The Apothecary's Daughter (59 page)

She groaned inwardly. Another new medical man to get used to.
“I daresay your replacement will not realize how fortunate he is with
so much less competition now that Haswell’s and Dr. Graves have
gone.

“Has your father no plans to reopen?”

“None he will admit to. He is, however, expanding the physic
garden. He likes the idea of making a tidy profit on his famous
Haswell herbs.”

Mr. Shuttleworth chuckled. “Perhaps he ought to stay on as a
chemist, then.”

“I think not. Haswells are apothecaries the way we are English.
One cannot simply change citizenship at will.”

Again he chuckled and nodded his understanding.

For several minutes they stood without speaking. Down on the
canal, a narrowboat was slowly making its way under the Honeystreet
Bridge. “I remember when I first arrived here and saw you standing on
that bridge,” Mr. Shuttleworth said. “One of the three lovely enticements to settle here.”

She nodded at the memory.

“Do you know if Miss Robbins enjoys the sea?”

“Mr. Shuttleworth!” Lilly was incredulous and amused both.
“Are you serious?”

“Why not?”

“She is daughter of a boat builder,” Lilly allowed.

“My thoughts exactly.”

Lilly thought about Francis. “Mr. Baylor seemed to think a lot
of her as well.”

“Do you think so? He was attentive to her, I own. But nothing
to the attention he paid you. In any event, he departed, leaving the
field open for me.”

She shook her head, grinning in spite of herself.

“You judge me fickle, Miss Haswell? I protest your censure. I
have always been completely loyal to whichever one of the three of
you I could convince to fall madly in love with me and did not tend
toward seasickness.”

Nor sickness of any kind, she thought sadly, but did not say so.

“Now…” He rubbed his hands together comically, looking down
toward Mill House and the barge yard. “I wonder if Miss Robbins is
in the mood for adventure.”

Still shaking her head, Lilly watched him go.

Realizing she had lingered far too long, Lilly trotted down the
damp, windswept hill to help Mrs. Mimpurse and Jane serve supper. She was enjoying helping at the coffeehouse. For all Mary’s teasing, Lilly had learned to convert from her ingrained apothecaries’
measurements to the standard with less trouble than she would have
imagined. Still, many was the time Maude found her bent over the
worktable with a frayed quill and scrap of paper, checking her sums.
Lilly was still no great cook, but was steadily improving. She took to
baking more naturally. She liked the careful measurements required,
the level teaspoonfuls of leavening or pounds of fat. Not the “pinch of
this and handful of that” mode Mrs. Mimpurse used to throw together
stews, soups, and other dishes with such easy flair.

When she stood in Mary’s place at the old worn worktable, Lilly
felt closer to her sister-friend. She took pleasure and comfort in mixing, in kneading, in shaping dough. Not so different from mixing and
cutting pills, really.

Still, she found herself unexpectedly missing the shop. She hadn’t
realized how much she had enjoyed knowing how to help people and
doing so as confidently as Maude whipped up a suet pudding or pasty.
Francis had been right. Lilly even missed the feel of the mortar and
pestle in her hands, and when she brought a small one from the shop to
use in mixing spices, she saw Maude bite her lip, but the dear woman
had not protested.

Now, as Lilly rounded the corner of the vicarage, she slowed her
pace according to long habit. When she reached the coffeehouse and
opened its door, she paused as she usually did to inhale deeply of
the sweet, familiar aromas. Freshly ground coffee beans, cinnamon,
nutmegs, ginger, and cloves.

Smells like home …

She did not miss the alligator.

LOVAGE

A known and much praised remedy.

-CULPEPER’S COMPLETE HERBAL

illy remembered it clearly, although it was years ago now. For she
-remembered everything.

She remembered the day Francis arrived by narrowboat more than
seven years before, as a seasick apprentice. She had been standing on
the Honeystreet Bridge, as she often did, searching for her mother on
every narrowboat that passed by on the canal.

She stood there now on a warm springtime evening, a fortnight
after her meeting with Mr. Shuttleworth atop Grey’s Hill. One last
time, she told herself. Once more searching searching God’s will
for the future, searching her memory for every moment spent with
Francis Baylor, Mary Mimpurse, her mother even Roger Bromley
and Dr. Graves. Dear ones lost to her. Any day now, Mr. Shuttleworth
would join that list.

She watched as a barge approached from the east, followed by a
narrowboat.

She had given up standing there all those months she had tried
to manage her father’s shop. She hadn’t the time for it then. Now it
seemed she had a great deal of time.

Or do I? she wondered. She once thought she had all the time in
the world to see the world, enjoy the world. Now she understood what
far wiser people had long known no one is promised the world, nor
even the morrow.

Lilly used to long for travel and adventure far from Bedsley Priors.
But death and loss had narrowed her sights. Her telescope no longer
focused on the horizon, but rather on what was nearest and dearest to
her heart. The rest was just so much water boiled away and gone it
might steam the glass and cloud one’s view for a time, but in the end it
vanished, leaving only the purest essence of life behind. Family. Faith.
Friends and neighbors. Health. Things Mary would have given her
last breath for, and perhaps had.

Lilly told herself all this, and yet she knew. She knew her heart
had never gotten over the loss, the missing of one gone away from her.
Should she return to London and begin a new search? No. She must
let go. Again.

The barge passed under the Honeystreet Bridge, its load of coal
sinking the vessel low in the canal’s waters. A crewman lifted his hat
to Lilly, and she dipped her head in acknowledgment. She knew she
should be getting back. Her father and Mrs. Mimpurse were having a few neighbors in for whist and tea an unofficial end to their
mourning and they were expecting Lilly to join them.

The narrowboat approached then, painted in shades of muted
gold by the slanting rays of sunlight. Lilly saw two figures on its tiller
deck. One hand rising in salute.

She felt a flicker of recognition. Strained forward to better see in
the fading light.

It cannot be….

But it was.

Finally, finally, Lilly saw that cherished face, the much-missed
and loved person.

The hand waved. The well-known voice called, “Lilly! “

Her heart leapt within her.

It was Francis, coming back to Bedsley Priors.

Before the boat was even lashed to its moorings, Francis jumped
from the deck and scrambled up the bank with no thought to his fine
suit of clothes. At the end of the bridge, he stopped and looked at her,
his earnest gaze reflecting all the longing she felt.

Lilly stood there, feeling stunned and oddly rooted where she
was, some fifteen or so feet away from him.

“You can have no idea how much I have missed you,” he said,
the angles of his face more defined than ever, his brown eyes large
and intense.

Lilly swallowed. “Have you?”

“I’ve thought of you every day. Why do you think I wanted so
badly to succeed?”

Breathless, she could only stare at him.

“I have passed the examinations, Lilly,” he said. “I am a certified
apothecary.”

Her throat was suddenly dry. “Congratulations,” she managed.

“I am taking over Shuttleworth’s. Did he mention it? He’s let me
have it for exceedingly generous terms.”

“Shuttleworth’s?” Lilly asked, feeling slow-witted. “You’re the
new apothecary? “

Francis nodded. “Though I do not plan to call it Shuttleworth’s
any longer. I was thinking …” He took a step forward. “That is …
How does Baylor and Haswell sound?”

Lilly’s heart, already beating at an alarming rate, felt as though
it had taken a shock from the electricity machine. Dragging in a
deep, shaky breath, she feigned a casual shrug. “Or Haswell and
Baylor.”

He grinned and opened his arms.

Lilly ran.

Francis caught her mid-air and held her tightly against his chest.
Slowly, he let her slip down until her feet returned to the bridge. He
released her only to cradle her face in his hands. Lilly looked up at
him with all the love she felt, and his warm, chocolate eyes seemed to melt into hers. He leaned down as she reached up, and their lips
finally met. She leaned into his embrace and together they stood,
with no thought to passersby, nor to the canal, nor to a single boat
upon it.

walked, as I often did, to the churchyard. My brother, Charlie,
-was not there this time. He was likely off working in the gardens
at Marlow House, counting weeds as he plucked them, or ladybird
beetles, or emmets crawling about their hill. And I knew he was content in his own way.

I stood before a headstone, still new, not yet cankered by time and
wind and lichen. But in my mind’s eye, I was standing before another
grave. Her grave.

Uncle Elliott had finally sent the letter I had once longed for:
We have found your mother. Upon reading those words, I remember
thinking that we ought to go to her quickly, before she moved again
again out of reach.

But Rosamond Haswell was not going anywhere. Ever again.

When the Elliotts took me “to her,” they took me to a London
cemetery. To a plot bearing a temporary cross marker with the name
R. H. Wells inscribed.

Her searching, and mine, was over.

She died in hospital of consumption, her secrets with her. A scrap
of paper with Jonathan Elliott’s name and address was found among
her things, and the hospital had sent a message hoping, no doubt,
for payment. Uncle Elliott had been away traveling, but upon his
return he had paid what was due and located the gravesite, leaving
the temporary marker until he might confer with me.