Upon A Starlit Tide

3. Wolf Cub

3

Wolf Cub

Le Bleu Sauvage was a confection of luxury and light, fantasy and fashion. Furniture embellished with carved flowers and shells, palm leaves, and foliage adorned every room. The high walls were a tasteful shade of pearl-grey, bedecked with sumptuous mirrors and art. No room, however, was more breathtaking than the grand salon.

With two sets of high double doors opening at either end, one could walk from the vestibule to the center of the room, where silk-covered chairs and chaise longues were artfully arranged, passing beneath an enormous crystal chandelier before pushing aside the gauzy curtains and stepping down to the sweeping expanse of lawn.

The dark-haired man was oblivious to his elegant surroundings. He lay, eyes closed, upon the largest of the chaise longues. Luce drank in every part of him: the black hair flopping over his high brow, the triangle of pale flesh peeking through the laces of his shirt.

‘Fetch Jean-Francois, Nanette,’ Jean-Baptiste was saying. ‘I must send word to the harbourmaster at Saint-Malo.’

Nanette obeyed at once, hurrying out into the gardens where the dovecote lay. At the same moment, Marie-Jeanne came back through the doors behind Luce, bearing a tray loaded with bread and broth.

‘Ah, well done, Marie-Jeanne,’ Gratienne said, pointing. ‘Put it there. He will be famished when he wakes. Poor wretch.’ Her gaze fell upon Luce. ‘There you are, Lucinde. I wondered where you had got to.’

‘Why do you bother, Maman? You know exactly where Luce was,’ Veronique said patiently. ‘She always begins her day in the chapel.’

‘Whatever do you pray about, day after day?’ Charlotte inquired. ‘You missed all the excitement this morning.’ She gestured to the unconscious sailor, lowering her voice as though he might hear. ‘The fishermen found him on the beach!’

‘Goodness,’ Luce said, feigning surprise. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘Your mother has everything in hand,’ Jean-Baptiste said, tilting his cheek for Luce to kiss. He smelled of ink and coffee; warm, and comforting. ‘I knew the weather would be foul last night.’

‘Oh?’ Luce, noticing that his lace jabot was crooked, reached up to adjust it.

‘Indeed. I was at the dockyards in Trichet yesterday,’ he explained. ‘Monsieur Gaultier’s new ship is near complete. And what do you think, one of the carpenter’s apprentices stuck his knife in the mainmast in his haste to get to his dinner!’

Luce’s hands stilled. ‘Papa. You’re not truly blaming that boy for the storm?’

‘I most certainly am, mon trésor. A knife in a mast will always raise the weather. If he’d been less eager to drop tools and fill his belly, he’d have remembered it.’

Luce hid a smile. Her father was dressed impeccably in a lacecuffed shirt, silk faille waistcoat, and breeches. Still, it was impossible to separate the gentleman before her from the young sailor he had once been—along with his superstitions. The ship’s bell and hourglass in the vestibule—manned by the four laquais and rung on every watch except the deeps of the night and early morning— were proof enough of this, as was Jean-Baptiste’s unabiding dislike of reversed maps, upturned shoes, and whistling, which he swore would turn a stiff breeze into a gale. It was an unconditional rule that the women in his household—domestiques included—refrain from brushing or dressing their hair after dark, lest they rouse the weather and endanger his ships.

‘Maman, he is still so cold.’ In her lace-edged peignoir, her golden hair loose around her shoulders, Veronique looked like she was sitting for a portrait, not nursing an unfortunate sailor. She was also, Luce noted, clasping one of the young man’s hands. ‘His skin is like ice.’

Gratienne rustled to the chaise, held a hand to the sailor’s brow. ‘You are right, ma chère fille.’ She frowned about the room, then gave a determined nod. ‘Very well. Out, my daughters. You must leave the room at once.’

‘But, Maman!’ Charlotte exclaimed.

Veronique pouted. ‘Might we not stay and help?’

‘We must remove his wet clothes and warm him,’ Gratienne said crisply. ‘Decorum must be maintained. Besides, neither of you are dressed to receive visitors.’

‘He’s hardly a visitor,’ Veronique said. ‘He’s not even awake!’

‘But he is about to be undressed,’ Jean-Baptiste said, a laugh tickling the corners of his mouth. ‘Off with you, ma filles.’

Luce’s sisters dragged themselves to the door, Veronique clinging to the sailor’s hand until the last possible moment.

‘How disappointing,’ Charlotte muttered. ‘This was the most exciting thing to happen since we left Saint-Malo.’

She gave Luce a pointed look. Le Bleu Sauvage was the family’s summer home, a retreat when the walled city became an odious, simmering cauldron. Ordinarily the move occurred when the weather warmed—usually in June. But this year, like the year before, and the year before that, Luce had begged her father to take the family to the malouinière much earlier. Saint-Malo, home to twelve thousand souls, was crowded, noisy, and unbearably close. Yes, it was surrounded on all sides by the sea; but its high walls and ramparts, its locked gates and strict curfew, made reaching it difficult. By the end of March, Luce was climbing the walls. Her father, taking pity on her, had moved the entire household to Le Bleu Sauvage at the end of April.

Luce had almost cried with relief. Her sisters, too, had shed a tear, though for entirely different reasons. With the rest of the wealthy families still in the city, the usual summer pastimes— balls and receptions, piqniques and long, lazy walks followed by cards, music, and even longer suppers—had not yet begun. To Veronique and Charlotte, the Léons were alone in the vast emptiness of the countryside, with neither excitement nor diversion. Since neither could tolerate missing any social engagement, no matter the occasion, they had in no way forgiven their youngest sister.

‘He is most handsome, is he not?’ Veronique whispered. She glanced back at the chaise. ‘I wonder what colour his eyes are.’

‘Black,’ Luce murmured without thinking.

‘What did you say?’ Charlotte’s sharp gaze caught Luce, pinned her.

‘I imagine, ’ Luce said quickly. ‘I imagine they’re black.’

‘ Girls! ’

‘Yes, Maman,’ Charlotte and Veronique said in unison, dipping their heads. Luce followed them slowly out, watching as her mother and Alis, the eldest of the domestiques, bent to strip away the sailor’s shirt. A glimpse of his bare torso, his shoulder, the skin smooth and pale, before Gratienne turned.

‘ Lucinde! ’

Luce bowed her head and hurried for the door. She could not help but turn back, at the very last. Warmth flowed through her, head to toe. The young man’s eyes were open. For one sweet moment, before they closed again, they met Luce’s own.

‘Ah, there she is; lingering at Papa’s door again like a lost hound.’ Luce, waiting outside her father’s study, turned to see Charlotte on the stairs. It was evening, and the servants had lit the candles, but the golden light did nothing to warm Charlotte’s countenance. ‘Waiting for scraps, are we?’

Luce was tempted to remind her sister that she was not the only one who had been waiting at doors that day. Both Charlotte and Veronique had discovered countless reasons to linger on the second-floor landing—which offered a clear view to the guest room where the young sailor was resting—despite Gratienne’s informing them that under no circumstances would they be permitted to enter.

‘Don’t be unkind, Cee,’ Veronique said, gliding down the stairs. Like Charlotte, she had changed for supper and glowed in a gown of ivory silk faille, her blonde hair pinned elegantly at the back of her head.

Charlotte ignored her older sister. ‘What will Papa give you this time, Luce?’ she mused. ‘Are we to pack our belongings and move again? Or will it be more rubbish from one of his ships?’

Luce said nothing; there was nothing to say. Papa had always delighted in bringing her things. Rare sea shells, carved hair pins; a precious copy of Systema Naturae. Feathers from the French Antilles, tiny bottles of pink sand. Cakes of indigo, which he knew to be her favorite, its beautiful blues shallow or deep depending on the dyer’s whim. She was always careful to take these gifts straight to the cabinet adjoining her bedchamber, tucking them away before her sisters noticed them. Charlotte, however— always watching, measuring, judging—noted each and every one, down to the tiniest shell.

‘What do you and I care for trinkets and feathers, Cee?’ Veronique, who owned half a hundred feathers in various shapes, colours, and sizes, examined her flawless face in the enormous gold-framed mirror—now free of its storm-coverings—and brushed at one delicately powdered cheek. ‘After all, we may buy whatever we wish.’

But it was not the same, and they all knew it. A gift from Papa— one of the busiest men in Saint-Malo, which was, in its turn, one of the busiest seaports in Bretagne—was not only a sign of his esteem and affection, but a sign that you, the receiver of the gift, were important enough to have been in his thoughts. Feathers and trinkets they might be, but the fact that Luce received so many tokens from her father merely proved what Charlotte had accused Luce of since they were but tiny girls: of his three daughters, Luce was Jean-Baptiste’s favorite.

It was a dire crime at the best of times, but today it was even worse. For when Jean-Baptiste had heard from the servants that his guest had awoken, he had gone directly to the chamber on the second floor, knocked politely, and closed the door behind him. Clustering on the landing, ears pressed to the door, his three daughters—Luce, too, was incapable of withstanding the chamber’s siren-song—had heard the low rumble of their father’s voice. And, even more exciting, an answering one. There followed a muffled scrap of a conversation—Luce caught the words ‘dauphin’, ‘Cádiz’, ‘English’, and ‘storm’—before Jean-Baptiste had come out again— his daughters had straightened guiltily—and, after giving them a brief, knowing glance, walked down the stairs and into his study, closing the door firmly behind him.

He had remained there throughout the afternoon, protected by one of the household’s most enduring laws: when Jean-Baptiste was about his work, no one, not even Gratienne, was permitted to disturb him.

No one, that is, but Luce.

Charlotte, who was clearly aware of this fact (and, of course, that Luce was the only one among them who might prevail upon their father to share their guest’s identity) opened her mouth to say more, then closed it again at the sound of her father’s muted voice.

‘Is that you, mon trésor?’ Luce winced.

‘Run along, treasure, ’ Charlotte mimicked. ‘You know he only treats you so because he pities you. Your wretched feet, your awkward ways. It’s no wonder—after all, you’re not really a Léon like the rest of us, are you? You’re just another piece of flotsam he brought home when he went to sea.’

‘Cee!’ Veronique was shocked enough to look away from her reflection. ‘You didn’t !’ She turned to Luce, her face soft with pity. ‘Take no heed of her, Luce. She’s just jealous...’

Luce barely heard her sister over the storm of shame that had woken in her heart. Shoulders hunched, she stepped into her father’s study, closing the door softly behind her.

‘There you are,’ Jean-Baptiste said, from behind his enormous desk. ‘I have been hoping you would come in and rescue me from these wretched accounts.’

‘Do you need help, Papa?’

‘Not tonight, mon petit oiseau. I intend to do nothing but enjoy my supper and partake heartily of that new wine from Bourgogne. Such an aroma!’

Walking into her father’s study was like entering another world. Unlike the rest of the house, the room clung stubbornly to a masculine soberness. Letters, accounts, and ledgers covered the desk, which was overlooked by dramatic paintings of his favorite ships— the Lionne, the Thétis, and his pride and joy, the Fleur de Mer.

Shelves and cabinets lined the heavy oak-paneled walls, bursting with books and maps, models, rare stones, and strange coins. He loved treasure, had acquired it in every port he had ventured to: dried starfish and carved whale bones. Feathers, fishhooks, and coral. Turtle shells. The twisted horn of a narwhal and the startling, spiny jaw of a swordfish. Spears and swords, powder horns and pistols. Shells of every colour and description. Luce loved to explore those shelves, to imagine the places he had been, the shades of those distant seas and the scent of different winds. Spices and salt, flowers and tropical rains.

‘And what of my youngest daughter?’ Jean-Baptiste asked, smiling at her as she rounded the desk. The words, that smile, were an embrace, easing the sting of Charlotte’s final barb, which was all the more painful for being true. Luce was not a Léon by birth. Jean-Baptiste had found her while he was at sea: two years old and newly orphaned, the daughter of a Guernsey shipwright. Unable to abandon her to the winds of fate, Jean-Baptiste had simply picked her up and brought her back to Saint-Malo. ‘Have you had any adventures today?’

Grey threaded his dark hair, and age had weathered his swarthy skin, but it was not difficult to imagine the dashing young corsair he had once been, making his fortune through tenacity, daring—and by clinging with a grappling hook to the heaving side of precisely the right ship at precisely the right time. It was this bravery and persistence that had allowed Jean-Baptiste to win the hand of Gratienne, the daughter of a minor Breton noble who, drowning in debt, was not too proud to save himself with hard-earned Léon wealth.

His gaze flicked to the window and, beyond it, the grounds and the forest, the dusking sea. Looking at him there, trapped behind his desk, overseeing his ships instead of striding across their decks as they stormed into war-torn waters, Luce wondered if he dreamed of taking the helm again. Pushing out onto the night-dark waters of the Manche like a scarred old lion in search of prey. The memory of adventure was on him still.

‘None that compare to yours, Papa.’ Not a lie, but close enough to one that she felt a pang of guilt. What would he say if she told him of her morning? Sneaking from the estate? Pulling a man from the storm-exhausted sea? She went to the window, where her father’s globe, a sphere of wonder and adventure in miniature, took pride of place. ‘Although, I suppose the fishermen bringing us that poor sailor counts as an adventure, doesn’t it?’

‘I suppose it does.’ Jean-Baptiste reached for his pipe and tobacco box. The box, carved intricately with flowers and two tiny, roaring lions, was made from the shell of a coconut. As a child Luce had loved running her fingertips over its textured surface, those clever, gleaming lions. ‘I’m sure it seemed that way to your mother. Has she come down yet?’

Gratienne, exhausted by the day’s events, had taken to her bedchamber for the best part of the evening.

‘Not yet, Papa.’

He chuckled, pressing the tobacco loosely into the pipe’s bowl with practised care. ‘I’ll never forget the look on her face when they laid him down on that chaise longue. It’s hand-painted, you know.’

Luce watched him hold a spill to the candle on his desk and use it to char the tobacco, brow furrowing as he puffed. Tiny furrows of red rose and faded in the clay bowl.

‘And is our sea-faring guest still abed?’

‘I believe he is, Papa.’ Luce hesitated. ‘Do you—do you know who he is?’

Jean-Baptiste did not look up from his pipe. ‘I do.’

‘And?’ She reached out a fingertip, twirling the globe on its axis. Oceans and islands, archipelagos and continents passed in a blur.

Jean-Baptiste was watching her, grey eyes twinkling through a veil of smoke. ‘Don’t tell me you, too, have fallen under our handsome guest’s spell? Veronique has already come knocking: ‘Would you like a cup of chocolate, Papa?’ Charlotte, too, tried her luck—she brought oranges. Of course, I told them nothing.’ He chuckled. ‘Do not look at me like that, mon trésor. I know it was cruel of me. But oh, the expressions on their faces...’

Luce cringed. No surprise, then, that Charlotte had been so bitter. Not for the first time, Luce wondered why her father treated her so differently. Was it, as Charlotte had said, because he pitied her? Or did he feel compelled to prove that she was not, as Charlotte had suggested, mere flotsam?

‘It would seem the young wolf cub has made quite the impression,’ Jean-Baptiste continued, leaning back in his chair to enjoy the full effect of his pipe.

Luce frowned. ‘Wolf cub?’

‘The boy is a de Chatelaine, mon trésor.’

Oh. She had not expected that. The de Chatelaines were the most influential of the Malouin ship-owning families, their crest a series of white fleurs-de-lis and wolves against an ocean of blue. Castro and Camille de Chatelaine’s malouinière, Le Loup Blanc, was set along the banks of the Rance. It was generally agreed to be the largest and most beautiful of the country houses, while their grand town house within the walls of Saint-Malo was the envy of every shipowner’s wife.

‘Morgan de Chatelaine, to be precise,’ Jean-Baptiste added. ‘Castro’s youngest son.’

Morgan. ‘Of the sea,’ the name meant. No wonder it had spared him.

‘He was sailing back from Cádiz,’ Jean-Baptiste was saying. ‘Been living there since he was a boy; learning his family’s business, understanding the trade.’ He sucked on his pipe ruminatively. ‘I too lived there when I was a youth, you know.’

Luce nodded. ‘I remember.’

Many Malouin shipowners sent their sons there to be apprenticed in the intricacies of trade with Spain. Luce rotated the globe until her fingertip rested on Cádiz. As a child she had loved to hear Jean-Baptiste speak of its plazas and markets. It was the oldest city in Europe, he had said. Timeworn ruins sat alongside impressive new buildings, their gardens bursting with exotic flowers brought back by explorers. ‘That’s why we didn’t know him.’

‘Precisely.’

There it was, then. The answer to all of Luce’s questions. Her sisters’ and Samuel’s, too.

‘Young de Chatelaine was trying his hand at captain for the first time. The Dauphin was his father’s ship. You remember it?’

‘I do.’ Luce had seen it at anchor in the harbour countless times. It had been a beautiful ship.

‘He told me they were pursued by two English privateers off Guernsey,’ Jean-Baptiste said. ‘They took fire, and the Dauphin was damaged. Then the storm rolled in. It prevented the English from finishing the job and seizing the ship and Morgan’s crew, but that hardly matters, does it, when it decided to take the ship for itself?’

‘What of its ballast?’ Luce asked, looking up from the globe. ‘Were they not carrying storm-stone?’

No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she remembered the stones in the young man’s pockets.

‘I didn’t bother to ask. Assaulted by the enemy and then the weather? The Dauphin was clearly unprotected.’

Luce frowned. She had no doubt the storm-stones were of the finest quality. She had felt the heavy rumble of their magic as they sank.

‘I would have thought Castro would have taken more care,’ Jean-Baptiste was saying. ‘It is not as though he can’t afford it.’

‘Indeed,’ Luce said distractedly. With such stone aboard, and a crew experienced enough to know when to step back from the wheel and simply let the stone—and the storm—run their course, the Dauphin and her crew should have been protected against all manner of disaster: mutiny, assault, foul weather. Yet she was lost, her crew still unaccounted for, her captain saved only by chance.

Strange.

‘Monsieur de Chatelaine has come back to take his place beside his father and brothers. And itching to try his hand as a corsair.’ Jean-Baptiste grinned. ‘I was much the same at his age. Longing for the horizon.’

Luce forced herself to smile back. If only she could tell her father that she, too, longed for the horizon. To ask if Morgan de Chatelaine had had the opportunity to travel even farther than Cádiz. The French Antilles, perhaps? The Spice Islands? The New World? The longing to see such places, to stand in the prow of a ship with spray spilling on the wind, salting her hair—to know that nothing and no one could stop her from seeing the great wide world—was a pain in her heart.

‘I sent Jean-Germane with a message for the de Chatelaines this afternoon. Let them know their son is safe in our care.’ Jean-Baptiste’s eyes gleamed with catlike speculation. ‘It appears my luck has held once more, mon trésor. Castro de Chatelaine’s only unwed son washed up like a seal pup—carried under my very roof!—without me having to lift a finger? There has been no marriage between Léons and de Chatelaines for a hundred years. Such an alliance would only be for the good.’

Luce frowned. ‘Then why did you keep his name from Charlotte and Veronique?’

‘To increase the appeal, of course! There isn’t a man—or woman— alive who’s not made more attractive by a little mystery. Although... he is pretty. Pretty enough, it seems, to intrigue all three of my daughters.’ Jean-Baptiste tilted his head, considering her. ‘Veronique’s curiosity I understand; she is oft taking an interest in men, and they in her. And Charlotte is always interested in whatever Veronique is interested in. But you, mon trésor... I did not expect it.’

‘Well, he is handsome,’ Luce said lightly, spinning the globe again and trying not to think of Morgan de Chatelaine’s lean, muscled back beneath her fingertips. She stilled the globe with a touch and turned to face her father. ‘To be honest, I was more interested in where he had sailed from. And the fate of the ship, of course. When first I heard of the wreck I feared it was one of yours.’

Jean-Baptiste scoffed. ‘One of my ships? Lost almost within sight of Saint-Malo? I think not!’

Luce could not help but smile. It had long been said that, while her father had not inherited the bulk of the Léon fortune, he had certainly received the lion’s share of the family’s luck. While other shipowners were struck by ill timing or bad investments, Jean-Baptiste’s endeavours always flourished. She could not remember the last time he lost a ship. ‘The lion is a cunning and wily beast, mon trésor,’ he once told her. ‘He thinks deeply before he acts. And, of course, he discusses his plans with God.’

But even with God’s guidance, and the protection of stormstone, such fortune was rare. The sea was notoriously fickle, its moods as changeable as the moon. Every shipowner in Bretagne envied Jean-Baptiste his luck. In reply, he would merely shrug. He had always loved the sea, he told them. The sea simply loved him back.

‘In any case, I am happy to hear that you, at least, remain disenchanted by our guest.’ Jean-Baptiste set down his spent pipe and rose from his chair, joining Luce at the window. The Manche was a wash of distant darkness in the dusk. ‘I do not think I will ever be ready to part with you.’ He reached out, touched her cheek. ‘Although no doubt the time will come.... You grow more beautiful every day. More beautiful, even, than Veronique, though I will deny it if you ever tell her I said so.’ A bittersweet smile. ‘No doubt some rogue will steal you from me and break my heart.’

‘Never, Papa.’ She tried not to look at the globe, at the oceans and the islands, the archipelagos and continents.