off a little. “Let me finish here, then we’ll go inside.” She turned sweet eyes on him. “Mr. Wainwright, are you a little frazzled?”

“I am ! I need you.” Good God, he really did. “I mean, well, it’s like this…”

Again those sweet eyes: Mary Cooper, who had nothing and no one and somehow managed. She gave him a little push. “Go inside, Mr. Wainwright. It looks like Sally and I will finish up here.”

Meekly, he did as she directed, truth to tell enjoying someone ordering him about. Mrs. Gower must have watched the whole thing from the front window, which, Luke noticed, sparkled as bright now as Aunt Luella’s front window had sparkled…was it two months ago? She sat him down in the pub, considered the matter, and placed hot buttered rum in front of him.

He took a sip, not knowing what to say. Mrs. Gower was never one to hang back, to his relief. She filled the conversational space. “Mary came here after your aunt’s funeral. You know how forthright she is, but calm-like. She said she didn’t have a place to stay, and did we have work for her?”

“Thank God you did.”

Mrs. Gower did hang back then. “Times aren’t easy right now, and I couldn’t promise her wages. Right now it’s food and a pallet in the kitchen. She’s been selling her little Christmas fancies.” She looked at the wall, where three of them hung. “Those are the remainders.”

“I think I’m going to make her a better offer,” Luke said apologetically.

“Oh?” Mrs. Gower perked up.

“Yes. As you know, I’m a partner to my former father-in-law in the shipbuilding trade. We’re in competition for a sizeable loan to add onto the business, but the loaning house wants a true drawing of our proposed drydock. I want to hire Mary to draw it.”

For some reason, Mrs. Gower gave him that look he had seen her give others, particularly those who tried to cheat her or Mr. Gower. It was the look Clarissa used to refer to as the you-don’t-measure-up stare.

“That’s it?” she asked.

“I intend to pay her quite well,” he assured the innkeeper’s wife.

“And?”

He was spared further inquisition when Mary and Sally came in, looking windblown and rosy themselves. Sally fit well next to Mary’s side. A fleeting thought passed through his overworked, frazzled brain. I wonder how Mary would fit next to me? It was a brief thought. He had a business deal for this person; that was the only guarantee. Another fleeting thought: I wonder how old Mary is?

It scarcely mattered. She could draw and he needed an artist. A few words to Mrs. Gower, and there was hot buttered rum for Mary, too. Sally started to pout. He was going to give her The Father look, but Mary beat him to it with a smile and “Hot cider?” which erased the pout. I’ll have to remember that , he thought.

It wasn’t his particular choice, but Mrs. Gower sat in on his proposal to Mary for work. As he spoke, he realized that the innkeeper’s wife was looking out for Mary, too.

“That’s it. We need that loan from Biddle and Bancroft, who have requested an actual illustration. What do you think, Mary?”

“Do you have blueprints?” she asked. “I could…No. Could you take me to those…those…”

“…South Yard Docks…”

“…South Yard Docks and let me draw what is there, with the new modifications, against a fitting background?”

He considered the matter, and suspected that the competitor’s drawing was probably the structure only. The mechanic in him said that was sufficient unto the day. The man who had seen what Mary could do wanted to take a chance on more.

“I like your idea, Mary,” he said. “I would agree to it on one condition.”

“Which is…”

“You call me Luke instead of Mr. Wainwright. He’s a stodgy fellow. I am not.”