“Of course he wouldn’t confess such intimacies to you, his prior sweetheart. Nor would he ask such of you, being a gentleman of rank. Which begs the question ... whatdidyou two talk about?”
“Really, Eliza. Your interrogation knows no bounds.” Esmée took the book back. “Though he did ask about you.”
“Did he?” Eliza looked flattered. “How are his Norfolk kin?”
A pang shot through Esmée, arrow-sharp. “All have passed.”
Eliza’s face crumpled. “Poor Captain Lennox. I only knew of his father’s death. ’Twas in the papers a few years ago, but Mama hid it from you.”
“What?”
“She knew it might upset you. Unearth the past.” Eliza sighed. “But I had no idea about Mrs. Lennox and Hermione. I do recall Hermione wedding a landowner of some merit.”
The tightness in Esmée’s chest expanded. Might Hermione have died in childbirth? Eliza, for all her fearlessness, had a mortal dread of such. So many failed to survive the ordeal and enjoy motherhood. Esmée’s fervent prayer was that her sister be spared.
“I suppose the captain has returned to Indigo Island and I can breathe again,” Esmée said. The thought was nettling. Sore. A bittersweet mix of things regretted romantically that would never be righted.
“More’s the pity.” Eliza went to the shop window and stared out at the teeming harbor. “Farewell, our masterful, commanding Captain Lennox.”
Did her sister know something of his whereabouts? An imminentcruise? Quinn had gone into the anteroom with the other officials during the ball. Had the captain already set sail again? Esmée opened her mouth to ask, then closed it. She’d rather bite her tongue in two. What would knowing profit her?
Let the past pass.
“We must make the most of the time we’ve been given.” Eliza spun away from the glass. “I asked Father if he could spare you in the near future. Quinn will be in meetings, as the assembly will soon be in session. Some nonsense over outlawing the importation of slaves.”
“Nonsense? I beg to differ.”
“Nonsensein that such a measure will never pass muster in slave-heavy Virginia.” The mettle in Eliza’s tone suggested it was a frequent topic of discussion in the Chevertons’ townhouse. She softened, her eyes as imploring as a spaniel’s. “Come, Esmée. I get frightfully lonesome.”
Esmée set the book on the counter. “What of your many friends?”
“None suit like the company of my elder sister.”
Before Esmée could reply, a customer entered and ended the matter, inquiring after a new chocolate pot.
“See you soon, Sister.” Eliza smiled in farewell. “We shall have a splendid time in Williamsburg.”
Beset by a headache, Esmée left the shop and walked uphill toward Main Street, knowing Quinn and Eliza had departed and the townhouse would be quiet. Since Mama had died, Father rarely arrived home till supper at eight o’clock. As usual, Esmée was greeted by their housekeeper, Mrs. Mabrey.
“A headache, you say?” Her lined face grew pinched with concern beneath her beribboned mobcap. “Some thyme tea should do. Shall I bring it to your bedchamber?”
“Father’s study, thank you.” Esmée removed her straw hat, set it on a foyer table, and moved past the stairwell into her father’s bower. Instinctively she reached for his mahogany spyglass, standing at one window and training her sights on Indigo Island. On such a clearday every speck of sand glittered, trees swaying like the grass-skirted women her father told stories about. Somewhere she couldn’t see sat the Flask and Sword, the boon of sailors. Captain Lennox was on the back side of the island in the cottage Father had told her about. He’d visited more than once, though not for years.
“Here you go, Miss Shaw.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Mabrey.”
The tea tray was placed on a small table near at hand, infusing the paneled room with an earthiness that mingled well with Father’s pungent tobacco and heady brandy.
The housekeeper shut the door behind her, and Esmée returned to her musings. Sleeplessness pinched her eyes, and the ache gripping her temples throbbed unrelentingly. Returning the spyglass to its lined case, she sat down to her tea, then remembered the scrap of paper in her pocket. She laid it in her lap as she sipped from her cup. Her name, oft misspelled, was written flawlessly in a bold, masculine hand. The bookseller’s? Or the giver’s?
Despite her headache, a wee thrill couldn’t be denied. A little intrigue in her chocolate-laden world was not amiss. Might Eliza be right? Could the giver be the captain?
She took out her old memories of him, sorting through each one like antique buttons in a box before settling on one that shone like glass. ’Twas when he’d whisked her south to meet his Norfolk family. What a fuss had come beforehand as trunks lay open and garments were examined and cast off in favor of something suitable.
“You ken what this means, dear daughter.” Mama looked at her, a knowing glint in her eye.
Esmée, caught up in the novelty of a serious suitor, thought little beyond the present moment. “I know not except Captain Lennox wishes to acquaint me with Norfolk.”
