The Baron & the Clockmaker's Daughter

The Baron & the Clockmaker’s Daughter

  by

  Suzy Stewart Dubot

  Dedication

  This is dedicated to Sylvia Sibrover, ‘a fan’, in her own words. She has rendered me innumerable services, and this is my way of thanking her.

  Thank you, Sylvia.

  I would also like to mention both my grandmothers

  – Ilo Yoakam Stewart & Florence Warren Dooley –

  They were both women who lived through hard times and survived.

  Copyright © 2011 by Suzy Stewart Dubot

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4659-3839-8

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Book cover & cover photographs:

  Suzy Stewart Dubot

  Author’s Note:

  The author has taken the liberty of including water closets in the Baron’s home. They were invented before the story takes place, but were not of common usage. Forgive her for offering this convenience to people she has created. She worries about them.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  Summer 1818

  She had been sent down a winding road in search of the cottage. The directions had been vague and perhaps incorrect, but Faith hadn’t had much choice in the matter. The cottage was her last resort, because now she was homeless.

  The tenancy of the family home had been in her father’s name until his death ten days ago. It was the unexpected opening that the owners had seized upon to ask her to leave within the week, feeling generous in not having had her evicted immediately. The few substantial possessions that she had were now safe with friends until the day that she could return to fetch them. The cloth bag she carried had a simple change of clothing, a few necessary pieces and the legal papers concerning the family. Her parent’s marriage lines, her birth certificate and their death certificates were papers she might have to show to an employer, one never knew.

  She wore her father’s gold timepiece pinned to the inside of her pocket, the only token of a life spent with a man who had remained a stranger to her. He had been spare with his dealings with her and even thriftier with his affections. His indifference might be considered a blessing in disguise, because now that he was gone, it made little difference, except she was left to fend for herself.

  The day had been sunny and a little too warm, although she was now on a road that was cooler, being shaded by a mixture of elms and hornbeams. That had been one small mercy.

  She no longer paid attention to the fields and hedgerows as she walked, because she kept her eyes looking forward for the first glimpse of the cottage. It had to be near as she’d left the town of Hatfield behind her more than an hour ago. No one had passed in either direction and she’d begun to doubt that she was on the right road. And then, she spied a thatched rooftop as she turned in the bend. Set back from the road with a wild garden in the front, surrounded by what had been white picket fencing, the cottage had probably been quaint and inviting when first built. Now it had begun to show its age with the stucco more grey than white. The years of rain running off the thatch had left stains too, but she honestly didn’t care a whit. This was her aunt’s home, and she’d finally arrived. For the first time in her life, she'd taken matters into her own hands and left her home town for an uncertain destination.

  -o0o-

  Faith had been born in Chipping Barnet to Robert and Penelope Eversley, née Williams. She was the only surviving child that her parents had produced but had not been valued any the more because of the fact. Her mother had loved her in a weak fashion, but her father had not wished to share his wife with anyone. That meant that any moments she spent with her mother were furtive and unsatisfactory, inevitably interrupted by her father’s demands. She hadn’t realised as a child that that wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

  Her parents had been a strange pair, viewed with an outsider’s eyes.

  Her father might have been considered a good-looking man. He was of above average height, with blue eyes and dark hair, which had begun to grey. He was well proportioned without excessive fat. Taken out of context, his face would be decidedly aristocratic with a high forehead, straight nose, high cheek bones and a well-shaped jaw. Put into the context of the horologer that he was, with glasses perched on the end of his nose, he became ‘trade’ and thus, common.

  He should have been appealing, but there was something about him that detracted from his potential. A quirk in his character had meant that he had no charm and made no effort. In fact, he cared for no one and did not pretend that he did. If customers came to his shop, it was because he was the only horologer in the town and he did his job competently.

  One might wonder why his wife had accepted his proposal of marriage. She had been a pleasant girl with attractive looks comprised of a slender body and full breasts. Her blond hair and blue eyes drew one’s attention to her heart shaped face and fine features. She’d had admirers, but it was Robert Eversley who had won her hand simply by persistent domination. One would never know if, in her secret heart, she had hoped to change him, soften him, but it was obvious he was not made to any mould but his own. It can only be hoped that his obsessive possessiveness had made her think he had some affection for her. Any real attachment he’d had was, however, for her capabilities as his housekeeper and for his own sexual satisfaction. For him, she had been a possession and the care he took would have applied to any object he wished to keep in good working order.

  For all of his lack of emotion or sentiments, he was not deliberately cruel or miserly. A religious person might have said that he had been deprived of a soul.

  They had lived in a small house with a shop front at the end of the High Street. Their accommodation was, like so many shops along the main road, on the first floor of the premises, above the shop. It consisted of a main room, a bedroom, a box room, which had been converted into Faith’s small room, and a little kitchen that was not much more than an alcove off the main room. Her father repaired clocks and timepieces but without any passion. It was a trade as good as any other, in his opinion. He had the advantage of being the only clockmaker in the area, which meant that he did a fair amount of business repairing and selling time pieces. His income permitted them to live well enough, and it equally paid Dame Hilton the hours that Faith spent in her local school.

  It was the only time in her life that Faith’s mother had had her way with her father. She had inveigled him (Faith would never know how) into letting her attend the school. She would be eternally grateful to her mother.

  She’d loved the school.

  It was a world of wonderful things and possibilities beyond Chipping Barnet. Dame Hilton and another teacher, Miss Blythe, encouraged the imaginations of all the children, who were only too eager to express themselves in writing when it was about the Pyramids or the Indians in North America. Arithmetic had needed them to calculate the distance they would travel to arrive in some foreign place or the time it would take. Sometimes they added foreign sums of money or changed English money into rou
bles or pesetas. It was more interesting than ordinary sums. Geography sent them around the world to exotic places they found hard to imagine; countries where the white face was thought strange. It taught them that the earth was round and on the opposite side from them was an island discovered by Captain Cook, a Yorkshire man. Dame Hilton had been more important to Faith than her poor mother….

  When Faith was fourteen, her mother died and her schooling with Dame Hilton was terminated. Her father had wanted her at home. Faith’s disappointment was moderate as her time had been counted anyway; there were no children over fifteen at the school. Dame Hilton had nevertheless gone to see Mr. Eversley, suggesting that Faith continue without fees in exchange for helping with the other pupils.

  “If she is to help anyone, it is to be her father,” he had replied in such a way that there was no breaching his decision. Paying fees or not had had no influence on his decision of withdrawing her. He’d needed someone to run the house; he had replaced his defunct housekeeper with his daughter.

  Dame Hilton had come prepared. When leaving, she left a letter of recommendation in Faith’s hands.

  “If it can be of any use to you,” she whispered to Faith, “please don’t hesitate in naming me. It is the least I can do for you now that you are out in the big world.”

  She left with a sad look on her face. There was no doubt that Faith would be wasted on her father.

  Faith wasn’t unhappy. If she were ignored by her father, at least he didn’t mistreat her, and she had basically everything she needed. She’d heard stories about widowers abusing their daughters in many ways. Some of the abusive fathers weren’t even widowers, as though that excused the widowers’ transgressions. She was glad that she had only to submit to his indifference. She realised, however, that if she hadn’t been there at her father’s service, it wouldn’t have made much difference to him, because he would simply have had to find someone else.

  The shop had a small garden at the back which she tended, and it gave her hours of pleasure through all the seasons. She realised she was fortunate, as most of the shops had only paved utility courtyards giving onto the alley at the back. Hers was a walled-in garden that retained the sun’s warmth and provided shelter from too much wind, so she would escape there to read when she wasn’t needed by her father. In the winter, she would feed crumbs to robins or sparrows that were unusually brave or, perhaps, especially hungry. This late spring, it had been the source of the healthy golden colouring to her face in spite of wearing a bonnet. She loved the feel of the sun on her face.

  Life included encounters with neighbours and local people when she went to market, so she wasn’t really isolated — except — she knew that something was lacking.

  Her first flirtation had been innocent enough. At fifteen, one of the cheeky barrow boys had smiled at her and flattered her and had finished by kissing her quickly on the mouth one evening after the market was finished. It had meant nothing to her, except that she’d had her first kiss. It did lift her spirits to know that someone had found her attractive.

  And then suddenly at eighteen, she’d noticed that men watched her as she walked by. Sometimes there were friendly calls of encouragement, or she engaged in banter that always finished with laughs that made her feel that she’d accomplished something. It developed her self confidence as she noticed that, by asserting her own personality, she also won respect. Many were the invitations that were given to her jokingly, but whose authors would have seized the chance to court her had she been willing to accept.

  Her first serious entanglement had, however, left her wary. The baker’s son, Neville, had been paying particular attention to her, keeping her talking a little longer than the other customers, always with a kind comment. On one occasion, he’d caught up with her in the street as she was returning from an errand for her father and had asked her to walk back more slowly with him. He was considered a ‘catch’ as his family had accumulated enough money to have bought their own house, and as the elder son, he would no doubt take over his father’s business at some time.

  He was half a head taller than Faith and two years older. The whole family looked like they came from good old Anglo-Saxon stock — blond hair, rosy cheeks and blue eyes, every one of them. Neville was considered to have a solid build, but it didn’t take long to realise that he would probably end up like his father and mother, who were plump, if one were being kind, or fat if one weren’t. It was probably an occupational hazard, because it wouldn’t have been the case if they’d been greengrocers. But then, they probably wouldn’t have owned their own house, either.

  After weeks of this flattering flirtation, he had asked to go to the beer garden for a drink with him, perhaps a cider or a light ale? She had gone with him one sunny afternoon, and while they had sat outside in the garden, he’d taken her hand and kissed it. Walking her home in the late afternoon, he’d managed to take her into a passageway between buildings and kiss her passionately on the mouth. She’d resisted by pushing his chest and speaking of the impropriety of it. She was grateful that he had backed away and hadn’t attempted more. It was only afterwards that she had realised the danger she had risked physically and to her reputation.

  She hadn’t enjoyed it as much as she had that first innocent kiss given by the barrow boy. It was strange, but she hadn’t liked Neville’s smell. He wasn’t dirty, but there was an underlying odour that repelled her. When next she saw Neville, it had been a relief, because he was with another girl who was hanging on his arm looking at him much more admiringly than she ever had. He’d noticed her, but pretended he hadn’t. Perhaps he hadn’t liked her smell either. Whew...that left her justifiably off the hook. In the future, she would have to be much more discerning.

  There had been other men who had taken more than a passing interest in her. At twenty, one of her father’s regular customers had noticed her. Mr. Postlethwaite had obviously made it known to her father that he found her attractive. As a result, her father had openly encouraged her to cultivate his interest.

  A man in his middle forties, he was a well-to-do widower with one grown son. Still trim without the belly that so many men acquired half way through their lives, he might be called appealing by some women. His face showed his age somewhat and his hair was more grey than brown, but he had been pleasant with a beautiful mellow voice. She’d seen him as middle-aged, though, and had wanted something more from life before she found herself settled into banality. She would almost have preferred to be tied to the barrow boy with no prospects.

  From then on, she’d made herself as discreet as possible, hoping that her father would forget her, which he did most of the time. The years had slipped by and Faith had had to content herself with a very unexciting life. There were moments when she wondered if she should have encouraged Mr. Postlethwaite. She found herself sunk into that banal life that she had been trying to avoid, but at least she wasn’t bound to anyone.

  o0o-

  One of her closest friends was Lydia Hall, now Mrs. Lydia Curzon, a tallish girl who was younger than Faith. Lydia had also lived in Chipping Barnet all her life. They had been neighbours as children as well as both attending Dame Hilton’s school, where they had discovered that they shared the same sense of humour. Besides being very attractive with quite ordinary features, Lydia had the sweetest most generous nature too. Some people are born unselfish and manage to keep themselves untainted by the greedy grasping people they meet. Lydia was one of them. Faith had felt the loss severely when Lydia had met a gentleman at one of her cousins’ wedding and had married him within the shortest time. Faith understood perfectly. Her husband had not wanted to risk losing her to someone else. They now had a haberdashery shop in the High Street that was well placed and consequently, thrived. Faith wondered if she and her sweet husband had been able to seize that mysterious ingredient that she felt was missing.

  And then, one day, her father had keeled over dead. It had never occurred to her that it might ever happen. The world as she knew
it had collapsed with him, leaving her with limited funds and homeless. Eviction into the street was now on her doorstep; but beyond, the world was waiting….