Heirs of Acadia - 02 - The Innocent Libertine (17 page)

They set off. The carriage gave a glorious ride. Back and forth it swayed, gentle as a cradle. She knew this road so very well. It was a journey she had feared she would never make again.

Another milestone swept by. This one marked their final turning. How she could see this while lying down mattered not a whit. A trio of horse patrol, known as Redbreasts for their bright hunting jackets, fell in to either side of her carriage. They served as the only protection against highwaymen in the outlying districts and were drawn from retired cavalry regiments. They tipped their hard felt-covered hats to her as she lay there in the gently swaying carriage, then sped on to take their proper stations just ahead.

She had the most remarkable ability to lie down and yet see all she wished. They swept past fields heavily laden with crops of wheat and rye and barley. None of the recent unpleasant summers of rain and cold and want pervaded this perfect scene. Hedgerows grew to either side, dusted white by the passage of her fine carriage. The coachman blew his curved horn, signaling a village up ahead, warning all who occupied the lane to give way. The carriage swept grandly through a hamlet of stone houses and laughing children.

Soon after the hamlet, the wall began. Lillian cried with joy at the sight. The wall was shoulder high and ran for just under two miles, marking the front of her estate. The one now occupied by that vile banker. The one she had promised herself she would never return to unless it was hers free and clear. Yet here she came, which could mean only one thing. Lillian snuggled deeper into her coverlets and reveled in the sight of that lovely stone wall.

The carriage slowed and the horn blew again, this time warning the occupants of the house that the mistress was returning.

They turned through tall stone gates, carved as a miniature triumphal arch. The gates were open, of course. The horn blew again, and Lillian wanted to rise. She should be properly seated for her return. But she could not. And somehow it was all right. Sunlight flickered in and out of the tall poplars bordering the entranceway. The light played with her eyes. If she could but lift her hand and shield her gaze from the flickering light, then she might catch a glimpse of the manor. The horn blew once more, and the light grew stronger still.

Then she sneezed.

Lillian opened her eyes and stared in dismay about the cramped cabin. “Oh no, tell me it is not so.”

“Good morning. How do you feel?”

“Oh, let me sleep. Please let me sleep.”

Instantly Abigail was by her side. “Here, won’t you take a bit of cold tea? You know it settles your stomach.”

“No thank you.” It had been a dream. Lillian felt like weeping. Just a dream.

“Are you ill? What a pity. You’re usually at your best in the morning.”

“No, it’s not that.” Lillian knew it was not a horn at all she had heard in her dream, but rather the boatswain calling to the watch high in the riggings.

She recognized the swaying now as well. How could she not, after two weeks and two days at sea. The boat pitched and yawed in steady yet jerking motions. She had come to consider the movement as among her worst enemies.

“Here, let me help you up.”

Lillian raised her arm to the customary position for Abigail to take hold. She had been continually ill, almost from the moment the ship had left the Thames estuary. She had never thought an illness could be this severe and not mortally fell its victim.

“The captain says we continue to make astonishing time.” Abigail had been her constant nurse, day and night trying to ease her distress. Always cheerful, always patient, she had been a true angel. “He assures us we will be close to breaking the record for a late summer crossing.”

The days had been endless hours of nausea and agony. Although her anguish was less severe in the morning, these early hours remained distressing because ahead of her stretched another dismal day. Abigail would force her to eat a morsel of something before the nausea grew worse. Then she would do her utmost to ease Lillian’s descent with cheerful talk and reading from Byron’s last letter.

Two days prior to their departure, Lillian had traveled up to Eton to visit with her son one final time. Byron had surprised her with a gift. One of his schoolteachers had explained to the boy the journey his mother was taking and how it might be several months before letters could be exchanged. Only then had Byron truly understood the distance and the time that would soon separate them. He remained fiercely adamant that he wished to stay at school. But he had conjured up a parting gift that continued to touch Lillian deeply.

At that final meeting, Byron had presented Lillian with a vellum packet containing the longest letter her son had ever written. It was a journal, really, a glimpse into the life of a boy at the cusp of manhood. He had walked her through several of his days, describing his mates and his teachers and his sports and his life. But it had been more than mere descriptions. Byron had sought to examine his own changing heart. He had stumbled often and slipped into formality and even chastised himself for writing as he did. But that he had tried at all had reduced Lillian to tears. And his boyish open-hearted charm had proved a wonderful balm to her body and spirit on the long sea journey.

But today was to prove quite different. For Lillian abruptly realized that something had changed, and at a fundamental level. The sensation was so alien, Lillian was halfway across the cabin before she realized she felt no nausea. “Let me go, would you?”

“I’m not certain that’s a good idea. The ship is pitching something dreadful this morning.”

“Please. I’d like to stand unaided.”

“But you were so ill when you first awoke. I’d hate to see you fall again.”

“It was a dream.”

“Truly?”

“I cried out over a dream I was having. I thought it was real, but it was only a dream.”

Abigail released her arm but remained hovering nearby.

Lillian was almost flung flat by the ship striking a great wave. She caught herself on the bunk’s railing.

“Shouldn’t you sit down?”

Lillian said in disbelief, “I’m all right.”

Abigail could not believe it either. “Are you certain?”

Lillian looked at the younger woman and said in wonder, “I’m hungry.”

Abigail gasped, “Really?”

“I can scarce believe it, but I feel absolutely famished.”

Abigail cried, “You wait right there!”

Abigail hurried from the room. Lillian remained as she was, protecting herself against the ship’s violent rocking motion with one hand on the bunk. Yet the motion was no longer an enemy. She was so weak her head spun. But there was none of the horrid nausea and cramps that had devastated her every waking moment and turned the past sixteen days into endless torment.

The cabin had a small window in the wall opposite the narrow door. Gingerly she made her way across the cabin, wrenched the lever, and opened the window wide. She took draughts of the air and stared out at the heaving blue waves. The ocean was no longer her foe. She laughed out loud at the morning’s liberty.

Steps hastened down the hall and the door was flung back. “Are you ill yet?” Abigail asked anxiously. “Do you still feel—”

“I have never been better.”

Abigail’s eyes sparkled with a joy so great the ailment might have been her own. “All I could find was this morning’s gruel. But I persuaded the cook to part with a bit of honey.”

Her stomach seemed to reach across the cabin with her hands. “Please give it to me. I feel the hunger in my bones.”

This statement caused both women to laugh out loud, for the few scraps Lillian had eaten during the journey had been forced upon her, and most came back soon after.

She sat on her bed and devoured every bite.

Lillian set the bowl aside and declared, “That was the most splendid meal I have ever enjoyed. A six-course meal at the Berkeley Hotel could not be any finer.”

The two ladies shared yet another laugh. Lillian gathered enough breath to say, “I have been such a dreadful burden.”

“You have been no such thing.”

“I most certainly—” Her words were halted by a knock upon the door.

Abigail stepped to the door and cracked it slightly open. “Lieutenant, I had not expected you to deliver the water yourself.”

“Captain’s compliments, Miss Abigail. He is heartily glad to hear the countess is better.” The young officer’s voice sounded both formal and mildly flirtatious to Lillian’s ear. “I am to say this is the officers’ entire Sunday allotment of shaving water.”

“Lady Houghton will no doubt be most grateful. Thank you for your kindness, sir.”

“It is nothing, Miss Abigail. Will we be seeing you on deck?”

“Anon, sir.”

Lillian waited for the door to shut and the footsteps to retreat to comment, “Miss Abigail, is it?”

Abigail set the steaming wooden pail down by her bunk. “He is quite handsome. And he has gone to great pains to explain his prospects.”

Suddenly the two were giggling like schoolchildren.

Lillian gathered herself and reached for Abigail’s hand. “Thank you, dear sweet girl. Thank you. You have saved my life. I must apologize for all the trouble I have caused you.”

Abigail’s gaze was as direct as the light coming in through the open portal. “Do you recall how you refused to accept my own apologies and gratitude?”

“Vividly. And with great shame.”

“But you were right. It is as my mother predicted. Already I have gained such wisdom from our time together.”

A swift pain came and went, one that scraped across her heart and vanished.

“It’s not the nausea, is it?”

“No, no, I’m fine.” Lillian forced herself to smile. “Really.”

“Do you feel up to joining us on the deck for the Sabbath service?”

Lillian could see the younger woman expected her refusal. And in truth she had no desire whatsoever to endure the ceremony. The memories would no doubt resurface. But Abigail had done so much for her over the past two weeks, it was hardly possible to refuse her anything.

“Let me put this water to good use,” Lillian replied brightly, “and see if I can repair some of the damage these weeks have inflicted on me.”

“You’ll join us?”

The delight was so evident on Abigail’s features Lillian knew she had made the right choice. “I should be honored.”

The church Lillian’s uncle had overseen had been a dismal and cold affair, dating back to the eleventh century with a thirteenth-century tower. He and her aunt had been so proud of the fact they made a point of mentioning it to everyone they met. Lillian had thoroughly disliked the building. It had seemed much smaller inside than out, and no wonder, for the walls were four-and-a-half-feet thick at the base, built at a time before pillars and supporting columns and the like. The windows, narrow slits set far back, meant that the church’s interior always resided in shadows, even on the sunniest day. The exterior was a mottled yellowish brown, the color of dried mud. The slate roof was ancient and buried beneath a growth of lichen and moss. The edifice sat in a medieval graveyard, with the tombstones so lashed by wind and rain and time that the names were unreadable.

The congregation had all seemed as gray and stone-faced as her aunt and uncle. No one ever smiled at her. They knew her dark little secret even before she had heard it herself. As a child, all she knew was they had looked at her askance, and whispered behind her back, and refused to let her play with the other children. Lillian’s early years had become peopled by the ghosts she had made up, her invisible friends with whom she played hide-and-seek among the weather-beaten tombstones.

As Lillian dressed for the service topside, she found herself recalling that first glimpse of her own hidden secret. One chilly evening when she was nine, while her uncle was busy with his church duties, her aunt had spirited the young Lillian across town to a prison. That distant night, the prison’s keeper led Lillian and her aunt down a dank stone hall mired with fetid odors and the misery of centuries. They entered a stone chamber with low beams darkened by eons of woe. There sat a woman who looked somehow familiar to the child.

Lillian now stared out the porthole as she brushed her hair, but in truth she saw nothing save that dread night. She recalled how everyone had cried then. Lillian’s aunt had sobbed as she hugged the woman. The woman was dressed in rags, and she cried as she reached out for Lillian, who screamed in horror and drew away, or tried to. Her aunt and the woman only cried the harder. Her aunt forced Lillian to step forward. But the woman did not attempt to hold the child again. Instead, the woman caressed Lillian’s hair and face, over and over, as though seeking to draw in the child’s beauty through her grimy fingers.

Now, as Lillian stared out the window at the dancing sunlit sea, she could feel the woman’s touch sliding down her cheek in time to her strokes of the brush. How strange life was, she reflected, that the further she moved from that time, the more vivid the memories became. As though some unseen force was determined that she would never leave that early pain behind.