CANDLES IN THE DARK
Doug Marsh knew what the army expected of him. Invalided out, life sometimes baffles. He struggles to run his uncle's candle-works and look after those dependent on it. A contract with the Bath Assembly Rooms would go a long way toward succeeding at both of those things. The plight of a young woman is a distraction he doesn't need.
Esther Hopkins, formerly 'the Honorable', has no time to mourn the life denied her by a single mistake. A woman alone with a new-born son to raise needs work, and she is determined to make it on her own. If only she could stop yearning for the sturdy arms and kind blue eyes of the man who rescued her from starvation and enlisted the entire Marsh Candle Works to her support. But Sergeant Marsh shows nothing but benevolent interest in her welfare. Why should he care for a fallen woman?
In the normal course of things Esther is far above Doug's touch. Can he find the courage to court her and still take care of business at the same time?
CHAPTER1
Douglas Marsh preferred order in all things. Keeping the account books for Marsh Candle Works suited him. Numbers never lied, lined up when you told them to, and stayed where you put them. One misfortune blighted his pleasure in the figures: there weren’t enough of them—at least, not enough entries on the income side of the ledger. He slammed the book shut, removed his gold-rimmed spectacles, and pinched the bridge of his nose.
Not much else about his current situation suited him in the least. He glared at the gnarled blackthorn walking stick next to his desk, grabbed it resentfully, and limped to the door of his office. Little had unfolded in military order since the surgeons judged him unfit for duty and sent him home to a country he hadn’t seen in seventeen years. Supplies arrived late and payments later. Weather failed to cooperate. Heat, damp, and cold all bedeviled the making of candles. The work got done, aye, but never in its prescribed fashion. He locked the office door, wiggling the key to fit.One more thing to fix.
Least orderly of all were the people in his life. The workers seemed a willing lot, but sick babies, the ague, and, Doug suspected, the occasional bit of drink, impacted their numbers more days than he cared to count. Not one showed the least sign of being impressed by a battle-hardened soldier with more scars than he could show in polite company.
My uncle spoiled the lot of them. Treated ’em like family. None has an inkling of proper discipline, not even the boy who—
“Mr. Morris, what in the name of all that is holy are you doing?” he bellowed. The lad was paid to sweep up at end of day, not fidget with a candle mold.
Joseph Morris looked around the room, as if wondering whom Doug had addressed, before peering back at his master. He dropped his hands to his sides and rubbed them on his pants, eyes wide. “You mean me, sir? I’m sorry. Most folks call me Joey.”
“Mr. Morris, your duty is to make this work room as tidy as may be before you follow the others home.”
“I know, Mr. Marsh. I were just straightening the molds. Wondrous things the molds. Easier than dipping like the folks do with th’ tallow aren’t they?” In Doug’s long career, no raw recruit ever grinned up at him the way this imp did, as if he expected a pat on the head or something. They quickly learned otherwise if they tried.
Doug attempted his fiercest sergeant face but must have failed completely because the lad leaned in and spoke, as if in confidence. “You’re looking a bit down pin this even’, sir. Is it the leg painin’ you? My gran says—”
“Never you mind what your gran says. Your duty is the broom. Get to it,” Doug growled, feeling like a brute. He hated feeling like a brute. He hated being compared to the boy’s grandmother even more.I’m only thirty, damn it. He felt ninety-two.
He clamped his hat on his head, stomped toward the door to the yard, and immediately regretted it when pain shot up his hip.
How’s a man supposed to organize his troops? This isn’t some damned nursery.
He turned at the sound of whistling to see the boy about his work, none the worse for Doug’s harsh words. The lad glanced up without pausing in his work and grinned at his employer. Doug’s lips twitched to smile back.
“And Mr. Morris, don’t forget to lock up,” he barked.
The whistling began again, and the boy nodded. Doug wondered if locking up the Works was too much responsibility for one so young. What was he? Ten? Twelve? Doug took up the king’s shilling at thirteen. He considered going back to his office until the boy finished but did not. He knew young men lived down to low expectations and generally up to higher ones.
The boy will do, but still, he’s a lad. Someone needed to check on things later.
For now, he had an errand to run for the least orderly part of his life. Aunt Edna expected him to bring bread and sweet buns home every night. She fretted if he refused or failed to remember. Uncle Horace apparently never forgot. If he spoiled his workers, the man positively doted on his wife.
It had been a month after the Battle of Toulouse before Doug woke up to discover that he had survived after all, that his mangled leg was still attached to his body, and that Napoleon had abdicated. Other news had been less pleasant. He would never walk without a limp, he faced a premature end to his army career, and he had inherited the care of Aunt Edna along with the Marsh Candle Works because his Uncle Horace had suffered a heart spasm on the floor of the workshop and died before the damned battle was ever fought. Doug still couldn’t say which had been the worst news. Some days he suspected the last one.
Another four months passed before he could travel, four months during which Aunt Edna’s tear-stained and frantic letters drove him almost insane. Never one to shirk his duty, Doug finally gave up trying to imagine ways to wiggle out of coming home to take over. With Napoleon in exile, there was no place for him even among the fogies and slackers of the invalid battalion. Men flooded out of the army with little pay and no way to earn a living; he knew he had it better than most. He tried to feel grateful.
He crossed the yard where Peter Spratly stood in the open door to the storage barn. The building had two sections. One housed a stall for the trap he inherited with everything else and the pony that pulled it. The beast had been hitched to the trap and stood waiting to take its master home. Walls separated the other section, where they stored tallow, spermaceti wax, and, when they could get it, bees’ wax, along with spools of wick.
“Still waiting for the delivery?” Doug asked his foreman. A shipment of spermaceti was due. Cleaner burning and better smelling than tallow, “whales’ candles,” as folks called them, were a less costly alternative to beeswax candles. Doug and Peter agreed Marsh’s future depended on expanding sales of them.
“Aye.” Peter looked up at the sky. “But dark comes early this time o’ year.”
“Give them an hour and then lock up,” Doug replied. “And make sure Joey does the same to the works floor. Don’t let him know you’re checking. Just make sure the lock is solid.
Peter gave a wry dip of his head and tugged his forelock, half respect, half mocking. Doug shook his head and heaved his body up into the trap, pleased with the reminder that his arms still worked as he wished.
The candle works lay on the Lower Road to Bristol across the river from Bath itself. Doug urged the pony briskly along the river and across the bridge, slowing as he came into the town proper, letting the pony patiently make its way toward the snug town house he shared with his aunt. Before reaching it, however, he diverted down a commercial street and turned on a narrow back lane to pull up in front of Butterfield’s Bakery, the source, his aunt assured him, of the best spiced buns in Bath. He had no reason to disagree with her, even if the shop did lie far from the better shops and fashionable retailers.
