The Artful Match

by Jennifer Delamere

  Books by Jennifer Delamere

  LONDON BEGINNINGS

  The Captain’s Daughter

  The Heart’s Appeal

  The Artful Match

  © 2019 by Jennifer Harrington

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  www.bethanyhouse.com

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan

  www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

  Ebook edition created 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  ISBN 978-1-4934-1723-0

  Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.

  This is a work of historical reconstruction; the appearances of certain historical figures are therefore inevitable. All other characters, however, are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Cover design by Koechel Peterson & Associates, Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota/Jon Godfredson

  Author is represented by BookEnds, LLC.

  Contents

  Cover

  Books by Jennifer Delamere

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Ads

  Back Cover

  He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still.

  Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven.

  —PSALM 107:29–30

  Prologue

  LA GUAIRA, VENEZUELA

  AUGUST 1881

  JULIA BERNAY STEPHENSON WATCHED as her father carefully stirred honey into his coffee. For years she had thought he was dead, and now, even though it had been a week since she’d found him alive, she still looked at him with wondering eyes.

  Paul Bernay didn’t exactly match her memory. He was older now, of course, and not as robust, for traumatic events had aged him. There was a tremor in his hands as he set down the spoon and raised the mug to his lips. His speech had been scattered in the beginning, reflecting a frail and troubled mind, but Julia’s presence had begun to set him on the mend.

  When Julia and her husband, Michael, first walked into this little pub and saw him, the moment had been electric. Julia had known instantly that he was her father.

  Paul had taken longer to recognize her. It wasn’t until she had thrown her arms around him that he began to respond. Julia couldn’t blame him. He hadn’t seen her since she was a child, and now she was all grown up and appearing out of the blue.

  But then his arms had tightened as he returned her embrace, and he murmured, “Daughter.” He had even gleaned which of his daughters was holding him. When he’d said, “My Julia,” her heart had swelled with happiness.

  Every bitter thought she’d nurtured for years regarding him had vanished in an instant. “Yes, Papa,” she had said, clinging to him tightly. “It’s your Julia.”

  It seemed like such a fantastical dream that just a few short months ago, Julia would never have believed it. She was newly married to a man whose love she cherished, and soon she would return to England to begin her medical studies. Best of all, she would bring her father back with her—if she could get him to agree.

  That had been a sticking point, because her father was terrified of the idea of returning to England.

  The coffee had been brought out by Diego, a young man who filled a variety of positions at this humble oasis in the port town of La Guaira, Venezuela. He spoke good rudimentary English, picked up over the years through his interactions with Paul and with the English and American sailors who spent time here while their ships were in port. Because Paul had not spoken coherently at first, Diego had told them what was known of his story.

  Eighteen years ago, Diego’s brother was a sailor aboard a merchant ship that visited a small Caribbean island shortly after a hurricane had left it in shambles. The residents who had survived were attempting to piece together their homes and businesses. Under a pile of rubble, they had found Julia’s father.

  He’d been unconscious after weathering the storm outdoors, clinging to a stubby tree while being pelted with flying debris. No one had seen him before, nor did they have any idea how he’d come to the island. The few hundred residents all knew each other, so this had been a great mystery. Nobody knew what to do with him, for his mind was too scattered to enable him to care for himself.

  Diego’s brother took pity on the man and persuaded him to come to Venezuela. Diego had been a mere lad of five at the time, but he and Paul—now christened Pablo—had hit it off from the beginning.

  “It took months of my mother’s gentle care before he would speak more than two words at a time,” Diego had explained.

  In the years that followed, Paul Bernay had lived with Diego’s family much like a kindly but doddering uncle. He was popular with the sailors because he helped them while away idle hours playing checkers and listening to their stories. He took up carving small figurines in wood and made a bit of money now and then selling them.

  Pablo never spoke about his past or what had landed him on that island, although many people, including Diego’s family, had tried to prod the information from him. They could not tell whether he was being intentionally secretive or whether he was so battered by the storm that he had lost his memory.

  Over this past week, Julia had shared with her father all that had happened to the family while he had been away. He still spoke very little, but every day he seemed to grow more able and willing to speak, his words coming out more clearly.

  Julia had been trying to coax him into revealing the information he’d kept silent about all these years, and today they finally seemed to be getting somewhere. With careful, gentle questioning, they had been able to take Paul’s mind back to the moment he’d realized his ship was heading directly toward a hurricane.

  “It was the barometer,” her father said. “It was falling—down, down. There was trouble brewing. I could feel it in my bones. After fifteen years at sea, I could feel the weather, as though the winds were talking to me.”

  “But what happened to the ship, Papa?” Julia asked. Her father had been the ship’s second officer and in charge of navigation. Knowing trouble was coming, he surely would have taken the ship to safety.

  His hands began to shake again, and he set down his cup, flattening his palms on the table in an effort to stop their involuntary moveme
nt.

  Julia grasped her father’s fingers. They were as cold and rough as sandpaper. She prayed her touch would calm his heart as well as the nervous movement of his hands. “I’ve told you, Papa. There is nothing for you to fear. The ship was written off as a loss due to the storm. No one in England knows what really happened. There is no one who can harm you now.”

  Her father shook his head. “The authorities . . .” He looked into her eyes. His own were lined with worry. “If they discover I am alive, there will be questions. There will be trouble.”

  “I will be there to aid you with any legal issues,” Michael assured him. They had already told Paul that Michael was a seasoned barrister.

  “If there are secrets we must keep, we will keep them,” Julia agreed. A great burden on her heart had been lifted when she’d learned that her father had never planned to abandon them. “Whatever you were caught up in, I know you were innocent—or at the very least, that you were participating against your will.”

  His hands grasped hers tighter. “How do you know that?”

  “It was that conversation I overheard the last night I saw you, when I came to the pub to fetch you for dinner. You were speaking to another man as the two of you came outside. Do you remember? You noticed me standing just on the other side of some crates.”

  He nodded. “That was one of my captain’s henchmen.”

  Due to misunderstandings fostered by their mother, Julia and her sisters had grown up thinking their father was the captain of a merchant ship. They’d learned only recently that he’d in fact been a second officer.

  “You insisted you hadn’t heard anything,” Paul continued. “I didn’t believe you. I told myself it didn’t matter. You could not have understood what we were talking about.”

  “I heard enough to get the wrong idea about why you never came back. I thought you were planning to abandon us.”

  His hands jerked in surprise. “What did you hear?”

  Julia was able to recite it word for word because she’d turned over the sentences so often in her mind. “‘I wish to heaven I could be free from the whole lot of them. I had such plans for my life, you know. And it was nothing like this.’” Julia paused, closing her eyes briefly, experiencing the old, familiar wash of pain. “I thought you were speaking about us—your family.”

  “No,” he protested. “I regret every day without you. And Marie—”

  He broke down in earnest, tears flowing. No one moved or spoke, allowing him time to grieve. His joy at seeing his daughter again had been tempered by the news that his beloved wife was dead, and his heartache was still fresh, overwhelming him at times.

  After a while, Michael quietly pulled a handkerchief from his coat pocket and pushed it in Paul’s direction. Paul picked it up and used it to dry his eyes. He examined the high-quality linen for a moment, then gave Michael a look of approval. “You have done well, daughter,” he said to Julia.

  Julia smiled. Yes, she had. But it was Michael’s goodness and honorable character that she was most grateful for, not his ability to buy fine things.

  “What did that conversation mean?” she pressed gently.

  She and Michael had heard one theory from Charlie Stains, the old sailor who helped them locate her father. Charlie thought Paul might have been caught up in illegal activities related to the American Civil War. If this was true, it could explain why he’d been afraid to return to England.

  Paul studied everyone at the table with him, as though weighing whether to speak. Michael had been gradually earning his trust over these days, but Paul seemed to gauge him one last time.

  He then looked to Diego, who’d been listening intently. Diego placed a hand over his heart. “I will tell no one, Pablo.”

  Finally, after surveying the pub and assuring himself that no one else was within earshot, Paul said softly, “Gunrunning.”

  Julia and Michael exchanged glances. Charlie’s guess had been correct.

  “We were taking goods to Barbados,” her father continued. Now that he’d shared the heart of it, he seemed ready to tell his tale. “We also had a secret stash of munitions to be delivered at a port in the Bahamas. From there, they would go to blockade runners and be smuggled to the Confederates. I said I wanted no part of a scheme that would prolong the evils of war. They told me I had no choice. They threatened my family. My beautiful wife and my precious girls.”

  His voice cracked on the last phrase. Perhaps he was remembering how young and vulnerable his wife and children had been at the time.

  “I had a premonition things weren’t going to turn out right. I could feel it as surely as if someone had laid a cold hand on my arm. I tried to jump ship in Barbados, but the captain’s ruffians caught me. They beat me unconscious and hauled me back to the ship.”

  He paused to take a breath and sip more coffee. His voice had picked up strength as he’d gone along. “Now they knew they couldn’t trust me. They didn’t believe my warnings about the storm, either. No one spoke to me more than was absolutely necessary. There were whispered conversations that stopped when I approached. So I became stealthier in my movements. I overheard enough to piece together their plans. I was going to fall overboard before we got to the Bahamas.”

  Julia gasped. Michael said, “They were going to murder you?”

  Her father’s hands shook as he wiped his forehead with the handkerchief. “The next night, I let down a dinghy and escaped. I decided it would be better to die on the open seas than to let those dogs kill me.”

  “God was with you,” Diego said. “You made it to land. They did not.”

  “When was this? What day?” Julia asked.

  “My brother said the hurricane hit that island on the third Sunday in September,” Diego supplied. With a tiny smile, he added, “You can believe there was more prayer going on that day than usual.”

  A memory sparked in Julia’s mind of a Sunday shortly after she’d seen her father for the last time. It had been a beautiful, cloudless day in Plymouth, but Julia had been in a funk. Sorrowful thoughts had plagued her ever since her father had left. She had begun to nurture the fear that he would not return.

  That afternoon after church, while Cara had been napping and their mother dozing in a chair, Rosalyn had persuaded Julia to go for a walk. They’d climbed their favorite cliff, where they had a view of the sparkling sea. Julia had confided her fears to Rosalyn, and Rosalyn had suggested they pray for their father. Perhaps those simple prayers of two children had helped save him.

  Yes, people had been praying that day. And even if they didn’t know exactly what they were praying for, God had answered them nonetheless.

  Moonlight shimmered on the water, making a silver trail for the ship to follow as it sailed eastward across the Atlantic Ocean.

  At last, they were going home.

  Julia said a prayer for her father, now asleep in a cabin below. Despite relatively calm seas, sleep had not come easily for him. Michael had managed to allay his concerns about the legal difficulties of returning to England, but the terrors he’d endured during the hurricane remained embedded in his soul. In the end, only his love for his daughters and his powerful desire to be reunited with them had induced him to board this ship.

  As Julia gazed at the sea, she envisioned her sisters’ joy when she presented them with their father. It was as if he were raised from the dead, given that for nearly twenty years they had believed him gone.

  Except for Cara. She had never once stopped believing their father was alive. She had clung to that hope like an anchor through the storms of life. Julia felt more than a little chagrin at all the times she’d berated her sister for building castles in the air. Cara had been right all along. Julia, with her supposedly clear-eyed view of the world, had learned that sometimes the “sensible” path wasn’t the right one after all.

  She heard a familiar tread behind her. Smiling to herself, she closed her eyes, waiting in anticipation.

  Michael’s arm slipped around her waist
. “What are you pondering, my love?”

  Julia leaned against his chest and said dreamily, “I’m thinking how nice it is sometimes to leave common sense by the wayside.”

  She felt his chest move as he chuckled. “That’s quite a statement coming from you, soon-to-be Dr. Julia.”

  She didn’t bother to explain. Instead, she took a moment to savor being in his arms. They’d been married such a short time, and yet she could not remember, in any tangible way, how she’d lived her life before him. “To be honest, I was thinking of how overjoyed Cara will be. I hope it will make up for my leaving England with no warning.”

  Julia still felt remorse over not sharing her plans with her sisters. Only after the fact had she written them letters revealing that she and Michael had been quietly married on a Monday morning and were going to Venezuela on their honeymoon. She had not explained why they were making such an unusual journey, lest she raise hopes that would turn out to be false.

  The letters had gone into the red postbox at the railway station just minutes before Julia and Michael boarded the train for Southampton. By presenting her sisters with a fait accompli, she had hoped to lessen their worry. If they knew her plans ahead of time, they would have fretted endlessly over how to dissuade her. It would have been a terrible strain on them all. The logic was sound, but it hadn’t alleviated her feelings of guilt.

  Michael stroked the back of her neck, a gesture that soothed and relaxed her. “Any anger she feels will disappear as soon as she lays eyes on your father.”

  Julia could hardly wait. It was a homecoming that was the stuff of dreams.

  CHAPTER

  1

  NEAR EXETER, IN SOUTHWEST ENGLAND

  FOUR WEEKS EARLIER

  IT WAS GOING TO BE A FINE DAY—no matter what anyone else might say about it.

  This was Caroline Bernay’s firm resolution as she packed up the drawing supplies for her and four-year-old Robbie. After a week of nearly relentless rain, the morning had finally dawned dry, although the sun was filtered by dark clouds that looked delightfully ominous. Cara couldn’t wait to try her hand at capturing them on paper.