dear, of course he can. How I shall miss you! But it is for the best, I truly think so, you must go back before you lose your looks in this horrid climate, and then you may see if anything can be got out of Mr. Warren.” She paused. “I know you will accept nothing from us, but it did occur to Robert and me that perhaps the cost of your fare was a concern to you. We should be so happy if—”
“No, no, it is not a consideration, I have the money for that and a little more besides. Which reminds me, I shall need some clothes, some half-mourning for when I arrive back in England. Will you please send a servant to Madame Duhamel for me?”
Madame Duhamel was a Frenchwoman who had come to Calcutta with her husband, only to be left a widow when he was carried off by the cholera. She had set to making her own living, and employed several local derseys to make up the fashionable clothes she designed. With good contacts in Paris, she had the fashion dolls and the plates only a few months behind the modistes in London; Octavia knew she would dress her in style.
“Madame Duhamel!” exclaimed Harriet. “She is wickedly expensive, you know.”
“But I shall not need so many clothes, and it will not do for me to arrive in London black and dowdy; my sisters are very smart, and will abuse me for a provincial if I do not take care.”
“Oh dear, you are quite right, first impressions are so important. Well, if you have the wherewithal, you cannot do better. I shall send to Ballygunge at once, there is no time to be lost. Indeed, I may ask her to make a gown for me, my blue is looking sadly shabby, I thought, when I wore it to the Lawrences the other night.”
When Octavia retreated to her room that night, lying under the muslin draped over the posts of the bed to keep insects at bay, she found sleep elusive. In a day, her world had been turned upside down. Hope sprang in her breast, hope that Mr. Gurney had not been exaggerating, that her inheritance would provide her with at least a modest independence. In which case she would no longer be a poor relative, no longer obliged to put up with her sisters’ patronising ways. Perhaps there would even be enough money to rent a house in a quiet part of town; if the house in Yorkshire could be sold, she had no desire to live in Yorkshire …
Fortune, Mr. Gurney had said. What constituted a fortune? To her, an income of a few hundred a year would be a fortune beyond her wildest dreams. How pleased Christopher would have been for her. Dear Christopher, with his kindness and sense of amusement. Tears slid through her closed eyelids as she finally fell asleep, her mind filled with memories of her husband, and the inheritance quite forgotten.
Octavia lay in her narrow berth in the tiny cabin she occupied on the Sir John Rokesby. She wasn’t asleep, but listening to the sounds around her that had become so familiar to her over these last six months: the creak of the ship as it hit the waves and rolled up and then back, the shrill bosun’s pipe, the noise of the sails and rigging singing in the wind, running bare feet on the deck, orders bellowed out, the slap of halyards against the three masts, and, more often than she would have liked, the scuttle of rodents’ feet as these unwelcome fellow passengers went about their ratty business.
Tonight, even in the early hours that were the quietest on board, the hours she had come to know as the dog watch, there was an expectancy in the air. The long voyage was nearly at an end. Today, with the wind in the right quarter, which the captain had assured her it would be, the ship would be making land, and then it would sail up the Thames to berth at Tilbury docks, in the heart of London.
It was more than five years since she had sailed from Tilbury, on a soft June day, alone; none of her half brothers or sisters had felt inclined to take the time to see her off.
Her brothers and sisters. Half brothers and sisters; at least she had some hope of not turning out like them. She shifted in her bunk, too short for her long legs, and gazed into the darkness, seeing them in her mind’s eye.
Octavia heard the sounds of the morning watch going on deck, followed by the steady thump as the lascars washed and dried the decks, the sound of the chants as sails were furled or unfurled. She sat up, shivering slightly. She missed the warmth she had grown used to in India; a voyage that had started in brilliant sunshine was ending on a chill March day.
The Sir John Rokesby slid up the grey Thames in the mist. They could have been coming into port anywhere; for a wild moment Octavia imagined they had taken a wrong turn and were arriving in America, or Canada. Anywhere but London, where she would be greeted without enthusiasm by her brothers and sisters, a black sheep making an unwelcome return.
There was no one waiting for her on the dockside; of course there wasn’t. She looked out at the forest of masts around her, for a moment wishing she was setting sail and not arriving. Then she squared her shoulders and, wrapping her cloak about her as a gust of cold air struck her, snatching at her hat, walked down the gangplank to set about the business of making sure her few boxes and trunk were despatched to Theodosia’s house in Lothian Street. A kindly officer helped her into a hackney carriage, and she was off along grey London streets.
Home, Octavia said to herself. All the passengers had talked enthusiastically of coming home, even the disappointed girls for whom a season or two or three in India had failed to produce the requisite husband. They had families, she supposed, people who might even be glad to see them, whereas she— Well, she wasn’t going to allow herself to fall into a fit of the dismals. This might turn out to be a far different homecoming from any she had imagined, should what Mr. Gurney had told her in Calcutta turn out to be even half true.
She stared out at the warehouses, a hive of industry as goods were loaded on and unloaded from the immense number of ships in this busiest of ports, and drew her cloak more closely about her.
Harriet, kind Harriet, who had made sure that she had warm clothes for her return to England: “One forgets how cold it is at home.” They were, thankfully, the clothes of a matron, of a married woman, velvets and silks; even though in mourning colours, they suited her much better than the light dresses of her girlhood.
She sincerely mourned her late husband. She had never been deeply or passionately in love with him, but she had liked him, found comfort and even pleasure in his arms and bed, and had enjoyed his company. Had they been given more time together, it might have grown into a very happy marriage.
What was to become of her? What kind of a life could she make for herself? If she had money, then the prospects were far more cheerful, the choices greater. It would be hard to make decisions for herself, after the in-between time of her early widowhood, and the out-of-times days on board. She hadn’t been bored on the Sir John Rokesby; with far more assurance than she had had on the voyage out, she had found it easier to make friends and play her part in the social round of the small world of a ship.
She had her sketchbooks with her, and paints, and had whiled away many hours building doll’s houses. That was something that happened by chance, when the small daughter of a fellow passenger, fretful after an illness, had wanted something to play with. Octavia, remembering how much pleasure she had had as a girl from the doll’s house that she had made with the help of a friendly joiner, acquired some balsa wood from the ship’s carpenter and set about modelling a stately home for little Emily. The carpenter had offered to do it, he could run her up a house in a jiffy, but Octavia was eager for an activity to soothe her restless mind. Busy fingers were, she had long ago discovered, a very good remedy for troubled spirits, and so she had set about it herself, creating a fine Palladian house which was the admiration of her fellow passengers.
“Amazingly clever,” said one of the officers. “And you a woman, I’d hardly have believed it possible.”
The doll’s house had aroused suspicions in some of the less amiable among her fellow passengers. Did they imagine she didn’t hear their whispers?
“She was lucky to catch Captain Darcy, she was indeed, a very good catch for her, if not for him, poor man.”
“Wasn’t she a Melbury before her marriage?”
“Yes,