Extended Epilogue
3 months later…
Sarah whooped as the wind whipped a foam of salt into the air around her. It soaked her face and hair. She turned to beam at Leonardo who stood further back from the prows of the ship. Sarah stood at the most forward point she could reach on the magnificent vessel. She thrilled at the sense of speed and motion as the steady Atlantic wind filled the sails and drove it on. A flash of motion caught her eye down below and she looked to see flashing, silver shapes breaking out of the water. They leaped and frolicked in the wavefront that the ship created before itself, chattering and squeaking their friendship and delight.
“Come and look, Leo! Are these dolphins!” she pointed.
Leonardo joined her but the woman he had been talking to called out.
“They are, Sarah. They enjoy greeting sailors and showing us how much better they are as mariners compared to us!” Elizabeth called.
Sarah looked down in wonder as she felt her husband slip his arm about her waist.
“I do wish you would not get quite so close to the edge,” Leonardo said, also looking down.
Sarah was about to reply when she felt her stomach lurch. She frowned, putting a hand to her stomach. The lurch came again accompanied by a wave of nausea. She had not experienced a single day of seasickness, despite being warned of it by Elizabeth, her mother-in-law, before embarking on this voyage. She was proud that she had been aboard ship from London to the west coast of Africa without a single day of sickness. But now…
“Oh dear,” she gasped. “I think the sea is finally taking its toll on me.”
Leonardo looked at her oddly. “But it is not even a bad day. No rolling to speak of. We are darting through the water, straight as an arrow.”
“Nevertheless…” Sarah said and then was hanging over the side, heaving.
Leonardo held her about the waist as his mother joined her son and daughter-in-law in the prow. Sarah felt utterly miserable, no sickness or illness she had ever experienced had felt as bad. It was as though every scrap of food she had ever eaten was trying to leave her body.
“Take her below, Leo,” Elizabeth said in her curious, half-English, half-American lilt. “I have a remedy for sickness but something tells me we’ll have to let nature take its course.”
Sarah looked at her mother-in-law questioningly for a moment but then a fresh wave of nausea hit her and her stomach dictated where she should be looking. She was dimly aware of Elizabeth talking quietly to Leonardo. Then he was picking her up in his arms and carrying her to their cabin, below decks.
***
Sometime later she lay on the bed they shared, head hanging over the edge and a wooden bucket placed on the floor beneath her. Leonardo sat next to her, holding her hair away from her pale face.
“Oh, it just isn’t fair, Leo!” she exclaimed. “I cannot be like this for the rest of the voyage. I really wanted this adventure. To see India. To travel on a real sailing ship. To explore! I cannot spend the entire voyage in my cabin!”
Leonardo laughed and Sarah raised an outraged face to glare at him.
“I do not think that you will. You will be sick for a part of it. But only in the mornings.”
She looked at him blankly and he rolled his eyes. “You once chided me for the gaps in my education. My mother believes you may be with child.”
Dismay gave way to a dawning look of unutterable joy.
“Can it be?”
“It certainly can. We’ve had enough opportunities!” Leonardo laughed.
“Oh Leo, a child! Our first child!” Sarah exclaimed.
“I say that we should ensure that we do not return to England before he or she is born. They will be born a British subject and heir to two estates but they will be born on the high seas and will consider the world to be their home!”
His eyes shone and Sarah smiled at the thought, despite her sickness. In fact, the idea seemed to be helping. Or perhaps it was just that there was nothing left to bring up. They had been married for six weeks. On their first morning together as husband and wife, they had talked of Elizabeth and Peter’s desire to return to the sea, to journey on to India and beyond in search of trade. Sarah had been keen to go with them, at least as far as India. And Leonardo had been just as keen. Her worries about the shackles of marriage had proved unfounded. Or rather, her choice of husband had rendered those worries obsolete. Leonardo would not shackle her to duty or society. He was an adventurer, son of an adventurer. And now would be father to an adventurer.
Sarah flopped back on the bed, Leonardo stretching out beside her and cradling her head on his arm.
“Perhaps, they will be born in India. The jewel in the crown,” Leonardo said.
“Or Africa. Born to look out over the great unconquered continent,” Sarah said, placing a hand over her stomach, imagining the baby growing there.
“Or America. Land of the Free is what they call it,” Leonardo said.
“It does not matter,” Sarah sighed. “The world will be theirs.”
They had persuaded Elizabeth and Peter to wait six weeks before departure. Long enough for Leonardo’s solicitor to secure her birthright. The estates left to her by her mother were restored along with Moncrieff, which fell to her after Alexander’s confession to arranging the murder of both her father and his own. That confession had saved his life, leaving him twenty years to serve but sparing him the hangman’s noose. And it had meant that he could not claim the title he held. They reverted to the rightful heir, Sarah Sutton.
Julia had been horrified and mortified in equal terms. That her brother was a murderer and now a common criminal and that her cousin had stolen her betrothed. Nothing could be proved of her collusion with Alexander in the planned murders. It was unclear if there was any collusion or not. Sarah wanted to believe she had not known. Out of compassion for a woman who had never shown her any, Sarah had allowed her to remain at Moncrieff. Aunt Diana would visit her daughter there and Sarah looked forward to seeing the Dowager Countess on her eventual return. Eventual, because they had no immediate plans to return. There was simply so much of the world to see. So much adventure to experience.
She had always been afraid that marriage would deny her that adventure, close off the world from her view. It had taken her meeting Leonardo to learn that it was not true, that she had instead gained a companion to share it all with.