‘I shall be buying another property,’ he told her. ‘It will be nothing as grand as this one, of course. I shall start to look around for somewhere suitable immediately. And I thought?.?.?. Well, I hoped that you might come to live there with us so that you could continue to care for Charlotte because I will have to work. The only trouble is you will be laying yourself wide open to yet more gossip. It’s bad enough as it is but imagine what people will say if they know you are living unchaperoned with me.’
‘People can say what they like about me,’ Amber said heatedly. ‘Just so long as I can be with my girl.’
Barnaby nodded before going on, ‘The other thing is I won’t be able to take on any staff. Not until I get another business properly up and running that is. So it would mean—’
‘It would mean I’d have to be head cook an’ bottle washer into the bargain,’ she finished for him. ‘But that’s all reet. I ain’t afraid o’ hard work.’
‘Even so, I’d like you to think about it before you make a final decision,’ he encouraged, before leaving the room, closing the door softly behind him.
*
Early the next morning Barnaby set off on his house-hunt but everything he looked at was either too expensive or so rundown that it was almost derelict.
‘Did you find anywhere suitable?’ Amber asked when he visited the nursery that evening and he shook his head.
‘No luck at all, I’m afraid. But never fear, it’s early days,’ he told her with far more optimism than he was feeling. It had been hard to accept that he was no longer the owner of Greenacres and the shipyard and when he thought of how tirelessly he had worked to build the business up he felt angry and heartbroken, but there was nothing he could do about it and so he was just going to have to get on with things. ‘Did you give some thought to what I said?’ he asked and Amber nodded without hesitation.
‘Yes an’ the answer is still the same. Me name is mud down in the town so we may as well give ’em somethin’ else to talk about. I don’t much care what they say so long as I can be with Charlotte.’
With a brisk nod, he left the room. Amber knew she was doing the right thing, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t nervous about living in a small house with a man she didn’t like. Still, if she wanted to be with her daughter, what other choice did she have? She’d tried supporting her on her own and it had been a disaster, so she would just have to make the best of it. And if she was completely honest with herself, the fact that Barnaby hadn’t blamed her, nor tried to call the police on her when she’d taken Charlotte, showed that perhaps he really was sorry for the way he had treated her. And if that was the case, she supposed she should try to put her resentment aside and at least be friendly towards him – for Charlotte’s sake. But then she shook her head. No. No doubt he’d had his own selfish reasons for not reporting her, so even though she couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him after everything that had happened, she still didn’t trust him. And she wasn’t sure if she ever would.
*
The atmosphere was grim over the following week as some of the staff began to drift away. The cook was the first to go when she left to live with her daughter in Goathland, a pretty village out on the moors.
‘I were thinkin’ o’ retirin’ soon anyway,’ she told the master, which eased his conscience a little as far as she was concerned, at least. Next, Nancy informed Amber that she’d been taken on as a barmaid at an inn in the town.
‘It’ll be totally different to what I’ve been doin’ ’ere,’ she told Amber sadly. ‘But at least I’ll be bringin’ a bit o’ money in an’ I can live back at ’ome wi’ me mam again. But what are you goin’ to do?’
Amber took a deep breath. ‘I’m goin’ to live wi’ Mr Greenwood when he finds a suitable house so I can carry on lookin’ after Charlotte.’
Nancy’s eyes stretched wide as she whistled through her teeth. ‘Crikey, lass, are you sure that’s a good idea? I mean, there’s enough gossip flyin’ around about you two as it is. If you move in wi’ ’im you’ll be branded a scarlet woman.’
Amber shrugged. ‘So be it! I don’t care so long as I get to be wi’ me baby.’ She cuddled Charlotte to her and they sat silent for a time wondering what the future had in store for them all.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Aweek later on a beautiful day in May, Barnaby went to the nursery to tell Amber, ‘I think I’ve found a house that may be suitable for us but I’d like you to come and see it before I make a final decision. You may know the property in question. It’s an old sea captain’s house on the headland about half a mile from Whitby Abbey.’
‘I know the one you mean, but ain’t that been empty for a long time?’
He nodded. ‘Yes it has, and it’ll need a lot of work to bring it back to how it should be. But I think it would be worth it. What do you think?’
‘It’s worth a look,’ she agreed.
So early the next morning after collecting the keys from the estate agent in town, they set off with Charlotte in the carriage to view it.
As they drew near, Amber noted that some of the tiles were missing from the roof and what should have been the front garden was so overgrown that it looked like a jungle. The front of the house was surrounded by a picket fence in desperate need of painting and the gate was hanging off its hinges.
‘I know it looks a little daunting,’ Barnaby told her. ‘But I can afford to get men in to repair the roof and do some of the work and it is a sizable property. It stands in half an acre of garden which would be enough for us to have our own small vegetable plot and perhaps keep a few chickens. I believe there’s an orchard as well, so we wouldn’t be short of fruit and veg.’
When the carriage drew to a halt Barnaby alighted and reached in to take Charlotte as Amber clambered down after him.
As they battled through the overgrown weeds to the front door, Amber noticed that a lot of the glass in the little leaded windows had been broken, probably by children or vandals. Even so, as he had said, it was a large building and the views of the sea on one side and the moors stretching away into the distance on the other were breathtaking.
Barnaby had to give the front door a good shove to get it to open and it creaked alarmingly as he pushed it wider for them to enter. They stepped into a good-sized hallway with black-and-white tiles on the floor and panelled walls. A staircase with beautifully carved bannisters led up from one side of it and Amber could hardly wait to explore the upstairs, but first she would concentrate on the ground floor.
The first door leading off the hallway led into the kitchen, which, although furnished, was under such thick layers of dust that it was impossible to see if any of it would be salvageable. A large range cooker stood against one wall and next to that was an inglenook fireplace with a bread oven set into the wall on one side of it. There was a deep stone sink with a pump attached, which told them there must be a well somewhere, and a long wooden draining board. Cobwebs hung like festoons of delicate lace from the rafters and the moths had been feasting on the curtains. But as Amber looked about, she didn’t see the work that needed doing. In her mind’s eye she could see it as it could be and she smiled before tripping away to examine the rooms that led off it while Barnaby looked after Charlotte.
