Acadia Song 04 - The Distant Beacon Read Online Free Page A

fitting that this be the first signal of her return.
    Nicole flew back to the carriage. “Hand down that small trunk! Please. No, not that one, the other bound in leather.”
    Gordon was standing at the door of the carriage, watching her curiously. “What is it?”
    She accepted the trunk from the driver, set it on the ground, and found her hands to be trembling so much she made hard going of the straps.
    “Nicole, what’s the matter?” Gordon asked again.
    She finally got the trunk unlatched and flipped open the lid. On top, wrapped in clean bunting, was the dress she had decided upon while still on board the vessel. A white frock, the simplest she owned, the only decoration was tiny mother-of-pearl buttons and a froth of lace rising from waist to neck and adorning each wrist.
    “Nicole, my dear, Georgetown is but an hour’s ride ahead of us.”
    “Yes, that is so. You don’t think I can meet my parents wearing four days of road dust, do you?” She dug through the trunk to find a pair of shoes of ivory kid leather. She glanced at Gordon. “Do you have anything finer to wear than that dusty old greatcoat?”

    The rains came just as Andrew had predicted, and just as she was putting Father to bed for his midday rest. The old man was so much like a child these days that even his eyes had taken on a newborn’s milky unclarity. She would never have admitted such a thing to anyone, but it seemed as though her father was waiting for something. What, she did not know exactly. But when it arrived, he was intending to leave. Or even more shattering to her lonely spirit was the thought that God was intending for him to go. Because with this thought came a second impression, that both God and her father were merely waiting for Catherine to let him go.
    She sat by his bed as she had many times through the difficult winter, when ice and snow had closed the roads and she couldn’t make the journey to her beloved French settlement a day’s ride northeast of Georgetown. She would sit here by her slumbering father and listen to the snow and wind and think about her earlier days with a clarity that words could never provide.
    She would recall her beloved friend Louise and their meeting place high above their two villages—and the day they exchanged babies, the journey to Halifax for the doctor to see to her little one. Then came the horrible day of Acadian expulsion. Those nearly two decades of not knowing what had happened to her baby, to Louise and Henri. The years of loving and raising little Anne as their own. Here there was no pain to the memories, not even over the loss of her own Nicole. She thought of her by that name now, which was as it should be. And she prayed for them all.
    By the time she emerged from Father John’s room, the rain had ceased its thunderous drumming on the roof. A few moments later, while she was washing the midday dishes, the sun reappeared. The air beyond her kitchen window sparkled with a special clarity now, every scent etched against the backdrop of wet earth and a clean spring breeze. The church bell rang the hour, and all the world seemed to shimmer in cadence with the chime. Even a gentle birdsong held a strength echoed by the whinny of a horse determinedly shaking its bridle.
    A driver’s whip cracked through the clear afternoon. Catherine paused in her chores and squinted out the window. Beyond her range of vision, an angry driver used his whip a second time and shouted, “Ho there, you! Pull your weight now, giddap!”
    The horse neighed in protest. No, not just one horse. Obviously several of them were straining hard against a heavy load and the mud from this most recent rain. Catherine stood there amazed that any driver in his right mind would attempt to force his steeds through the aftermath of a spring downpour.
    Then, to her astonishment, four horses rounded the corner, heaving and straining to pull a stately carriage. Catherine raised a hand and rubbed her eyes. The picture seemed