Title: Caroline
Fandom: Poldark
Characters: Caroline Penvenen, Ross Poldark, Verity Blamey, Dwight Enys
Rating: PG
Spoilers: The Black Moon
Summary: July 1795: Caroline is reunited with Dwight. A short, sweet story about the reunion of two lovers long divided by family, misunderstanding and war
Disclaimer: The Poldark novels were written by Winston Graham and are the property of his estate. These characters (and a portion of dialogue) have been borrowed for this story, from which no profit is made.
Author's Note: This sequence plays out in an altered format in the 1975 TV adaptation (and will presumably take place, in some form, in the new 2015 adaptation eventually), but the continuity used here is drawn direct from the novel. There, the culmination of this three-book sub-plot is told exclusively from Ross's perspective, rather than that of the individuals more intimately concerned. I wanted to explore Caroline's take on proceedings.

The hand was familiar. Caroline knew it the instant she saw the letter.

Ross Poldark.

So he was back. He was back from his foolhardy, brave, desperate mission into war-torn France and was writing with news either of his success or his failure.

The room quite suddenly seemed airless. Her hand shook, fingers tightening involuntarily around the paper.

She took a moment to compose herself before opening the letter.

My dearest Caroline, Dwight is safe…

The remainder of the letter vanished in a haze. Caroline sat down heavily on the nearest chair and almost missed it, clutching the letter to her chest. Her breath came hard and she fought to control it.

It had been a year – more than a year. More than a year since word came of an engagement in the English Channel in which a ship had been lost, a ship bearing one Surgeon-Lieutenant Dwight Enys, late of Cornwall and secretly engaged to Miss Caroline Penvenen of Killewarren. Fifteen months of agony – a full six months before even receiving assurance that he was alive and in the hands of the French, and that increasingly small comfort as further months dragged by. A name on a prisoner-of-war list and a single, treasured letter meant little when men were known to be dying like flies in the prison camps of France.

She blinked away tears and drew a deep breath, picked up the letter and read on:

My dearest Caroline, Dwight is safe. I must tell you that first, before all else. We have successfully breached the prison at Quimper and brought him away, and arrived at Falmouth yesterday eve.
That is the first news. The rest of what I must tell you is less salutary. Conditions at the prison were beyond appalling, and our journey to England not easy. Dwight is exceeding frail. I believe – nay, I can say with certainty that you will be shocked when you see him. I have brought him to the house of my cousin Verity Blamey, whom you know, and will rest here some days until he is fit to travel on.
My dear Caroline, you have waited long already. I must ask you to be patient a small while longer. If all is well I hope to bring him to you on Wednesday.
Your faithful friend, Ross Poldark

Caroline sat very still, the letter crumpling in her shaking hand, the room around her blurred. Alive, safe and in England. After all this time.

She knew herself well, well enough to know that patience had never been among her virtues. She had indeed waited long already: fifteen months since Dwight's ship was lost, nineteen months since they were parted, just days after becoming engaged a second time. Longer still since the acrimony of their first parting, when a carefully planned elopement had failed at the last because Dwight, learning of treachery, had rushed to save the life of Ross Poldark and a number of other men, and she, unknowing, hurt by his failure to arrive on schedule, had departed in anger and refused for too long to forgive.

So much wasted time.

It was on account of her that Dwight had gone into the Navy and thus ended in the hands of the French.

Exceeding frail, the letter said. Conditions at the prison were beyond appalling.

She glanced up at the window. Some twenty miles to Falmouth and the light already fading.

Tomorrow then, at first light. If Dwight was not yet fit to travel to her, then she would travel to him.

There was to be no more waiting.

xxx

You will be shocked when you see him, the letter said.

Caroline set off at dawn in pouring rain, a groom at her heel by way of escort.

She loved to ride, always had, and her horse was strong and fast, yet the journey passed tedious slow. She saw little of the countryside, seeing rather Dwight as he'd been that last day before he left: handsome face and lithe young body, self-conscious in his uniform, bright-eyed with love and regret.

Exceeding frail, you will be shocked when you see him.

Ross, she knew, seeking to spare her, had taken pains to withhold a degree of the information obtained in the course of his investigations, but Caroline had contacts of her own. Conditions at the prison were beyond appalling, he had written, and that much she already knew. The knowledge had long been unbearable.

Dwight is safe. It was all that mattered. He was safe and he was close by, they would be together soon.

She urged her horse on.

The Blameys kept a small house in Falmouth near the harbour. Caroline had been there just once, unasked and unannounced, upon first hearing a rumour that the Travail had been sunk in action – that journey more precipitous even than this, ending at the doorstep of a virtual stranger to beg for news. There was, she had learned, no pride in fear and despair.

She'd not forgot the way.

Groom at her heel, she clattered over the cobbles, came to a stop at the portico and dismounted, wet hair tumbling loose from under her hat to slick about her shoulders.

She knocked without hesitation. There was to be no more waiting, no matter what.

A maid came to the door. Caroline stepped into the house, shaking rain from her hair and clothes, and saw Ross on the stair, dearest Ross who had risked so much for her sake and for Dwight's.

"Well, Captain Poldark, so you are back, I see, as promised." She took his face and kissed him on the lips, and felt behind her the disapproval of the maid. "And you have brought me back my erring doctor? Safe? Intact? All of a piece? And willing to fulfil the promises made before he left?"

"Caroline…" Ross regarded her warily. "You were to have greeted him on Wednesday. We were coming over and would have been with you –"

"And did you think I would be willing to sit in Killewarren stitching a sampler while everyone was living a high life in Falmouth? You misread my temperament. Where is he? Upstairs?"

"I think in the parlour. But he has only just risen. You must have left early –"

"At dawn."

"But I must warn you. In my letter I gave you some hint that he is as yet very frail…"

Impatient, Caroline looked past him to his cousin now descending the stairs. "Verity, how good to see you again. And in happier circumstances than last time."

"Caroline, we did not expect you –" Verity Blamey began.

"So Ross says. But you should have. I have waited at home like a fading spinster too long already."

Verity, too, was hesitant. "Caroline…I have hardly warned him. He is only just from bed and I do not think he feels strong enough to –"

"Not strong enough to see me? Does one need to be strong to confront me? Am I a scaly dragon to be shrunk away from until properly announced?" She kissed Verity and smiled brightly, long hair dripping onto the stair carpet, unwilling to brook any obstacle here at the last. "So let us go up, shall we?"

In the parlour, Ross said. In that room fifteen months ago Verity had read confirmation of the Travail's fate from a week-old newssheet.

Caroline pushed past and up the stairs, idly wondering how Dwight might diagnose the palpitations of her heart.

You will be shocked when you see him.

It had been Christmas when she saw him last – not even Christmas gone, but the one before. They'd had but a single day together, spent at Nampara, Dwight resplendent in his stiff new uniform, which she'd mocked wholeheartedly, and he'd agreed was absurd, content for once to laugh at himself on her account.

She reached the parlour, pushed open the door and saw him, standing defensively at the mantelpiece, a small fire burning bright in the grate.

She was not certain she had entirely believed in his return until this very moment.

He turned and looked at her, skin and bone, his face skeletal in its emaciation, chalk-white and blotched with sores, borrowed clothes hanging off him with neither flesh nor muscle beneath.

Exceeding frail, you will be shocked, Ross had written.

Caroline stood a moment taking him in, her smile unwavering, eyes picking over every detail of his face, so very dear to her, so familiar – and yet so changed. She had expected this, was prepared. He was safe, he was alive, restored to her intact when all hope had seemed lost. What more could she ask?

But she had never possessed the skill of saying what she felt. The more a thing mattered, the more she made light, the words twisting in her throat to come out glib and flippant.

"Well, Dwight." She took off her hat, shook it once and dropped it on a chair. "So they have dragged you away and you have come to redeem your promises."

Verity and Ross were at the door behind her. Both had tried to keep her away a little longer, of a certain fearing, for his sake, her reaction to his condition. Did they think her so shallow? The look in his eye put her in mind of a skittish horse, abused and afraid, to be approached with care, but behind that, behind the sickness and starvation, it was Dwight.

Words would not do. She stepped forward and kissed him full on the sores on his lips.

He tried to turn his head away. "Caroline!"

"Good heavens, so I still have to make all the advancements!" she said, because making light was all she knew to do; a show of emotion, she had been taught, was not ladylike, and that lesson held fast, even now. "D'you know, my dear, I am never allowed to retain any maidenly modesty, for I have to run after you, to seek you out, and even to kiss you without receiving any embrace in return!"

His eyes were shadowed, sunk deep in his emaciated face, his hair speckled grey at the temples. He stood clinging to the mantel, staring at her as if unable to believe she was here. "Caroline," he said again.

"All this time, while you have been hiding in that prison camp I have been wondering if I would ever be able to bring you to the point of fulfilling your promise. Time and again I have thought, no, he will never do it, I am doomed to be an old maid." Having begun to talk she found that she could not stop, and hardly knew what she said. "Now, when at the last you are in England, I have to ride all morning through the pouring rain to catch you before you slip away again. Look at my habit, it will take a drying and ironing and perhaps will shrink from very saturation. And my hair!"

She twisted said hair in her hands, but it was not raindrops alone that fell to the floor. She blinked hard, breath catching in her throat.

"Caroline, my love, my own…" Dwight's voice was thin and hoarse, crackling over the words.

"Ah, hear that, Ross. So he has committed himself at last! I believe we shall have a wedding after all. If we do, it will be the biggest ever in Cornwall. We shall have to hire an Admiralty band and army buglers and the choirs of three churches, all to celebrate that Dr Enys has been caught at last!" Her voice sounded brittle to her own ear. She brushed at her cheek. "You see, I am weeping with relief. I am to be saved from the horrors of a spinster's life. But Dr Enys, you notice, is also weeping, and that, I know, is for his lost freedom."

"Caroline, please," Ross said, wiping a hand across his own eyes.

"But I shall not desert you, Dwight," Caroline said, patting his arm, flippancy and sincerity coming together at last. "I shall stay near by this house until you are fit to travel, and shall take special care to ensure that you do not slip away to sea. And when you are fit to travel, I shall sit beside you in a coach and link your arm so that you are not able to jump out. When shall we be married? Can you name the day to set my heart at rest?"

Dwight said, indistinctly, "I am not fit – like this. You see…I am a little altered, my love…"

"Yes, I observe, and so we must alter you back, mustn't we? We must feed you on mutton broth and calves' liver and raw eggs and canary wine. Then you will have the courage to take me for your lawful wife, just as we arranged in the good old days."

Dwight said again, "Caroline," but this time as if his very heart were breaking. "If you will still take me – but I shall need time…"

The door clicked shut; Ross and Verity had withdrawn.

Caroline paid them no mind, kept talking, her voice growing feeble and yet the words tumbling out still; if she stopped, she was done for. "I think it should be an October wedding, don't you? Having seen old Agatha Poldark's centenary out of the way, we must give the county time to recover before its next giddy round! Until then you must come home with me, even to the scandal of the neighbourhood. We will feed you up right away with the best things that we can find. You shall be cosseted and fed and allowed rest and given the best of everything. And if you are not feeling better in a week or two we will send for the doctor…"

Now a lurching pang, for there was no other doctor in the district – none that she would trust him to. Dr Choake at Sawle, Dr Behenna at Truro…no. There was none that would do.

"Your uncle," he said, speaking as one in a daze. This had been the prime obstacle to their proposed marriage at every turn. She shook her head.

"You do not escape that easy, my dear. My uncle is gone, and took with him every impediment. Killewarren is now mine – and soon yours, little though you may care for the burden of such a great estate."

Dwight wavered, unsteady on his feet, and reached behind him for a chair. Caroline took his arm to help him sit and felt only bone beneath the sleeve.

"October," she repeated in a voice as unsteady as he. "We must make sure to have you well in good time."

She found another chair, pulled it close and took his hand – an old man's hand, the skin paper-thin and discoloured.

"You are very quiet, my love."

He licked at the sores on his lips. "It is," he slowly said, "A little difficult to credit that this is real. The days have been so unvaried, relentless…there was no hope…"

His eyes were haunted. She closed her fingers around his, gently, for the bones felt so very fragile. "I am real, you are real, we both are here, and I shall not allow you from my sight again."

Staring at her still like a man caught in a dream, he raised her hand and pressed it to his lips.

Caroline leaned forward, free hand rising to enfold the back of his neck. She kissed his forehead, his cheek, his lips, and let her head gently rest against his. "My love," she whispered. "My dearest, only love, how I have wanted you."

xxx

It was quite some time before a tap at the door signalled an intrusion.

Caroline paid it no heed. Dwight had fallen asleep, curling toward her in his chair as she perched on its arm stroking his hair, an action that felt somehow more intimate than any embrace they'd ever shared. Fifteen months ago claws of despair had sunk deep into her heart upon learning the fate of the Travail; now at last, sitting here with Dwight and talking to him, holding him, touching him, watching him sleep, for the first time in fifteen months the shadow was lifted and she felt free.

She heard the door open and knew without looking that it was Ross.

"How ragged his hair is," she said without looking up. "I do not know much about prison, but I should not have supposed the trimming of hair to be a luxury commonly available among inmates."

"We did it on the boat," said Ross, moving across the room toward them. "With a knife and not much care for the neatness of the cut; Dwight was weak and the rank growth of hair and beard seemed to offend him, so we removed them."

The harsh, sunken planes of Dwight's emaciated face were softened in repose. Caroline brushed her fingertips through the uneven ends of his hair. "He will, I think, be ill for some time," she said in a carefully light tone.

"It seems likely."

"Fortunate, then, that he has engaged himself to a woman of sufficient means to coddle and cosset him until he is well…Ross." Now at last she met his eyes. "You have brought him back to me, against all hope, all reason. I am more thankful than I can say."

"The first obligation was mine, doubly owed," said Ross, uncomfortable always in the receipt of gratitude for any service, great or small. "A long recovery now lies ahead."

"Yes." The prospect pained her for Dwight's sake, but did not alarm her. "And we will spend that recovery together, the rest of our lives also, when but for you Dwight should have died in that prison, no doubt quite soon." This, now, was the thought that alarmed: the nearness of the escape, brought home by the fragility of his condition. She turned her face from Ross so that he should not see her expression, began to stroke Dwight's hair once more. "He'd have died in pain and hunger and squalor, far from his home and those who care for him – leaving me to wait and wonder, a hopeless old maid facing a dull and lonely future."

"Caroline..."

"Oh, there'd be other suitors, to be sure, for a woman of wealth and property I dare suppose it inevitable, but there could never be another Dwight, and I'm very much afraid that no other would do."

Of that she was quite certain. She'd had her share of suitors before now, respectable men approved by her uncles, but Dwight with his shabby coat and firmly-held principles, this penniless country doctor who had nothing to offer but himself, proud and passionate, skilled in his work, stubborn and sensitive and gentle and kind, Dwight was the only one to look past her fortune and body and the hardness of her manner and see her.

No other would do.

"So now he is returned," she said. "Safe if not well, and for that there can never be thanks enough for our dear Captain Poldark."

xxx

I shall not allow you from my sight again, Caroline had said, but she had, of course, to allow him from her sight again. There were arrangements to be made: accommodation to be sought, since Mrs Blamey had no more room, and a carriage to be hired, for Wednesday, as Ross had first planned. Dwight tired rapidly and slept a great deal, and had also a patient to attend, as one of the group that freed him had been wounded during the escape. This was Drake Carne, Demelza Poldark's youngest brother. They had feared for his life during the crossing from France, Ross said, but his recovery was now certain.

The same could not be said of Dwight, who ate little despite his starvation and moved about the house like a ghost. His mood varied from restless to listless, and he avoided talk of his long ordeal.

"It will take time," Ross said, more than once. "It will take time. You must give him time."

So Caroline talked of other things. She talked of her uncle's long illness and slow death, of the close friendship she had formed with Mistress Poldark, whom she had barely known before Dwight went away, and of how sorely his patients had missed him, so much so that even she could not fail to be aware of it. She talked of relief efforts for the poor last winter, of the difficulty her want of official status had presented in gaining news from Quimper, and of the house parties she had held for French refugees, in hopes of attaining information or support of any kind. She talked at length of her plans for their wedding, a grander affair with each hour that passed, and coaxed from him small smiles and faltering kisses.

xxx

By Wednesday Dwight was running a fever. The ordered carriage was put off and Caroline paced about the house, muttering beneath her breath every curse Uncle Ray had never known her to have heard him utter.

"It would be too cruel," she told Verity, voice low, her customary glibness failing her. "He has no strength to fight an illness. It would be too cruel if he went now."

Wednesday also brought dire news from France: the émigrés' counter-revolutionary invasion, with which Ross and his group had travelled on their mission to Quimper, had ended in disaster and carnage.

Both Caroline and Ross had been involved in the planning of this expedition, drawn in by their efforts on Dwight's behalf. Ross took the news hard, and Caroline should, she was certain, have felt it more. Perhaps she still would, but at present she had neither thought nor feeling to spare for anyone but Dwight.

Nature had not intended her for a nurse, yet mocking fate seemed to relish casting her in that role. Long hours at her uncle's bedside through the weary months of his prolonged death had taught her much, and here at least there was Verity, bustling about and managing all while she sat quiet at Dwight's side and held his hand and listened to his mutterings. He spoke more in his fever than she had ever known him lucid, rambling variously through a ferocious sea battle, the sinking of his ship, and the horrors of the prison camp. The fate of the miner's wife he'd once loved weighed somewhat upon his mind still, it seemed, as did that of a miner killed on the mission to retrieve him from France, and those of his fellow prisoners left behind to suffer and die without the attentions of their physician.

Caroline herself was mentioned once or twice, with longing and love and regret.

The fever was frighteningly sharp but mercifully brief, and within hours was already abating. Dwight took the heartiest supper he had managed yet, and the coach was re-ordered for the morrow.

"It is high time," Caroline told him, "That we went home," and then set about making plans for the removal of his stored possessions from the Gatehouse at Mingoose to Killewarren.

"The county will talk," he said in a voice that was the merest puff of air, his scant strength exhausted by the violence of the fever, but he was smiling as he said it, a faint tilting of the lips that seemed the most he could manage, for the time.

"We are engaged, but cannot marry until you are well; you will not get well unless you are cared for, and where should you be better tended than at Killewarren by me? No, I will not have it otherwise." Caroline had no intention of being parted from him again. "The county always talks. It would do them good to have somewhat of substance to say. Captain Poldark's heroics might perhaps be a worthier topic."

Something flickered in his eye. She waited for it.

"I did not believe it could be him…standing in that place." The words came with some effort. "Impossible…"

"Captain Poldark," Caroline said, "Does not believe in impossible."

"To take such a risk…"

"Was foolish, perhaps, but he felt it worth the while, and I could not argue for I wished you back more even than he. He took with him volunteers – my dear, you are held in far higher regard than you know."

The sickly pallor of Dwight's cheeks was brightened by a flush of pink. He ducked his head, dabbing at the scorbutic sores on his lips.

"I must thank…"

"You have thanked. And I have thanked. He runs away like a scaredy-spider each time. I believe that man would better prefer to walk ten times into the prison at Quimper than stand to hear a single word of praise. It is a terrible flaw, but one for which I fear we must forgive him."

Another faint smile, and with it a small huff that might almost have been a chuckle.

Caroline sat back in her chair and began to dream of the future she'd feared for so long would never be.

xxx

Twenty miles was quite an undertaking for an invalid.

It was of necessity to be a more leisurely trip than Caroline's precipitous ride in the opposite direction. Dwight slept late in the wake of his fever, and they broke their fast together before he looked in one last time on his patient, Drake Carne, who sat in bed with his shoulder heavily bound and was to remain in Mrs Blamey's care another some days, yet contrived to look rather more substantial than the doctor attending him.

Thence to the hired carriage waiting at the door, the short journey downstairs posing the first hurdle; it was taken slow and with aid, and was followed by goodbyes and thanks to Verity Blamey for her generous hospitality and loving care.

Ross, his mission complete, was to travel home to the north coast with them and rode alongside the carriage, eager now to return to his wife and children and the neglected business of his mine. His manager, he said, had been unwell since the winter and burdened too long in his absence with extra duties.

Caroline glanced at Dwight and saw a dawning light of professional interest in his eye.

"Dwight," she said, "It will not do. You are days only from prison and not yet arrived home, can scarce attempt a flight of stairs without aid, not an ounce of flesh on your bones, and already you are thinking of your sick people!"

He looked sheepish but did not deny it. "It will," he said, between slow, careful breaths, "Be some little time before I may think to resume my rounds."

"It will be some long time," said Caroline. "Your sick people have done without you till now; they must do without you still yet."

He smiled, and nodded, and took her hand. "It will be some while yet. Still the need is not merely theirs, my love, but mine also."

"There can be no possible need for anyone to move among dirt and disease," she objected. His devotion to the unwashed mass of people who could not afford to pay for his attention was a thing she admired but had never understood, and in his present condition the prospect was alarming.

The carriage jolted heavily, robbing him for the moment of breath. "The occupation," he managed at length. "Not yet but in time…occupation, I believe, restores the mind…which in turn restores the body. I have seen it…"

"Rest and good food restore the body," said Caroline determinedly. "I keep an excellent cook and very comfortable rooms. I cannot hope to compete with the attractions of France, but you will not, I believe, be disappointed in your new home."

He smiled again. "Is this your prescription, Miss Penvenen?"

"It is."

The carriage jolted again and he coughed painfully. "Well," he said when he had regained his voice. "You are, of course, correct, in the first instance. Your directive shall be obeyed."

Now Caroline smiled and was content. "You are mocking me, my love. I believe I have been a bad influence on you!"

xxx

Dwight slept half the journey and winced through the rest, increasingly breathless as the carriage rattled and jolted and jerked over roads that had seen no improvement since Caroline's uncle first brought her to Cornwall as an orphan of ten. She passed the journey developing her plans for the wedding, to be set in stone before Dwight grew strong enough to protest the size and scale.

He tried anyway, but in this weakened state was easy to overrule. "It is no good being ashamed of me," Caroline said. "It's embarrassing that I have so much money, but you knew that all along, and a big wedding is one of the consequences. The county, you may know, has quite despaired of my prospects, so I must be permitted to celebrate the capture, at last, of my man. I'm afraid there is no escape for you now."

Dwight smiled and did not argue.

At the gates of Killewarren, Ross left them, refusing to come in for refreshment and rest.

"You have been apart long," he said. "I will not intrude now. You have the rest of your lives to begin."

"Thanks to you," Caroline said, and this time he could neither escape nor avoid the sentiment.

"Ross…" Dwight began, but Ross shook his head.

"Say nothing," he said. "I wish only your future happiness – and health! Demelza has long delayed Jeremy's inoculation in hopes of your safe return, for she would not have Dr Choake, so that at the last I'd no option but to come seek you out. But all in good time."

He waved and was gone.

Caroline watched him go and was thoughtful a moment, now that they were so near.

"Dwight," she said. "I move fast and carry all before me and presume much and demand always my own way. I have brought you here in some haste without asking once to be sure: is this truly what you wish, still, after all?"

Dwight had always had rather a grave turn of countenance, more so now, in this haggard state, than ever. He regarded her seriously. "A penniless physician without even good health to his name…" He made a self-deprecating gesture that encompassed his skeletal features and emaciated frame. "I should well ask if this is truly what you wish, still, after all."

Caroline had spent now considerably more than enough of her life without him to be certain of her answer. "Yes," she said.

"Yes," he said.

She smiled. "Then let us go home."

end

© J.B. August 2015