The Rector's Daughter Read online

  ‘If that be your lad yonder,’ Josiah said, indicating the child with a nod. ‘Then you should have kept better hold of him.’

  The young woman let out a relieved sigh. ‘I know and I’m so sorry for causing you such inconvenience. Please accept my sincere apologies.’

  She gave him a self-conscious smile and Josiah smiled back.

  ‘Ah, well,’ he said, noting her pleasing proportions and auburn hair. ‘We’ll say no more about it, shall—’

  ‘What, may I ask, is going on here?’

  Tearing his eyes from the woman in front of him, Josiah looked around to see a thin, tight-featured woman wearing an over-large hat and a gown laden with frills striding towards them.

  Arthur shot out from his hiding place and dashed over to her.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he bawled, burying his face in the folds.

  ‘Of course not, my angel,’ she replied, hugging the boy to her.

  ‘I just wanted to see, so I—’

  ‘Arthur ran off,’ the young woman started to explain. ‘I tried to catch him, but—’

  ‘This enormous wheel,’ cut in Arthur. ‘It nearly squashed me and—’

  ‘Squashed!’ The over-dressed woman clutched the child to her.

  ‘Yes,’ he snivelled, his lower lip trembling with each word. ‘And I was so frightened, Mama.’

  ‘There there, my pet, do not fret, my love.’ She gathered him to her bosom then her eyes narrowed and she looked at the younger woman. ‘I thought you were supposed to be looking after him?’

  ‘As I about to explain, Mrs Palmer—’

  The boy let out a piercing scream.

  ‘Arthur ran off,’ said the young woman, raising her voice above the racket, ‘and—’

  ‘He was nearly killed,’ interrupted Mrs Palmer.

  ‘It weren’t your lad who was in danger, madam, but this young lady,’ said Josiah. ‘And to my way of thinking, if he did what he’d been told, she wouldn’t have very nearly been crushed by a three hundred-weight cast-iron flywheel.’

  The woman with the ridiculous hat turned her caustic gaze on him.

  ‘And who, pray, are you, to speak to me in such a manner?’

  ‘I’m the engineer who put the barrier up to stop children and idiots from wandering where they shouldn’t,’ Josiah replied.

  A splash of colour stained her throat above the lace of her collar.

  ‘Engineer, huh!’ she sneered. ‘A jumped-up Irish oaf, don’t you mean? And a drunken one at that.’

  Josiah balled his fists. ‘Irish! I’m Cornish. Cornish, madam. Can’t you—’

  ‘Josiah.’

  His brother Ezra’s level voice cut through Josiah’s boiling temper. He took a deep breath and pulled himself together.

  Mrs Palmer grabbed her son’s hand. ‘Well, whatever you are, you’re clearly not a gentleman. Come on, Arthur.’

  ‘Yes, Mama,’ the boy replied, looking adoringly up at her. ‘Can I have an aniseed twist and a balloon for being brave, Mama?’

  ‘Of course you can, my pet.’ Mrs Palmer gave Josiah a contemptuous look and, with Arthur trotting beside her, headed back to the main area.

  As she reached the middle of the enclosure she turned and looked at the young woman still standing in front of Josiah.

  ‘I don’t think the rector will be very pleased when he hears about this, do you?’ she snapped before stepping out into the crowd.

  The young woman set her bonnet straight and looked up at Josiah, the sun highlighting the gold flecks in her green eyes.

  ‘Thank you again for your swift action,’ she said in a soft voice.

  ‘I’m glad I was there, miss,’ Josiah replied. ‘But next time I’d advise you to keep a tight hold of your charge.’

  ***

  ‘I think Arthur’s a little feverish,’ said Mrs Palmer, putting her hand on her son’s forehead.

  ‘Do you think so?’ said Charlotte, looking at Arthur who was lying on the sofa in the rectory parlour sucking noisily on an enormous candy twist. ‘He looks well to me.’

  ‘Where is that blasted doctor?’ Mrs Palmer muttered as she knelt beside her son, stroking his forehead.

  ‘I’m sure Dr Forsyth will be here any moment,’ said Charlotte, casting her eye over the child at the centre of the afternoon’s drama.

  Having spent years tending to sick and poorly children as part of her parish visiting, to Charlotte’s mind Arthur looked perfectly fine which is more than could be said for her.

  With her head pounding and her heart racing, Charlotte had stumbled out of the restricted enclosure after Mrs Palmer. Vaguely aware of the ground-breaking ceremony taking place in the main area of the yard, Charlotte had pushed her way through the crowds and caught up with Mrs Palmer outside the main gate.

  Although Charlotte yearned for the peace and quiet stillness of her own bedroom, in consideration of Mrs Palmer’s near-hysterical state Charlotte offered her and her son the hospitality of the rectory.

  Ten minutes later they stumbled through the rectory door, much to the surprise of Mrs Norris, the rectory’s cook, who opened it.

  The doorbell rang.

  ‘At last!’ shouted Mrs Palmer as she leapt to her feet. ‘I shall have something to say to Dr Forsyth for not attending sooner.’

  The parlour door opened but, instead of the elderly doctor, Nicolas walked in.

  At well over six feet tall with a slender build and an aquiline nose, Captain Nicolas Paget was every inch a gentleman. He’d served alongside Wellington during the Peninsular Wars from which he retired some ten years ago at just twenty-five years old.

  Since then he’d resided with his mother in Deptford and done pretty much what gentlemen did, which was visit their clubs and tailor and generally be seen around town.

  He’d clearly recently visited Weston’s in Bond Street as Charlotte hadn’t seen the shawl collar double-breasted navy jacket, gold waistcoat and buff and tan striped trousers that he was wearing before.

  His pale-blue eyes darted around the room until they found her.

  ‘Miss Hatton, you are here,’ he said, striding across to her.

  ‘Yes, we returned early,’ said Charlotte, feeling better at his appearance.

  ‘So I was told when I got to the yard not half an hour ago, and was alarmed to hear you’d very nearly been injured,’ said Nicolas.

  ‘Were you?’ asked Charlotte, feeling warmed by his obvious concern.

  ‘Indeed, I was,’ he replied, his jaw taut as it rested on his high winged collar. ‘I imagined all manner of calamities. What happened?’

  Charlotte told him.

  ‘And I would have been crushed beneath had it not been for a gentleman’s swift action,’ she concluded.

  ‘Gentleman?’ snapped Mrs Palmer. ‘How can you call him so with his jacket off, sleeves rolled up and collar open? No gentleman I know would be seen in such a state of undress.’

  ‘He was an engineer,’ said Charlotte. ‘And what matter that his jacket was off? He was clearly working on some of the machinery when we came upon him.’

  Mrs Palmer gave her a scornful look. ‘In my opinion, Miss Hatton, the rogue whose neglect nearly cost me my son was no more than a drunken Irishman like all the rest. And…’ She shifted her attention to Nicolas. ‘I’m sure if you’d been there and witnessed this navvy and his familiar manner towards Miss Hatton, captain, you would have thrashed him rather than thank him.’

  The doorbell rang again.

  ‘If that is not Doctor Fo—’

  The door opened and, thankfully, Dr Forsyth, his bushy grey eyebrows knitted tight together, walked in.

  ‘I’m sorry I took so long, I’ve been at a difficult birth. Now…’ he said, looking at them over his half-rimmed spectacles. ‘Who is the patient?’

  Leaving Doctor Forsyth to examine his patient, Charlotte and Nicolas stepped into the hallway, taking up a position facing each other on either side of the Persian floor runner.

  Charlotte smile
d shyly across at him and he smiled back.

  They stood awkwardly facing each other for a moment, then he cleared his throat.

  ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t able to get to the rectory in time to accompany you and Mrs Palmer as I had hoped,’ he said. ‘But Mother, you know how she can be when—’

  ‘I quite understand,’ said Charlotte, giving him a tight smile.

  ‘It’s just when she has one of her turns it’s the Devil’s own job to make her rest,’ he continued. ‘And at her age health can be precarious.’

  ‘So you’ve said,’ Charlotte replied. ‘And as an only son you have to be mindful of her welfare.’

  ‘I do,’ said Nicolas. ‘However, I regret I had to today as I wasn’t able to keep you from harm as this Irish labourer has.’

  ‘He was not Irish, captain, but Cornish,’ said Charlotte, as the image of her rescuer flashed through her mind. ‘And an engineer not a labourer.’

  Nicolas smiled and the fashionable Grecian curls across his forehead lifted slightly.

  ‘Well whoever he is you must tell me his name, so I might seek him out and thank him for his most timely intervention.’

  ‘I’m afraid it all happened so fast that I don’t know his name,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘Pity,’ said Nicolas. ‘But from what you say, Miss Hatton, I would think Master Palmer needs a firmer hand, especially when his actions endanger others who are held in great affection by another person.’ He gazed longingly at her.

  A warm glow spread through Charlotte, dispelling some of her earlier annoyance at him for breaking his promise to escort them to Cow Yard.

  She smiled warmly at him and was rewarded with another gaze of adoration.

  He took a step forward and was just about to speak again when the door from the kitchen below opened.

  Mrs Norris appeared, and Nicolas took a pace back.

  ‘I ought to take my leave of you, Miss Hatton,’ he said, taking his hat, gloves and walking stick from the hall table. ‘Please convey my best wishes to Mrs Palmer and I look forward to seeing you both in church on Sunday.’ He clicked his heels together and bowed.

  Charlotte curtsied.

  Flipping on his hat he shot her another brief smile and let himself out.

  Charlotte turned her attention back to the woman standing in the door.

  The rectory’s housekeeper, who was dressed in her serviceable brown serge dress, apron and mop cap, was in her mid to late thirties with wide hips and a narrow face.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Norris?’

  ‘I thought I heard the upstairs bell,’ the housekeeper replied.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Charlotte. ‘But you were mistaken. However, once Mrs Palmer and her son have departed could you have a peppermint infusion taken to my room as I have the starting of a headache.’

  ‘Very good, miss,’ said Mrs Norris.

  Giving the smallest of bobs, she went back down the stairs and the door closed after her.

  Charlotte turned and looked into the large, ornate gilt-framed mirror fixed over the long hall table.

  Starting of a headache! She’d had a tight steel-like band of pain around her head since she’d returned to the house. However it wasn’t just the memory of the monstrous iron wheel careering towards her that had started her temples throbbing but the image of her rescuer, too.

  She hadn’t thought she’d taken much notice of him but, in truth, she could recall with clarity the unruly nature of his black hair, his compelling dark eyes and broad shoulders without any trouble.

  And although she’d told Nicolas she couldn’t recall his name and didn’t remember hearing it, she knew the tall Cornishman who had saved her life that afternoon was called Josiah.

  Chapter two

  Seeing Olive Jessup walk into church for Sunday Eucharist, Charlotte ticked her name off the list in the small journal she had resting on her knee.

  Olive, whose husband was the first parishioner Charlotte’s father had buried after they arrived in Rotherhithe five years ago, lived in Neptune Rents, took in washing to support herself and her four young children. Olive had slipped on the wet cobbles and twisted her knee two weeks before and Charlotte had been taking food to the family, but as Olive now had only the smallest hint of a limp Charlotte thought it safe to cross her off her visiting list.

  It was the role of the rector or vicar’s wife to keep an eye on who was and who wasn’t at church each week. Since her dearest mother’s sad departure from this life, Charlotte had taken on the task. It was supposed to ensure that only those parishioners who sat under the word of God regularly were granted poor relief by the parish council. Charlotte took a more relaxed approach to the church attendance criterion than her father liked.

  Charlotte looked up, but as her eyes skimmed over the congregation, someone called her name.

  ‘Miss Hatton.’

  She turned to find Nicolas standing behind her, his pale-blue eyes warmed as they rested on her face.

  Today he was wearing a sharply cut brown jacket which showed a richly embroidered waistcoat with twinkling silver buttons beneath.

  Charlotte smiled. ‘Good day, captain—’

  ‘Good day to you, Miss Hatton,’ Nicolas’s mother said, springing out from behind her son.

  Mrs Paget might be the wrong side of seventy, with wrinkles etched in both cheeks and hair like grey cobweb, but her gaze was as sharp as a hatpin. Although she finished each and every conversation with, ‘if I’m spared’, to Charlotte’s mind, Mrs Paget had the constitution of an ox.

  ‘What a pleasure to see you, Mrs Paget,’ Charlotte said, forcing a smile. ‘How are you?’

  The old woman’s elf-like face contorted into an agonising expression. ‘Never without pain.’

  ‘Mother’s knees have been troublesome this week,’ Nicolas said, straightening the ruffles around his cuffs. ‘The doctor has bled her twice but with no relief.’

  Charlotte did her best to look concerned, if only for Nicolas’s sake.

  ‘You look well,’ he said, his pale-blue eyes still fixed on her.

  Mrs Paget’s toothless mouth sucked in on itself.

  ‘Whatever are you talking about, Nicolas?’ she snapped, peering up at Charlotte over her half-rimmed spectacles. ‘Miss Hatton looks as pale as a sheet. Now, Nicolas, help me to my seat.’ Her hands clutched the end of her walking stick like two blue-veined bird’s claws.

  ‘A moment, Mama!’ Charles said, a flush creeping up from his starched winged collar. ‘Miss Hatton, I hoped I might call—’

  Mrs Paget rapped her stick on the black and white tiles underfoot. ‘Now, if you please, Nicolas, unless you want my knees to give way under me.’

  Nicolas’s face twitched with irritation.

  ‘It’s all right, captain, we can talk after the service,’ said Charlotte, sending him a warm smile.

  He smiled back, then walked his mother to their seats. The first blast from the organ brought the congregation to their feet.

  Taking up the refrain of the opening hymn, Charlotte gazed around the congregation and stopped mid-Alleluia. Standing at the back of her father’s church, with the light illuminating the strong angles of his freshly shaven chin and the straightness of his mouth, was the man whose image she hadn’t been able to dislodge from her mind ever since she’d first set eyes on him four days ago.

  ***

  Josiah gazed up the spacious height of the church’s arched roof and then down to the ornate altar screen above which, in the east window, the Virgin stared over the worshipers below. St Mary’s was a far cry from the nonconformist chapel his family attended. A smile crossed his lips as he pictured his father dressed in his sober Sunday black with his Bible under his arm. He would have had to be trussed up and carried into such a place as this. His eyes travelled on and then he sat bolt upright. Across from him in the raised pews at the front of the church and dressed in her Sunday bonnet sat the young woman who he hadn’t been able to get out of his mind since the ground-breaking ceremony four da
ys ago.

  The next hymn started, and those around him stood up. As she held the hymn book in front of her, a shaft of light from the high windows above caught her in a pool of light, which emphasised the richness of her chestnut hair.

  As the congregation sang the chorus, Charlotte’s eyes drifted across the heads of the worshipers and fixed on him.

  They stood in a timeless moment staring at each other across the expanse of the church. The organ blasted out the last note and broke the spell and she averted her gaze.

  The assembly took their seats again and the service continued but Josiah heard nothing of the liturgy and even less of the sermon, because each time he glanced that way, her lovely eyes stole his attention from everything else.

  Finally, the service finished and the congregation began to greet each other as they made their way out of the church.

  The young woman rose from her seat and Josiah did the same. Pulling down the front of his waistcoat he stepped out of the pew and made his way towards her. As he got within arm’s reach of her, she turned and looked at him.

  ‘Good morning, miss,’ he said, noting in passing the sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose on her otherwise flawless complexion. ‘I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m—’

  ‘The man who saved me from being crushed,’ she replied, her eyes sparkling as they met his. ‘I think I’ll remember you until my dying day considering the circumstances under which we met.’

  He bowed. ‘Mr Martyn, at your service.’

  ‘Miss Hatton,’ she replied, with a small curtsy. She cast a sideward look towards the woman who had berated him in the work yard as she sat in her pew. ‘And I’m sorry for the way Mrs Palmer spoke to you.’

  ‘Tis not you who should be apologising, Miss Hatton,’ he replied.

  ‘Even so,’ she continued. ‘I am sorry that your kindness was rewarded so.’ She laughed. ‘And to call you Irish when clearly you’re a Cornishman is…well…’

  ‘I am and proud of it,’ he replied, oddly pleased.

  ‘There you are, Martyn!’ a familiar voice called from behind him.