More importantly, Eleanor would face Arran MacLean once again. What would he say when she stepped out of the canoe at Assiniboia? Would he be happy to see her? Would he pull her into his arms and whisper the words her heart had longed to hear these many years?
She had told herself she was coming to teach, but her heart whispered the truth. She wanted to rekindle the love that she and Arran had shared on St. Mary’s Isle. Yet, her head warned her heart that he might reiterate the painful things he’d written to her in response to her letter of regret.
So many questions and uncertainties plagued her as they drew closer to their destination, the greatest of which was whether Arran would be married to someone else. It was almost all she could think about.
“She’s happiest in your arms,” Reverend West said as he sat beside Eleanor. He lifted the collar of his coat to ward off the chill as he let his gaze rest on Eleanor and Miriam.
Eleanor couldn’t deny his words. The baby was happiest in her arms. Every few hours, as soon as Fiona completed Miriam’s feedings, Eleanor took the baby back and saw to all her otherneeds. They were rarely apart, and she had grown to love the child as if she were her own.
She rubbed the baby’s back and looked out at the riverbanks. They had steadily risen higher the closer they came to the colony, and she could no longer see above them to the prairies beyond.
“Anne would be so thankful for your loving care.” William, as Mr. West had asked her to call him, spoke in a soft, almost reverent voice. The grief in his eyes was still so powerful, Eleanor struggled to look at him in moments like this. He was far too young and handsome to carry such a heavy burden through life. Eleanor often prayed he would find joy again. Even his daughter was not enough to bring a smile to his face. He hadn’t held her once since her birth, though Eleanor had offered her to him many times. She was all too aware of what it felt like to be rejected by a parent. It was the last thing she wished for Miriam. But still he refrained.
The child reminded him of all he’d lost. Even the name he’d chosen for her meant “sea of bitterness.”
“It’s an honor to care for your daughter.” Eleanor smiled at the sleeping baby. Her heart-shaped mouth and delicate little nose were so like Anne’s, it was difficult not to think about her friend when she looked upon the babe.
“I hope it’s not too great a burden.” It was William’s constant concern. “I can make other arrangements if you’d—”
“She’s not a burden.” On the contrary, the baby had filled Eleanor with purpose as she waited to start her school and brought a sense of joy amid her grief. Taking care of Miriam had become second nature to her. “I cannot think of anything I enjoy more.”
The lines in William’s face eased and he nodded. “Thank you, Lady Eleanor.”
She smiled at the minister. “Please. Just call me Eleanor.”
Here, in this wild and desolate place, there were no distinctions between nobility and commoners. Eleanor had known what she was giving up when she left England’s shores, and she had no regrets. The peerage had brought nothing but heartache and pain to Eleanor and her family for as long as she could remember. It had destroyed her mother, broken up her parents’ marriage, and shunned Eleanor the moment her father had succumbed to its pressures.
“You may be the first English lady in the entire Northwestern Wilderness.” William gazed upon the wooded riverbanks and rubbed his hands together, blowing into them for warmth. He spoke, more to himself than her, “I’m beginning to think that bringing you and Anne here was the biggest mistake of my life. If something happens to you, I don’t think I’d be able to forgive myself.”
Eleanor’s lips parted at the bold statement, and it sent a shiver up her spine. Rumors and reports had trickled to them along their journey. At both York Factory and Jack River House, they’d heard about the attack by the North West Company men and Bois-Brûlés. They’d learned that over a hundred and fifty settlers had left with a man named Duncan Cameron and gone to Montreal. That would only leave about fifty settlers at Assiniboia. With the addition of the immigrants from Kildonan, they would reach one hundred and forty. A small number, to be sure. But not without hope. Surely, the Bois-Brûlés would recognize that it was useless to keep fighting. Each time they drove a group of settlers away, another would come, this time stronger.
Even now, the new governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Robert Semple, sat in the lead canoe. He had been hired in answer to the ever-increasing troubles between the Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company. Semple was a loud, boisterous man with more fervor than Eleanor had everwitnessed in any one human being. He was impatient and bold, a frightening combination, as she’d already witnessed. They had made the journey in less time than any of the settlers before them, to the detriment of the colonists. Five people, including Anne, had lost their lives on the journey and he had rarely taken the time to stop and bury them properly.
“Do you have great dreams and aspirations for the colony?” William asked Eleanor, thankfully changing the subject.
Over the last few months, he had kept a respectful distance while still overseeing Eleanor’s welfare. When Anne had been alive, the three of them had enjoyed companionable hours crossing the Atlantic, but after her death, he’d pulled away, rarely speaking to her for more than a moment or two. Eleanor had wondered at his distance, questioning if it was because of the baby, his grief, or because he was now a single man and she an unmarried woman. Whatever the reason, she had respected his space and kept to herself and Miriam. Her relationship with Fiona had naturally grown and she had been thankful for a new friend in this foreign land, but she was happy to converse with a fellow English compatriot again.
“I hope to be of help,” Eleanor responded to William. “To teach and care for the children whenever I’m able. Though, I confess”—she had not admitted this to anyone else—“I worry that I will not be as useful as I had first hoped.”
He frowned. “Why not?”
They were surrounded by colonists on all sides, and she did not wish to alienate herself more than she already had by simply being a member of the aristocracy, but she couldn’t deny her concerns. She spoke quietly. “This land is far more uncivilized than I had first hoped. I fear I have taken the place of someone more useful, such as a farmer or a tradesman. Perhaps I was too hasty in believing the colony was ready for a teacher.” Other than Fiona, the settlers had kept her at a distance. When shetried to offer her help, even in the simplest ways, they refused to let her be of service. She no longer used her title, but that didn’t mean the others would forget that she was a lady. Would they allow her to teach their children, or would they refuse her that honor, as well? “I wonder if a school is a frivolous luxury in such a young colony.”
“Education is never frivolous. It is the bedrock of society. Or, at least, it should be.” He studied her, the sounds of the voyageurs’ paddles slicing through the water and the hum of conversation mixing with the calls of the birds in the nearby trees. “What prompted you to come all this way? Could you not teach in England?”
She did not anticipate his question. William knew she was Lady Selkirk’s cousin, but that was almost all he knew about her past. She had not shared anything about her father’s scandal or her relationship with Arran MacLean. He didn’t know that she was all but ostracized from her homeland. “I was ready to set my own course. When Lord Selkirk agreed to let me come, I knew I must seize the opportunity. It isn’t often that one is able to make history.”
“Do you not have a family in England who is worried about you?”
Eleanor looked ahead to a bend in the river, wondering how many more curves they would travel before the settlement came into view. “There is no one.”
“What of your parents?”
She met his gaze with a steady look, hoping he would realize his questions were too personal. But he watched her openly, his curiosity apparently piqued. In a way, it gave her hope that he had started to look beyond his own pain and grief to think of others—even if it meant prying into her affairs.
“Are they deceased?” he asked, pressing for more. “Surely, if they were alive, they would have protested your journey as much as Anne’s did.”
Eleanor had left England behind to forget about the past and to start afresh, without scandal to mock her every move. If she told William the truth about her parents now, the weight of her past would follow her to this far-off land.
