by C. J. Chase
“I wrote him a note detailing my reasons.” More than that—a face-to-face confrontation—beyond a few brief words of farewell, would be unnecessary. Painful.
“A note? A rather cold parting. Are you certain—”
“Yes.”
“Then take this with you.” He tossed her a purse.
The coins inside chinked as she caught the pouch. She hefted its weight in her hand. “What …?”
“Enough for you to begin a new life.”
“I can’t accept this. Why, you’ve already arranged my passage.”
“It is little enough. Fitzgerald would have extorted far more over the years. And you’ll need funds to feed and clothe and educate young Master Nicky. I owe him my life.”
As did she.
“I’ll be returning to my townhouse today. If you need me, send one of the footmen.”
“I will.” Mattie strode to the door, then stopped and turned to face Kit’s brother one last time. “It’s been …” Not a pleasure, exactly.
Sympathy flecked those blue DeChambelle eyes. “I understand.”
Ah, George. His specter haunted her still. When she returned to America, she would forego the painful reminders of Washington and go elsewhere, perhaps to the West. With the funds Julian had provided, she could open a store of her own. The Indiana Territory might well be a new state soon—a good place for a new beginning. She hesitated, then asked, “Do you think Kit will be penalized for what happened?”
“I think you have the wherewithal to make it worthwhile to him. Consider this decision carefully. You needn’t rush—there will be other ships, you know.”
“This is the correct decision. Farewell, Julian.”
“God go with you, Mattie. I wish you every happiness.”
Mattie paused at the top of the staircase, willing her unsteady legs to carry her to the bottom. No doubt the carriage would be arriving forthwith to take her and Nicky to the docks. She reached for her bags, only to stop. How odd to be leaving empty-handed but for the Bible in her hand, her bags having already been taken to the ship.
“Ah, Miss Fraser. There you are.” The earl smiled as he met her on the landing. An elegant black cloak enveloped his shoulders.
“Sir?”
“We thought we would go with you, to see you off.”
“How kind of you, my lord.” We? She hadn’t spoken to Kit since … Where had he been these past two days? Had he even read the letter she’d written? The idea of seeing him one last time delighted and dismayed her.
“Would you step into my wife’s chamber a moment?” The earl gestured, and Mattie followed him through the hallway.
Lady Chambelston reclined on her bed, her cheeks at last beginning to glow again with health. She smiled when they entered the room.
Mattie’s throat ached from her effort to fight back memories and tears. “Was there something you wished to say to me, ma’am?”
“Something I wished to give you, rather.” The countess nodded to a velvet box. “For you.”
A gift for her—the woman who had brought so much misery to an already suffering family? Mattie popped open the box. Twin earrings of diamonds and emeralds winked at her from their bed. “Oh, I could never accept these after all you’ve already given me!”
The countess raised a hand to stop her protests. “My son tells me you saved his life.”
And had nearly taken Lady Chambelston’s through her quest for vengeance. “An exaggeration, to be sure, ma’am. The credit goes to Nicky.”
“Keep them, Mattie. Please. To remember us by.”
Mattie looked again at the sparkling stones, now wavering through the moisture that filled her eyes. “I’ll never need jewels to remember you and all you’ve done for me, but … thank you.” She closed the box and clenched it until her fingers ached.
“Then share what you’ve learned here, Mattie. With Nicky, and with others who need to know.”
“I will.”
The countess gestured her closer. Mattie leaned over and accepted the woman’s embrace. Fragrances of comfort and faint perfume unsettled Mattie’s senses.
“Mat-tie?” Caro called from the hallway.
“Are you certain this is what you want?” the countess said as she released her. “You will always be welcome in our home. You may stay as long as you wish.”
No, it wasn’t what she wanted, but … “This is for the best.
For all of us.” She forced her mouth into one last smile then joined Caro and her father in the hallway.
No Kit, though. Relief warred with regret, even though she knew ‘twas better this way. Or easier, at least.
“Where’s Nicky?” she asked as the earl aided her into the carriage.
“He was so excited, we let him go ahead with the bags. He should be on the ship waiting for you.”
“Oh, dear.” She hoped someone had checked the silver.
The carriage bounced over the bricks until too soon it stopped at the docks, not far from the spot where she had first landed on English soil. How long ago that seemed. Today the sun poured down with aching brightness. As she alighted from the carriage, she stared at the Gallant’s masts rising up to a clear blue sky, a sky as blue as Kit DeChambelle’s eyes.
“Goodbye, sir,” she said to the earl.
He patted her shoulder awkwardly, his eyes even more brilliant than normal. “Send us a letter when you are settled, Mattie.
“I’ll do that, sir.”
“I’ve always wanted to see America again. Peacefully.”
A hysterical giggle bubbled in her throat at the notion of entertaining an English earl in the wilds of Indiana. “Goodbye, Caro.”
“Goodbye, Mat-tie.” Caroline embraced her, then stepped back, her eyes shimmering with moisture.
“Hurry, miss!” a crewman called.
Mattie turned her face away and forced her uncooperative legs into motion. Once on the ship she joined the other passengers at the rail as they shouted farewells to friends and relatives. She lifted her hand, then froze as a third person joined Caro and the earl.
A breeze ruffled his blond hair and her heart stopped for the second it took her to determine that a sling immobilized his left arm.
Julian, not Kit.
Her disappointment tasted bitter in her mouth.
“Mattie!” Nicky joined her at the rail.
She coerced her face into a smile for his sake. “What do you think of our ship?”
“I ‘ave a room and a bed all to myself.”
“A berth.” She tweaked a few strands of his dark—clean—hair. “You’re on a ship now. The captain won’t take kindly to landlubber talk.”
“I ain’t met the captain yet. But I talked to the cook. Want to meet ‘im?”
“Perhaps later.” In the distance, St. Paul’s dome winked a farewell in the sunlight as Mattie allowed herself one last look at London. One last link to Kit DeChambelle. A great weight pressed against her—against her heart, against her shoulders—as she fought to raise her hand for one final wave. Then she left to find her cabin. And solitude.
Moments later she slipped into her room. Somershurst hadn’t scrimped when he’d made the arrangements. The muted light filtering through the tiny porthole bathed the space in shadows. She opened the precious velvet box but the emeralds stared back dully, their fire dimmed by the gloom as surely as her spirit. She snapped the case shut and stowed it in her pocket, then glanced at the same coat that had seen her to England. Plain brown wool—coarse and practical. Like her. She brushed her fingertips along the scratchy fabric, letting it remind her of who she was and what she had come to do.
A woman consumed by her own notions of vengeance.
Fortunately, she did not return the same woman. And at least her ill-begun quest had yielded two worthy results. Nicky would have a home and a family—her. And no matter what cloud of suspicion lurked over the DeChambelles, Kit had freed Julian of his burden.
Bands of pain tightened around her chest until
she could scarcely breathe. She dropped to the bed, buried her face in her hands and let the sobs come. They wracked her body and purged her soul until there was no feeling left inside.
She reached into her coat pocket for a handkerchief, but only the velvet box caressed her fingers. Perhaps in her bags. She looked at the satchels in the corner of her cabin—
Unfamiliar bags, not hers.
Obviously the crewman who’d led her to this cabin had erred. As most of the passengers still waved at the rail yet, she could rectify the situation with none the wiser.
She slipped off the bed and exited the cabin.
“Ah, there you are. Come, you don’t want to miss your last view of London.”
The clipped English voice, his voice, set her heart pounding. Slowly, she turned. “Kit?”
He stepped from the shadows until he stood before her, so close she could detect his scent over the foul-smelling Thames and London’s ever-present smoke. His warmth radiated through his clothes and curled around the cold, melancholy places inside her.
“But—but, what are you doing here?”
“I came to talk to you.”
“I’ve already said my piece.”
“But you haven’t heard mine.”
What was left to say, but goodbye? Unless … Hope thrummed in her pulse. “Why did you tell your mother I saved your life?”
He blinked puzzled eyes. “I didn’t.”
Julian. But Mattie supposed, in a way, she had saved him from his lieutenant’s extortion and his government’s suspicions.
Kit circled his fingers around her wrist and drew her to the ladder. “Come, let us enjoy the view from the deck. We have one last matter of business to settle before we leave English waters.”
Mattie followed him to the upper deck. Already other passengers abandoned their positions at the rail as the ship floated down the Thames, leaving London’s buildings growing smaller in the distance. The spectators at the dock—Kit’s family among them—had shrunk so as to be indistinguishable.
Kit hefted a bag onto the rail, then reached inside and withdrew her pistol.
The Thames’s stench caught in her chest, choking her.
“Here. Hold this.”
She whipped her hands behind her back. “I told you before, I don’t want it.”
“Just for a moment, for one last time.”
Reluctantly, she accepted the weapon. Simple wood and iron, yet with so much power to destroy.
He reached into the bag again and withdrew a goblet of finest crystal. “You were right about many things, Mattie—including the dangerous path I trod. That night on the Impatience, when I wasn’t sure any of us would leave alive, many things—things I’d stubbornly ignored for so long—suddenly became clear to me. I don’t want to be the man I was, or worse, the man I was on my way to becoming. And with God’s help, I won’t.”
A wild swirl of hope coiled through her. “Kit? But …”
“I’ve spent the past two days getting my affairs in order—beginning with my heart. I’ve surrendered everything—my pride, my past, my future. My life. I am a new creature, embarking on a new life.”
He drew back his arm, then catapulted the goblet into the air. It winked in the light as it arched upwards. And then it plunged down, down into the dark, churning waters of the river.
“My past is forgiven. Buried.” He turned his face toward her, his eyes light and boyish, his smile erasing the strain of self-reproach. “Go on, Mattie. Bury the past. Here—in England.”
She looked at the gun one last time, then hurled it into waters. “Thank you.”
“I’ve learned we cannot look to the future until we cast off the shackles of the past. Mattie.”
She drew her gaze from the river to his suddenly serious face. He reached inside the bag one more time, and when he extracted his hand, a circlet of gold set with emeralds and diamonds gleamed up at her from his palm. How did they reflect the light when her earrings hadn’t?
“It looks like the earrings your mother gave me.”
His lopsided grin slipped through the debris of the walls around her heart. “As it should. My mother thought it would make a splendid wedding ring, and it would be a shame to divide the set. It belonged to my grandmother.”
Mattie Fraser—and heirloom jewelry? “But …”
“Marry me, Mattie.” Wistfulness clouded his blue eyes to gray. “Else I will be lost, living in America without you.”
“America? You intend to sail all the way to America?”
Amusement softened his cheeks. “That is why I am on this ship.”
“But I thought … You can’t leave your home, your family, your country. Your life is in England.”
“I don’t want a life in England without you.”
“Me?”
“I love you, Mattie. More than country. More than family. More than life itself. I want to watch the glow of the sunset against your face and see the brilliance of the sunrise reflected in your eyes.”
She closed those eyes against the unattainable pictures he painted. And yet, clenching her lids shut gave her mind free rein to conjure images to match his words.
“I want to hear my name on your lips.”
That lump had lodged in her throat again. And yet this time it swelled with hope. “Don’t tease me, Kit. Not about this.”
He captured her hand again and held it while his gaze bored deep into her heart. The warmth of his palm seeped into her and filled her with tenderness. “I love you, Mattie Fraser, and I will ask you again—and again and again until you are so weary you finally say yes. Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife? We’ll take what we’ve learned and make a new life for ourselves.”
Her eyes stung until his face blurred. “Oh, Kit. If you truly want this, then yes. Oh, yes with all my heart.”
“Come, let us find the captain. He can marry us once we are underway. That sunset I spoke of? I want tonight to be the first.”
Kit stared across the churning gray sea. His cloak billowed behind him, whipped by the icy wind that lashed his face with coldness and hurled the ship westward. He met the wind defiantly. It tossed salt-flavored spray against his face where the drops mingled with the salt-cured tears that pooled in the corners of his eyes.
Somewhere beyond the horizon now, the misty island of his birth rose above the waves, shrouded by approaching twilight. He and Julian would never have that chance to reconnect after all. It was indeed too late. A warning, perhaps, that he should never again postpone an opportunity for reconciliation or transformation.
“Mr. DeChambelle!” Nicky’s excited voice rose above the gale. “Come look.”
The boy clutched his hand and tugged.
Kit stared down at the dark windblown hair, and his pensive mood dispersed into the mist.
“What did you wish to show me?”
“Look!” Nicky drew him toward the other side of the ship where Mattie waited, her gaze focused westward. She gripped the rail, her finger encircled by the emerald wedding ring.
His wife.
Rays of waning sunlight speared through the clouds, painting the sky a brilliant scarlet and dyeing the churning sea with red.
He paused next to Mattie. She’d regained her poise, but a new sense of understanding—of experience—softened what had previously been a confrontational tilt of her chin and smoothed the sharp edges in her speech. She never turned, but she knew he was there—she clasped his other hand between both of hers. Joy swelled inside him, pushing aside those last lingering feelings of loss.
His wife.
“It’s a sign, you know, a red sky at night.”
“A sign for fair weather on the morrow,” he murmured.
He withdrew his hand from her grasp so he could wrap his arm around her shoulders and pull her closer. So close, he inhaled the fragrance of her hair in the sea-scented air.
The three of them stared in silence at Heaven’s pageant of light and color until the twilight dimmed to night.
His tomorrows promised to be fair indeed.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What is the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation?
Mattie and Kit expressed remorse for the things they had done, but others (such as Mattie’s father and brother) never did. Can you forgive people who never express regret for the things they have done? Can—or should—you reconcile with those who are unrepentant?
According to Mahatma Ghandi, “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” Do you agree? How was this true in the lives of Mattie and Kit? What caused the change? How have you observed this in your own life?
In Matthew 18:15-17, Jesus outlines the steps for dealing with the forgiveness and reconciliation of fellow believers. In what way is this similar to God’s relationship with humanity? In what ways does it differ?
How does the older brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) illustrate the need to go beyond forgiveness to reconciliation? Do you have any prodigal “brothers” with whom you need to reconcile? What do you need to change in your life and attitudes to make this reconciliation possible?
Lady Chambelston suffered because of Mattie’s sin, and yet because of her willingness to forgive she was able to use her pain to point Mattie to God. What events can you use from your life to point others to God?
Kit looked at his future and saw a life of developing alcohol dependency. Mattie saw a future of punishment and execution. Have you ever contemplated what your future might be if God didn’t redeem your life from destruction (Psalms 103:4)? How would your life have been different?
Kit’s spectacles correct his vision, but his pride keeps him spiritually blind. What behaviors and attitudes sabotage our spiritual vision? What “corrective lenses” can we use to keep our spiritual life in focus?
Because of his past actions, Kit feels unworthy of God’s love and forgiveness. However, his friend Harrison suggests the problem is actually Kit’s pride. These seem to contradict. What do you think was blocking Kit’s reconciliation with God? What events did God use to reach Kit? Do you have attitudes that put stumbling blocks in your relationship with God? What events has God used to bring you to Him?
