“Come under here.” He poked his head out and was rewarded by a giggle from his son who must have thought it funny to see his father under the wagon.
Nathaniel and Henrietta both crawled under the brake and after some arranging and Oliver making sure no limbs were in the way of a wheel in case the wedges failed to stop the brake from rolling, they were comfortable. Snug and dry.
Nathaniel and perhaps even Henrietta might have been able to sit upright under the brake, but since Oliver couldn’t, they joined him in lying down for their picnic.
“Like the ancient Romans,” Oliver said and then had to explain to Nathaniel how the Romans had eaten lying down.
After a bit, with the soothing patter of the rain, a stomach full of cheese sandwiches, and the exertion of the morning, Nathaniel fell asleep in the middle of the blanket.
Oliver was on his side, resting his head on his hand, and Henrietta had taken the same position. Their faces were only a few feet apart. It had not seemed dangerously intimate until Nathaniel had fallen asleep. But now it did.
Oliver touched the back of Nathaniel’s dark head lightly. “You didn’t have to tell the caterpillar story to get him to nod off.”
“Running about was enough.”
“My son, the lepidopterist.”
“What is that?”
“A person who collects butterflies. Studies them.”
“What is the word for a person who makes maps?”
“A mapmaker. But you’re right. There should be a fancy word like lepidopterist. Chorographer. Chartographer. Cartographer.”
She laughed. “That’s you. You’re a cartographer.”
“No, not really. But I thought I might be.” He rolled onto his back and looked at the underside of the brake rather than at Henrietta.
“Once upon a time,” he started and then stopped.
“All the best stories begin that way,” she said encouragingly.
“When I was young, I wanted to be an explorer, see new lands, discover things.”
He cast a glance at her. He felt it was a laughable ambition now when his life was so confined, so timid. But she did not laugh. Her face was still. She was listening. He shifted his eyes back, away from her.
“So, after I left Eton, I did not go to university or go to work for my father’s businesses. Instead, I joined an expedition to the East Indies.”
He had quickly made a discovery on that voyage, but not of an uncharted island or a hidden reef. No, he had discovered Oliver Hartwell could not tolerate life on board a ship. Not one whit. And his wretched vomiting never subsided, even after weeks at sea. Fearing Oliver might die, the captain finally put him ashore at Cape Town, so Oliver might build up enough strength for the dreaded return trip to England by a different ship. He made it back to Portsmouth barely alive, accordingto the ship’s doctor. He had been skeletal and wasted, skin collapsed, his mouth a desert of sores.
Oliver Hartwell was doomed never to leave the island of Britain again.
Henrietta’s voice was full of enthusiasm and excitement. “You’ve been to the East Indies? That’s marvelous! How could I not know that?”
“Because I haven’t. I never went. Incurable seasickness. I had to quit the idea of a life of adventuring.”
The sound of the rain hitting the topside of the brake filled the hush that followed.
“How terrible. How terrible that must have been for you.”
No one had ever truly sympathized with him over the loss of his boyhood dreams. Even Crispin had never understood how deep the wound had gone. How, after that, it had taken all of Oliver’s strength, physically and mentally, to go back out into the world and try to find something that interested him.
“Were you crushed, Oliver?”
He turned towards her, on his side again, and looked at her face. Those blue eyes were welling, her bottom lip was trembling. For him. For that long-ago Oliver Hartwell, the boy-man he had been at her age.
“I was. But I still liked maps. And that was when I chanced on your father again, having not seen him for six years.”
