Beloved Castaway (19 page)

“Yes.” The soft whisper barely reached him. Still, she held tight to his hand.

“It has always been my desire to have a son who would succeed me in the pulpit. In seeking to avoid some of the, well, difficulties of raising our elder son, I thought to keep William close.”

A sob tore through the silence.

“Trouble yourself not, Mary,” he said. “I’ve taken steps to—”

“I meant only to avert William from the path his brother took,” she said between sobs. “I feared. . . .”
 

Knowing the answer, Hezekiah yet asked the question. “What did you fear, wife?”

The long silence left him to consider that Mary may have fallen asleep. After a shuddering sob and a shift in position, she removed her hand from his.

“I feared he, too, would hate you.”

“So you had your elder son steal him away? Woman, I fail to see how—”

“Yes, husband, once again you’ve failed to see.”
 

Her vehement response stunned him. Never had his wife spoken so boldly. “Go on.”

“William is a bright boy, full of promise, but so was Josiah. I could not face another son’s banishment for things that were crimes only in his father’s eyes.”

Unable to remain prone, Hezekiah rose to light a lamp. Yellow
light spilled into the room and filtered through the mosquito netting surrounding the massive bed to glint off his wife’s tears. Mary was sitting, arms wrapped around her knees and her nightcap slightly off-kilter.

Hezekiah climbed back into bed and reached to straighten the cap, then drew his wife into his arms. She stiffened but did not protest, giving Hezekiah’s heavy heart a greater burden.

If pressed to name the last time he had held his wife in a tender embrace, he could not.
 

Mary gathered the bed coverings around her as if she felt a sudden chill. “Husband, Josiah did only what I asked of him.”

This news, while not completely unexpected, was quite dis-
heartening. His dear Mary, wife of his youth and comfort in his old age, had thought so little of him as to conspire to spirit away his son.

What did you expect?
The answer was one he had known for some time but never admitted aloud. To speak of his shortcomings to Mary would go far toward easing her pain and guilt. Hezekiah looked into her eyes, watched a tear roll down her familiar wrinkled cheek, and said nothing.

Anger shot through him, quickly chased by an odd measure of remorse. “I’ve sent someone after them,” he said when the danger of admitting the full truth had passed. “In a few days, I suspect you’ll be reunited with your son.”

“Rather I be reunited with both sons.” Her eyes dared him argue. “Josiah is as much your son as William.” She paused. “He certainly has inherited more of your temperament.”

The taunt chased him as he extinguished the lamp. “Jean Gayarre’s instructions are to return William to me. I left Josiah’s fate to his own choosing.”

“You sent Jean Gayarre to fetch William?” Her laugh held no humor. “Unless he’s reformed, I doubt Monsieur Gayarre could find his way downriver for all the alcohol in him. Pray tell me you didn’t send a pathetic drunk after our son.”

“Jean Gayarre is none of the things you allege, but no, I did not send him. His son has taken the helm and likely has already accomplished the task of wresting the boy from Josiah’s clutches.”

His wife clambered from the bed and raced to relight the lamp. The look on her face struck terror into his heart just as the sudden light pained his eyes.
 

“What sort of foolishness is this? Douse the lamp and come to bed.” He turned his back to her and pulled the covers to his chin. “I’ve no further inclination to discuss the matter. You will be informed when your son returns. Now I bid you good night.”

“Hezekiah Carter, have you no idea what you’ve done?”

Dare she speak thus? Hezekiah decided to ignore his wife’s dis-respectful tone, attributing it to duress. “Yes, I’ve set in motion a plan to right a wrong. When our son returns, I shall listen to your opinion of what William’s future holds.” He paused for effect. “I will, however, make that decision myself, and I’ll tolerate no further meddling from you on the issue.”

“No, you old fool. You’ve sent a murderer after an innocent child and a son who sought only to obey the wishes of his mother.” She gave him no time to respond. “You don’t believe me,” she stated. “Ask Delilah. She’s been in that family’s employ since Andre was in the cradle. She’ll attest to it.”

The breath went straight out of him, and only with great effort did he speak. “How do you know of—”

“Of Delilah?”
 

The sharp words he sought became babble when pressed to his tongue. Rather than be thought daft, he pressed his lips together and affected a defiant stance. Carefully, he managed a nod and with further effort whispered, “Yes.”

“I’m no fool, Hezekiah Carter. Your mistake was in assuming so.” Mary moved closer, her fists clenched. “In all things, for the duration of our marriage I have deferred to you, with the education of William being the sole exception. Dare you to disagree?’

“
 
’Tis true,” he said.

“Even when you banished Josiah, I held my tongue.” She moved closer, her eyes narrowing. “I’ve received letters, as have you, professing admiration for the way you fill your pulpit.”

His own fingers fisted. “Speak plain, woman. What are you suggesting?”

Never in all the decades he’d awakened next to Mary Carter had he ever seen such anger cross her lovely features. Even when he had sent Josiah away, she’d remained complacent, dutiful.

“What reaction,
Reverend
Carter, do you think the good people of our church will have once they find their esteemed pastor has been associating with murderers, drunkards, and women of ill repute?”
 

Hezekiah reached for his trousers and yanked them on. He’d not spend another moment under this roof under these circumstances. “Jesus associated with those people,” he said, although he knew the defense to be a weak one.
 

Mary crossed her arms over her chest.

Odd, but he felt the need to bargain. “I have known Jean Gayarre since childhood. Would you have me walk away from him now?”

Her silence spoke volumes. “You’ve given this more than a little thought, haven’t you, Mary?” His shoulders slumped as defeat sank in.
 

“I have.”

“Then you know I am at your mercy.” He paused, hating to ask the question yet knowing the answer. “What is it you would have me do?”

---

Angry waves tossed the two-masted sloop
Perroquin
as she eased away from the mouth of the river, then cut across the gulf in a southeasterly direction. The scene unfolding outside mirrored what was in Andre Gayarre’s heart.

The
Perroquin
might be the fastest ship in the Dumont line, a Baltimore clipper only recently acquired, but her speed was balanced by her spare accommodations. Much care had been taken to see to his comfort, likely at the instruction of a worried Monsieur Dumont.
 

Threats made by Andre Gayarre were rarely forgotten and always acted upon, a fact the owner of Dumont Shipping had heard. Yet the silks on the bed and crates of provisions in his cabin did little to cause Andre to feel anything but fury at the thought of Viola Dumont and those who had helped her escape.

“And to think I trusted her.”

But did he really? Andre took three steps forward, then halted. Did he trust anyone, really?

His sister, perhaps, at least until he discovered she’d been the one who had betrayed him. That wound cut the deepest. Deciding what to do about Emilie would be the most difficult element of his plan.

Viola’s fate, he’d already decided.

And the idiot Carter? “ ’Tis a sentence worse than death merely to be associated with the Carter name,” Andre muttered. “Yet I shall do what I can to relieve him of that association forthwith.”

A jolt sent him sprawling. Andre rose, cursing the skills of the
fool at the wheel. Though he was more than qualified, he did not take command, preferring to leave such mundane chores to those whose temperament allowed for them. Perhaps he should relieve the dolt who now piloted the
Perroquin
.

No, his disposition was better suited to pacing. And to planning. Barring any trouble with the gale they now plodded through, their trajectory would take them across the Straits of Florida in a few short days. Surely the tub that Carter piloted would be in his sights soon.
 

A pity he’d nearly had to send the captain of the
Perroquin
to his death before convincing him not to take the coward’s route around the storm. Valuable time would have been wasted going around a squall through which they could easily navigate.

In the end, the man had seen the wisdom of Andre’s suggestion to plow through and take the shortest course. Like as not, the coward Carter would be limping along at the edges of the weather, losing time with each moment of smooth sailing.

The only concern Andre felt was the possibility the sloop might get ahead of the plodding vessel and miss the criminal entirely. No, he’d not think on it. His was on a mission that would brook no defeat, would make no mistakes.

The
Jude
would be caught. Viola would be his. So would revenge.

Andre scrubbed at his eyes and tried to keep from screaming. The creaking of the wood was destined to drive him mad if he listened to it another minute. It certainly conspired to keep him awake most of the night, and that was before the rain and wind had hit. Odd since he’d made his home aboard seagoing vessels most of his adult life.
 

He rose and resumed his route around the small cabin that passed for his home aboard the
Perroquin
. Seventeen paces to the north, twelve to the east, seventeen back to the south, and then twelve to the west. The pattern had been repeated since daybreak, although the past hour’s trudging had become difficult at best due to the rolling of the deck.

If revenge had a cost, it was the time he spent in this jail cell of a stateroom. Then he thought of Viola Dumont, of the cathedral, and of the wedding that wasn’t.

Fury boiled anew. How dared the woman defy him? Before he could exact revenge, he would see that she married him true and proper. Nothing vexed him more than a promise not carried out. And nothing fueled his anger more than a missed opportunity to fill Viola Dumont with a Gayarre heir and a Dumont grandchild.
 

Sweet would be the revenge, yet something stirred in him at the thought of a new life, a child of mixed Gayarre and Dumont blood. To his relief, the moment passed, and his thoughts cleared.
 

“A welcome payment for what I shall gain, this imprisonment at sea,” he said as he steadied himself against the wall, then returned to his pacing.

The book Father thrust upon him lay buried in the trunk among the clothing and sundries he’d packed himself. Odd the old man would insist he give this book to Emilie and not something more personal. Despite his crusading sister and his father’s frequent arguments on the topic of freedom and salvation, the pair had a strange affection that Andre did not share. It was as if he’d been judged to be like his mother, who had deserted the family, and been left to his own devices.
 

He glanced at the pier glass and caught his reflection glaring back. The fact that a mother he had no memory of could somehow cleave a wedge between father and son seemed at once patently unfair and strangely appropriate. Andre knew as a Gayarre he was born of mother and father, but as a man, he was not like the father who’d contributed to his birth.

No, he was nothing like Jean Gayarre. So, by default, indeed he must be like her.

Whispered stories of his mother often swirled in circles about his nursery like wisps of smoke from a dying fire. Even now, he could recall his nurse and others speaking of a woman who left not one child but two before she’d fully recovered from her confinement. Thus the question that went unspoken except in the back quarters of the Gayarre home was not why she left but why she returned.
 

Why, after a year away and no contact with husband and daughter, did Madame Gayarre present herself on the doorstep at Rue Royale, then install her formidable person in the upstairs rooms as if she’d never been away? Why, when presented with the son and heir to the Gayarre fortune, did she wail with great sorrow and leave their home forever, a description that lodged in Andre’s heart in childhood and rendered it cold and lifeless?

Andre sighed and commenced his trek across the shorter length of the stateroom. At least he knew his heart was dead and withered. Many men walked about without such valuable self-knowledge.
 

He needed neither the approval of his father nor the presence of his mother. This was fact. The Gayarre fortune, he did find necessary; thus his father’s request would be carried out.
 

Still, the book and what it might contain taunted him. A moment later, he tore through the contents of the trunk and retrieved the Bible. He carefully lifted the seals from the letters with a penknife and began to read.

A commotion above caught Andre’s attention and sent him
hurrying up onto the deck. The wind drove sheets of rain toward him as he emerged to find a group of men setting the ship to anchor.

“What are you doing?” he called, but his voice was lost in the roar of the gale.

Then he saw it. The mainmast.
 

Or rather he saw where it would have been.
 

The splintered wood lay sprawled across the foredeck under a tangled mast of rigging and sails. Picking his way through the mess, Andre reached the group and pushed his way to the center.
 

The captain, a wretched skeleton of a man in drenched cap and spectacles, spied Andre and sidled up beside him. “We’ve got no choice but to anchor her until the storm passes.”