The Legacy: Scotland Bay the Return, #1

By Cecly Ann Mitchell

Rhys Le Noireau has spent nearly four decades feeling like a puzzle piece out of place, struggling to find his true identity.

When his mother, Astral, falls into a coma and requires hospitalization, Rhys, a successful architect, is entrusted with the daunting task of organizing her belongings and settling her affairs.

As Rhys delves into the process of cleaning out his mother's home, he stumbles upon a hidden treasure trove of family heirlooms: an ancient family Bible, a mysterious Deed, faded birth certificates, weathered photographs, and fragments of notes written on parched paper.

Rhys's journey unearths secrets and unravels a complex family history.  Each discovery opens a doorway to a bygone era -a world that resonates deeply within Rhys's soul.

He has a choice - the life he knows or a path he is compelled to follow.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Les Grand Editeurs Publishers Ltd
• Release date: Oct 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201412531

Cecly Ann Mitchell

Most days I wear several hats. Author, Wordsmith, Writing Coach, Editor, Public Sector Communications Consultant, and Workshop Facilitator. In my world of Caribbean Historical fiction, readers meet long-forgotten island people, who lived through events remembered in the whispered recollections of living historians or between the pages of tomes in dusty archives and long-abandoned places. My non-fiction work marries my passion for Public Sector Communications and the craft of writing Commercial fiction while resident in the Caribbean. The most important thing you need to know about me, I'm not human until I've had my first cup of homegrown coffee.

Book preview

Chapter 1

1981

RHYS

H ello? sleep laced his voice

Mr. Le Noireau? Rhys didn’t recognize the voice of the man with a thick East Indian accent.

Yes. He answered warily.

This is Dr. Sharma from St. Paul’s Hospital in Washington D.C.  he bolted, sitting upright, his back against the bedhead.

What’s happened to my mother? Rhys didn’t give the doctor the opportunity to finish his introduction. He fumbled in the dark for the switch to turn on his bedside lamp, flinging the covers off him.

There was an imperceptible pause. Dr. Sharma’s thick accent filled up all the space in his head. 

There has been an accident and your mother, Astral, has been admitted here. I cannot give you any more information over the phone. I suggest you get here as soon as you can, so we can proceed with her treatment.

Is she okay?

Mr. Le Noireau, Dr. Sharma implored, with his professional practiced control, Please get here. We will talk then.

There was a loud, click, and then the jarring dial tone as Dr. Sharma hung up before Rhys could ask any more questions.

He knew it was pointless calling the hospital to get any further details.

He called Annalise.

I was just about to call you. She cried as soon as she answered.

I don’t know what happened. Her voice was shrill with panic. I went in as usual this morning and found her unconscious and clammy on the floor in her office.

She took a shaky breath and continued, I called the ambulance, but in the melee, and getting her admitted and all of that I forgot to call you. Sorry. But I did give the doctor your number.

Annalise Roche was his mother’s assistant and Rhys’s weakness. The daydreams and nightmares he had about that woman, would make Jackie Collins blush.

Now however, was not the time for those emotions to take up space in his head. He needed to focus, to get to his mother’s bedside. 

Stay with her. I’m getting on a plane and I’ll see you soon.

ASTRAL

A RHYTHMIC PULSE WAS beating against her skull, the pain traveling from the base of her neck to a point behind her left eye.

Someone was drilling into her eye socket. She could not open her eyes; the lids were heavy, and her head hurt something awful.

She tried to talk, to ask for a sip of water, but none of her organs was cooperating.

Heavy tongue, parched mouth.

She inhaled but couldn’t get oxygen into her lungs. She labored to breathe, willing air into her lungs, but nothing entered.

Everything felt pressed down. She was stifling, wading through the ‘sapatay’ mud pits behind the cow pens in Scotland Bay.

Her body arched, throwing her head back for balance. 

She exhaled, surrendering to the overwhelming peace enveloping her.

She floated allowing the rhythm of the outgoing tide of the calm aquamarine waters of the Caribbean Sea ripple through her spirit, strum at her soul and take her home to Scotland Bay.

SCOTLAND BAY TRINIDAD

1941

GRANDPA WAS DEAD, BURIED and now she was alone.

She had no family.

The lights of the Gulf Steamer blinded her as it tugged out into the Boca on its way to Port of Spain, disregarding the war time surveillance orders. It would be blackout time soon, Mame, her nurse and grandfather’s housekeeper would send Gus, to fetch her.

Astral turned, her body now in profile against the darkening March sky. She looked up at the Chateau up on the hill, behind her, her home. Mame had lit the lanterns on the top floor gallery. Another act of defiance of the authorities and their blackout regulations.

The signal light of the steamer as it passed by and the answered flash from the lighthouse on Monos island over the bay, momentarily blinded her.

She turned huge tear filled, almond shaped, golden eyes up to stare at the mauve palette painting the sky, and then out, at the shimmering beauty of the familiar Scotland Bay coastline.

This stupid war.

Grandpa was dead, finally buried in Tetron.

Even in the midst of the madness, every villager on the peninsula attended Jean Claude Le Noireau’s funeral. The small chapel in Tetron unable to accommodate the crush of people wanting to take a last look at his body, laid out in his coffin.

Now, with no Mista Le Noireau to run the estate, the villagers of Scotland Bay were busy packing, giving up the fight, her grandfather had spearheaded for them to remain in the village.

The Yankees had come with lofty promises. Jobs for the labourers and land for the chattels who rented from her grandfather.

The convoy of soldiers and police had driven by, while they were putting her grandfather into the ground. His funeral an excuse to plaster the villages of Staubles Bay, Tetron, and Scotland Bay with ‘Evacuation Notices’.

Cowards.

Mr. Hurley, Grandpa’s solicitor explained that she need not worry. She was a Le Noireau and the Americans would not dare do anything to her. But as the reality of her situation settled, she felt the weight of the world on her sixteen-year-old shoulders.

Everything was changing. Her grandpa was dead.

No family in sight.

Americans moving in to take her home.

In the distance someone called her name.

Ahhh Papa. she groaned, slowly lowering her body down to sit on the bark of a fallen coconut tree. 

Gentle Trade Winds blew her blue-black hair into her eyes and face, one hand rising gracefully to whip unruly strands back into place.

In the shadows of coconut palm trees, Lucien Bouisguard watched her as she sat, back hunched, trembling against nature’s rage and her fate. He understood her distress.

Here they were descendants of proud immigrant French planters. The men and women who for two centuries built the economic foundation of the colony. In spite of all their wealth, they couldn’t prevent this injustice from engulfing their way of life and their village communities.

Already, the Yankees had cleared Hart’s Cut, Mt. Pleasant, Chaguaramas, and other villages along the coast. Staubles, Tetron and Scotland Bay, were the holdouts.

A manicou foraging for food in fallen coconut branches and other debris on the beach, startled him as it scurried past his foot, nudging Lucien to inch closer to where Astral sat deep in thought on the beach.

Anxiety overwhelmed him. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand and edged closer to where she sat, rehearsing with every step, what he had to say.

Astral?

She tensed, getting up slowly, her body cramped from the dampness of the beach.

She stamped her feet on the damp sand, working out imaginary pins and needles sticking her all over her body. She finally turned towards the approaching man. His presence making her aware of the time.

Astral, what are you doing here?

She shrugged, the slim shoulders looking frailer, more tired than any of the village elders he had seen earlier.

Lucien knew she was afraid. He desperately wanted to help her. But the help he offered was based on the premise that someday she would be his ticket to a different lifestyle.

Standing. Watching. Thinking. What does it look like to you? her voice was like a wind's whisper, tiny and childlike and he fought an overwhelming desire to crush her in his arms.

She turned to face him; her face ravaged by tears.

What's the matter? and when she didn't answer you alone?

They were stupid questions and in the distance a goat ba-ehed in answer.

Astral smiled through her tears, very gently shaking her head; and then remembering that it was dusk, and he would be unable to see clearly.

No. You're here now. I’m not alone anymore.

It pained his heart to see her this way; defeated and despairing. He knew to some extent the pain she was feeling.

Losing everything had driven his grandfather to suicide and left him a 'poor white boy' snubbed by his peers. They were no longer welcomed.

The ‘founding family status’, didn't qualify he and the members of his family for membership to Staubles Bay Club, Union Club or the Country Club, once his grandfather was dead.

It meant as the eldest child in his generation, he had to find employment. Jean Claude had been ‘friends’ with his grandfather and a union with Astral had been discussed openly between his father and grandfather. When Louis, his grandfather, committed suicide, nobody, especially Mr. Le Noireau wanted his precious granddaughter married to Bouisguard.

Astri. she looked up. Lucien was over six feet tall, with wavy blonde hair and gray eyes, an inheritance from his French fore parents. Are you alright?

She nodded and he took the final steps, closing the gap between them.

Up close he could see the tears; she tried to hide, as they slowly trickled down her face.

Oh Astral. He exhaled 'Don't cry. Everything will work out for the best."

Slowly she shook her head, sniffed, and turned away from him to wipe her tear-streaked face with the hem of her skirt.

When she finally spoke, he felt as though his heart had just passed through a wringer.

I'm not going.

What are you talking about?

I'm not moving from here.

Say again. Lucien gently turned her to face him. You're not moving?

She shook her head.

But why? He was a little surprised.

Because when the Americans take Scotland Bay, they take all the Le Noireaus have.

Astral what are you talking about?

Lucien knew better. He was the bookkeeper on her grandfather’s Scotland Bay cocoa estate, farm and Coconel, the chocolate factory that Mr. Le Noireau owned along with other agricultural holdings.

He knew Astral’s value, now that her grandfather was dead.

Lucien, my grandfather was in debt, he sold everything except the Chateau and the farm before he died. All he left me was the Chateau and now. She shrugged her slim shoulders.  

She was annoyed, but she didn't know with whom.

Your grandfather left everything to you? You are the Le Noireau heir? he asked puzzled.

Yes.

"My God! I don't understand what happened to your uncle?'

She tilted her head to look at him. The question draped across her features.

What uncle? I don’t have any family. She gave him a palm up gesture.

Your grandfather never told you about your uncle?

She shook her head. No. Mr. Hurley didn’t mention any family either when the will was read this evening.

Lucien exhaled; his brows furrowed in confusion.

He folded his hands over his chest and looked down at her. His feet apart, his body rigid.

'From what I have heard, your Grandpa had two sons, your dad Mr. Andre and his twin brother Mr. Orleans."

She chuckled. Have you lost your mind. My grandfather would have told me if I had an uncle.

He didn’t say anything for a long while, mulling the information she just gave him in his mind.

So, what you going to do?

I don't know, Lucien. I really don't know.

He knew what she should do. Her financial status, as sole heir to the Le Noireau fortune, that she did not know she had, changed everything for Lucien. It altered the plan he had constructed in mind.

You can't stay here.

I know that damn it! she shouted. Don't you think I've thought about moving? But where will I go? She rounded on him in anger.

What do you want me to do? This, she spread her arms out wide to encompass the expanse of the estate, from the seashore all the way back into the village, is all that I have, and I'll die before I give it all up without a fight.

His anger came from deep within. He shouted at her.

"You're some type of fool girl? How long do you think it will take for a group of Yankee soldiers to rape you and kick you out? Is that the type of fight you

Reviews for The Legacy

[Xiomara · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was an amazing read. I was not expecting all of the drama, but this novel had that and more. The characters were believable and the dual timeline flowed seamlessly between the story worlds of 1941 and 1981.
Thank you for including the first chapter of the second novel in the series 'The Chateau on the Hill'.
I cannot wait to read this novel as well.
I'm preordering the entire series.