My dearest girls, you are fretting Mr. Kennedy too much,” their mother told them, even shaking her finger at them this time over their bothering their stepfather.
She was still a lovely woman, which, Lucy thought, was probably what got them in this pickle. One must know what to spend one’s face and future for, she thought, and this marriage bargain their mother had made to get them away from rural Canada and back to Europe was not worth it. She had promised their beloved father on his deathbed she would return here but at what price?
The three “Sutherland girls,” as they still sometimes called themselves out of David Kennedy’s earshot, were huddled in the parlor of their rented house called Richelieu. “However mild we find the climate here, your stepfather has his difficult days,” Mother went on, wringing her hands.
“As do we—and you, Mother,” Lucy insisted, “with all his bitterness and scolding.”
“We mustn’t judge someone who is ill, my dears. As the Bible says, we must look out not only for our own interests but also for the interests of others.”
“He doesn’t look out for yours,” Lucy said, hands on her hips. At nearly age sixteen now, she had stepped forward more than once to defend her mother to the curmudgeon. “Good gracious, he runs you ragged.”
“Lucy,” Elinor put in, “best we leave it alone.”
“A fine thing for you to say,” Lucy went on with a frown at her younger sister. “You often hide out in this very room if we’re not with Ada—alone with these portraits of beautiful women who just stare down from their frames and don’t make a peep, when Mother’s always at his beck and call.”
“Lucile!” Mother said. “You dare not scold your sister for making what escape she can. You love these paintings too, or at least the gowns in them, as much as Nellie loves making up their stories. Now I must get back upstairs for he needs his hot posset. Oh, how different Jersey is from those days your father and I lived here, our—our first wonderful, romantic days together.” Her eyelashes clumped with tears. “I’ve told you both so much about him, so please never forget him and his fine family ties as I shan’t so that—”
Her voice caught on a sob. She squeezed both their shoulders and hurried from the room as the thuds of her second husband’s cane sounded on the ceiling overhead.
Lucy said, “She loved Father so much she’ll never love anyone else. She married him,” she added with a slanted look at the ceiling, “to get us out of that farm in wilderness Canada, to give us a chance in England. And here we are in just Jersey after a stay in Mr. Kennedy’s family’s gloomy castle, which I hated, hated, hated. Especially the horrid governesses, especially that one that locked us up so she could have illicit trysts with the valet!”
“Just Jersey is far better than that. At least before we ran off the last governess here, we improved our French, oui? I long to see France—well, someday.”
“At least we can get out of this house, right now, together,” Lucy said. “Your mere mention of our Ontario days makes me feel doubly trapped here.”
“We can’t just leave.”
“Write Mother a note that we went for a walk to see Ada or to look in shop windows in town.”
“But did we?”
“Good gracious, Nellie, you adore reading fiction, so make it up! We’ll walk out the causeway to old Elizabeth Castle. As grim and weathered as the old stone pile is, you’ve said it’s so romantic with its stone towers, and it was named for ‘the Virgin Queen.’ I’m sure it’s low tide.”
“But we’ll have to listen for the warning bell when to leave. I don’t care if we learned how to swim years ago, you know you can get caught there when the tide rises.”
“Ah, when the tide rises,” Lucy said, slapping a piece of paper and pen on the table next to Nellie, then fetching the inkwell. “Sounds like the title of a book you could use when you become a famous writer someday.”
“Don’t tease. I shall keep my diary but find someone wonderful to wed,” Nellie insisted as she bent over the paper. “And you will draw and sew pretty dresses like the ones in these Lely and Reynolds portraits, oui?”
“Sacre bleu! When the cows come home!”
“Which, of course, they do in Jersey all the time.”
Lucy almost laughed at that. “The cows may come home, but I won’t be here. I’m going to follow the Jersey Lily to London.”
“Can you believe it? She’s won the favor of the Prince of Wales. I overheard that she’s his mistress—his lover. I didn’t tell you anything about that, because it is just too risqué, but I overheard Mrs. Norcott telling mother something Lillie said to the prince in public. In public!”
“Tell me now. Tell me!” Lucy demanded, putting her elbows on the table and her face close to Nellie’s.
In a quiet voice, though there was no one else to hear, blushing to the roots of her red hair, Nellie said, “He told her—as a joke, I guess—that he had spent enough on her to build a battleship.”
“Oh my. I can just imagine the wardrobe he’s paying for and the jewels. No more plain black gowns. But she wasn’t cowed one bit by that, I’ll wager. So she said?” Lucy prompted.
“She told him right back, ‘And you’ve spent enough in me to float one!’”
Lucy gasped and clapped both hands over her mouth. She bounced back from the table, eyes wide. She was shocked at that, but also at the fact that Nellie must know what that meant. “And did she get scolded, snubbed, or shunned?”
“Our Lillie? I take it whoever overheard laughed, and it’s spread like wildfire—obviously, even to Jersey! Can you believe it?” Nellie repeated.
Lucy heaved a huge sigh. “It doesn’t matter a whit if I believe it. She believes in herself, and so the world’s her oyster.”
“I knew you would be shocked. And to think, she believed in us. There,” Nellie said, signing both their names with a flourish. “I told Mother we won’t be late. Since I’m named after her, I should sign as Elinor the second. One of my goals in life is to be presented at court someday. You just wait and see. I adore hearing and reading about royalty.”
“And I adore getting clear of this house. Just Jersey, here we come.”
They walked quickly toward the harbor through St. Helier’s quaint, narrow streets and cheek-by-jowl shops with French names over their doors. Others were abroad, both the British islanders, mostly retired officers and small pensioners drawn by the low income-tax haven of the Crown dependency. But there were the descendants of the Norman-French, too, who had been here for centuries and spoke a half-French dialect none of the British bothered to learn.
The native Jerseyites made their livelihoods by cider production and selling crafts like walking sticks fashioned from tall cabbage stalks. The women knitted stockings and the famous dark blue sweaters called jerseys worn by island fishermen. Besides tending their brown Jersey cows for their rich milk, farmers enriched their small gardens with seaweed compost and, of course, cow manure. Out in the green countryside, gardens could smell to high heaven, but the patches of golden gorse had a sweet scent that sometimes drowned that out.
Potatoes were the prime crop here, especially small ones called chats, which the islanders boiled or fried. Vive la pomme de terre! sometimes seemed to be the island motto in this forty-five square miles that used to be the home for seafarers and smugglers of fancy French goods. After all, France was still but a two-hour steamer trip away.
The girls were forever trying to spot cottages with the so-called witches’ seats on the chimney tops. Nellie pointed at one now, and they both nodded without having to say a word. It was an island tradition that, if a house didn’t have that slab for the crones to sit on, smoke their pipes, and keep warm from the chimney draft, they would come right down and sit by the fire, and then the householder would be cursed.
Seagulls screeched overhead, and the sea this late afternoon glittered azure in the sun, then plunged to darker blue when a cloud raced overhead. Despite what they’d written about going to see Ada, they passed stolid Government House and started out on the stone walkway around the harbor. A steamer was approaching, and fishing boats and a few stray pleasure crafts nodded at anchor. Over it all loomed the huge fortress named for Queen Elizabeth, which could always be reached by boat or sometimes on foot over the causeway when the tide was out.
Nellie stretched her strides to keep up with Lucy. However petite Lucy was, she walked like the very dickens. “It’s as if this pathway presents damp treasures from Poseidon’s realm, like seaweed hair from mermaids and polished pebbles for their jewels on this magic road to another time.”
“Mm,” Lucy said. “It’s the military men in their natty uniforms I like looking at.”
“Just think, you’re ready to come out—well, if you can say that in a forsaken place like this, however many dances and soirees the Norcotts offer at Government House in the season. If you wed a naval man, hopefully one who will someday become an admiral, he could get assigned to some wonderful place, and you could see the world.”
“I’ll see the world. Somehow.”
“But you’d rather see Paris, right? Ah, me too. Look,” Nellie said with a sweep of her hand. “It’s so clear today you can even see the houses in France, only about twelve miles away and yet so far. Too bad Mother’s letter to her distant relations will mean an invitation for you to visit only old England and cold Scotland.”
“She wants me out of the house because I stand up to him, and he can’t abide me. Nice to have mutual feelings, I warrant.”
“I would miss you if you went—terribly,” Nellie admitted as they climbed stone stairs to the walkway along the walls. It had the best view, but the wind tugged at their hats and hair.
“I know you long to see Paris too,” Lucy said, “especially after all those wonderful tales Grandmama told of all her relations living there. Remember those barrels of goods she’d get near Christmas? You loved the books, but I loved the clothes, the latest Paris fashions in cold, rough Canada.”
“And made such for your dolls. I vow, it was the only reason you liked dolls. You preferred to roughhouse with the neighboring boys.”
“And Grandmama was so strict. Always proper manners, learning to sit still in silence, to be self-contained, as she called it. You could do it, but I could not.”
“I just made up stories in my head,” Nellie said as they walked through the entrance gate under the grim walls. “Stories about castles and princesses. I never told you, but I used to think my fate was to be that of the heroine in The Princess and the Goblin. I fully expected to learn later I was really a princess in disguise after all.”
Lucy leaned her elbows on one of the narrow, deep windows of the fortress wall and inhaled the tangy sea breeze. “If you are the princess, then poor mother is really a queen who has married a goblin.”
“And you then?”
“I don’t deal in fancies or fiction. I want things real and ready. I want to look outward, not in some book.”
Nellie looked hurt. They stood in silence, gazing out for a while, watching the waves bash the rocks below. At least, Lucy thought, Nellie wasn’t going to stage one of her dramatic scenes or use a bunch of big words like castigate and incorrigible.
“It’s true,” Lucy spoke finally, putting her hand on her younger sister’s shoulder, “that we’re as different as night and day, looks and interests, but we will stick together, no matter what, whoever we marry or where we go or what we do. Promise? I do.”
“And not ever argue again.”
“Really, don’t go overboard. Oh, there’s the tidal warning bell, so we’d best head back already. Mother or the maid would cover for us, no doubt, but I don’t want to get my feet wet on such a windy day.”
“Just get your feet wet with exciting people and having things your way,” Nellie dared as they set out back down the stone stairs at a good clip, amid the crowd of others hurrying back. Already the tide was licking at the causeway, and the occasional gust of October wind blew spray on them so they could taste salt when they licked their lips. No doubt Mother would know they’d been to the shore. Oh crumbs, Lucy thought, she couldn’t think of everything.
Lost in their separate thoughts and warmed by having pledged even a ragged oath to each other, the sisters held hands and quickened their steps.