Page 33 of The Butler's Forbidden Fancy
“Nay to ye, Octavian. We’ve a pot full!”
Octavian noticed that John’s employee had his arms full of rope sacks. Irene, John’s wife, had a winter vegetable garden that would put angels to shame and she shared her bounty with their workers.
O’Neill and his wife had become good friends with Octavian and Eliza. The two couples had much in common. Their new existence, free of class differences was also full of hard labor. O’Neill and his wife were from County Cork, Ireland. They’d arrived in Baltimore as indentured servants fourteen years ago and worked in their master’s shop making sails for ten years to compensate that man for paying for their passage across the Atlantic. For the past four years, John and his wife Ellen owned their own shop. They had four employees who made specialized large winged sails for the new, swift ships called cutters. The O’Neills supplied them for five of the ten Baltimore shipyards that constructed the fast cutters for the China trade.
Octavian and Eliza worked too. Eliza and her two young assistants made ladies hats, serviceable for the winds blowing in from the Chesapeake Bay up to the Point and inland to the City. Octavian had worked for nearly two years as a teacher at a public school. But today, he had news that would change that.
He made the storefront of his wife’s shop and flung open the door. No one was about. Not unusual that since it was Christmas Eve, but he was surprised his wife was not in attendance either. Usually she waited patiently, busying herself in the shop until he arrived home from school. But tonight, she was not here. Odd, that. But perhaps she was upstairs cooking.
She tried very hard, did his wife, to make a good meal. If she was the laughter of his days, the joy of his nights, and the beacon to his tomorrows, she was not, God bless her, a cook. Whether she could not smell or had a poor sense of taste, she was either heavy-handed with the spices or ignored them altogether. Nor could she bake a decent loaf of bread. So Octavian bought all their bread and cakes. True, occasionally, she made a palatable soup. But at nothing else did she excel. Fish, plain and simple, was the best thing she did. Along with arrange pretty lettuces and tomatoes on a plate. Having worked with a few cooks when he was in domestic service and having cooked for himself in France, Octavian often put on Eliza’s kitchen apron and made their dinner. Tonight, he’d cook a fish stew that he’d perfected.
They lived.
Hell, they thrived. She was still his angel of the earth. And their son, Nathaniel, nearing a year old, was the delight of his new and charming existence.
“Hello, my love!” he called to her as he strolled in. “Where are you? I’m home with good news!”
“Come up,” he heard her say and the weak thread in her voice alarmed him.
He pushed the front door closed with his hip and headed around the display table to take the wooden stairs up.
Inside their gathering room, a fire blazed in the stone hearth. His wife, her riotous red hair soft around her face, sat near the far corner with Nate in her lap, cooing to him. But then she turned her face up to him—and her smile was not her usual grand welcome.
He set down his packages on the far table and went to her. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, Octo.” She played with a wooden dog, that Jim White the carpenter down the street had carved for Nate. “I’m quite well. You needn’t be so concerned.”
“But I am.” He chucked his son under his chin and smiled at his boy’s beam of welcome. “You didn’t sound like yourself.”
“You mark me too well, Octo.”
He kissed her full on the lips. She smelled of cinnamon and cloves and the warmth of a loving home. “Is that not my occupation?”
She rolled her eyes, already in better spirits. “It is.”
“And so?” He arched his brows. “What?”
“You first. You said you have good news.”
“I do. Is not yours good too?” He frowned at her.
She firmed her lips. “Some.”
“Now I am intrigued. Tell me.”
“No. You were to go to the bank. So you must relieve me of my worry. What did they say about the loan to build the school?”
“I have a loan from the Bank of Baltimore. Two thousand dollars to build my new school.”
“Oh, my darling. That is wonderful. They liked your character.”
“They liked my profession. Little do they know of my character, my love. But they do appreciate a man who wants to educate children. A man who can say he went to Eton, speaks French and has been in His Majesty’s service.”
“They didn’t say that was a problem? Good of them,” she said, nodding.
Some here who were their neighbors had at first not trusted an English man and woman. Memories of the last war against Britain in eighteen-fourteen was bitter in Baltimore. The British, having burned much of Washington and ransacked Alexandria, Virginia, had turned north expecting to destroy shops and shipyards. But the citizens of this city had organized. They sank old ships in the mouth of the river leading to the inner harbor. Plus they had fortified much of the town. When the British arrived by land and sea, they were stalled in place. Though there had been a fierce naval battle and the British admiral had surrendered, the invaders left, empty-handed.
Even so, the Baltimoreans welcomed Octavian and Eliza. When their neighbors learned that they were interested in becoming Americans, hard-working and without affectations, the locals, one by one, became their friends. Octavian’s popularity as a teacher had earned him much praise. Eliza, unaffected as she was, opened her millinery shop and was happy sewing. “One skill I did learn well,” she had often told him.
