Midnight Rose (47 page)

“Do you know much about it?”

“Only that it was initially a private venture of antislavery humanitarians. They were hoping to accomplish two things—a home for unwanted ex-slaves and a base for legitimate trade into Africa. The trade venture didn’t work out, though. The colony wound up being taken over by the British government. It’s still a haven for free slaves, however, and your mother will be safe there.”

“That’s a comfort. I’m sure my stepfather will never stop looking for her if he finds out she wasn’t sold into slavery as he intended.”

“Do you have to go there, too? We could use you here, Erin.”

“I know, and believe me, I’d like to help, but I feel driven to try and find her, Pastor Jones.”

Soberly, somberly, he whispered, “I pray that you do, my child. I pray that you do.”

Pastor Jones insisted she take money for carriage fare. Temperatures had dropped even lower, and the skies were cloudy and overcast with the threat of rain. A chilling wind was blowing in from the channel, and it was no kind of weather to be out walking, especially in her weakened condition.

When the carriage pulled up in front of Charles Grudinger’s house, it was nearly dark. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep at Mother Bethel, but after eating so much of the delicious meal Pastor Jones had prepared for her, she had curled up on his sofa and slept all afternoon. He had not wanted to awaken her, feeling she needed the rest.

Dressed as she was, Erin did not dare go to the front entrance. Instead, she went to the door that opened to the alley in the rear, where deliveries and service calls were made.

Nanny Bess peered out a window in response to her knock, calling sharply, “Who is it? We aren’t expecting anyone.”

Erin gave only her first name.

Promptly opening the door to motion her inside, Nanny Bess exclaimed, “Glory be, I’d never have known it was you. What on earth has happened? Your clothes, your hair…” Her voice trailed off; she was embarrassed because she’d gone on so. It was obvious the once glamorous and richly dressed young woman had fallen on hard times.

Erin proceeded to tell all, and Nanny Bess listened with eyes growing ever wider with each word she spoke. “I need to talk to Mr. Grudinger,” Erin finished in pleading. “I don’t have any money. Mother Bethel can’t help, either. And I’ve got to get to Sierra Leone and find my mother. I was hoping, praying, he’d grant me passage on one of his ships.”

They were sitting in the kitchen. Nanny Bess had guided her to a chair at the table. She didn’t say anything as she took Erin’s wet cape and offered her one of her robes. Finally, when Erin was warm, comfortable, and holding a mug of steaming coffee in her trembling hands, Nanny Bess told her Mr. Grudinger was not well. “The doctors think it’s his heart. He seldom gets out of bed anymore. He’s gone to sleep for the night, and I don’t want to wake him up.

“In fact,” she admitted, “I’m not sure it’s a good idea even to let him know you’re here.”

“But why?” Erin was desperate to know, a sinking sensation in her stomach. “Surely he’ll help me, and I know he was involved in transporting freed slaves back to Africa, and—”

“That didn’t work out.” Nanny Bess cut her off brusquely. “The Colonization Society was having money problems, so he got involved with packet services instead.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I do know is that I don’t have anywhere else to go, and if he can’t, or won’t, help me, then I’ve got to try and slip on board to stow away and hope I don’t get caught.” Her voice cracked with emotion.

“That won’t be necessary. Mr. Grudinger has been generous to me through the years, and my needs have been few. I have money saved, and I can book your passage on one of the packets myself. He owns two of them. But they also carry cargo, and they don’t sail from port till they have a full load. There’s only room for about twelve passengers, but I’ll see what I can do about getting you on the next one out.”

“Thank God.” Erin breathed a sigh of relief, but sensing there was something she wasn’t being told, she asked suspiciously, “Why don’t you want him to know I’m here?”

“Because I’d have to tell him everything, how your husband sold you into slavery, which technically makes you a fugitive. He wouldn’t dare let you go on one of his ships then. He’d be afraid he’d lose his contract with the government to carry mail if it became known he was illegally transporting runaways.

“Whether you like it or not,” she hastened to add, “Mr. Youngblood is a rich and powerful man. Quite well known and highly regarded. If he finds out you escaped and were brought north, you can be sure he’ll have people looking for you. Mr. Grudinger would not want to be involved.”

“But you will help me?” Erin felt the need to be assured, reaching to clasp Nanny Bess’s hand.

“Of course I will, but I wish you were going to stay here. I could use your help.”

Erin shook her head. “That’s not possible.”

Nanny Bess understood, then dismally shared her own fears. “Mr. Grudinger isn’t going to live much longer, and I won’t have a home myself when he’s gone. But that part doesn’t worry me. What does is wondering what I can do to help Mother Bethel.”

“You’ll find a way,” Erin assured her, reverently adding, “Your kind always do.”

Nanny Bess flashed a wide grin and impulsively reached to hug her. “And so does yours! I won’t be at all surprised to see you back here one day. I’ll sure be praying it happens.”

“Maybe. Right now I’ve got a long journey ahead of me.” Pain assaulted her as she remembered Rosa’s dying prediction that she’d go far, far away, because she’d worn gray on her wedding day. Sharing the superstition, she offered the comment, “I don’t believe in things like that, but it makes me wonder.”

“Maybe it works both ways,” Nanny Bess voiced her hope. “Maybe it’ll bring you back again.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Several more weeks passed before
Grudinger’s
packet in the harbor was fully loaded with cargo. Erin passed the time by helping at Mother Bethel in exchange for a cot in the basement, since Nanny Bess stuck to her resolve that it was best Mr. Grudinger not know she was about. There was much to be done at the church anyway, where the homeless and hungry were fed daily.

Erin liked working from dawn till dark, so that when she finally went to bed, she was too exhausted to dream. For despite her resolve to forget the past, she miserably had no control over her heart during sleep. So many nights she would awaken from having envisioned Ryan’s strong arms about her, only to weep in sorrow for what was, what might have been.

She was glad when word came of a definite departure, for winter had descended, and no one could be sure when the river would become ice-locked and impassable.

Nanny Bess went to the dock that morning to see her off. She’d provided new clothing and money to help Erin become established once she reached her destination. “This packet, the
Freedom,
goes directly to Liverpool. From there, you’ll be sailing off the coast of Portugal, then Africa, and finally reach Sierra Leone in about another ten days after you leave England.”

Erin tried to express her gratitude, but Nanny Bess said it wasn’t necessary.

“We’re all in this together, child. Helping each other. That’s what it takes to get through this life.”

Erin hadn’t thought much about Nanny Bess providing her with false papers of identification, listing her under the assumed name of Miss Edith Starling. But she realized why that was necessary when the captain obligingly showed her the information he had to keep on all his passengers: their age, sex, occupation, and nationality. So, there would be no document of Erin Sterling ever having crossed the Atlantic.

As on her previous voyage, Erin fell in love with the sea. While the other passengers gathered in the saloon for card games and such, she delighted in following the crew about, fascinated to observe the inner workings of the ship.

The captain, Dolan O’Grady, invited Erin to his quarters each night after dinner. While he enjoyed his daily allowance of one glass of brandy, along with a cigar, Erin listened, entranced, as he told her all about his life at sea, what it was like to be on a packet line.

The term
packet,
he told her, came from the way cargo was bundled—in packets. It came to signify a ship that sailed on schedule, which meant such a vessel could be counted on to deliver the most urgent of cargoes, such as important mail and time-pressed passengers.

Dizzily, Erin challenged herself to memorize every detail. “What ye be wantin’ to learn all the technical points for, lassie?” Captain O’Grady wanted to know one evening as she proudly recited all she’d learned.

With a shake of her head and a twinkle in her brown eyes, Erin laughed. “Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll run a ship of my own.”

The packets were all tubby in appearance. Sturdy construction was required, Captain O’Grady emphasized, for no matter what its size or role, there was no more demanding a job for a ship than year-round service on the Atlantic. Erin was amazed at the cost, which ranged from forty to fifty thousand dollars per ship.

Captain O’Grady agreed. “Aye, that sounds like a lot, but a packet carrying a full cargo can earn as much as twenty thousand in freight alone in a year Then there’s maybe an additional ten thousand to be had from passengers and mail. Why, even allowing for maintenance costs, a packet can still pay for herself in just a couple of years.

“As for me,” he divulged, “I might make only forty dollars a month in salary, but I get five percent of the income from cargo, and another twenty-five percent of the passengers’ fares, and Mr. Grudinger even gives me a cut of the fee for carrying mail. Thirty times the earnings of a seaman, a captain’s responsibility is worthwhile, me lassie.”

He was pushing the
Freedom
at top knots, in hopes to cross the Atlantic before a bad winter storm attacked with banshee winds, blinding snow, and mountainous seas that could roughly wash the decks for hours at a time.

“Packet sailors,” Captain O’Grady proudly boasted, “are the toughest of the tough. They can stand the worst weather, the worst food, on the least amount of sleep.

“All they require,” he added with a wink, “is a bit more rum than most.”

Ryan put on the fancy new suit his mother had had tailored for him: black waistcoat, gray striped trousers, white shirt, ruffled collar, red satin cravat. He wasn’t impressed over the outfit any more than he was the dinner party she was having. In fact,
he just plain didn’t give a
damn about anything anymore.

Ebner appeared to tell him the first guests were starting to arrive.

He poured himself another drink from the crystal decanter on his desk. Even though it had been nearly two months since Erin had gone away, he still tortured himself by imagining her sitting there, copying the diagram of the labyrinth so she and her lover could meet in the center.

Goddamn it, he cursed, how could she have done it? All those nights they’d made wonderful, passionate love, and she’d seemed so willing, so responsive, only to leave his arms later to go to another. How blind, how stupid, he’d been.

Ebner cleared his throat and uneasily repeated, “Mastah, yo’ momma said I was to tell you to come on out and greet your guests.”

“They aren’t my guests, Ebner. It’s her party. Let her worry about it.”

“Mastah Ryan, suh…” He approached reluctantly, fearfully. “Mastah, I know it’s none of my business, but I just felt I had to say somethin’ to you, ’cause me and you, we’ve known each other a long time, and—”

“Just get on with it,” Ryan snapped impatiently. He was getting fed up with the way the servants crept around as if they were scared to death of him. Maybe he was irritable, but he’d never been cruel to them. They had nothing to fear, and they should know that.

“Mastah, I’m worried about you.”

Ryan laughed. “What on earth for?”

“Well, suh…” Ebner wasn’t sure how far to go in voicing his concern. “You’re not takin’ care of yourself, and I’m worried ’cause you just aren’t happy no more.”

“Of course I’m happy,” Ryan fired back sarcastically. “Why wouldn’t I be happy? I’ve got extremely competent overseers who keep Jasmine Hill running quite efficiently. My mother runs the house with the help of Eliza and a whole staff of good servants. And all the slaves are well taken care of, and they seem satisfied with their life. There’s not a thing I have to do. I can just sit here night and day and drink, and nobody cares.”

“I cares, suh.”

Ryan looked at Ebner over the rim of his glass and knew by the valet’s concerned expression it was so. “Well, I appreciate it, Ebner, but there’s no need to worry. I’m fine.” His smile was forced.

And Ebner knew it.

Ryan tossed down the rest of his drink and stood. “Well, I suppose there’s nothing to do but get this evening over with. How many did my mother invite, do you know?”

“I heard her tell Eliza she’d invited all of Miz Ermine Coley’s family. I counted Eliza settin’ places fo’ nine.”

Ryan groaned. That meant Ermine’s parents and both sets of grandparents, and he smelled a rat. His mother hadn’t told him it was strictly a family gathering, and if the grandparents were included, it meant the pressure would be on him to announce a new wedding date tonight. He wasn’t ready. He hadn’t even gone down and signed the papers the family attorney had prepared that would free him legally from Erin. Damn it, he just wasn’t ready for any of it, and most of all, despite the pain and anger, he wasn’t even ready to stop thinking about her, wanting her, and, most anguished of all, to stop loving her.