The Birthright (8 page)

She felt as much as saw the eyes upon her, directed from every station on the ship. “And what name does the captain use?”

“Lad, when he’s pleased, Potter, when I am slow. I am his nephew; my mum’s his baby sister.” He hesitated at the stairway leading into the aft hold, turned back, and gave her an impish grin. “But when I’ve mussed my navigation and put the ship somewhere off Madagascar, he has some right names for me. I dare not tell you what I am called then.”

A voice from the quarterdeck blasted out, “Look lively, you lot! This is not some ladies’ Sunday tea! Bosun, take the names of every sailor on the mizzen there. And you, Potter, what are you hanging about for?”

The grin vanished in a flash, and young Potter clattered down the staircase. Nicole risked a glance up and found her gaze met by a scowling older gentleman. His weathered face was framed by white muttonchop sideburns, so bushy they protruded almost a hand’s width from his face. His sharp gray eyes swept over Nicole as though taking in every aspect, seen and unseen, and finding little that met with his approval. Nicole shifted her eyes toward the deck planking and then she sped down the stairs after Potter.

She found him waiting for her at the end of a long, narrow passageway. Slightly out of breath now, she whispered, “Your captain is…remarkable.”

“Remarkable is the word, ma’am. You best step lively about him and mind your p’s and q’s.”

Nicole liked the young man with his playful, mischievous look. “Should I salute, do you think?”

“Oh, ma’am, I beg you…” Then Potter realized she was jesting and rewarded her with another of his animated smiles. “If you do, pray allow me to be around to watch the fireworks.”

He rapped on the door, and at the sound of a woman’s voice from within, he opened it and announced, “Miss Harrow, if you please, ma’am.”

“Very good, Andy. Show her in.”

The woman who rose to greet Nicole was gray haired, very slender, and held herself rigidly erect. Though she wore a dress of violet rather than black, Nicole had the immediate impression of standing in the presence of someone recently bereaved. Her eyes were red rimmed, and her lips were pressed so tightly together that the skin wrinkled around her mouth. Her right hand clutched a crumpled handkerchief. “Good day to you, Miss Harrow. I am Emily Madden. Captain Madden is my husband.”

“An honor to meet you, Mrs. Madden.” Nicole gave a low curtsy, more than anything to hide her dismay over having to spend weeks in this grieving woman’s company.

“Andy, perhaps you would be so good as to have Benson serve tea.”

“I’d be happy to do it myself, ma’am.” Before she could object he hastily offered a quick bow and backed out of the room.

“I see you have already smitten one of James’s officers. No doubt you shall have them all under your charm before the day is out.”

Nicole wondered if Mrs. Madden was displeased with her, just as the captain had seemed to be earlier. “I beg your pardon, madame, but I wish to be no bother to anyone.”

“No, of course not.” She then noticed the direction of Nicole’s wandering eyes. “Rather impressive, is it not?”

Nicole took this as permission to give herself over to enjoying the ambiance of the room. “It is positively stunning!” Built into the rear of the cabin was a swath of glass panels through which she could view the sea streaming out behind the ship.

“Yes, I imagine the captain’s great room would make for marvelous accommodations in which to enjoy one’s first voyage across the sea.”

“I have been to sea before, madame.” In the distance she could still see the tall hills near Halifax and two of the town’s higher steeples.

“Oh? And when was that?”

“Once as a young child. Then again the summer before this.”

“Do my ears not detect a French accent?”

The hills gradually turned a soft bluish gray as the distance and the sea mist grew between ship and shore. “Indeed so, madame.”

“But I thought my husband mentioned something about an English connection.”

Nicole sighed and looked away. Watching the hills disappear beyond the horizon only made matters worse. “That is correct.”

“Then you must be from the Quebec region. No doubt you elected to avoid the coming battles.” The thought of war turned her tone bitter. “Such wisdom in one so young.”

Before Nicole could correct the woman, there came a knock on the door. Andy Potter reappeared with a silver tray and tea service. He set it down and said, “With your permission, ma’am.”

“Oh, very well, you may pour. But then you really must be off. I won’t have the captain coming down on me for allowing you to shirk your duties over this young lady.”

The crimson flush appeared again, creeping up from Potter’s collar. “No, ma’am.”

Emily Madden pointed at the seat beside her. “Do sit down, my dear. You can turn your chair to take in the view.”

Dejectedly, Nicole lowered herself onto the seat. She struggled to understand how such excitement and eagerness could come from the same heart as all the regret. “No, thank you, but I have seen enough.”

Emily accepted her teacup and said, “Our young guest is from the province of Quebec, Andy. She has traveled here by sea.”

“Excuse me, madame. But I am not Québecois. In fact, I have never been farther west than Halifax.”

Potter and Mrs. Madden glanced at each other, then at Nicole. “But your accent…” Emily said with a quizzical look on her face.

Nicole accepted her tea from Andy, secretly detesting how her privacy was being quickly eroded. But she had no choice. “I was raised in Louisiana.”

The news appeared to upset Emily. “But Louisiana is not involved in the conflict.”

“No, madame.”

“Then, why…” Emily became silent for a long moment. She set down her cup, folded her hands, and said with a sternness that seemed modeled after her husband, “Young lady, I fear you have boarded this vessel under false pretenses. When in Halifax my husband was specifically ordered to make room on this ship for a very important
English
guest. Yet now I discover you are from Louisiana. Or at least you say you are.”

Nicole kept her eyes focused on the cup in her lap. “Everything I have told you is the truth.”

“You will forgive me if I find that somewhat difficult to believe. If you have been at sea before, how is it you never saw a captain’s great room?”

“Because I was not invited.” Nicole found herself forced to have to meet the older woman’s gaze and reveal yet more of her secrets. “I was separated from my parents at birth and raised in southern Acadia—what you may know as Cajun territory. Last year I sailed north and was reunited with my family.”

Emily’s mouth opened, but her mind remained blocked by too many questions seeking to be asked all at once. Finally she settled on, “But why England?”

Nicole shook her head at the question. Why indeed? Was she allowing her adventurous spirit to speak to her so loudly she failed to hear her Lord’s quieter request? If she had truly followed His will in embarking on this voyage, why then was she now awash in remorse?

Nicole realized the room waited for her reply. She couldn’t think of anything to say but the truth. “My uncle is childless and has asked that I come to be his heir.”

“And who, pray tell, is this uncle?”

“Sir Charles Harrow.”

The silence that met her answer was so deafening, Nicole could hear the water rushing beneath the stern and the dull footfalls of sailors overhead. She had no choice but to lift her head once more. In any other setting, the pair of expressions she saw would have seemed comical. Both the young midshipman and the captain’s wife stared at her in round-eyed shock.

“Lord Charles, the earl of Sutton?” Mrs. Madden managed to say.

“Yes, madame.”

“He is one of the wealthiest men in the realm,” added Andy.

Emily had completely forgotten the young man was still there. She looked at him and said, “That will do, Mr. Potter. You may go now.”

“But…yes, ma’am.” He bowed to them both, but more earnestly to Nicole this time. “Your servant, Miss Harrow.”

When the door had closed behind him, it was Emily’s turn to peer out over the flowing waters. “You must excuse my abruptness,” she said.

“No apologies are necessary, madame.”

“Indeed they are.” The handkerchief was retrieved from where it had been stowed up her left sleeve. She bundled it tightly in her hands and said as if to the sea that churned outside the glass, “I made this journey with my husband, because my two daughters, our only children, live in the southern colonies. One is in Boston, the other is farther down the coast in New York. I implored them both to leave. We are not without means in England, and so we could have offered their husbands proper situations. Think of the grandchildren, I begged them. Think of what it would be like to have them surrounded by war….”

Then Emily’s voice became unsteady. She clamped her mouth shut and sat there, immobilized by the effort to contain her grief and her worry.

Nicole’s heart went out to the mother. “They would not agree, madame?”

“Would not even let me finish. Come what may, they told me, their place was with the colonists and their grievances. Come what may.” The fist clenching the handkerchief beat against her thigh. “I regret to say my daughters have inherited their father’s stubborn nature. I cannot help but feel that I failed in my duties as a mother and grandmother. Had I spoken the right words, used the proper tone, perhaps I could have them here with me now. Safe and sound.”

“I do not know what is right for them,” Nicole confessed, “but I admire their ability to know what is their proper place and station. And I admire you for permitting them to stay.”

Emily’s countenance seemed overly bright as she turned toward the younger woman. “You do?”

“I have just watched my own mother letting me go.” Suddenly the cabin’s air seemed filled with tiny needles, and it hurt to breathe. “Such a difficult act I could never imagine doing myself, no matter how right the deed.”

“My dear young lady…” Emily paused long enough to dab at her eyes with the kerchief. She then forced herself to pick up her teacup and offer Nicole a smile. “I do believe you are going to prove a veritable tonic.”

A few minutes later, Potter returned to announce, “Captain’s compliments, ma’am. He requests the pleasure of your company at dinner.”

“Very well,” Emily replied. “You may tell him we shall be delighted to attend him.”

After they were alone again, Emily explained the accommodations to Nicole as she gestured toward the different rooms. “This chamber is in effect the master’s dining room and great room. His office is through that door, which he has rigged into a sleeping cabin. We are to use his bedroom through there.” Her smile came easier now. “These are quite exceptional quarters for a trading vessel, though I assume you are used to far more luxurious surroundings. But Captain Madden is also part owner of the trading company and rarely puts to sea anymore. He made this journey mostly on my account. He was fairly certain from the outset that our daughters would not return. Their husbands are both very active and prosperous. One is a representative for the upstart Colonial Congress, or whatever they have chosen to call themselves.”

“I must be honest with you, madame,” Nicole decided aloud. “I may be related to the earl, but it is something I learned only a few months ago. As for these surroundings, I spent most of my last journey at sea wedged into the central hold, praying to survive a terrible storm.”

Emily’s eyes seemed to gain a new light. “Everything you say raises a thousand questions, my dear. So many I scarcely know what to ask next.”

Perhaps it was her conflicting emotions or the vastness of the sea out the back portals or the richly burnished cabin that enclosed them so comfortably—whatever the reason—Nicole suddenly felt ready to disclose her secrets to a woman she had known but a few hours. “My beginnings were among the very poor, madame. The Acadians were expelled from our homeland when I was only a few months old, so I made my first sea voyage before my first birthday. After that, my family lived in a lean-to that was attached to a cowshed. When the Spanish opened Louisiana to Acadian settlement, we walked there from Charleston. That journey took us over a year.”

Emily was silent for a while, gazing behind Nicole at the westering sun. She then pulled a pocket watch from the belt around her middle, opened it, and said, “My goodness, we must begin our preparations. You will find my husband is a stickler for punctuality. We must be ready in time to permit the duty-men to fit this cabin out for dinner.” She rose to her feet. “Which trunk will hold your finer dresses?”

“I am afraid I have nothing better than what you see before you.”

Emily cast a doubtful glance over Nicole’s dress, coming to rest on the dirty hem left by her crossing the market and harbor square. “The captain requires all his guests to dress rather formally for dinner, my dear. And your figure is so much fuller than mine, I fear nothing I have will fit you. Surely you must have brought something finer.”

“Nothing. Perhaps I should just decline…” Nicole halted, thinking for the first time since her departure of Charles’s trunk. “Well, perhaps there is something.”

“Yes?”

She moved to the newer trunk and unfastened the straps. “My uncle sent this from England. It arrived just as I was preparing to leave.”

“You haven’t even looked?”

“I looked, but I did not pay it much mind.” What little she had seen of the trunk’s contents had somewhat frightened her, for it seemed in the haste of final preparations to be a harbinger of the unknown that awaited her in England. Nicole flipped open the trunk, peeled back the layers of wrapping blankets, and lifted the edge of the first garment.

Emily gasped. “Oh my!”

Nicole stood slowly with the garment in hand. It was a full-length gown of finest satin. The bodice and body were a brilliant blue that shimmered in the softening sunlight. The half sleeves and flounced shoulders were decorated with tiny flowers sewn with gold thread. This same floral pattern traced its way down both sides, broadening to become glowing gardens about the wide hem. The dress possessed a swooping décolletage, kept to a fitting modesty by a sheath of white silk that buttoned around the neck and was embroidered with sky blue flowers to match the hem.