The Sister Wife

by Diane Noble

  She stared at him wordlessly, her heart pounding. When she finally spoke she fought to keep her voice steady. “And why not?”

  “Because the earl signed all of your holdings over to Joseph Smith before your departure.”

  She stared at him in utter silence. Finally, she said, “Would you repeat that?”

  “Your grandfather gave the estate and everything on it to Joseph Smith.”

  Her mind refused to accept the significance of his words. “If you mean he made a gift of some of our vast acreage that makes sense. As to the other, I know my grandfather. He would never turn over our ancestral home to anyone, church, charity, the queen.”

  “Your home is with us. It’s not a building of stone, no matter how ancient, no matter how many generations have lived there. Even the grounds, the gardens, are temporal. Your real home, that which is on earth, is building the kingdom of God, building up treasures in heaven by your work here…” His voice remained low and urgent, yet strangely quiet as if he were calming a troubled child.

  “You’ve been toying with a new religion, not totally committed, yet not against it. The time will come when you need to stand either with us or against us, and that ‘us’ may very well include your grandfather.”

  “You are wrong,” she said, “about my grandfather and me. But that is not what is important right now. Right now, I need to see if the wrong that has been done to him can be undone.” She started to leave, but Brigham stepped in front of her.

  “You need to hear me out.”

  “I’ve heard enough.”

  He spoke as if she hadn’t uttered a word. “You will soon see,” he continued, “that once you make the decision to give your all to the teachings of the Prophet and to obey to the uttermost his revelations from God, a strange and wondrous peace will fill your heart.” He paused. “When that happens you will never look back. You will not want to look back. You will no longer yearn for your childhood home.”

  He stepped closer to her, the same sense of urgency in his voice. “Think of the angel that appeared to a simple, humble man, telling him God had a plan for his people…that after all these hundreds, yea, thousands of years, the God who spoke to Moses in the burning bush, the God who gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments, wasn’t through with his people. His angels still appear, as the visitation of Moroni proves; he still draws those to himself who are worthy to be counted among his people.”

  She still glared at him. “Have you considered, sir, that right now I don’t want to be counted among the worthy?”

  Again he ignored her words. “I have wanted to tell you the truth from the beginning, to answer the unspoken questions I’ve seen in your eyes. Until tonight, you’ve held your tongue, a good and pleasant practice for a saintly woman,” he said, “and I commend you for that. Because I believe that it was out of love and concern for your grandfather that you did not approach him with your questions.”

  “Tell me the rest,” she said.

  “Your grandfather contacted the Prophet by letter more than a year ago, asking to meet with one of the apostles when we arrived here. He wanted to speak to someone with authority, someone who was closer than anyone else to the Prophet. He had already met a number of times with his solicitor and understood every detail of what he was about to do. He wanted to make sure it was done legally and properly on the Church’s end of the transaction.”

  Mary Rose frowned. “He said nothing of this to me.”

  “He’d heard of the Prophet’s success in recruiting converts in Canada. He’d also heard that Joseph was planning to send his twelve apostles to England, Scotland, and Wales as missionaries. Your grandfather made inquiries about the new Church, and liked what he’d heard.” Brigham smiled. “We’re just rebel enough to appeal to that frontier spirit inside his soul. He’d also heard that the Prophet has an almost supernatural touch when it comes to making money. But as any good financier knows, it takes money to make money. All that was a consideration with the earl.

  “He’d decided what he wanted to do long before I arrived, and he wrote of his plan in great detail in a letter to the Prophet, also his reasoning. He’d borrowed against the estate for years, plus the upkeep was getting beyond what he could manage. His solicitor drew up papers, and your estate was signed over to the Prophet the day before your departure. The Church took on the debt, and we’ll pay it off. But the land, the home, now belongs to the Church and will help tremendously in upcoming missionary efforts in England.”

  She remembered how he never looked back that day. Sorrow mixed with anger settled into her heart. Why hadn’t her grandfather told her? Did he think her incapable of helping him make such a decision? What if there had been another way? She drew in a deep breath, thoughts and questions flying into her brain, her heart, faster than she could capture them.

  “The Church now owns the estate and everything on it. In return your grandfather will get a prime piece of farmland and the house of his choice built on it, a barn or two, livestock, a carriage or farm wagon, whichever he would like, even someone to help him on the property. Or if he’d prefer, a house in town near the Prophet’s, which is located in a prime area near the new temple.

  “Your grandfather also asked that the two of you sail by clipper ship, with first-class accommodations rather than steerage, which is how most converts travel, and he asked for a maid for you and a manservant for him—to experience, for the last time, the life of a country gentleman, a titled gentleman, playing the role of the wealthy.”

  Mary Rose turned to Brigham again. “Why this church? Why did he think it was the only one long before his conversion?”

  “I think because the Saints embody that same wild spirit he grew to love on his previous travels there. And finally—and most importantly—that God had chosen this plainspoken young man from Palmyra, New York, as his Prophet to restore his Church—his only Church—on earth. He’d long believed other churches didn’t offer a view of God he could believe in or dedicate his life to, yet the religious teachings of the young Prophet did.”

  “He had concluded all this before your arrival?”

  Brigham shook his head. “The rest is as you yourself witnessed. Your grandfather read the Book of Mormon, which I brought to him, signed by the Prophet to your grandfather. He felt the burning in his heart, personally testified to its truth, and was baptized into the fellowship of the Saints, just as you witnessed.

  “I have seen the longing in your eyes, a longing to go home. I feared even tonight at the captain’s table when you spoke so boldly to your grandfather in front of the others that he would hesitate to tell you what he’d done.”

  “And you thought it should be a private matter?” Her voice was shrill, but she didn’t care.

  He didn’t answer.

  “You thought it so private that you waited until I left the room, and then you announced to my grandfather in front of everyone else that it was time to tell me the truth? You thought that private?”

  “I knew it was time for you to know the truth. If others overheard, so be it. Your home is with the Saints now. You can’t return to England.”

  He bade her good night, tipped his hat, then walked back toward the quarterdeck. She stared after him as he disappeared into the darkness.

  You can’t return to England.

  She swallowed hard, started to cry, and then thought better of it. Brigham couldn’t be right about this. Her grandfather had been duped. She’d heard of such things, especially when it came to a new religion led by a self-proclaimed savior. She felt it in her bones. Whatever had been done could be undone; whatever needed fixing could be fixed. Her iron-willed grandfather had taught her that much about life. And about herself. Her backbone was wrapped in iron, he’d always told her.

  Never return to the manor? She almost laughed. Of course she could. It might take some planning, some sleuthing, but if ever she wanted to return, she would find a way.

  She wouldn’t cry, she willed herself not to. But the tear
s flowed anyway. She turned around to face the bow of the ship, closed her eyes, and let the wind dry her wet cheeks.

  NINE

  The Sea Hawk seemed to be running with a current or perhaps a sudden wind had caught her sails. Mary Rose felt the movement of the ship and an almost dizzying sense of speed—and vertigo. She caught the railing with her hands and waited until the sensation passed. Vaguely, she became aware of someone watching her. She glanced over to the curve of the deck, just beyond the bow. Gabe MacKay lolled against the railing, propped with his elbows, one ankle crossed over the other.

  “My ancestral land,” she said. “It’s supposedly gone.”

  “Supposedly?” Gabe walked toward her and then turned to face the sea, just as she was, his hands on the railing.

  “I’ll get it back.”

  “What does your grandfather have to say about it?”

  “I haven’t talked with him, but Brigham made it clear. In exchange for his generous gift to the Saints, we’ll have everything we’ll need to get to Nauvoo—our passage on the Sea Hawk, wagons and horses for transport from Boston, lodging along the way—and when we arrive in Nauvoo, the means to build ourselves a house, and some livestock and crops to put on our new land.”

  “If I were a betting man, which I am not, I would bet that someone with your spirit and gumption and intelligence and heaven-knows-what-else that’s inside that beautiful head of yours—I’d say that the sale or gift or whatever you want to call it of your ancestral home has little to do with who you are or how you’ll make your way in life.”

  “I’m glad you think so.” Her tone wasn’t exactly without sarcasm.

  He chuckled. “From the moment I saw you climbing over the groom’s bench on the landau, I knew that nothing, absolutely nothing, would ever stand in your way to get at what you want.”

  “I’ll keep that picture in mind when I visit the Prophet and demand my lands and ancestral home be returned to me.” She couldn’t help laughing at the image.

  “I know without a doubt it is a picture I’ll keep tucked away in my mind. If you could only have seen yourself…” He shook his head, his eyes bright with amusement, even in the starlight. He pointed to the North Star. “That, m’lady, is how brightly you burn—it is also a light you must pay attention to…and follow.”

  He quirked a brow. “Methinks, m’lady, you are a woman who very seldom does as she ought. In fact, my gut—if I may use such an indelicate word—tells me that until your talk with your dear apostle, you were about to convince your grandfather to get the captain to turn the ship around and return you to jolly old England.”

  “True, but ’tis not your gut, dear sir, ’tis your acute hearing. I so much as told my grandfather we should return home at supper.”

  He paused, again gazing into the deep night sky. “Look up at that star and tell me what is it you want in life, more than anything else? And I don’t mean becoming a Saint.”

  The question took Mary Rose by surprise. He had guessed her ambivalence. “For weeks, even months, I’ve tried to think what life would be like, obeying the Prophet, laying everything that I am, or ever could hope to be, at his feet in the name of the heavenly Father. But it hasn’t settled in my heart the way it should have, the way others have witnessed it has been for them.”

  “Commendable that you tried, and I can say honestly that I admire—even envy—such commitment in the apostle, in your grandfather, even in the Prophet himself. But what about you, Mary Rose Ashley, what do you wish for as you gaze at that star?”

  She lifted her eyes to the dark heavens, aware that Gabe was watching her.

  “That light,” she said after a few minutes, “if such a light burns bright inside me, symbolizes love.”

  “Love?” he said, and she noticed a hint of gladness in his voice.

  “Yes. Love for God, for others, for those things in life I hold dear—”

  “And what would those things be?”

  “Writing my thoughts in my journal…”

  “Many people keep journals,” he said, stepping closer as if to better see her in the starlight. “What brings the word ‘love’ to your mind when thinking of writing?”

  She looked into his eyes, saw something deeper than mere curiosity, and felt instinctively that she could trust him with her heart’s dream. “Poetry, sonnets, stories…the people who live in the worlds I create.”

  “You record people?”

  She smiled, turning away from the North Star to see him more fully. “People who populate the stories I create in my mind.”

  “Characters,” he said in wonder. “As in a novel.”

  “Yes. Characters.” A comfortable silence fell between them, but he didn’t take his eyes off her. “’Tis my heart’s greatest desire to write such a book. I could never be a Jane Austen or Charles Dickens, but…oh, how lovely it would be to attempt such a work.”

  “And your story,” he said, “is it a love story?”

  She smiled. “Aye, ’tis.”

  He laughed. “Next ye’ll be sayin’ ‘bannock’s boucle,’” he said in an exaggerated brogue. She laughed with him, then he said, “But back to your love story—it has a man and woman who meet and fall in love, does it?”

  “I have yet to write that scene,” she said, feeling her heart beat faster. “And truly, though love plays a part, the entirety of my story is broader and deeper than mere human love. There are other details to see to, other actions for the characters to carry out, puzzles to solve, troubles to get through, and of course triumphs in the—”

  “Perhaps it plays so small a role because, Lady Mary Rose, you yourself have never experienced mere human love.” A half-smile played at the corner of his mouth.

  “’Tis true enough, I suppose,” she said. “And you, Mr. MacKay? Have you experienced such a thing?”

  He gazed at her for a long moment. Above them the sails billowed and snapped, the rigging clanked against the masts, and though the latest watch had just changed and the men were taking their posts, it seemed to Mary Rose that they were alone in the universe.

  Taking her hand, Gabe turned her toward the North Star. She left her hand in his, enjoying the warmth and the gentle squeeze he gave her fingers. With this man at her side, she could almost forget the words of the apostle.

  “I have not experienced such love, mere or otherwise,” he said. “But tonight that star makes me believe such love might be possible.”

  “It would have to be a love that is willing to forsake all others,” she breathed, keeping her eyes on the brilliant heavenly body. “Perhaps giving up goals and aspirations…at least that’s the kind of love the characters in my story have for each other. A love so strong it is nurtured and cared for above all other loves.”

  “Aye,” he said, “a sacrificial kind of love.”

  “That is it exactly,” she said, venturing a look at his moonlit silhouette.

  “Where one is asked to give up, perhaps, a life’s goal for the other,” he said, “to win the abiding love of the one he or she adores.”

  “I must write your observations on love in my journal when I return to my cabin.” She ventured another gaze in his direction. “How much would you be willing to sacrifice, should you find yourself in love…a love so strong it is nurtured and cared for above all other loves?”

  He turned to study her, and for a moment he didn’t speak. Then he lifted her hand and, turning it, kissed her fingertips. “At this moment, I can think of nothing I would not give up for the one I love.”

  Mary Rose smiled up at him and tilted her head. “Of course, you are speaking hypothetically,” she said. “And I am exploring ideas for my novel.”

  He dropped her hand and bowed slightly. “Of course, Lady Mary Rose.” He offered her his arm. “Now, may I escort you back to your cabin?”

  “I would like that,” she said, and when he offered his arm, she took it. “I’m curious,” she said as they strolled along the deck, “about your beliefs.”

 
; “Do you mean about my church affiliation? I belong to the Church of England.”

  “No, I mean about God. What do you believe about him? Is he a personal God you can picture? Such as you can another human? Or is he distant and unapproachable?”

  He laughed. “You do have a way with words. Sadly, I fear the second option is truer than the first. If I picture him at all, he’s an old man with a white beard who gets easily distracted.”

  “Easily distracted?”

  “Yes. It’s been my experience that he doesn’t necessarily watch out for his creation, for those he supposedly loves,” he said, and she noticed his voice held none of the warmth of their earlier conversation.

  They stopped near the railing before walking into the companionway between the cabins. She slipped her hand from the crook of Gabe’s arm where he’d tucked it. “Something happened to you, then, to cause such a picture of God.”

  He smiled slightly. “Yes, and perhaps someday I’ll tell you about it. Right now isn’t the right time. But I don’t believe my experience is much different than what other humans experience. Is the God of our universe a personal God, as you call him? Or is he a disinterested, distracted being that created the world on a whim and simply keeps things running and watches us all making a mess of things?” He paused. “We build cathedrals to him, we worship him with music and prayer, yet what does he do for us in return?”

  She saw emptiness and pain in his eyes and wanted to cry because right now she almost agreed with him.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  She turned to look up at him, studying his eyes, feeling she could easily get lost in their depths. For a moment she couldn’t speak, then she said, “Would you do something for me?”

  He gave her a half-smile and raised one eyebrow. “You’re not trying to convert me, are you?”

  “On the contrary,” she said. “I’m trying to find out if I—and my grandfather—have been duped.”

  With this, Gabe threw his head back and laughed. “Is this a new method of reeling in new converts? Subversion?”