White, billowy sails luffed before collapsing into lifeless piles on the deck. Beige-colored side ropes snapped in the stiff breeze. The brigantine’s hull shuddered as it came about.
Standing on the quarterdeck of the Windborne, Rebecca Parcell clamped one hand to her straw hat as the ocean wind tugged at its brim. A month into their voyage from the new world to the old, she no longer noticed how her legs and hips shifted for balance aboard the privateer’s ship.
“A single reef, gentlemen,” Captain Roberts bellowed.
A battalion of men, none of them gentlemen, clambered up the rigging. Canvas sails tightened beneath the clear blue sky, and the vessel leaped forward into the wind.
Becca’s spirit rose. The captain had said they might make landfall in France within days if the wind held. The wind was holding.
How soon would she see Daniel again? They’d been separated for more than ten months.
She followed the progress of one young crewman in particular. He shimmied up the ropes—the rigging, they called it—beyond the gaf sail on the main mast. She swallowed past the lump in her throat and forced herself to keep an eye on him.
“I am not enamored of heights, either. ‘Tis a job I would pay to avoid.”
Becca winced. She knew that voice.
Jude Fenimore stood behind her on the quarterdeck, his pale blond hair gleaming white in the sun. His blue eyes were wide-set, his nose thin and straight. Only sun-blistered red skin along his nose and the top rim of his forehead marred the perfection of his appearance.
Mr. Fenimore had been kindness itself from the moment they met at the Capes of Delaware, two strangers waiting to board the ship. She had detested him from that first meeting.
Guilt stabbed her. It wasn’t his fault that he resembled her deceased husband. Her philandering, disloyal, traitorous British spy of a husband, Philip. God rest his soul, she almost forgot to add.
She and Philip had only been married for three years, and he had been gone for more than two. There were days now when she strained to recall his precise features, his voice. Mr. Fenimore brought her dead husband back to life.
He turned from Becca to the two women she loved most in the world. Becca’s former mother-in-law, Lady Augusta Georgiana Stokes Parcell, and her mother, Hannah. They’d insisted on undertaking the difficult journey to France with her. Neither could imagine missing Becca’s wedding, they’d said.
“We hear that France is the civilest society on Earth.” Lady Augusta said to Becca. “We have asked Mr. Fenimore to school us on Parisian courtesies.” Her face shone each time she looked at him.
So Lady Augusta saw the resemblance to Philip, too, Becca thought with dismay. Becca didn’t have the heart to discourage this shipboard friendship with the man. She hoped her mother-in-law wouldn’t suffer when he left them at the end of their journey.
“I was telling your lovely companions that in France, you must say exactly what you mean but appear not to mean it at all.” Mr. Fenimore aimed his smile at Becca. “Or say the opposite and make it appear that you thoroughly believe it.”
“What on earth for?” Becca tucked a lock of wavy black hair back into the straw hat. She knew she was being rude. She didn’t care.
“Rebecca.” Lady Augusta’s tone was censure enough.
“What on earth for? For amusement, Mrs. Parcell.” Jude laughed. “The French crave amusement, because, beneath their frothy surface, when given a choice of believing the best or the worst of the world, they always believe the worst. Flirtation and style, toujours the style, make life bearable, you see.”
“I do not see. And how is it you are an expert on the French temperament?” Dear god, couldn’t he leave her alone? He brought out the worst in her.
His smile faltered for a moment, then returned. “I do business in Paris. I moved there from London when the war began.” Mr. Fenimore extended one silk stocking-clad leg, swept an arm forward, and bowed as if to lighten his own mood. “Back to the subject of French manners. Now, you must flirt with me.” The lace at his wrist rippled in the breeze.
And how did he manage to keep his linen shirts white after twenty-nine days aboard the ship when her blue muslin gown was stiff with salt and layers of dirt that she was better off not contemplating? The ship’s quarters were too tight to allow for servants.
Facing her silence, he prodded, “Madam, as you are fair and lovely, be generous and merciful to one who is your slave.”
“You are making fun of me.” Becca’s cheeks burned.
“Indeed, I am not. The practice of flirtation will serve you well, especially at Versailles, will it not, madam?” He turned to Lady Augusta for confirmation. His pale skin glistened, as if the spring air suddenly blazed with summer heat.
Lady Augusta’s expression softened, as it always did when she was in Mr. Fenimore’s presence.
Becca’s behavior toward Mr. Fenimore was indefensible. She struggled to think more kindly of him and of her poor, dead husband. Without Philip’s treason, Becca never would have come to serve General Washington as a spy. She never would have met Daniel Alloway. Without Philip, she wouldn’t be here, caught between the new world and the old, on her way to wed the only man she could imagine marrying. She felt her lips curve into a smile at the thought of Daniel.
“There. Memorize the expression that graces your face at this very moment, Mrs. Parcell,” Mr. Fenimore crowed. “You will conquer all of Paris with that countenance.” His forearm pressed against his side as if pained by a sudden cramp.
Becca felt her eyes narrow. He was schooling her on how to lie.
“My daughter is practicing to be a wife, not a coquette.” Hannah sounded uncharacteristically stern.
“I mean no disrespect, madam. Désolé.” He lifted his hand to his heart and bowed so deeply, appearing so mortified, that Hannah and Lady Augusta laughed.
Désolé, Becca repeated to herself. I am sorry. Becca appreciated the way that Mr. Fenimore wove together English and French, as if to acquaint them with the language they’d need to conquer.
Her gaze veered to Hannah. She was shorter and slighter than Becca, but they shared the same dark blue eyes, wide cheekbones, and black hair. And the two of them already spoke fluent French.
“Don’t let anyone know I was born in France. Promise,” Hannah had whispered as they were rowed out to the Windborne.
“But why not?” Becca had protested.
“The Catholics made life difficult for us, my parents said.” The lines on Hannah’s face seemed to deepen at the memory. “We left, and I had nightmares for years.” She had been born in France but left as a young child. “I…I am nervous returning.”
“You are American now. It will be fine.” Becca had clasped her mother’s hands between her own, studying Hannah’s face. She watched her mother’s moods for signs of the blue devil. That was what Hannah called her dark days. There’d been fewer of them since she’d come to live with Becca and Augusta in Morristown.
The blue devil had claws. They had grabbed Hannah after Becca’s birth and not let go. When Becca was three, Hannah fled, convinced Becca and her father would be better off without her.
Becca’s throat tightened at the sudden memory, the shock of discovering her mother alive last year. They had found each other in Philadelphia, where Becca and Daniel were searching for traitors. All Becca’s life, she’d been told that her mother was dead. How angry she’d been to discover the lie.
Becca forced her attention back to the present, to the sound of water rippling over the hull and metal rings clinking on stays. “You’ve made this voyage before, Mr. Fenimore. It can’t be too much longer, can it?”
“We might make land as soon as tomorrow. That’s what Captain Roberts tells me.” Fenimore’s skin seemed even paler than usual.
Becca nodded. Paris was a landlocked city, and they would dock in Nantes. She patted the pocket she wore beneath her gown to feel the reassuring whisper of crinkling paper. Daniel’s latest letter was safe there.
He would arrange to pay for the carriage to take them to Paris. He would leave more instructions for them at the port. He described where they would live until the wedding with such detail that she could almost taste the sweet, tart oranges that grew there.
In his letters, Daniel spoke little of his new job as Mr. Barnes’s business agent. Daniel had been gone for 302 days. Becca kept count.
“You’ve been such pleasant company,” Mr. Fenimore began.
Was that sarcasm in his voice?
“If I wanted to assure myself that you were well taken care of, where might I find you three ladies after we make landfall?”
Becca let the early evening breeze cool her cheeks as she turned to face east, away from Mr. Fenimore and toward Daniel, toward Paris and the future. She wasn’t about to encourage a friendship with their fellow passenger in France.
“We’ll be staying outside of Paris. A place called Passy,” Augusta volunteered. “Do you know it?”
“With Dr. Benjamin Franklin,” Hannah added. “Mr. Fenimore?”
Something in her mother’s voice, some emotion trapped between fear and surprise, made Becca spin round just as Jude Fenimore’s face went slack.
His chest rose and fell as if starved for air. He fell to his knees, one hand holding the side of his rib cage, then collapsed with a hollow thump on the deck.