"Late night thoughts and writings..."

From the Private Journal of Governor Lord Henry Whitehall

Port Dominion, the same night — April 19th...

Sleep will not come tonight.

The sea is restless, as though it too senses the shifting weight of fortune pressing upon these shores. From my balcony the harbor glimmers like a dark mirror, its calm broken only by the silhouettes of ships at anchor. Among them, the newest arrival —a French ship— her masts faintly visible beneath the waning moon.

And from her decks, or perhaps within the finest cabin, emerged that insufferable creature — Gaspard François LeCroissant — who strutted down the gangway this afternoon in a blinding flare of yellow satin and self-admiration, trailing the scent of some Parisian flower whose name I neither know nor care to and made me feel as if my stomach had turned as a result of this morning's breakfast.

The man had barely opened his mouth before I despised him. His voice dripped with condescension, his bow was too low, his smirk too knowing. Even his apologies seemed rehearsed, as though each syllable had been polished before a looking-glass.

Upon my return to the Manor, I let my contempt come forth, with Eleanor there - watching and listening as usual, in that uncanny manner that she has.

“First the Spanish Contessa,” I muttered under my breath, “and now this—this French fop.”

I thought the words low enough, but Eleanor heard. She always does.

Her hand brushed mine — only for a heartbeat, but the gesture disarmed me more completely than any act of diplomacy ever could. There is something in her touch — soft, deliberate, dangerous — that pulls the air from my lungs and the thoughts from my head. I turned to look at her, and she met my eyes with that half-smile of hers: the one that forgives nothing yet asks everything.

It is damnable, the power she has. She need only tilt her head, let her hair fall just so, and all my resolve weakens. It is not love — not in the tame, domestic sense the poets speak of. It is something darker. She is at once my solace and my torment, my saint and my succubus.

There are whispers about her — of course there are. There are always whispers about women who know how to command a man’s gaze. That she smiles too freely. That she lingers too long in the company of others. That she keeps secrets even from her husband.

Let them whisper.

If they knew the truth — that she can unmake me with a single glance, that I would sooner fall upon my sword than see that smile turned against me — they might pity me more than they mock her.

But enough of that.

This business with the French and the Spaniards unsettles me. First, the arrival of the Contessa — all charm and mystery, her eyes too deep, her manners too precise. There is a kind of spell about her, though I cannot name it. The men, even those of rank and discipline, speak her name in the same breath as one might a prayer or a curse.

And now LeCroissant.

A man such as he does not cross an ocean without purpose. His presence here — in the wake of the Contessa’s — feels deliberate. A move on the board, though I do not yet see whose hand guides the pieces. France and Spain are playing a game, and England is the table upon which they play it.

The colony feels different already — charged, expectant, as though something unseen coils beneath its tranquil surface. Reverend Task speaks of temptation and divine testing; Colonel White speaks of readiness and muskets. I speak of patience, though I feel none.

Eleanor says I am too quick to anger, too slow to listen. Perhaps she is right. She often is. And yet, when she says my name in that low, lilting tone — “Henry…” — I would forgive her anything, even the lies she does not tell.

She has gone to her chamber now, or perhaps she waits by the fire, her hair undone. I can almost see her as I write — the candlelight tracing her shoulders, the glint of her glass half-raised. I should join her. I always do, though part of me wonders if each night spent in her orbit pulls me further from the man I once was.

But there are worse fates than being lost to her.

As I close this book, I find my thoughts circling back to the same uneasy notion: Port Dominion is becoming crowded with secrets.

Spanish secrets, French secrets… and perhaps even those of my own house.

If the Contessa and that painted French peacock are the heralds of something greater, may God grant that I see it coming before it swallows us all.