The next morning dawned gray and cold. The Tempest was not sighted until noon. The fourth day out, a light, misting rain raked the decks and only a brief time could be spent in the open before a chill cut to one’s bones. The sails were reefed as the wind strengthened and became more easterly. Near evening the course was shifted to a due westerly one. They had sailed northward, taking advantage of the southeasterly winds and passing well east and north of the Bermudas. Now they sailed west to make landfall north of Chesapeake Bay and would let the prevailing northeasterlies blow them down upon it. The schooner would take the advantage more of the quartering tail winds and press ahead, making port a good day ahead of the Hampstead.
In the ensuing days Shanna grew more restive and short of temper. Her days were empty and long. Once the Hampstead turned west, the sun came out, and freshening winds swept her swiftly along toward her goal. Though the weather was warmer, it was still bleak for Shanna, and the poor ship could not travel fast enough to suit her.
It was after the evening meal, and even Sir Gaylord had been unusually gracious. Still it little eased the wintry chill of Shanna’s manner, and she finally took to the deck to escape the fruitless attempts at humor her father and Captain Dundas employed to cheer her. She was huddled against the rail, a fur-trimmed cloak drawn snug about her, hiding her nose in a woolen muffler coiled about her neck, when Pitney came to stand beside her. He leaned his elbows on the rail and watched the fickle waves form frothy caps of white. After a long silence in which Shanna ignored him he spoke.
“You seem in poor temper of late, Madam Beauchamp.”
Shanna tightened her lips and gave him no answer, but Pitney knew only too well what had soured her happiness.
“Ye’re angry and upset because of course ye’ve been dealt a cruel blow by fate.” There was a mocking tone in his voice that lent the words a heavy sarcasm.
“Hardly by fate,” Shanna scoffed. “More by trusted friends.”
“Ah, ye have a voice,” Pitney laughed gently. “Hergus and meself have been wondering about that.”
Shanna grew petulant beneath his prodding. “There has been little enough to say to either of you.”
“Poor lass,” he chided her. “ ‘Tis a sad thing that ye alone suffer against the outrageous whims of fortune.” Pitney paused and rubbed his hands together while he stared at the darkening evening sky. “Shanna child, let me tell ye a story. ’Tis of a young man whose trials might well rival yer own.”
Shanna braced herself to hear his platitudes.
“He was not a complicated soul, though he had taken his father’s simple smithy and worked it with honesty and sweat into a vast iron trade that hired a round dozen hands. He met a titled lady, the youngest of a wealthy family, alas, all daughters. After a blissful courtship they were discreetly married, and she bore him a son. It gave the family a continuance of heirdom, and they accepted the man into their home.
“The son was coddled by his aunts, and the mother would not tolerate interference by the father who, being common, could not understand the ways of gentlefolk, or so she was convinced to believe by her kinfolk. The father yielded in the matter and let the nanny and tutors rear his son, taking only those rare moments with him when the others did not demand the boy’s time.
“The father became an outsider in his wife’s home, and her bedchamber was soon moved from his to another wing in the house. He saw her at evening meals but only from across the table and surrounded by a flock of haughty dames who looked upon him like a tolerated leper. Out of pride he left. The son once escaped the manor house and visited his father’s shop where the two of them spent joyous hours in comradery before the lad was hunted down by servants headed by the domineering aunt. She wore the bell of the household and warned the father of interfering further with the boy. The man stood upon his rights, but the local magistrate was well impressed with the power of the wife’s family, and the poor man found himself barred from the manor house and enjoined from seeing his own son.
“The boy fled again during a winter storm and journeyed through a blizzard in bare feet and sleeping gown to be with his father. The lad was fetched back, and the father was cast into jail for disobedience. But the son was taken with a chill, and the fever soon found him. He died in a barren manor house crying for his father.
“As it served no further purpose, the man was released and wandered the streets drunk and broken of heart. He returned to the manor once more and begged his wife to leave the frigid, lifeless realm of the dowagers and go away with him. Aye, she promised and took him into her bed again.”