Chapter 13
Soon they began to see fewer lone cabins in isolated clearings and more clusters of homes, grainfields and gristmills, even a small town or two. When they spent the night at an inn, the proprietor mistook them for a family.
“I have one empty room left for you and your wife and son, Mr. Galant.”
A little thrill passed through Brielle. Even Titus seemed proud when Bleu didn’t correct the assumption.
Never mind that once Bleu had seen them safely to their lodging upstairs after a shared supper, he slept in the stable near their horses.
Brielle lay down atop the unfamiliar mattress, a golden glow about her.
It was enough to be thought of as Mrs. Galant for even a trice.
Week’s end brought them to the headwaters of the Rivanna River which, Bleu explained, ran from Charlottesville to the James River for almost fifty miles.
Its watery journey from the foothills onto the Piedmont plain made her realize how vast Virginia was.
Their mutual relief was palpable to have come so far unhindered.
They’d weathered the wilderness and summer heat with its swarms of biting mosquitoes and black flies unscathed.
When Brielle thought she couldn’t go another step, Bleu pointed to a smudge of grey marring the horizon. “See the smoke from Orchard Rest’s chimneys?”
Could it be? They hastened toward it, their horses closing the distance, the high voices of children carrying over fields and woods.
Next they passed into an immense orchard with more fruit trees than Brielle had ever seen in one place.
Countless apples and pears, peaches and cherries, soon to be theirs for the taking.
A handsome stone house on a hill came into view as well as other buildings resembling what seemed more a village than a plantation.
Bleu dismounted behind a one-story cottage near rows of apple trees.
Charmed, Brielle wondered who lived there as he helped her from the saddle.
Tired of riding, Titus was already running toward the distant childish voices with a zeal that made her eyes fill.
He’d rarely been around other children. She hoped he’d meet lifelong friends.
Turning back to Bleu, she watched him hobble the horses. Through the trees lay the glint of a river. Suddenly self-conscious, she looked down at her worn, torn linen, one shoe missing a heel.
“As I said,” he reassured, obviously noting her dismay, “Sylvie will soon get-up new garments for us both.”
Taking her elbow, he started up the hill beneath the shade of full-grown oaks to Orchard Rest. A woman appeared in the doorway, joy etched across her face. Sylvie?
“Bonjour, frère!” she called, hurrying down the porch steps.
Smiling, Bleu quickened his pace and caught her up, swinging her round till her feet left the ground. Brielle looked down at the grass, not wanting to intrude on the tender moment.
“And who is this lovely creature?” Sylvie asked him, on her feet again, hope and surprise in her striking features.
“C’est ma future épouse même si elle ne le sait pas encore,” he answered quietly without hesitation. “Mademoiselle Gabrielle Farrow.”
Though his rapid French eluded her his sister’s outright wonder did not. Sylvie threw her arms about Brielle in a warmhearted embrace.
“Pleased to meet you, Madame Blackburn,” Brielle said, warmth creeping up her neck as Bleu looked on.
“Please, call me Sylvie. And may I call you Gabrielle?”
“Brielle, thank you.”
“Très jolie.” Sylvie turned back to her brother. “You’ve come far from the look of you. Hurry inside and let me feed you before the children discover you’ve returned. They’ve been playing down by the river on so warm a day.”
“We have a young boy traveling with us.” Bleu looked down the hill to the heavily treed riverbank. “I suspect he’ll soon find your tribe and make introductions.”
“Then he’ll be welcomed warmly.” Sylvie led them into the house and a cool, shadowed hall. “Will is away surveying. Before he left we had a small feast and roast porc. There’s plenty left over.”
“Providential timing,” Bleu told her, hanging his cocked hat from a wall peg.
“And after that a bath and new clothes.”
“You have both waiting, I presume?”
“I am always hopeful of your arrival so I prepare, oui. And since I am forever sewing for the settlement, there are plenty of women’s smallclothes and gowns to choose from, too,” she added with a smile at Brielle.
They followed her through a dining room into a spacious kitchen with whitewashed walls and abundant cupboards. “Please, have a seat and let me serve you. Cider, to start?”
In a quarter of an hour they’d finished the bountiful meal including refills of the delicious cider as Sylvie sat at the table with them.
“Much has changed since you were here last year. More Acadians have joined us and others have gone further south to the new community in Louisiane. Thankfully the winter and spring were mild. Our only woe was when lightning struck and one of the barns burned. But the wheat yields have been the best since we first began fieldwork years ago.”
“Your orchards are thriving,” Bleu told her, setting down his fork.
“The cider apples especially. Our larders are bursting from season to season.” Sylvie began clearing away dishes. “Now, are you ready for a bath? Some rest?”
When Sylvie declined her help cleaning up, Brielle turned her attention to making herself presentable. Hot water was hauled upstairs to a copper tub in a bedchamber. Left alone, she could hear Bleu and Sylvie talking downstairs, still in the kitchen.
As she parted with her begrimed clothes she took in the lovely room, the canopied bed hung with yellow curtains that matched the fabric at the windows. Window seats overlooked a walled garden at the back of the house that reminded her of her parents’ in Philadelphia.
Sylvie soon reappeared with garments, not just one dress and petticoats but several, reminding her that Bleu had told her his sister had been a seamstress in Acadie before the expulsion.
She’d even worked at the Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg for the governor’s wife and daughters. And now, all of this.
The tub was emptied quickly and whisked away to be refilled for Bleu.
“I could more easily bathe in the river,” she overheard him say to his sister’s protests across the landing.
“Bof!” she rebuked him. “You are in civilization now, not the wilds like a beast.”
Another door shut, ending the matter, and Brielle stood in a newly made linen shift and boned stays, fingering a chintz petticoat draped across the bed, her washed hair hanging to her hips.
Sylvie Galant Blackburn was not only gracious but also exceptionally skilled.
Expert tiny stitches and seams, pleats and embellishments elevated every garment.
Numerous pins studded a pincushion awaiting all the pinning required to encase her in the gown of her choice.
Everything was hers, Sylvie told her, including clocked stockings, even an assortment of shoes.
Left alone, Brielle wondered the significance of such extravagance. Though Bleu had assured her of his sister’s hospitality, she hadn’t expected to be treated like family. Dare she say it?
Almost like a bride.
Bleu stood at the bottom of the staircase as Brielle came down, her hand on the banister, her eyes on him.
No one else was in the hall in a hard-won moment that left him speechless.
To his sister’s credit, he no longer smelled of sweat and horses but rosemary soap and freshly laundered linen.
As for Brielle, she hardly resembled the same woman who’d gone upstairs an hour before, making him realize the rigors of the trail had not been easy on her.
Though her hair was still damp it had been pinned up simply but alluringly, her skin aglow, her gown a work of art.
He gave a slight bow which made her smile. She cleared the bottom step and stood looking up at him. He fisted his hands to keep from touching her. His pained restraint was short lived as the front door burst open behind him and half a dozen children rushed in.
“Oncle Bleu!” Childish voices echoed in the wide hall as his nieces and nephews danced around them and eyed Brielle with sharp interest. “Oncle Bleu!”
He saw Sylvie’s attention dart to the open doorway where a thoroughly wet Titus stood, looking elated yet sheepish. He’d found the river to his liking. Perhaps that sufficed for a bath.
“You’re finally here!” the children piped. “How long will you stay?”
“Calme,” he told them, embracing them like he wanted to do Brielle. “Introduce yourselves to Mademoiselle Farrow first.”
The girls curtsied charmingly while the boys mimicked his previous bow. Suddenly quiet, they looked to Brielle as if waiting for her to release them from the polite silence.
“Tell me your names,” she said with a smile.
Oldest to youngest, they obliged.
“I shan’t remember at first so you’ll have to help me,” she told them, repeating each. “Madeleine, Talbot, Morgan, Amélie, Jolie, and Corbin.”
“There’s another bébé coming at harvesttime,” Madeleine announced as Sylvie left the kitchen and joined them. “Right, Maman?”
Sylvie nodded. “Garcon or fille … which will it be?”
“Boy,” Corbin, the eldest, said confidently. He’d grown a foot since last meeting. “And his name must be Bleu.”
“Non, a girl!” Amélie insisted, her freckled face pink. “Primevère!”
“Primrose?” Bleu asked. “What sort of absurdité is that?”
The girls giggled and the boys groaned as Bleu motioned for Titus to join them, dripping water and all.
“I hope you will be especially kind to our guests,” Sylvie told them, inviting Titus to eat in the kitchen. “They have come a long way and need rest.”
Madeleine laced her arm through her uncle’s. “Will you stay in the cottage or here in the house? I ask because Maman had the cottage redone and even papered the walls. I think Miss Farrow would find it quite nice.”
Bleu winked at his nieces and nephews. “We’ll decide who is to be where once we weather the storm of you.”