“And who is this lovely creature?” Sylvie asked him, on her feet again, hope and surprise in her striking features.
“C’est ma future épouse même si elle ne le sait pas encore,” he answered quietly without hesitation. “MademoiselleGabrielle Farrow.”
Though his rapid French eluded her his sister’s outright wonder did not. Sylvie threw her arms about Brielle in a warmhearted embrace.
“Pleased to meet you,MadameBlackburn,” Brielle said, warmth creeping up her neck as Bleu looked on.
“Please, call me Sylvie. And may I call you Gabrielle?”
“Brielle, thank you.”
“Très jolie.” Sylvie turned back to her brother. “You’ve come far from the look of you. Hurry inside and let me feed you before the children discover you’ve returned. They’ve been playing down by the river on so warm a day.”
“We have a young boy traveling with us.” Bleu looked down the hill to the heavily treed riverbank. “I suspect he’ll soon find your tribe and make introductions.”
“Then he’ll be welcomed warmly.” Sylvie led them into the house and a cool, shadowed hall. “Will is away surveying. Before he left we had a small feast and roastporc. There’s plenty left over.”
“Providential timing,” Bleu told her, hanging his cocked hat from a wall peg.
“And after that a bath and new clothes.”
“You have both waiting, I presume?”
“I am always hopeful of your arrival so I prepare,oui. And since I am forever sewing for the settlement, there are plenty of women’s smallclothes and gowns to choose from, too,” she added with a smile at Brielle.
They followed her through a dining room into a spacious kitchen with whitewashed walls and abundant cupboards. “Please, have a seat and let me serve you. Cider, to start?”
In a quarter of an hour they’d finished the bountiful meal including refills of the delicious cider as Sylvie sat at the table with them. “Much has changed since you were here last year. More Acadians have joined us and others have gone further south to thenew community inLouisiane. Thankfully the winter and spring were mild. Our only woe was when lightning struck and one of the barns burned. But the wheat yields have been the best since we first began fieldwork years ago.”
“Your orchards are thriving,” Bleu told her, setting down his fork.
“The cider apples especially. Our larders are bursting from season to season.” Sylvie began clearing away dishes. “Now, are you ready for a bath? Some rest?”
When Sylvie declined her help cleaning up, Brielle turned her attention to making herself presentable. Hot water was hauled upstairs to a copper tub in a bedchamber. Left alone, she could hear Bleu and Sylvie talking downstairs, still in the kitchen.
As she parted with her begrimed clothes she took in the lovely room, the canopied bed hung with yellow curtains that matched the fabric at the windows. Window seats overlooked a walled garden at the back of the house that reminded her of her parents’ in Philadelphia.
Sylvie soon reappeared with garments, not just one dress and petticoats but several, reminding her that Bleu had told her his sister had been a seamstress in Acadie before the expulsion. She’d even worked at the Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg for the governor’s wife and daughters. And now, all of this.
The tub was emptied quickly and whisked away to be refilled for Bleu.
“I could more easily bathe in the river,” she overheard him say to his sister’s protests across the landing.
“Bof!” she rebuked him. “You are in civilization now, not the wilds like a beast.”
Another door shut, ending the matter, and Brielle stood in a newly made linen shift and boned stays, fingering a chintz petticoat draped across the bed, her washed hair hanging to her hips. SylvieGalant Blackburn was not only gracious but also exceptionally skilled. Expert tiny stitches and seams, pleats and embellishments elevated every garment. Numerous pins studded a pincushion awaiting all the pinning required to encase her in the gown of her choice. Everything was hers, Sylvie told her, including clocked stockings, even an assortment of shoes.
Left alone, Brielle wondered the significance of such extravagance. Though Bleu had assured her of his sister’s hospitality, she hadn’t expected to be treated like family. Dare she say it?
Almost like a bride.
Bleu stood at the bottom of the staircase as Brielle came down, her hand on the banister, her eyes on him. No one else was in the hall in a hard-won moment that left him speechless. To his sister’s credit, he no longer smelled of sweat and horses but rosemary soap and freshly laundered linen. As for Brielle, she hardly resembled the same woman who’d gone upstairs an hour before, making him realize the rigors of the trail had not been easy on her. Though her hair was still damp it had been pinned up simply but alluringly, her skin aglow, her gown a work of art.
He gave a slight bow which made her smile. She cleared the bottom step and stood looking up at him. He fisted his hands to keep from touching her. His pained restraint was short lived as the front door burst open behind him and half a dozen children rushed in.
“OncleBleu!” Childish voices echoed in the wide hall as his nieces and nephews danced around them and eyed Brielle with sharp interest. “OncleBleu!”
He saw Sylvie’s attention dart to the open doorway where a thoroughly wet Titus stood, looking elated yet sheepish. He’d found the river to his liking. Perhaps that sufficed for a bath.
