Shadows of Love

by Gail MacMillan

  “She threw punch over me!” I yelled, wrenching against my father-in-law’s grip as Colin came running up to us.

  “What happened? Starr, what have you done?”

  “Your wife has taken to beating her sister-in-law at fisticuffs.” Abraham shoved me from him, into Colin’s arms.

  My hair hung about my face, my beautiful gown was grass-stained and ripped, but to my satisfaction Caroline looked worse.

  “No!” Colin’s tone mirrored his distress.

  “Yes.” Abraham came to stand in front of us. “And she’ll be fittingly dealt with, never fear. There’ll be no repeat of this villainy, you can rest assured. Take her home, boy. I’ll not have her shaming me a moment longer.”

  ****

  I learned my sentence later that afternoon. When Abraham returned from the festivities, he demanded Colin and I come to his office. As we stood before his massive desk, the scratches from Caroline’s fingernails still smarting on my cheek, Abraham Douglas decreed that I was to be sent to a finishing school in Halifax for the winter.

  “I’ll not have a repeat of today’s infamy,” he snapped when Colin tried to protest. “Much as I want a grandchild, I don’t fancy his having a socially unacceptable wildcat for a mother. Mrs. Lambert’s Academy for Young Ladies will put an end to such a possibility. Now get out of my sight, both of you. I can no more tolerate the sight of an ungrateful guttersnipe than I can stand to look at a man who is incapable of controlling his wife.”

  ****

  Three weeks later, it was time for me to go to Halifax and take up winter residence at the academy, the colonial equivalent of a finishing school for young ladies. By spring, Abraham declared, I would have acquired all the social graces necessary to be a proper wife to Colin.

  In March he would send Colin to Halifax on one of his ships bound for the Caribbean. I would join my husband aboard and sail with him to one of the French islands, where Abraham maintained a house. There we would honeymoon. He had our lives neatly planned, I realized, as I helped Rose pack my new winter wardrobe in chests. Colin and I were powerless against him.

  Then I heard my husband at the keyboard. I gave the maid instructions for finishing our task and, clutching my skirts, ran to be with him. Since Abraham had informed us of my leave-taking, every second I could spend in Colin’s company had become precious.

  Enchanted as always by the spectacle of my handsome young husband enthralled in creating his unique brand of magic, I paused on the threshold of the drawing room to listen. That afternoon, the French doors were thrown open to catch the last warmth of a beautiful autumn day, the room dappled with the shadows of the yellow, orange, and red leaves of maples and birches beyond the verandah.

  Colin had been working in the shipyards earlier in the day and still wore the crimson homespun shirt, rust-colored riding breeches, and dusty knee-high boots he’d donned for the task. With the rays of the declining sun in his blond curls, he looked startlingly familiar… Darcy as a shipyard laborer must have looked much as my husband did at that moment. A lump formed in my throat.

  As I moved to stand beside the piano, he paused in his recital, looked up at me, and smiled.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said. “Cream-colored lace must have been invented with you in mind.” He took my hand, brushed aside the thick Italian trim that decorated the wrist of my golden-brown gown, and kissed my fingers.

  “Sweetheart, what is it?” he asked, concerned, when he looked up at me again. “You look pensive and decidedly sad.”

  “I was thinking how very much you look like Darcy,” I couldn’t disguise the catch in my voice.

  “Ah, sweet little wife,” he breathed. “You yourself said we mustn’t think of him with sadness.”

  “With sadness, no. But it’s wrong to try to spare ourselves pain by pretending he never existed. I want to know about his life here in America. I want to know about your friendship with him.”

  Colin paused, then released my hand with a heavy sigh.

  “Very well,” he said. “Perhaps the best way I can do that is to play one of our favorite songs for you. We composed it together. I’m not a fine singer, but I’ll do my best with Darcy’s words.”

  He put his fingers to the keys and began to play. The melody was hauntingly beautiful, the words tenderly plaintive. Deeply moved, I went to stand behind him and put my arms gently about his shoulders.

  As the piece reached the magnificent climax in its tale of forbidden love, the words caught at me with a whiplash of ambiguous meaning:

  “And my soul, afraid of dying,

  Fears to face eternity.”

  Those were not the words of a man contemplating suicide. As the song ended, confused and frightened at the possibilities the lyrics had raised in my mind, I put my tear-streaked cheek against Colin’s soft curls, my fingers tightening on his shoulders.

  Colin took my hand and held it against his cheek. Frozen in our grief, we failed to notice the man who entered. Only when his shadow cast its darkness in the dappled sunlight did we become aware of his presence.

  Turning to face Captain Madison, I was as nonplused by his expression as by the words of the song. His jaw flexed with a nervous tick and his gray eyes were strangely bright.

  In the autumn hush, the static hiatus that followed seemed to stretch into infinity. Finally the captain broke the spell and moved toward us again, slowly. Colin got to his feet and put his arm about my waist.

  “Was that a song you and Darcy Pod composed together?” the captain astonished us by inquiring when he stopped beside the piano.

  His fingers tightening about my waist, Colin nodded. “Barret, don’t hit me,” he said, his voice shaking. “Not in front of Starr.”

  “Hit you?”

  “Like you did in Vienna when…”

  “I’ve had opportunity to reflect since that night, and since my unwarranted behavior in the meadow that day I found you and your wife…together. Believe me when I say I’m trying to understand.”

  He turned and walked away.

  “Colin…” I began.

  “Don’t ask, Starr. Please don’t ask.” His face crumpling into an agony of emotion, my husband hurried out of the room.

  Barret Madison had once again proven to be an enigma. That same evening he further puzzled me when I overheard a confusingly intimate conversation between himself and Gram.

  Sitting alone in the deepening twilight on the side verandah swing, I heard them come out of the front entrance and take chairs around the corner from where I was waiting for Colin. Unaware of my presence, they began to talk with a familiarity I had never known them to exhibit in the presence of others.

  “You’re sailing with the morning tide, my boy.” Gram’s words reflected an intimate fondness. “Behave yourself and don’t take any mad risks to please Abraham. Remember, I hold your life especially dear.”

  “Yes, Gram.” His form of address astonished me. “You know I always heed your words.”

  “Huh!” The old lady grunted in pretended disgust. “You heed about as well as my dear departed Joshua did. He obeyed only his conscience.”

  “Your husband was a remarkable man,” Barret said. “I should have enjoyed knowing him.”

  “I wish you had,” she sighed. “Now go and prepare for your voyage. You need rest more than the company of a fractious, senile old woman.”

  “Fractious? Senile?” Barret chuckled. “You’re as stable as Gibraltar and as shrewd as a fox. You’ll never be fractious or senile, my love.”

  “Come, come, enough of this sentimental drivel,” she replied, a sudden catch in her voice. “Kiss me good night and get to your bed. I don’t want to hear of your being lost at sea because you weren’t properly rested.”

  “Yes, Gram. Good night.”

  A moment later I heard the door open and close.

  “God speed,” I heard Gram murmur, “and bless you, my special boy.”

  ****

  I had not thought to inquire the name of
the ship on which I would be travelling and was therefore appalled when we reached dockside the following morning to see the Maris Stella tied up at the pier, taking on supplies for immediate departure. When I’d overheard Gram and Barret discussing his sailing in the morning, I should have foreseen that Captain Madison’s ship would be my means of transport.

  As we alighted from the carriage, the master himself appeared out of the crowd of men busily engaged in loading his vessel.

  “A fine day to start a voyage, Barret,” Abraham said with alacrity. “A good stiff breeze and clear skies. I wish I were accompanying you. There’s nothing to equal the feel of the wind at your back and the taste of salt spray on your lips. I believe it would make me feel young again. And to see those exotic Caribbean islands once more would be to glimpse heaven. When I was a young mariner, I believed them to be as close to paradise as it is possible to get on this earth.”

  “You’re not an old man, Abe,” Barret said. “You’ll sail again.”

  “Perhaps.” Abraham’s reply was a heaved sigh. “But for the present, I’m tied to a desk in an effort to build a future for my family. Once I’ve got my business secured and my grandsons toddling about Peacock House, then I’ll be free to go adventuring once more.”

  His expression changed then, from one of nostalgic longing to one of good humor. “Enough wishful thinking.” He clapped his hands to bring order to the situation. “Colin, your wife’s trunks are aboard, and the Maris Stella is about to cast off. Bid her farewell and let her and Barret be on their way.”

  I looked up at my husband, the immediacy of my departure making my heart flutter with a mixture of loneliness, trepidation, and, strangely, excitement. Colin must have seen the first of these emotions mirrored in my face.

  “Farewell, sweet Starr,” he said, his voice hoarse. Suddenly I was in his arms and we were clinging to each other, desperate in our last minutes together.

  “I love you, Starr,” he muttered against my bonnet. “Don’t give up on me.”

  I could not answer. My throat was too painfully tight.

  “Let her go, boy.” Abraham, who had been near enough to hear Colin’s words, spoke coldly. “She’ll be waiting for you in the spring, a much more manageable creature than she is now.”

  “This way, Mrs. Douglas.” Captain Madison swept out an arm to indicate the waiting gangplank. Colin released me, and I turned away from him.

  “Farewell, and try to behave.” Abraham handed me over to the captain. Barret Madison wasted no time propelling me up the plank to the deck.

  I looked down over the bulwarks at Colin. Suddenly he was Darcy—Darcy who’d been parted from me, surrounded by plans for a future that was never to be.

  Panicked by the analogy, I would have fled back to him had not a seaman, at that moment, raised the boarding plank. As Captain Madison’s mate bellowed his master’s orders to scurrying sailors and they hastened to cast off the great ship’s moorings, I swung on the ship’s commander.

  “Let me off! Let me off at once! I can’t leave my husband!”

  “Control yourself, Mrs. Douglas, or I’ll be forced to once more confine you to my cabin.” Captain Madison looked down at me in ill-disguised contempt. “I have work to do. I can’t have an hysterical female rushing about my decks.”

  Defeated, I quieted, and he continued, “I would advise you to smile and wave a fond farewell if you truly care for the lad. It would be cruel to leave him with a final memory of tears and ravings to carry him through a long, cold winter.”

  I saw the truth in his words. I went back to the rail and raised a gloved hand in farewell to the handsome, distressed-looking young man on the pier. With a supreme effort, I forced a smile across my trembling lips.

  “God bless you!” Colin yelled as the ship slid out into the current. “I love you! I’ll come for you!”

  Then we were beyond hearing as the great ship, caught by winds and the river’s swift flow, moved away.

  “I’ve only one sleeping cabin aside from my own.” Barret Madison returned to my side. “It’s not luxurious, but you’ll have to make do. The Maris Stella is a cargo vessel, not an elegant passenger ship.”

  “Yes, I recall your aversion to human cargo.” I cast him what I hoped was a demeaning glare before turning my attention back to the diminishing village of Pine.

  ****

  The night was a cold, crisp, star-sprinkled beauty. I came up on deck to find the Maris Stella gliding southward. Only the sound of her bow piercing the wavelets and an occasional creak of the boom or flap of canvas broke the peace. A male voice I recognized was singing softly in French. Turning, I saw Captain Madison, a dark silhouette alone at the helm. Forward, a solitary seaman kept watch.

  I walked to the rear and joined the master.

  “I didn’t know a captain actually took the wheel of his vessel,” I said.

  “On nights such as this, I often do,” he said, breaking off from his song. “It gives a man time to reflect.”

  “Reflect on what? I believed you and Jared Fletcher were men of action, not contemplation.”

  “On the contrary, ma’am, I often contemplate my situation in life. For instance, tonight I’ve been thinking I should have been master of a vessel like this thirty years ago during the war. What a privateer this lady would have been! And I’d have become rich, not merely a Douglas servant.”

  “I would hardly call you a servant,” I said. “As master of a fleet the size of Abraham Douglas’s, you’re a good deal above that status. I think it must be wonderful to be in command of even one vessel. If I were a man, I should have become a master mariner like my father. He owned his own vessel and ran blockades and carried out secret missions for the Prime Minister. After he died, people said he was a rogue and a pirate, but it wasn’t true. He was brave and honest, a true patriot.”

  My voice broke as I recalled the slurs on my father’s reputation and how they had hurt my mother and me.

  “Then your father truly was…?”

  “I’ve already told you. Captain Morgan Reynolds,” I said proudly, thrusting out my chin and taking a deep breath to chase away the tears threatening to spill down my cheeks.

  A silence followed, punctuated only by the flapping of canvas, the creak of the boom, and the soft splash of the ship slipping through the waves. I thought of my father, commanding his Sea Starr on a night such as this. Had he perhaps at times been lonely for my mother? Or had the thrill of racing through the waves under wind-billowed canvas been enough to make their long separations worthwhile?

  “Would you like to take a spell at the wheel?” Captain Madison aroused me from my reflections with the unexpected offer. “Morgan Reynolds’ daughter should know the feel of a ship beneath her hands.”

  “You’d let me guide your Maris Stella?” I couldn’t believe his offer.

  “Come here.” He stepped to the left to make way for me.

  Amazed and excited, I obeyed.

  “Place your hands so. Hold tight. There. Now, steady as she goes.” His strong, brown hands placed mine on the wheel, then slid away to leave me alone at the helm.

  At first I was tense and awkward, struggling against the rudder’s pull. I could feel the tug of the great ship beneath my hands. The rise and fall of the deck beneath my feet became her breathing. Gradually I began to relax and lose myself in the utter thrill of it. The wind was at my back, the Maris Stella lived, and for the moment I was her master.

  The night, the sea, the stars, the great ship…all about was magic. For the first time I understood what drew men like Barret Madison and my father to this life, why it enthralled them as surely as Colin’s music and Randall’s medicine encompassed their lives.

  For an enchanted time, I held the great vessel on course. Even when my arms began to ache and the wind freshened, making my task more arduous, I could not bring myself to relinquish the wheel. I had fallen in love with sailing.

  A sudden gust hit the canvas above me with a force that made the tall s
ails snap and the booms groan. The Maris Stella leaped and lurched. I was all but dragged from my feet by the force sent up from her rudder.

  For a moment I feared I’d lose control. Then those familiar weathered hands closed over mine and held both the ship and me steady.

  “Easy as she goes, matey.” He chuckled, his chest against my shoulders as he stood behind me. “You’ve done well. I didn’t think a little girl like you could hold her as long as you did. Put on another sixty or seventy pounds, build up your biceps, and there’ll not be a mariner north of the equator better.”

  He was teasing, but there was also a note of genuine admiration in his voice. I blushed under his praise and was glad it was night.

  As the ship once again settled to a moderate pace, I became aware of his nearness, of his powerful body pressed against my back. I could not move without rubbing against him. I shivered.

  “You’re cold,” he said, moving aside to free me. “You’d best go below before you catch a chill.”

  “Yes,” I said, stepping away. “Yes, perhaps I’d better. Thank you, Captain, for letting me discover the magic both you and my father have known.”

  ****

  Late the following afternoon, a storm broke over the Maris Stella. I lay in my bunk and clung to its sides as the great ship, buffeted by the tail of a tropical hurricane, pitched and bucked over mountainous swells. I wondered if I’d live to see Colin again.

  When night came, I did not undress for bed. I knew sleep would be impossible. Bells clanged to announce the changes of watch, rigging creaked and groaned above the roar of wind and surf, and often the voice of Captain Madison’s mate bellowing urgent orders echoed into my cabin. Exhaustion eventually took its toll and, in spite of the heaving ship, I fell into a doze.

  I was awakened in the dark hours shortly before dawn by a commotion in the companionway outside my cabin. I staggered to my feet and steadied myself across rolling floorboards to open the door.

  Barret Madison, in dripping oilskins, stood in the companionway, one of his sailors cradled in his arms. The man was moaning, the water running from his drenched body red with blood.