Did her sister know something of his whereabouts? An imminent cruise? Quinn had gone into the anteroom with the other officials during the ball. Had the captain already set sail again? Esmée opened her mouth to ask, then closed it. She’d rather bite her tongue in two. What would knowing profit her?
Let the past pass.
“We must make the most of the time we’ve been given.” Eliza spun away from the glass. “I asked Father if he could spare you in the near future. Quinn will be in meetings, as the assembly will soon be in session. Some nonsense over outlawing the importation of slaves.”
“Nonsense? I beg to differ.”
“Nonsense in that such a measure will never pass muster in slave-heavy Virginia.” The mettle in Eliza’s tone suggested it was a frequent topic of discussion in the Chevertons’ townhouse. She softened, her eyes as imploring as a spaniel’s. “Come, Esmée. I get frightfully lonesome.”
Esmée set the book on the counter. “What of your many friends?”
“None suit like the company of my elder sister.”
Before Esmée could reply, a customer entered and ended the matter, inquiring after a new chocolate pot.
“See you soon, Sister.” Eliza smiled in farewell. “We shall have a splendid time in Williamsburg.”
Beset by a headache, Esmée left the shop and walked uphill toward Main Street, knowing Quinn and Eliza had departed and the townhouse would be quiet. Since Mama had died, Father rarely arrived home till supper at eight o’clock. As usual, Esmée was greeted by their housekeeper, Mrs. Mabrey.
“A headache, you say?” Her lined face grew pinched with concern beneath her beribboned mobcap. “Some thyme tea should do. Shall I bring it to your bedchamber?”
“Father’s study, thank you.” Esmée removed her straw hat, set it on a foyer table, and moved past the stairwell into her father’s bower. Instinctively she reached for his mahogany spyglass, standing at one window and training her sights on Indigo Island. On such a clear day every speck of sand glittered, trees swaying like the grass-skirted women her father told stories about. Somewhere she couldn’t see sat the Flask and Sword, the boon of sailors. Captain Lennox was on the back side of the island in the cottage Father had told her about. He’d visited more than once, though not for years.
“Here you go, Miss Shaw.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Mabrey.”
The tea tray was placed on a small table near at hand, infusing the paneled room with an earthiness that mingled well with Father’s pungent tobacco and heady brandy.
The housekeeper shut the door behind her, and Esmée returned to her musings. Sleeplessness pinched her eyes, and the ache gripping her temples throbbed unrelentingly. Returning the spyglass to its lined case, she sat down to her tea, then remembered the scrap of paper in her pocket. She laid it in her lap as she sipped from her cup. Her name, oft misspelled, was written flawlessly in a bold, masculine hand. The bookseller’s? Or the giver’s?
Despite her headache, a wee thrill couldn’t be denied. A little intrigue in her chocolate-laden world was not amiss. Might Eliza be right? Could the giver be the captain?
She took out her old memories of him, sorting through each one like antique buttons in a box before settling on one that shone like glass. ’Twas when he’d whisked her south to meet his Norfolk family. What a fuss had come beforehand as trunks lay open and garments were examined and cast off in favor of something suitable.
“You ken what this means, dear daughter.” Mama looked at her, a knowing glint in her eye.
Esmée, caught up in the novelty of a serious suitor, thought little beyond the present moment. “I know not except Captain Lennox wishes to acquaint me with Norfolk.”
“’Tis a thoughtful move toward matrimony, if that is what you both want.”
Torn between two hats—a straw bonnet with a cluster of silk violets and a beribboned bergère—Esmée turned this way and that before the looking glass. “Has Henri asked Father for my hand?”
“Perhaps he’s waiting for his family’s reception of you first. No doubt ’twill be as warm as ours of him. His mother is French, remember. I hope you’ll say a few words with her in her native tongue.”
Esmée had finally decided on the bergère. “How I wish I was as fluent as Eliza.”
Now she hardly recalled their coach ride south to the old port town steeped in the tobacco trade. But all the rest seemed near as yesterday. There in the entry hall of a large brick townhouse, Henri had introduced her to his family as if she’d been royalty. Their kind regard of her had been equally memorable.
His mother, expressive and garrulous, took to her at once. She had Henri’s ocean-blue eyes, calm as the sea on a summer’s day. His father, a giant of a man, was a bit stern, his dark hair unpowdered, his dress Quaker-plain. And his sister, Hermione, as lovely as her name, was blessed with the same blue eyes and coal-black hair, a dimple in her chin.
And now they were all . . . gone. While he’d been away at sea, she guessed. How did the captain come to terms with that? Esmée wrestled with the emotion the dusty memory wrought. It seemed out of place here in this still room years after the fact.
If only the tea would assuage her head and her heart. All her carefully stowed feelings, any remaining tenderness toward him, had been hardened by long, barren years. Or so she thought. Seeing him again—his once beloved features, the silky hair she’d run her fingers through, the broad shoulders that seemed a bulwark against the world—made her realize the great void she’d experienced in his absence. Though Eliza and others had tried their hand at matchmaking and a few would-be suitors had come forward, Esmée had spurned them all, politely but firmly. Much to Eliza’s dismay.
“My dream is to have children close in age,” Eliza had confided. “Cousins are truly one of life’s best gifts.”
“I may well never marry. Not everyone is called to it. You’d best have as many children as the Lord allows to make up for my lack.”
“Well, I shan’t stop conspiring.” Eliza winked at her brazenly. “’Tis what I do best!”
“Scheming is more like it,” Esmée shot back, close to tears and trying to hide it. “Praying gets better results.”
But somewhere along the way even she’d stopped praying. Whereas once Captain Lennox’s safety and well-being on the seas were first in her heart, she’d jettisoned those petitions. Her fervent prayers went the way of her hopes and became floating wreckage. As the years passed, it hardly seemed to matter.
Hers was a heart adrift.
And the captain’s sudden, unexpected return reminded her of all that.
“Daughter, are you unwell? I smell medicinal tea.” Her father entered his study, a concerned eye on her as he stowed his walking stick and cocked hat. “’Tis rare I see you home so early in the day.”
She forced a smile. “I might ask you the same, Father.”
Yawning, he took a seat behind his desk. “One gets little done the day after a ball, I’m afraid.”
Esmée poured a second cup of tea. Father disdained the stuff. “Shall I have Mrs. Mabrey bring you some coffee?”