Eleven. A Secret History
Eleven
A Secret History
SEVENTH DAY AT SEA
June 22, 1865
Henrietta Stevenson, with her delicate Grecian features and gentle manner, had been cast as the seamstress whom Sydney Carton consoles on their way to the guillotine in the final scene of the play. Several men had tried to win the role of Carton, Nicholas Nelson coming closest until Lu deemed him too “soft.” Charlotte felt for her sister when journalist Denham Scott nonchalantly strutted into the dining room to read against Henrietta for the much-coveted part.
Carton: Keep your eyes upon me and mind no other object.
(Takes both of the seamstress’s hands in his.)
Seamstress: I mind nothing while I hold your hand. I shall mind nothing when I let it go, if it should be rapid.
Carton: Our executioners will be rapid—fear not.
Seamstress: You comfort me so much. I am so ignorant! Am I to kiss you now? Is the moment of our fate come?
Carton: Yes.
Charlotte sat on a bench at the foot of the stage, watching her sister be pulled in by Denham Scott—something not in their director’s audition notes. A sudden notion hit Charlotte like a thunderclap as Louisa belted out for the scene to stop: the two people alone onstage had stood like this before.
What on earth? Charlotte asked herself in a panic, jumping up as the room erupted into applause and Louisa was forced to acknowledge that Scott made the best Carton so far (“At least all your negative qualities are in alignment with his!” she crowed). But Lu seemed as distressed as Charlotte by the sudden, intimate, and all-too-real display onstage. The search for Carton would continue.
Meanwhile, Henrietta’s cheeks were flushed, always a tell-tale sign. She might keep from even Charlotte her innermost thoughts, but the one thing she could never hide was her sense of decorum. As Henrietta quickly left the dining saloon, Charlotte followed closely on her heels.
“Harry—what on earth?” Charlotte ran through the cabin door after her. “How dare Scott grab and surprise you like that? Lu’s threatening to banish the men for good!”
Henrietta stood by the dresser, fiddling with the handle of a hairbrush. “I wasn’t entirely surprised.”
“Honestly, Harry, whatever can you mean?” She took so long to answer that Charlotte went over and grabbed the hairbrush away from her. “Well?”
“Do you remember when we first heard back from Admiral Austen? How surprised we were by that?”
“Yes, and then we wrote him again— you wrote—and we invited ourselves here.”
“We did, yes, but then—well, do you remember at Constance’s salon, when Denham mentioned being recalled to London?” Henrietta began to speak unusually fast. “And the Admiral DuPont had just sunk, and the head of Cunard made his VIP offer to the Herald and its reporters, and then…”
“And then what ?”
“… and then Denham managed to get on board in time to join us.”
Charlotte stared back at her in confusion. “But why would he do that?”
“I should have spoken sooner. It’s all happened so fast.” Henrietta reached into the high neckline of her check-patterned day dress and pulled out a garnet ring on a simple chain. Charlotte’s first thought was how long Harry had secretly been wearing the necklace, as if her brain could not yet absorb what her sister was trying to tell her.
“What in the world is that?”
“He gave this to me.”
“Who—Scott? That’s impossible—when?”
“Last night.”
“Last night here, on ship?” Charlotte’s mouth fell open.
“He loves me.” Henrietta suddenly beamed. “And I love him.”
“Harry, no! That’s absurd!”
“I know Denham comes across as cocky and flippant, but I promise you he is the very picture of industry. He supports his brothers and sisters back home with his earnings, leaving so little for himself. He prizes loyalty to family above all. If he was a character in your beloved Dickens, you would think him a hero.”
“But you hardly know him!” Stunned, Charlotte sank onto the lower bunk bed as an image flashed through her head: Henrietta’s flushed cheeks in Harvard Yard after Nash’s lecture, and again on the steps of the Athenaeum over her broken boot. “Oh, wait—oh—Harry, no! All those walks alone back home, on the Common, and here on board, whilst I nap…?” Henrietta silently nodded. “But why such secrecy from me, your own sister?”
“I couldn’t bear to add to your worries over leaving Father. And I had to be certain, before I did.”
“Yet you are somehow certain now—here, in the middle of the Atlantic? I suppose you’ll tell me next how Scott has swept you away.…”
“Denham is indeed more romantic than me—he doesn’t want to waste a moment.”
“A moment? To do what?” stammered Charlotte.
“To marry. To start our family life together.”
“But why such a rush?” She watched in horror as Henrietta blushed, and then Charlotte’s own cheeks reddened as the unusual nature of their surroundings dawned on her. “Henrietta Alice Stevenson, do not tell me you’re planning to wed on ship! Oh my God, you are, aren’t you!”
“One day you will understand, Charlie, I promise you. I wish it could be now—I am so sorry for the shock of it.”
“And then what—you’re to live in England?” Henrietta nodded, and Charlotte crossed her arms against the news as if about to throw a childish fit. “I won’t be a party to this, I won’t. Father would never forgive me for not stopping you.”
“Charlie, if you had an offer to go on the London stage, you would leave Boston in a heartbeat and you know it.”
Charlotte started at these words; she was not used to such presumption in her sister. “No, I do not know it! Harry, what has happened to you—really? And you will be so poor!”
“I have no doubt that Denham will continue to rise at the paper. He never gives up when he wants something.”
“That something, at present, being you, I take it? You and not our money, or Father’s station in society—you’re so sure of that?”
“Charlotte!”
“How often he mentions having to make his way!” she defiantly exclaimed.
“He is self-made —just like Nash. It’s a fine quality in a man, wouldn’t you say?” She sat down on the bunk bed next to Charlotte, who immediately burst into tears. Harry was everything to her—missing mother, wise sister, compassionate friend—and the mere idea of her absence was intolerable.
“Oh, Harry, I know I sound a brat.” Charlotte wiped her eyes on her gingham sleeve. “It’s just so much to take in.…” Henrietta pulled her close and kissed the top of her head like their mother used to do, although Charlotte had no memory of that herself. “… and poor Father,” she added through her tears. Harry’s calm and attentive presence at home had always sustained William Stevenson—Charlotte could not imagine returning alone to Boston to face him.
“I wish there was something I could do or say, anything to help you understand.”
Charlotte sat up straight and grabbed Henrietta’s hands in hers. “We sailed together for a reason—can you not wait to marry?” she pleaded, with as much fire in her eyes as when onstage. “Can you not wait before you desert me for good?”
Henrietta sighed from experience and squeezed her sister’s hand in hers. Charlotte had always been impossible to say no to.
Eventually Charlotte curled up childlike in the bottom bunk, exhausted from all the emotion of the day, and fell asleep. Henrietta tucked the blanket about her before quietly leaving the cabin. She and Denham often met by the iron stairs leading to the wheelhouse and this was where she now found him, standing with his profile to sea, balancing a notebook against the deck railing as he scribbled. She watched him for a few seconds before speaking—he always looked so happy when at work.
“I’m afraid you were too convincing in your audition for Charlotte.” She saw Denham’s face break out in a smile at her words as he tucked the notebook away and turned to face her. They hadn’t had a moment alone together since becoming engaged the previous night, and Henrietta had been both shocked and strangely thrilled when he had presented himself to her onstage. “You should have told me you would show up like that.”
“An irresistible impulse of mine.” Denham grinned. “You know them well by now. So, I take it from your expression that you told her? I am glad. Was it difficult? You said she can be volatile.”
“No, I said she’s very free in her manners. One always knows where one stands with her.”
“And where do the two of us stand?” He held out his hand and Henrietta came over to take it. Minutes passed as they stood there quietly, hands clasped together on the railing, watching the roiling water below until a troubled Henrietta was first to speak.
“You can’t see anything, down there, the deeper and murkier it gets. Think of all that’s hidden—sea creatures, Plato’s lost island of Atlantis, icebergs… a whole other world. Like the world of this ship.”
“Not icebergs,” corrected Denham. “We always get the tip of a warning there.”
She sighed from regret. “I should have warned Charlie.”
“We ran out of time. Too many ships leaving or sinking…” He turned to gently kiss her brow. “How do we fix things for you?”
“She wants us to wait to marry—to complete the journey she and I set out on together, at such pain to our father, and meet with the admiral.”
“Loyalty is one of your finest qualities, my darling—along with a surprising mastery of British naval history!” She loved how he always spoke so admiringly of her, even when he teased. “But I am determined to step foot on British soil with you as my wife.”
Henrietta regretted never having developed any feminine wiles, for all she could do was ask him again to wait. But he shook his head, then tilted it toward her in that wonderful way of his, so full of anticipation and direction. “My love, I didn’t get where I am by giving in so easily.…”
Her breath caught in her throat as the warmth of his lips met hers. It only now broke through Henrietta’s consciousness how much of love was about touch—and how destabilizing. All she wanted was to be with him, and this desire washed away everything else like the sea. The world was now surface landscape, mere background to her want and need: he was its gravitational pull, its chemical center. In their few moments of intimacy together, she had never felt less alone—or more at home with herself. This must be the true power of love: the willingness to leave one’s world behind for a place that had been hiding deep inside you all along, another lost island. She was stunned to realize she didn’t mind the prospect—she, whom Charlotte had often had quite the job of getting out of doors to do things.
She finally pulled back as she recalled her promise to Charlotte. “Can we not compromise?”
“When it comes to love?” He smiled. “Never!”
“No, I mean, what if we still marry on ship, but you head back to the paper as required, and Charlotte and I stay on in Portsmouth as planned?”
“But only long enough to visit with the admiral, you promise? And you and I would reunite in London immediately afterward?” He narrowed his eyes in playful resignation. “I suppose it would give me time to find a proper home for my bride.”
She put both her hands on his shoulders and bowed her head against his chest, just as she had watched Charlotte do onstage as Lucie Manette. Henrietta’s lack of a mother’s guidance did nothing to steady her at times like this. “How do you feel about that prospect?”
“I feel I will regret it, letting go of you so easily.”
“I promise I will make it up to you the moment we reunite.”
“Why, Miss Stevenson, is that the first hint of flirtation from you, only now that my affection is secure?”
“I’ve done much of this backward,” she admitted, looking up at him with a smile.
“Just so long as you catch me up in the end,” he replied, giving her nose a little tap in teasing reprimand.