“Thomas hated the sun!” She let out a fresh wail and Rose gave Caleb an exasperated look. He shrugged helplessly.
Rose tried again. “At the very least, give your poor eyes a rest. You don’t want to give the other ladies from the Benevolent Society the satisfaction of seeing you with puffy red eyes, do you?”
His mother snuffled back her tears and gave a jerky nod. “Yes, perhaps...perhaps you’re right. Mrs. Craggs has been insufferable ever since she came back from that spa treatment in the Swiss Alps.”
The crisis handled, Caleb settled back against the squabs and sent up a silent prayer of thanks for having such a clever woman for a fiancée. Not just for these little moments of feminine comfort she provided, but for all the practical knowledge she brought to their union, as well. His father had been dead only these three days, but already the transfer of his shipping business to Caleb had manifested in meetings with anxious investors, lawyers thrusting papers in his face that needed signing, and a hundred other irksome details. Having Rose there with her sharp eyes and easy grace had made all the difference. She was gently bred and knew just how to handle these matters. If she did not set his heart aflame with passion, well, that was hardly her fault, not when they’d both agreed that this would be a marriage of alliance and nothing more.
Ahead of them, the hearse was struggling to make its way up the steep hill, and Caleb wondered how often coffins simply fell out the back and went coasting down the hill like toboggans. But the groaning vehicle crested the hill without incident, and then they were following it through the iron cemetery gates.
The cemetery stopped just short of being derelict, and it certainly was not one of the fashionable garden cemeteries that sprawled around the outskirts of the city. The only reason that his father would be buried in this dreary location was that it contained the family crypt, the final resting place for Bishops going back all the way to the Mayflower. Their bloodline was a point of pride for his father, one upon which he had expounded enthusiastically and frequently.
The burial service was mercifully brief. It seemed that Caleb’s father had not been a man to inspire fiery eulogies or long-winded remembrances. The reverend said a few words, Caleb threw a symbolic clump of warm spring dirt onto the coffin with a satisfying thud, and his mother made a pretty show of restrained sniffles. Then the black-clad pallbearers lifted the coffin and deposited it in the family crypt. All in all, it was a rather tidy affair.
Afterward, Father’s acquaintances came up, offering their condolences and promising Caleb that they were eager to continue doing business with the family. It seemed terribly gauche to conduct business at a funeral, but no doubt his father would have been appalled if the gears of industry were to grind to a halt on account of a minor detail like death. There probably wasn’t a single person among the mourners who would have considered Mr. Bishop a friend. Despite his resentment of his father, Caleb felt a pang of pity for the old man. What a miserable legacy to leave behind.
Caleb stared into the gaping entrance to the crypt that now housed his father’s mortal remains. There was a ridiculous bell contraption rigged up that his father had insisted upon. Supposedly, in the case of being buried alive, it would give him a lifeline to signal for help. Caleb doubted that if the bumpy ride up the hill hadn’t roused his father from his deathly slumber, that he was going to wake up at any point in the future.
He jumped at a light touch on his arm and spun around, half expecting his old man’s ghost to be standing there, wagging his finger in disapproval.
But it was only his lovely fiancée, her dark blue eyes filled with concern. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” Rose said, “but I think your mother is ready to go home.”
He glanced over to where his mother was dabbing at her cheeks and his heart clenched at how lost the old dear looked. The tall form of his father’s business partner, Richard Whitby, stood beside her. “Will you be a love and ask Whitby to take you both home? I’d like a little more time here.”
Rose gave him a questioning look—she knew well that there was no love lost between him and his father—but angel that she was, she only nodded. “Of course. I’ll see you Wednesday for luncheon with my parents?”
“Just try and stop me.” He gave her a chaste kiss on the cheek.
He watched as Whitby offered his arm to Rose, Caleb’s mother trailing behind them. When the somber clip of the funeral horses had faded, Caleb was left alone with his thoughts and the soft chorus of birds. It wasn’t that he really needed any more time to pay his respects or see the old man off, he just wanted a few moments of peace and quiet after a week of chaos. Good God, what was he going to do? His father had tried to drill the fundamentals of the shipping business into him, from how to balance the ledger to inspecting cargo, but Caleb had preferred to spend his days playing cards at the Beacon Club, and his evenings at the theater. Everything about shipping was dull and dry, and that was not to mention that a good portion of its success hinged on the trade of human souls in the Caribbean. Why could his father not have just left the business in the capable hands of Whitby? Caleb certainly didn’t want it.
Before his old man’s heart had stopped beating, Caleb had been secretly studying books on architecture at the Athenaeum, and putting together a portfolio of sketches in the hopes of securing an apprenticeship at an architectural firm. He had always been fascinated by the grand buildings around Boston, and had dreamed of one day leaving his own mark on the city. To tell a story in stone, to immortalize his vision for a more beautiful world, was the most noble pursuit he could imagine. But now he had a mother and a fiancée who relied on him to keep a roof over their heads and his plans of designing beautiful buildings would have to be relegated to the fancies of youth.
Sighing, Caleb stared into the gaping tomb that had swallowed up the last of his dreams, and felt only despair.
* * *
Tabby watched the funeral procession trudge up the hill from her window, a sluggish black stream of mourners. Burials were rare in the old cemetery nowadays, and anything other than a simple affair with a handful of mourners even rarer.
The spectacle of the glass hearse and the team of gleaming black horses drawing it was too captivating to watch from afar. She let the ratty lace curtain fall from her fingers, then threw on a light shawl and her straw bonnet and went outside to take a closer look.
The scent of hothouse funeral roses mingled with damp earth, and cheery sparrows, heedless of the somber occasion, dipped and chased each other among the stones. With the mild spring air on her neck, Tabby let her fingers trail along the worn tops of the headstones as she made her way toward the funeral party.
The minister had just finished his prayer and the crowd was beginning to disperse when Tabby caught sight of a young man standing by the crypt with his back toward her. His hair had lightened from chestnut brown to a warm honey blond, and he was taller now—though still on the slight, lean side—but she would have recognized him anywhere.