Lucky's Lady

Chapter One-3

“It’s not safe for a young woman such as yourself to go walkin’ through these streets near the docks.” Victor, Mr. Watkins’ servant for longer than she’d been alive, started his usual rant about her walking. “One never knows what mischief lies around a corner out there now-days.” He set the horse’s foot down and looked at the four to check them for balance. “If you’d give me a few minutes, I’ll have the ol’ girl between the shafts in no time, and get ya home safe soon enough.”

Mary-Michael leaned against a post and watched as he picked the hoof up again and removed the temporary nail holding the shoe, took the file from his back pocket and began to rasp more hoof away.

“Besides, I wasn’t expectin’ ya to leave early today.”

“It’s not early, Victor. Why, it’s almost time for dinner. Besides, you know walking helps me clear my head after a busy day. We have a potential new client and I want to think about some designs from the notes I took during the meeting. He’ll be coming back tomorrow morning to meet with Mr. Watkins.”

“At least get one of the lads from the Dutchman’s crew to walk wit’ ya. You know Mr. Watkins don’ want you walkin’ alone with that lawman pesterin’ you.”

Mary-Michael began the trek through the yard toward the street. “He can’t hurt me, Victor. I can out-run him if I had to.” She held up a hand to wave at him as she kept walking. “See you at the house,” she said, calling back at Victor.

Once through the yard, it was only a short eight blocks to the house she shared with Mr. Watkins, and their servants, Victor and his wife Sally. She could run the distance in less than ten minutes, but a nice leisurely walk through the wharf business area wasn’t as bad as people often thought it was. For certain there were the shady types, the drunken rogues who hung around the alleyways near the pubs waiting for their doors to open, though the constable kept most of them in line. But for the most part, people down here were hard-working, church-going people. She should know, this was where she’d grown up. Now every day she passed the dry goods store she once lived above as a child before the fever took her parents, leaving her and her brother George orphaned. This was her home. She’d never left Indian Point in her life, except to visit Mr. Watkins’ farm several times a year. Her community wasn’t as bad as Victor always made it out to be.

The houses on Washington Street weren’t like the houses further in town with lots of extra rooms for visitors. Most of these modest homes belonged to tradesmen and their families, and thus were on the small side. Though the home she shared with Mr. Watkins was one of the larger of these, it wasn’t by much. Mr. Watkins had added onto the house when his first wife Abigail had been with child, so this house had four bedrooms, where most had two or three. He’d also turned one of the two downstairs sitting rooms into a study for himself not long after that first wife passed away trying to deliver their babe. Mary-Michael had spent many hours in that study reading educational tomes from Mr. Watkins’ vast collection.

She crossed her front porch, relishing the tiny bit of evening breeze they caught up here on the slight knoll over-looking the bay, and pushed open the door. “I’m home, Sally,” she called out as she went down the hallway looking for Mr. Watkins in his study. She tossed her jacket on the banister rail and heard Sally acknowledge her from out in the kitchen. “I walked, so Victor will be along soon. He was nailing a shoe on Buttercup when I left. She must have lost it when Victor brought Mr. Watkins home at noon.” She knocked softly on her husband’s office door, and after getting no reply, she thought perhaps he was asleep. Cautiously pushing the door open, she discovered she was right. The gray-haired old man sat in his favorite wing chair in the corner, holding the evening paper, sound asleep.

His cloudy eyes opened and he smiled. “Ah, Mary, my girl. A man couldn’t have a better companion.”

“I’m also your wife, Mr. Watkins.” She poured herself a glass of water and took a seat across from him on the settee.

“Aye. You are that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s Sally cooking for dinner?” Mr. Watkins made a great show of raising his paper and snapping the wrinkles from it.

“I don’t know, sir, but it smells delicious.”

“She doesn’t cook a thing that isn’t, my girl.” Her dear, wizened husband brought the page right up to his face and began to peruse the headlines. “So how is everything at the office?”

“It got interesting right before I left,” Mary-Michael said.

The elderly man lowered his paper enough to meet her gaze. “How so?”

“I had a visitor. An Englishman. He said he is the partner of a Mr. Ian Ross, formerly of Indian Point.” She awaited his recognition of the name and when he smiled, she knew he’d remembered. “He said Ian has inherited his uncle’s title. He is now the Earl of Something, Mr. Watkins. Your old friend’s son is a nobleman and the two men are partners in a tea importing company.”

Her husband folded the paper and nodded his nearly bald gray head. “It’s why Hamish had to send his only child to live with that old...” He cut off what he was going to call the man, likely so as not to offend her. “What did he want, this visitor. Was Ian with him?”

“No, sir, he was not.” Mary-Michael tempered her excitement and continued. “This gentleman said he admired the vessels under construction as he walked through our yard.”

Her husband’s gray eyes danced with merriment. “Did you tell him they were all your designs?”

“Yes, though you know I am uncomfortable doing so. We only spoke for a few minutes. The man said he and his partner are looking at expansion of their business. They would like two new clippers.” When her husband’s eyes grew wide with interest, she went on. “They are in need of boats that can compete in the tea trade. They’re currently sailing a pair of twenty-one-year-old clippers from Jorgensen’s yard up in Halifax.”

Mr. Watkins continued to nod, acknowledging their competitor, and she went on.

“They have one hundred and twenty footers now, and he’s looking at one hundred and eighty or eighty-five feet. With that, I can increase his cargo capacity by sixty to eighty percent and get him where he needs to go faster, but I didn’t tell him that.” Mary-Michael couldn’t stop the grin from spreading across her face.

“Why not?”

Mary-Michael considered her words. “Well, like most men, he didn’t seem comfortable discussing business with a woman. In fact, I think he’d rather deal directly with you. And secondly, I wouldn’t want to promise any percentage increase in his profit until I knew exactly what he wanted in materials, accommodations and trim.”

Her husband chuckled. “I taught you well, my dear.”

Sally walked in with a fresh pitcher of water with sliced lemon and two glasses with big cut pieces of ice. She poured their drinks and said, “Dinner is in thirty minutes, Miz Watkins.”

“Thank you, Sally.”

Her husband swallowed deeply from his cold drink and held it as he stared at her in an odd way. “I want to know if you’ve given any thought to what we discussed the other day, Mrs. Watkins.”

“Regarding what, sir?” she asked, though she knew exactly what topic he meant to revisit.

“Regarding you getting your heart’s desire.”

Mary-Michael sighed and turned to stare out the window at the lengthening shadows of the trees on the bricked streets. “I’m not sure I can do it.”

“You could if you met the right person.” He sipped from his glass again. “We will need to find you this right man soon. I never know when I lay my head down at night if I’ll be picking it up the next morning. If you want your babe to carry my name, you should do something about it soon, lass.”

He obviously saw her slowness to reply as a need for more time to think on the subject. What her dear mentor and husband could not know, was that she’d already begun to consider his plan during her walk home. First, she wondered if she could possibly do it at all. And secondly, there was this unexplainable attraction she felt toward the Englishman. If this is what Becky had meant when she said Mary-Michael would know it when she felt it, then she was certainly feeling something. That was the only reason she was considering doing this.

She wondered what it would be like to create her babe with this man, the one whose name she did not remember.

“I would never push you to do this,” Mr. Watkins said, “except I know my days are now numbered.”

“I never thought… That is, when we wed, I… I didn’t think I would care, or that I would desire a child as much as I do.” She wiped at a single tear, unwilling to cry over this again. “And now… after Rowan and Emily, I just don’t think… I could go through falling in love with other little ones, only to have them taken from me again.” She swiped at one more falling tear, then another and another. “I miss them so much.”

“As do I lass.”

“Sometimes I feel this desire for a babe has me so envious of my own friends that I avoid them. I know they sense me distancing myself from them, too. It’s not that I’m not happy for them, because you know I am.” She wiped again. “It’s just that I’m so jealous of their happiness I’ve thrown myself into my work even more and given up their company so as not to feel my own pain. It’s a self-centered jealousy that I fight, sir, and I’m not sure that those selfish emotions are something I should feel if I want to be a good mother.”

“You are the least selfish woman I know, Mrs. Watkins, and you deserve this child of your heart.” He sat back and closed his eyes. “Besides, you wouldn’t be feeling those conflicting emotions if you had a child.”

“But what I have to do to get this child of my dreams means committing a grievous sin.” She could never take a sin as enormous as this into the confessional. At least not in Indian Point, both priests knew her personally. She’d have to go into Baltimore. And after? Even after confessing, for the rest of her life, while she enjoyed the beauty of motherhood—if she were so blessed—she will always know in her heart that she’d sinned to create her little miracle.

“Is it a sin when I am willing it? Did not Sarah give her maid, Hagar, to Abraham to conceive his children?”

“Yes, and it broke Hagar’s heart to give over her son to Sarah after his birth.”

“You will not have that issue if the father of your child is someone who isn’t from here,” her husband countered. “We can go to Richmond, Philadelphia, Washington, or even New York if someone from Baltimore is too near for you to choose.” She wiped her eyes, thinking about the gift her husband was giving her to allow this. “I will help you all I can, Mrs. Watkins, but I must know you want my help.”

Through her tears, she nodded. “I may not have to go that far, sir. You can tell me if you approve of Ian Ross’s partner tomorrow, for he is someone… I might consider.”

He finally smiled. “Well, I hope he is a handsome and intelligent specimen, for I cannot have a son or daughter of mine be anything less than both!”

Mary-Michael gave her husband a nervous laugh. Mr. Watkins was sure to find fault with the English captain, a man whose touch still burned her hand when she thought of him. She would just have to remind her husband that he told her she was the one to do the choosing, not he. And she chose the dark-haired, dark-eyed Englishman who stirred up a whirlwind of confusing feelings in her.

After dinner she discussed with her husband all the items she’d written down from her conversation with the Englishman regarding the two new builds the man requested. Mary-Michael thought to sketch out some rough designs for their meeting the next morning, so she excused herself from the table, telling Mr. Watkins she would like to have something to show their potential client when they met.

She went up to her room and took a seat at her dressing table, then untied her hair-net and let her braid drop down her back. Lifting her fingers to her throat, she unbuttoned the top three buttons of her blouse. The upstairs room’s two windows were wide open, but since there was hardly a breeze moving outdoors, none moved in the house. The heat caused a sheen of perspiration all over her body. She parted her bodice, then lifted an ivory handled fan and began trying to cool herself off.

If it was this hot in June, God alone knew how hot it would be in August.

Moving to her desk, she set up her paper and graphite pencils, and began to think on what to sketch for this friend of Mr. Ian Ross. Two more clippers would be good for business, giving her crews steady work for the next year and a half. Not that there was any lack of business. In fact, just the opposite. Watkins Shipbuilding was currently running easily one year for delivery, even though she promised the Englishman under twelve months. She’d have to put the word out for more qualified tradesmen because she really wanted to build these two boats before Mr. Watkins could no longer assist her in managing the yard, which could happen at any time.

Mary-Michael went over and over the conversation with the Englishman and she kept coming to the same conclusion. She was certain she did not mistake his desire for speed and efficiency, and given the specifications from Mr. Ross, she knew they were of one mind when it came to design. For the past six years she’d been giving the customers what they wanted in their new builds, but she got the impression the Englishman and Mr. Ross were willing to consider some of her more innovative ideas and plans.

Her passion was designing clippers. Ships that had sleeker, faster hull designs with sail plans that would best utilize the wind. She loved dreaming up composite material designed to reduce weight and allow for more cargo. That was her life’s work.

There were only a handful of shipyards in the area that built these ships, though it seemed each year one or two more got into the business. Especially since the demand for the speedy cargo carriers was increasing almost daily. The only other shipyard out on the point with them, Barlowe Marine, focused solely on military-type vessels, heavy and armed from stem to stern, as the owner had a previous career with the government as a naval architect. Though well-constructed and of different design, they were military ships designed for the navy, and not true clippers.

Watkins specialized in cargo carrying clipper ships, where the amount of goods transported and the speed in which you got your cargo to the owner, determined how much money you made. Speed. It was important, but not the primary consideration in her designs. Optimizing the cargo space and making the loading and unloading of cargo easier and more efficient was as vital to turn-around time and profitability as speed.

Safety, speed, optimization of space. That’s what she wanted to give this client. And hopefully he would give her a babe in return. Even as she wanted to cry for baby Emily and her brother, Rowan, she smiled and placed her hand over her womb and imagined the possibility of having a child growing within her soon.

Mary-Michael returned her attention to the drawing and tried to remember everything the Englishman said. She began to draw a hull, a bell bow, the jibboom, knightheads, keel, and stern. Her pencil flew across the sheet, as she added deckwork and masts and rails. Spanker to flying jib, she gave her new creation full sail. She marked the hull for copper sheathing and for drama she added waves and clouds against a stormy sky. The deck arrangement was a basic deck house with rear cabin, as she was still unsure which actual layout he’d prefer. He mentioned two full cabins on each as a preference, but Mary-Michael didn’t know if he wanted them separated or side by side.

She stared at her creation, her heart swelling with pride. She loved drawing ships under full sail. For her, they came alive on the page. When she began drawing ships as a child, she could imagine herself standing on the fo’c’sle deck looking out into the ocean and watching the waves as they parted under her bow. Even now, she could almost feel the wind in her hair and the spray on her face as the bow sluiced through the water.

She could imagine it, just as much as she could imagine a babe in her arms this time next year. And both this drawing and that child of her dreams might become reality if Mr. Watkins sold the deal to the Englishman.