The Girl in the Gatehouse (23 page)
“Mr. Martin!” Dixon complained.
Martin leaned closer to the girl. “But I shall tell you the real version. The Frenchies were firing on us, see. And the nine-pounders were coming in like hailstones. I turned and saw a young midshipman standing there just a’staring up as a ball was about to strike. So I stuck out my hand and shoved him out of the way.” Martin shrugged. “There went the hand, but at least I lived to tell the tale, and so did he.”
He glanced at her, found her staring at his arm in fascination. “Sometimes itches, where the hook facing laces to my arm. Otherwise, it’s naught. An apothecary gave me some foul-smelling ointment, but it was useless. Miss Dixon there gave me a new pot. Now I smell like a flower shop.”
Martin looked from his arm to the girl. “Would you like to see it? It isn’t too gruesome, at least I don’t think so. But then, I’m used to it.” He rolled up his loose sleeve and showed her how the leather bindings wrapped around his forearm, just below the elbow. “A nice smooth stump. Ship’s surgeon did a good job. I’ve seen far worse anyway.”
Maggie swallowed, and he quickly rolled his sleeve back down.
“Sorry, lass,” Martin apologized. “Ought not to have shown you. That’s more than enough for one day, ey?”
He rose from the bench and Maggie hurried back through the gatehouse. Her “thank-you” followed her out, so that Mariah was not sure if it was meant for her or Martin.
I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!
How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!
– Jane Austen,
Pride and Prejudice
Hart was holed up in the library, reading one of two new books he had brought with him from London. Matthew had begun to read the other volume offered but could not sit for hours on end as Hart seemed capable of doing. He rose and paced about the room. When Hart cleared his throat, Matthew took the hint and let himself out into the hall.
From the windows at the front of the house, Matthew watched as Hugh Prin-Hallsey directed the loading of a cart of belongings, which the man was selling to raise funds. Matthew still didn’t like Prin-Hallsey rummaging about the place, clanging and carting furnishings, paintings, and the like while he was paying good rent to live there. Especially now that he had a guest. But he kept his objections to himself, still hoping to curry the man’s favor until he agreed to sell Windrush Court to him outright.
The portly agent from some auction house marked each item in a ledger as the servants carried out piece after piece. Matthew hoped he and Hart would still have beds to sleep in when the man was through.
Mariah Aubrey hurried up the drive, hand atop her bonnet to keep it in place. Thinking something might be amiss, Matthew quickly let himself out the front door and onto the covered portico.
“Mr. Prin-Hallsey.” She paused to catch her breath, cheeks flushed. “Mrs. Strong mentioned you were . . . parting . . . with a few things. I should like to purchase something I saw when last I visited my aunt.”
She turned her head, looking among the heap of articles waiting to be catalogued and loaded, and pointed to a wheeled invalid chair. “There it is!”
“What, that?” Hugh frowned. “I do hope you are in good health, Miss Aubrey.”
“Oh, yes. It is not for me. It is for the dearest old lady in the poorhouse. She is weak as a foal but always so cheerful.”
Hugh inhaled thoughtfully. “Your aunt’s nurse had it taken up to her room, but the old girl was too proud to use it. It was built for my father near the end of his life.”
Miss Aubrey bit her lip, likely fearing this meant Prin-Hallsey would not be willing to part with it cheaply. Perhaps Matthew would buy it for her.
“So . . . how much, do you think?” she asked.
Hugh looked down at her, his expression inscrutable. Suddenly he reached out and tweaked her chin. “Oh, take it for nothing for your dear old lady.”
“Really?” she asked.
Watching the exchange, Matthew was as surprised as Miss Aubrey clearly was.
Hugh shrugged. “My mother, Honora, would have approved. Besides, it wouldn’t fetch much, and I plan never to need it.”
A look of wonderment crossed her face. “How good of you, Hugh. Thank you.” In a flash, she reached up and kissed his cheek and hurried past before Hugh could react. In fact, the man looked mildly dazed.
Miss Aubrey grasped the chair by its handles, then pushed it down the drive before anyone might offer to help. Or change his mind.
Matthew observed Miss Aubrey’s gratitude and hurried departure with an odd sense of envy and bemusement.
Prin-Hallsey shook his head as though to clear it, climbed the front stairs, and stood beside Matthew. Together, the two of them watched Mariah push the chair across the lawn, evidently finding the graveled drive too jarring.
“Singular creature, our girl in the gatehouse,” Hugh mused. “You would think with all her troubles, it would not be the best time to concern herself with the problems of others.”
“Perhaps that is the best time of all.”
Hugh’s lower lip protruded. “You may be right, Bryant. I own a strange lightness in my own crusty heart at having given her the old thing.”
“Any particular reason for the sudden largesse?”
Hugh inhaled deeply. “You might say I have experienced a recent windfall.”
“At cards?”
“No, not cards. Not this time.”
“I have never cared for games of chance myself.”
The man looked at him wryly. “Oh, come, Captain. Do not deceive yourself. You are in the midst of a very risky game of chance as we speak, are you not? For what else has brought you to Windrush Court? Risking all that hard-earned prize money, and for what? The smallest chance a certain lady will jilt her well-connected suitor to marry you, when she rejected you once before. What are the odds?” Hugh smirked and shook his head. “I would not bet on you, old boy. No, I would not.”
Mariah delivered the invalid chair to a grateful Miss Amy. Even Agnes seemed pleased. Mariah also delivered the belated greeting from Captain Prince, which made Miss Amy beam and her sister look nervously over her shoulder.
While she was there, Mariah looked about for little Maggie but did not see her. On the way home she wondered if Martin had succeeded in frightening the girl away, but was pleasantly surprised when she appeared at the gatehouse door a few days later. Without a word, she looked up at Mariah with clear appeal in her eyes.
Mariah opened the door to her. “Well, go on.” She smiled and followed behind as the girl ran through the gatehouse.
Dixon was already standing at the kitchen window, and Mariah joined her there. Outside Martin sat on the garden bench, again playing his flute. Maggie sat down to watch and listen.
After a few minutes, Martin lowered his instrument. “I hear you are a singer,” he began. “I’d play something you could sing to, but I understand you like hymns and I don’t know many of those.”
Maggie shrugged and asked, “Will you get your hand back in heaven?”
He considered her, head cocked to one side. “I don’t know. Do you think I shall?”
She nodded, reddish-gold hair bobbing up and down.
“Well, then I shall look forward to going there. I sure miss that hand and wouldn’t mind seeing it again.” He grinned. “How I would shake my hand should we meet once more.”
Maggie giggled. “You can’t shake your own hand.”
“Could happen.” He regarded her a moment. “How old are you?”
She shrugged again. “Seven or eight. I don’t know my birthday.”
Martin lifted his chin, appraising her. “I think eight. Do you know why?”
She shook her head.
“I had a sister once, and you remind me of her. The last time I saw her, she was eight years old. I was older and already gone to sea when the letter came, saying she had died. My mother was laid very low over it. But when I got shore leave two years later, there was already another babe to take her place. But I never forgot my sister. In my mind, she is ever eight years old.”
“What was your sister’s name?” Maggie asked in her quiet voice.
Martin smiled wistfully, eyes distant. “Mary. But our mother was Mary as well, so we called her Mary Jane.”
“Mary Jane,” she repeated.
“And may I have the honor of knowing your name?” Martin asked, though Mariah had already mentioned her name, she was sure.
The girl bit her lip in a bashful smile. “Maggie.”
He offered her his good hand and she shook it.
“I don’t know my mother’s name,” she added.
“That’s too bad. And your father’s?”
Maggie shook her head. “I lived with my grandmamma, and that’s all I called her.”
“As well you should.” Martin looked into Maggie’s sweet, accepting face and seemed to hesitate. “You know, I still have my old flute. Should have sold it years ago, but couldn’t bring myself to part with it. Perhaps I could teach you to play it. At least, I think I could. Would you like that?”
Maggie smiled and nodded.
“Well, give me a few days to find it. I believe it’s buried in my seaman’s chest. But I shall unearth it, shall I?”
“Yes, please.”
Martin rose from the bench with a groan and a stretch. “Well, I had better get back to work, before Miss Dixon calls me a sluggard and worse. A good day to you, Miss Maggie.”
She bounced a small curtsy. “And to you, Mr. Martin.”
At the kitchen window, Dixon breathed, “Oh dear . . .”
Alarmed, Mariah asked, “What? What has he done now?” She looked into the stricken face of her old friend and what she saw written there surprised her. “Don’t tell me he’s gone and made you like him.”
Dixon pulled a grimace. “Foolish girl. Not ‘like him.’ Not in that way, of course. But . . . he does surprise one, doesn’t he? Maggie speaks more to him than to the two of us put together.”
Mariah nodded. “Children who are not frightened by him seem drawn to him like bees to honey.”
“Or manure,” Dixon murmured, as though that were the next line in the script, but she no longer possessed the asperity to do the part justice.
The next day, a pony cart came rumbling up the gatehouse lane, driven by Jack Strong. Martin sat beside him and was the first to climb down when the cart came to a halt. Mariah stepped outside to see what the men were about, and Martin gestured her over. He reached into the cart and hauled out a large canvas bag and tossed it to her. She caught it gingerly, but the bag was far lighter than it looked. Then Martin and Mr. Strong began hefting an old trunk off the back of the cart. Maggie, George, and Lizzy appeared at the other side of the gate, grasping the iron bars and watching the bustle with interest. Mariah waved George over, and the boy came running through the gatehouse, hurrying forward just in time to help with Martin’s end of the trunk.
“Couldn’t stand to see your aunt’s things burned in the rubbish pile, or pilfered by the maids,” Martin explained, puffing and straining. “Thought you might like to have them – what Hugh didn’t manage to sell, that is. I suppose what’s left is not very fashionable.”
“Thank you, Martin. That was very thoughtful.”
Mariah carried the canvas bag toward the house just as Dixon opened the door for them. Martin, George, and Jack Strong bore the trunk inside, then went out for a load of bandboxes, another bag, and an old mahogany cosmetics case. The men left everything in the drawing room for the ladies to peruse at their leisure, but Mr. Strong offered to return the following day to haul the trunk upstairs if they wished. George lingered behind after the men departed.