Heirs of Acadia - 03 - The Noble Fugitive

by T. Davis Bunn

  © 2005 by Davis Bunn and Isabella Bunn

  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 2012

  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—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owners. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  eISBN 978-1-5855-8569-4

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

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

  Cover design by The DesignWorks Group, Inc.

  For all the years of love, encouragement,

  and graciousness,

  this book is dedicated to

  Becky Bunn,

  wonderful mother and mother-in-law.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Book Four/Heirs of Acadia

  About the Author

  Others Books by Author

  Prologue

  JULY 1832

  The bosun’s whistle piped the darkest hour of the night. Serafina quietly rose from her narrow bed and lit a candle. The world beyond Serafina’s porthole seemed painted with a despair that nearly choked off her breath. Yet not even this could stop her.

  Swiftly Serafina donned a modest frock of grayish blue, like the sky before sunrise. The dress was unadorned save for the double row of ivory buttons rising from the matching cloth belt to her neck. She wore no jewels because she had none. She brushed her hair carefully and tied it back in a silk ribbon matching her dress. Her shoes were dark leather and sturdy, but she did not put them on.

  She inspected her impression in the tiny mirror attached to the wall above her stateroom basin. She hardly recognized her own face. Somewhere along the way, she had changed. There was a subtle shift in the way she held herself. Her mouth was set in firmer lines. Her eyes no longer seemed to shine as they had before. Serafina turned away with a sigh. There was nothing to be gained by looking back or wishing for events to have been otherwise. They were as they were.

  She straightened the bed linens and set the letter for her parents on the pillow. Her determination mingled with the pain she was causing. The words inside the folded paper burned her mind with tragic finality. I am leaving and will not return.

  Serafina slowly lifted the door latch and slipped from the cabin. Just across the narrow passage were her parents’ quarters. She paused to listen but heard nothing beyond their closed door.

  Elsewhere the ship was alive with quiet bustling. She could hear the crew padding about on bare feet. Officers spoke in the hushed tones of people aware that others slept. Serafina carried her shoes in one hand and a small case in the other. Her dark cloak, with the cowl pulled far over her face, hid her slender form and features. She moved swiftly through the passage and up the stairs.

  As she stepped out to the deck, a cold wet wind sliced across the waters. She tightened her cloak and pulled the hood down farther. Somewhere far to the southeast, a kindly summer sun rose upon her beloved Venice. Here in the Portsmouth harbor, however, the weather remained chill and damp and hostile.

  Fortunately she did not have long to wait.

  “All right, missie.” The sailor dropped quietly from the rigging to stand beside her. “Let’s be seeing it.”

  Serafina set down her case and fished in the folds of her cloak for the coin. She held out one of the stolen gold ducats where it caught the light. “Just as I promised.”

  “It’s smaller than a sovereign, but I reckon it’ll spend good enough.” His hand was black from gripping the tarred ropes. “Let’s be having it, then.”

  “When I am on the rowboat and headed to shore.” Serafina made the coin vanish. “That was the agreement.”

  “Agreements change,” he said, his grin made evil by the gap where his front teeth should have been.

  “Perhaps I should call for an officer.” Her voice sounded much more confident than she felt.

  “Do that and you’ll find yourself back in your cabin swift enough,” he hissed, but he also backed off a step. “Then you’ll sail for America with the rest of us.”

  Her body felt trapped within talons of fear. But she did not yield. “I will pay only when I am safely on board the small vessel.”

  The sailor scowled and wheeled about. “This way, and keep silent.”

  Serafina followed the man as he crept around to where the last of the supply boats were moored at the side of the larger ship. Her heart was in her throat, both over the possibility of being spotted and the sailor doing wrong by her. But he moved with catlike swiftness straight for the lower mid-deck, scouting in every direction.

  When they arrived he glanced over the railing and whistled once very quietly. Then he stood with hand outstretched.

  Serafina glanced doubtfully over the side. The longboat rested calmly in the lee of the sailing ship. Two sailors held the craft steady against the ship’s side and peered up at her. “How am I to get down?” she asked.

  “On the sailors’ ladder, and be quick about it.” The sailor unfastened the railing’s catch, swinging one portion out like a waist-high door. He then lifted his curled half fist before her face. “You’ll pay me now.”

  She dropped the coin into his palm. Instantly the man whipped about and vanished. Nervously she leaned forward and dropped her case and her shoes to the outstretched hands. The boat seemed very far down from where she stood. A man in the longboat hissed words she did not understand, but the urgency was clear enough. She turned around and gripped the unsteady rope ladder with both hands. Step by tremulous step she eased herself down, the wind catching her skirts with a force that made her gasp.

  Somewhere overhead an officer called to his men. Serafina hesitated, fearing the alarm was about to be raised. A pair of hands, tough as old oak, reached up and gripped her calf. She kicked them off. The man below might have chuckled.

  She took the ladder’s next rung. The descent seemed to last for ages. Finally her toe touched the boat’s rail, and another hand reached for her arm. This time she allowed herself to be guided onto a plank seat.

  As soon as she was settled, the two seamen pushed the longboat away. The vessel reeked of the load of fresh vegetables that it no doubt had just delivered. They fitted their oars into the locks and pulled hard
for land. The man in the bow said softly, “My mate tells me you’ll pay for your passage in gold.”

  “A gold ducat when we arrive,” Serafina agreed as she bent to slip into her shoes. She was surprised at how firm and low her voice sounded to her own ears, nothing like the sprightly tone she was accustomed to hearing. The sorrow she carried was no doubt aging her.

  “There goes your ship now,” the man said, pointing toward the stern with his chin.

  Serafina turned quickly. She stifled a sob at the sight of the sails unfurling and the ship’s anchor creaking up from the seabed. The officers on the foredeck were silhouetted against the first hints of the gray dawn. A bosun piped his mates aloft, as mournful a sound as ever she had heard. Her heart cried out words her mouth could not form, calling for her mother and father. She could watch no longer.

  The oarsmen made a swift crossing of the inland harbor, and soon the longboat was fast against the dockside. One man helped her climb onto the stone jetty while another held her case at his side. “Our payment?”

  She leaned over to hand him the coin. Half of her money was gone now. “Where can I find a carriage to Bath?” she asked, trying to keep the tremor from her voice.

  “Couldn’t say about travel to the Wessex region, missie.” He pointed toward an inn at the harbor’s far end, where light glowed from all the ground-floor windows. “But the post coach for London leaves from there at daybreak.”

  She thanked the men and started across the dock. A few workmen were about, rolling giant water casks toward a waiting craft. Otherwise the port was still. Her footsteps echoed loudly off the buildings at the harbor’s edge. Up ahead a horse whinnied as bridles were fitted into place. A pair of gulls traced their way across the gradually strengthening light. She stopped a moment and watched them soar and swoop off across the water. In the far distance, sails were melting into the sea.

  “I have no family and no friends,” she whispered. Her shiver was as much from within as against the cold.

  She started up the rocky port lane toward the inn. She did not allow herself to turn again as the ship carrying her parents westward vanished beyond the horizon.

  Resolutely she focused upon the lamplight flickering over the inn’s stable doors. Up ahead, her future awaited. As well as her beloved Luca.

  Chapter 1

  Serafina found it very hard to be the youngest. Everyone was always telling her how fortunate she was to be a Gavi, one of the oldest families of Venice. Most left unsaid that her mother was lucky to have become Alessandro Gavi’s second wife. Serafina’s father was one of Venice’s leading doges, the merchant families who had ruled the water-bound kingdom for more than a thousand years. Her mother’s family was far less grand. They were mere landholders from the Dolomites. But the year after Alessandro’s first wife had died, he had met the lovely Bettina and married her. Serafina’s father was sixteen years older than her mother. Two of Serafina’s half sisters were already married and had children of their own. They treated Serafina with utter indifference, almost like an unwanted houseguest. But the youngest half sister, Gabriella, was another thing entirely. Gabriella, a few years older than Serafina’s seventeen years, took every opportunity to make life miserable for her.

  But Serafina would not have described her life as unhappy. She loved her parents and willingly sought to obey and please them. She loved their villa fronting Venice’s Grand Canal. She could spend hours hanging over her bedroom’s balcony railing, watching the water and the boats and the birds. She particularly loved the sunsets. For she had an artist’s heart, like Luca. And because of Luca she yearned for this sunset most of all.

  Serafina sat on the iron bench attached to the wall behind her balcony. Her view was over the Rialto Bridge and the promenade on the canal’s other side. She could hear the crowds and observe the gondoliers setting down their passengers. But she was invisible to those below. Her father was very proud of this protected balcony, sometimes called a widow’s ledge. He claimed it was of Arab design, originally brought west by the first crusaders. When Serafina had been a child, she had imagined being a damsel trapped in an evil lord’s tower, waiting for her prince to come and rescue her. And now her childish dream was becoming a wondrous reality. She shivered with delicious anticipation.

  She leaned over to the balcony’s railing and observed the bolder ladies walking arm in arm with their paramours. The setting sun cast a gemstone glow over all the buildings. Truly she could imagine herself captured within a mythic realm, one from which only a great hero could rescue her. Or a handsome army officer with an artist’s heart. Someone just like Luca.

  From the bedroom next to her own, Serafina could hear Gabriella quarreling with her mother. Gabriella was engaged and close enough to her wedding day to challenge her stepmother. Gabriella’s shrill voice carried through her open window. “I won’t do it, do you hear?”

  Serafina’s mother sounded almost as sharp. “The whole city hears you! But this changes nothing!”

  Gabriella’s laugh was not a pleasant sound. “Why should I spend time with the little child?”

  “Serafina is a child no longer, as you well know. She is seventeen and soon to become engaged herself!”

  Serafina winced at that shrill reminder. She was indeed just days from becoming betrothed. Roberto was the son of another wealthy merchant, but he was thirty-two! An old man, in her estimation. Serafina had heard other merchant princes comment that the marriage was a union worthy of Venice’s consiglière, the title her father carried.

  The single issue over which Serafina quarreled with her parents was men. Her parents had grown weary of the constant train of suitors. Serafina felt as though she had been courted by every bachelor from Venice to Milan. But none had proven the least bit interesting to her.

  Serafina’s parents had grown increasingly impatient. She was seventeen, and it was time she was wed. Roberto was not unattractive. He was well presented and spoke with the languid musicality of Venice’s elite. And his family’s holdings stretched all the way to Vienna and Berlin. This suitor would do splendidly, they told her in no uncertain terms.

  In truth, Serafina had not so much accepted the engagement as stopped paying much attention. The day before Roberto had presented himself, Serafina had met Luca. A fact Serafina kept most secret. Though her parents indulged many of their youngest daughter’s whims, Serafina was well aware that Luca was not a man of whom they would approve.

  Her mother demanded, “I want you to take your sister with you!”

  “First of all, she is not my sister. And second, who are you to be insisting on anything?”

  “I am your mother.”

  “You have never been my mother! You are my father’s wife. You . . .”

  Serafina heard the hurt in her mother’s voice. “Please do finish your thought.”

  “Why, so you can fly off to Father and tell him what I’ve said and done?”

  “Why shouldn’t I? You are behaving in an utterly improper manner.”

  “Oh, I can hardly wait until I am out of this house and free of you and your wretched daughter.”

  “Why do you speak like this? What have I or Serafina ever done to hurt you?”

  Gabriella did not reply. But Serafina knew too well what the girl was thinking. She had heard Gabriella speak with her sisters of how Bettina had usurped their mother’s position. One of Gabriella’s favorite topics was how infatuated their father had grown with Serafina, the daughter of his winter years. How dangerous Serafina was to their position. Especially because of her beauty.

  As long as Serafina could remember, people had commented upon her loveliness. Venice’s young dandies had followed her in packs since she turned twelve. But such words as they flung her way had meant nothing. Until they had been spoken by Luca.

  Serafina heard her mother continue, “I have tried my very best to make this a happy home, a place where you and your sisters would feel welcome—”

  Gabriella’s voice echoed as she raced d
own the central stairs. “Why shouldn’t we be welcome here? It was our home long before you ever came.” The slamming front door boomed through the entire house.

  Hurriedly Serafina reentered her bedroom, seated herself, and picked up some handwork. She had to distract attention from her balcony. Her mother knocked and opened the door. “May I come in?”

  Bettina Gavi was from the alpine village of Campobello. Bettina was not an Italian name at all, but Austrian. Venice had become a principality of the Austro-Hungarian empire less than a hundred years earlier. But the Dolomite region had been held and lost a dozen times and more over the past thousand years. Though they claimed to be Italian, Bettina’s family spoke German at home. She had insisted that Serafina learn the language as well. Serafina’s sisters had complained bitterly and refused to sit with the tutor. But Serafina had loved the challenge and the way the lessons brought the world beyond Venice closer. Her mother had taken note of Serafina’s gift with languages and hired additional tutors. Serafina soon became fluent in English and spoke passable French.

  But it was not merely a gift for languages that mother and daughter shared. Bettina Gavi was a fairly tall woman and full figured. Both mother and daughter had hair the color of flax, a shade beyond blond. When the sea winds blew hard, her father claimed to see woven threads of sunlight in Serafina’s tresses. Just as he had when he fell in love with her mother.

  Serafina’s sisters were all olive-complexioned like their father and his first wife, with sharp Venetian features and hair so dark it turned indigo in the sunlight. They were handsome women, all of them. But they also bore the mark of their heritage, eighteen generations of traders and merchants and holders of princely power. Their appearance only made Serafina appear even more feminine.

  “I had thought perhaps you might like to take a turn with me,” Serafina’s mother said.

  “No thank you, Mama.”

  “But it’s going to be such a lovely sunset. Why should we not take a promenade together?”

  Mother and this daughter had always enjoyed a special bond. Serafina found a unique delight in the closeness between herself and her parents. The fact that her plans for the evening went directly against this caused her great turmoil. No matter how often she told herself it was right to do as she intended. The closer the hour approached, the more excited she became. Yet her sense of guilt and dread increased as well, until she felt almost torn in two.