Captain Rose’s Redemption

But is he right about Richard?

Cassandra left the dining room and walked down Belle View’s long central hallway, barely sparing a glance for the dusty sitting room, office and library flanking either side of it. The paint on the walls of the main hall had once been a vibrant red, but it had dulled to a rusty colour. Like everything at Belle View it needed seeing to, but she couldn’t spend money on paint when there were labourers to be paid. She passed the wide front door and the tall clock standing beside it, her mother’s wedding gift from her parents. It chimed the half hour, the bells as clear today as they’d been when Cassandra was a child. They were the one thing age and the hurricane hadn’t appeared to touch in the old home. She climbed the staircase to the second floor, her hand brushing over the rough banister in need of a polish before striding down the upstairs hallway to her bedroom.

Once inside, she locked the door. Her large, four-poster bed filled most of the room. A turned wooden chair sat between the opposite window and the fireplace covered with an embroidered screen. Even without an overabundance of fine furnishings, this room was simple and comfortable in a way that none of the rooms in any of Giles’s houses had ever been.

It wasn’t comfort she sought at present, but something more disturbing.

She knelt in front of the fireplace and worked loose a brick near the bottom. The hiding place had once held her childish treasures, but today it concealed a darker secret. She pulled out the pouch of money, disappointed by how much lighter it was. The coins wouldn’t last much longer and, to her shame, she almost wished Richard would send the pistol if it meant another bag and the slight easing of her financial concerns.

No amount of money is worth the misery he’d bring if he returned. The misery he’d already visited on her by pretending to be dead and convincing Uncle Walter to support his lie. She set the money aside and tugged out a letter tied with a ribbon and encompassing a number of folded, weathered and water-stained parchments.

A few days after Cassandra’s arrival, Mrs Sween had given Cassandra Uncle Walter’s travelling desk. Inside, beneath the mundane accounts and letters from friends had been the items Richard had sent him. They’d been sealed between the pages of a letter to her from Uncle Walter, one that had proved more unsettling than the illicit documents and the memories of Richard they’d conjured up.

She untied the ribbon and set aside the documents to read Uncle Walter’s last letter again.

Dear Cassandra,

By the time you read this I will be gone, but know that I loved you like a daughter and cherished you as if you were my own. However, for all the love I bore you I have also lied to you in the most grievous of ways.

I’m sorry I cannot tell you this in person, so that I may beg for your forgiveness, and I hope once you read what I have to say you will find it in your heart to forgive me and to understand why I did it.

‘I’m the one who should have asked for your forgiveness. I never should have left you,’ she whispered, and tears blurred the paper while she read his account of what had happened with Richard five years ago. The effort it had taken for him to unburden himself was evident in every scraggly curl and shaky line of each word. It broke her heart to imagine him, ill with fever, struggling to confess to her. If only he could have known she’d discover it for herself, it might have saved him the pain and effort. Yes, he’d lied to her about Richard, but in the weeks that had passed since she’d first read his letter, she’d come to forgive him. His one sin didn’t erase the years of love and his hard work on her behalf at Belle View.

She flicked the edge of the paper with a fingernail, wishing she’d never left him or Virginia. After everything Uncle Walter had done for her, she hadn’t been there for him in his final illness, and it tore at her. He’d deserved her love and thanks and care, and she hadn’t been able to offer it to him. It was another of the many things Giles, the Chathams and even Richard had stolen from her.

She continued to read, trying to hear Uncle Walter’s voice in each word, to remember his face and his smile, but all she could glean were a few snatches of expressions. Her inability to clearly recall the man who’d taken care of her after her parents’ death stung as much as the words of his letter. The tone of them reminded her of the one she’d written to him shortly after Dinah’s birth when she’d admitted her mistake in marrying Giles and had asked for his advice. He’d never judged her for the failure of her marriage, but had helped her as best he could. He might not be here, but he was asking for her help now, not for himself, but for Richard.

I’mentrusting Richard’s evidence to you. Please protect it and assist him as I have. Neither one of us has the right to ask this of you, not after the way we deceived you, but please understand it was all done with the best of intentions.

I spent my life in Virginia fighting for those who’d been wronged by others. I could not allow Richard, a man who was once my apprentice and your fiancé, to be falsely accused and do nothing.

I failed to help him see justice done, but perhaps you can find a way to succeed.

She folded the letter, then picked up the shipping passes and other papers. The contents made no more sense to her today than they had the many times she’d perused them in the past few weeks. Beside her, the cold fireplace beckoned her to strike the tinder and set the lot of it on fire and be done with Richard. There was no reason she shouldn’t.

Except Uncle Walter asked me to help him.

She tucked the papers inside the letter and returned them and the money to the space behind the mantel and replaced the loose brick. For Uncle Walter she would keep the papers safe until she could return them to Richard, but she would do no more. She’d damaged her already weak position in Williamsburg once by defending Richard. She wasn’t about to risk everything to do it again. Belle View and Dinah’s future were all that mattered now.

* * *

Richard pulled the collar of his light coat up higher around his face and hurried through the dark streets of Nassau. He’d put aside his mask, frock coat and breeches for the simple clothes of a first mate. In this pirate haven, everyone minded their own business and he could move unnoticed through the riff-raff without fear of discovery. As he approached the centre of town, evidence of the hurricane from ten years ago marked the buildings on either side of the road. Many rose into the sky, their stone structures devoid of roofs, their walls pocked with gaping holes. People moved in and out of the shadows and small alleys, their shuffling footsteps followed by the gravelly voices of whores trying to entice clients inside. Richard stepped over a filthy drunk sleeping against a wall, ignoring the sodden wretch and the faint inkling of disgust and shame the sight of him conjured up. All this filth was too familiar to him, like the currents of the James River that he and Vincent used to navigate as boys or the smell of the tobacco ripening in the fields of Sutherland Place.