“I was not content!” Josiah exclaimed. “I married her because I was not content with the warehouse. I wanted more, and I am getting more. You will not stand against me, Sarah, I will not allow it.”
She turned away and looked out the window. Below them a rival’s ship was safely docked, swarming with sailmakers come to collect the sails for repair, half a dozen sailors crawling over the deck caulking the planks with tar and hemp rope.
“We used to stand together,” she said.
“I know.”
There was a silence. Sarah sighed. “I will not go against you. So trust me, Josiah. Don’t keep things from me. I am not a silly girl. I am not a lady of leisure. I was brought up to this business. I can help you.”
He nodded and came across the room to her. He put his arm around her waist and held her for a brief moment. “I know,” he repeated. “I have been miserably lonely with this worry.”
They stood still for a moment, watching the ship, as bereft parents will watch someone else’s baby in a cradle.
“I must go,” Josiah said briskly. “I have a horse waiting.”
“You have hired a horse again?”
Josiah laughed. “Sarah, I have bought the Hot Well. I have to check on my business! Of course I have hired a horse, and as soon as I can find one that suits me, I shall buy one! I need to ride out and see that my business is thriving. I would not be doing my work if I were not riding out to look at it. Surely you see that!”
She smiled unwillingly at him. “Yes. It is the expense which worries me.”
“It would cost me more if I did not inspect it,” he said briskly. “Now let me go.”
She watched him from the window. Mehuru held the horse’s head for him as he mounted. It seemed odd to see Josiah setting off for his work on horseback. All his life he had gone no farther than the quayside outside their house. Now he looked like a gentleman, in riding boots and with a cape on his shoulders. Sarah thought that if she saw him at a distance, she would not recognize him. The little brother she had reared was going far away from her, and she did not understand him, nor his business, anymore. The figures in the ledgers were no longer small, manageable amounts, easily understood, added and subtracted. They were dangerous sums, perilous debts. And Josiah was no longer her little brother who came to her for advice and never sent out a ship without her checking the figures. He was a man prepared to take great risks, to take a massive gamble to win the home he wanted for the wife he had chosen.
Unseen by Josiah, she put up her hand to wave good-bye in a gesture that looked more as if she were calling him back.
JOSIAH’S HEART LIFTED A little as he rode along the riverside to the Hot Well. The tide was coming in, and the sunshine sparkled on the water. The woods on either side of the river had lost their lush greenness, the leaves dulling in the heat and glare of the July sun. Josiah felt better for confiding in Sarah. She had been his business adviser for so long that any secret from her made him uneasy. And in reassuring her he convinced himself.
The Merchant Venturers’ expensive avenue of trees were dusty after months of carriages going to and fro beneath their spreading branches. The waves were slapping the river wall of the Pump Room in a pretty, irregular sound. An onshore breeze had lifted the constant smoke away from the city, and the sky was blue with fleecy strips of white cloud. Josiah rode down the little avenue with his hand on his hip and felt the novel pleasure of being a proprietor of land. He inspected the building with smug care; he took in the sky above it and the circling birds as if they, too, were part of his investment and a credit to his acumen.
At the back of the building, the tap, which had traditionally dispensed water for free, was being bolted off. The workmen looked up and pulled at their caps as Josiah rode past. Josiah responded with a small, jaunty gesture.
He could have hitched his horse to one of the posts outside the pump room. There were others there, bearing the traditional Bristol saddle—a two-seater—for a lady to sit behind the groom. Instead Josiah chose to whistle up a loitering urchin and promise him a penny to hold the horse. It was not that the animal was too high-bred or skittish to be left unattended. The stable knew that Josiah was not a confident rider, and they always sent him a placid, slow-moving hack. But Josiah was learning the pleasure of spending money. A penny was a little enough sum, but to Josiah, hiring a child to hold a horse when there was a hitching ring for free was an extravagance. It excited him to be extravagant. He foresaw a future when he would become a liberal tipper, a spendthrift in small, enjoyable ways, a man who carried loose change in his pocket and had spent it all on trifles by the end of the day.
He strolled into his pump room and looked around. The perennial invalids were in their usual places, drinking water or loitering under the roof of the colonnade, taking their prescribed exercise. Josiah hardly glanced at them. These were not the people whose custom would determine the success of the Well. He needed the fashionable crowd, the London pleasure seekers, the day visitors from Bath. They had come here in their hundreds in previous years, and Josiah had been at pains to advertise that the spa was under new management and offering advantageous rates for this first season. Surely, with a sky so blue and an outlook from the large windows of the rooms so beguiling, they would come in their hundreds again?
“Ah, Mr. Cole.” The master of ceremonies, newly appointed by Josiah but chosen by Frances, came forward and bowed to him. “Mr. Cole, our proprietor! We are all prepared, as you see! All ready for the launch of the new management. I have already received several cards notifying me of the arrival of ladies of quality. I think we shall have an enjoyable year! I do indeed! We are starting a little late, a little late in our season, to be sure. But people do not go to London till October or November, and I am confident we can charm them from their country houses to here. We have the rest of this month and all of August and September, besides!”
Josiah smiled. He could not help but be uneasy with the man who wore such tightly strapped stays under his clothes that his waistcoat fitted without a wrinkle and his coat was one smooth line from padded shoulders to stiffened hem. “Good,” he said shortly. “I see they are shutting off the free tap at the back of the building.”
“Certainly,” the master confirmed. “It would be fatal to our atmosphere of elegance to have the back of the building crowded with dirty and sickly people. Besides—how can we charge for water inside the building if we are giving it away free outside?”
“Yes,” Josiah agreed curtly. “The room looks well. I will take the attendance book and the cash register home with me.”
“Certainly, certainly,” the man said sweetly. “But I think you will be happy. I am content enough with how it is going. We have our poor little invalids here as usual, but also a fair number of pleasure seekers, and it is they who give the spa the air of fashion that it needs.”
“Yes,” Josiah said, rather at a loss.
“There are a few little improvements I would suggest?” the master of ceremonies continued archly. “I would have put them in hand, but they do cost money, and I wanted to speak to the holder of the purse strings. I cannot have you thinking me extravagant, now!”
“What are they?”
The man held up his slender hand and ticked the items off on well-manicured fingers. “One: The quartet plays only in the summer season and I think it is a shame. In the winter when it is gray outside, we so badly want music and light and laughter inside, don’t you think, Mr. Cole? Don’t you agree, sir?”
“Yes,” Josiah said, goaded. “Keep them on.”
“And I want to hire a little woman, a pretty little woman to stand behind an urn and make tea in the afternoons. You can order tea, but I want it here, visible, so you can see it, and want it, and have it in a flash. In a flash! D’you see?”
Josiah shook his head at the volubility of the man. “Do as you think best,” he said. “But check any expenditure with me of more than ten pounds.”
“Now, that is a reasonable
way to do business!” the man cried. “But how silly of me, you are a businessman first and foremost, aren’t you, Mr. Cole? Now, is there anything else I wanted to ask you?” He put his head on one side. His wig released a little puff of scented powder. “No! Not a single thing! Now, can I tempt you to a glass of your own water?”
Josiah recoiled hastily. “No, no. No need. The men bring bottles for my wife to drink when they deliver in town. She likes it. I . . . er . . . I do not take it. I am in perfect health, thank God.”
The man laid a gloved hand on Josiah’s sleeve. A faint but unmistakable scent of geraniums blew sweetly and powerfully into Josiah’s rigid face. “Are you sure I can’t tempt you?” he cooed.
“No, no.” Josiah nearly choked in discomfort. “I have to go! Business, you know, business.”
He got himself out of the room at speed, mounted his horse, and threw a penny at the boy. But once he was safely out of reach, he turned his head and looked back. He chuckled. He could not help but wonder what his da—the son of a collier—would have made of the family’s meteoric rise and this new fanciful trade.
CHAPTER
30
I HAVE BEEN THINKING WHAT we can do,” Mehuru said to Frances. She was sitting on the bench in the central garden of Queens Square, with him standing beside her. Frances had just walked around the square, obeying Stuart Hadley’s instructions to take light exercise in the open air.
Frances turned to look at him, shading her pale face from the sun with her little parasol. The August day was hot; she was wearing a muslin gown flecked with pink and a pink shawl over her shoulders. Mehuru had to curb his desire to straighten the shawl and wrap her tighter. Ever since Stuart had warned him of her health, he found he was desperate to keep her warm, as if she were some rare African plant that would wither and die under the cool, damp skies of England.
“We,” she repeated with a little smile. She did not say whether or not she recognized his right to speak of them as a couple.
“Has the doctor spoken to you about your health?”
“No,” she said. “I am well now.”
Mehuru made a little grimace. “He thinks that you have weak lungs.”
“Oh, I knew that,” Frances said. “It was my mother’s complaint, too.”
“He told Josiah that you should go abroad in wintertime.”
“Josiah never said.”
“Josiah cannot see how it can be done,” Mehuru replied grimly. “Three ships of his own, and he cannot see how you can be sent somewhere warm for the winter.”
Frances twirled her parasol and peeped up at Mehuru from under the fringe. “Don’t be unkind about Josiah,” she reproved him. “It is not fair to criticize him.”
“Mmm.” Mehuru suppressed his disagreement. “The point is, the doctor thinks you should be in a better climate than here for the winter months.”
“How do you know all this?” Frances suddenly demanded.
“I was holding the doctor’s horse and listening,” Mehuru said without embarrassment. “Servants always know everything, Frances, you know that.”
“But not about us? They don’t know about us?”
“Frances,” Mehuru said patiently. “I am trying to make plans.”
“My reputation . . .”
“They know nothing about us,” Mehuru lied quickly. “I want to plan . . .”
“To plan what?”
“The doctor says that you should go away in the winter for your health. This is not a light matter. He means it. He is afraid that your lungs are damaged and the wet and cold weather is bad for you. This house is low-lying, too near the river. And the air of this city is unbreathable!”
Frances nodded more seriously. “I have never felt well since I came to Bristol.”
“I want you to come away with me.” Mehuru finally took the plunge. “I want us to go to Italy or, better than that, to France. I think that the political situation in France is perfect for us. I want us to live in France together, as man and wife.”
Frances was stunned. She sat bolt upright and snapped the parasol shut. “France!” she exclaimed.
“They will have a parliament governed by the will of the people,” Mehuru predicted. “And Negroes from the French colonies will sit side by side with white representatives. They will free the slaves in the colonies, and black men and white men will be equal under the new French law. It is the ideal place for us. I will work as a journalist; I will earn a living as a writer.”
She shook her head. The cluster of pink silk flowers on her bonnet quivered as if they were afraid.
“Why not?”
“They cannot free the slaves,” she said disbelievingly. “They will not.”
“I am assured they will, and France would be the very place for us to live together.”
“I could not live in France,” she said in a small voice.
“Italy, then.”
“I could not live abroad. The only family I have is in England. I could not go abroad.”
“But you never see your family.”
“My family name is important to me.” She looked at him as if she could never explain. “People know who I am in England. This is where I belong.”
He curbed his impatience. “Let’s walk,” he suggested. He could not bear to stand behind her seat and not be allowed to touch her while she threw away her chance of health and their only chance of happiness. She rose up obediently, and they went down the path to the center of the square; he walked a scant half pace behind her.
“Very well, then,” he said. “Let us find a house with good healthy air, perhaps near your old home. You liked it there, did you not? At Bath?”
Frances felt her heart speeding and her breath coming short.
“You don’t understand. We could not live together, Mehuru. I would be ruined.”
“I understand that Josiah’s friends and family would not recognize you,” he said carefully. “But your own family would surely still care for you?”
She put her hand at the base of her throat, trying to still her panting. “No,” she said. “I would be ruined, Mehuru. They would cut me off. I would never see any of them again.”
“What about your uncle, the one who writes to you, Lord Scott?”
Frances, thinking of his lordship’s unequivocal advice about the fatal results of infidelity, gave a shaky laugh. “Him least of all!” she said. “If I left Josiah at all, it would be the end for me, Mehuru! If I left him for you, I would be outlawed by my family. They would never speak of me again.”
He had a growing, painful sense that he was defeated before he had even started. “Frances,” he said, “I have lost everything. My house, my family, my country, my work, which was the greatest joy of all, and I am beginning again. Why cannot you and I begin again together?”
She shook her head. “It’s not possible, not possible. You do not understand.” She turned away and started to walk, a little quicker, down the westward path toward her house.
“Why not?” he demanded, catching her up.
“We would have no money,” she said. She was breathless from walking too quickly. “I have nothing except what Josiah gives me, and you have nothing at all. We could not take a house, we could not even rent a room. The only work I can do is governessing, and you cannot earn at all.”
“People would help us,” he argued. “We could go to London. I already have made friends with some Englishmen, members of a constitutional society. These people would be our friends; we could live near them. There is a place in London called Wapping where a friend of mine lives. We could leave Bristol and stay there.”
The look she turned on him was simply incredulous. “You have been to radical meetings?” She was stunned. “Mehuru, how could you? How could you even get to them?”
“I crept out. I have been to several.”
She gasped. “But these are dreadful people! They threaten the whole nation. These are dangerous radical agitators!”
He tried to laugh a
t her alarm, but he felt a growing fear at the gulf that was opening between them. “You have not met these people, Frances, and I have. They are not dangerous agitators—they are quiet, sensible men who wish to see sensible changes made in this country and the ending of the slave trade. Two or three of them are my countrymen, and they understand my position.”
She was quite white with horror. “You have been plotting with runaway slaves?”
“They are not runaway slaves,” he snapped. “They are freemen.”
Frances put her gloved hand to her cheek as she tried to catch her breath. “Mehuru, this is awful. I had no idea that you were doing this. They are dangerous agitators, and they will be arrested and hanged or transported. If they catch you, they will send you to Australia or to the plantations. You must promise me never, never to go again.”
“Or what?”
She did not hear the warning note in his voice; she was too absorbed in her fears for his safety. “I shall tell Josiah that the doors have to be locked at night. You must not meet with these people.”
“Or you could chain me up,” he suggested bitingly. “Or have me whipped.”
She suddenly realized what she had said. “I don’t mean that,” she recanted swiftly. “I meant that you are a foreigner. You do not speak the language, you do not understand the people you are mixing with. I want to protect you.”
“I think I do not need the kind of protection that locks up a grown man and forbids him to choose his friends.” He was toweringly angry. “I think I do not want a woman who threatens me with imprisonment. And I do not want a woman who desires me but will not acknowledge that she desires me and still plans to spend the rest of her life with her husband.”
He spun on his heel and was walking away from her when Frances, reckless of who might see her, ran after him and caught at the sleeve of his coat. “Don’t!” she cried. She was panting for air. “Please! Mehuru!”
He stopped when he saw the whiteness of her face and heard her breath coming so short.