Chapter Seven

‘How dare you?’ Caroline said. She was seated in the passenger seat beside Seth and had her arms wrapped tightly across her chest to keep out the cold.

Seth had a rug stowed in the boot, but he wasn’t going to fetch it for her. Against his better judgement, Seth had acquiesced to Caroline’s request to meet. That her father was ill there was no question – the whole town had heard the news – but the night that Seth had saved Charles Maunder from drowning, Caroline hadn’t bothered to return from Plymouth to be at his bedside, or to support her mother. What a night that had been! Such a storm. Seth had lost some fishing equipment but, mercifully, none of his boats. Others in the town had not been so lucky and had lost their boats, and therefore their living. Jumping into the freezing water in the harbour to save the flailing Charles Maunder had salved Seth’s conscience, a little, about the fact that he had fared better than most. He had a feeling that coming back to see her sick father now wasn’t the only item on Caroline’s agenda.

Seth shrugged but didn’t answer her question.

‘How dare you refuse me! I want my baby back. If you won’t give her to me, then it’s kidnapping.’

‘You dumped her like a sack of potatoes on the table in the bakery, if you remember. You didn’t want her then. And I don’t consider caring for my own child is kidnapping. The last time I saw you, you said you were going to America. What’s put a stop to that?’

‘The person I was going with isn’t ready to join me.’

Changed his mind, now he’s got the worth of you, no doubt, Seth thought.

‘Yet,’ Caroline added, when Seth was slow to respond. ‘He’s been held up. In his business dealings.’

Whatever they might be; a wife to leave possibly, Seth thought. He said, ‘And he’ll be happy to have a ready-made family for this venture?’

Caroline blinked and jerked her head backwards as though surprised at his question. Hah – he was beginning to find holes in her story, wasn’t he?

‘He’d do anything for me,’ Caroline said, recovering quickly, although Seth couldn’t help noticing the flush that flooded the side of her neck as she spoke. ‘We’ll let the courts decide about Rose shall we? Brother of a murderer, son of a man who died in prison, put there for smuggling? If you ask me he should have been hanged, too.’

‘No one is asking you. Least of all me. But I will tell you I was reliably informed that the authorities had their reasons. At the time.’

Setting a sprat to catch a mackerel, was the reason he’d been given. The authorities had believed, at the time, that his pa had been part of a much bigger smuggling racket and that other parties would get messages to him in gaol and then they’d be caught, too. But that hadn’t happened.

‘A tad suspicious, though, that you managed to keep your nose clean,’ Caroline sniffed. ‘If I may say that?’

Seth wasn’t going to respond to that. He had kept his nose clean and that’s all there was to it. But he did wonder if the evil-by-association tag would ever leave him, and if he’d need to go a long way away before it did. But he refused to let Caroline rile him with her jibe.

‘I’ll remind you, Caroline, that you were happy enough to let that brother, that son, share your bed when it suited you.’

‘Brothers,’ Caroline said. ‘Plural. Didn’t Miles tell you he was seeing me for a while?’

Caroline spoke as though intending to wound, but her words didn’t even scratch the surface of Seth’s feelings, his emotions.

‘I only have your word for it.’

Could he believe anything Caroline said? In all likelihood she’d made it up on the spur of the moment to goad him. But it made him think. He made rapid calculations in his head. Fleur was born on the July 16th the previous year. Count nine months back from that. No, impossible for Miles to have fathered Fleur because he was in custody then. He considered telling Caroline that Miles had escaped from prison, had come round to Mulberry House threatening him and Emma, but decided against it.

‘The only reason you bothered to ask to meet me in Victoria Park,’ he said, ‘was because you wanted all the trappings that came with everything at Hilltop now it’s mine. Or was. As you now know, it’s been sold. It didn’t take you long to meet someone to emigrate with, did it, once you knew I was already married? So I question your motives now in wanting Fleur back.’

‘Fleur? She’s called Rose.’

‘On her birth certificate she is, but I’ve been to a solicitor and had her name changed by deed poll.’

‘You can’t do that!’

‘You’ll find that I can and I have. Go and see Bettesworth if you don’t believe me, although I doubt he’ll trade any confidential information.’

‘Why Fleur?’ Caroline gasped. She looked deflated now, as though all the air had been knocked out of her. As though she realised, now that Seth had made legal moves for the protection of their daughter, she was losing ground in her argument about kidnapping.

‘Because Emma and I choose to call her Fleur.’

‘Huh, that grasping half-French bitch.’

‘Get out! This conversation is over.’

Seth leaned in front of Caroline to open the passenger door, and when his arm accidentally brushed her breasts, he jerked it away as though bitten.

Caroline merely smirked at him. She remained seated even though a gust of wind caught the door and blew it wide open. The wind was blowing at her hat and loosening strands of hair, blowing them across her forehead. But she seemed unaware of it, immobile.

‘This conversation most definitely isn’t over, Seth,’ she hissed. ‘If I can’t have Rose – oh, so sorry, Fleur – then I’ll have her worth. In cash.’

‘You want to sell me my own child?’

‘A thousand pounds should do it.’

Seth gasped at the amount she was asking for. Yes, he had it, but would have to sell some property to realise the funds. And possibly sell a few shares, too. Did he want to do that? If only he’d found a buyer for the fishing fleet then the ready cash wouldn’t be a problem, but he hadn’t.

But, by whatever means he paid off Caroline, could he be certain she wouldn’t spend it all in weeks and come asking for more? No, he couldn’t be certain that she wouldn’t. But what choice did he have?

‘You’re a lower form of life than ever I thought you were,’ Seth said.

And then, unbidden, the thought came into his head that Fleur might have inherited Caroline’s base trait. But if she was being brought up by him and Emma then she’d take on better values by association, wouldn’t she? Seth couldn’t be sure and he shivered.

‘Cold?’ Caroline said, with a grin showing back teeth that were beginning to rot. The sight made Seth want to retch.

He had a feeling that for all her fine ways and her affected airs, Caroline was mixing with people who drank and, more than likely, took drugs too if those teeth and the pallor of her skin was anything to go by.

‘Not particularly,’ Seth said. He was, in fact the opposite – fired up with rage at Caroline’s attitude and scheming.

‘Well, if you are, I can think of something we could do to warm ourselves up. There’s no one to see us here, is there?’

She pointed to the sea in front of them, then to the track they’d driven down to get there. They were at least three miles from the nearest habitation. Seth had made sure of that.

‘And if there were, they’d see nothing,’ Seth said. ‘I’d like to say I regret every single moment I was foolish enough to spend with you, but Fleur is the exception.’

‘Wifey’s bakery back in action yet?’ Caroline said quickly, fluttering her eyelashes.

The hairs on the back of Seth’s neck began to prickle. ‘If I could be certain you started that fire, or instigated it, I—’

‘Ah, but you can’t, can you?’ Caroline shrugged her shoulders, which Seth took to mean she had been involved and that she was pretty sure he’d never get to the bottom of it. ‘I don’t see why that little cow, Emma Le Goff, should get what should by rights be mine. Men are supposed to marry the women they get their evil way with. And it wasn’t as if you had to marry her, was it?’

And he hadn’t married Emma yet. But Caroline Prentiss was never going to know that.

Seth was never going to give Fleur up to Caroline’s custody. God only knew what would become of the child if he did. God forbid, she could even sell Fleur on again. If Caroline could ask him to buy his own child, would she have any reservations about selling the child to someone else? People did, he knew. Childless couples who were desperate for a baby had been known to pay big money for the right child.

‘You’ll get your thousand pounds,’ Seth said, teeth clenched, his words coming out staccato fashion. ‘It might take me a few days to realise the cash, but you’ll get it. I’ll leave it at your parents’ house.’

No way was he going to meet Caroline anywhere, ever again. The sooner she was out of their lives for good the better it would be. Especially for Fleur.

Caroline gave a false laugh. ‘And have them question why you’re bringing money around?’

‘They don’t know about Fleur?’

‘Of course they don’t. And I hope they never will. To tell my pa now after his heart attack, albeit a minor one so the specialist at the hospital said yesterday, might set off another one.’

Caroline was showing concern for her father rather late in the day in Seth’s opinion.

‘I’ll leave the money at Bettesworth’s for you to collect. And I hope your father recovers soon.’

And there were no false words in that. Charles Maunder was a decent enough chap – Seth had never heard bad words spoken against him.

‘He will as long as he doesn’t know about, er, Fleur.’

‘I wouldn’t want to be party to a man having a heart attack.’

‘Very noble of you,’ Caroline said, her voice dripping sarcasm. ‘And I’d rather not have to go to Bettesworth’s. The fewer people who know about this the better. You can post a bank draft to—’

‘No! Cash or nothing.’

Hmm, perhaps Caroline was right. It might also be better for him if Bettesworth knew none of this. But all the same, Seth didn’t want to be traced as having any association with Caroline through a bank draft.

‘Giles, then,’ Caroline said. ‘She’s still loyal to me.’

Seth remembered the housemaid that Caroline had talked over as though she was of no consequence when he’d been calling on her.

‘And Giles lives where?’

Caroline gave Seth the address and he made much of taking a notebook from his inside pocket, and a pencil, and writing it down.

‘Give me a week from today.’ He’d have to arrange a covering bank loan in order to give Caroline her money, but he saw no problem with that because with a dozen properties as collateral the bank manager would be only too pleased to do business.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘I can’t wait to get out of this place now. Too parochial. With my looks, and your money, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I find it really easy to get into films. Come to think of it, another couple of hundred pounds would be useful.’

‘That, too,’ Seth said. ‘It will be money well spent. But it’s the last you’ll ever get from me. Understand?’

Caroline giggled. Then she lowered her lashes and made a pout of her mouth at Seth. ‘You feel like murdering me, don’t you? Must be in the blood, what with your brother, Carter, having murdered Sophie Ellison.’

‘You don’t know how much,’ Seth said. He leapt out of the car and yanked on the starting handle with all his might.

Thank God Caroline hadn’t got out of the car to goad him further and the car started first time.

Because otherwise, what might he have been capable of?

‘Sell some of the cottages? Which ones? Not Shingle Cottage? Please say not that one.’

Emma couldn’t quite believe what she’d just heard. Seth had only just told her that he’d met up with Caroline Prentiss three days ago. And he’d waited until now, when they were in bed, to tell her.

At first, when they’d got into bed, they’d cuddled up as they always did, but now they were lying side by side, on their backs. Not touching. Emma didn’t know what she thought or felt about it all. Or about Seth for that matter. Would he ever be free of the woman?

Caroline Prentiss, so Seth had said, had asked him for £1200 in exchange for allowing him to bring up Fleur. How could anyone sell their own daughter? And £1200? Why, you could buy a hotel for that! And £1200 was more than enough to live on for years without having to do a stroke of work, which was probably why Caroline Prentiss had asked for it. To Emma’s knowledge, the woman had never done a day’s work, either before her marriage or after she was widowed.

Well, she might have to get used to it, mightn’t she? Women were starting to stand up for themselves, starting to want the same rights in society as men had and not before time. Although, in Emma’s opinion, they might be going the wrong way about it. She’d read in the paper only a couple of days ago that a group of suffragettes had raided the House of Commons. And ninety-six of them – ninety-six! – had been arrested. Like them, she’d stand firm about what she believed in and right at this moment she was going to fight to keep Shingle Cottage. But she’d do it by gentler means.

‘Seth, are you still awake?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you heard me. I said, which cottages are you going to sell? Because I’d prefer that Shingle Cottage isn’t one of them.’

And certainly not so the proceeds can go to Caroline Prentiss she thought, but didn’t add.

‘Not Shingle Cottage, no. It’s too dear to you – and to me. And I’d never let Mrs Drew become homeless. But some will have to go.’

‘The one Mrs Phipps is in?’

‘Might as well. She rarely pays the rent anyway. I won’t sell the one her daughter, Mary, is in with her nippers, though. Mrs Phipps can move in with her.’

‘Oh, Seth, you’re too soft. Really you are. Mrs Phipps was horrible to me when Mama and Johnnie died, even though she took me in and told everyone what a wonderful job she was making of getting me better. But she wasn’t. She took the clothes I’d been wearing at Mama’s and Johnnie’s funeral because they were better than her own daughter’s clothes. When I asked for the red coat Mama had made me she said, “Coat? What coat? I ain’t seen no coat.” The liar. She was eating all the provisions Dr Shaw sent for me, and you know it. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if she doesn’t cause trouble once you get her evicted. Isn’t there anything else you can sell to raise the money?’

‘She might not be evicted, sweetheart, if the new buyer wants it to rent out. We’ll see. I’ve got some shares I could sell. My ma left them in trust for me in her will and I’m reluctant to part with them for sentiment’s sake, if nothing else. I could sell a boat. One of the trawlers. The price I’m asking for the whole fleet is a bit steep for most buyers, but one on its own might sell easily enough.’

‘Hmm,’ Emma said, thinking. There was so much she didn’t know about Seth still; he hadn’t mentioned his mother’s shares before, not that she thought for a moment that he was purposely keeping that a secret. ‘Have there been any enquiries for the fishing fleet?’

‘A few. But like I said, the asking price is beyond the means of any who’ve made enquiries so far.’

‘You really want to get out of fishing, don’t you?’ Emma said. And who could blame him? As long as he was fishing there would be those who remembered his father and brothers and their under-hand and cruel ways.

‘Here, I do. But I’ll need to know I can provide for you and Fleur with whatever I do instead.’

‘Not forgetting my earnings,’ Emma reminded him. She was loving running a business, small as it was at the moment, and she knew she could never give up doing that.

‘Never forgetting that,’ Seth said. ‘Olly’s keen for me to work for him, but what he could pay is a pittance compared with what the boats bring in. And one thousand two hundred pounds, which is what—’

‘How soon does … she … want the money?’

Emma didn’t want to hear Seth use her name. The sooner she was given the money and was on a boat and gone for good, couldn’t be soon enough for Emma.

‘Very soon. By the end of the week. I’m going to see about a covering loan.’

‘I’ve got nearly a hundred pounds in the bank. You can have that. And Mama’s amethyst necklace. The stone’s not valuable, but the chain is a good one. Eighteen carat gold,’ Emma said. ‘I’ll sell it if it will help. Go down to the pawnbrokers or something.’

Emma had never been in a pawnbroker’s shop in her life and didn’t really understand the workings of the place, but she’d seen more than a few townspeople go in with things wrapped in paper bags or a sheet of newspaper, then come out again pocketing bank notes or a few coins.

She began to wonder if she’d been rash offering to sell the amethyst necklace because in her heart she’d always treasured it and hoped one day to pass it on to her own daughter. Not to Fleur, but to a daughter of her own. She’d give something else as a keepsake for Fleur, one of Seth’s ma’s rings perhaps – although there were few enough of them left since Miles had sold them just before he was arrested along with Carter and their pa.

‘I wouldn’t want you to part with that,’ Seth said. ‘Ever.’

‘I would, though, if it would speed her on her way out of our lives.’

Seth turned onto his side and Emma could see in the glow from the oil lamp on the bedside table that he was giving her a quizzical look, one eyebrow raised and a smile playing at the edges of his lips. Would she be kissing those lips tonight? Would she?

‘What?’ she said. ‘What’s that look for?’

‘I think, inside that pretty head of yours, you’re already at the pawnbrokers doing the deal, aren’t you?’

‘You know I am,’ Emma said. ‘You know me better than I know myself sometimes.’

‘I’ve studied you long enough,’ Seth said. ‘Close up. And from afar.’

He began to smooth Emma’s shoulder, gently massaging it. Then he trailed his fingers up the side of her neck, so softly it was as though a butterfly was fluttering its wings against her skin.

‘When you thought I was doing things with Matthew that I shouldn’t have been?’ Emma said, and the second the words were out of her mouth she wished she hadn’t said them. Would Seth think she’d been thinking about Matthew while lying beside him in mentioning his name? ‘And I never would have, I hasten to add,’ she carried on quickly. ‘Is that what you mean? And when you thought I was going to become the second Mrs Smythe?’

‘Yes, then,’ Seth said. ‘I ought not to have jumped to conclusions because I know now you weren’t doing any of the things I imagined you were.’

‘Oh, Seth,’ Emma said, turning to snuggle into him. ‘And I ought not to have read things into your silences that weren’t there. I take some of the blame that you turned to … her, when you thought I was lost to you. It feels as though she’s here in the bed with us at the moment.’

Seth laughed.‘You say the most outrageous things, sweetheart. The very thought!’

He ran a hand through Emma’s hair, smoothing out the strands. How caring the gesture was, how loving. Emma snuggled up to him even closer.

‘I’ll go and see the bank manager in the morning, sweetheart. See about a bridging loan until I can sell something. Get this third person in our ménage à trois out of the picture.’

‘And in the meantime?’ Emma said, showering Seth with kisses – his nose, his lips, his cheeks, his forehead, doing her level best to banish Caroline Prentiss from her mind, from the bed.

‘In the meantime …’ Seth began, but Emma put her lips to his. She’d leave him in no doubt what she wanted in the meantime.

And perhaps tonight would be the night she would conceive and her plan would be back in action, because the previous month her joy that she might be pregnant had been a false alarm.

‘Who was on the telephone so early?’ Emma said, strolling into the kitchen, warm and content, her body still glowing after a night of loving.

Seth had leapt out of bed and rushed down to answer it. He hadn’t come back up again either – well, not to the bedroom he hadn’t, although Emma had heard him running water into the basin in the bathroom.

‘Who?’ Seth said. He carried on sawing a thick slice of bread from a loaf, then cut another slice. ‘Er, Sergeant Emms. Some fool loosened the rope on one of my crabbers and it was drifting in the harbour. While he was talking to me Ned Narracott turned up and said he had taken a punt out and secured it again.’

‘Good. But who would have done such a thing?’ Emma asked.

Seth shrugged. ‘I doubt we’ll ever know. Some drunk who thought it was just a bit of fun? Someone my father wronged with the smuggling, perhaps? Who knows?’ He spread butter liberally on the bread, then covered the butter thickly with blackberry and apple jam. ‘I’ve made tea. It’s in the pot.’

Emma laughed. ‘My, but I think an early morning telephone call would be good around here every day.’ Just as Emma’s own papa had done, Seth tended to sit and wait while Emma prepared breakfast, or any meal for that matter.

‘Emma,’ Seth said sternly, not returning her good humour. ‘I think it might be best if Fleur stays in Shingle Cottage for a while. Until … you know … her mother’s safely on the Atlantic.’

‘But Mrs Drew’s cough?’ Emma protested. ‘She’s not well. Coughs are always worse at night when you lie down.’

However upset she was at the fact that Fleur wouldn’t be sleeping under their roof for a few nights, it had been Mrs Drew and what was really wrong with her that had been uppermost in Emma’s mind. She knew that Mrs Drew’s cough wasn’t infectious because she’d been to see Dr Shaw and left money to pay any bills Mrs Drew might incur for treatment. And he’d told Emma that neither she nor Fleur were in danger of developing Mrs Drew’s cough, when she’d asked if they might be.

‘You’ve really come to love Fleur, haven’t you?’ Seth said, taking Emma’s hand.

He lifted it to his lips, and Emma shuddered at the feel of his warm lips against her skin. It was all she could do not to whisk him upstairs. She was turning into a wanton hussy for sure. Not that Seth had any complaints. Sometimes their lips were red and raw from the kissing, and her body ached from the delicious writhing on the mattress which would need replacing soon it was getting that much wear. But she had work to do, and lots of it.

‘Yes. I have,’ Emma said a little huskily, pushing back her desire for Seth, because now wasn’t the time for such things. ‘Fleur has your eyes and it’s like looking at you when she smiles at me. I couldn’t bear to think of any child of yours being unloved and unwanted. And her mother didn’t want her, did she? Not really?’

‘Not at all. She threatened me with the court to begin with, but once we started talking money she soon forgot about that. All the same, I think it would be safest if Fleur stays with Mrs Drew at Shingle Cottage until I’ve got the cash for Caroline and she’s on that boat to America – without Fleur. I can’t be certain she won’t come back and snatch the child.’

‘Get her penny and her bun,’ Emma said quietly, not really wanting to even think that Caroline Prentiss would snatch Fleur from them, but having to face the fact that she might try. ‘Which boat?’

‘The Titanic. She’s going steerage, so she said, but no doubt she’ll have the best of everything once she gets to America with my money. She says she’s going to see if she can get into films.’

‘Films? You mean she wants to be a film star? Like Alma Taylor? Or Mary Pickford? They’re both so beautiful.’

Emma and her mama had often gone down to the Roxy – or the flea-pit as her mama had always called it because didn’t she always come home covered in bites on her ankles? – but it had never occurred to Emma to want to be an actress tied to a railway line, which was all some of them seemed to do in the films she’d seen.

Seth laughed, his body shaking against hers. ‘Sometimes, sweetheart, you convey your meaning by what you leave unsaid.’

‘Yes, well. She won’t be able to hold a candle to either of them, will she?’

‘I know. Laughable, isn’t it?’

‘In a way,’ Emma said. ‘But I’m scared, Seth. We shouldn’t be afraid to live our lives because of people like Caroline Prentiss and Miles threatening us. I’m nervous now when I’m on my own in the house in case Miles comes back. He’s escaped from prison once, he could do it again. And I’m even more scared Caroline will come looking for Fleur – after she’s got her money maybe.’

‘She won’t. If I have to put her on the ship myself, I’ll do it.’

‘You wouldn’t?’

A ripple of fear made Emma’s shoulders judder. The Titanic. From what she’d read in the papers, it had been built in Belfast and was sailing from Southampton next month. If Seth went there to make sure Caroline got on the ship, and they had to put up at an hotel en route, what if she seduced him? He was a man, after all, and hadn’t Beattie Drew said that men have different urges and needs to women? Stronger ones? And she and Seth weren’t married, so if that did happen then it wasn’t as if she could divorce him for adultery.

Oh! Emma put a hand to her forehead. Her life was becoming so tangled with the subterfuge of her sham marriage, and she was feeling giddy with images that she was struggling to get from her mind.

‘I would. Or get someone to do it for me. Olly perhaps?’

‘Yes,’ Emma said. ‘Ask Olly to make sure she goes up the gangplank. I wouldn’t want you, you know, to succumb …’

‘Don’t say “to Caroline’s charms”, sweetheart. That block of stone hasn’t got any.’

‘But she has given you a beautiful daughter.’ Emma put a hand to her ear, not that she needed help in hearing Fleur screaming for England upstairs. ‘Who at this moment is probably yelling her little lungs out because she’s wet and needs a change of clothes, and I’ll need to give Beattie Drew some money for Edward to go to Sarson’s for baby formula and …’

Emma ran out of words. They just evaporated on her tongue. And she couldn’t have said them anyway, could she? That a few days without Fleur would be just what she needed, was what she’d been going to say. She could ask Seth if she could borrow the car and she’d go calling on hotels over in Torquay. There were so many more top-quality hotels over there – hotels where titled people stayed to take advantage of the milder climate and the good sea air.

Mr Clarke at the Esplanade Hotel had told her that while his chef – and the chefs in many top hotels – were good enough at turning out excellent lunches and dinners, none of the ones he’d ever known made pastry and tarts, both sweet and savoury, as she did. She was being given an opportunity and she was going to make the most of it.

‘Three minutes, Seth, three minutes, then I’ll have Fleur ready to go.’

As Seth drove down the hill with Fleur firmly secured with webbing bands on the seat beside him, he was hating himself for lying to Emma. It hadn’t been a scuppered boat that Sergeant Emms had telephoned him about. It was to inform him that Miles had killed a police officer while in custody, and then escaped. But how could he have told Emma that? He was thinking fast – make sure Fleur was safe first because she was the more vulnerable. Yes, he’d make one move at a time until he heard more from the police.