44

I love thee, I love but thee! With a love that shall not die till the sun grows cold, and the stars are old.

Bayard Taylor

Sylvie sewed by her bedchamber window, ignoring the pinch in her back. A great many garments were finished for the palace servants, the evidence of sitting so long. With the Dinwiddies still away, she plied her needle nearly nonstop. The tediousness of her task left her mind free to roam. So quiet was the house that she heard the caged bird singing in the closed schoolroom below. Despite the gloomy weather, it trilled and warbled as if celebrating the coming spring. They were firmly entrenched in an icy, melancholy March, disease and death everywhere. Like a tightening noose, the circle of those still well was shrinking.

She was now reeling from the news that Lord Drysdale had succumbed. His widow, sick herself but recovering, had gone to Indigo Island in the care of Esmée, who’d taken the baby soon after birth. The loss shook and saddened Sylvie.

Mr. Hunter had long been buried. After another nighttime visit to the bookbindery attic, Sylvie found it locked, Eve and the children gone. Where, Sylvie did not know, and no one was available to tell her. Sick at heart, she’d returned to the palace, barely evading the sheriff and night watch on their quarantine rounds. There was no one to share her worries with since Eulalie and the other Acadians were long gone, safely ensconced on the Rivanna.

She hadn’t needed to consult the calendar in the shuttered schoolroom to know Will had been away more than a month, long enough to realize again and again what a fool she’d been to let him go without her. Every missed opportunity, each cold, careless word she’d ever spoken paraded before her, leaving her riven with regret. Liselotte Kersey had been the wise one, as ready as Sylvie was reluctant. Had she by now made inroads into Will’s heart? A warm, willing woman near at hand could easily dismiss from a man’s mind a cold, careless one at a distance.

In between the layers of regret lay yearning. All the little details about Will she’d refused to entertain returned and made her heart stand still. His long, thoughtful looks. That endearing affability around her that faded to a stoic reserve with others. His patient persistence and unflinching fortitude. The risks he took. Williamsburg seemed empty without him. She was empty without him, even more than before.

Biting her lip, she bent over her work, a tear spotting the linen shirt she was making him—if they saw each other again. Surveying was dangerous work. Starting a settlement had its own risks. And by choosing to stay here, she might die here—of disease or heartbreak, both seeming to war over which would claim her first. Of late she’d felt that same nightmarish foreboding as when the English ships came into Acadie, before all their lives unraveled.

What did the future hold?

Trading her needle and thimble for a handkerchief only made her more emotional. It was Will’s handkerchief, one she’d used too often of late. Abandoning her sewing, she dried her eyes and went to the window. On the top floor, it offered a splendid if rain-streaked view. She pressed her forehead to the cold glass, more tears mingling with the rain. As she stared at Palace Green, so still it resembled a painting, a flicker of movement caught her eye. Who would dare step out on such a wet, windy day with contagion roaring around them?

Her heart stilled.

Will.

He was on foot, leading a dun-colored bay horse, Bonami loping along. Was he headed west toward the Rivanna and Greenmount, far beyond her reach again?

She whirled away from the window and ran toward the door. The back stairs were steep, and in her haste she nearly stumbled. Once out the side servants’ entrance, she was hit by a blinding blast of weather, but it hardly slowed her. As the wind snatched her cap, she hitched up her petticoats and abandoned any pretense of modesty, sleet soaking her to the skin in seconds. And then, just as suddenly as he’d appeared, she lost sight of him.

“Will!” Her voice held a frantic echo, bouncing about the deserted street.

She raced on, careening through puddles rather than dodging them. There he was at the corner. Slowly he turned toward her. He waited, his hat dripping water, his buckskin leggings a sodden black and nearly as dark as his blue woolen coat.

“Sylvie.”

Oh, the low, tender way he said her name. It left her half melting. With no thought, only a forlorn, lost feeling, she flung herself into his arms, breathless with relief and longing. Cheek pressed to his wool coat, she shut her eyes. Her crying came as hard as the rain, the thawing she’d felt since his leaving flowing out of her like Acadie’s rivers into Baie Française.

He held her for long minutes without saying a word, his jaw resting against her bent head. The silence settled around them with that security he wrought, the longed-for peace she’d not known for so long she forgot it was even possible. It made her never want to let go.

“Don’t go, Will. Don’t go without me—please.”

The woman who looked up at him seemed a stranger. Gone was the cool pride and simmering resentment he’d grown used to. Sylvie Galant was now all entreaty and tears, her eyes pink from weeping, the dark hollows beneath telling. Somehow the immense change softened her and made her more beautiful. He forgot his dripping hat and Braddock’s reins and that Williamsburg was watching from countless windows.

He placed a cold yet gentle hand against her damp cheek, but at his touch she seemed more undone. He felt that pull to hold her close, to shelter her and chase the world with its fractious cares away. He wanted to do more than hold her. He wanted to kiss her. Kiss her long and thoroughly till the wet street was obliterated and she kissed him back.

But common sense prevailed. Without another word, he lifted her to the saddle, then reined toward Palace Green. Within minutes they were inside the Kersey townhouse, dripping water onto the pine-board floor. Sylvie’s eyes lifted to elegant papered walls and paneling as Will spoke to a wide-eyed maidservant.

“Take Miss Galant upstairs and lend her one of Miss Kersey’s dresses. I’ll wait here.”

At the maid’s urging, Will moved into the parlor to stand by the blazing hearth, his sleeplessness overtaking him, his plans for the day unraveling in the best way. Kersey was at the college though it was not in session, and he’d given Will the run of the house when in town, a boon given the taverns were now closed.

It took time before the maid returned Sylvie downstairs in a dress that looked like spring, the floral chintz as bright as the day was dark, her wet hair combed and pinned up beneath a borrowed cap. Liselotte was smaller in stature and the gown fit snug and short, but Sylvie was dry, at least, and more composed than she’d been on the street.

Once she entered the parlor, the maid closed the door, sealing their privacy. Sylvie’s concern now seemed to be him in his sodden state. “Do you not want to change?” she asked softly as she took a seat on a near sofa.

“Nay, I’m on my way to the almshouse and can’t avoid the weather. With Hunter buried, the children are there.”

Her hand went to her bodice. “I wondered where they’d gone. I went to the bookbindery but couldn’t find them.”

“Kersey, as executor of Hunter’s estate, arranged for me to take them as their new bondsman.”

Tears glazed her eyes again. “A merciful, generous act.”

“Not entirely.” His voice held humor. “I have other motives.”

Her gaze lightened, then grew shadowed again. “Oh?”

“I am in need of a caretaker.”

“Oh, Will . . .”

Their eyes locked, and in that poignant hush she gave him her answer.

He could hardly speak for the rush of emotion he felt. If he’d not been sleepless, if he’d not heeded that midnight urge to ride . . . “We’ll leave once the weather clears. For now I’ll go to the almshouse and make arrangements.”

Sylvie met with the butler once she returned to the palace, hardly believing that life could take a blessed turn in so short a time.

“Yes, Miss Galant?” He sat at his desk where papers and daybooks were piled high, testament of his overseeing palace staff.

“I’ve come to give notice, sir, and I hope you’ll pardon the suddenness of my doing so.”

He studied her, this florid-faced man in livery, looking understandably weary and not at all surprised. “Meaning you are leaving town posthaste, I suppose.”

“As soon as the weather clears.” She wouldn’t share the details. She wasn’t even sure of them herself. He likely didn’t care and had far weightier concerns than her future. “I’ve finished the dresses for the Dinwiddie daughters and left a note bidding them adieu. And I’ll bring down the garments I’ve finished for the other servants.”

“Very well. We shall miss your needle.” He drummed his knuckles atop the table. “As it is, we’ve no word on when the governor and his family shall return. Though you’ve spent your time well in their absence under quarantine, I don’t blame you for seeking service elsewhere.”

She thanked him and returned upstairs to pack. A small chest soon held her few belongings, including her sewing kit and scissors. She’d started on Henrietta’s garments but so far had cut out only the pattern, finding more enjoyment in this diminutive dress than any she had made as she simply anticipated the child’s delight.

Her last hours at the palace flew past, leaving her looking out the window toward Kersey’s townhouse and wondering when Will would reappear. A niggling fear remained . . .

Mightn’t something happen to prevent her and the children from leaving after all?