“I am fully recovered. A touch of mal de mer. A wicked case of seasickness.” Jude Fenimore leaned against the ship’s rail overlooking the Port of Nantes. He peered past Becca to speak to Hannah and Augusta.
“I have a delicate constitution, you see.”
Hannah’s dark eyebrows, so like Becca’s, dropped into a straight disbelieving line. “Seasickness? You should have allowed me to examine you.”
“There was no need. Your tea has refreshed me entirely.”
Jude had woken from his faint quickly but pushed Hannah’s hand away when she sought to examine him. He drank the relaxation tea she prepared from poppies and recovered enough to stagger to his narrow room within the hour.
“Lady Augusta and Hannah suffered terribly with the boat’s motion,” Becca said. “But seasickness comes at the beginning of a voyage, not the end.”
“I doubt seasickness keeps track of time.” He shrugged.
Becca squeezed her eyes shut. They were scratchy with lack of sleep. She opened them to find Jude studying her.
“I regret that you lost a night’s sleep on my account.” His lips curved into a half smile. “Though I am surprised you bothered to watch over me, given your distaste for me.”
He’d slept on the floor below deck near the boat’s stern, where the captain and senior crew ate. The crew had made Jude a nest of blankets. Becca had watched him until sunrise by the flickering light of a single candle.
There was no point in denying the truth. “You remind me of someone who caused me distress. I treated you badly. I kept vigil to apologize.” She didn’t mean to sound surly. Becca could speak of numbers and mathematics without end. Speaking of her own emotions left her awkward and tongue-tied.
Jude had grimaced and winced in pain as he slept but never roused. Once, he moaned, “No, René,” so loudly that she reached out her hand to shake him awake and end the nightmare. She would have called Hannah if he’d gotten worse.
By dawn, she no longer saw a pale ghost of her dead husband when she looked at him. She saw only Jude, and her irritation with him vanished. It was difficult to dislike anyone when you’d seen them asleep and vulnerable. He’d seemed years older at rest than awake.
“Ahh. You were making penance.” His smile was gentle. “Apology accepted.” He shook his head. “But I didn’t expect the kindness.”
“Who is René?” she blurted out.
He went still, then smiled again. “I don’t know. You tell me.”
“You said his name in your sleep. You said, ‘No, René.’”
“A dream, I suppose. I don’t recall.” Jude shrugged.
“Tighten the sails,” a voice overhead rang out.
The bow swept left, and Becca staggered, clutching the rail to stay upright.
The jib sail came down first, then the main. “Ready to anchor,” another voice called. Minutes later, the wooden masts were stripped naked, the crew folding sails. Without its forward motion, the ship pitched and rolled, subject to the wild, living sea.
“The anchor, boys,” Captain Roberts shouted with his Scottish burr.
Chain slid through metal with a rat-a-tat-tat, and the anchor plummeted to the harbor floor.
The Windborne anchored in the bay until the harbormaster gave permission to tie off at one of the docks. As the sky lightened from apricot to a watery blue, Becca scanned the busy port crowded with ships.
Women in colorful aprons displayed vegetables, bread, and meat for sale. Crews hoisted barrels filled with fresh water or goods for sale onto boats. In the distance, Becca spied a long line of Black men in chains wearing little more than loincloths.
She averted her eyes, sending up a quick prayer that Missy and her son were well and still free. Captain Roberts had told them of the slave ships in Nantes. “From West Africa, they come. Then the French slaver traders go on their merry way to the Caribbean or America.”
“Merry way?” Lady Augusta had said.
Roberts grimaced. “Not merry at all, trading in human life.”
Behind them soared a fairy tale castle with white towers, jutting turrets, and dark-gabled spires. The house of the Dukes of Brittany, Captain Roberts said. It seemed light enough to float in the air, with only the heavy yellow bricks at its base tethering the castle to earth.
But Becca’s mind drifted back to Daniel. Three hundred and three days had passed since she’d seen him. She patted the pocket tucked within her skirt again to feel the reassuring outlines of the letter she kept there. His letter.
“I have become familiar with an entirely new typeface, thanks to Dr. Franklin,” Daniel wrote. “I dream of schooling you in this French alphabet. It shall require many lessons.”
Becca’s cheeks heated. She imagined the warmth of his skin as she drew letters on his palm, along his arms, then in the hollow of his throat, and along his chest beneath a summer moon in a Philadelphia garden last summer. It was their private game of touch and tease. Daniel had unknowingly started it when he drew an A on the palm of her hand to show her how printers invented different alphabets.
They would travel in a large coach, he had written. He would come as quickly as he could to meet them on the road.
The breeze was buttery soft and the weather warmer than it would have been at home. The modest homes here, with their tile roofs and wooden shutters, were different, too.
“Are you ready now?” Becca called to Hannah and Lady Augusta. She stepped onto the gangplank and waited for the vibrations underfoot to signal that the two women were following. But she waited alone on the narrow plank of wood over the Loire River. Becca whirled back, calling again. “Shall we go?”
Hannah and Augusta stood arm and arm, appearing as anxious as if they were about to dive into the harbor fully clothed. Their voices were low but not low enough.
“What will you do?” Augusta asked.
“It won’t happen.” Hannah paused. “Was it foolish of me to come?”
“Then we are both foolish. I swore I would never return,” Augusta said.
“It was dreadful here,” Hannah said.
“Entirely dreadful,” Augusta echoed.
“For her, we did it.” Hannah swept her unruly dark hair off her forehead.
“For Becca,” Augusta sighed. Her silver hair was held rigidly in place. Even with her impeccable posture, she stood at least five inches shorter than Hannah.
“You didn’t want to come? Neither of you?” Becca took three quick steps back up the walkway. Her eyes stung. “Why didn’t you say something? You didn’t protest. Neither of you even complained when you were sick the first two weeks.” None of the herbs Hannah carried with her had relieved their odorous, painful malady.
Hannah and Augusta exchanged glances. Neither spoke.
Below them, dock workers hurried by pushing wheelbarrows with yellow and orange fruit. Members of the crew rolled barrels from the cargo hold to the dock.
“How didn’t I see? Of course, neither of you wanted to return to Europe. I’ve been blind.”
Hannah patted Becca’s arm, murmuring, “There, there.”
“If we didn’t want to come, we would have stayed home. Has it crossed your mind that neither one of us would think of missing your wedding?” Augusta stood even taller, as petite as she was. She had fled from England and her husband’s creditors.
“You could have said something when Daniel and I told you we would marry in Paris. You didn’t even try to change our minds.” The breeze whipped a strand of hair across her face.
“Mr. Barnes needed Daniel here. He left for France so quickly.” Hannah’s gaze slipped to Augusta. “Paris was the only choice.”
“Of course it was.” Augusta nodded to Hannah.
Becca’s gaze slid from one woman to the other and back. “When did you two start to agree about anything?”
“We don’t know what you mean.” Augusta and Hannah raised their chins.
“You’ve disagreed on what to eat for supper, what herbs make the best tea, and how to clean curtains” And—it seemed to her—on which of the two Becca loved more. They had politely detested each other since the moment Hannah came to live with them in Morristown last year. “Seasickness brought you together,” Becca said.
“Whatever can she mean?” Augusta said to Hannah, who shook her head.
“All it took for the two of you to become friends was a queasy stomach.” The two women had shared a small room in the officers’ quarters and nursed each other through the worst of the disorder. They’d emerged as friends.
“Don’t fret, dear. It will be fine.” Augusta patted Hannah’s hand, then pulled her forward.
“Of course, it will be fine,” Becca snapped. She hovered for one more moment.
“Go ahead, Becca.” Augusta’s voice was kind but distant. “We’ll find our way down when we’re ready.”
Becca flew down the final few feet of the gangplank, eager for the feel of solid ground beneath her feet. Even more eager to reach Daniel.
She jumped to the dock. It buckled, rising and falling like ocean waves. She staggered in surprise. Captain Roberts’s arm shot out and steadied her.
“Go slow, missus,” he said. “People talk of getting their sea legs. S’harder to get your land legs back, me thinks. It’ll take a day or so. Step careful til then.”