Lord, I cannot bear it.
Eliza’s veil settled back in place. Coming alongside her, Esmée took her arm while Father supported her on the other side. Questions Esmée couldn’t ask sat like gravel in her mouth.
The cottage door stood open, but Lucy and Alice had vanished. Helping Eliza inside, Esmée and her father led her to a fireside chair, Ruenna near in her new cradle.
“I’ll have Lucy bring you both tea.” Hardly aware of what she said or did, Esmée removed her sister’s wraps while a clatter went up in the kitchen.
Father kept on his greatcoat, his expression causing Esmée’s heart to wrench harder. He looked down at Eliza, who stared vacantly into the fire. This was not her beloved, vibrant sister. This was a shell of Eliza, a fragile, miserable echo.
“Father . . .” Esmée looked at him imploringly, hands spread. Was Eliza listening? “What of Quinn?” Esmée whispered.
He swallowed with difficulty and hung his cape from a wall peg. “Though he seemed to rally, by the time I returned from bringing the baby to you, he was gone.”
Gone. Such a small word for such enormous loss. It left her breathless. Quinn—an integral part of Williamsburg, from the House of Burgesses and governor’s council to titled peer and attentive host, the pride of their very lives—now lay in the Bruton Parish graveyard. His absence tore a hole in everything they knew. Now Ruenna had no father, only a sickly, grieving mother. Death was never far, but never had it felt so personal since Mama’s passing.
Numbly she watched as Lucy brought tea. Eliza said nary a word. Father took the chair beside her while Ruenna slept without stirring at one end of the hearth. Esmée felt hapless and uncertain, words of sympathy catching in her throat. Circling behind her father and Eliza, she took the empty chair by her sister, who was accepting a cup of tea from Lucy’s hands.
“Despite everything, I’m glad you’re here,” Esmée began quietly once Lucy had retreated to the kitchen. She looked to the cradle. Ruenna wore the lace and linen gown she’d come to the island in, a matching cap on her head, the strings tied loosely beneath her chin. “Your daughter is well, thankfully. She has a felicitous disposition and cries little. She—”
“Looks just like her father.” Eliza set down her cup with a clatter.
Esmée glanced at their father in a silent plea. He regarded his granddaughter with bloodshot eyes as if he’d not slept in a fortnight. What a time they’d had since they last parted. Esmée couldn’t imagine the tears and the turmoil.
Drying her eyes, Eliza returned to her tea with a visibly set jaw, a handkerchief fisted in one hand. She did not raise her veil or look Ruenna’s way again.
CHAPTER
fifty-eight
Father and Eliza took Henri’s quarters with its two bedchambers and larger parlor. Eliza made it quite clear Ruenna was to stay behind.
“I cannot have the care of an infant when my heart is broken. Not yet.” She’d faced Esmée, the old fire in her eyes a mere flicker. “Perhaps not ever.”
With that she’d hastened to Henri’s cottage, Father in her wake. Esmée sensed Lucy’s and Alice’s unspoken relief when the decision was made.
In the ensuing days, Eliza was rarely seen, sleeping the hours away, trying to recover her health—or lose herself in slumber. Lucy would deliver their meals only to return posthaste. The easy amiability Esmée had once shared with her and Alice was now fraught with profound sadness. Even the weather grew stormy, washing more bodies from the Guineaman ashore.
Inking a quill, Esmée penned her uppermost hope during one of their lessons. “This too shall pass.”
She wrote it in her light, scrolling hand, Lucy and Alice following with their own quills and paper. Esmée felt a glimmer of hope when Alice suggested they write down what they were most thankful for, a challenging task amid their sadness. But quickly their gratitude was spelled out.
Birdsong. Cats. The Bible. Hyson tea. Warm bread. Jam. Companionship. Laughter. Firelight and starlight. The coming spring. Heaven.
That night, Esmée lingered in the tower, looking out on the vastness of the water and willing Henri back to her. Ensconced on high, she seemed to rise above the worries of the moment. She pulled another old letter she’d gotten from the sea chest out of her pocket.
7th June 1749
Dear Esmée,
Since we passed the island of Barbados we have had continuous contrary winds. We therefore mostly sailed with set sails and double-reefed topsails.
I have not written in some time. I have realized these letters, which you will likely never read, have instead become necessary to me. Somehow the simple stroke of writing your name brings you nearer despite the miles and circumstances that separate us. Though coastal Virginia fades in memory the longer I’m away, you remain steadfast. I see your eyes in the green of a Montserrat forest, your dark hair reflected in the black-sand beaches, your comely form in the wending hills and valleys of these lush islands. You once said I am all rigging and sails, not a whit romantic. Let this be proof I am not that which you claimed, not soulless but soulful, and still besotted.
She could almost hear him speaking, his penned words reflective of his voice. Longing swam through her in a giddy rush. All the years lost to them still stung like a sea urchin, but she sensed Henri was on his way back to her. Or so she hoped. Eliza had no such silver lining.
Setting aside his letter yellowed with age, she took out a blank sheet of new paper and inked her goose quill.
Dear Henri,
Words cannot express the depth of my missing you. Each day feels a year, each minute hours. Yet I am proud of your service to the colonies and am confident your mission will be a success.
All that has happened since you sailed breaks my heart. I cannot even commit my feelings to paper without spotting the page. Smallpox is making a misery of Virginia once again. Father and I are spared, as we have mild scars to show for it from years past. But dear Eliza has lost Quinn and is even now on the island with me, a scarred widow. Father is with us. I fear he is afraid to leave Eliza as if she might die of grief. I know not what to say nor how to comfort her. She has no interest in her newborn daughter. I pray to help her but cannot see my way clear.
Another heartache is that a ship foundered in a tempest a sennight or so ago . . .
The candle flickered, a glaze of gold before her tear-filled eyes. Her quill dropped and spattered ink. She laid her head against the table, another prayer rising in her heart.
Lord, help me help Eliza.
On the Sabbath, Esmée walked with her father on the beach. The tide was out, the sun making a blinding blue of the water. Signs of spring were taking hold, not only beach grass but a lone spot of color here and there poking out amid marshland and forest.
“I miss Grace Church,” Esmée confessed, her arm tucked in his. “It seems strange on the Lord’s Day to be absent.”
“Sabbath services are suspended till the pox subsides.” He bent to examine a piece of sea glass. “Henri told me he might build a chapel here, though he would be hard-pressed to find a clergyman to live on the island. ’Twould be an exceedingly small flock.”
Esmée lifted her head to the sea breeze, trying to imagine it. She’d just shown Father the finished garden wall and boundaries of their future home. His approval meant the world to her. He’d also asked to see the graves. She bit her lip when tempted to tell him about the buried treasure.