by Diane Noble
“This will not do at all. Can you imagine the little ruffians, sprightly and vigorous as they are, living with an old woman?”
“I truly don’t know how capable she is of handling them; I only know that she is expecting them, that their parents wrote to say it’s all arranged.”
He raked back his hair with his fingers and turned to gaze out at the ocean again. “How long have they been with you and your grandfather?”
“A fortnight before we left.”
He gave her a glance and chuckled. “No wonder you didn’t know what to do with them on the carriage.”
Her voice softened when she said, “I freely admit I did not know the first thing about children, and still don’t know as much as I need to. It was Bronwyn who showed me how well they responded to her once she filled their hearts with all the love she could.”
“They were probably starved for it,” he said, still staring at the horizon. “Do you think a distant cousin will give them the love they need?”
“I believe it’s possible. Maybe that’s exactly what she—and they—need. The one thing I do know is that Hermione is their mother and father’s choice for their next guardian, and I must abide by their wishes.”
“Coal told me his parents live in the Sandwich Islands.”
“Yes.”
“It might as well be Mars.” He raked back his hair again and furrowed his brow. “I think we should take them with us. Count them as ours.”
“I promised their mother I would follow her wishes to the letter,” she said. “We’ll need to pay Hermione a visit. As hard as it would be to let them go, maybe Richard and Sarah were right when they chose her.” She paused. “Besides, what if Richard and Sarah are on their way to Boston right now? They wouldn’t know where to begin looking for the children should we just cart them off to Illinois. And what about the danger we face?”
“True,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “That’s a consideration. But I might want to add a postscript to your letter about their parental responsibilities.” He fell quiet for a moment. “What is it they do there, and why can’t their children be with them?”
“They are missionaries. Richard is a surgeon,” Mary Rose said. “He and Sarah live on an island set aside as a leper colony.”
“It’s understandable that they don’t want their children exposed to the disease.” He turned to her. “But I can’t imagine anyone choosing to serve their church, or their God, over the good of their family, of their children.” He shook his head slowly.
“Sarah’s letters tell of God’s call to bring healing to the suffering souls and bodies of those in the leper colony. She also says that she knows God is watching over their children—he loves them more than she and Richard do.”
He was still fuming when he turned to her again. “Coal, Ruby, and Pearl need a real family,” he said.
“I agree, but they know they have parents. They write them letters and speak of them often. Their dearest hope is that their parents will return for them soon. But I’ve always felt it would take a miracle for that to happen.” Her eyes filled. “I never knew I would grow so attached to them. Even if Cousin Hermione is the perfect guardian, I will leave a large portion of my heart with the children.”
He took her hands in his. “We know something today about miracles that we didn’t know yesterday.”
She couldn’t help smiling. “We have seen one with our own eyes.”
“Then we will pray for another, that the children will be reunited with their rightful parents, as they so earnestly pray. But until that day, they deserve to be properly cared for.” Gabe stood there, gazing down at her, his eyes so full of warmth they made her soul want to take wing, or dance, or both. “The greatest miracle of all, my love, is finding you”—he smiled—“and loving you.”
He drew her closer. This time she felt his lips touch hers like a whisper.
FOURTEEN
Halifax, Nova Scotia
It was a sunny day, and the sun warmed Enid’s shoulders, though it did little to thaw her troubled thoughts. For nearly four days she’d been worrying about what she would tell Hosea about London. It was only this morning as the packet ship from Charlottetown dropped anchor in Halifax that she had concluded what she must do.
Gabe wanted to speak with her, and for that she was grateful. Though she had kept the dark secret close to her heart for so many years, it seemed inconceivable that she would now speak of it. And to Gabe. No one knew of it except Earie Lundie, the old woman in the woods, and she had died years before. Her house burned to the ground not long after and, if she kept records, they were but ashes now.
Sitting in the memorial garden of St. Paul’s Church, Enid heard a gate open and close, and then the sound of footsteps on gravel. She looked up.
Gabe MacKay rushed to her and grabbed her around the waist, lifted her off her feet and twirled her around.
They both laughed as he set her upon the solid ground again. His crooked smile was the same, his ready laugh, the beloved gesture of raking his hair with his fingers…all the same. But as she studied his eyes, she could see that something was different behind the twinkle of gladness to see her; they veiled another emotion that for now remained a mystery. She could feel it in her bones. Whatever it was, his ready laughter told her he was happier than he’d been in years.
“Just look at you,” he said, lifting his hand to touch her hair. “You haven’t changed.”
She laughed, and her cheeks turned pink. “I was surprised when Hosea said you wanted to talk with me,” she said. “Though I can’t imagine why the three of us can’t have the same conversation at the same time. I suppose he thinks you can talk me into doing his bidding about this visit to London.”
When he didn’t answer she knew she was right. “What is it that you can say that my husband can’t say for himself?”
When he spoke his voice was tender. “Hosea desperately wants you to go back to London with him for the reasons he told you in the letter.”
Enid drew in a deep breath, held it, and then let it out slowly. She walked over to a small stand of hemlocks and stood beneath them, somehow feeling more secure in their dappled shadows.
“I have a letter I want you to give him,” she said, pulling it from the deep pocket in her skirt.
“He’ll be here in just a few minutes. You’ll have nearly twelve hours together. Can you not give the letter to him yourself?” Frowning, he walked over to her. “And why a letter at all?”
“’Tis better if you’re not so close to me,” she said. He looked completely confused, almost boyish, which made what she planned to say all the more difficult. “Please, sit down or I’ll never get this out. Please, Gabe. It’s important.”
He walked back to the bench and sat down, still facing her. “So this involves me too.”
“It has everything to do with you,” she said, “and everything to do with Hosea, and with the reason I cannot conceive.”
She knew his beloved face so well, and could see his mind racing to keep up with her, but at the same time dragging the past that connected them.
“That night so long ago,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper, “in the woods.”
“You don’t need to describe where we were,” he said. “I remember every detail, from the loamy scent of the soil, and the earthy perfume of the moss…”
She held up one hand. “Don’t,” she said. “Please. This is painful enough without hearing the details.”
“We never spoke of what happened after that night,” he said.
“I didn’t because you didn’t.”
He seemed to let that sink in for a moment, then he said, “I loved you. I loved what happened between us. It may’ve been young love, but I thought it was real. But you never said anything about love that night.”
“I thought you were trying to forget what happened…your family, their deaths. That your pain was so deep and so great that all you felt was sorrow. That there was no room for love.”
“There was that, but surely you know I’d loved you since childhood.”
She gave him a small smile. “Maybe you should have told me.”
He looked down at the ground. She wanted to go to him and take him into her arms, just as she had that night. But after he heard what she had to say, it wouldn’t matter anyway. It struck her that she might lose both men she loved so well, all because of her choice.
“You left for Boston too soon after,” she said, “sooner than you had planned. I thought it was because of me; that your guilt was too great. That you couldn’t bear to tell me there was no love in the act, no commitment to any future for us.”
He stood and came over to her, gathered her into his arms, and she rested her cheek against the rough fabric of his jacket. She knew it was an embrace meant to comfort, not anything else. She understood that, but she took a few steps backward anyway.
“I became…with child…that night.”
Standing in the dappled shadows of the ancient hemlocks, he stared at her dumbfounded. A simple birdsong suddenly sounded, so sweet it made her heart hurt. When he spoke, it seemed he could get out only one word: “Enid.” It spilled from his lip, jagged, husky, choked.
He sat down on the bench again, dropping his head into his hands. Without looking up, he said, “We have a child?”
She blinked back her tears. “Our child didn’t live. He came too early. He was fully formed and beautiful, but his lungs and heart were not yet strong enough for this world. He died in my arms three hours later.”
“A son,” he whispered. Several seconds passed and then he looked up at her, his face crumpled with emotion. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You were in Boston. I didn’t want you to marry me for all the wrong reasons; I didn’t want you to give up your dreams.”
He groaned, his shoulders slumping.
Enid’s eyes filled. “I wanted to tell you. I wrote you letters…”
“I never received them.”
“I never posted them.” She came over to him and knelt before him, then took his hands in hers. “I had hidden my condition well beneath my skirts, not knowing how to tell my mother and father. When the pains started I visited Earie Lundie.” She didn’t have to explain who the woman was. Everyone on the island knew about the midwife and her herbal medicines and potions.
“I should have been with you,” he said, unable to look her in the eyes.
“Even then I was strong, Gabe. You had left me to pursue other dreams. You hadn’t spoken of love, only of need. I didn’t want to be just someone you needed to heal your own pain. I wanted to be loved. Cherished. Though all these years later, I look back with a different perspective. I think had Gabriel lived, I would have told you. I would have wanted him to know his father.”
“You named him Gabriel?”
“Gabriel MacKay the Second,” she said. “And Earie helped me bury him in a garden behind her cabin. I stayed with her for several days. She rocked me when I cried and helped me heal with her medicines. My parents knew of my interest in healing animals and thought I was staying with her to learn about her medicines.”
Gabe watched her with an inscrutable expression.
“I had hoped you would forgive me,” she whispered. “That’s one reason I’ve kept this secret to myself all these years. I thought I might die if, when I told you, I saw bitter accusation in your eyes where once I hoped and prayed I would see love.”
He reached for her and drew her from her knees to sit beside him—and holding her in his arms, he sobbed. She could no longer hold back her own tears, and while holding him, she cried too.
After a moment, he said, “If ever there was forgiveness to be given, I would have given it the moment you asked. But there is none needed.” He placed gentle, strong hands on either side of her face and, looking into her eyes, he said, “I’m the one in need of forgiveness—for not thinking through the consequences of our act, for not telling you I loved you when—with all my heart, soul, and spirit—it was only you whom I cherished for all those years.”
She was still weeping when she said, “You loved me?”
“I would have moved heaven and earth to come back to you. I would have married you, shouting from the very rooftops how much I loved and adored you, and always had. If Hosea hadn’t come along and captured your heart, I would have told you then of my deep feelings.”
She gave him a tremulous smile and reached into her sleeve for a handkerchief. “We were little more than children, growing up the way we did, best friends running wild all over the island, playing make-believe, building castles of sand on the beaches, then discovering that our friendship had turned into something else.” She dabbed at her watery eyes. “’Tis time to tell Hosea, but I cannot tell him face-to-face. I wrote it all, every bit of it, in a letter, and I want you to give it to him after you anchor in Boston.”
“Are you certain that is wise?”
“I have to take the risk. I want children of my own; I want children with the man I love. The specialist will see that I have born a child. It is the only way. Hosea must know. But I kept your name out of the letter. He will not know it was you. It would destroy your friendship.”
“He is a bighearted man, filled with God’s mercy and grace, more so than any other man I’ve known.” His gaze followed another trill of birdsong in the hemlocks. “But I am responsible for what happened. He needs to know that.”
Enid stood, walked a few feet away, and then turned back to him. “I’ve kept these things in my heart all these years. Earie is dead, her cabin nothing more than ashes. Even our baby sleeps beneath the ashes. If she kept records of people she treated with her medicines and why, those records were destroyed. I could easily decline the visit to London and let everything go on as before, my secrets intact.”
She lifted her gaze into the slender hemlock branches, watching the flutter of the leaves as the breeze caught them. “But when I received Hosea’s letter, I realized I wanted more than anything to bear another child, Hosea’s child. And that this might be the only chance we have to see that happen.”
Gabe came over to stand in front of her. “You bore our child alone. But you’re no longer alone in this. I will support you in any way possible. All you need to do is ask. I will deliver the letter and do my best to try to explain to Hosea what happened. And I will tell him it was me that night.”
She nodded, feeling she might cry again at any moment.
“I will deliver your letter, and then write to you myself from Boston after I have spoken to Hosea.” He gave her a gentle smile. “Though he and the letter will probably arrive at the same time on the return of the Sea Hawk.”
She kissed the letter and whispered, “Godspeed,” and handed it to him.
He tucked it in his inside breast pocket. “This may change everything,” he said. “When I give it to him, I mean, and tell him my part in it, our friendship may be destroyed. And your marriage may never be the same.”
“It’s a risk I need to take,” she said. “I love Hosea and have from the moment I saw the two of you, bedraggled and looking half starved, practically crawling onto our farm.”
“Ah, yes, the aftermath of the Thunderer.” He broke the tension with a chuckle.
“Your ordeal was talked about for years in Charlottetown.”
“I’m glad the townsfolk thought it humorous. We didn’t. At least, we didn’t at the time. It’s one thing to have actual pirates take over your ship; it’s quite another for a couple of green boys like us to hear rumors of piracy and jump overboard and swim to shore, thinking what we’d heard was true.” He chuckled. “I doubt that we will ever live that prank down.”
“Gabe,” she said solemnly, “when you give this to Hosea, tell him that there’s never been anything between us since that one night.” Her sorrow had twisted into a huge, painful knot inside as she imagined Hosea reading the letter. Especially now that she knew Gabe planned to tell him he was the baby’s father.
“I
will.”
“And tell my husband how very much I love him, and that the last thing I would ever want to do is hurt him.”
“I’ll tell him that as well.” Another bird trilled from the top of the hemlocks, and an answering call drifted down from the steeple, the bird then flapping away as the bell struck one o’clock. “Hosea said he would be here at one. What shall I tell him of your decision?”
“That I will go with him to London. And truly I will—if he forgives me after reading my letter. I wrote that I will be waiting, trunk packed, when the Sea Hawk sails into the Halifax harbor.”
“You’ll be all right?” Gabe asked as a breeze kicked up, picking up locks of Enid’s hair.
“Yes, especially now.”
He tilted his head. “Why now?”
“Because of you.” She didn’t elaborate.
“Me, why?”
“Because you love us both, and if anyone can help Hosea understand what happened between us in the past, it would be you. Knowing that you will be with him when he reads the letter calms my heart.”
He studied her face for a moment, looking as if he had more to say on the subject. But instead of commenting on her words, he swallowed hard. “I didn’t have a chance to tell you,” he said. “I’m resigning my position with Cunard. I won’t see you again on the return trip.”
She tilted her head, too surprised to speak for a few heartbeats. “Designing ships is your life’s passion, Gabe. It’s all you’ve ever wanted to do.”
“I’ve had something rather unusual happen to me,” he said, his half-smile returning. “I suppose you could say I found religion.”
Again, Enid was too startled to say anything at first. Her eyes widened as she recovered. “What kind of religion?”
“They’re called Saints—Mormons. Led by a modern-day prophet, Joseph Smith.”
She looked at him incredulously. “I didn’t think such things interested you.”
“They haven’t until now. I’ll write and tell you more about my adventures once I have arrived in America.”