Another Country
Another Country
Kate Hewitt
Copyright ©2012 by Katharine
Swartz
Smashwords Edition
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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters and events
portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
“It’s high time, Eleanor, that you made a decision
about your future.”
Eleanor McCardell, formerly
Campbell, turned wearily from her position by the window, gazing
out at the relentless rain that doused Glasgow in a deep, grey
gloom. Her mother-in-law, Henrietta McCardell, stood by the
fireplace, hands laced across her middle, her smile firmly in
place, her eyes as hard as flint.
Eleanor sighed. “You’re right, of
course, Mamma-in-law.” Even now she stumbled slightly over the
title, meant to be an endearment allowed her as a sign of honour,
yet even after nearly a year in the McCardell household, most of it
with her husband John posted to India, Eleanor did not feel part of
the family.
She was afraid she never would.
“It’s been three months since our son John died,”
Henrietta continued, her voice trembling only slightly. “Of course
we are all still grieving...”
“Yes,” Eleanor murmured. Was it
grief, she wondered, or mere listlessness that kept her in this
state of weary uncertainty? She’d married John, a soldier who’d
stayed the summer with his aunt and uncle on Mull, two years ago.
Of that time, they’d only spent six weeks together. He’d been
called suddenly to India, leaving Eleanor alone, waiting for his
summons which never came. At first, she’d stayed with her father,
David Campbell, and his wife Jane.
Ten years ago her family had lost their farm and
livelihood, Achlic, to a scheming nobleman, Sir James Riddell.
Although the details of that sorry exchange were hazy to Eleanor,
who had only been eleven at the time, the repercussions were
not.
After the loss of the farm, Eleanor's older sister,
Harriet, had left for Canada to find her fiancé, Allan MacDougall.
Eleanor's older brother, Ian, ashamed by what he considered to be
his part in the loss of Achlic, had run away to sea.
Eleanor had been left alone with a father she barely
knew, a man broken down by despair and hardship. His marriage to
Jane McCready, a local spinster, had rejuvenated him somewhat, but
the alliance only made Eleanor feel like a stranger in that new
household, that new house.
Never a home.
"
A
home
." Eleanor repeated the words softly to
herself, her face to the window. It was hard to remember a time
when she'd felt she'd had that, without fear or worry. The comfort
of her own board, her own hearth. Her own family. Now she wondered
if she ever would know such comforts.
When her father had passed on a year ago, John’s
parents had extended an invitation to stay with them in Glasgow.
Eleanor had been relieved to go. Her stepmother Jane had sold the
farm and planned to retire to Inverness with her sister, making it
clear in briskly apologetic tones that the dwelling had no room for
a young married woman.
Eleanor had looked forward to life in the city, away
from the small, stifling community on Mull.
If only she’d known then how much more stifling
Glasgow would be.
The McCardells lived a modest, pinching kind of
life. They did not endorse any amusements beyond a hymn sing on
Sunday evening; their society comprised middle-aged matrons and
merchants, with very few young people for Eleanor to meet or
befriend. She spent her days helping Henrietta manage the
household, stitching sheets and shirts or checking that the cook
scoured the copper pots to a proper shine. On other days she
accompanied Henrietta on her various charity works, standing dourly
by her side while she lectured unfortunate women whose husbands
were drunkards or layabouts, knowing the desperation in the eyes of
those poor souls was mirrored in her own.
It had all been bearable when John was alive, for
she could nurture her dreams of sailing to India, being reunited
with her husband--even if his countenance grew blurred and vague
with time, the memory of his words, his smile, quite dim. She still
could weave a fantasy of the life they might have together, the
wonderfully exotic smells and sounds of India, a place so distant
and unreal, brought to her imagination only in John's few letters
and a colored plate of Calcutta Henrietta kept on the dresser
shelf.
It was something different, an adventure she could
call her own.
Then John died of malaria only six months after his
arrival in India, and so had those frail hopes.
“You’re welcome to stay with us, of course,”
Henrietta McCardell continued now, her lips curling into something
halfway between a smile and a grimace. “But as you know, our lives
are quiet, and we are humble and modest.”
Eleanor knew this only too well, yet she still
chafed at the implied rebuke. She resisted the impulse to ask her
mother-in-law what she thought she was... a brazen woman? She’d
spent the last year living as humbly and modestly as a church
mouse, and before that her life on Mull had been one of a farm
girl.
“No doubt you’d find it quite dull,” Henrietta
continued in an accusatory tone. Eleanor did not bother to object.
She had already found it dull, and she knew Henrietta McCardell was
trying to find a way to be rid of her. She’d heard her hushed
conversation with her husband, Edmund, last night in the front
parlour.
Eleanor had gone to bed, and then returned
downstairs to fetch a fresh candle. She overheard Henrietta’s
urgent whisper, and in shock, she’d remained rooted to the spot,
listening.
“She can’t stay here, James--really, the girl is too
much! If there had been children, perhaps... but John barely knew
her, and they were wed only six weeks before he left! I’d always
been expecting her to go to India with him, eventually, not remain
with us. I’m not without Christian charity, but I can hardly
consider her family.”
Eleanor had clenched her fists, wanting to throw
open the door and shout that she didn’t consider the McCardells
family either, and didn’t want to stay there anyway.
She and Henrietta had never got along well
together--the dour matron had always cast a critical eye over
Eleanor. Either her dress was too worn, or her apron dirty, or her
hair in disarray. Eleanor knew the woman didn’t think her--a poor
farm girl from Mull--a good enough bride for her son.
And perhaps she wasn’t, Eleanor thought now, since
she was finding it hard to nurture her grief. Sometimes she could
barely remember John’s face, yet she’d married him. She’d loved
him.
Their courtship had been short but sweet, and
Eleanor had revelled in John’s simple affections, the attentions he
was happy to give her. For too long she’d lived a half-life in
shadows, first under the specter of uncertainty when Achlic Farm
was lost, and then later in her father’s new household,
still--always--a stranger.
David Campbell had softened in his
old age, and Jane McCready had been a good wife to him. Their home
had been a happy one, and Eleanor still felt a flicker of uneasy
guilt when she thought of how ungrateful she must be, to have
wanted to flee such happy confines.
Perhaps if Ian hadn’t run away to sea, or Harriet
married and gone to Canada, she wouldn’t have felt so left behind,
so alone.
Yet she had, and so when John asked her to marry
him, promising a new life, a life of an army wife which would
certainly bring with it adventure and change, Eleanor had accepted.
Then it had been her turn to leave, to find her own calling.
Except she hadn’t. Not yet.
Henrietta made a tsking sound with her tongue, and
Eleanor knew she’d let her thoughts wander away once more. ‘She’s
half daft, that one,’ she’d heard Henrietta say more than once. If
only she didn’t feel this lassitude, this terrible weariness all
the time. It was if John’s death had paralyzed her, left her unable
to imagine any kind of future at all.
Eleanor forced herself to smile at
her mother-in-law. “That’s very kind, mamma-in-law, to think of me
so carefully. But I assure you I wouldn’t find your life dull in
the least. The months I’ve passed here have been very pleasant.” It
was a lie, but Eleanor felt indebted to say it.
“Indeed.” Henrietta spoke through her teeth. “Then,
of course, my dear, you must stay as long as you wish. I thought
perhaps your stepmother might want to visit with you...”
Eleanor thought of Jane Campbell,
her father’s wife since she was thirteen, now in
Inverness.
“Perhaps,” she replied to Henrietta, though in her
heart she knew a visit with Jane and her sister was a remote
possibility. While the older woman would welcome her, the small
house in Inverness would be crowded, and the cost of Eleanor’s keep
dear.
“You wish to write her?” Henrietta prompted, and
Eleanor almost smiled. Goodness, the woman wanted her gone. She
didn’t blame her, even though last night she’d shed tears of
bitterness and humiliation. They’d been thrown together, virtual
strangers, the ties of kin tenuous at best.
“I’ve written to my brother,” Eleanor said. She felt
a tingle of satisfaction at the look of Henrietta’s surprise. She’d
rarely spoken of Ian, who had ran away to sea a decade ago and
ended up in Boston, studying to be a doctor and living with the
wealthy Moore family.
It had been the hand of Providence
that had landed Ian on
The
Allegiance
, Captain Henry Moore's ship.
Henry Moore, unbeknownst to Eleanor or anyone in her family, had
been tutoring Margaret MacDougall, a distant cousin who boarded
with the Campbells while they were at Achlic.
He was a good, honest man, and when he discovered
Ian's relation to Margaret, on whom he'd already placed his
affections, he'd made sure to watch out for the boy, appointing him
surgeon's mate and eventually leading him to the halls of Harvard's
Medical School. Fortune had favoured him, and Eleanor hoped it
would favour her as well.
“Your brother?” Henrietta asked now, as Eleanor had
stopped speaking, lost in thought as she was over the possibilities
Ian and his life presented to her. “What are his
circumstances?”
“He’s a doctor in Boston. In
America,” Eleanor clarified, heartened once again by Henrietta’s
widened eyes. “I’m hoping to hear word from him shortly, when the
next ship comes in.” Eleanor glanced out the window, as if she
could see all the way to the docks. The
Julia Rose
was due any day now from
Boston, and Eleanor hoped fervently that it would carry on it a
letter from Ian.
“You’ll stay with him?” Henrietta could not seem to
get her head around the idea, novel and unexpected as it was. “Is
he a bachelor?”