Chapter 43
Chapter
Catherine claims a migraine, says goodnight and thank you to Elizabeth, and steals up the stairs. She unclips her diamond and pearl earrings and tucks them away in her borrowed reticule.
She has hoped to sell them, using part of the money for her passage to New York and the rest to repay Elizabeth for her kindness, and for the borrowed clothing she’ll take with her, but Elizabeth wouldn’t hear of it.
She insists the dresses are a gift, and will take no recompense but a note once Catherine reaches her destination and the promise of a future visit.
Catherine’s borrowed travel valise is already packed with that extra dress and her trousers and leather slippers from The Elphame.
Those she’ll keep. Even if they’re painful reminders of what she’s lost, she knows that one day they’ll be all she has left of the time she had with Andrew and she’ll want to hold them close to her heart.
Where, in some other world, he might still be.
But not in this one. The thought nearly breaks her.
The ship McNeil arranged for her departs at dawn, but she doesn’t bother sleeping. She just sits on her bed, the valise at her feet, and waits for the sun to rise. When it does, she stands and makes her way to the docks.
There, she presses one of the earrings into the captain’s hand as payment for her berth and settles into the small cabin she’ll share for the next ten days with an elderly widow, Mrs. Haverfield. And Mrs. Haverfield’s little lapdog, Samson.
The widow and the dog seem… perfectly acceptable. Nice enough. As are the ship, the weather, and the crew. She can’t really be bothered to feel anything about any of them at all—not even the dog, and she generally very much likes dogs.
“Why New York?” Mrs. Haverfield asks her, clearly excited to be on a sea voyage, but Catherine can only manage a wan smile in return.
“My uncle is there,” she says.
“Ah,” Mrs. Haverfield replies and nods her head. “Samson and I are headed to the upper decks for a stroll. Perhaps you’d care to join us?” The dog wags his tail enthusiastically at this suggestion.
“No, thank you.” Catherine knows it’s impolite to refuse, but she can’t bring herself to go for a walk. She can’t even make conversation—the very least of which would have been to ask about Mrs. Haverfield’s trip in return.
But she doesn’t ask, she only sits with a heavy thump on her little bed, dimly aware she is being rude and without the energy to care about it. She lies her head down on her pillow instead.
Everything around her feels unremarkable. As if her senses are still lost in the low gray clouds that hung over Jamaica yesterday. As if she herself has been shrouded in gray and can summon no real enthusiasm for anything.
She closes her eyes while Mrs. Haverfield shuts the cabin door behind her and Samson gives a little bark of delight. Perhaps she will get a dog in New York, she thinks, but then dismisses the idea. She doesn’t want a dog.
She doesn’t want anything but Andrew McGann, and she can’t have him. Not and still be herself, the Catherine that she wants to be. And not if she is going to give him his chance at using the dukedom for something good.
She knows that he’ll be able to manage the task, just as she knows it will fill his heart and his deeply good soul with joy when he does.
She recognizes in him the same drive and spirit that she sees in Violet, and she wonders for a moment how she has managed to be so lucky to have them both in her life.
Until she remembers that currently, neither of them are. Violet is back in London and McGann is in Jamaica, with his grandmother, where he belongs.
She runs through the puzzle once more in her mind, as she has a thousand times already.
He needs to be the duke to fulfill his dream of building a fleet of ships and using them to provide a safe haven for those in need of one.
And to be the duke, he must give up his dream of her.
There is no way that she can see for him to have both. It is a puzzle that cannot be solved.
Nothing has changed since yesterday. Nothing will change. If there had been a solution, she wouldn’t have boarded this ship. Whatever its name is. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t care, because it isn’t The Elphame.
She stares at the wall and bites at her cuticles. She should probably spend some time considering what she is to do in New York, beyond calling on Violet’s father, but she doesn’t. She hasn’t any energy left for planning. That has stayed back in Jamaica too, along with her senses and her heart.
This is what happens, she muses, to a person without a heart. They become only a shell, not a real person at all. But she can’t even muster the enthusiasm to enjoy her own melodramatics, so she just frowns instead and bites again at her cuticles.
Eventually, Mrs. Haverfield returns and Catherine nods vaguely at her.
The woman says something about luncheon, but Catherine doesn’t reply.
She is considering the idea of joy and how even on the heels of her father’s death and all that came after—the new earl, the change in her fortunes, the edict to marry—she’d still been able to find joy.
And now she can’t.
She is bereft of it, because she is bereft of Andrew. In just a few short weeks he and joy have become inextricably linked within her and she cannot have one without the other. That thought too makes her feel heavy and empty.
She lies back on her small bed and feels the sway of the ship on water, hoping it might put her to sleep. Perhaps she can sleep all the way to New York.
McGann calls at the governor general’s mansion the morning after the Yule Ball, but Mrs. Masters informs him that Catherine is no longer a guest there. She set sail at daybreak for New York.
“What?” he says dumbly, staring at Elizabeth. He can’t make his mind understand what the woman is saying.
“She’s gone, Your Grace.”
“Aye, I heard you.” He pauses. “Where did you say she went?”
“To New York, Your Grace.”
“Aye,” he says again, but he still can’t quite understand the words. He just stands on the doorstep of the governor general’s mansion, looking… bloody hell… probably as lost as he feels.
“You might,” Elizabeth says, “try the docks for more information.”
That, at least, breaks through. He can go to the docks. He turns to leave, wishing his leg would allow him to run.
“And you might,” Elizabeth calls behind him, “stop off at my uncle’s. He likely owns the ship in question and I’m sure he’d wish to be helpful to you, Your Grace.”