The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (55 page)

That was partly her fault. Madeleine and Cameron had sacrificed a lot when they’d sent her to the college at Cheltenham, although they’d never said a word about it. The only thanks she’d been able to give was to invent pretexts for staying in England over the holidays, in order to save the passage back to Jamaica.

She looked about her at the great, shabby, golden room. Her Goldilocks house, she used to call it, for everything at Eden had always seemed just right.

Compared with many a Jamaican great house, it was small, with only a single storey of living quarters over an undercroft of storerooms and Madeleine’s darkroom. Bedrooms, the nursery, and Cameron’s study were arranged around the central sitting-room, while a loggia on the south-east side led out to the bath-house and the cookhouse beyond.

As a child, Sophie had thought it the very pattern of what a house should be. It was never too hot and never too cold, for it stood seven hundred feet above the plains, and caught the sea breezes during the day, and the land breezes off the hills at night. Her Goldilocks house.

She frowned. Maybe it was the dream still clinging to her, but this morning she could see only the shabbiness and decay.

And there was something else, too. Eden had been built by a Durrant. One drunken night in 1817, Rose’s great-grandfather had ridden up into the virgin forest, and vowed to build a mansion here.

Who else but a Durrant would have carved out an estate at the edge of the Cockpits? Who else but a Durrant would have failed so dismally at being a planter that he’d been forced to abandon it again to the forest?

By the time Cameron had bought the estate in 1886, Eden had been a ruin for over twenty years. As a child, Sophie had often tried to picture it as it must have been then: beautiful, mysterious and other-worldly as it slipped gently back into the past, its fretwork window shades crumbling like tattered lace, its high panelled rooms silently overtaken by creepers and strangler fig.

To a child it had been a fairytale image, but now she perceived the latent threat. Was Madeleine more of a Durrant than a Monroe? Was that where she got her flair for secrecy?

She went out onto the verandah, and found her sister sitting on one of the big cane sofas, mending a cushion cover.

Madeleine looked up at her and smiled. Then she caught her expression, and the smile wavered. She glanced down at the cushion cover, and smoothed it out over her knee. ‘Braverly saved you some breakfast,’ she said. ‘But it’ll be time for lunch soon, so I expect you’d rather wait?’

Sophie nodded and said that would be fine.

‘And you’re not going to like this,’ said Madeleine, biting off a thread, ‘but I’ve accepted an invitation to a tea party at the Trahernes’. I know it’s a bore on your first day, but Sibella wanted to welcome you home. Well, that’s what she said. Actually I think she wants to ask you to be her bridesmaid. I hope you don’t mind?’

I hope you don’t mind?
Since when had Maddy been so polite with her? ‘Not at all,’ she said, hearing her own false politeness with disbelief. ‘It’ll be nice to see her again.’

She looked about her at the wide verandah with its simple roof of cedar shingles. At least out here nothing had changed. There was the bird-feeder hanging in the doorway to Madeleine and Cameron’s room. He’d put it up in the early days of their marriage, so that Maddy could watch the hummingbirds as she lay in bed. There were the tartan cushions which she herself had helped to sew: red and green for the Monroes, and blue and yellow for the Lawes. She remembered furious cushion-fights with the dogs, with Madeleine and Cameron both laughing too hard to protest.

It’s all just the same, she thought, and inside her the knot of worry fractionally loosened. There can’t be anything truly wrong. There must be some explanation that you’ve simply missed.

She turned and looked out over the garden. From where she stood, a graceful double curve of white marble steps swept down to the rough green lawn. The grass at the foot of the steps was trampled and brown, for although the front door was at the other side of the house, everyone always rode round to the steps to tether their horses.

All just the same.

Down in the garden, hummingbirds flashed and hovered in a jungle of tree-ferns and hibiscus. She caught the brilliant orange and cobalt of strelitzia, and the cloudy blue of plumbago. At the bottom of the lawn, the Martha Brae slid by between banks overhung with scarlet heliconia and giant bamboo. Beyond it, past the shimmering green of the cane-pieces and the red slash of the Eden road winding towards Falmouth, she glimpsed the far-off glitter of the sea.

With both hands she gripped the sun-hot balustrade. ‘Cameron was out early,’ she said.

Madeleine sighed. ‘Actually, that was late for him. These days I hardly see him. I hate to think what it’ll be like at crop-time.’

‘But I thought he’d got a manager for Fever Hill.’

‘He has, Oserius Parker. But you know Cameron. He has to see things done for himself, or he can’t relax.’

‘But that isn’t his fault, is it?’ Sophie said over her shoulder.

Madeleine threw her a surprised glance. ‘Of course not. I wasn’t criticizing him.’

Sophie nodded. Below her on a banana leaf, a small green lizard regarded her with a swivelled and ancient eye.

‘Sophie,’ Madeleine said quietly, ‘you don’t need to worry.’

Sophie turned and met her sister’s eyes. ‘Then why won’t you tell me what you were doing in Montpelier?’

Madeleine sighed. ‘Because I wasn’t in Montpelier.’

‘But—’

‘Sophie. Enough.’ They locked gazes. Then Madeleine shook her head, as if to dispel a disagreeable thought, and went back to her sewing. ‘As I said,’ she muttered, ‘you don’t need to worry.’

Angrily, Sophie turned back to the garden.

Down by the river she caught a flash of red. Belle – small, determined, and dark as her mother – emerged from the bamboo, sneezing and rubbing dust from her eyes. She wore a pinafore dress of scarlet twill which her mother said was indestructible, and easy to spot. A flash of blue sailor suit, and six-year-old Fraser, tall and fair like his father, exploded after his little sister, closely followed by a mastiff puppy with flapping caramel-coloured ears. They were happy children growing up in a happy, secure home. If Madeleine was doing anything to threaten that, Sophie would never forgive her.

The next instant she felt mean and disloyal for even thinking such a thing. ‘You’ve got a new dog,’ she remarked, to make amends.

‘That’s Scout,’ said Madeleine, sounding relieved that they’d moved onto neutral ground. ‘He’s a pest, but the children adore him.’

‘Where’s Abigail?’

‘Fast asleep in the undercroft. She’s never quite forgiven Cameron for exiling her from our bedroom.’

Sophie drew a circle on the balustrade. ‘Yesterday at Montpelier—’

‘Oh, Sophie, do stop.’

‘– I saw someone who looked like Ben.’

Madeleine blinked. ‘Which Ben?’

‘Our Ben. Ben Kelly. From years ago.’

Madeleine looked down at her sewing. ‘Good heavens. Well, don’t mention that to Cameron, will you?’

‘Why not?’ said Sophie sharply.

‘Surely you remember? He never did understand how we could’ve been friends with a boy of that – sort.’

‘Is that the real reason you don’t want me to mention it?’

‘Of course,’ snapped Madeleine. ‘What’s the
matter
with you?’

There was an edgy silence.

Down in the garden, Belle erupted shrieking from the croton bushes, her sunhat flapping as she raced across the lawn with Scout at her heels. Still shrieking, she launched herself at a rope swing which hung between two wild lime trees.

Sophie watched Madeleine’s needle flashing in and out, and thought how strange it was that they never talked of Ben, or of the old days in London; or of Cousin Lettice, the grim little martinet who had brought them up. Nor did Madeleine speak of her childhood in Scotland, or their parents or their early days at Fever Hill, or the two fine scars which encircled her wrists, and which she always concealed with a pair of narrow silver bracelets.

Sophie had always supposed that it was because she talked to Cameron about such things. Now she wondered if Madeleine talked – really talked – to anyone. She’d always had a talent for secrecy. That was how she’d survived.

In the pony-trap the night before, they had chattered without drawing breath all the way home, while Cameron rode beside them, listening and smiling the almost-smile which was habitual with him. But looking back on it now, Sophie realized that in fact it was she who had done most of the talking, while Madeleine herself had said very little.

Down on the lawn, Belle had fallen off the swing and bumped her knee. She sat hunched on the ground, peering at her leg for signs of blood. Her brother bent over and told her not to be such a muff, and Scout pushed in his nose and got in the way.

Sophie watched Madeleine imperturbably biting off another thread, and felt a pang of unease. She was so very like their mother. That glossy black hair, those beautiful dark eyes; the extravagantly curved red mouth.
A secretive lot, the Durrants. And they always went too far
.

For lunch, Braverly had surpassed himself in Sophie’s honour. Baked black land-crabs with rice and peas; puréed sweet potatoes and an avocado salad; and to follow, his famous coconut pudding, flecked with flakes of pounded vanilla and laced with golden rum from Eden’s own distillery at the Maputah works.

Somewhat to her relief, she didn’t get a chance to ask any more questions. Cameron was back, and the children had pestered Madeleine until they were allowed to eat with their aunt Sophie.

‘When you were in England,’ said Belle, ‘did you see the King?’

‘Can one really eat snow?’ asked Fraser.

‘How big
is
the Koh-i-noor diamond?’

It wasn’t until Poppy the nursemaid had taken them off for their nap and the coffee had been brought out onto the verandah that conversation became possible. But even then, a state of armed peace prevailed between Sophie and her sister.

And yet whose fault is that? she thought with exasperated affection, as she took her cup from Madeleine’s hand and watched her valiantly trying to paper over the cracks.

‘I meant to ask you,’ said Madeleine, raising her eyebrows in the way that people do to signify interest in something utterly trivial, ‘did you remember to order your calling cards?’

‘Ah,’ said Sophie, raising her eyebrows in her turn. ‘I’m afraid I forgot.’

Cameron lit a cigar and leaned back in his chair, and glanced from one to the other.

‘Oh well,’ said Madeleine brightly, ‘you can borrow some of mine. We can send a wire to Gardner’s, and ask them to make you a priority.’

‘Yes,’ said Sophie, ‘let’s.’ My God, she thought, we sound like characters in a play. This is Maddy.
Maddy
. What’s happening?

‘I know it’s a bore,’ said Madeleine, not meeting her eyes, ‘but there are all sorts of duty calls that you’ll simply have to make.’

Obediently, Sophie nodded.

‘The Mordenners and the Palairets,’ said Madeleine, ‘and old Mrs Pitcaithley and Olivia Herapath. And Great-Aunt May. That’ll be a trial, I know, but you can’t possibly not.’

‘No, no, of course.’

‘And then there’s Clemency. Though she can hardly be called a duty.’

‘How is she?’ said Sophie.

‘Much worse, I’m afraid. Not even Cameron can do anything with her. Perhaps you can work a miracle.’

‘Mm,’ said Sophie. ‘Or perhaps,’ she added, on the spur of the moment, ‘she could move out of Fever Hill and come and live with us? I mean, she can’t go on in that great barracks all alone.’

‘Of course she can’t,’ said Cameron, ‘but you try getting her out.’

Sophie set down her spoon. ‘What if I sold it?’ she said suddenly. ‘Then she’d have to move.’

There was a silence. Madeleine looked at her in horror. Cameron merely looked.

Until she’d said it, she hadn’t even known that it was in her mind. And she didn’t know why it occurred to her now – except perhaps that if Clemency moved in with them, there’d be one more person to distract Maddy, and keep her away from that delicate-featured young gentleman in Montpelier.

‘But you’re not going to sell it,’ Cameron said calmly.

‘No,’ said Sophie, ‘but I could. I mean, it’s just an idea. And Eden needs the money—’

‘No we don’t,’ he said.

‘– and then – then you wouldn’t have to work so hard. And Maddy,’ she took a breath that was almost a gulp, ‘well, she wouldn’t be on her own all the time.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ said Madeleine sharply.

‘It was just an idea,’ muttered Sophie.

‘But Sophie,’ said Cameron, coming to her rescue, ‘even if you wanted to sell, what sort of guardian would I be if I let you squander your inheritance before you came of age?’

Sophie smiled. ‘Isn’t that rather Victorian?’

He laughed. ‘Of course it is. But then, I am a Victorian.’

‘Can we please talk of something else?’ snapped Madeleine.

There was another awkward silence.

Madeleine put the little beaded cover over the milk jug to keep off the flies, and shooed Scout away from the coffee tray, and told Belle, who was just creeping down the steps at the far end of the verandah, to go back to bed at once and take her nap. Then she took up her cup and stirred her coffee rather fast.

Cameron flicked a sugar-ant off his knee, leaned back in his chair and studied the horizon with a distant frown which said that he was well aware that there was some kind of tension between the sisters, but that he wasn’t fool enough to get caught in the crossfire.

When the silence had gone on long enough, Madeleine smoothed her skirts over her knees, and got to her feet. ‘Well,’ she said briskly. ‘I must go and dress. The Trahernes expect us at four.’

Half an hour later, Sophie was battling with the bodice of her afternoon gown when a button popped off and shot across the room.

God
, why was everything going wrong? She couldn’t even fasten a wretched dress.