Into His Arms

by Paula Reed

  Elizabeth gave her a bittersweet smile. “Jonathan.”

  “My father?”

  “Aye. We met him on Cigatoo. We took an immediate dislike to one another, Jonathan and I, but for Naomi, it was love at first sight.”

  “They are not like you and Uncle Miguel,” Faith said. “But they love each other, that I know.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt of that, Faith. I may not ever have liked your father overmuch, but the man commands respect. If I know Jonathan, he loves you all fiercely.”

  “He does, and I’ve surely broken his heart,” Faith agreed, her voice quivering.

  With a harshness that was out of character, Elizabeth replied, “‘Tis about time his faith cost him something.”

  “Then you do hate him for keeping you and Mother apart.”

  “I don’t hate him,” Elizabeth sighed. “Naomi wrote to me once. She could have done so again, if she had chosen to. I suppose I’ll always feel a little hurt that she chose him over me, but I understand.”

  “You do?”

  “Aye. Naomi needed Jonathan, even as I needed Miguel. My sister and I are on two different paths, and that is just the way of it. Do you really think yourself so unusual, a Puritan born and raised who eventually comes to rebel against all of the proscriptions, the hypocrisy?”

  “No one I have known has ever spoken such rebellion.”

  “Only to face the stocks or be whipped? Imagine that,” Elizabeth retorted, and Faith nodded in understanding. “Naomi and I spoke of it, though, in furtive whispers, in the dark of night.”

  Such a tale was inconceivable to Faith. Her mother was a pillar of the church, an upright woman. She was very nearly as perfect as Faith’s father.

  “But while such thoughts made me long for escape, they made Naomi long for security. When I allowed myself to question the church, I felt free. Naomi felt terrified. I suppose the story of the lace sums it up well enough. After our mother discovered the petticoat and whipped us for our lying, stealing, and vanity, she marched us to the church. There we were lectured to for well over an hour. By the time we left, I was disgusted. It was only a bit of finery. But Naomi was utterly convinced that her desire for the lace was a sure sign that she was destined for the fires of hell. She struggled with such worries for a long time.”

  Faith could well imagine her mother’s torment. Had she not wrestled with the very same fears?

  “And then came Jonathan Cooper. A more solid, stable, self-certain man you’ll never meet. He’s a rock, that one. And he was handsome and hardworking, a man with a promising future. A man brimming with divine grace. When she fell in love with him, she changed. I almost wish I could say that it was for the worse. Our separation might have been easier to swallow if I could have believed that she feared him.”

  “Oh, nay!” Faith protested. “He is not a brutal man! He is forceful, and fearsome in some ways, but he would never really hurt any of us!”

  Elizabeth reached over and patted her hand. “I know that, dear. As I said, I selfishly wished that Naomi had changed for the worse. Mayhap I was a little jealous. She married your father, and it was as though a light went on inside of her. He restored her. He gave her back her faith in the church, and in doing so, he gave her faith in herself. Who am I to judge that? He has made my sister happy. I cannot, for the life of me, hate your father.”

  “What did Uncle Miguel give to you?”

  The older woman paused, as though she debated something in her own mind. Finally, she turned and arched a graceful brow at Faith. “Well, for one thing, he was devilishly handsome and a master of flattery. I must admit, having never in my life been told that I was beautiful, that meant a great deal more than it should have.”

  To her dismay, Faith felt her cheeks flame at her aunt’s words. Even as she understood her mother’s long-ago doubts, she understood Elizabeth’s vanity. It was a heady thing, to be told of one’s beauty and desirability.

  “And he stirred within me feelings both forbidden and intoxicating. Sheltered as I was, I was ill prepared and overwhelmed.”

  Faith’s face felt positively scorching.

  Elizabeth continued as though unaware of the girl’s response. “We had a whirlwind romance, because my family was to spend only a few weeks in Jamaica until our ship came for us. My conversion to Catholicism was an impulsive one, born of passion, but I quickly came to embrace much of it.”

  “It spoke to you?”

  “Not all of it. I saw the corruption I had been warned of since childhood, but having seen the flaws in my own church, as well, it mattered little.

  “Forgiveness, Faith. Here was a God who had not already chosen my fate. I could ask forgiveness, and it would be granted.”

  “There is little enough of that in our church,” Faith acceded.

  “Even the very best people founder, Faith.” Elizabeth looked hard at her niece, and Faith had the uneasy feeling that she could see right through her. “In the end, redemption comes through forgiveness. Forgiving others and forgiving ourselves.”

  When Elizabeth rose to check on the midday meal, Faith sat alone with her thoughts. Geoff’s betrayal had cut her to the quick. She hadn’t been able to decide which infuriated her more, the fact that he had seduced her and then discarded her, or the fact that she had allowed him to do so.

  Wrapping her arms tightly around her waist, she walked to one of the front windows and gazed out at the bay and the sea beyond. Thoughts of Geoff always left her with a nauseating combination of frustrated ire and aching emptiness.

  Where was he? Did he ever think of her? Had he any regrets?

  She shook her head to clear it. These were futile questions. She could only hope that, in time, she would be able to follow her aunt’s advice and forgive both Geoff and herself.

  Elizabeth had given her much else to think on. She had cast an entirely new light upon Faith’s mother, and somehow it left her feeling somewhat differently about herself. Different paths, Elizabeth had said. Not one path of good and all others of evil, merely paths that were different. Where would Faith’s take her?

  Chapter 19

  There would be many such conversations between Faith and her aunt in the weeks to follow. And the more they talked, the more certain Faith felt that, despite the pain that Geoff had caused her, and despite her own fall from grace, Destiny had been the answer to her prayers, after all. Geoff’s bold defiance of convention had shaken her loose from the grip of Puritanical fear. Now, Elizabeth was helping her to find new places to take hold of hope.

  Here was a woman who could forgive those who had denied her forgiveness. She could question churches without forfeiting her faith. Her thinking was adaptable, independent, admirable.

  But Elizabeth was not without her own contradictions, and at times, they nearly split Faith’s heart in two. She had quickly came to love both her aunt and uncle. They had welcomed her warmly and lavished her with the finest of everything they had to offer. At the same time, what she saw in the cane fields sickened her.

  As in town, she could not understand the words of the Africans’ songs, but the anger and sadness, ever colored by a fierce pride, spoke directly to her soul. It was a wonder they had the energy to survive, much less sing. Many did not. Those who did seemed to find that energy in the hostility and disdain that steeped just below the surface, impervious to the overseer’s whip and the indignity of bondage.

  The innocuous, sweet sugar crystals that had once been a rare treat could be had in abundance at Winston Hall, but Faith found that she had lost her taste for it. She drank her tea black and declined the luscious desserts prepared by the African women who served in the kitchen. Anything sweetened with sugar was made sour by sweat and sadness, bitter by blood and anger.

  “Does it never disturb you, Aunt Elizabeth?” Faith ventured one afternoon as she and the older woman rode in an open carriage. They traveled down the road, through recently burned fields, and out toward the beach. “All that you have costs them so much.”

/>   Faith inclined her head to a thin, young African boy not much older than her brother David. He moved among the blackened plants, cutting away the canes that stood strong amid the destruction. Fields were burned before harvesting to make them passable. Thick growth, snakes, wasps, and other hazards had to be destroyed before laborers could begin the work of harvesting. Fire eliminated these impediments without damaging the fruit of the canes.

  Elizabeth smiled and patted her hand. “They look so human, it is easy to forget, but they do not have feelings like you and me, dear.”

  How could this woman who was so accepting of the differences between people be so unable to see past a mere difference in color? Faith wondered. Aloud, she answered, “They are not beasts.”

  Elizabeth sighed. “You must try to understand, Faith. When I first married Miguel, slavery appalled me, too, but it is a necessary evil. You’ll grow accustomed to it. The plantations simply couldn’t run without African labor.”

  “Does that justify it?”

  “They’re savages, dear. Little more than wild animals.”

  “And kept so by their owners.”

  Elizabeth set her lips into a thin line. “There is naught that you can do about it. In this, it is better to just accept the way things are. Perhaps I have chosen not to see things anymore, but to dwell upon the Africans’ plight only causes heartache. Once you have lived here awhile, you will come to understand.”

  Faith fell silent. In the last few months, she had learned that people could be either too rigid in their beliefs or too rigid in their denial. It seemed that they could be too willing to bend, as well. She doubted that anything could accustom her to the cruelty that plantation owners insisted was a necessity.

  Her aunt’s statement also brought to mind another quandary. She could hardly impose upon Miguel and Elizabeth’s kindness forever. Elizabeth had subtly mentioned that several of their friends had fine sons who stood to inherit healthy farms, but Faith shuddered at the thought of one day becoming like her aunt, complacent at the suffering of the people who worked the cane fields.

  As if that weren’t enough, though she still felt much bitterness toward Geoff, she could not bear the thought of any other man’s touch. Her hosts had been thoughtful, content with her tales of family and village life in Massachusetts, never pressing her for details of her voyage. That part had simply been too painful to speak of.

  The two women arrived at the beach and alighted from the carriage. The slave who had driven them there laid out a blanket in the shade of palms on the fine, white sand and unloaded a hamper of food and wine. Faith smiled and thanked him, causing him to look at first startled, then suspicious, before Elizabeth sent him on his way to return in two hours’ time.

  “It does trouble you greatly, doesn’t it?” Elizabeth sighed. “You have great affection for your uncle and me, but you cannot abide the way we live.”

  Realizing that it was a futile subject, Faith replied, “It is not for me to judge you.”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “Nay, it is not for any of us to judge each other. Life is not as black and white as we would have it.”

  “Some things are.”

  Her voice matter-of fact, but without malice, Elizabeth replied, “So, there is a bit of Jonathan Cooper’s steely will in his daughter, after all.”

  Faith gazed out at the excruciatingly blue sea. Ripples on the surface hinted at the eternal motion of wind and water, but otherwise it was as smooth as glass. Even as it had done when she surveyed it from the ship’s rail, the ocean seemed to pull at her soul, and she voiced her thoughts aloud.

  “Perhaps my father is not perfect, but as you said, he is solid and commands respect. I am not ashamed that he is a part of me. If only I could have his absolute certainty without sacrificing the freedom that I have found.”

  “For myself,” Elizabeth replied, “I tend to be rather suspicious of those who seem convinced that they possess an absolute understanding of the Almighty.”

  “You sound a bit like someone else I know,” Faith reflected.

  At Elizabeth’s suggestion, the two women tucked their skirts up above their knees and waded into the warm water, basking in the feel of the breeze upon their faces.

  For all that she had let go of much of the hellfire and brimstone of her past, there was still a heavy weight upon Faith’s soul. There were rules that were an intrinsic part of her, and she had broken them. She had begun to think that if she could but speak of it, then forgiveness might follow. Faith drew a deep breath and bolstered her courage.

  “In many ways, Geoff is as certain as ever my father was. He is an atheist,” she said, broaching the subject that had plagued her for weeks.

  To the younger woman’s surprise, Elizabeth didn’t seem at all shocked by her pronouncement or the casual use of Captain Hampton’s Christian name. “Is he?” she replied mildly.

  “Aye. It troubled him, our different beliefs.”

  “Troubled him? I would have thought it to be the other way ‘round.”

  “It seemed to me that we were not so very different at all. Neither of us could keep our philosophies if we examined them too carefully. He is as consumed by blind faith in nothing as I was in blind faith to the church of my childhood.”

  Elizabeth perused her niece with a look of heightened respect. “You are wise, indeed.”

  Faith looked down at the waves lapping at her calves. Wise? She doubted that.

  “Interesting thing, that,” Elizabeth commented.

  “What?”

  “What happens to you whenever you speak of your ship’s captain. There is some deep turmoil there. It cannot be as bad as you think, my dear.”

  “We were lovers!” Faith blurted. She held her breath and waited for her aunt’s reproach, but again found she had worried for naught.

  “Of course you were.” Elizabeth took Faith’s hand. “I wondered what had come between you.”

  “You knew?”

  “Not when he came to tell us of you. He’s a handsome man, that’s sure, but he was so cold. I thought perhaps he harbored some grudge against you for stowing away on his ship, but he would accept no payment for your passage. I knew not what to make of him. As for you, you were obviously distressed when we met you, but that could easily be attributed to the loss of your family and all that you had been through.”

  “Aye,” Faith agreed, “I had hoped you would believe that was all it was.”

  “In the weeks that you have been here, you have opened much of your heart to me, but whenever you speak of the ship, you lapse. Suddenly you are a guilt-ridden daughter of Eve. And you are miserable.”

  “Do I seem so? I try not to be morose.”

  “You are entitled to nurse your broken heart. Come, let us eat. We’ll drink that bottle of wine, and you can tell me all about it.”

  Shadows moved across the pale sands, and Faith and Elizabeth laughed and cried and held each other. By the time the slave who had brought them there returned, Faith’s face was tear streaked and her brain a bit muddled with drink, but her heart felt lighter than it had in weeks. The two women giggled while Faith managed to gain her seat in the carriage and pull her aunt in unceremoniously along side her.

  Elizabeth opened the second bottle of wine which they sipped slowly, staying somewhere short of truly drunk on the journey back.

  Miguel was plainly shocked and dismayed when they tripped into the reception hall amid giggles at some private jest.

  “Querida, you and our niece have returned!”

  “We have!” his wife replied. Her eyes sparkled and she draped her arms about him rather more affectionately than their lack of privacy warranted.

  Miguel firmly extricated himself from her embrace, and his wife pouted. “How unlike you, Miguel, to be so prim and proper.”

  “I did not expect you to come home is such disarray and having had too much Madeira, I think.”

  “Oh, we had just enough,” Elizabeth insisted. “I assure you.”

 
; “We have another visitor,” Miguel announced, and a man with ebony hair, a dashing smile, and elegant, Spanish style clothes joined them from the library. “Elizabeth, Faith Cooper, allow me to present my brother’s son, Capitán Diego Montoya Fernandez de Madrid y Delgado Cortes. He was on his way from Spain to Cartagena when he was beset by pirates. He is here in Jamaica seeking the captain of the marauders. You will not believe it, but it is Captain Hampton he seeks!”

  “I seem to be most fortunate,” the captain added in flawless English, accented slightly by his native tongue. “By my count, Miss Cooper was aboard his ship at the time.” He smiled hopefully at Faith. “You can act as a witness when I find him.”

  Chapter 20

  The room spun crazily, although Faith was hard pressed to tell whether it was a result of the wine or the situation. She was vaguely aware of her aunt’s protest.

  “Oh, nay! Surely you are mistaken. Faith would have told us if Captain Hampton had accosted a Spanish vessel while she was on it.”

  “I must confess,” Miguel said, “I was bewildered by Diego’s claim, as well, but he is certain he was attacked by Captain Geoffrey Hampton and the crew of Destiny.”

  Faith looked back and forth among those who gazed at her expectantly. What could she say? This man had seen the name of the ship, and Geoff was arrogant enough to have made sure that Capitán Montoya knew the name of the man who raided his cargo.

  “He—he did it for me,” she stammered. Then more passionately, she explained, “He wanted to let you go in peace, but his crew would not hear of it. They threatened mutiny, and he feared for my safety. Please, you must believe me.”

  Her uncle looked utterly dumbfounded, and Faith felt her face suffuse with color.