Unclaimed Heart (2 page)

“She's seventeen, Henry. I think you should just tell her the truth.”

Henry Blackchurch leaned both fists, knuckles down, on the back of Violet's sofa and shook his head vehemently. “We don't know what the truth is.”

Violet's voice softened. “We know enough, surely.”

His eyes went to the window. Outside, the summer light had finally faded. The night was soft and starry. “We can only speculate.”

“She thinks her mother was a saint. As a child she spoke of nothing else but Mother coming home to be with her. I don't know if she still thinks such things. She keeps her feelings to herself. But it's a vulnerable age; she hovers between childhood and womanhood. Her feelings are not in her control.”

Henry straightened and nodded towards Alice the maid, who was setting a silver tea tray on the low table. “Leave us, please,” he said.

Alice nodded dutifully and slipped out of the sitting room, closing the door behind her. Henry found it difficult to speak of personal matters, even to his sister. Another presence in the room would tie his tongue completely. He folded his hands behind his back and rocked on the balls of his feet. Violet waited patiently.

“I know my wife was . . .” He stopped, started again. “She had flaws.”

Violet snorted a derisive laugh.

“But she was my wife, and it's my duty to determine what happened to her, and bring her home if that is her wish. I need you to keep Constance distracted. Don't let her think too much about where I am, or what I am doing. For, truly, she may be disappointed.”

“She
will
be disappointed. You both will.”

“I can't bring myself to judge Faith as harshly as you, Violet,” Henry said. “What if you are wrong?”

Violet shrugged, conceding. “You do what you must, Henry, and we will be here at the end of it, as we always are.”

Henry opened the window and leaned out. The sea called, as it had always called him, since he was a young lad. He felt trapped on land, helpless. Out there, he could move. Towards Faith, perhaps. Towards the truth.

“I'll leave on the first favorable tide,” he said. “I can't stand still a moment longer.”

“Are you coming to bed, Constance?”

Constance turned to the soft hand on her shoulder and smiled weakly at her cousin Daphne. “Momentarily.”

Daphne sat on the top step next to Constance, folding her hands in her lap. She had in her hands one of the little novels she liked to read: ghastly romances about beautiful orphans, inevitably trapped in ruined castles while ghosts rattled chains nearby. Constance was always mocking her for her tastes—goodnaturedly, of course.

It was dim in the stairwell, with only the lantern at Constance's feet to illuminate the space. Mother's portrait was directly in front of them, at the bend in the staircase. Constance had often studied this portrait, wondered about her mother, wanted to know her mind, her heart. As a child, she had made up many games about her mother's return, earnestly scribbled stories about her adventures on the road home to her daughter.

Softly, the voices of her father and aunt drifted up the stairs, but she couldn't hear what they were saying.

“What's on your mind, cousin?” Daphne asked.

“Father has news of my mother.”

Daphne's eyes widened, her pupils growing large. “Truly?”

“She was seen in Ceylon, some years past.” Constance smiled weakly. “That is all I know, as Father will not speak another word of it to me.”

“How perfectly thrilling,” Daphne breathed, then turned her eyes to Faith Blackchurch's portrait. “She was very beautiful.”

“Yes, she was.” Constance smiled. Her mother's hair was black as a raven's wing around her oval face, her eyes dark blue and her skin porcelain. In the portrait, she wore a dress of deep crimson and a gold locket around her neck. “You know, I've often wondered if she carried a little portrait in that locket.” She didn't want to sound sentimental, so she didn't confess to Daphne that she'd long imagined a picture of herself as a baby shut inside that gold oval.

“Do you remember her at all?”

Constance shook her head. “No, not at all. I try to think back as far as I can. But I only remember Aunty Violet. You.” She squeezed her cousin's hand. “I hardly remember Father; he was never around. When he was, all he wanted to do with me was tie knots and learn sailing terms. You know he's leaving again, immediately. Off to Ceylon.”

Daphne shuddered with excitement. “To find his lost wife. It's like a book, isn't it?”

“Not the kind of books I read,” Constance teased.

“If this were a book, you'd go too, Constance,” Daphne said. “You'd stow away and have adventures at sea, meet some noble man posing as a peasant, be reunited with your mother . . . and your father would be revealed as a tyrant, perhaps not even your real father.” She checked herself. Her cheeks were growing flushed with excitement. “I'm sorry, cousin. My imagination ran away with me.”

Constance patted her knee. “You read too many of those horrid novels.”

“I like them horrid.”

Constance rose and offered a hand to help Daphne to her feet. “I don't know how you don't have nightmares. This isn't a novel, Daphne. This is my dull, dull life.”

And yet she couldn't sleep. Daphne had unwittingly sown a seed that had worked its way into her brain and germinated. Father wasn't taking passengers out on this hastily arranged voyage. Plenty of room for her. Before he realized she was on board, they could be miles from British waters. Too far to turn back.

In the dark, while Daphne breathed deeply and softly in the bed next to her, a plan began to form.

GULF OF MANNAR, SOUTHERN INDIA: 1799

 

The movement of sunlight in the water had always fascinated Alexandre Sans-Nom. He sank down and down on his rope, with a stone tied to his back. He had worked pearl banks all along the coasts of India and Ceylon, and knew precisely what to do. With his little pick, he quickly began to loosen oysters from their sticking places and drop them in his bag. Two other divers worked with him: Sinhalese men whom Gilbert de Locke had employed two weeks ago in Marichchakuddu. Alexandre knew that de Locke didn't like to keep divers on for too many months. They became lazy, he said. They were more likely to turn to stealing. He kept only Alexandre: for eight years now.

The Sinhalese divers pulled their ropes and returned to the surface. One minute was the average amount of time that a diver could stay at nine fathoms, airless, under the weight of the green ocean. Alexandre could stay far longer, four or five minutes. Until his lungs felt hard, and dizzy spangles began to gather on the edges of his vision. Then he'd pull the rope and be hauled to the surface, gasping, with four times as many oysters as his companions.

“Well done, lad,” de Locke said to him, with a tight smile that might have been pride. Was it a misplaced paternal feeling that kept Alexandre in de Locke's employ? Or was it simply Alexandre's uncanny ability to hold his breath for so long? After all, that was the circumstance around which they had found each other.

He was sleeping on a mattress, under the caravan where he worked when he first heard them.

“The boy is not for sale,” said Givot, the caravan's owner.

“I will pay you what he's worth to you. Autumn is only three weeks away, and then winter will follow. Your show will be off the road; you'll be paying his keep for no return.”

Givot harrumphed, and Alexandre felt a warm discomfort creeping over his skin. Were they talking about him? He felt vulnerable, as though he might be in trouble. Last time he had been in trouble, Givot had whipped him twice across the back with his horsewhip.

“Where did you find him?” the mysterious voice asked.

Givot, who loved the sound of his own voice, launched into a tale that the eleven-year-old Alexandre had never heard before. “His mother sold him to me when he was two. She was poor, couldn't keep him. Tried to drown him in a laundry tub. When he stopped fighting, she pulled him up. He took a breath and kept right on breathing.”

A chill spread through his stomach. Was this true? Givot had always told him that his parents were scholars, studying at the university in Paris. That, one day, when they had finished their studies, they would return for him. Until then, they had given strict instructions that Givot was to care for him, and he was to do whatever was bid him.

The stranger was still talking. “This is my final offer. I know you could use the money. Your horses are looking tired and old.”

“I won't hear of it.”

Alexandre blocked his ears with his hands so he wouldn't hear the rest of the argument, the two men talking about him as though he were only as important as a horse. He curled on his side and held in sobs, a pit of emptiness opening up within him. He belonged nowhere, with no one. Sleep eluded him.

Hours later, after all the lanterns had been extinguished, quiet footsteps had alerted him to somebody's presence nearby.

Gilbert de Locke crouched next to the caravan, leaning his head to seek Alexandre out. “Boy?” he whispered. “You should come with me.”

Alexandre, small and frightened, had become paralyzed.

“I will take you somewhere warm and sunny. I will pay you handsomely.”

Only the first part of de Locke's promise came true. The coast of India was indeed warm and sunny, but it seemed that de Locke forgot his offer of payment almost as soon as Alexandre had taken his hand and agreed to follow him. Being young, never having known anything but hardship, he didn't complain.

Down he went again, the two Sinhalese divers beside him. He worked as quickly as he could, waiting for his companions to be pulled up. Then he spun in a slow circle to make sure he was alone, his dark hair floating around his face. Baroque undersea formations surrounded him; only fishes watched. He reached for an oyster, wishing his fingertips could see inside. Aware that he had only limited time, he pried it open with his pick. Nothing. Another, and another. Nothing. The cracked shells spun slowly away from him, towards the ocean floor. Shadows of the other divers appeared above; he returned to his original task, collecting oysters for de Locke. One day he would find a pearl, in those brief moments alone under the sea. And when he did, he would run away from Gilbert de Locke and buy a passage home to France. He would show de Locke that he was no longer the naive boy he had once been.