The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (121 page)

‘We thought you were arriving tomorrow, Captain Palairet,’ Belle said loudly. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Osbourne freeze.

‘I decided to come early,’ said Adam Palairet. ‘I need to see my cousin Osbourne rather urgently. Do you know where he is?’

Belle had the uncomfortable feeling that he’d guessed exactly what she was up to.

She lifted her chin. ‘I’m afraid I’ve no idea,’ she said crisply. ‘But I’m not at all sure that he wants to see you.’

‘I’m quite sure that he doesn’t,’ said Adam Palairet.

Behind him Belle saw Osbourne slip across the hall and disappear into the library. ‘Then perhaps,’ she said, ‘whatever it is that you want to see him about can wait till tomorrow.’

‘It concerns you too,’ said Adam Palairet, startling her. ‘I understand that you – that you’re a rather close friend of his?’

‘I don’t like your tone,’ she said sharply. ‘Who told you that?’

‘Does it matter?’ He stooped for his valise. ‘When you see him, would you tell him I’ve arrived? Would you ask him to look me up?’

‘No, I don’t think I shall,’ said Belle. ‘Besides, I have things to attend to. For one thing, I’m supposed to stop you from accosting your ex-wife and causing a scene.’

He turned back to her. ‘Celia? Is she here?’

‘Please don’t try to make out that you didn’t already know.’

‘As it happens, I didn’t,’ he said mildly. ‘But why should I wish to cause a scene?’

‘Apparently you used to beat her. Or something equally sordid.’ She felt herself colouring. Spoken out loud, it sounded ludicrous.

Adam Palairet seemed amused. ‘Is that what they say?’

‘Yes, it is. Why do you smile? Don’t you even care?’

‘Should I?’

‘Why do you always answer with questions? It’s most uncivil.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, not sounding sorry at all. ‘I suppose it’s because for the last four years I’ve been giving orders – that’s what one does in the army – and it’s a relief not to have to do it any more.’ He gave her a brief smile which only made him look more tired. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d better find Dodo and reassure her that I’m not about to make a scene.’

She stood in the doorway and watched him walk away across the echoing marble hall.

Something about the way he moved reminded her powerfully of that day on the beach at Salt River. She remembered standing in the sand with Cornelius Traherne, willing the young man who’d just quarrelled with his wife to come towards them. Please, please, she’d begged him silently, and for a moment, when she’d caught his eye, she’d thought that he would. But then he’d turned and walked away, leaving her alone with Traherne.

If only he’d joined them, everything would have been different. Traherne wouldn’t have been able to carry on talking to her; he wouldn’t have had the chance to order her to meet him in Bamboo Walk; and then she would have stayed a child, just a normal child, and Papa wouldn’t have looked at her as if she were a stranger, like in the old nightmare . . . And all because this remote, unsmiling man had walked away.

And now, because of his prejudice against her family, he meant to make trouble for her and Osbourne.

On impulse, she ran after him. ‘Why did you have to come here?’ she cried. ‘Why do you have to spoil things?’

At the sound of her voice, a footman peered from a doorway, then discreetly disappeared.

Belle didn’t care.

Adam Palairet stood looking down at her with his tired, steady brown eyes that gave nothing away.

‘What good does it do?’ cried Belle. ‘We’re so happy! Why must you ruin everything?’

Adam Palairet opened his mouth to say something. Then he seemed to think better of it, and turned on his heel and walked away.

Osbourne wasn’t in the library, but a maid told Belle that he’d been seen leaving the West Gallery, heading for the glasshouses, so she set off in pursuit.

Osbourne had chosen an excellent hiding place. Kyme had four enormous glasshouses from which an army of gardeners kept the house supplied with oranges, grapes, pineapples and peaches; it also had a gardenia house, a conservatory and an orchid room. All were far from the party, being across the lawns from the house, and only dimly lit by gas.

As Belle made her way through the first glasshouse, she began to feel better. And she regretted her outburst at Adam Palairet. She’d made a fool of herself. Besides, what could he actually
do
? Osbourne was of age, and had his own money from some sort of trust. Let the dreaded captain do his worst.

She searched the conservatory and the gardenia house, then the other glasshouses. All in vain. Osbourne, she thought with a smile, knows how to hide.

Grapes hung overhead in luscious clusters bloomed with pearl. She passed a tree laden with the infamous peaches which had got poor Dodo into trouble. She picked one and took a bite. It tasted incredibly sweet and juicy.

With the peach in her hand, she reached the orchid house. Here the sound of ragtime had faded to an insect whine, and a fountain in a white marble basin made its own gentler music. Orchids twined naked green stems about the hairy trunks of palms beaded with moisture. Belle breathed in a draught of hot, humid air. She smelt jasmine, and the heavy sweetness of Dames de Noces . . .

The scent of Jamaica.

For the first time in years, she thought of her secret place by the Martha Brae. The giant bamboo creaking and whispering overhead; the young duppy tree snaking its folded roots towards the green water . . .

A sharp sense of danger swept over her. Eden had been ruined for her, ruined for ever. She could never go back. Would it be like that with Osbourne? Would Adam Palairet find some way of ruining that too?

She threw away the peach. Broke off a sprig of jasmine and inhaled its heavy, funereal perfume. Then she caught another scent.

Cigar smoke.

In the far corner, through the fronds of an enormous umbrella palm, she made out a faint blue haze of smoke; a corner of a rattan armchair; a man’s hand resting on the arm. Even from this distance she could see that it wasn’t Osbourne.

That smell of cigars . . .

If she shut her eyes she could almost see her father. ‘Hello, Belle,’ he would say when she padded into his study in her nightgown. And if the nightmare had been particularly bad, he’d pour her a tiny glass of rum and water, and she’d lie on the Turkey rug gazing up at the great oil painting of Strathnaw, and ask him impossible questions about robins and snow . . .

Shaking off the memory, she walked the length of the orchid house, and drew aside the palms.

The gentleman in the armchair turned his head, recognized her, and gave a delighted smile.

‘You? But how extraordinary,’ said Cornelius Traherne.

Chapter Thirteen

She was back in Jamaica, and nothing had changed.

Dodo, Sibella, Osbourne – they’d all been a dream. Once again she stood before Cornelius Traherne in the moist half-darkness, amid the dripping palms and the jasmine. Its heavy perfume caught at her throat. The trickle of the fountain was a distant echo of the Martha Brae.

He hadn’t changed. By now he must be in his early seventies, but his lips were still a plump, vigorous red, and his pale, slightly protuberant blue eyes were as avuncular as ever – until one noticed the pupils, as blank and black as a goat’s.

‘It really is you, isn’t it?’ he said with the kindly, old-gentleman smile that she remembered. ‘Little Isabelle Lawe from Eden.’

Her blood thudded in her ears. For a moment the urge to run was almost overwhelming. But if she ran, he would have won. He would know that he still had power over her.

There was a lamp on the cane table at his elbow: a hurricane lamp with a tall glass shade, like the ones on the sideboard at home. Reluctantly, she moved forward into its light. ‘What brings you to Kyme?’ she said.

‘The dear old DD,’ he replied, tilting back his head to draw on his cigar, and regarding her through lowered lids. ‘We’ve been friends for ever. Although as you can see, I’ve eschewed this notion of dressing as a servant in favour of a dull old evening coat. More befitting for an elderly duffer like myself. Don’t you agree?’

Belle did not reply.

‘But tell me,’ he went on, ‘how is your papa? And your beautiful mamma?’

Another silence, which he affected not to notice. ‘And my daughter? How is Sibella? I take it that you left her well?’

She licked her lips.

‘Such a pity that I never seem to see her when I’m in Town.’

‘I thought it was rather that she would not see you.’

He chuckled. ‘It amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it? And how is my grandson? How does Max go on?’

‘I really can’t say. Sibella has him down in Sussex with a governess.’

Traherne nodded sagely. ‘Safest place for him. Such a sickly child. And always rather fearful, as I recall.’

Belle swallowed hard. She wondered why she didn’t just leave. What was keeping her here, standing before him like a supplicant?

For years she had imagined this moment. She had planned precisely what she would say to this man who had ruined her life; this man who haunted her nightmares and infected her mind.

Sometimes in her fantasies, she destroyed his reputation before an awestruck crowd with a few well-turned phrases. Sometimes she achieved it with an icy, contemptuous glance. More recently, her daydreams involved cutting him dead as she walked in unimpeachable respectability on the arm of her handsome new husband, Osbourne Palairet.

But none of the fantasies worked. None of them could take away that sense of being for ever tainted. That deep conviction that only he really knew who she was.

Like a supplicant she stood before him in her maid’s uniform – dear
God
, in her maid’s uniform, just as he’d once told her she would. She was inside his fantasy. The intervening years had been a dream . . .

‘I must say,’ he said, ‘you’re looking uncommonly well. And that costume is rather a success. You make a very fetching maid.’

‘You can’t do this,’ said Belle.

He blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I’m not a child any more.’

‘What an odd thing to say.’ He paused. ‘But then, you always were an extraordinary little girl.’

‘No,’ said Belle. ‘No I wasn’t.’ But she knew that her voice lacked conviction.

‘Oh yes, quite extraordinary. You seemed to know things at thirteen which most grown women—’

‘You ruined me,’ she said.

He reached over to the ash-stand at his elbow and ground out his cigar. Then he drew another from his dinner jacket, rolled it between his fingers, lit it, and leaned back with a sigh. ‘I rather fancy,’ he said, ‘that you’re confusing me with someone else.’

Belle stared at him. She opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again.

‘Oh, you needn’t trouble to apologize,’ he said gently. ‘It’s easy to do. One’s memories of childhood are so unreliable, aren’t they? Events run together. Faces blur.’

‘You can’t do this,’ she whispered.

‘However, because you’re the daughter of an old friend,’ he went on, ‘I’m inclined simply to draw a veil over such a regrettable misunderstanding.’ Frowning slightly, he picked a fleck of tobacco off the tip of his tongue. ‘Although if I’ve understood you correctly – if it’s true, as I hope it is not, that something unfortunate happened to you when you were a child – then for the sake of the regard I have for your parents, for the sake of their standing in society, and indeed for the sake of the respect I have for you – then you have my word as a gentleman that it shall go no further.’

There was a roaring in her ears. She put out a hand to steady herself, and beneath her palm the window pane felt clammy and cold. ‘In all these years,’ she said, ‘it never occurred to me that you might lie about it.’

The pale goat-eyes met hers steadily. Patient. Unassailable. She could see that he did remember, but that he would never allude to it.

You can’t ever tell anyone. You know that, don’t you? It’s our secret.

Of course she knew it. If anyone found out – if Osbourne got to hear of it – the engagement would be over, and her last chance of safety would be at an end.

And yet – it appalled her that he could pretend like this.

‘You used to tell me,’ she said in a low voice, ‘that I was born to play the part of a maidservant.’

‘Whatever are you talking about?’

‘You used to say that if I was yours, you would see to it that I wore nothing but an apron—’ her voice broke.

He looked genuinely puzzled. ‘But how extraordinary. I have no recollection of that whatsoever.’

With astonishment she realized that at least in this, he was telling the truth. He’d forgotten all about his own fantasy. He’d simply
forgotten
. Somehow that was more humiliating than if he’d remembered. And more frightening. It was like being rubbed out.

‘I was thirteen years old,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘And you did – that.’

He rose to his feet, looking down at her with polite concern. ‘You clearly are a most unfortunate young woman,’ he said, his voice full of sympathy. ‘You seem to have created some sort of terrible fantasy in your mind, and for some reason which escapes me, you have woven me into it.’ He gave her a brief, pitying smile. ‘I wish you well, my dear. I truly do. And I hope that in time, you will recover your sense of proportion.’

He moved past her, and she pressed herself against the panes of the glasshouse to avoid touching him. But as she did so, she heard men’s voices on the lawn outside. She spun round.

Traherne stopped with his cigar halfway to his lips.

Through the window, Belle made out Drum Talbot hurrying towards them up the path that skirted the glasshouse. He seemed agitated, talking urgently to another man behind him whose face she couldn’t see. Plainly, Drum didn’t know they were there, watching him from behind the glass.

‘An altercation,’ murmured Traherne. ‘Dear me, what very poor taste.’

Belle turned back to him. ‘You need to be clear on one thing,’ she said. ‘If you ever try to speak to me again, I shall cut you dead. I don’t care who’s there to see it. I don’t care if the whole world knows, and it causes the most dreadful scandal.’