Page 75 of A Castaway in Cornwall
He went on. “While on parole, I formed a relationship with a neighbor woman.”
Her wariness must have shown on her face, for he raised his hand. “Not that sort of relationship. She was a widow far older than I. We were friends, and she was eager to help. She gave me her late husband’s clothes. Daniel wore the blue trousers and shirt from the depot under a civilian coat, thinking no one would be any the wiser.”
Laura nodded her understanding. She took his hand, glad for an excuse to do so, and began treating his bloody knuckles.
“Before I left on parole, François boasted that he had an important letter hidden safely away, his ticket to freedom wheneverhe wanted it.” Alexander shrugged. “At first, I doubted his boast was true. I assumed he simply enjoyed provoking me.”
Laura stopped her work to look up at him. “Why? Why does he hate you?”
“Among other things, because we loved the same woman.”
Laura’s breath caught to hear him say those words. “Honora?”
His head snapped toward her, eyes blazing. “How did you know? Did François have the gall to mention her name?”
“No, nothing like that. When you had the fever, you muttered the name.”
For a moment longer he stared hard. Then his ire faded. “Enora, the French version of Honora. Sadly, she did not live up to her name. Although I didn’t realize until it was too late and she was my wife.”
Laura’s throat tightened, and she felt light-headed. “You have ... a wife?”
“Ihada wife. When Enora married me, I thought she had chosen me over François. But no. After we wed, she saw no reason to stop seeing him. I had to ship out, but François stayed in the area. When I received Enora’s letter and read that she was with child, my momentary joy quickly faded as I counted back the months. I knew it could not be mine. I had been gone more than a year by that point, and I am not an imbecile. The humiliation and betrayal are forever with me.”
Seeing the anguish on his face, Laura whispered, “I am sorry.”
“So was I. Despite her infidelity, I felt no satisfaction when I learned the child was stillborn and Enora died from childbed fever a few weeks later.”
Pity washed over Laura. She thought of her poor aunt Anne, who had died in similar circumstances.
“At all events,” he continued, “I was determined to help Alanand see my ailing father, and to return Daniel to his beloved wife. So he and I made our plans.”
His wounds tended, Laura repacked Miss Chegwin’s supplies.
Alexander rose and began pacing the room. “We broke curfew, and my neighbor sneaked us out of Peterborough in her coach. We made our way to Yarmouth. There, we hoped to find a ship to take us to the south coast or even farther, but the only southbound ship we were able to find that day was theKittiwake. We didn’t want to wait around and increase our risk of recapture. We knew theKittiwakewouldn’t take us to France, but it would get us far away from the local militia pursuing us and to the southwest coast, where we thought we’d find plenty of ships crossing the Channel. The captain welcomed us and our money and gave us a small cabin, and we went in, praising God we’d made it.
“But moments later our cabin door burst open and there stood François, triumphant. He said if we objected to sharing the cabin, he would tell the captain we were escaped prisoners of war, and I believed he would have, even if it meant implicating himself.”
Alexander slowly shook his head. “Such uncanny bravado. He didn’t seem to worry about being caught. It convinced me he really did have British connections who would come to his aid if worse came to worst.”
“He stayed in that small cabin with us throughout the journey. Shared our food and sprawled across one of the two bunks, leaving Daniel and me to take turns on the second.
“One day he again boasted about the important letter in his possession....”
In their small cabin, François pulled a folded page from his pocket with a flourish. “You, Alexandre, would find this especiallyintéressante.If only your brother possessed such a letter.Mais, non. Tant pis pour lui.”Too bad for him.
With a self-satisfied grin, François tucked the letter into his pocket, out of sight.
Might that paper, whatever it was, truly exonerate Alan? Alexander wondered. Or was François merely taunting him to provoke a fight? Alexander’s fingers curled into a fist, ready to oblige him. But remembering how François had tormented Daniel in the prison camp, he feared his smaller friend would end up being hurt if violence broke out in that confined space. Alexander clenched his teeth until his jaw ached and he’d mastered his anger.
“What is your plan once we reach Portreath?” Alexander asked him. “If you think we will take you with us to France, you are badly mistaken.”
François shrugged. “I have no wish to go to France. Jersey is my goal.” Again he patted the letter in his pocket.
A crewman delivered a simple dinner of boiled salt beef and biscuits, his expression more harried than usual.
“Anything amiss?” Alex asked.
“Heavy seas, sir. Captain says it ain’t safe to enter the harbour at Portreath. We have to go farther. Sure to be a long night.”
