A Silent Ocean Away

by DeVa Gantt

  A Silent Ocean Away

  Colette’s Dominion

  DeVa Gantt

  A Silent Ocean Away is dedicated to our readers—those who enjoyed our self-published version of the Colette Trilogy and enthusiastically spread the word. If not for them, and the many booksellers who invited us into their stores, this edition would not be in your hands.

  Contents

  Directory of Characters

  Prologue

  An evening mist settled over the moss-scarred walls of the…

  Chapter 1

  JOHN Duvoisin watched the Raven labor from the landing stage.

  Chapter 2

  SUNLIGHT poured into the bedroom Charmaine shared with Gwendolyn Browning.

  Chapter 3

  THE open carriage rocked gently from side to side as…

  Chapter 4

  CHARMAINE arrived at the mansion early the next morning. Colette…

  Chapter 5

  CONSTRUCTION on the new door began the next morning. The…

  Chapter 6

  IT was Charmaine’s nineteenth birthday, though no one in the…

  Chapter 7

  QUICKLY, Robert!” Agatha urged. “She’s having trouble breathing!”

  Chapter 8

  IN a shower of spring brilliance and crystal-blue skies, Colette…

  Chapter 9

  BY nine o’clock the children were sound asleep, and Charmaine…

  About the Authors

  Other Books by DeVa Gantt

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  DIRECTORY OF CHARACTERS

  IN RICHMOND, VIRGINIA:

  Charmaine Ryan—heroine of the story (born 1818)

  Marie Ryan—Charmaine’s mother, abandoned as a young child at the St. Jude Refuge

  John Ryan—Charmaine’s father and dockworker

  Father Michael Andrews—Pastor of St. Jude’s Church and Refuge

  Sister Elizabeth—Nun and teacher at the St. Jude Refuge

  Joshua Harrington—Charmaine’s first employer

  Loretta Harrington—Joshua’s wife

  Jonah Wilkinson—Captain of the Raven, the Duvoisin merchantman

  Edward Richecourt—Duvoisin lawyer

  ON CHARMANTES:

  The Duvoisin Family:

  Frederic Duvoisin—Patriarch and master of Les Charmantes; son of Jean Duvoisin II, founder of Les Charmantes (deceased); brother of Jean III (deceased)

  Elizabeth Duvoisin—Frederic’s first wife (deceased 1808)

  John Duvoisin—only son of Frederic and Elizabeth; heir to the Duvoisin fortune (born 1808)

  Paul Duvoisin—Frederic’s illegitimate son (born 1808)

  Colette Duvoisin—Frederic’s second wife (born 1810)

  Yvette and Jeannette Duvoisin—twin daughters of Frederic and Colette (born 1828)

  Pierre Duvoisin—youngest son of Frederic and Colette (born 1834)

  People living in the Duvoisin Mansion:

  Agatha Blackford Ward—older sister of Frederic’s late wife, Elizabeth; John’s aunt

  Rose Richards—elderly nursemaid to Yvette, Jeannette and Pierre; formerly nanny to John and Paul; originally hired by Jean II to care for Frederic as a young boy

  Professor Richards—Rose’s deceased husband; formerly tutor to John and Paul; initially hired by Jean II as a tutor for Frederic

  George Richards—Rose and Professor Richard’s grandson; close friend of John and Paul; production manager and overall supervisor of island operations (born 1809)

  Duvoisin Servants:

  Jane Faraday—head housekeeper

  Travis Thornfield—butler and Frederic’s personal valet

  Gladys Thornfield—Travis’s wife; Colette’s personal maid

  Millie and Joseph Thornfield—Travis and Gladys’s children

  Felicia Flemmings—housemaid

  Anna Smith—housemaid

  Fatima Henderson—cook

  Gerald—head groom

  Islanders:

  Dr. Robert Blackford—Island physician; Agatha’s twin brother; older brother to Frederic’s first wife, Elizabeth; John’s uncle

  Harold Browning—Charmantes’ overseer

  Caroline Browning—Harold’s wife; sister of Loretta Harrington

  Gwendolyn Browning—Harold and Caroline’s only daughter

  Stephen Westphal—Charmantes’ financier; manager of the town bank

  Anne Westphal London—Stephen’s widowed daughter; resides in Richmond

  Father Benito St. Giovanni—island priest

  Jake Watson—harbor foreman

  Buck Mathers—dockworker

  Jessie Rowlan—dockworker

  Madeline Thompson (Maddy)—mercantile proprietress Wade Remmen—lumbermill operator

  Rebecca Remmen—Wade’s younger sister; friend of Gwendolyn

  Browning

  Martin—town farrier

  Prologue

  Fall 1833

  A Prayer

  AN evening mist settled over the moss-scarred walls of the stone church, shrouding it in hopelessness. A solitary man slumped forward in one pew, muttering disparaging phrases to the looming shadows. He needed another drink. Expensive whisky hadn’t yielded peaceful oblivion, hadn’t even dulled his senses. And yet, if he wasn’t drunk, what the hell was he doing in a house of God? What, indeed! He chortled insanely, the inebriated laugh ending in a dizzying hiccup. He’d come to pray—pray for death. Not his own death. He wasn’t quite so noble. Not yet, anyway. Instead, he petitioned the Almighty to bring about the demise of another. Retribution—justice. His lips twisted with the delicious thought of it. Death…So simple a solution.

  “Put him out of his misery. Put me out of my misery,” he slurred, confronting the wooden crucifix that hung above the barren altar. “Do you hear?”

  His sudden movement sent the walls careening, the statues a nauseating blur of spinning specters. He grasped for the bench, attempting to right his toppling world, but his hand missed its mark. Not so his forehead. It met the back of the wooden pew with a resounding crack. With a groan, he crumbled to the stone floor, his agony blanketed in a palette of smoky-blue, a vision that dissolved into the consuming void of blessed unconsciousness.

  Marie Ryan hurried along the dimly lit courtyard, her heel catching sharply on the stone pathway and echoing across the vacant enclosure. In all her years at the St. Jude Refuge, deep in the heart of Richmond, Virginia, she had never acquired the soft footfalls of the diminutive nuns who routinely tread the very same cobblestone in their contemplative procession toward vespers. This evening was no different.

  She was very late, and the interview awaiting her tardy arrival had been arranged for her. Now it would have to be canceled. She would not leave the refuge again. This was her home, where she belonged, and neither the threat of her husband, nor her ill-fated past, would send her scurrying from its protective walls. Tonight she had received a sign.

  From the day she had been abandoned as a young child on the steps of St. Jude’s thirty years ago, the Almighty had intended she serve Him. For the past sixteen years, she had ignored His call; tonight she would not. Life beyond the church walls no longer lured her with empty promises. The real world comprised two separate, yet contingent, factions of humanity: those who suffered life’s travesties and those who ministered to them. On this eve, she would circumvent the former and embrace the latter. Her penance had been paid in full.

  She entered the rectory and nodded demurely to its three occupants: Sister Elizabeth, Father Michael Andrews, and Joshua Harrington. The latter was an elderly gentleman and prosperous businessman, who was seeking a suitable companion for his wife. With five sons married and moved away, Loretta Harrington
was suffering the effects of an empty nest.

  “Please don’t think me ungrateful, Mr. Harrington,” Marie apologized when the introductions were over, “but I’m afraid I’ve changed my mind.”

  Father Andrews stood stunned. The gentlewoman had shown great interest in the Harrington position and had asked him to set up this appointment. He knew its handsome salary would prove a blessing. “Marie, is something wrong?”

  She hesitated. “I’ve finally realized this is where I belong, here at the refuge. Yes, I know I have a home, but I want to work at St. Jude’s with those who really need me.”

  The priest’s astonishment doubled. Though Marie’s daughter attended the rudimentary school that Sister Elizabeth conducted, Marie rarely crossed the church’s threshold herself. “But your husband—” he began.

  “Will be made to understand,” she replied.

  “I’m not certain I understand. I thought you needed this employment.”

  Marie sighed. “There was a man in the church tonight. He was ill.”

  “Another beggar,” Father Michael scoffed, his voice unusually harsh.

  “No, not a beggar,” Marie refuted, surprised by his reaction. “He was dressed in fine clothing. And yet, he was in a sad state: unconscious. I believe he struck his head on the pew. I had Matthew carry him to the common room, and I remained with him until he awoke. I fear he has suffered greatly, and not just physically. I want you to look at him, Father.”

  “I fail to comprehend how this man has influenced you.”

  “It was something he said,” Marie remarked distantly. “I believe the Good Lord sent him not only to St. Jude, but to me, to make me see this is where I’m needed, where I belong. Again, I apologize, Mr. Harrington. I shouldn’t have drawn you away from your wife. But I must remain at the refuge. I hope you understand.”

  With a mixture of relief and dread, exultation and pain, Father Michael Andrews smiled down at Marie. He’d been denied this woman’s presence for sixteen years. Tonight she had returned.

  Rising from the rickety chair he had perched before the window, John Ryan strutted across the small kitchen like a proud peacock. He massaged his inflated chest, then raked long yellow fingernails through his graying hair. It fell back over his indelible scowl.

  Turning away in disgust, Charmaine Ryan threw herself into preparing dinner. Her father’s pompous promenade repulsed her to the core, and when he paraded so, she thanked the Lord for making her a girl.

  She sighed. Her mother was unusually late. The appointment with Joshua Harrington had begun over two hours ago, and though her father deemed the lengthening delay a favorable sign, she did not.

  “What time did your mother say she was supposed to meet with ’em?”

  Charmaine jumped. “I think she said five.”

  “Think? Jesus Christ, girl, don’t you know?”

  “No, I don’t know for certain,” she responded peevishly, her eyes hardened until he, with a grumbling shake of the head, meandered into the bedroom.

  Charmaine struggled to gain control of her ire. These days, anything her father said brought her to anger. Unlike her mother, who cowered under John Ryan’s verbal assaults, they incensed Charmaine. Perhaps she was brave because he had never raised a hand to her. Marie was less fortunate. Educated in the folly of questioning her husband’s supremacy, she kept silent in order to preserve a fragile peace.

  With mind revolting, as it always did when she pondered the union of John Ryan and Marie St. Jude, Charmaine stared absently across the humble kitchen, beyond the dilapidated walls of the three-room cottage, and past the barriers of time, hoping to perceive some understanding of nature, the twist of circumstance that had sanctified the marriage of her parents. If she knew little about her mother’s past, save the fact she had been abandoned on the steps of St. Jude Thaddeus Church, she knew even less about her father, a man who appeared and disappeared as the mood struck him, often leaving his wife and daughter for days at a time, which suited Charmaine just fine. The less she saw of him the better. Did he have a family aside from his wife and daughter? It was only one of many unanswered questions. All she really knew of John Ryan was that he was an ill-bred, uneducated drunk. He rarely worked, and then, only when he needed money for spirits, sauntering about the Richmond docks seeking odd jobs.

  How had such a scapegrace won the heart of her mother? Another unfathomable question. Marie should have entered the novitiate, taken sacred vows that would have wed her to God and His Holy Church. Instead she had left St. Jude’s at the age of eighteen to marry a man whom she claimed had been kind to her. A single child had been born of their union. Charmaine had been christened Haley Charmaine Ryan after her paternal grandmother, a woman she had never met. However, only her father used the name Haley, and now it was all but forgotten, for her mother fancied the name Charmaine, a name that still haunted the older woman’s memory from a time and place she couldn’t quite recall.

  “Maybe we oughta eat without her.”

  Charmaine flinched. The man had perfected his penchant for sneaking up on people. “Yes, perhaps we should,” she agreed, setting the meal on the humble table. She’d purchased a small slab of pork with the money she’d saved from running errands for the elderly spinster next door. Tonight they’d celebrate her mother’s good fortune.

  “I hope that Harrin’ton fella knows a good thin’ when he sees it,” he said, straddling the stool at the head of the table. Charmaine held silent as he pulled the wooden platter and knife nearer and proceeded to manicure the fat from the steaming roast. Then, he set aside the choice slices for himself and placed the remaining cuts on his daughter’s dish. “Your mother is a hard worker,” he continued. “There ain’t none that can match her skill when she puts her mind to it, and I wouldn’t want this fella thinkin’ otherwise.”

  “No, sir,” Charmaine whispered sullenly, appalled by his demand that a stranger respect the virtues of a woman whom he continually debased. His convoluted reasoning would never cease to amaze her, and if the situation weren’t so decidedly sad, she would have laughed outright at his pathetic proclamation.

  “I just hope he intends to pay her well,” he proceeded, his words muffled as he shoved a forkful of meat into his stubbled mouth. “I ain’t allowin’ no kin of mine to work cheap. No, sir. For his sake, I hope he ain’t some high-and-mighty a-ris-to-crat who thinks he can get away with payin’ some miserly amount, ’cause I won’t have it.”

  Again Charmaine bit her tongue. It was pointless to accuse him of sending his wife to labor for wages he would assert his right to claim. Besides, it would benefit Marie to hold such a position, one that would grant her a life apart from her derelict husband. Charmaine attended the St. Jude School with the other orphaned children. It was an escape from her father’s cruelty. But what did her mother have? Up until today, nothing but the bungalow in which they lived and dared not hope for anything better to come along. But something had come. The Harrington household offered Marie a refuge of her own.

  “Jesus Christ, woman, how could you be so goddamn dumb?”

  “I’m sorry, John,” Marie placated, “but there was nothing to be done.”

  “Nothin’ to be done?” he sneered. “You expect me to believe that? I know what you’ve been up to. You didn’t want that job! Workin’s too good for you.”

  “That’s not true, John. I told you, Mr. Harrington was seeking someone younger and more impressionable, someone his wife could take under her wing.”

  The remark elicited another oath. “Then send Haley,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” he responded with a growing grin, the infant idea taking root. “She’s young enough for all them things you been sayin’ them Harrin’tons want. She oughta suit his fancy wife jus’ fine.”

  “No, John. Charmaine is too young, and she has her schooling to finish.”

  “Schoolin’!” he spat. “She’s had enough of that damned church. What good has it done her, ’cept t
o teach her how to sass me? It’s time she earned her keep!”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Marie unwisely rejoined. “I’ll continue to look for a job, and until I find something suitable, we’ll get by on the money you earn at the warehouse. I know it isn’t much, but we’ve managed before and—”

  “I ain’t workin’ there no more,” he cut in.

  “Why not?”

  “John Duvoisin is a drunk, and I ain’t workin’ for no drunk. So we’re just gonna have to let Haley work for them Harrin’tons and live on what she brings home. Then when you find somethin’, we’ll be sittin’ pretty.”

  “But, John, she’s young,” Marie reiterated softly, praying she could calm him. “Surely they won’t pay her well. No, there are other options. If need be, we’ll use the money I’ve—” Too late!

  “And what money might that be, Mother?” he accused, his calculating eyes assessing her as if she had somehow managed to scheme behind his back.

  “The money I’ve earned taking in laundry.”

  “The money you’ve earned taking in laundry?” he mimicked cruelly. “And how did you manage to keep all this money a secret up until now?”

  “It wasn’t a secret, John. It was my money, and I was saving it in case—”

  “Your money? Your money?” he bellowed, his face suffused with rage. “That money belongs to me. All of it! I’m your husband! I’m the one who clothes and feeds you and your daughter and puts a roof over your heads, ain’t I?”

  “Yes, John, but—”

  “Shut your yap! And don’t be givin’ me them saintly looks, either!”

  “Stop it!” Charmaine shouted. And then, fearing how the ensuing row would ultimately end, she reined in her anger. “Please, just stop it!”

  Her unexpected outburst only succeeded in diverting her father’s fury. “Now let me tell you somethin’, young lady. I’m sick and tired of them looks you been givin’ me—looks you think I can’t see—believin’ you’re better than your pappy. It’s about time you showed me some respect instead of sassin’ me with that spiteful tongue of yours. As long as you’re livin’ under my roof, you’ll be doin’ as I say without any lip. You hear?”