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“South lies France,” Elijah explained. “We’ll sail past Plymouth soon. Dartmoor is inland from there.”
Her vision clouded, and she lowered the telescope. Did it feel the same to her brother to be so close to the despised place that had broken their father before they were born—like a betrayal?
“Did he ever talk to you about it?” he asked tonelessly.
“Seldomly. I know it was the War of 1812, but I don’t even know how he was taken prisoner.”
“Uncle John commanded a blockade runner,” he said, referring to their mother’s brother. “Caught them on a supply run. They starved our uncle to death on the prison ship. And almost Father, before they transferred him to Dartmoor Prison.”
A shudder ran through her; she could scarcely reconcile the surrounding beauty with those horrors. “The prison ship could have been anchored right here.”
“Mother said Father was a different man after those three years.”
The single, ephemeral image she possessed of her mother came to mind—cascading hair, a brighter red than her own.
“I’d been quarreling with him,” he continued, “and I demanded to know how she could tolerate him. She said she still remembered what he was like before the war. It was the only way she could stand him. She didn’t blamehim. She blamed the British.”
Awash in the usual mix of envy and compassion whenever Elijah spoke of their patient, loving mother, Helen’s gaze dropped to the pine deck. He’d had more time with her—sixteen years to her eight. Yet Elijah had suffered their father’s wrath more, and without their mother as a buffer, he left home within a year of her death.
Whenhadn’tHelen felt this complicated jumble of emotions toward her brother? She had been but a girl when she became the woman of her house upon their mother’s death. Then Elijah had sailed away, exploring the world as a man, and she was left to pick up his duties at the family business.
You would have left, too, in his shoes,she reminded herself. Father had belittled him without mercy; he had looked past Helen, only noticing her with mild gratitude for running their home and the lumberyard.
At nine, she already looked up to Elijah; when he sailed away on his global adventures, he went from beloved to hero. Oh, how she had lived for his letters, often delivered a year or more from when he penned them, and his lengthy but infrequent visits.
Meanwhile, Father’s efforts had gone either into condemning Elijah when he was home or pining for him when he was gone. Would she have accepted more meanness in exchange for more praise?
No. He only commended Elijah out of his hearing. It went into the wind.
Helen laughed as she remembered such an instance, covering her mouth as mirth escaped. Elijah turned to her, bewildered by the change in her demeanor.
“Remember when you and Father quarreled over your racing against the British for sport?”
One side of his mouth quirked up. “On the Pearl River! You’ll see it, God willing.” He shook his head. “Regattas right there amongst the sampans, the junks, and the ferries. We rowed like the devil himself was in pursuit! Patriotic, all of us, British and Americans alike.” He scoffed. “Damn fool I was, thinking the old man would be gratified I bested the Brits.”
She put a hand on his arm. “I’m not one to defend him. But hewasproud, you know. You’d already left when he sobered next. He told anyone who would listen that his son showed up the British. Now here you are, racing and winning again—all the way to London.”
Elijah turned to face her. “Samuel Miller is dead, and I’m not a lad anymore, begging for his favor. I’ve failed you as a brother, Helen, but I won’t again. By God, we’ll finish this with your tea fortune—or I’ll die in the trying.”
She squeezed his arm. “I’m grateful. But no dying allowed, do you hear? We’ve had enough of that.”
“Tell that to the sea.” He turned and indicated with his chin toward the faraway cliffs of Cornwall. “It’s a strange feeling to see England with my own eyes. Eerie, but right.”
“Whatever our family’s history here or whether Father would approve, this isourlife. It’s 1850, not 1812. We’ve lost everything except each other andAlacrity. You’ve brought us to the shores of England. Sail me to London and I’ll do my part, arranging a shipload of silver.”
He grinned, another glimpse of the boy she remembered from long ago.
So continued Helen and Elijah’s new understanding. When they had boardedParadiselast year for San Francisco, they barely conversed. Sailing back to Boston with Robbie’s remains, the guilt and pain remained, but they were at least shared.
They were united now—in grief, new and old, and by their plan.
Elijah ordered his crew to prepare the ship for arrival. Singing shanties as they worked, they scrubbed the deck until the pine shone white, and polished the brass work until it gleamed in the sun.
One man was suspended from the tip of the bow, above the waves, cleaning the gilt figurehead. As if soaring upward, the eagle’s head extended past the ship, its long wings pressed flush against either side of the bow.
Alacritywas two hundred feet long and when the crew finished cleaning every visible surface of her, Elijah bellowed to his men, “You’ve scrubbed her fine, sailors mine! Now dress the ship! Rigging monkey, climb!”
Apprehension gripped Helen as she watched a sailor begin his ascent up the mast. No imagination was required for her to recall the sight and sound of a man falling and impacting the deck.
