Loving Sarah (44 page)

Once through the yard, it was only a short eight blocks to the house she shared with Mr. Watkins and their servants, Sally and Victor. She could run the distance in less than ten minutes, but a nice leisurely walk through the wharf business area wasn’t as bad as people often thought it was. For certain there were the shady types, the drunken rogues who hung around the alleyways near the pubs waiting for their doors to open, though the constable kept most of them in line. But for the most part, people down here were hard-working, church-going people. She should know. This was where she’d grown up. Every day either on foot or in the buggy, she passed the dry goods store she’d lived above as a child before the fever took her parents, leaving her and her brother, George, orphaned. This was her home. She’d never left Harbor Village in her life except to visit Mr. Watkins’s farm several times a year. It wasn’t as bad as Victor always made it out to be.

The houses on Washington Street weren’t like the houses farther in town with a lot of extra rooms for visitors. Most of these modest homes belonged to tradesmen and their families and, thus, were on the small side. Though their home was one of the larger of these, it wasn’t by much. Mr. Watkins had added on to the house when his first wife, Abigail, had been with child, so this house had three bedrooms, where most had two. He’d also turned one of the two downstairs sitting rooms into an office for himself not long after that first wife passed away trying to deliver their babe.

Mary-Michael crossed her front porch, relishing the bit of evening breeze they caught up here on the slight knoll overlooking the bay. She pushed open the screen door. “I’m home, Sally,” she called out as she went down the hallway looking for Mr. Watkins in his study. She tossed her jacket on the banister rail and heard Sally acknowledge her from out in the kitchen. “I walked, so Victor will be along soon. He was nailing a shoe on Buttercup when I left. She must have lost it when Victor brought Mr. Watkins home at noon.” She knocked softly on the door to her husband’s office but heard no reply. She thought perhaps he was asleep. Cautiously pushing the door open, she discovered she was right. He sat in his favorite wing chair in the corner, holding the evening paper.

His rheumy eyes opened and he smiled. “Ah, Mary, my girl. A man couldn’t have a better companion.”

“I’m also your wife, Mr. Watkins.” She poured herself a glass of water and took a seat across from him on the settee.

“Just on paper. But that’s all that matters, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s Sally cooking for dinner?” Mr. Watkins made a great show of raising his paper and snapping the wrinkles from it.

“I don’t know, sir, but it smells delicious.”

“She doesn’t cook a thing that isn’t, my girl.” Her dear, yet wizened, husband began to peruse the inside pages. “So how is everything at the office?”

“It got interesting after you left,” Mary-Michael said.

The elderly man lowered his paper enough to meet her gaze. “How so?”

“We had a visitor. An Englishman. He said he is the partner of a Mr. Ian Ross, formerly of Indian Point.” She awaited his recognition of the name, and when he smiled, she knew he’d remembered. “He said Ian is soon to inherit his uncle’s title. He will be the Earl of Something, Mr. Watkins. Your old friend’s son will be a nobleman, and the two men are partners in a tea-importing company.”

Her husband folded the paper and nodded his nearly bald head. “It’s why Hamish sent his only child to live with that old….” He cut off what he was going to call the man, likely so as not to offend her. “What did he want, this visitor. Was Ian with him?”

“No, sir, he was not.” Mary-Michael tempered her excitement and continued. “This gentleman said he admired the vessels under construction as he walked through our yard.”

Her husband’s eyes danced with merriment. “Did you tell him they were all your designs?”

“Yes, though you know I am uncomfortable doing so. We only spoke for a few minutes. The man said he and his partner are looking at the expansion of their business. They are in need of
two
new clippers.” When her husband’s eyes grew wide with interest, she went on. “They are in need of boats that can compete in the tea trade. They’re currently sailing a pair of twenty-one-year-old clippers from none other than Jorgensen’s yard up in Halifax.”

Mr. Watkins continued to nod acknowledging their competitor who’d shown interest in buying them out, and she went on.

“They have one hundred and twenty footers now, and he’s looking at one hundred and eighty or eighty-five feet. With that, I can increase his cargo capacity by sixty to eighty percent
and
get him where he needs to go faster, but I didn’t tell him that.” Mary-Michael couldn’t stop the grin from spreading across her face.

“Why not?”

Mary-Michael considered her words. “Well, like most men, he didn’t seem comfortable discussing business with a woman. In fact, I think he’d rather deal directly with you. And secondly, I wouldn’t want to promise any percentage increase in his profit until I knew exactly what he wanted in accommodations and trim.”

Her husband chuckled. “I taught you well, my dear.”

Sally walked in with a fresh pitcher of water with sliced lemon and two glasses with big cut pieces of ice. She poured their drinks and said, “Dinner will be served in ten minutes, Miz Watkins.”

“Thank you, Sally.”

Her husband swallowed deeply from his cold drink and held it as he stared at her in an odd way. “I want to know if you’ve given any thought to what we discussed the other day, Mrs. Watkins.”

“Regarding what, sir?” she asked, though she knew exactly what topic he meant to revisit.

“Regarding your heart’s desire.”

Mary-Michael sighed and turned to stare out the window at the lengthening shadows of the trees on the bricked streets. “I’m not sure I can do it.”

“You could if you met the right person, lass.” He sipped from his glass again. “We will need to find you this right man soon. I never know when I lay my head down at night if I’ll be picking it up the next morning. If you want your babe to carry my name, you should do something about it soon, Mrs. Watkins.”

He saw her slowness to reply as a need for more time to think on the subject. What her dear mentor and husband could not know was that she’d already begun to consider his plan during her walk home. First, she wondered if she could do it at all. And second, there was this unexplainable attraction she felt with this man. If this was what her friend Molly had meant when she said Mary-Michael would know it when she felt it, then she was certainly feeling it. And
that
was the only reason she might consider doing it.

She wondered what it would be like to create her babe with this man, the one whose name she did not remember.

“I would never push you to do this,” Mr. Watkins said, “except I’ve heard you cry at night and know my days are numbered.”

She wiped at a single tear, unwilling to cry over this again. “Sometimes I feel this desire for a babe has me so envious of my own friends that I avoid them. I know they sense me distancing myself from them, too. It’s not that I’m not happy for them, because you know I am.” She wiped again. “It’s just that I’m so jealous of their happiness I’ve thrown myself into my work even more and given up their company so as not to feel my own pain. It’s a self-centered jealousy that I fight, sir, and I’m not sure that those emotions are good to feel if one wants to be a good mother.”

“You are the least selfish woman I know, Mary Watkins, and you deserve this child of your heart.” He sat back and closed his eyes.

“But what I have to do to get this child of my dreams means committing a grievous sin.” She could never take a sin as enormous as this into the confessional—at least not in Harbor Village—both priests knew her personally. She’d have to go into Baltimore. And after? Even after confessing, for the rest of her life, while she enjoyed the beauty of motherhood—if she were so blessed—she would always know in her heart that she’d sinned to create her little miracle.

“Is it a sin when I am willing it? Did not Sarah give her maid, Hagar, to Abraham to conceive his children?”

“Yes, and it broke Hagar’s heart to give over her son to Sarah after his birth.”

“You will not have that issue if the father of your child is someone who isn’t from here,” her husband countered. “We can go to New York, Washington, or Richmond if someone from Baltimore is too near for you to choose.” She wiped her eyes, thinking about the gift her husband was giving her to allow this. “I will help you all I can Mrs. Watkins, but I must know you want my help.”

Through her tears, she nodded. “I may not have to go that far, sir. You can tell me if you approve of Ian Ross’s partner tomorrow, for he is someone I might consider.”

He smiled finally. “Well, I hope he is a handsome and intelligent specimen, for I cannot have a son or daughter of mine be anything less than both!”

Mary-Michael gave her husband a nervous laugh. Mr. Watkins was sure to find fault with the English captain whose name she couldn’t remember, but whose touch still burned her hand. She would just have to remind her husband that he told her she was the one to do the choosing, not he. And she chose the dark-haired, dark-eyed Englishman who stirred up a whirlwind of confusing feelings in her.

A
fter dinner, she discussed with her husband all of the items she’d written down from her conversation with the Englishman regarding the two new builds the man had requested. Mary-Michael thought to sketch out some rough designs for their meeting the next morning, so she excused herself from the table, telling her husband she would like to have something to show their potential client when they met.

She went up to her room and took a seat at her dressing table, then untied her hairnet and let her braid drop down her back. Lifting her fingers to her throat, she unbuttoned the top three buttons of her blouse. The room’s two windows were wide open, but because there was hardly a breeze moving outdoors, none moved in the house. The heat caused a sheen of perspiration all over her body. She parted her bodice. The ivory-handled fan that one of her husband’s customers had given her from his voyages in the pacific lay on the table. She picked it up and fanned her chest and neck.

If it was this hot in June, God alone knew how hot it would be in August.

Moving to her desk, she set up her paper and graphite pencils and began to think on what to sketch for this friend of Mr. Ian Ross. Two more clippers would be good for business, giving her crews steady work for the next year and a half, not that there was any lack of business. In fact, just the opposite. Watkins Shipbuilding was currently running one year for delivery, even though she’d promised the Englishman ten to twelve months. She’d have to put the word out for more qualified tradesmen because she really wanted to build these two boats before Mr. Watkins could no longer assist her in managing the yard. Or, heaven forbid, he decided to sell it, which was something they’d discussed a few times.

Mary-Michael went over and over the conversation with the Englishman, and she kept coming to the same conclusion. She was certain she did not mistake his desire for speed and efficiency, and given the specifications from Mr. Ross, she knew they were of one mind when it came to design. For the past six years, she’d been giving the customers what they wanted in their new builds, but she got the impression the Englishman and Mr. Ross were willing to consider
her
ideas and plans.

Her passion was designing clippers. Ships that had sleeker, faster hull designs with sail plans that would best use the wind. She loved dreaming up composite material design to reduce weight and allow for more cargo.
That
was her life’s work.

There were only a handful of shipyards in the area that specialized in cargo-carrying clippers, though it seemed each year one or two more began to build them, especially because the demand for clippers was increasing almost daily. The only other shipyard out on the point with them, Barlowe Marine, focused solely on military-type vessels, heavy and armed from aft to jib, as the owner had a previous career with the government as a naval architect. Though well-constructed and of different design, they were military ships and not true clippers.

Watkins specialized in cargo carriers, where the amount of goods transported and the speed in which the cargo arrived to the owner determined how much money was made. Speed. It was important, but not the primary consideration in her designs. Optimizing the cargo space and making the loading and unloading of cargo easier and more efficient was as vital to turnaround time and profitability as speed.

Safety, speed, optimization of space. That’s what she wanted to give this client. And hopefully he would give her a babe in return. She smiled and placed her hand over her womb and imagined the possibility of having a child growing within her soon.

Mary-Michael returned her attention to the drawing and tried to remember everything the Englishman had said. She began to draw a hull, a bell bow, the headworks, keel, keelson, stern. Her pencil flew across the sheet as she added deckwork and masts and rails. Spanker to flying jib, she gave her new creation full sail. She marked the hull for copper sheathing, and for drama, she added waves and clouds against a stormy sky. The deck arrangement was a basic deck house with rear cabins; she was still unsure of which actual layout he’d prefer. He’d mentioned two full cabins on each as a preference, but Mary-Michael didn’t know if he wanted them separated or side by side.