Frenchman's Creek

The novel opens with a prologue set in present-day Cornwall, where the once-grand Navron House has crumbled into a working farm. A solitary yachtsman, exploring a hidden inlet called Frenchman's Creek along the Helford River, senses enchantment in its silence. As he sleeps aboard his vessel, the past floods his dreams, carrying the reader into the story of a lost midsummer.

Lady Dona St. Columb is traveling by coach from London to Navron House, her husband's neglected Cornish estate, with her two young children, Henrietta and baby James, and their nurse Prue. She is fleeing the shallow, suffocating life she has led: the endless social rounds, the lazy good humor of her husband Sir Harry St. Columb, and the unwanted advances of his predatory friend Lord Rockingham. The final catalyst was a reckless midnight prank at Hampton Court, where Dona, disguised in Rockingham's breeches, played highwayman and robbed an elderly Countess. Overcome with shame, she returned the purse and resolved to leave London. Harry, bewildered and hurt, reluctantly let her go.

At Navron, Dona encounters William, a peculiar manservant with a faintly foreign accent who has been living in the house alone for a year. He proves perceptive, calling her arrival an "escape" and revealing that his philosophy comes from a former master whose life is "one continual escape." That night, Dona discovers a jar of freshly cut tobacco and a volume of poetry by the 16th-century French poet Pierre de Ronsard in her bedside drawer, inscribed with the initials "J.B.A." and a drawing of a gull.

Lord Godolphin, Harry's pompous old friend, calls to warn Dona about a cunning French pirate terrorizing the coast and urges her to summon Harry. Dona finds the affair amusing and resolves to keep Harry in London. Over supper, William describes his former master as a man without ties, for whom piracy is a means of independence.

Curious after watching William slip out to meet a stranger one night, Dona follows tracks through the woods to a hidden creek, a secret branch of the river sheltered by overhanging trees. There she discovers La Mouette, the Frenchman's ship, anchored in a deep pool. A crewman captures her and hauls her aboard. In the captain's cabin, the Frenchman sits drawing a heron, barely acknowledging her. He is tall, wears his own dark hair rather than a fashionable wig, and speaks with only a faint accent. He reveals he knows she is Lady St. Columb and admits he has been staying at Navron during his visits, sleeping in her bed and studying her portrait. William has been his servant all along. His name is Jean-Benoit Aubéry, from the region of Finistère in Brittany. He explains that piracy is an intellectual pursuit for him, a problem of planning and geometry. He asks Dona to sign La Mouette's crew book, and she does.

Their connection deepens through candlelit suppers, fishing expeditions on the river, and long conversations. He draws Dona's portrait, capturing a melancholy she recognizes as her secret self, then destroys it, saying a similar "blemish" creates a bond between them. When the Frenchman announces a new raid, Dona insists on joining. They strike a wager: if she is seasick, he wins her ruby earrings; if she endures, he must bring her Godolphin's wig.

Dona sails with the crew before dawn, and during the long day at sea she realizes she loves him wholly and without reservation. The target is the Merry Fortune, a merchant vessel belonging to Philip Rashleigh, Godolphin's brother-in-law, moored in Fowey Haven. The plan requires an overland approach, as a fort guards the harbor entrance. Dona rows across the harbor to lure Rashleigh from his house, improvising wildly when she discovers Godolphin is staying there. The Merry Fortune is sailed boldly out of the harbor under cannon fire. Pierre Blanc, the lute-playing crewman, rescues Dona from the rocks in a small boat. As pursuing vessels close in, the Frenchman lifts Godolphin's periwig, a large curled wig, off his bald head with his sword, waving it in triumph as a squall covers their escape. Becalmed in mid-channel, weak from seasickness, Dona forfeits her earrings. In the stillness of the cabin, she and the Frenchman become lovers.

La Mouette returns to her secret anchorage on Midsummer Eve. On the quay, they acknowledge the impossibility of permanent escape: he argues that regret would follow if she abandoned her children, and she understands he is right. They sleep under the stars, and Dona reflects that the peace they have given each other can never be lost.

At dawn, she slips back to Navron to find that Harry has arrived unexpectedly with Rockingham, prompted by reports of the piracy crisis. Worse, La Mouette has run aground, her hull pierced by a rock; repairs will take at least twenty-four hours. A tense day of deception follows. Harry is oblivious, but Rockingham watches Dona with suspicious eyes. The local gentry plan a coordinated trap, posting armed men in the woods. William goes to warn the Frenchman and returns wounded.

That evening, Dona hosts a supper for Godolphin and his allies, deliberately prolonging the meal to buy time. At midnight, the Frenchman walks calmly through the front door with a sword in hand. His crew covers the room from the gallery while William holds a cutlass at Rockingham's throat. The Frenchman claims Dona's rubies, strips the guests of their weapons and breeches to prevent pursuit, and has them locked upstairs. Alone with Dona, he tells her the answer to their situation must come from her: She is a wife and mother, and he is a French outlaw. He asks William to take her to a cove near Coverack by dawn; if La Mouette appears at sunrise, she must give her answer.

After the Frenchman departs, Rockingham frees himself and confronts Dona with a knife. He threatens to expose her as the pirate's lover and accomplice. A violent struggle erupts. He gets his hands around her throat, and she drives a knife into his armpit. When he pursues her up the stairs, she tears a heavy shield from the wall and hurls it into his face. He falls to his death.

Dona wakes near noon to learn that La Mouette escaped, but the Frenchman was captured on the beach, fighting alone to cover his crew's retreat. He is imprisoned at Godolphin's estate and will hang the next morning. Learning that William is alive and sheltering at the nearby village of Gweek, Dona rouses herself. She sends Harry ahead with the children, then rides to William with a pistol and a knife. Flattering her way into the Frenchman's cell, she passes him the weapons through coded conversation. That night, William gains entry to the keep disguised as a physician, Dona overpowers the guards, and together they free the Frenchman and flee in a commandeered carriage.

Their last night together is spent beside the Loe Pool near Portleven, a freshwater lake separated from the sea by a bank of shingle. They acknowledge what they have known since Midsummer Eve: she will return to her children. She speaks of her future with resignation, saying the cabin-boy "will vigil sometimes in the night, and tear his nails, and beat his pillow, and then fall asleep perhaps, and dream again." He describes his house at the headland of la Pointe du Raz, where the west wind blows without ceasing.

At dawn, La Mouette appears on the horizon with her crimson masts and white sails. The Frenchman climbs into a small boat, hoists the sail, and puts out to sea. Dona stands on the beach, watching. The ship hangs on the horizon "like a painted ship upon the still white sea," seeming to belong to another age. Then the sun rises, hard and red, and the moment is over.