Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss, and ends with a teardrop.
Augustine
Will clutched the latest edition of the Virginia Gazette, bereft of its usual news, the headline dedicated to the contagion sweeping Virginia and elsewhere. “A True State of the Small Pox” was in boldface, the names of Williamsburg’s stricken inhabitants beneath. Standing in a cold circle of winter sunlight on Greenmount’s porch, Will scoured the list of names among the recovered, dead, sick, and not yet taken. His breathing grew heavier as dread gained the upper hand. Sylvie’s name was missing, but one prominent name was not.
Lord Drysdale, carried off by the purple.
He read it a second and third time, cut by disbelief.
God, help us.
His main ally in Virginia—tall, stalwart, unflinching—felled without warning like the finest tree in the forest. It seemed the noble’s hand had been in every facet of Virginia life. The House of Burgesses. The governor’s council. The Bruton Parish Church vestry. He had even been justice of the peace and a highly respected barrister. And he was now gone. Nothing had been printed about his wife and child.
Stunned, Will was cast back to Kersey’s parlor, where Lord Drysdale had declared his outrage with British officials and pledged his unswerving support to the Acadians.
Who would stand in his stead?
His remaining ally, Captain Lennox, was on a cruise at the request of the colonial government, his return uncertain. It left Will feeling alone. Adrift. On such a clear, sunlit day it was hard to believe anyone could be ill or mourning.
He looked at the newsprint a final time, a small announcement at the bottom catching his eye. Future issues would be suspended till further notice. His gut wrenched again. With that terse stroke, his tenuous tie to Sylvie seemed suspended too.
The raucous banging of a loose shutter in the wind turned his attention upward. The shutter hung precariously from the second floor, and he made a mental note to nail it down. All around him were sounds of life, labor, even laughter. It seemed almost a miracle he’d gotten the Acadians out of Williamsburg without one of them falling ill, as if Providence wanted to spare them more misery. Aside from a few good-natured squabbles among themselves while settling in, they’d set right to work, even Liselotte Kersey, who seemed determined to show him she well knew how to manage a plantation.
He didn’t want to be disappointed with this venture, and he didn’t want to disappoint them. He kept short accounts with his workers day by day, overseeing their labor, listening to their ideas as he sought to make his venture more about the common good than his own personal stake in the matter, which was suddenly and irrevocably more complicated.
He folded the gazette, secured it in a coat pocket, and looked toward the river, its silver sheen leading to distant places rife with bloodshed and battle. Virginia’s back settlers were taking a beating from the Indians and their French allies. Where and when it would end, Will didn’t know. He prayed for peace, yet peace seemed naught but a dream.
For now, he focused on what was within his control. To the east stood newly inhabited mud- and stud-frame buildings that had the look of a small village. Most of the Acadians lived there, half-hidden by a towering stand of chestnut trees. A kitchen house stood near a well at one end of the muddy lane. Gray smoke purled from the kitchen’s twin chimneys, mingling with the aroma of baking bread. A paddock and stable were nearest him, even a small if empty coach house. He could see women passing from smokehouse to spinning house to kitchen and dairy and stillroom, Liselotte foremost, a brisk efficiency to her step.
Craving solitude, he turned toward his own front door. By Virginia standards his dwelling wasn’t grand, but to him it seemed a palace with six generous rooms and a gabled attic. Well-built right down to the mahogany door with its brass knocker, it held an austere elegance he favored. His footsteps echoed on the foyer’s pine floor, as there was little furniture that hadn’t been auctioned. A bucket and basin and a linen towel sat atop a bench where he washed. Candles and a few tin lanterns were scattered throughout.
Though bare, the house bore details that bespoke a prior woman’s pleasure. Sash windows with crown glass. Brass sconces on painted plastered walls. Corner fireplaces with carved mantelpieces. Even a bake oven in the kitchen. A fine place for a family. His hope was to let his bride fill it with the things she wanted. In return, all he wanted was her presence.
Was he a fool focusing on a woman who remained unsure of him?
A knock on the door he’d just entered cut short his reverie. Nicolas stood outside on the bricked steps, hat in hand, his weskit dusted with wood shavings from the carpentry shop. “Since it’s the end of another successful workweek, we thought we’d celebrate,” he said.
“You’ve earned it,” Will returned, stepping onto the porch and shutting the door behind him.
“Won’t you join us?” Nicolas’s expression, markedly different from when he’d been laboring in Williamsburg, seemed so satisfied Will couldn’t help but turn from his melancholy over Lord Drysdale, if only for a moment. “The women have promised a feast, and Thibault has stood watch over the fire pit and has pronounced the meat almost done.”
“I’m not one to shirk an invitation, especially when the kitchen is involved.”
“Even Mademoiselle Kersey has put her apron on.”
They walked toward the tumbling river, the drooping sun spreading yellow light over its eastwardly rush. Talk and laughter could be heard at a distance. The Acadians seemed to thrive on being together, and tonight seemed evidence of their recovering spirit. Trestle tables with benches offered enough seating for all of them inside the kitchen house. The roast pig had been carved up by an expert hand—Acadians were very fond of pork, Will had learned—and several side dishes along with an endless supply of both Indian and wheaten bread covered the table.
As early evening swept in, the chill shadows were chased away by a roaring bonfire on the riverbank. No one seemed to mind the cold. A keg of cider was rolled out, and Will looked toward the extensive orchard that would bear apple saplings in time. Most of the Acadian seed he’d brought here had sprouted, awaiting planting, which turned his thoughts again to Sylvie. But it was Liselotte he spied walking toward him when the meal was over, a briskness he was becoming used to in her step.
“Did you enjoy your supper, Major Blackburn?” she asked as she whisked his empty plate away.
“I can’t fault the cooking,” he replied, taking out the clay pipe Kersey had given him upon his leaving. “But I’m still making peace with Virginia’s Indian maize.”
“It improves with butter,” she replied with a smile.
They stood outside the circle of Acadians who’d gathered to sing as they sat on the benches they’d used during the meal. One of them even had an old fiddle and another a hautbois, a reed instrument crafted in the settlement’s carpentry. Their ingenuity in exile continued to surprise Will.
“When do you leave on your next survey?” Liselotte asked over the music.
“I’m awaiting word of that. For now, the time is better spent right here.”
“You’ve accomplished a great deal already. I expected a run-down farm, but it’s very much like Cloverwell, my former home.”
He didn’t miss the lament in her voice. “You’re doing admirably here. Your uncle would be proud.”
“I want to make you proud, Major. I know how much this endeavor means to you.”
He looked at her through the smoky darkness as she drew her shawl closer about her.
“Something seems to be weighing on your mind, if you don’t mind my saying so,” she said. “You were in high spirits earlier.”
Had his usual reserve slipped, or was she more insightful than he’d thought? “A post rider came earlier with the latest news from Williamsburg, none of it good.” He still felt numb with disbelief. “Lord Drysdale has died of the pox, for one.”
“A shame. My uncle will count it a great loss, and it’s surely a blow to your endeavors here. Is it true Lord Drysdale introduced a measure to exempt the Acadians from payment of all public and county levies for seven years?”
“Before Candlemas, aye,” Will said, struck by both grief and gratitude.
“My uncle also told me you and his lordship convinced Mr. Carter of Corotoman to sign over a tract of fifty thousand acres bordering this plantation. Is that true?”
“Sixty thousand, of which each Acadian is allotted fifty acres in return for their work here.”
“Let’s hope the generous Mr. Carter stays standing, then,” she replied. “What we need is a church. Perhaps these French Catholics would be viewed more favorably as converts rather than as Virginians’ enemies, with their hatchet waving and conspiring with the Indians and the like.”
“At the moment, politics and religion are the last thing on Acadians’ minds. They’re solely concerned with survival.”
“But in time they’ll need a place to worship. And all Hades will break loose if they ever raise a mass house.”
“My plan is to build a chapel. Till then I’ll hold worship services in the main house for any who want to join me.”
“Even papists?”
“God has no such divisions, last time I checked.”
“Tell that to this very parish, who I’m sure would bar their doors to them.”
“Middle Church and any prejudices you mention are quite a distance from here.”
Frowning, she turned back to the music. “Do you know what they’re singing?”
He listened to the refrain, recognizing it at last. “An old French ballad.”
“Rather pretty if strange.” She turned to him again. “Won’t you teach me their tongue, Major Blackburn? I feel a bit left out at times, especially when you converse with them in French.”
“Best ask the women, as you’re with them the most.” He took a long draw on his pipe, wondering at her motives. “It’s not a language easily mastered.”
“Indeed, I’ve only picked up a few words and phrases.” She made a face. “Gâteau. Jardin. Eau. Rivière Rivanna.”
“A fair start.” He gestured to Bonami, who’d finally appeared after a roam in the woods. “Chien.”
“Dog?” She laughed. “Chien.”
He knelt and knocked the dottle out of his pipe, then ground the remains with the heel of his boot. The last thing he needed was a fire along the Rivanna. “Au revoir, Mademoiselle Kersey.”
Looking amused and perhaps a tad dismayed at his going, she met his eyes before he turned and went up the hill to the house, Bonami trailing. His breath plumed bitterly, the mud beneath his boots more ice. He craved spring and lambing and a finished gristmill and ferry, to name but a few.
And Sylvie. Always Sylvie.
Leaving Bonami on the porch, Will went inside, weighing the wisdom of locking the house at night. Traversing the foyer and staircase in the dark, he was overcome that this was now his. Each step. Each brick. Every crevice and corner. If not for his change of direction and the Lord’s provision, where might his hard-heartedness have led him?
He readied for bed, turning away from the washstand that stood between two upstairs windows. He could see the dwindling bonfire and hear distant singing, a reassuring sound after the emptiness he’d experienced when he first set foot here. He sought solitude as often as he could, but the gaping emptiness of a place that needed habitation was a different matter. He felt that emptiness in this house bereft of a woman’s presence. But not just any woman.
Shuttering any thought of Sylvie, he lay down in the big, unfamiliar bed with its smooth linens and quilted coverlet gotten in Williamsburg, expecting a sound night’s sleep. It was nearing midnight. The case clock in the foyer below tolled with a resounding echo.
Strange what came into a sleepless man’s mind in the endless dark. Stranger still why he’d rise long before dawn in the dank cold and stumble sleepily to the stable to saddle Braddock, then ride such a distance for anything other than surveying or securing supplies. It seemed some unseen hand was urging him forward and unraveling his plans for the day to lead him somewhere else entirely.
And he was willing.
By noon he’d made it as far as the fall line of the James River, Braddock showing no sign of strain. Fine Virginia bloodstock, capable of going the distance. Bonami kept up with him as if it was all a lark.
In hours the weather turned, hurling hail and sleet from leaden skies. At last, saddle sore and feeling lamed himself, Will rode into a much-changed Williamsburg, signs of mourning everywhere, with shops still closed and streets too open.
He slid off Braddock’s back and handed the reins to a groom before entering the Kersey residence by a side door, relief filling him.