CHAPTER THREE #3
“You should be grateful we discovered his character before the marriage. With your limitations, another family might insist you accept whatever husband had been secured. Your father and I are protecting you.”
My limitations.
The words silenced me more completely than my stammer ever had.
Mother interpreted my silence as surrender.
Nathaniel came to Le Champ des Fleurs three nights later.
A storm had passed over the river shortly before dusk, leaving the lawn wet and the sky the bruised purple of a healing wound. I was in the schoolroom with the windows open, playing the same passage again and again because repetition demanded nothing from my voice.
The door opened behind me.
Nathaniel stood upon the threshold.
Mud darkened his boots and the lower edge of his naval coat. Rain had flattened his hair against his forehead. He looked exhausted, but there was a terrible purpose in his face that frightened me more than exhaustion should have.
I rose so quickly that the bench scraped across the floor.
“N-N-N—”
“It is all right,” he said. “I know.”
He closed the door but did not come farther into the room.
“Your father has forbidden me the house. I will honor that after tonight.”
I shook my head.
“The engagement is finished, Cécile.”
Another shake, harder this time.
His expression softened, and that kindness nearly broke me.
“You need not defend what existed between us. Your parents arranged it, and now they have withdrawn it. You bear no blame for either decision.”
That was not true. I had allowed them to speak for me. I had stood before Mother with a thousand words burning inside my mind and given her nothing she could not ignore.
Nathaniel approached the pianoforte and placed several handwritten pages upon its lid.
“I prepared this arrangement for you before everything changed.”
I touched the first page. His name appeared in the upper corner, written in the strong, slanted hand I knew from his letters.
“You should keep it,” he said. “Whatever else they take from you, do not let them persuade you that your music belongs to them.”
I pressed the pages against my chest.
Below us, a door slammed. My father’s voice carried through the hall.
Nathaniel looked toward the sound.
“I discovered something during my final command,” he said quickly. “Records that should not exist and cargo that was never reported. Your father knows why my name has been ruined. So do Judge Dewey and Mr. George.”
The blood seemed to leave my hands.
Nathaniel stepped nearer, lowering his voice.
“If they tell you I fled Virginia, do not believe them.”
I stared at him.
“I have written to friends who understand what these men have done. If the letter reaches them, they will come.”
“Wh-who?”
A floorboard groaned in the gallery.
Nathaniel glanced toward the door.
“There is no time.”
I seized his sleeve. The damp wool felt cold beneath my fingers.
“D-d-don’t—”
My father threw open the door.
For one terrible moment, neither man moved.
Then Father looked at my hand upon Nathaniel’s coat.
“Take your hands off my daughter.”
Nathaniel did not obey immediately. His eyes remained upon mine.
“Being heard is not the same as being safe, Cécile,” he said quietly. “Remember that.”
My father crossed the room and tore us apart.
He called for servants. He accused Nathaniel of trespass, dishonor and madness. Nathaniel answered none of it. He allowed Father to drive him into the gallery without resistance.
I followed as far as the schoolroom door.
“I b-b-believe—”
Nathaniel looked back.
The rest of the sentence struck glass.
Father shoved him toward the stairs.
I tried again, forcing breath against the closed passage of my throat until pain spread across my chest.
“I b-believe y-you.”
Whether Nathaniel heard me, I never knew.
He disappeared down the staircase, and the front doors closed behind him.
By morning, he was gone from the county.
I wrote him a letter that afternoon. It contained only four words.
I should have spoken sooner.
I hid it inside the music cabinet, intending to send it when I learned where he had gone.
No address ever came.
The memory left me with the same cruel truth: I had allowed my parents to mistake silence for obedience so many times that even I had begun to confuse the two.
Nathaniel had believed my voice was worth waiting for.
When his turn came to be heard, I had not made anyone listen.
And now he was gone. Disgraced, erased from our parlor talk, and vanished into the dark, leaving me trapped in this grand, hollow house with men who viewed me as a broken ornament.
From the gardens below, the sharp, shrill laughter of Warren Dewey echoed up through the open window, followed by the distant clatter of tea cups.
I pressed Nathaniel’s sheet music against my chest, staring at the closed rosewood lid of the pianoforte.
Where are you? I thought fiercely into the quiet, dusty room. Why did you leave me here with them?
The house gave no answer. Outside, the gardenias shifted in the afternoon heat, pouring their sickly, rotting sweetness through the glass, while high above the portico, a single blue butterfly beat its wings against the transom.