A Distant Shore (20 page)

Isobel could not imagine living in such a place. And yet, until a fortnight ago when she’d learned her intended, George Jamison, had died of dysentery, she had been fully intending to live in such a place, or worse. George Jamison had been intending to take her back to Burma, which by all accounts was a more savage place than Serampore.

Restless now, Isobel rose from her cane chair and paced the confines of the guest bedroom she’d been given at the Marshmans’ residence on the outskirts of Calcutta. What was she going to do now? It was a question that had plagued her for the last two weeks, and she had yet to settle on an answer. Joshua Marshman had informed her at dinner last night that a ship was sailing to Boston in a week’s time. He’d offered to book her passage on it, and Isobel had murmured something about needing to think.

Yet what, really, was there to think about? She could not remain in India; she did not even want to remain here. She had disliked everything about the country since she’d arrived: the heat, the humidity, the noise, the dust, the flies, the food. The thought of sitting in her pretty bedroom at home on Beacon Hill, reading a book or enjoying a treat of marzipan or drinking chocolate… things she’d once taken for granted, and now all seemed to be the height of luxury and privilege.

So why not return to Boston? She could not stay in Calcutta without a husband; Rufus Anderson had made that clear before she had left, and the Marshmans had intimated as much since her arrival.

But to return to Boston humiliated and ridiculous… a woman who had traversed half the world chasing after a husband and he’d been awkward enough to die before she could so much as meet him! It was too awful to contemplate.

With a groan Isobel sank back into her chair, her head in her hands.

“Miss Moore? My dear?” With a light knock Hannah Marshman opened the door to Isobel’s bedroom and smiled tentatively. She had made some efforts to be friendly, Isobel knew, but she had been too bewildered and miserable to respond in kind. Really, she acknowledged with an uncomfortable pang of guilt, she had been a rather wretched, as well as enforced, houseguest.

Now she rose and ushered Hannah in. “Do come in, Mrs. Marshman. You have been so kind to house me here.”

“It is no trouble, I assure you. I am only so sorry for the difficulty in which you now find yourself.”

Isobel smiled rather thinly, glad for Hannah’s understanding even if she felt her hostess understood too much. She was a woman who had already seen thirty, and she had not met her fiancé before intending to wed him. Hannah Marshman had clearly surmised Isobel’s desperation.

“It must be a deep disappointment to you,” Hannah ventured cautiously, “to find yourself without recourse in a strange and hostile land.”

Isobel glanced at her rather sharply, for she had been expecting the older woman to murmur some meaningless sympathy about how awful it was to have her fiancé die before she had arrived. Meaningless, because she had never met George Jamison and had no idea whether they would have suited or not. She could not truly grieve him, yet she grieved the loss of the possibility he’d provided her with… the life she’d hoped to have, as both wife and mother. Yet would she have loved him, or he her? She had no idea, and now never would have.

“It is a disappointment, to be sure,” she said, and Hannah picked at an invisible thread in the cuff of her dress, a style, Isobel noted, that was nearly a decade out of date. She supposed missionaries’ wives didn’t have much cause for—or interest in—fashion, if they ever even learned of it, so far away from home.

“Have you considered,” Hannah asked carefully, “your possibilities?”

“I did not know they existed in the plural. It seems the singular one available to me is a return passage to Boston.” Isobel stared out the window, the watery sunlight filtering through the slats of the shutter, so Hannah wouldn’t see the naked grief and despair on her face.

“Of course, that is the most obvious course,” Hannah agreed. “But there is, perhaps, another?” Her voice rose in query but Isobel had no ready answer.

“Another?” she repeated blankly, turning back to look at her hostess.

“Indeed,” Hannah answered, and the briskness of her voice made Isobel frown in bewilderment. “It is true you can no longer marry Mr. Jamison. But is there any reason why you could not, perhaps, marry another man?”

“Another…” Isobel stared at her in shock. She did not know how to answer; on one hand it seemed both cold-hearted and desperate to so quickly consider exchanging one fiancé for another; on the other, returning to Boston was surely worse. “I have not considered such a thing,” she said at last. “I confess, I came to marry Mr. Jamison, and no other.”

“Of course, of course,” Hannah murmured, and Isobel ventured to ask,

“Is there—is there another missionary in need of a wife?” Her cheeks heated; what a question! She could not sound more desperate if she tried.

“Not precisely,” Hannah answered carefully. “There is a man, a widower, James Casey, who works for the East India Company, but unlike many of his colleagues he is sympathetic to our cause.” Isobel knew many in the East India Company disliked the missionaries who had come to Calcutta and to preach freedom and grace to a people the Company would rather continue to be oppressed. The Company had long believed Christian mission competed with their commercial enterprise, but several decades ago William Wilberforce had campaigned to allow Christian missions to come to India. The campaign had been successful, and William Carey had been one of the first to step upon these shores as a missionary. Since then, many more had come, but the East India Company still often resented their presence.

“A widower,” Isobel repeated.

“Yes, with four young children. Dear ones, very well-behaved, of course, but they miss their mama. She died in childbirth, poor woman, and the youngest is only a few months old.”

“I see,” Isobel said faintly, for she saw indeed. This man, whatever his name was, had to be as desperate as she was. But he was surely in need of a housekeeper and governess, not a wife. She could not imagine taking four young souls, one of them no more than a newborn babe, into her care as soon as she’d said her vows. It was not what she’d ever expected or wanted.

“Do think on it, my dear,” Hannah said quietly. “You would be doing such a noble service in offering yourself thus.”

Which made her sound like some kind of sacrifice. Was this why she’d come to India? For this unknown man and his family? Or would she be condemning herself to a life of hardship and thankless service? Once the vows were said, Isobel knew, there would be no going back. She would belong to her husband, and he would command both her days and her destiny for the rest of her life.

The thought was both alarming and awful—as alarming and awful as returning to Boston. Miserably Isobel nodded at Hannah, her throat too tight to speak, her thoughts whirling through her head in a confused and unhappy jumble.

Boston, 1838

Margaret raised her gaze from the math lesson she was correcting, to let it fall with consideration on her young niece Maggie and the oldest pupil of the First School, Seamus Flanagan. Maggie was helping Seamus with the new primer he had started, her head bent rather close to his.

Margaret was fair enough to know she held a somewhat unreasonable disregard for the strapping Mr. Flanagan. He was eighteen years old, two years older than Maggie, and his knees did not even fit under the desk he had been given. No, indeed, several weeks ago Maggie had suggested that Seamus not sit behind a desk like any other pupil, but rather in a chair much like the one Margaret now sat in, behind the mahogany desk, inlaid with hand-tooled leather, that Henry had given her as a gift when she’d founded the First School six years ago.

Before Margaret could tell Maggie that if Seamus Flanagan intended to remain a pupil of the First School, then he needed to act like a pupil in all particulars, the man himself—for indeed he was a man—kindly but firmly refused.

“I’m all right, Maggie,” he’d said quietly, earning Margaret’s grudging respect even as his words, so gruffly given, caused her a flare of alarm. Seamus Flanagan was addressing her niece by her Christian name, and doing so in a way that suggested he’d done it often enough.

Too often for Margaret’s liking.

If only she hadn’t stayed away from the school a few weeks ago, when Charlotte had been ill. If she had been more diligent, more vigilant, she surely wouldn’t be in the predicament she now found herself—desperately afraid that her impressionable young niece was developing a
tendresse
for the handsome and wholly inappropriate Seamus Flanagan.

Margaret knew her niece would not listen to any warnings. Ever since Seamus had entered the First School, respectfully asking to learn, Maggie had been unreasonably defensive of him. When his sister Aisling had joined the happy group of pupils a week ago, Maggie had welcomed her effusively, shooting Margaret several challenging looks that she had resolutely ignored. She was delighted to welcome the shy, well-behaved Aisling Flanagan, who at ten years old was a perfectly suitable pupil for the school. It was Seamus, with his deep voice and workman’s hands and broad shoulders, that she did not like seeing in her school.

That afternoon she asked Seamus to stay behind to discuss his math work, and sent Maggie to wait outside with John Caber.

Seamus stood in front of her teacher’s desk, his cap in his hands, his gaze disconcertingly steady.

“Your ability in mathematics, Mr. Flanagan, is perfectly acceptable. In fact, you have an admirable grasp of all the particulars.”

Seamus’ face remained carefully bland. “Thank you kindly, Mrs. Moore. That is very good to hear.”

“I kept you back today not to discuss your mathematical ability,” Margaret said briskly, “but my niece Maggie.”

If anything, Seamus’s expression went blander. Margaret had no idea what the man was thinking, which was all the more disconcerting.

“What about your niece do you care to discuss with me, ma’am?”

Margaret was further disconcerted to hear how well he spoke; he had learned much in the last few months he had been attending the school. “She is developing an affection for you, Mr. Flanagan. An affection I cannot countenance.”

Seamus’s face reddened but he did not avert his gaze. “I’ve done nothing to encourage such feelings.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Margaret interjected coolly. “However, my niece is young and impressionable and has come to Boston with ideas of adventure and romance, as any young girl might do. The very fact that you’re in this school is reason enough for her to lose her head entirely.”

Seamus stared at her for a moment. Margaret wished she knew what he was thinking. “I assure you, I won’t do anything to make it worse.” His brogue had thickened, and bizarrely that made Margaret feel satisfied.

“See that you don’t,” she said briskly, and handed him back his math book. “Otherwise I do not see how you will be able to continue at this school.”