He turned and strode from the room.
****
An hour later Randall, wearing a fur coat, hat, heavy-laced moccasins, and thick gloves, carried my child swathed in blankets down the winding staircase to an entry ablur with familiar faces. I followed, a small bundle of possessions clutched in my arms. As my father-in-law had predicted, I was leaving Peacock House as ragged and penniless as I had entered it. Only now, I had a baby.
As we reached the bottom steps, Gram came forward, kissed my cheek, and touched the baby fondly. “God be with you, my child,” she whispered, tears bright in her eyes. She swung on Abraham, who was standing by the door. “And may He somehow forgive you, my son, for this infamy!”
She moved out of our way, and I saw Caroline sneering at me from the parlor doorway. Richly gowned, her hair perfectly dressed, she was a vision, the obvious center of Jared Fletcher’s attention and admiration as he stood behind her, newly arrived from the overland journey from Halifax with Abraham.
“Don’t forget to come back, darling,” she purred to Randall. “Remember, the quickest way to get rid of trash is to throw it on the river ice and let it flow out with the other debris in the spring.”
Ignoring her, Randall walked to the door his father had thrown wide open for us, and strode out to where Abe’s shabbiest single-horse sleigh waited.
”Where are we going, Randall?” I asked as he clucked the horse into motion.
“To a place where you’ll be well cared for by a beautiful, loving woman my father refers to as a fish shed slut,” he said between set teeth. “I’m taking you to live with the woman I love, Bridgit O’Brien.”
“I’m glad.” I adjusted the slumbering Colin in my arms. “I’ll feel comfortable with anyone you love, Randall.”
“My father committed a brutal act when he threatened you and your son,” he said grimly. “I’ll care for both of you in Barret’s absence.”
“Randall, I love you,” I whispered, my voice catching over the lump in my throat. “You truly are my brother.”
“Thank you, love,” he said. “Try not to judge Bridgit and me too harshly. If I could, I’d marry her tomorrow.”
****
“Are you sure you’re comfortable, Starr?” An hour later, Bridgit O’Brien adjusted pillows about me as I lay with Colin in a white spool bed in the second of two small bedrooms in her cabin a half mile beyond Darcy’s house.
“Quite comfortable,” I said, looking up at the pretty, auburn-haired young woman beside my bed. “Please don’t fuss over us, Bridgit. You’ve been extremely generous in taking us in.”
“I’m glad to have company.” She smiled. “It’s been lonely since Kevin died. And tonight, with Mary off tending Mrs. Prescott, who’s ill again, I’m especially glad to have you and the wee lad with me.”
“Bridgit, love, if I had my way, you’d never be lonely again.” Randall slipped an arm about her shoulders and drew her close.
“I know, darlin’,” she said, patting his hand, the one on which a wide gold wedding band gleamed in the lantern light. “Starr, please don’t think ill of us. We truly love each other.”
“I know you do.” I looked at them, at their love, and recalled how Barret and I had been together.
“You’ll be with him again, Starr, I promise,” Randall said, sitting down on the edge of the straw mattress and apparently guessing my thoughts.
“Of course you will.” Bridgit supported him as she pulled the patchwork quilt more snugly about me. “But now you must rest. I’ll build up the fire, and we’ll pass the night snug as bugs in a rug. I wish I had a larger house, that you might not be squeezed into this tiny cubicle with this darlin’ wee laddie.”
“Bridgit, love, you have only to say the word and I’ll have workmen here in the morning to build you the biggest, finest house…” Randall began, but she stopped him.
“Naught of that talk, my boyo. We’ve already been through all that nonsense. I’ll not be givin’ people any call to say I’m your whore who exchanges her favors for your money.”
“Bridgit, please…”
“Randy, love, be a good lad and close your mouth on the matter. Good night, Starr. May flocks of angels guide you to your rest.”
She and Randall left me alone. Warm and comfortable, I snuggled Colin close to me. I was exhausted, but the excitement of the past hours kept me wakeful. I heard Randall draw a protesting Bridgit into the adjoining bedroom.
“Randy, love, no. Starr will hear.”
“Sweetheart, she understands,” he muttered. “How often do we have such a chance, with Mary away?”
I fell asleep to the sounds of their lovemaking, loneliness for the father of the baby in my arms all but breaking my heart.
The next morning I awoke late to hear a woman’s voice humming softly in the next room. Sunlight streamed in a window. I guessed it was near midday. Then, with a shock, I realized Colin was gone from his place beside me. I struggled to my feet, wrapped a quilt about me, and hurried to the bedroom door. The scene in the next room amazed me.
Mary Constable sat in a rocking chair by the hearth. My baby, swaddled in blankets, lay in her arms. The young woman was humming as she rocked the child. Becoming aware of my presence, she turned to face me.
“He was fussing, but I hated to awaken you to nurse him,” she said. “You looked so tired. Bridgit has gone to work at the fish sheds. It’s always the season for some kind of fish. But I, of course, since Captain Madison left, have no employment. I could not bear to work with Captain Fletcher, knowing the intentions Mr. Douglas had for him and me.”
“But I thought…”
“That I hated you, despised the good fortune you apparently had had as a result of wayward behavior?” She adjusted Colin in her arms. “I’ve had time to change my opinion since those days; time to hear how you cared for a young husband you couldn’t possibly have loved; time to hear of your courage in defending him from a great brute in the shipyards; time to learn of your faithfulness in spite of the love that was between Captain Madison and yourself. Under those circumstances, I doubt I would have been as strong. I remember how it was when Kevin and I were in love, you see.”
“You know about Barret and me?” I gasped. “How?”
“I worked with him for several months,” she said. “After he rescued me from that unthinkable marriage proposal, I trusted him and he came to rely on my integrity. He told me often, but not directly, of his feelings for you. The look in his eyes said it all, whenever you were mentioned. He’s a kind, strong, generous man. I owe him a deep debt. If I can begin to repay it by helping to care for his lady and his son, then I shall do so with a glad heart.”
****
I lived with Bridgit and Mary for more than two months that winter. They were sincere, compassionate young women, and I developed a sisterly affection for both. Bridgit particularly delighted in helping me care for Colin and constantly extolled the baby’s prowess in growth, strength, and intelligence.
“I swear, Randy, he’s the finest lad I’ve ever seen,” she declared one evening late in March when Randall arrived to find her rocking little Colin in a chair by the fire. “Starr and Captain Madison have been blessed, indeed.”
“Bridgit, darling, I know you love children,” he said, dropping on one knee before her. “I’d give you one of your very own if I could. Dear God in heaven, you know…”
In the flickering light of the gently crackling fire on the hearth, his expression ached with tenderness. I feigned absorption in the tiny garment I was mending, but I could not avoid hearing.
“I know, my darlin’, I know,” she whispered, her eyes swimming with tears. “But the good Lord has seen fit to grant us a bit of Starr and her captain’s joy. We must content ourselves with that.”
“Oh, love, I’ve come to take even that from you,” he said, looking up at her. “Jared has located Barret. Starr must go to him.”
“Barret’s been found?” I cried, falling to my knees beside Randall
and clutching his arm. “Where? When? Is he well?”
“He’s on the small French island in the Caribbean where he was born,” Randall said, rising and drawing me to my feet with him. “Starr, according to reports Jared’s received, he’s not well.”
“Has he a disease? Was he injured?” My words tumbled over one another in my excitement.
“Not exactly.” Randall held me by the arms and looked deeply into my eyes as he struggled to find the right words.
“Tell me!” I cried. “For God’s sake, tell me, Randall. Don’t keep me in this limbo.”
“He’s become addicted to laudanum…opium,” he said. “He’s been living in the brothel where he grew up. The madame, an old friend of his mother’s, is caring for him.”
“Oh, sweet Lord Jesus!” Bridgit gasped. “Starr, you must go to him at once. You must bring his baby to him and make him want to live again.”
****
The next morning Randall told his father he must make a voyage to the Caribbean aboard the Douglas’s fastest available ship. The governor had asked him how quickly a letter from Pine could reach the Caribbean aboard a Douglas vessel, and Randall had said he had rashly declared within seventeen days. Now he must prove his word by going himself in that time.
At first Abe was appalled at his son’s foolishness. His fastest ship, the Maris Stella, was in drydock being readied for a voyage to England. .
“We’ll take the Winsome Witch, the ship that was to have been Jared’s if Barret had returned to master the Maris Stella,” Randall said. “She’s swift and light, if a trifle fractious, but I’m sure Jared can handle her.”
On the night of May first, Randall and Jared smuggled my baby and me aboard the Winsome Witch, the ship that had been christened on the day I discovered Jared in bed with Caroline.
I came up onto the moonlit deck one night a week into our voyage to find Jared himself at the helm. A single sailor stood watch near the bow. Aside from the seaman, the captain and I were alone.
“A bad habit I picked up from Barret,” he grinned when I joined him. “A captain should never be seen at the wheel himself. It does, however, give one an opportunity to reflect, as Barret used to say.”
“And what were you reflecting upon tonight, Captain?” I asked.
“On many things.” He smiled vaguely. “For instance, I was just now thinking how much like a beautiful, eager, yet rather unruly woman this Winsome Witch is. She’s trim and fast and exciting, yet sometimes she seems determined to try me, to dare me to control her.” He shrugged and laughed lightly. “I’m being fanciful, too fanciful for a ship’s master. If my men were to overhear me, I’d have a mutiny on my hands.”
He’s thinking about Caroline. I turned back to my quarters. He’s wondering if he will ever be able to control her.
****
“I should like to see Captain Barret Madison,” I said, holding Colin in my arms.
The address to which Jared, Randall, and I had been directed was on a street lined with taverns, inns, and large, shabby houses whose shades were tightly drawn. At midday, beneath a scorching tropic sun, all was quiet, but at night I felt certain this district exploded with life and all the pleasures it could offer human flesh.
The middle-aged woman who’d opened the door peered out at me suspiciously. She clutched a ruby-colored silk robe over her ample bosom, rings glittering on her softly wrinkled fingers. Her auburn hair was a mass of disheveled ringlets, she reeked of cheap perfume, and the paint on her sagging cheeks appeared to be a remnant of the debauchery of the previous night.
“Who are you, and what do you want with Barret?” she asked, her voice hoarse from the sleep I’d interrupted.
“I’m Starr Douglas,” I said. “This is my child, Colin. Captain Madison is his father.”
“Starr!” she exclaimed, coming fully awake. “Come in, come in. Thank God you’re here.”
“We’ll wait for you outside,” Randall said. “Once you’ve had your reunion, Jared and I will join you.”
The woman drew Colin and me into the shadowy recesses of the house and up a flight of thickly carpeted stairs with such haste I had only a glimpse of the interiors through which we passed. I scarcely had time to gather an impression of dark reds and golds, of overly ornate, crowded rooms, heavy carpets, and pungent scents mingling with the odors of stale cigar smoke and liquor.
As she hurried me along, the woman talked rapidly.
“A friend of his found him unconscious in the street a month ago,” she explained in a hushed, slightly breathless voice. “He’d taken too much opium; he’s become addicted. He kept mumbling my name, so the man brought him to me.”
She halted me with a heavily ringed hand at the foot of a second flight of stairs, narrow and uncarpeted, that led upward to a closed, white plank door at their zenith.
“The first week was pure hell for him,” she said, looking into my eyes. “He screamed and raved like a lunatic from need of more of that cursed drug. His friend had to restrain him and tie him to his bed lest he injure himself. On the eighth day, he quieted and fell ill with a raging fever. My ladies and I were kept a-running to keep him alive, I can tell you. Now all that has passed, but he’s thin and weak, a ghost of what he once was. Do you still wish to see him?”
“Yes.”
“God love you, dearie, you’re all he said you were,” she whispered, tears filling her tired eyes. “His friend, the man who found him and brought him here, is with him now. He’s cared for him most of the time.”
We went up the stairs, and she opened the plank door and thrust me into a small, austere, white cubicle. A single gabled window curtained with snowy gauze let in enough light for me to see the man lying on the narrow cot against the far wall. A washstand and a ladderback chair were the only other furnishings in the small cell. A big man who’d been sitting hunched in the chair stumbled to his feet at my entrance.
The woman shoved me forward. “Go to him,” she said, her harsh voice soft with emotion. She shut the door and left us.
I started forward, Colin clutched in my arms, then stopped as, in the dim light, I recognized the man standing by the bed. Captain Andrew MacDonald looked at me in utter astonishment.
“Mrs. Douglas.” The two words were a harsh intake of breath.
The person beneath the patchwork quilt and ivory sheets stirred at the sound of his voice.
“Andrew, who is it?” he muttered.
I moved to the couch and looked down at the man who rolled to face me. Barret Madison, bearded, naked to the waist, stared up at me. His dissipated countenance and red-rimmed, sunken eyes shocked me. I could barely believe he was same man whose life I’d shared on Eden.
“Starr!” he breathed as he recognized me. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve brought your son,” I said, my voice cracking over the words.
“My son?” He wet dry lips with his tongue. “No, it couldn’t be. I couldn’t…have a child. Not after…”
“You have a child,” I said kneeling beside the low bed to let him look into Colin’s sleeping face. “Look at him. Colin Barret Douglas is our son.”
I explained all Randall had told me about male sterility, Barret’s own case in particular. When I’d finished he stared up at me for a few moments. Then he looked down at the child in my arms. As Colin awoke and the gazes of two pairs of gray eyes met, I saw realization dawn in those of the man.
“Sweet Jesus,” he breathed, struggling up on one elbow. “Is he…are you…are you both all right?”
“Take it easy, laddie,” Captain MacDonald urged, easing him back into the bed.
I nodded, unable to speak over the lump in my throat. Of course we were all right, now that the three of us were together, my heart cried.
****
“Why?” I asked Andrew MacDonald later, when Barret slept. “Why did you help him? I thought you hated him.”
“Not the lad himself, only Abraham Douglas and all that man stands for,” the grizzle
d seaman said gruffly. “When I found Captain Madison lying in the street, drug addicted and near dead, I had to help him. We’re both mariners, both victims of Douglas’s ruthlessness.
“He kept mumbling Maggie’s name, so I brought him here and learned his story. I couldn’t desert him then. When he’d recovered a bit, he told me he’d sold his soul into hell and wanted to die. I had to fight to keep him alive. I couldn’t let Abe Douglas claim another victim.
“But now you’re here and you have his child. All will be well. I’ll be leaving. I hope someday you’ll be able to forgive what I once did to you and him and the boy. I’ll end my days here in the Caribbean running short junkets with my lovely London Lass, free at last.”
“On the night of the attack on the Linnet, you saved us, took our part when things looked blackest,” I said. “I can only be grateful.”
“And for casting you adrift?” he asked. “I did a despicable thing, done in irrational outrage, which I shall always regret. I allowed others to encourage me into evil retribution against innocent people. Even taking that pig Simon aboard was another’s idea. But enough. Where are you stopping? I’ll help you get the captain to your lodgings.”
“I’m living at my father-in-law’s cottage,” I said. “It was fortunate Barret happened to have been found on this island where we have a house to go to…or, at least, as Randall Douglas’s guests we do. He and Jared Fletcher are with me. I’ll go below and tell them we’ll be down directly. Then you must come to supper with us.”
“Yes, Andrew.” Barret awoke and enhanced the invitation.
“I’ll see, laddie, I’ll see.”
Leaving Colin with his father in the narrow bed, I hastened down to inform Randall and Jared of my success. When I returned to the garret moments later, I was surprised to find Barret’s rescuer gone.
“Where is Captain MacDonald?”
“He left.” Barret was involved in staring down at his son with such tenderness it warmed my heart. “He said he was no longer needed.”
Shadows of Love Page 26
