The Birthright

by T. Davis Bunn

  “An honor to meet you, Mrs. Madden.” Nicole gave a low curtsy, more than anything to hide her dismay over having to spend weeks in this grieving woman’s company.

  “Andy, perhaps you would be so good as to have Benson serve tea.”

  “I’d be happy to do it myself, ma’am.” Before she could object he hastily offered a quick bow and backed out of the room.

  “I see you have already smitten one of James’s officers. No doubt you shall have them all under your charm before the day is out.”

  Nicole wondered if Mrs. Madden was displeased with her, just as the captain had seemed to be earlier. “I beg your pardon, madame, but I wish to be no bother to anyone.”

  “No, of course not.” She then noticed the direction of Nicole’s wandering eyes. “Rather impressive, is it not?”

  Nicole took this as permission to give herself over to enjoying the ambiance of the room. “It is positively stunning!” Built into the rear of the cabin was a swath of glass panels through which she could view the sea streaming out behind the ship.

  “Yes, I imagine the captain’s great room would make for marvelous accommodations in which to enjoy one’s first voyage across the sea.”

  “I have been to sea before, madame.” In the distance she could still see the tall hills near Halifax and two of the town’s higher steeples.

  “Oh? And when was that?”

  “Once as a young child. Then again the summer before this.”

  “Do my ears not detect a French accent?”

  The hills gradually turned a soft bluish gray as the distance and the sea mist grew between ship and shore. “Indeed so, madame.”

  “But I thought my husband mentioned something about an English connection.”

  Nicole sighed and looked away. Watching the hills disappear beyond the horizon only made matters worse. “That is correct.”

  “Then you must be from the Quebec region. No doubt you elected to avoid the coming battles.” The thought of war turned her tone bitter. “Such wisdom in one so young.”

  Before Nicole could correct the woman, there came a knock on the door. Andy Potter reappeared with a silver tray and tea service. He set it down and said, “With your permission, ma’am.”

  “Oh, very well, you may pour. But then you really must be off. I won’t have the captain coming down on me for allowing you to shirk your duties over this young lady.”

  The crimson flush appeared again, creeping up from Potter’s collar. “No, ma’am.”

  Emily Madden pointed at the seat beside her. “Do sit down, my dear. You can turn your chair to take in the view.”

  Dejectedly, Nicole lowered herself onto the seat. She struggled to understand how such excitement and eagerness could come from the same heart as all the regret. “No, thank you, but I have seen enough.”

  Emily accepted her teacup and said, “Our young guest is from the province of Quebec, Andy. She has traveled here by sea.”

  “Excuse me, madame. But I am not Québecois. In fact, I have never been farther west than Halifax.”

  Potter and Mrs. Madden glanced at each other, then at Nicole. “But your accent…” Emily said with a quizzical look on her face.

  Nicole accepted her tea from Andy, secretly detesting how her privacy was being quickly eroded. But she had no choice. “I was raised in Louisiana.”

  The news appeared to upset Emily. “But Louisiana is not involved in the conflict.”

  “No, madame.”

  “Then, why…” Emily became silent for a long moment. She set down her cup, folded her hands, and said with a sternness that seemed modeled after her husband, “Young lady, I fear you have boarded this vessel under false pretenses. When in Halifax my husband was specifically ordered to make room on this ship for a very important English guest. Yet now I discover you are from Louisiana. Or at least you say you are.”

  Nicole kept her eyes focused on the cup in her lap. “Everything I have told you is the truth.”

  “You will forgive me if I find that somewhat difficult to believe. If you have been at sea before, how is it you never saw a captain’s great room?”

  “Because I was not invited.” Nicole found herself forced to have to meet the older woman’s gaze and reveal yet more of her secrets. “I was separated from my parents at birth and raised in southern Acadia—what you may know as Cajun territory. Last year I sailed north and was reunited with my family.”

  Emily’s mouth opened, but her mind remained blocked by too many questions seeking to be asked all at once. Finally she settled on, “But why England?”

  Nicole shook her head at the question. Why indeed? Was she allowing her adventurous spirit to speak to her so loudly she failed to hear her Lord’s quieter request? If she had truly followed His will in embarking on this voyage, why then was she now awash in remorse?

  Nicole realized the room waited for her reply. She couldn’t think of anything to say but the truth. “My uncle is childless and has asked that I come to be his heir.”

  “And who, pray tell, is this uncle?”

  “Sir Charles Harrow.”

  The silence that met her answer was so deafening, Nicole could hear the water rushing beneath the stern and the dull footfalls of sailors overhead. She had no choice but to lift her head once more. In any other setting, the pair of expressions she saw would have seemed comical. Both the young midshipman and the captain’s wife stared at her in round-eyed shock.

  “Lord Charles, the earl of Sutton?” Mrs. Madden managed to say.

  “Yes, madame.”

  “He is one of the wealthiest men in the realm,” added Andy.

  Emily had completely forgotten the young man was still there. She looked at him and said, “That will do, Mr. Potter. You may go now.”

  “But…yes, ma’am.” He bowed to them both, but more earnestly to Nicole this time. “Your servant, Miss Harrow.”

  When the door had closed behind him, it was Emily’s turn to peer out over the flowing waters. “You must excuse my abruptness,” she said.

  “No apologies are necessary, madame.”

  “Indeed they are.” The handkerchief was retrieved from where it had been stowed up her left sleeve. She bundled it tightly in her hands and said as if to the sea that churned outside the glass, “I made this journey with my husband, because my two daughters, our only children, live in the southern colonies. One is in Boston, the other is farther down the coast in New York. I implored them both to leave. We are not without means in England, and so we could have offered their husbands proper situations. Think of the grandchildren, I begged them. Think of what it would be like to have them surrounded by war….”

  Then Emily’s voice became unsteady. She clamped her mouth shut and sat there, immobilized by the effort to contain her grief and her worry.

  Nicole’s heart went out to the mother. “They would not agree, madame?”

  “Would not even let me finish. Come what may, they told me, their place was with the colonists and their grievances. Come what may.” The fist clenching the handkerchief beat against her thigh. “I regret to say my daughters have inherited their father’s stubborn nature. I cannot help but feel that I failed in my duties as a mother and grandmother. Had I spoken the right words, used the proper tone, perhaps I could have them here with me now. Safe and sound.”

  “I do not know what is right for them,” Nicole confessed, “but I admire their ability to know what is their proper place and station. And I admire you for permitting them to stay.”

  Emily’s countenance seemed overly bright as she turned toward the younger woman. “You do?”

  “I have just watched my own mother letting me go.” Suddenly the cabin’s air seemed filled with tiny needles, and it hurt to breathe. “Such a difficult act I could never imagine doing myself, no matter how right the deed.”

  “My dear young lady…” Emily paused long enough to dab at her eyes with the kerchief. She then forced herself to pick up her teacup and offer Nicole a smile. “I
do believe you are going to prove a veritable tonic.”

  A few minutes later, Potter returned to announce, “Captain’s compliments, ma’am. He requests the pleasure of your company at dinner.”

  “Very well,” Emily replied. “You may tell him we shall be delighted to attend him.”

  After they were alone again, Emily explained the accommodations to Nicole as she gestured toward the different rooms. “This chamber is in effect the master’s dining room and great room. His office is through that door, which he has rigged into a sleeping cabin. We are to use his bedroom through there.” Her smile came easier now. “These are quite exceptional quarters for a trading vessel, though I assume you are used to far more luxurious surroundings. But Captain Madden is also part owner of the trading company and rarely puts to sea anymore. He made this journey mostly on my account. He was fairly certain from the outset that our daughters would not return. Their husbands are both very active and prosperous. One is a representative for the upstart Colonial Congress, or whatever they have chosen to call themselves.”

  “I must be honest with you, madame,” Nicole decided aloud. “I may be related to the earl, but it is something I learned only a few months ago. As for these surroundings, I spent most of my last journey at sea wedged into the central hold, praying to survive a terrible storm.”

  Emily’s eyes seemed to gain a new light. “Everything you say raises a thousand questions, my dear. So many I scarcely know what to ask next.”

  Perhaps it was her conflicting emotions or the vastness of the sea out the back portals or the richly burnished cabin that enclosed them so comfortably—whatever the reason—Nicole suddenly felt ready to disclose her secrets to a woman she had known but a few hours. “My beginnings were among the very poor, madame. The Acadians were expelled from our homeland when I was only a few months old, so I made my first sea voyage before my first birthday. After that, my family lived in a lean-to that was attached to a cowshed. When the Spanish opened Louisiana to Acadian settlement, we walked there from Charleston. That journey took us over a year.”

  Emily was silent for a while, gazing behind Nicole at the westering sun. She then pulled a pocket watch from the belt around her middle, opened it, and said, “My goodness, we must begin our preparations. You will find my husband is a stickler for punctuality. We must be ready in time to permit the duty-men to fit this cabin out for dinner.” She rose to her feet. “Which trunk will hold your finer dresses?”

  “I am afraid I have nothing better than what you see before you.”

  Emily cast a doubtful glance over Nicole’s dress, coming to rest on the dirty hem left by her crossing the market and harbor square. “The captain requires all his guests to dress rather formally for dinner, my dear. And your figure is so much fuller than mine, I fear nothing I have will fit you. Surely you must have brought something finer.”

  “Nothing. Perhaps I should just decline…” Nicole halted, thinking for the first time since her departure of Charles’s trunk. “Well, perhaps there is something.”

  “Yes?”

  She moved to the newer trunk and unfastened the straps. “My uncle sent this from England. It arrived just as I was preparing to leave.”

  “You haven’t even looked?”

  “I looked, but I did not pay it much mind.” What little she had seen of the trunk’s contents had somewhat frightened her, for it seemed in the haste of final preparations to be a harbinger of the unknown that awaited her in England. Nicole flipped open the trunk, peeled back the layers of wrapping blankets, and lifted the edge of the first garment.

  Emily gasped. “Oh my!”

  Nicole stood slowly with the garment in hand. It was a full-length gown of finest satin. The bodice and body were a brilliant blue that shimmered in the softening sunlight. The half sleeves and flounced shoulders were decorated with tiny flowers sewn with gold thread. This same floral pattern traced its way down both sides, broadening to become glowing gardens about the wide hem. The dress possessed a swooping décolletage, kept to a fitting modesty by a sheath of white silk that buttoned around the neck and was embroidered with sky blue flowers to match the hem.

  Emily bent over the chest and retrieved the note that had dropped from the dress when Nicole unfolded it. She read it aloud. “ ‘My dear Nicole, in hopes that you shall deign to join me in England, I have taken the liberty of ordering up a few items to help with your journey. You will find a viscountess-to-be is expected to dress the part, even on board a ship. I do hope they are of a proper fit. Yours ever, Charles.’”

  “I cannot wear this,” Nicole murmured.

  Emily’s gaze shifted from the dress to the young woman and back. “Whyever not?”

  “Because until last summer, all my clothes were homespun! Until I was thirteen, my only shoes were deerskin moccasins sewn together by my father.”

  “But you just said you did not meet your father till this very year.”

  “I mean my French father.” Nicole dropped her arms, bunching the dress together at her waist. “Whatever am I to do?”

  For some reason, Nicole’s distress brought a cheerful light to Emily’s face. “A veritable tonic,” she repeated.

  Chapter 7

  Emily Madden insisted they not take in the air on the quarterdeck as was customary, while the great room was being fitted for the evening meal. Instead, she retired with Nicole in the captain’s bedchamber, in what was now to be their sleeping quarters. There she helped Nicole unpack and stow her meager belongings and inspect the rest of Charles’s gifts. Everything they unpacked brought soft cries of delight from Emily, who said she wanted to “keep the prize a secret” for the moment. Emily’s excitement was enough to ease even Nicole’s pall of worry.

  The chest contained two more dresses: a cotton-and-silk frock of delicate coral and a heavier, more wintry affair of midnight blue. There was also a shawl of wool, so soft Emily continued to stroke it long after they had put it aside. Below the shawl sat three pairs of kidskin shoes, one for each of the dresses. Though the shoes were a tight fit, the leather was soft enough that, with the tiny gold buckles fastened at the widest position, Nicole felt she could manage. And manage would be all she could do, for she felt as though perched on a tower with a hard wooden base. The shoes had a “fashionable tilt,” as Emily explained, with underpinnings of proper calf and cork. All Nicole knew was that they were positively the strangest things she had ever worn.

  But that was before Emily ordered her into the dress. Emily had already dressed and then helped Nicole pin her hair into something she said befitted a young lady attending the master’s table. There was only a tiny hand mirror in the cabin, yet what little Nicole could see of herself and her new hair left her decidedly uncomfortable, particularly after Emily discovered the paper-wrapped bundle of satin ribbons—two for each dress. Emily tied the ribbons into her hair with the bows dangling down over one shoulder.

  Finally, there was nothing more to unpack, nor any excuse to prevent her from fitting into the dress that lay on the bed as if taunting her. The noises from the other room pressed her, as did Emily’s frequent glances at the pocket watch now lying beside the dress. So Nicole admitted defeat and raised her hands, thereby allowing Emily to slip the dress up and over her head.

  Emily helped her do up the buttons at the back, took as far a step away as the cramped cabin allowed, then whispered, “Turn around.”

  She did so. Emily’s not saying anything caused Nicole to demand in a hushed voice, “Well, is it awful?”

  “Awful? My dear…”

  Then a knock came at the door, and a gruff voice said, “The captain is descending, ma’am.”

  “We are ready.” To Nicole, she said, “Slip on your shoes. No, not those. The light blue ones there by the bed.”

  They were the same type as the darker blue that she had already tried on, but when she pushed her feet into this pair, her right foot made contact with something bundled into the shoe’s toe. Nicole removed her foot, lifted the
shoe, and pulled out yet another paper-wrapped package. “Not more ribbons.”

  As she opened the paper both ladies gasped in unison. In Nicole’s hand lay a slender gold necklace from which hung a pendant and large square-cut green stone surrounded by tiny diamonds.

  Again Emily unfolded the note and read it. “ ‘This belonged to my mother. I am certain she would be delighted to see you enjoy it.’”

  “This is not for me,” Nicole protested.

  Emily lifted the necklace from Nicole’s trembling fingers. “Turn around,” she said.

  “I cannot possibly—”

  But she was silenced by a second knock on the door, sharper this time. “Hurry, dear,” Emily said. “We mustn’t keep the ship’s company waiting.”

  Before Nicole knew it, Emily had strung the necklace, and her hands were plucking at Nicole’s shoulders, straightening a strand of hair, pulling at a sleeve. Then she quickly opened the door and started pushing her forward.

  Nicole had no choice but to enter a great room now filled with officers in glittery uniforms and lit by more than a dozen candles. In the flickering light she caught sight of a stranger, looking at her from across the room where a silver platter was mounted on the wall. The plate was polished to such a brilliant finish that it reflected better than any common mirror. The stranger was bedecked in the finery of fables, a dress of softest blue, with cascading hair and eyes green as the glimmering pendant hanging around her neck.

  It was only when her hand reached up to touch the gem that Nicole realized she was looking at herself.

  In a voice full of pride and excitement, Emily Madden announced, “Gentlemen, may I present to you the Lady Harrow, viscountess of Sutton.”

  Chapter 8

  Nicole climbed two of the stairs leading to the quarterdeck. She spread out what had once been her best shawl and then settled herself on top of the hogshead lashed to the stair’s railing. The great oak barrel was two-thirds her height and broad as a table. Its top made a perfect stool from which to look out over the sea, read, and reflect.