He pushed her hair off her face, did some more work with his makeshift rag. “All my Christmases have come at once,” he said. “I know there have been a lot of tears, but why are ye so wet?”
“I lost the bucket of water, I think. Kiss me, Richard! Oh, kiss me with love and let me kiss you with love.”
Love reciprocated, they both discovered, turned lips into the thinnest possible of skins between body and spirit. From now on, thought Richard, there need be no secrets. I can tell her anything. Kitty simply knew the bliss of music in her heart and wings on her soul. Love had been there all along.
Stephen came out to see them on Kate’s first birthday, the 15th of February, 1793, bearing an amazing gift.
But it was not the gift which caused Richard, Kitty and the child to stare: Lieutenant Donovan was clad in the full glory of his Royal Navy rank—black shoes, white stockings, white breeches and waistcoat, ruffled shirt, cutaway Navy coat, a few touches of gold braid, sword by his side, wig on his head, hat tucked beneath his arm. Not merely strikingly handsome—also strikingly impressive.
“You are going!” said Kitty, eyes filling with tears.
“What a figure ye cut!” said Richard, concealing his grief with a laugh.
“The uniform came from Port Jackson—not a bad fit,” said Stephen, preening, “though the coat needs work about the shoulders. Mine are too broad.”
“Broad enough for command. Congratulations.” Richard held out his hand. “I knew there was some significance in the name of this wretched ship just arrived.”
“Aye. Kitty. I wore the uniform in honor of young Kate, I do not go immediately. Kitty will not sail for at least a week, so we still have a little time.” He pulled the wig off to reveal that he had imitated Richard and cropped his hair. “Christ, these things are hot! Meant for the English Channel, not Norfolk Island in humid Februaries.”
“Stephen, your beautiful hair!” Kitty cried, looking closer to weeping. “Oh, I loved it! I keep trying to persuade Richard to grow his, but he says it is a nuisance.”
“He is absolutely right. Since I cut mine I feel as free as a bird—except when I have to put the wig on.” He went to Kate, sitting in a high chair Richard had made, and put his parcel on its tray. “Happy birthday, dearest little godchild.”
“Ta,” she said, smiling and reaching out to touch his face. “Stevie.” She looked beyond him to Richard and beamed. “Dadda!”
Stephen kissed her and removed the parcel, which did not upset her in the least; while her father was in the same room she saw little beyond him.
“Put it away for her,” Stephen said, giving the parcel to Kitty. “’Twill be some years before she can appreciate it.”
Curious, Kitty undid the wrappings and stared in awe. “Oh, Stephen! It is beautiful!”
“I bought it from Kitty’s captain. Her name is Stephanie.”
She was a doll with a delicately painted porcelain face, eyes which had properly striped irises, minutely drawn lashes, a mop of yellow hair made from strands of silk, and she was dressed like a lady of thirty years ago in a panniered pink silk gown.
“Ye return to Port Jackson in Kitty, I gather?” Richard asked.
“Aye, and then on her to Portsmouth in June.”
They ate roast pork and then a birthday cake Kitty had managed to make feather-light on a rising ingredient no more substantial than white-of-egg beaten in a copper bowl with a whisk Richard had made her out of copper wire. He was so good with his hands, could make her anything she asked for.
The sporadic visits of ships had provided tea, real sugar, various small luxuries including Kitty’s pride and joy, a frail porcelain teaset. The unglazed windows fluttered green Bengalese cotton curtains, but pictures and forks still eluded her. Never mind, never mind. William Henry was perhaps three months from his birth; she knew he was William Henry. Mary would have to wait until the next time—not as long a wait as Richard would choose, but never mind, never mind. Children were all she had to give him. There could never be too many; Norfolk Island had its dangers too. Last year poor Nat Lucas, chopping down a pine, watched in horror as it fell with a monstrous roar upon Olivia, baby William in her arms and her twin girls clinging to her skirts. Olivia and William had escaped almost unharmed, but Mary and Sarah died instantly. Yes, of children there must be many. One mourned their passing dreadfully, yet thanked God for those still living.
Her life was filled with happiness, for no better reason than that she loved and was loved, that her daughter was bursting with good health and the son growing inside her drove her mad with his incessant kicking. Oh, she would miss Stephen! Though not, she knew, one-tenth as much as Richard would. Still, these things happened. Nothing remained the same, everything kept marching to somewhere else that was a mystery until it arrived on the doorstep. Stephen was sailing in her all the way to England, and that meant much. Kitty would keep him safe, Kitty would skim the waves like a petrel.
“May we have Tobias?” she asked.
The mobile brows flew up, the vivid blue eyes twinkled. “Part from Tobias? Not likely, Kitty. Tobias is a Navy cat, he sails with me wherever I go. I have trained him to think of me as his place.”
“Will you visit Major Ross?”
“Definitely.”
Richard waited to ask his burning question until he strolled up the cleft with Stephen toward the Queensborough road. “Will ye do me a favor, Stephen?”
“Anything, ye know that. Would ye like me to see your father, Cousin James-the-druggist?”
“If ye’ve time, not otherwise. I want ye to carry a letter from me to Jem Thistlethwaite in Wimpole Street, London, and give it to him in person. I will never see him again, but I would like someone who knows this Richard Morgan to vouch for him.”
“It shall be done.” At the white boundary stone Stephen took the wig and clapped it on with a rueful look at the grinning Richard. “Ye have a week to write your letter. Kitty is in the roads until I say otherwise.”
With the advent of the Reverend Mr. Bain as resident chaplain in Norfolk Island, the pressure to attend Sunday service had eased a little. Commander King insisted that every felon be present, so if all the free came as well, the crush was dreadful. Felons were deemed to need God’s attention more than did the free.
Knowing therefore that his face would not be missed if he missed service on the morrow, Richard warned Kitty that he would be up late on Saturday night writing a letter to Mr. Thistlethwaite, and would sleep on when morning came. Delighted that he would gain a few extra hours of rest (writing a letter was not like sawing a log, after all), Kitty took herself off to bed.
Richard lifted the oil lamp off its shelf with great care; it had been bought at the same stall as the teaset, and cost more because it was accompanied by a fifty-gallon keg of whale oil. His use of it was sparing—sheer weariness did not permit nightly reading—but possessing it had meant that he could pore over the treasure trove of books Jem Thistlethwaite had sent in the only leisure activity did not make him feel a traitor to his family. Kitty, he understood now, would never learn to read and write because neither was important to her. The sole fount of knowledge in their house was he, therefore he had to read.
Paper bathed in a golden glow from the two-wicked lamp, he dipped one of his steel pens into the inkwell and began to write with scant hesitation; what he wanted to say had already been rehearsed in his mind over and over again.
“Jem, this letter is borne by the best man I have ever known, and the only consolation I have in losing him is that you will come to know and love him. Somehow we have trodden the same path through all the years since Alexander sat in the Thames, from ship to ship and place to place. He a free man, I a convict. Always friends. Did I not have Kitty and my children, losing him would be a mortal blow.
