The Golden Cross (19 page)

“Stay, enjoy your dinner,” he said, abruptly pushing back his chair. “I am tired. I bid you all good night.”

Henrick could think of nothing to say as his father stood and left the table. He waited until the sliding door to the dining room had safely closed, then he lowered his gaze and caught Rozamond’s eye.

“Could he really want me to marry that woman?” he asked, his mind still reeling at the thought. He could not have been more surprised if his father had suggested that he marry Gusta. A wife would be nice, and marriage ought to be in Henrick’s near future, but he had always planned to seek his wife among the leading merchant families of Batavia. Never would he have considered marrying someone from the wharf.

“He is fatigued,” Dempsey answered calmly. “Preparations for this voyage have exhausted his faculties. Do not forget—and I say this with due respect—your father has always been charmingly eccentric. The artist in him, I suppose? But this time his eccentricity has gone too far.” He took a sip, then lowered his glass and casually stroked his upper lip. “Should we find a doctor? Perhaps he is not mentally competent to participate in this voyage … or to change his will.”

Rozamond uttered a soft murmur of disagreement. “Father is too beloved and well-known to be portrayed as a lunatic. He and his lawyer are old friends. Father could show up in the town square eating daisies, and his lawyer would never admit that Schuyler Van Dyck was mentally incompetent.”

“There is so little time,” Henrick pointed out, drumming his fingertips on the linen tablecloth. “The ship sails very soon, and the captain will command all hands to board at least a week before they weigh anchor. We would have to find a doctor, and arrange for Father to see him—which he would not be willing to do. Besides, the V.O.C. is counting on Father. It is to our advantage that Father sails with Tasman, for this voyage will make him famous. He has not exaggerated the importance of this upcoming expedition.”

Dempsey’s eyes narrowed in thought. “Well, if you won’t marry that woman, Henrick, she won’t be going. Tasman will not allow women on ship, true? So when your father sails, you will be master of this house.” He raised one eyebrow. “If she persists in her association with this family, if she troubles you at all, you would be
perfectly within your rights to ask the constable to arrest her. That is why we have a workhouse.” He shrugged. “But she may simply disappear among the riffraff at the docks. Perhaps she will marry a sailor.” He reached out and tenderly wrapped a finger in one of Rozamond’s curls. “She might even vanish, never to be seen again.”

Rozamond fairly purred under her husband’s attentions. “Wouldn’t it be lovely if she sailed back to Europe? When the time comes for Papa’s will to be settled, if she cannot be found—”

“The money will remain with the estate, where it belongs,” Dempsey finished. He smiled at his wife and returned his gaze to Henrick. “I think we have nothing to fear. After your father departs, you can take matters into your own hands. The voyage will last many months, and any number of things could happen to a young woman down at the docks.”

Henrick stared at his plate, conscious of a small stirring of guilt, but he valiantly fought it down. Dempsey was right, as always. This young woman was no kin to him; she had no part in this family’s fortune or in any of their lives. This time his father’s eccentricity had gone beyond the boundaries of duty and common sense. His responsibility, as the eldest son, was to make certain that the Van Dyck name and fortune were safeguarded for legitimate generations.

But still … the young woman had worn a hurt, haunted look as she rose from the table and fled the room. And Henrick, who had never willingly hurt a living thing, could not bear the thought that he had unwittingly caused her to suffer.

“Here,” Dempsey said, lifting his glass. “Let us drink to the future, to the voyage to come. We will pray a safe and prosperous journey for our father, and he will find the southern continent filled with gold and treasure.”

“To the voyage!” Rozamond twined her fingers around her glass.

“The voyage,” Henrick repeated. But as he lifted his glass to drink, he could not stop himself from pondering what would become of the girl who had clearly touched his father’s life.

Early the next morning, Aidan pulled the simplest gown she could find from the trunk in her chamber. Gusta had burned the skirt, bodice, and sleeves she had worn when she arrived at this house, and she had no choice but to leave in a gown provided by Heer Van Dyck’s generosity. Still, she could not be beholden to Schuyler Van Dyck any longer. Though he was a benevolent and honorable man, ’twas clear enough that his children hated her. Sooner or later his affection for her would turn to contempt, for every father wished to please his children … even as hers once had.

She slipped into the skirt, fastened it at the back, then began the painstaking process of pinning the sleeves to the bodice. When she was dressed, she smoothed her unruly hair with her hands, tied it quickly in a knot atop her head, absently pulling a few wisps down to frame her face. She didn’t look at all proper and neat today, but it didn’t matter. Gusta would no longer have to bother with her; Van Dyck’s children would no longer stare as if she were nothing more than an annoying bug on the carpet. She would say farewell, give her thanks to the master of the house, and she would return home—a failure.

Aidan paused at the door, impatiently pulling her drifting thoughts together. The harder she tried to ignore the truth, the more it persisted. Lili was right. Aidan would have been better off remaining at the tavern, flirting outrageously with sunburned seamen until one of them was fool enough to ask her to marry him. Well then. Perhaps today would be her lucky day. If any sailor on Broad Street was sober enough to smile at her this afternoon, she just might ask him to marry her, thus putting an end to all Lili’s harping and cajoling. She’d forget about art, forget about respectability. She’d settle for being poor and rough and two meals shy of starvation.

She smoothed her bodice, adjusted her skirt, and paused for a moment to study her reflection in the small looking glass on the dressing table. Her eyes were still a bit red-rimmed from the tears
she’d shed during the night, and her lips seemed as pale as her countenance. She pressed her lips together and pinched her cheeks, trying to instill a little color into her wan complexion. She wanted to leave this house with her head high. Van Dyck must think she had changed her mind about going to sea, and his children must never know they had defeated her.

Going home, she thought, returning the mirror to the table, would be hard enough. Lili would lead the other women in a chorus of “I told you so’s,” and Orabel would weep silently, sorrowing for Aidan’s missed opportunity. But even they would never know that something far deeper in Aidan had died.

She could not be an artist. If God had gifted her, he had made a mistake. If he had meant for her to make something of her gift, he should have provided her with the proper tools and opportunities. She couldn’t even manage a spoon and knife to Gusta’s satisfaction—so how was she ever supposed to become a great artist and respectable lady? She had almost begun to believe in Heer Van Dyck’s loving God, but the gentleman’s children had refocused her eyes upon reality.

Leaving her regrets in the small chamber, she stepped through the doorway, then descended the stairs. Gusta’s sharp voice echoed from the dining room where she was probably serving breakfast, so Aidan slipped through the dark-paneled hallway until she came to the master’s library.

Something in her had hoped he would be out—she could have left a note and slipped away without having to confront him one final time. But Schuyler Van Dyck sat at his worktable, his chin resting in his hand, his eyes fastened to the window and the garden beyond. He was thinking—and she knew instinctively that he was thinking about her.

“Goede morgen
, sir,” she whispered. As he turned, she folded her hands and gave him a calm smile. “I trust you slept well. I would not disturb you this morning, but must speak to you before I—”

“I did not sleep at all,” he interrupted. A trace of unguarded tenderness shone in his eyes as he looked at her. “I stayed awake all night, first burdened by the intolerable rudeness of my children and their actions toward you, then tormented by my own guilt. I should never have sprung my ideas upon you and Henrick without consulting you first. I embarrassed you, and I must apologize.”

With renewed humiliation, Aidan looked away. “Think nothing of it, sir.”

“But I must think of it, because our problem is not yet solved. Before the night was half-spent, I began to wrestle with the problem of getting you aboard my ship.”

“That is what I have come to tell you.” Aidan lowered her eyes, finding it difficult to meet his eager gaze. “Sir, I have decided to remain here. I cannot go with you.”

“You’re right, you can’t.”

Stunned by his rapid agreement, she looked up in surprise.

“Tasman won’t allow unattached women, and there’s naught we can do about that, right?” A broad smile lifted his cheeks as he looked at her. “You can’t marry me, and you shouldn’t marry Henrick—the boy is a fool for not seeing your true worth. I can’t even adopt you and take you as my daughter, for my children are bent on their own selfish ways. All right, then. You can’t go with me as wife, daughter, or daughter-in-law. But there is yet another way.”

She stared wordlessly at him, her heart pounding. Dreams she had resolutely buried in the night rose up again, bringing unexpected hope.

“What way, sir?” she whispered.

Heer Van Dyck rose from his place and crossed to the door, then closed it.

“You shall come with me,” he said, a blush of pleasure brightening his face as he turned to face her and leaned against the door, “as my ward.”

Aidan frowned. “Your ward? But Captain Tasman will not allow—”

“He will not allow a
woman,”
Van Dyck answered. “You shall join me on this voyage as a young
man.”

Aidan stared at her master in a paralysis of astonishment. How in the world could she pretend to be a boy? She was tall, true, and unfashionably slender, but she’d heard enough jokes at the tavern to know that she did possess a womanly face and figure.

Still, the suggestion intrigued her. A
boy?
Her eyes drifted toward the flower beds outside, where the gardener’s son worked in an oversized shirt and cap. Perhaps, garbed like that, she could pull off such a ruse. If she wore an oversized shirt and kept her hair twisted up in a cap or braided like the seamen; if she smeared her face with grime and kept her eyes lowered; if she grunted in monosyllables like the midshipmen who regularly mooned at her from behind the tavern bar—perhaps such a charade would work.

Aidan looked up at her master. “Gusta has always said that I would never make a lady.”

Heer Van Dyck chuckled so irrepressibly that she couldn’t help laughing herself.

T
his is how we shall accomplish it,” Van Dyck began, delighted by the surprise and pleasure in his protégée’s eyes. “No one shall know except Gusta. For your own sake, we shall have to tell someone of your whereabouts. Since we don’t know where we’ll go or when we’ll return, someone has to be able to account for us if we don’t return after an appropriate interval.”