Page 7 of Beyond the Lavender Fields
“Are you a doctor now? Is that why you have grown so sullen and silent since giving up the sea to become amarin de l’eau douce?”
A mariner of calm waters. A landlubber. Gilles bridled at the taunt. He hadn’t ended his six years at sea because of fear. “Why can you not come to terms with your son wishing to be a doctor?” Gilles asked. Two years of goading—as if that would make him change his mind and return to life onle Rossignol.
Père shrugged. “I already have one son trying to be a doctor. I have no use for two.”
“And your oldest son is already a mariner. Why do you need two of those?”
His father leaned back and crossed his ankles on the footstool. “Victor does not sail with me.” Père’s uncle, who owned the shipping company, had given Victor command of his own vessel a few years ago. It brought a much better income for a husband and father of two little girls. “You do not need this fancy schooling to become a doctor,” his father went on. “You can learn all you need from my surgeon.”
Gilles’s blood boiled. His father enjoyed these disputes far too much, which was one of many reasons Gilles kept his distance from Père, as though he carried the plague.
“Do you even have a surgeon?” Gilles set the plate beside him on the sofa, his food half finished. His stomach had clenched too tightly to try to fill it.
Père shrugged, just as Gilles had expected. He hadn’t found a good surgeon after Gilles’s last voyage, and no one questioned why. Who wanted to sail with a captain who cared so little for his crew? “You could be my surgeon.”
Gilles snorted. He had nowhere near the needed credentials to care for the health of an entire crew, even the small crew of a brig. Would the recklessness ever cease? He’d had a pitifully small amount of training thanks to his father.
“Oh, come. It is not so crazy an idea.” Père took his feet from the stool and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You’ve read more books than any university-educated doctor I’ve met. Do not discount your abilities,mon fils. You have a good mind, and no professor at that school will teach you anything you do not already know.”
Books could not stand in for a real teacher and training from one of the oldest schools of medicine in the world. They had wound through this argument every time his father returned home during the last two years. That enraging smile still marred Père’s face, and Gilles set his jaw to keep from saying anything more. He pushed himself to his feet.
“Surely life in the fresh air trumps sitting in a chair keeping track of a gluttonous pig’s fortune,” his father said.
Gilles’s fists clenched by his sides. “That gluttonous pig is one of your patrons.” Defending Daubin twice in one day. He wouldn’t have guessed.
“He hasn’t chartered an Étienne ship in years.” Père tossed up his hands. “Before the revolution, my contraband tobacco was good enough for him. Now he won’t so much as look at one of the family’s ships.”
Gilles understood Daubin’s change of heart completely. Old age kept his great-uncle from maintaining the order and discipline among his captains the Étiennes had once been known for. Daubin did not want to risk compromising his goods. “I would rather work for a gluttonous pig than for a pirate.”
For the first time that evening, a look of displeasure clouded his father’s glinting eyes. “I have a letter of marque.”
“One that is not recognized by the current government.”
Gilles bridled at Père’s laughter. “They do not know what they are about. We’ll have a dozen new governments before the dust settles,” his father said.
Gilles strode to the door. He’d had enough. “I did not take you for a monarchist.”
“I did not take you for Maxence.”
Gilles halted and glanced at his father. Better to follow in the footsteps of an aspiring physician than in the wake of a smuggler and thieving privateer with an expired license. Maxence had influenced him in ways that would make him a better man. Hadn’t he?
Not in Mademoiselle Daubin’s eyes.
“Perhaps I should have followed Maxence’s example and left the sailing life early. You do not hound him to return to your crew.” At least not anymore.
Père pressed his hands against his knees and stood. “Maxence was never a mariner. Even in my most hopeful moments, I could not convince myself he had a future at sea.” He wagged his finger at Gilles. “You,mon fils, could anticipate each swell, sense a storm before it showed its face, feel the slightest variance in our course. You were born for the sea. Come back. Be my second.”
His second-in-command? Once Gilles had desired the position, when he’d watched Victor work in the coveted role alongside their father. Gilles had set his sights on the same honor, but that dream had shattered after his last voyage. He wanted nothing to do with a life so cutthroat it tainted one’s loyalty to friends.
“Both your second and your surgeon, so you do not have to pay as many crew members?” Gilles shook his head. Anything for a bigger share in prizes. “I am trying to forget my years at sea, not return to them. I wish they had never happened.”
The corner of Père’s mouth twisted upward. “The sea made you the man you are. You cannot run from it.”
“We are building a new nation here,” Gilles said. “A place where a man is not shackled to the traditions of his past.”
“Except when it suits him.”
Gilles held his father’s stare. A challenge sparked in the man’s eyes, while the eerie glow of the fire undulated across his skin. It did not suit Gilles to hold onto anything from his past. That was why he had charted his course for the field of medicine, where he could help his countrymen rather than stealing from foreigners.
