Sadness shaded Eliza’s finely molded features. “Would that we had Mama instead.”
They turned down a brick walkway that led past a grand magnolia tree to the Cheverton townhouse. A butler in livery opened the door before they’d set foot on the first step, greeting them and then sending to the kitchen for tea at Eliza’s request.
Esmée left her lace purchase and straw hat in the foyer and followed Eliza into a newly refurbished parlor of Egyptian blue overlooking the rear garden. They sat, and a tea table between them was soon laid with the latest creamware tea service.
Eliza was unusually subdued. “Father’s last exploits were the death of Mama.”
Esmée didn’t care to dwell on it. Many years had passed since they fled the pirate’s den of Rhode Island, exchanging Block Island for York’s sandy shores. Something nefarious had sent them south, with Father’s northern enemies determined to lay him low. Escaping their net, he’d begun anew in Virginia, a respected admiral turned shipbuilder, merchant, tax assessor, and founding member of Grace Church.
Not the scourge of merchant vessels sailing the trade routes of the Spanish Main.
“Do you ever wonder why Father turned to privateering after so illustrious a naval career?” Eliza whispered.
Tea was brought, delaying Esmée’s answer.
“Hyson or imperial?” her sister asked.
“Hyson with cream, please.” Esmée looked out the window, where the last summer irises bent beneath the rising wind. The tea’s delicate fragrance, usually soothing, failed to relieve. “Father’s very lifeblood is salt water.”
Eliza leaned in conspiratorially. “Speaking of maritime matters, there’s tittle-tattle floating about that a certain sea captain has returned to Virginia.”
Esmée felt a slight tremor as she lifted her cup. “Father said the same.”
“Does that upset you? Your hand is shaking.” Eliza’s concern only elevated Esmée’s unease. “I thought perhaps after so many years, you’d all but yawn at the mention of his name.”
Yawn? Rather, yowl. “Henri Lennox remains a conundrum, then and now.”
“Who is the captain anyway?” Eliza mused. “Respected privateer . . . or pirate?”
Esmée lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug. “’Tis ever been a puzzle separating pirates from privateers. People have a terrible thirst for gossip and believe the worst.”
“I’ll not align with his enemies and call him a pirate but rather a respected privateer and former commissioned officer of the Royal Navy.” Eliza’s hand slipped to her middle as if her maternity stays were laced too tightly. “Tell me again why you two parted. The details escape me after so long. All I can remember is the both of you being absolutely besotted.”
Besotted. The word, once sweet, now seemed laughable.
“He chose the sea—his captaincy and ship—over me.” Esmée took a silver spoon and stirred sugar into her cup. “And I could not conscience being left behind on shore.”
“No doubt our family history has some bearing on your very messy parting. With Father away at sea so much, we hardly knew him. Mama was more widow. We seemed rather fatherless except we never lacked a thing. Even now, deeply involved in colonial maritime affairs, he is a riddle, always on the go and remarkably closemouthed.”
Esmée knew firsthand her father’s long silences—rife with unspoken regrets, she’d often thought—and the surprising recent words he did utter.
“You were in love once.”
Even now, a sennight later, the words clung to her like pitch.
Desperate for a distraction, Esmée looked about the lovely parlor still smelling of fresh milk paint. Eliza’s redecorating had no end. “I fear Father is missing Mama more rather than less as time goes by. Lately he seems especially restless. Preoccupied.”
Eliza’s alarmed eyes pinned her over the rim of her Sevres cup. “’Tis almost October, the month Mama passed. Surely that is the reason.”
Was it?
Esmée forced a smile, more undone by Eliza’s rare discomfiture than Father’s moods. “Perhaps the Lightfoot pleasure ball is just the antidote for us all.”
CHAPTER
three
Henri rowed the five miles from Indigo Island to the mainland in under an hour, spurred on by seas so flat and smooth they resembled an opal. Such becalmed waters were usually a hindrance, stranding ships and starving crews nearer the equator. The doldrums were the bane of Atlantic sailors. But here off Virginia’s coast, all was in his favor, though he wished for a light wind, if only to allay the late September sun beating at his back and dampening his linen shirt.
A sack of letters lay in the jolly boat’s bottom, brought over eight thousand miles from Ascension Island to loved ones throughout Virginia. Since his own familial ties were so meagre, he’d had no letters to post. The lonesome lack sharpened his resolve to keep the tenuous ties of his fellow mariners intact.
Looking over his shoulder, he squinted beneath the brim of his cocked hat as York’s sprawling façade took shape. His mental map of the thriving town was largely intact. Little had changed other than an array of new warehouses as befitted a port town. Water Street still boasted a staggering assortment of taverns and rum shops and bawdy houses, as plenteous as the ships glutting the harbor. On the cliff above, handsome, genteel homes looked down like disgruntled parishioners on the sinning street.
His gaze hung on one. The Shaw residence. He’d last ducked beneath the door’s lintel at the age of five and twenty. Esmée was younger, a vision of midnight hair, eyes green as a Montserrat forest, and a smile that had once stood him still. What had ten years wrought? Likely she’d wed. Given her parents grandchildren.
His mind reached back to a memory long blocked, the day he and Esmée had first met. The Relentless had moored at Block Island, a stronghold of privateers, pirates, and assorted mariners in Rhode Island. He rarely sailed so far north, but unexpected business had taken him there.
Three young women had been walking the beach, a fragile April sun breaking through after a fearsome winter. They were shelling, bare of foot, skirts lifted above their ankles. Their lilting voices carried over the water as the Relentless docked, drawing the attention of his affection-starved crew. He’d rebuked them for gawking but was hard-pressed to rein himself in and follow his own admonishment.
And then, that very eve, he’d found himself at a supper party hosted by the prominent Williams family. In Esmée walked, her smile wide, her pale green gown beguiling. Henri was taken aback by her warmth, her genuineness. She was flushed by the sun, as curvaceous and inviting as tropical fruit.
“Captain Lennox,” their hostess queried, “have you met Miss Esmée Shaw?”
Henri gave the requisite bow while Esmée curtsied prettily, hands clasped at her slim waist.
“The privateer?” she asked, her long-lashed gaze holding his. “Henri Lennox?”
Ahn-ree. Her French was perfect. Few pronounced his forename well. That alone left him half-smitten. “Should I bow out now?”
“Never fear.” Her face dimpled into a laugh. “I don’t believe half what the papers print.”