A Certain Latitude (12 page)

“Papa, Papa, where de pianoforte?” To Clarissa’s surprise, the girl spoke just like the slave, with the same accent and lilt to her voice.

The man shook his head affectionately. “Try again, miss.”

“Papa, where is the pianoforte?” She grinned and swung on his arm. “Dat better?”

Allen stepped down from the trap and offered Clarissa his hand to help her alight.

Lemarchand hesitated. “Mr. Pendale?”

“Mr. Lemarchand.” Allen bowed, his tone a little cool. Of course, she remembered his comment about not looking like his family, and without a hat—lost overboard long ago—and in his rumpled state, he certainly didn’t look like an earl’s son.

“Delighted to meet you. You’ll dine with us, I hope, and stay the night? Some of the other planters will be here.” He murmured a polite greeting to Mrs. Blight and turned to Clarissa. “Miss Onslowe, I trust you will teach my daughter some civilized ways. Celia, this is your governess.”

Clarissa curtsied.

“Where dat lazy girl?” Celia demanded. “Rissa, you come here. Bring my parasol.”

“Say please, Celia,” Clarissa said, before wondering if she’d be sacked from the job without ever having started it.

There was a short silence, broken by Lemarchand’s laugh. “You’ll see me in my study, Miss Onslowe, when you’ve had a chance to take off your bonnet. And Celia, do as your governess bids.”

Scowling, Celia muttered, “Give me de parasol. Please.”

The slave sidled toward her, holding the parasol out at arm’s length, and ducked as Celia aimed a slap at her.

“That’s enough,” Lemarchand said. “You will not be allowed to play the pianoforte if you do not behave.”

Celia scowled and prodded at the floor with the tip of her parasol.

“Can’t see much point in bringing a pianoforte,” Blight said. “The ants’ll eat it as fast as Miss Celia plays it.”

“Thank you, Blight,” Lemarchand said. “We’ll talk later. Pendale, I expect you’d like some refreshment. Please come inside…”

He led the way inside the house, leaving Clarissa alone with Celia.

“Is de pianoforte coming?”

“
The
pianoforte. Yes, it’s coming. They have to unload it from the ship, along with the other things Mr. Lemarchand ordered.”

“Miss Celia?” The slave, Nerissa spoke. “Miss, de master, ’im say I take de miss governess to her bedchamber.”

“Of course.” Celia, her former rancor toward the slave apparently forgotten, took Clarissa’s hand. “Rissa, you get hot water for Miss Onslowe. You come upstairs wid—with—me, Miss Onslowe, if you please, that is. I picked your bedchamber for you.”

Alone with Clarissa, Celia seemed to be more of a normal young woman, despite her outlandish speech. As they climbed the stairs together, Celia prattled of clothes and novels, and admired Clarissa’s very plain bonnet.

“What lessons have you had?” Clarissa asked, as they entered her bedchamber, a room simple furnished with a chest of drawers, a pier-glass, and a bed swathed in a mosquito net as well as bed curtains. She crossed the room to doors that led to a balcony and smiled with pleasure at the view of the sea.

“Mama taught me to read and write.”

“I see. How about geography? French? Drawing? Embroidery?”

“No.” Celia hung her head. “Papa, ’im say you teach me to be a proper young lady.”

“Of course,” Clarissa said.

Clarissa curtsied, as Lemarchand rose from his chair in the study.

“Miss Onslowe.” He bowed and gestured to a chair.

She sat and waited to see if she still had a job. While she did so, she studied Lemarchand. He wasn’t young—he had to be in his late forties—but he was lean and slender. His hair was unfashionably long, tied back in a queue, still dark apart from one white streak at his temple. His eyes were gray and perceptive under finely arched brows, set in an angular face with an aristocrat slash of a thin, high-bridged nose.

“Tell me about yourself, if you please.” He leaned back in his chair, his hands—long and elegant, she couldn’t help noticing—toying with a paperweight on the desk.

“I was housekeeper at Lord Thelling’s for five years. My father is the Reverend Henry Onslowe of Cadminton in Somerset. I attended Miss Redding’s Academy in Bath and taught there for a while. I—”

“The Reverend Henry Onslowe? Author of numerous pamphlets against the slave trade?”

“That is correct, sir.” She paused. If she was going to be sacked, then let it be with a flourish. “To be strictly accurate, those pamphlets were not written by my father. They were written mostly by me.”

“Well, well.” He grinned. “And the irony is that you are here. Life is exceeding strange, Miss Onslowe.”

“Lord Thelling—the present Lord Thelling, that is—persuaded my family that it was in everyone’s best interests for me to take this position. You must be aware that a woman has little say in such matters.”

He stood and strolled over to a sideboard. “You’ll take some wine, Miss Onslowe? I can send for lemonade, if you prefer.”

“I should like some wine. Thank you.”

He handed her a glass and stood leaning against the desk, his booted legs close to her skirts. “I’m quite used to people working for me against their inclination, Miss Onslowe, so your scruples do not worry me overmuch. I suspected you might well have connections with the Reverend Onslowe who, I must admit, has been something of a thorn in the flesh of those who practice the trade. I need an intelligent and cultured woman to educate my daughter, and when old Thelling described you as such, I thought you were just the sort of woman I had in mind.”

She smiled. “I was very fond of his lordship.”

“And the present Lord Thelling?”

“A fool.”

He laughed. “I think we shall do well, Miss Onslowe.” He clinked his glass against hers. “To what shall we drink?”

“To liberty?” She glanced up at him to see his response.

“Worse and worse,” he said. “A toast, then, to your fine eyes.”

“You’re flirting with me, Mr. Lemarchand.”

“Call me March.”

She cleared her throat. “I’m not so vain I can drink a toast to my own eyes, Mr. Lemarchand, and I don’t think you should flirt with me. I’m your servant.”

He looked at her with distinct approval, a measuring, carnal gaze.

She stood, and placed her untouched glass on the desk. It was time to let him know she was not easily caught. “I beg, sir, you’ll remember that I am here to educate your daughter, which I shall do to the best of my ability—nothing more, nothing less.”

“Ma’am.” He straightened, placing his glass next to hers. “You are absolutely correct. And you, by the way, were also absolutely proper in reprimanding Celia for her treatment of Nerissa. Our house slaves are valuable investments and should be treated as such. Tonight I’m to dine in rough male company—I regret it is so; but tomorrow I expect you to dine with Celia and me. ”

“I look forward to it, sir. Thank you.”

He bowed. “Your servant, ma’am.”

“First time on the island, eh, Pendale?” More claret sloshed into Allen’s glass.

He nodded and tried to remember the name of the man who addressed him.

“You should’ve been here six months ago.”

“Indeed?”

“We had a burning.”

“A burning?”

“A couple of escaped slaves. Splendid sport, hunting them down.”

“Ran for days,” another man, whose bulbous red nose betrayed his interest in drink, interjected. “Blight took the dogs to track them. Lord, you should have heard ’em squeal.”

“And then we burned them.”

“Took hours. Ever seen a man burn, Pendale?”

“A moment,” Allen said. “You’re telling me they were burned alive as punishment?”

“Works,” one of them said. “That’s why they don’t run too often.”

“Although”—the other leaned toward Allen—“they’re a sullen lot, now, Lemarchand’s slaves, and none too happy that Blight’s returned.”

They both nodded drunkenly.

“Mark my words, March’ll have trouble before long. And if it spreads to our estates, we’ll all have trouble.”

The other man, with the poor attention span of the extremely drunk, stared into his glass and sighed. “March has some remarkably pretty girls. Light-skinned, you know. Almost look like white women. Think he’ll give us one for the night?”

“One each.”

“Two each,” the other man responded with a chuckle.

The arrival of a large joint of mutton on the table halted the conversation, and the guest on Allen’s other side plucked his sleeve.

“Since you’re new to the island, Pendale ….”

Allen, having heard similar advice already, paid little attention as the man droned on. “Always wear a hat. Always use a mosquito net and avoid the night humors. Don’t let the Negroes get insolent. They respond only to beatings. They’re not people, Pendale. Animals, really. It’s our duty to protect them from their base natures…”

Or discussions on the price of sugar, ginger and tobacco. Complaints about prices, about abolitionists in England pecking away at the sugar lords’ rights, causing seditious trouble with their pamphlets and petitions … spreading all sorts of sentimental rubbish about how the poor Africans were plucked from their hearths …

“Indeed. Something you’d never see in England,” Allen said. His glass was empty again. A footman, bewigged and in elaborate livery—but with bare feet, which Allen really couldn’t get used to —stepped forward to pour more wine.

“Of course not, sir. That is my point exactly. We are not savages. We are civilized men.” The man opposite him, whose name Allen couldn’t remember, belched.

“Then I should inform you, sir, that the same does take place in England, in our port towns and cities. Men are captured against their will, plucked from their hearths.”

A huge moth the size of Allen’s hand fluttered in through the open window, evading the two footmen who stood with palm leaves wafting the flying insects away. The moth blundered into a flame, falling onto the table with destroyed wings, but trying to rise again.

“I suppose you talk of the Press gang,” Lemarchand—March, rather, he’d asked Allen to call him that—interjected. His smile was polite but, even as drunk as everyone was, Allen could tell his host was not pleased with the way the conversation was going.

“I do, sir.”

“It is a necessity in times of war.” Lemarchand shrugged. “Besides, the Press-gang provides employment for many, and the chance for prize money and advancement.”

“Or, more likely, an untimely death, and makes widows and orphans of the men’s families. Sir, those are Englishmen who are seized, who supposedly enjoy the rights of Magna Carta.” There was a murmur of approval from the guests crowded around the table. “It is also their right, under that same institution, to petition against the trade.”

“You’d have the
Tricouleur
fly in London?” someone demanded belligerently from further down the table.

“No, sir, but some might argue that an ill such as the Press-gang exists, because the slave trade has corrupted our consciences.” Christ, that was a mouthful to enunciate after gallons of claret. He wasn’t even sure it made much sense.

There was a short silence. The moth lay struggling in a pool of wax and spilled wine. Allen reached forward and crushed it with a balled-up napkin.

“Damned moths,” someone said with a laugh, and the drinking resumed.

Later, much later, Allen staggered up the stairs. God, he was drunk.

And into his bedchamber, fumbling at buttons with clumsy fingers—
boots off first, you fool
—and then, oh, thank God, into bed.
Lie flat. Don’t move. Room spinning. Puke? No, don’t have the energy. Sleep.
That was it. Probably have the devil of a headache tomorrow. Today. Later.

Someone giggled. A female giggle. Cool air swept over him.

“Clarissa?”

“No, sir, Nerissa.”

“Rhymes,” he said with great satisfaction.

He opened his eyes. The pretty maid—the one who had accompanied Miss Lemarchand—stood at his bedside with a palm leaf in her hand. “Master, ’im say I fan you.”

“How thoughtful. Go away.” He closed his eyes.

“Or anyt’in’ else you want, sah.”

“Anything else, eh?” How very hospitable.

“Yes, sah.”

The palm leaf swept through the air and tickled his nose and chest. Some delightful possibilities here, but he really didn’t want to move, and besides he’d far rather have Clarissa to do anything he wanted, or that she wanted, too. The palm frond caressed his cock. He opened his eyes, blinked, and focused. His erection lay against his belly—nothing to do with him, really. Just there, with no sort of urgency, only a possibility of pleasure should he choose.

Nerissa’s offer suddenly seemed a lot more interesting, as did the tickle of the palm frond.

“Stop that, girl,” he said. He tried to cover himself with the sheet before realizing that he lay on it and moving was just too much effort. All too much effort. Far better to let Nerissa take over, replace the palm frond with her hand, and then kneel over him, musky and warm, her breasts brushing his chest and face. She tucked his cock inside her—his hands were too clumsy to be of much use, but they landed on her breasts, smooth and solid. Meanwhile, below, far, far away, she bounced and slid in a way that should have been enjoyable but seemed strangely detached.

She panted, rolled her eyes, and gave a fine imitation of a woman in the throes of ecstasy. She did it quite well. It might have convinced him if drink hadn’t disengaged him from her efforts. He was reminded of the times he’d bounced up and down on top of merchants’ wives and bored aristocratic ladies, feigning passion, performing—one of the pleasures of Bristol: shopping, the waters, the play and Allen Pendale’s cock.

“Get off me!” He hadn’t meant to shout and he certainly didn’t intend to shove her off him, off the bed, and onto the floor.

She scrambled away from him, pulling her skirts down. She was afraid now, flinching as he sat up and dropped his legs over the side of the bed.

“I know you didn’t want to come here. That you were told to—”

“De master, he say I should come to you. I sorry, sah.”

“I’ll tell him you pleased me,” Allen said.