SEVEN
Months of correspondence had accumulated, along with lists of expenses and rents and salaries to be reviewed with Turner. After the affairs of the estate were settled, Jack had to tackle the countless entreaties from officers who were pleading for a post of any sort, to the farthest reaches of the empire if it meant a return to full pay and much-needed support for their families. Letters from fathers begged for placements for sons, as if everyone knew that hostilities would soon resume. Yet Jack recognized that he was an Admiral in a shrinking navy, the government reversing the massive build-up of years past by breaking down ships to sell as scrap lumber. Rather than prepare for the inevitable, the foolish ministers looked no further than the ends of their noses, while Bonaparte grew stronger.
Writing up a report for the Admiralty, Jack paused to reflect on all he had heard from American merchant masters and captains. Intelligence pointed in one direction, and he had to make his superiors see what was coming at them. That France would invade England was not some wild fancy. The ships to sail across the Channel were under construction, paid for with an endless expanse of uncharted land called the Louisiana Territory. As he dipped his pen, Jack realized that the room was getting too dark to see. Outside, the park was bathed in a rose and purple glow.
“Red sky at night,” he said to himself. He rang for the steward, to see about dinner.
“Will you wait for Miss Ashford to return, your lordship?” Davies asked.
“Is she not waiting for me?” Jack asked.
“She went riding, your lordship,” Davies said. “If you will forgive my boldness, I must add that she was in a rather unpleasant temper when she left. Stormed out is how Mrs. Finch described it.”
“Tell her maid, that French girl, what is her name, to get my daughter dressed and down to dinner immediately. Bad enough that I have made Cook wait.”
Portraits of ships tricked out the walls of the dining room, representing the postings of Ashfords for three generations. He would amuse Maddie with anecdotes, show her that her new family was as worthy of respect as the Beauchamps. The stories he was writing in his head disappeared when Davies told him that Miss Ashford was nowhere to be found.
“She cannot be prompt, then she shall be hungry,” Jack said.
Unexpected, that she would revert to old ways after she had behaved so magnificently on the ship, but she was a female and he was unaccustomed to the ways of little girls. “Proceed.”
What began as a savory meal devolved into rampant dyspepsia. The pudding was as tasteless as paste, the wine lacked body, and the cold meat attempted to return the way it had gone down. He took coffee in the entry hall, pacing as he drank, a bubble of bile tickling his throat. Punishments of every sort were examined; a severe caning declared the winner. Jack left his cup on the stairs, marched across the park towards the willow trees that dipped lazily into the pond, and found himself repeating actions his own father had taken numerous times. Mrs. Finch intercepted him before he reached the trees.
“Raise the alarm,” she said. “The horse. Back without her. Gone. Near the river.”
The peace of the country house was shattered by a bellowing of orders. Every member of the staff was called out, down to the scullery maid, to search every square inch of the property. He had promised, had he not, to take her riding and he had gone back on that promise. Did she think he was taunting her, offering a treat and then snatching it away when she tried to grasp it? Did she believe that she was alone, abandoned in a strange land? God be with her, had she been thrown, been injured? Would he find her dead, her skull broken?
Barely able to contain the growing anxiety, Jack put his mind to organizing a systematic inspection of the woods, the river banks, the fields and the laneways. He sent a messenger into the town to scare up the bailiffs, to make inquiries. Where would a twelve-year-old girl go? Life would have no meaning without her. She had become a part of him. He discovered the ability to pray as he pleaded with the Almighty to spare the child, to take him instead, to protect her wherever she was. Where was that place?
Pacing the hall, pacing the carriage path, pacing did him no good and accomplished nothing. Jack directed his aimless steps towards his brother’s house, the dowager cottage at the far northern end of the property. He knew that Lawrence and his family were at Bath, that the house was empty, but someone wandering without direction might take shelter in a doorway. His search a failure, he stood in the road and tried to put himself in Maddie’s place, but he was a man who had always inhabited a masculine world. He had no idea, no suppositions, not even a guess.
“Sarah, did you call her to your side?” he asked the wind. What if Maddie’s broken heart had cried out to her mother and Sarah had answered the child, gathered her up and taken her away from a man who had proved untrustworthy once before? He felt keenly the pain, understood without question what agony he had inflicted on Sarah when he abandoned her in Charleston.
The torches of the search parties bobbed across the fields like swarms of fireflies. Jack took to the woods, to track Maddie’s possible path to the river. He called for her in a voice that could cut through the thickest fog and reach the top of the mainmast, but all he heard in response was the sound of water trickling over the old weir. The stones were slick, the banks treacherous in the dark of night. His fault, for throwing out a promise like a piece of lint, plucked from his coat and cast away. His fault for being unreliable to a girl who needed his reliability as much as she needed food and drink.
Desperate, Jack made his way to the place he had found fascinating as a boy, the ruins of the old monastery that were little more than the remains of stone walls held together by dense thickets of ivy. He stumbled in the dark, tripped over a broken stone that was hidden by the tall grass. Pausing to rub away the pain in his ankle, he thought that he heard a sound coming from an area that the townspeople called the monks’ graveyard. He took another step and listened, but there was nothing.
He had to pick his way through the rubble carefully, but he ran when he spotted a dark shape crouched next to a pillar of stone. Her back against the mossy slab, Maddie sat hugging her knees, with her head buried in the folds of her torn skirt. Without effort, Jack took her into his arms and held her close so that she could not fly away. Her face was scratched; trails of tears lined her cheeks. Her right fist was clenched so tightly that Jack feared she had been seriously injured.
The walk back to the house was not long but with every step it seemed to get farther away rather than closer. Jack called for hot water, for bandages, for a physician. Tea, broth, brandy and water; he would give Maddie anything and everything if she would open her eyes and smile. Hugging her, rocking her, he sat on the stairs in the entry hall and told her she was safe. He would keep her safe, forever be her fortress, her champion. While he had breath in his body he would be protect her. He teased apart her fingers that were locked in place, and found a cloisonné pin that had pierced her palm.
“She’s not here.” Maddie’s voice was weak, as if she had cried herself into exhaustion. “Not here.”
“No, my angel, she is here, but within our hearts,” Jack said. “We who were left behind must look after each other as best we can.”
Jack knew that the pin had come from Sarah’s dressing table, from the room that had been left intact, an artifact of the moment she died. Every morning, Sarah had pinned the insignificant bauble to her chemise, where the heart-shaped ornament pressed against her heart. Where she held Maddie close, until she could replace the pin with the living child who had given it to her when Sarah and Jack married.
“Forgive me,” Jack said. “I forgot and you would have reminded me if I had only told you that you may speak to me at any time. Even the waisters on my ship can ask for permission to speak to me. Promise me that you will speak, and I swear that I will listen. Be patient with me, I beg you, while I learn how to be a father.”
The lost soul had fallen asleep in his arms. He brought her to her room, the brightest c
orner of the house that was furnished in the latest styles from France. When he tried to put her to bed, he found that she was clinging to him, her arm wrapped around his neck. He hated to untangle her, but she needed rest. In the morning, then, he would sit down with Maddie and together they would discuss what would be done with Sarah’s things. What a silly fool he had been, to preserve a room when Sarah had left him something much more permanent and everlasting.