Regency Christmas Wishes. Carla Kelly
walked beside her down the long hall, breathing in the faint odour of incense and something sharper that still smelled of disease and contagion. Underlying it all was the still-remembered rot of a warm southern climate.
The novice knocked on a carved door, listened with her ear to the panel, then opened it. She stepped inside and motioned for him to wait.
He stood in the hallway during the quiet conversation within, then entered the room when the nun sitting behind the desk gestured to him. The novice glided out quietly.
The nun behind the desk indicated a chair. She clasped her hands on the desk and wasted not a moment on preliminaries.
‘I have not thought of Theodora Winnings in years,’ the nun said. ‘Apparently you have, sir.’
He could blush and deny, but he was long past the blushing stage of his life. ‘I have, Sister... Sister...’
‘Mother Abbess,’ she corrected. ‘And you are...’
‘Captain James Grey of His Majesty’s Royal Navy.’
With that announcement, she gave him a long look, one that came close to measuring the very smallclothes he sat in, down to his stockings. ‘I remember you, sir. We despaired of your survival for several weeks.’ She permitted herself a smile. ‘Even your ship sailed away.’
‘With a promise to return,’ he reminded her. ‘Aye, you have me. I didn’t think I would live, either. At times, death sounded almost welcome.’
She chuckled, probably all the emotion her order was capable of permitting. ‘Teddy held your hand when we had done all we could.’
It was his turn and he took a page from her no-nonsense book. ‘I doubt you knew this, but I left her a letter the morning I walked out of here under my own power to rejoin my frigate. I proposed marriage in that letter, but I never heard from her. I want to know how she is. That’s all. The man at the mercantile said Widow Winnings had no children, but that can’t be right. Where is she?’
Only an idiot wouldn’t have noticed that he had disturbed the serenity of a woman probably committed by oath to be calm in all matters. She stood up quickly and turned her back on him to stare out the window.
‘If she’s dead, I understand,’ he said. ‘I want to let her know I would have moved heaven and earth to respond, had I known of her letter’s existence. Her letter was misplaced and I only received her reply in September. Granted, eleven years is a long time...’
He let his voice trail away. He knew enough of people to tell, even with her back to him, how upset Mother Abbess was. ‘I had good intentions,’ he insisted. ‘I proposed, after all.’
She turned around. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘Understand what?’ he asked, fearful and bracing himself for what, he had no idea. ‘Mrs Winnings must have had children. Teddy was one of them.’
‘Teddy is a slave.’
‘Shame on her for not telling you,’ Mother Abbess said as she sat down.
Astonished, Jem couldn’t speak. He took Teddy’s battered letter from his inside coat pocket and spread the paltry thing on the nun’s desk. He stared at the few legible words through new eyes. ‘But you need to know...’ suddenly made sense. So did, ‘I should have...’ farther down the page.
‘She didn’t come here of her own free will, just to be kind?’ he asked, perfectly willing to ignore obvious evidence, even though he understood the shamble of a letter now. I want to see her anyway, kept bouncing around in his brain. ‘Maybe?’
‘No, sir. During fever times, and when we ask, some of the better class of ladies send their slaves here to help.’ She made an offhand gesture. ‘They’re just slaves. If something happens to them...well, you understand.’
‘No, I don’t,’ he said, uncertain if he were more angry or more appalled at her words. He closed his eyes, which was the only way he could glimpse Theodora Winnings’ ivory skin. True, her hair was curly and her lips full, but God above, he had curly hair, too. ‘She’s so fair-skinned.’
‘So was her mother, but by half,’ the abbess said. ‘Roxie was a house slave and a great beauty. If memory serves me, Roxie was the daughter of a plantation owner and another slave. I assume Mr Winnings fancied her and bought her for his own purposes. Theodora was their child, with a quarter African blood, therefore not so noticeably of African descent. It happens all the time.’
Mother Abbess’s callous appraisal caused the growing gulf between them to yawn wider by the second. They sat in the same small room, worlds apart. Jem did his best to control the complicated emotions beginning to pinch at his heart like demons from a painting he had seen in a Spanish monastery, thrusting pitchforks into some saint or other.
‘I like sailing the oceans,’ he said finally. ‘The thing I hate the most is patrolling the Middle Passage where we sometimes encounter slave ships.’
He watched her eyes, in his dismay pleased to see some of the complacency in them disappear. ‘They stink to high heaven. I have never seen more wretched people, thirsty, starving and chained below decks. Mothers holding their dying babies up to me, as if I could help them. God, it chafed my heart.’
Her face was still serene, but she rattled the beads on the rosary that hung from her waist. ‘Why are you telling me this?’ Mother Abbess asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Should Teddy have said something earlier? I mean before I fell in love with her, because fall in love with her I did.’
‘Certainly she should have told you,’ the nun said with some vigour. ‘More shame to her and good riddance.’
‘If you were a slave and you saw a way out of this...this... I don’t know what... Would you have said something?’ He asked, irritated that his voice was rising.
Silence. The beads rattled louder.
Jem went to the door, eager to leave the suddenly stifling office. ‘Can you...or will you...at least tell me where Mrs Winnings took her household, after her husband died and she sold the business?’
Perhaps Mother Abbess saw he was in complete earnest. She joined him at the door to her office. ‘Some slaves were sold at auction. Others went with Mrs Winnings to Savannah, where she was from. It was years ago. I doubt any records remain. Leave it alone.’
‘I have the time,’ he heard himself say. ‘I also have the means and the inclination. Good day. Thank you for your ministrations to me eleven years ago. I do owe you for that.’
She opened her mouth to speak, but Jem had no desire to hear another word. He outdistanced the novice who had seated herself in the hall, and had the satisfaction of slamming the front door hard.
On the other side of it, he shook his head at his own childish behaviour and took a deep breath, which brought a whiff of the harbour, and tar, and the sugary fragrance of gardenias, in bloom in December.
He stood there in front of the convent, angry at himself and wondering if he had wilfully overlooked signs of Teddy’s parentage. In Italy and Greece he had seen lovely women with cream-coloured skin like hers. Had he assumed she was of Mediterranean extraction? He looked down at his feet, distressed with himself. Did it even matter? He loved Theodora Winnings.
What now, you idiot? he asked himself, as uncertain as he had ever been in his life. A man across the street was scrubbing steps leading up to a modest house, and children were jumping rope beyond the servant. Jem had the distinct feeling he was being watched so he turned around slowly, and laughed at his folly. It was the statue of the Virgin looking over him.
‘Am I an idiot?’ he asked her, then felt instantly stupid for talking to a statue.
He