Page 4 of The Beloved Escapade

The drawing room door opened.

“Lucy?” Papa’s voice sounded hollow.

She turned.

Papa stood in the doorway and Mama stood just behind him, and their faces were wrong. She had never seen expressions like that on them. Papa’s face was drained white, so his mouth looked painted on and his eyes looked through her and past her to something only he could see. Mama’s face was the face of someone trying hard to remember how she had come to be standing there.

Lucy’s heart folded itself up small and tight inside her chest.

“What is it?” The words came out rough. “What has happened?”

“Come, dearest,” Mama said. Her voice was thin and not her own at all. “Come and sit with us.”

Lucy stood. Her legs did it without her telling them to. She let Mama take her arm and lead her to the settee in front of the fire. She sat where she always sat. She looked up at Papa, who did not sit but stood staring into the fire with his hands clasped so tight behind his back that his knuckles had gone the color of old wax.

“Papa, what has happened?”

He drew in a breath and let it out. He turned and his eyes met hers. She saw that he did not know how to say what he had to say, but he was going to say it anyway because he had said harder things in courtrooms and would not be beaten by his own hearth.

“There has been an accident, Lucy. At sea.”

The fire made a small sound as a coal shifted. Somewhere at the back of the house someone was cutting onions, and the smell reached her all at once, sharp and strong and too big for the room.

“A ship went down. Off the coast of Cornwall. A week ago last Thursday. There was a storm.”

She could hear every word, but they would not come together to make sense.

“Lucy, my love.” Mama’s arm came around her, warm and heavy. “The ship was the Lady’s Grace. Uncle Henry was aboard her. Uncle Henry and Captain Belafonte and all the crew.”

“He was traveling with the captain,” Papa said. His voice cracked on the word, and he cleared his throat and went on. “From Falmouth to Bristol. They never reached Bristol. The storm was terrible. Witnesses on the coast saw her strike the rocks. There are no …”

He did not finish. She waited. He was staring into the fire again. She wanted to shake him, but her arms would not move.

“He is not coming back, Lucy,” Mama said. Very gentle. As if she were laying something broken into Lucy’s lap. “Uncle Henry is not coming back.”

The room stayed still. She had thought it might spin or that she might faint the way they did in novels, but it did not. She sat exactly where she was, with the tassels of her shawl gripped in her right hand and the onion smell climbing the walls, and stared at the coals in the grate.

Uncle Henry had told her once about a storm off the Cape of Good Hope. He had lain on the drawing room carpet and rocked his shoulders to show the pitch of the deck and described the mainmast breaking like God clearing His throat. She had laughed so hard, she had to hide her face in the cushion so as not to be vulgar.

He had said at the end that the sea was not to be feared exactly. To fear it was to give it more credit than it deserved. What the sea wanted was respect. What it wanted was for a man to know he was small and to sail small, and if he did that, the sea would let him keep going most of the time.

Most of the time.

From somewhere far away, she heard a dry sound and realized it was her own voice trying to speak.

“The ship went down a week ago?”

“Yes, my love. That is what we understand. The Lady’s Grace was seen striking the rocks off Land’s End on Thursday evening in a gale that lasted through the night. There were some fragments recovered. But no …” Papa’s voice failed him, and he pressed a hand to his mouth.

Mama held her tighter. She was crying. Lucy had not noticed until now. Her mother’s tears were running down her cheeks.

“There are no survivors, Lucy,” Mama whispered. “None at all.”

The clock in the hall began to strike. It could not be another hour yet. Nine had struck when the world was still a place where Uncle Henry was alive and on his way to her.

You are wrong, she thought. Not out loud. She could not have said it out loud. But under her ribs, something hot and fierce had caught and was burning.

You are wrong. You do not know. He might have jumped clear before she struck. He might have swum. He might have been picked up by another ship. He might have made it to shore somewhere and been laid up in a cottage with no way to send word. He might be walking up the drive this very minute, and any second the bell will ring and it will be him.