Chapter 14
That night on Sylvie’s porch, Bleu looked down on the cottage where Brielle had settled with Titus, the windows framed in candlelight. Alone with his sister on the porch, the children abed, he felt a rare contentment creep in, rubbing away the calluses of the outside world.
“So what do you think of Miss Farrow?” he asked, his voice so low he didn’t think his sister heard him as it took her a moment to answer.
“She’s lovely—astonishingly so,” Sylvie told him in low tones. “And I have a great many questions.”
“You’ve recovered from the shock of our arrival?”
“What I haven’t recovered from are your words to me at introduction.”
“When I told you she is my future bride but may not know it yet?”
“Exactly.”
“Given we met so recently, I would give her time.”
“I don’t think she needs time. Her every look at you tells a different story.”
Did it? Uncertain, he shifted in his chair though his eyes didn’t leave the cottage.
“And I see how you look at her …” She leaned in as if aware they might be overheard. “Tell me why, when no other woman has ever turned your head, you have suddenly lost your head to someone you’ve only known briefly?”
He lifted his shoulders, the mystery beyond him. “Some might say it was a bad beginning.” Though he didn’t like to remember that black Sabbath, he told her about the raid and Sylvie’s delight changed to dismay. “When I first saw her she was lying on the ground and I thought she was among the dead.”
“She’d fainted?”
He nodded. “Despite everything, when she came to and looked at me it was like lightning.” He remembered the charged moment so vividly it was like reliving it all over again. “It doesn’t hurt that she is, as you said, astonishingly belle. But it goes far beyond that.”
“How so?”
“When I am with her …” He paused, trying to corral words when he had none.
“When I am with her I feel I’ve come home.
It’s as if I’ve wandered for many years without a compass or map and have finally found what I’ve sought.
I never thought it would be a person but a place.
But it is very much a person, and I cannot explain it any better than that. ”
“You’re in love with her.”
“I am hardly a worthy prospect.”
“You settled her indenture contract,” she reminded him. “What other recommendation or gallant gesture is needed?”
“I don’t want her to wed me because she feels indebted. That may be her mind at present, clouding her judgment. For now she is liberated and sees me as her hero. I’ll just enjoy that for however long it lasts.”
Sylvie laughed softly and he felt encircled by the warm family feeling he’d missed. He had no confidante other than his sister … till Brielle. Theirs was a newfound intimacy he didn’t even know he needed, filling up the hollow places he’d long had inside him.
“You’ve prayed about her?” she asked.
Had he? His endless roaming, his longing for home, seemed a plea or prayer in itself. Since leaving Fort Pitt, caught up in events he’d not foreseen, he’d hardly been heavenly minded. But since some prayers went unanswered didn’t it stand to reason some were answered unasked?
Sylvie continued quietly. “I’ve not stopped praying for you and your future bride since leaving Acadie. You’ll make a fine husband and father. I’ve thought so for a long time now.”
“I am without work, a means to sustain her.”
“You’ve not lacked work since the war began.”
His thoughts whirled backwards instead of forwards. “Once I accused you of provisioning the enemy when your husband, the infamous Blackburn, first came to our door. Would you have me do the same?”
She wafted her fan so vigorously he felt its wind. “What means you?”
“I’ve had offers from the British—colonial governors of Virginia and Pennsylvania—to continue acting as official interpreter and guide.”
“Yet you can’t sustain a bride?” Her voice held disbelief. “Do they pay so little?”
“Two hundred pounds sterling a year.”
She gasped. “Are you jesting? ’Tis a small fortune!”
“The Lords of Trade are wanting to establish good relations with the tribes now that peace has been declared. A precarious path of coercion and exploitation.”
“Then I shan’t offer my congratulations.”
“Non. Payment aside, I have little peace about the position.”
“You still consider England the enemy.”
“Our forced removal from Acadie is not easily forgiven nor forgotten.”
“For a long time I felt like you. I still do though my ire doesn’t burn as bright. I’ve only moved past it by choosing a new life here and letting the past rest.”
“Marrying the enemy didn’t hurt,” he jested.
She smiled. “He’s Scots, he often reminds me, not English.”
“When will he return?”
“One never knows with surveying. He’s not far, just north of Charlottesville, a safer survey unlike forays into the back settlements.” Her voice tightened with concern. “I wonder, given the recent raid sparing Brielle and Titus, if that whole territory won’t soon be ablaze again.”
He nodded. “Western Virginia remains a ring of fire but at least I don’t have to watch my back here. The Rivanna is incredibly civilized.”
She sighed. “I suppose it’s too soon to start sewing Brielle’s trousseau.”
“Sew all you like, just don’t announce it.” He watched as the lights went out in the cottage.
How did one go about the business of courting when it hadn’t been done before?
Brielle came awake wondering where she was before her thoughts swung to Bleu.
Sunlight streamed across the cottage’s pine plank floor, and she realized she’d slept later than she meant to.
Titus snored faintly in the adjoining room, familiar and reassuring.
He needed his rest. The featherbed Bleu promised had lulled them both into a sound night’s sleep.
She lay still, reflecting on all that had happened since leaving the Rose and Crown.
Her new lodging was as pleasing as her former attic had been plain.
The Galants had spared no effort or expense at creating a welcoming bower down to the dove grey and rose wallpaper with matching bedding and the simple but well-made furnishings.
“I lived here before my marriage and now it’s kept ready for guests who happen by,” Sylvie had told her. “A place of happy memories and new beginnings.”
In a quarter of an hour Brielle had managed her front-lacing stays and chosen a simple sage green gown and white linen apron rather than the fancy chintz of yesterday.
Her braided hair was half hidden beneath a lace-edged cap, and she felt more herself than she had in years.
Though her stomach rumbled hungrily, all she wanted was Bleu.
Stepping onto the unfamiliar porch had her looking everywhere at once. June had stolen May’s apple blossoms and turned the sprawling orchard a lush green. She spied a footpath leading somewhere. To the heart of the settlement? The big house—Orchard Rest—seemed quiet. Was Bleu still abed upstairs?
She stepped off the porch and followed the path through the woods, unsure where it would lead her or who she’d meet.
Yet she felt safe. Fully alive. Not having her day hemmed in with endless tavern tasks seemed a miracle.
To her left, the Rivanna flowed southeasterly.
When she’d come through the trees she saw the ferry Bleu had spoken of mid-river.
A number of dependencies and outbuildings stood sturdily along both riverbanks.
On her side of the river, a wide lane divided smithy and stables from what looked to be a weaving house and dye shed. She counted a dozen weatherboard buildings painted a deep red and yellow. Men and women went about their work, none noticing her as she stopped at the wood’s edge.
“Bonjour, Mademoiselle Farrow.”
The low, beloved voice turned her around. Out of buckskins and minus his weapons, freshly shaven and clad in breeches and boots and a linen shirt, Bleu looked entirely different yet every bit as handsome.
In his extended hand were wild strawberries. “For you.”
“Salut toi.” She took them with an exclamation of delight, feeding him one before eating the rest. “Merci,” she added, the words pulled from some past part of her she’d thought lost forever.
His eyes held a question. “Would you like a tour of the settlement?”
At her nod they fell into step together, walking to one side of the dusty lane to avoid a passing wagon. The driver raised his hat to them, calling out a greeting.
“Do you know everyone?” she asked.
“Non.” He took her arm and led her around a rut. “Some Acadians are new to me though many have been here since the settlement’s founding eight years ago.”
She soon lost count of the buildings he pointed out.
Stillroom. Wash house. Stables. Smokehouse.
Spinning house. Salt house. Even a communal dining room and kitchen.
Barns stood in distant fields crisscrossed with rail fences.
But it was the chapel in the bend of the river at the farthest end of the settlement that stole her attention and her heart.
Modest and whitewashed, it boasted a steep, shingled roof and tall windows, the door affixed with decorative iron hardware.
“Small,” she exclaimed when they stepped inside. “Yet well made.”
“It serves many purposes,” he told her as they walked the center aisle toward the altar. “Traveling preachers come by on occasion. Weddings and baptisms and christenings are celebrated—and sometimes funerals. There’s even been talk of adding a bell tower.”
The fenced cemetery she’d seen behind the chapel turned her melancholy, yet the quaint building held the peace she’d often craved.
Her fears that her freedom would fall apart—that Griffiths would find her and Titus and return them to the tavern—lessened here.
Though she knew it was senseless, trusting Bleu had taken care of the matter, she still couldn’t shake her unease.
“I’ve not been in a church since Philadelphia.” Eyes on the altar, she sat down on a wooden pew. “And you?”
“I find God more outside these four walls than within.”
“The Creator of hot springs and waterfalls and wild strawberries.” She smiled, thankful for all they’d experienced in so short a time.
Thankful, too, he couldn’t divine her hopes of a wedding in this hushed, hallowed place.
If he asked her this very moment to marry him right here and now she would, his smile wooing her though that might not have been his intention.
Seized with shyness, she looked to her aproned lap, as tongue-tied as she was enamored.
Gabrielle Galant.