“Is that short for Christopher?”
“Um, yes.” He pulled at the edge of the linen shirt beneath his jacket and stretched the cloth away from his neck.
“I like Christopher better.” She bit into another section of the orange and gave a happy little sigh. “I think I’ll call you Christopher, if that’s all right with you, Captain?”
He said nothing but reached out and caught a drop of juice from her lip on his thumb before it rolled down onto her chin. He put his finger to his mouth and licked off the orange nectar. “You know, Rachel, I believe I could come to crave these ugly oranges.”
Chris was caught as surely asif he were a butterfly in a net. He knew he was in treacherous waters and about to sink like an anchor cut loose and abandoned to the deep.
He followed Rachel on through all the rows of fruit trees in the mission’s orchard which was handsomely divided by spacious walks separating rows of sweet and sour orange, lemon and lime trees, christi trees, fig trees, and coconut palms.
When at last she turned back toward the vicarage, he was struck with sudden regret, like the Bos’un’s lash on an unrepentant sailor at the mast. Something had passed between them, he was sure of it. He was just as certain, however, that he’d let some wonderful opportunity slip through his fingers.
He didn’t know what Vicar Berry had wanted to discuss with him that afternoon, but he knew with dead certainty he had to declare his intentions to Rachel’s father before he and Rachel succumbed to whatever strange orb of attraction hovered between them.
As soon as they neared the back of the vicarage, his stomach fell. The vicar stood in the kitchen herb garden, his hand shaded over his eyes, peering in their direction.
“Daughter, you’ve been away so long, I was afraid something might have happened to you.” He shook his head slowly and nodded toward Chris. “Captain Halloren, we still have things we need to discuss.”
“Father,” Rachel interrupted. “You were the one who told me to entertain the captain while you finished your sermon, but you didn’t tell me how long you’d need.” The little minx gave her father an innocent smile and added, “Besides, we were surrounded by students working in the gardens.” She stooped just in time to snatch a hen racing past them away from the chicken yard. “Nothing bad could have possibly happened with so many protectors surrounding me.” She smoothed the feathers back on her hen to soothe the trembling bird. “Now if you gentlemen will excuse me, I have to return Miss Luisa here back to her friends behind the captain’s fine new fence before she wanders into a stew pot.”
He and the vicar stared silently after Rachel while she picked her way back toward the chicken yard, murmuring God knows what to the small hen tucked beneath her arm.
So here he stood, a captain in the Royal Navy, the third son of a baron, and a supposedly intelligent gentleman trained at the Royal Navy College at Portsmouth. The man next to him was an ordained priest in the Church of England which he imagined entailed years of study. And they’d both been bested by a woman who talked to chickens.
The vicar clapped him on the back and said, “You look like a man who could use a tot of brandy, if that girl is as hard on you as she is on me.” After that, his tone turned stern. “And we still have something important to settle.”
Rachel rejoinedher mission women’s sewing circle in the front parlor to add her pile of sleeves she’d been working on all week for the men’s shirt construction they’d been laboring over together.
The official mission school classes offered English and reading to the men and needlework to the women. However, since a number of the women in her needlework classes had asked if they could learn a bit of reading as well, she’d devised a way to teach some reading within their community sewing circles.
Rachel would read Bible stories and answer questions about the meanings of words, or sometimes read from her father’s collection of tales of Greek mythology while the women sewed. Since the vicar never ventured into the midst of a sewing circle meeting, he had no idea Rachel was slowly providing the women in the community some reading skills.
She didn’t think he’d mind, but the Church Mission Society specifically set the standards of what was to be taught in the Freetown mission. She’d decided if he didn’t know about her secret classes, he couldn’t be blamed for veering from the path of what the society considered proper.
Mrs Chelly appeared in the doorway and slid her gaze around the room until she settled on Rachel. “You, Miss Berry, your papa wants to see you now.”
Rachel was in the midst of reading a particularly good story and looked up, annoyed. “Can he wait a few minutes?”
Mrs Chelly shook her head vigorously. “You better come now.”
She apologized to the rest of the seamstresses and followed the cook down the hallway to her father’s study. It was nightfall, well past time for the evening meal, and she saw the long table in the large parlor set with bowls, spoons and cups for the supper they provided the seamstresses.
Rachel turned to the cook with a guilty start. “I forgot the time. Could you make sure the ladies take a break for their supper?”
“Of course.” The woman moved past her and down the pathway toward the outdoor kitchen, probably to retrieve the kettle of stew she’d prepared.
Rachel stood alone in the hallway outside her father’s study. She hesitated before lifting her hand to rap on the door and then held her breath, dreading why she’d been summoned while presumably poor Captain Halloren still remained trapped in the room with her father.
When the doorcracked open a bit, lantern light from her father’s study streamed out into the hallway where dusk now shadowed the corners. Her father’s face, which had been stern earlier when she’d lingered too long in the orchard with Captain Halloren, now beamed with satisfaction when the two of them stood to greet her.
Not Captain Halloren, she remembered with a start, but Christopher. She should start thinking of him as Christopher. That was the name his mother had given him and most likely called him when she’d rocked him and sung to him as a child.
He’d probably been loved as a small child but then had been sent away when he was little more than a boy to face the brutalities, and dangers, of the Royal Navy. With a selfish little start, she realized she was glad. Otherwise, he would not have been here at this time and place; hundreds of enslaved souls would not have been delivered to Freetown to begin their lives anew. She was glad Christopher Halloren was in the world, her world.
When her father ushered her into his study and pointed to a chair in front of his desk, she nodded to Christopher who hovered stiffly in front of the other chair and looked as though someone had sunk his ship. She adjusted her skirts and sat while the two men took their seats as well.
After an increasingly uncomfortable silence, her father cleared his voice. “Ah, Rachel…” He stopped and cleared his voice again. “Captain Halloren has asked my permission to call on you whilst his ship remains in the harbor and after his next mission to Sherbro Island later this month. What do you say? Are you of the same mind, daughter?”
