by Meg Hennessy
She couldn’t confess, and wouldn’t, but the deception would be more than she could manage, and forgiving Donato would need more than an apology, perhaps more than a lifetime.
After changing back into her plain dress, Colette threw on a shawl and took the stairs to the main deck. Her brothers were on the forecastle.
“Can you not sleep?” Jordan asked.
“No, I cannot.”
“Loul is angry with me, says we should have stayed to help him.”
Colette shook her head, understanding how Donato was with his loved ones, his family and their protection utmost in his mind. “He wanted his family safe. He would not have allowed it. That is the only reason he turned us over to you.”
“We could have sailed with him, stayed out of range but been there in case he needed us.” Jordan offered.
“I should have stayed on his ship,” Loul persisted.
“Donato will need no assistance.” Colette wasn’t surprised at Loul’s show of loyalty, for the men had developed a level of respect through the early part of their journey. Never could they know of Donato’s involvement in the grounding of the Loirie. Never. “You have me and Enio—wasn’t that your mission?”
She didn’t miss the shift of glances between her brothers.
“We wanted you and Enio safe. That has been accomplished.”
“How long before we are home?”
“If you mean New Orleans, by nightfall.”
Loul put his arm around Colette’s shoulder. “But if you mean—”
“Sail! Sail!”
Jordan picked up his binoculars. “Well, I’ll be damned. It’s Donato’s ship, still sailing under a royal flag. How clever or…is that real?”
Colette nodded. “It is most real.”
“How so?”
“The king of Spain is his cousin. He has been appointed the viceroy of New Spain.”
“A titled man.” Jordan chuckled, watching Donato approach. “I’ll be damned, that son of a bitch.”
Having heard the excitement, Rayna came up to the main deck and joined the siblings atop the forecastle.
“He made fast time.” She looked at Colette. “Hurry, we must be ready to board.”
That wasn’t Colette’s first thought. Instead, she looked at her brothers and felt the pain of her abduction and the lost years of no memory. She now remembered it all, every detail from the attack: Jordan going overboard, and her running down the deck until she had stumbled and broken her leg. There had been a third ship that night, Donato’s, and it was his ship she had been pulled aboard.
She thought of her father, his pain over losing his daughter just like she had felt when Enio was taken. Images of Donato’s father enjoying his grandson raced through her mind. Her father would never know his grandson. It was too much to accept without serious consideration of her family.
No. Boarding Donato’s ship was not an assumed response to his return.
“I will be below.” Colette turned and retreated to the bowels of her brother’s ship.
“Colette?” Jordan tried for an explanation, but she had none to offer except the truth, and that would hurt him more than she could imagine.
“Take me home, Jordan.” Colette took the planked stairs to the captain’s cabin and closed the door behind her. She watched from the stern window, having heard Loul calling out to Donato.
“Tell us, Donato, did you leave the Lady Tempest on the floor of the ocean?” Loul yelled over the bulwarks.
“In time she will be. I left her badly wounded. You might see a couple polly boats pushing about.”
Hearing her husband’s voice nearly brought Colette to her knees, relieved he was alive and that he had prevailed. She had told him she’d be able to forgive him for anything, love him for eternity, having never thought for one moment that he was the man who had changed and destroyed her life and that of her family forever.
Rayna was in the chair waiting to be lifted overboard when Donato’s tender arrived. He was not in it, having stayed on board.
“Don’t forget my trunk.” Rayna said as she disappeared over the side.
Next load was her trunk. The tender waited.
“Where is Colette?” Colette heard Donato call over the bulwarks.
There was no answer until a knock on the door. “Colette?”
Jordan opened the door, then hesitated, taking in the items of her personal belongings strewn about the floor. “He waits.”
Colette turned away, unable to sort through her feelings. Donato was the man who had made it all happen, taking three years out of her life and her brothers’ lives, and indirectly had caused her father’s death. It was too soon to forget, to forgive. Unable to free herself from the past, she could not take a step toward their future.
“Take me home, Jordan.”
Jordan spun on his heels, and she heard him climb the stairs to the upper deck. “No other passengers.”
Soon the air billowed up the canvas and they were moving through the water toward the shores of Louisiana and away from Donato.
Colette curled up in the bed with Enio in her arms. He had fallen asleep, but she was awake, watching the wavering shadows on the ceiling from the moonlit waters of the sea. They’d be in New Orleans in a short time.
The idea of being home finally and forever should have made her feel relieved, maybe even relaxed, but none of those came to her mind or body. Instead, she felt empty, so much so she thought nothing would ever fill the wound that had opened up inside her.
It was close to eleven in the evening when they docked in New Orleans, using the tender to reach dry land. Jordan had a carriage and horses waiting at a nearby stable. Soon loaded, they were on their way back to his house in the Faubourg Sainte Marie.
A warm welcome awaited her with hugs from her stepmother and Aurélie. Maisie fussed over Enio, which normally made him laugh, but tonight he was a solemn little boy.
Hattie filled glasses with her special rum that made them pucker up with each taste, rambling on about how the sisters from the Ursuline convent had been out to see if Colette had returned and how they’d prayed for her safety.
The hospital was anxious for Colette to return to work as soon as she was able. Many of the soldiers at the hospital missed her caring hands and soft voice. The orphans missed their lessons in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Hattie assured her there was so much for her to do, she’d not think about any of this unpleasantness with her son’s father.
Colette wasn’t interested in that now. Exhausted, she made a polite good-night and took Enio upstairs to bed, praying the child would not again ask about his father.
She was just about to slip out of her dress when someone knocked on her door. Colette opened it. “Aurélie, I was just going to bed.”
“I help you, oui?” Colette opened the door farther for Aurélie’s entry. “Is the little bébé asleep?”
Colette nodded that he was. “He doesn’t seem so little anymore. He misses his papa.”
“Colette.” Aurélie started working on Colette’s buttons. “I do not wish to pry.”
But knowing Aurélie’s psychic mind, Colette suspected Aurélie had some insight.
“What did you read about me, Aurélie?”
“That you are with an unhappy heart. Your heart is sad and lonely and you think only of the man on the island. The man whose life you saved from your brother’s saber.”
“It is so.” Colette found that so easy to say, to admit, but to live it?
“Then why do you come to us and not to him?”
Colette looked away for a moment, unsure of what she should share. How easy it would be to allow her sense of obligation to God and her charities, as her family believed, rob her of the life she craved. That alone would be a falsehood as she stood before God. She had paid for the life of her parents, working endlessly, tirelessly, for others. But if Jordan learned Donato had taken their ship, he’d never forgive him, and it would only serve to further their division. She opted
not to share. “He has done some bad things.”
“So has your brother. I once told him he was a man of passion, some of it good and some of it not so good. But he is more good than not. Donato is much the same, non?”
“My brothers sacrificed so much of their own lives to save me. How can I deny that and return to where they thought to rescue me? Non. Non. It is too late. It is better this way. He is hundreds of miles away, back on the island.”
“But he will not stay there without his son.” Aurélie brushed Colette’s hair back and braided it. “I think you wish to understand too much when it comes to matters of the heart and underestimate your brother’s compassion.”
Colette stepped out of the dress pooled around her feet. She opened her wardrobe and sighed when she noted the boring dresses hanging within. But life wasn’t dresses and jewelry alone, it was the underlying beauty of what they expressed, a love for life, a passion she had with Donato. She pulled on a tired old nightgown. “I wish to sleep, Aurélie, but I thank you for your kind thoughts.”
Only minutes after Aurélie left, there was another knock on her door. As Colette suspected she would, Aurélie had reported to Jordan.
“Jordan, what is it? I am tired and as I told Aurélie I was just going to bed.” Colette opened her bedroom door to allow her brother entrance.
Jordan stepped inside and took a chair near the window and motioned for her to sit atop her bed. “Jordan, I am tired.”
“So am I, Colette. Why didn’t you go with him today?”
Her chest swelled with emotion much too dangerous to allow an escape route. “I am tired and have been through a lot—”
“Colette,” he interrupted. “I don’t want to be rude, but you are not the only one in life who has had bad experiences. It has been nearly four years since the abduction. Do you not think it is time to allow it to go away, find a life?”
“Find a life?” She couldn’t stop the tears. “I have a life, with Donato, my son.”
“Then why are you here?”
“You ask me that? Why? You sound as if you are disappointed I did not go with him.”
“Loul educated me about the two of you. He believes you are in love with each other.”
“As much as you hate him, you want me to go with him?”
“It’s not about me, it’s about you and your son, and God forbid, that Spaniard. I admit he’s a little more palatable as royalty.”
“But it is about you, Jordan.” She pushed to her feet. The tears flooded her cheeks. She angrily wiped them away but to no avail, for the dam had been broken by her brother’s prying. “I remember that night. I remember everything. There was a third ship, a third ship.”
She collapsed on the bed; Jordan rushed to her side. He sat on the bed next to her, wrapping her within his arms. “What do you remember?”
“Everything, from the attack to when I was pulled onto the third ship.” The rising memories tore through her muscles with spasms and twists that hurt, yet felt cathartic. The fire-tipped icy blades had returned, and the pain in her leg seared through her skin. Her lungs nearly collapsed; she strained for air. “I thought to have found myself. I have served the Lord and others long enough. I have paid my debt for our parents. I deserve my own life.”
“Of course, Colette…but you have one.”
Jordan pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his vest and handed it to her. “Here.”
She wiped her nose and dabbed at her eyes. “No, I don’t. It is not real.”
“Donato did not want you back? Could he not forgive you?”
That question jolted her out of her tears. She stared at her brother. “Oh my Lord, yes, he forgave me for taking his son.”
“I speak as a father and husband, what crimes are greater than what you had done, that you can’t forgive him?”
Colette pushed off the bed and stared out the window, seeing only darkness and stars in a cloudless night, as if the entire world awaited her answer. “I cannot tell you.”
“Why?”
“I cannot tell you because his crimes were against us, our family.”
Jordan stood up and came behind her. Taking her arm with his hand, he turned her to face him. “Then I think you better tell me.”
Her eyes were so swollen from crying, she could not see her brother clearly. “I don’t want you to hate him any more than you already do.”
“That’s not possible.” Jordan chuckled. With his thumb, he wiped her tears from her eyes. “Tell me what he’s done that you cannot forgive.”
Colette was falling into a dark tunnel where no one could help her, suddenly feeling so alone, so frightened. Donato’s Colette bled through to the floor. The fire-tipped icy blades melted to pool around her. No longer was she this woman of strength who had sailed across the ocean for her son, but a terrified woman aboard a ship on fire.
“Colette?” Jordan gave her a gentle shake.
“There was a third ship that night, the most horrific night of my life.”
“Wasn’t my best night, either.” He directed her to sit down on the bed, and he sank down next to her, wrapping her in his arms, keeping her safe, like always. “But we survived to go on living.”
She closed her eyes, afraid to say it, to confess. “The third ship…was Donato’s.”
The relief of saying it nearly melted her body like a candle on a hot day.
“There,” she whispered. Though her vision was impaired with eyes swollen from tears, she could see enough to realize he didn’t look shocked. She managed to stifle her gasps. “You are not surprised, shocked?”
“I already knew that. So does Loul. Rayna confirmed it. I might not know all the reasons why he’d partner with those skunks, but from the ashes, the phoenix rises. I have Aurélie, children, a safe home. None of that would have happened had it not been for that chain of events that threw us together. I would not give up what I have now to change the past. You wouldn’t have Enio, or this man you love. I’m flattered you think so highly of me, Colette, but I lived as a pirate for three years. I fought a war. I’m not proud of everything I’ve done. I’d like to be judged on who I am now, not the past. Did he make a mistake, yes, but no one knows it more than he. But I have to admire a man who sails five thousand miles to save his son.”
“On a clipper,” she clarified, to ensure he really appreciated what Donato had done.
“On a clipper,” Jordan conceded. “And don’t worry about me. I still have my revenge. He married into a French family. His son is half French.”
Her eyes filled with tears, for she loved her brothers so much. “But Jordan…you mean the world to me.”
He put his hands on each of her shoulders. “So can I forgive him? Is that the question that is tearing you apart?”
“If you can’t—”
“I don’t have to. Your choice is not between him or me. I love you, and that will never change. You will never lose me, Colette. I am your brother.”
“But what am I to do?”
“About?”
“Donato, I love him, his son loves his father, we have a life—”
“Hmmm…” Jordan pushed off the bed, then leaned down and gently kissed her forehead. “I think you just answered your own question. You must live your own life, as I do mine, but I will always be here for you, whatever you decide. Good night, sweet sister.”
…
The darkness of the night lifted slightly in the wee early hours. The moon still hovered over the gulf and cast a sparkling glow over the rolling waves. Water smoke had churned up from the sea and hovered around the top of the main mast. Soft sprays of droplets sprinkled the deck as the flying jib dived into the sends. The sails were unfurled to their fullest. The square riggings to the top of the main and fore mast were billowed, stretched by the wind.
Donato stepped onto the helm, allowing the misty night to keep him awake and wash the worries off his face. He had left the island, where Rayna was most likely asleep by now in one of the guest rooms he
had prepared for her. She seemed to like the hacienda, not that it mattered; that wasn’t her final destination, though she didn’t know it yet. There would be plenty of time for surprises. As soon as he had settled Rayna and provisioned the ship, he was back on board and headed for Louisiana.
The men asked no questions, and there were no grumblings about leaving port again. They knew where they were going and why.
He had promised Colette his son would always be with him, and that was a promise he would keep, but that wasn’t what drove him tonight and kept his heart pumping with a rhythmic cadence of a ceremonial dance.
He was going to get his son and…his wife.
He could think of nothing else through his battle with the Lady Tempest.
Soon he’d reach the soil of the United States. Being the newly appointed viceroy of New Spain, the officials of America would not touch him for fear of offending Spain. He sailed under the royal flag. His ship would not be seized, and his men would not be thrown into the Calaboose.
But if none of that were true, he’d still be in New Orleans tonight. If there were a price on his head and an order to shoot on sight, he’d be in New Orleans tonight. Nothing would keep him away from Colette.
As it was the last time he sailed into New Orleans, in the early-morning hours, the streets were relatively quiet. The only activity was near the Hôtel de la Marine off Rue de la Levée.
His men had been instructed to stay with the ship and to allow no one to board. Ramón rowed the tender ashore and would wait for Donato’s return.
Donato threw the rope over the pier as they slid into the post. He hopped off and tied the tender. “I don’t know how long this will take.”
“You should not go alone, Your Excellency. Her brother is home.”
“No.” He motioned for Ramón to wait on the dock. “Return to the ship and wait until you see me before returning. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
Ramón nodded that he understood and settled back into the tender to wait.