Watching him approach, she stepped out onto the porch and walked down to the beach below. She noted that Pickett had the same carry as she had seen the day she met him, slightly self-conscious but with a flair that superseded that flaw.
The canter of his horse said something about the rider, revealing a dimension she could not discern from his conversation or in the letter he had first written her. It was a gallant form of communication by him, and it made her heart race, a response reinforced with each toss of his proud mare’s head.
As he drew up, Pickett paused for a moment, then he swooped down off his horse, pushed his cape aside, slowly dropped his field cap, and bowed deeply in the French manner.
When she offered her hand, he pulled it to his lips and kissed it gently.
“My deepest respects for you, Mrs. Evers. My profound, deepest respects and admiration for all that I now know you have endured.”
“Thank you, Captain Pickett,” she said, swallowing her words out of a desperate need to control herself. “I have attempted to keep these travails from the gossip of the community. It seems I have failed.”
“I do not believe you fail in any endeavor, Emmy,” he said, smiling, but obviously holding himself from saying more.
She nodded, not at his assertion, but in approval of his use of her first name.
She plucked up her courage. “May I call you ‘Pickett George’?” she asked with a sly smile.
He straightened, and, from his surprised expression, she saw he realized that she knew much about him.
“You may, Emmy. You may,” he said.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
They walked along the beach for hours until the light started to fade, past the pounding surf in a misting rain, and shared with each other what they had endured during the past several months.
By comparison, his ordeal was slight, he knew. The stories Emmy conveyed were overwhelming to him, as hardened as he believed himself to be. In fact, a few times he had to turn away lest he show emotions that were not befitting a man of his age.
She asked his counsel about the turmoil that definitely was increasing in the East between the states over slavery. She wondered about whether a confrontation was likely to erupt between the opposing cultures of the North and South, each advocating passionately for its position—one side in favor of imposing a civil solution to the affront to human rights represented by the enslavement of others, the other side defending its rationalized position to preserve an economic infrastructure that had existed for generations.
“My father has written. My mother is very ill. With all that is happening, the threat of war, how safe will my children be if I to return with them to my home in Boston?”
“I believe you will be safe there, Emmy.”
“And what will become of you, Captain Pickett? How would you, as an educated man, place your bets on the next few years?”
He shook his head. He didn’t have an answer.
How closely tied to his heart would his decisions be, she wondered?
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Pickett was quiet as they walked, for Emmy’s questions about his future decisions were ones he had pondered over the past several months.
He knew he would likely move to where his heart brought him rather than where convenience seduced. He understood the value of passion as an underpinning to everything that ultimately mattered, to everything that defined one’s legacy, and to the difference he would or would not make in this life.
But what of Emmy?
He looked at the sturdy and beautiful woman who walked beside him and wondered how she might fare and whether she ever could fit into those travels.
He had seen much, and as he thought about her, thought of the wiles and courage necessary to survive in a cold, brutal world, he sensed she would endure and likely flourish.
She did not need to be protected, and that realization was a comfort and a disappointment to him all at once, bred as he was to believe that being a hero and rescuer was a noble reason for a man’s existence and ample enough foundation for a durable love.
He did not have answers for Emmy.
And he understood, with some sadness, it wasn’t time to make those decisions. He was duty bound for now, so hoping for a future with her in any case would be far-fetched and out of his control.
So, he was silent, and they walked on.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
They stayed together there for the balance of the day and then, on the next day, she returned home. On the morning she left, she presented him with the inlaid box that contained his Belgian Mariette six-barrel pepperbox. It was the last time they saw each other.
Chapter Forty-Three
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Emmy
Emmy looked over the rail, looked at the dock below, and then up at Port Townsend, framed by the deep green forests and blue mountaintops of the Olympics.
It was warming now, and enough blue patched through the clouds that, it seemed, she saw the land again in a way she had not since the time she had first arrived so many years ago. She would round the Horn again, going against every vow she had made after that first awful journey, and present her children to her family in Boston for the first time.
She wondered whether she would ever return again, here where so much was buried now. Isaac’s body was finally at rest, she knew. She hoped his soul finally had moved on and melded with the land that he had believed was his own.
She looked north and thought of George Pickett again. She had heard he had faced down the Brits up on the San Juan and that General Winfield Scott himself had trekked across the Panama isthmus to take over and attend to the disengagement of the hostilities.
She wondered how Pickett George would fare in a world of men who thought themselves and their
