The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (64 page)

They reached the house, and she was startled to see Moses waiting by the door, looking scared. ‘Jesum
Peace
, but I glad to see you, Missy Sophie!’ he cried, wringing his hands and getting in the way as Ben was letting down the carriage steps. ‘Master Camron into a
rage
, missy! Swearing like half past midnight, and blazing at Mistress—’

‘At Mistress?’ said Sophie as she stepped down. ‘But Mistress isn’t home yet, I left her at Waytes Lake.’

Moses tried to swallow and shake his head and talk, all at the same time. ‘No, missy. Master Camron sent for her to come
straight
home, and now they on the verandah, and he
blazing
into her, lip-lashing and throwing black words! True to the fact, Missy Sophie! I about ready to take foot and
run
!’

Sophie threw an anxious glance at Ben, but he didn’t even look at her. The perfect groom, she thought in exasperation. She watched in disbelief as he jumped back into the driver’s seat and turned the phaeton round, and headed off down the road without a backward glance.

Moses’s hovering presence dragged her back to the problem in hand. Clearly he was relieved to see her, but anxious for her to go inside and sort it out.

Pushing thoughts of Ben to the back of her mind, she glanced apprehensively at the house. Something must be very wrong. Cameron was the last man to lose his temper with his wife, let alone send her a peremptory summons and then swear at her when she arrived.

And Madeleine’s own route home proved that she wasn’t herself. To have missed out Romilly altogether, she must have taken the most direct route from Waytes Lake, due south through the cane-pieces of Glen Marnoch, then across the river at Stony Gap. That would have taken her very close to the Cockpits, and she hated the Cockpits. She would never have gone that way if it hadn’t been an emergency.

Squaring her shoulders and dreading what she might find, Sophie went inside.

The very air of the hall crackled with tension. ‘What on earth is the matter?’ she whispered to a terrified Poppy. But the black girl only shook her head and hustled the children into the nursery.

‘How could you do it?’ came Cameron’s voice from the verandah. ‘How could you bring yourself to do such a thing?’

Madeleine’s reply was low and indistinct.

‘
What?
’ roared Cameron. ‘Is that supposed to make it all right?’

Sophie’s heart sank. In all the years that she’d known him, he’d hardly ever lost his temper. It could mean only one thing. He’d found out about Montpelier. And God knew what else besides.

Without pausing to take off her hat, she crept across the hall towards her room. But she was only halfway there when Cameron spotted her. ‘Sophie, is that you?’ he called brusquely from the doorway. ‘Could I trouble you to come out here for a moment?’

She floundered for an excuse, and came up with nothing. ‘Er – of course. Just give me a minute to take off my hat.’

In her room she yanked out the hatpins and threw her hat on the bed. Then she went to the looking-glass and tidied her hair. Her hands were shaking. Her reflection looked guilty and wan. What could she say if he asked? Tell him a direct lie? Or betray her own sister? It wasn’t much of a choice.

When she reached the verandah he was prowling up and down, his fists jammed into the pockets of his shooting-jacket, his light grey eyes glassy with anger.

Madeleine sat very straight on the sofa, her face rigid and defiant. Scout the puppy was pressed against her skirts. He was trembling, his ears flat against his skull, his blunt black muzzle twitching back and forth as he watched his master pacing up and down.

Sophie halted in the doorway and put on what she hoped was a non-committal smile.

Cameron shot her a look and continued to pace. ‘I dare say you know all about this,’ he said between his teeth.

She glanced at her sister. But Madeleine’s eyes were fixed on some point in the middle distance, and her face gave nothing away. ‘Know about what?’ said Sophie.

Cameron threw up his hands. ‘Why, the simple matter of my wife selling her inheritance behind my back.’

Sophie’s mouth fell open. ‘Wha-t?’

‘You mean to say you didn’t know? It’s true. Strathnaw. The Monroe family seat. Sold. Behind my back.’ Again he began to pace. ‘My God, how people will laugh when they find out—’

‘Nonsense,’ put in Madeleine robustly. ‘No-one can laugh if they don’t know anything about it, and I went to enormous trouble to keep it secret.’

‘Yes,’ said Cameron, ‘secret from your own husband.’

‘If you’d known beforehand you’d have stopped me.’

‘Well of course I’d have stopped you!’ he roared. ‘What kind of logic is that?’

This was too much for Scout. He gave a yelp and hurtled down the steps with his tail between his legs. A flock of pea-doves shot off the lawn in an outraged flurry.

There was an echoing silence on the verandah. Madeleine’s bird-feeder swung gently in the breeze. A doctorbird hovered over it, its wings an iridescent blur.

Cameron rubbed a hand across his face, and went to the balustrade and stood looking over at the garden. Sophie could see the tension in his shoulders: the effort it cost him to bring himself under control. He hated losing his temper. And he would not easily forgive himself for raising his voice to his wife.

Quietly, Sophie made her way to the sofa and sat down beside her sister. Madeleine turned her head and made a valiant attempt at a smile. Sophie couldn’t smile back. She felt too ashamed. Some idea of what she had witnessed at Montpelier was breaking over her like a wave.

To have been
such
a fool. Worse than a fool. To have suspected her own sister of infidelity – infidelity with a thoughtless young cub like Alexander Traherne – while all the time she’d only been trying to sell that grim old Scottish barrack to save the home she loved. And who better to help her make a secret sale than the Trahernes, the premier mercantile family in Trelawny?

How could you have been so blind? Sophie berated herself. To have harboured such suspicions! And to have failed utterly to perceive that Eden wasn’t just hitting a rough patch, but was in danger of going under.

Yet all the signs had been there. The long hours Cameron worked. Madeleine’s constant sewing: turning her own gowns instead of ordering new ones; making the children’s clothes herself. And what made Sophie go hot and cold with shame was that through it all they had financed her without complaint. The Ladies’ College at Cheltenham, the first-class passage home; even the little second-hand pony-trap for taking her to that wretched clinic.

She watched her sister put her hands to her temples and smooth back her hair. Ever since Sophie could remember, Madeleine had done that when she was under pressure. She’d always been the strong one. Brave, resolute, and sure of herself, even when she was in the wrong. Suddenly Sophie felt weak, and very much the younger sister.

‘Surely you can understand why I did it?’ said Madeleine to Cameron’s back. ‘Eden is our home. For sixteen years you’ve put your heart and soul into this place. I will not stand by and watch it taken away by the bank.’

Still with his hands on the balustrade, he glanced at her over his shoulder. ‘Even if it means going behind my back?’

Madeleine’s lips trembled. ‘I told you why I did that. I explained—’

‘When we got married we made a promise to each other. No secrets. No more secrets. Have you forgotten that?’

She looked down at her lap, and her hands curled into fists. ‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘But Eden is our home. It’s more important than Strathnaw—’

‘Strathnaw was your inheritance. My God, Madeleine! There have been Monroes on that land for over four hundred years. How could you sell it? How would Jocelyn have felt if he’d lived to see this?’

‘Oh, that’s a low shot—’

‘It would have broken his heart. Did you ever think of that?’

‘Of course I thought of it! I thought of very little else!’

Sophie reached out and took her hand, and gave it a squeeze. ‘I think you were immensely brave,’ she said. ‘Whom did you find to buy it?’

Madeleine gave her a wan smile. ‘I don’t even know. I didn’t want to. The Trahernes handled all that.’

‘
The Trahernes?
’ said Cameron in disbelief. He raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Oh, God in heaven.’

Madeleine looked perplexed. ‘But – they were wonderful. Both Cornelius and Alexander.’

Cameron snorted. ‘I’m sure they were. I’m sure they were delighted to carry on an intrigue with a beautiful woman behind her husband’s back.’

Madeleine’s chin went up. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘A young rake like Alexander and an old lecher like Cornelius? Superlative choice of conspirators, my darling. Now you’ll be the talk of every club from here to Kingston. What were you thinking?’

‘I was thinking of saving Eden,’ she retorted. ‘Which clearly was horribly wrong of me. I do apologize.’

‘But the Trahernes, Madeleine? Have you ever known Alexander to keep a secret?’

‘Cameron, lower your voice, or the servants will hear.’

‘They already know! By now I should imagine half Trelawny knows!’

‘Oh, how you exaggerate!’

Sophie drew a deep breath, and struggled to take it in. ‘So that’s what you were doing in Montpelier,’ she said.

‘What?’ said Madeleine.

‘You went there about the sale. That’s it, isn’t it? And you were upset, and Alexander was comforting you.’

‘Of course,’ said Madeleine distractedly. ‘What did you think?’ Plainly the nature of Sophie’s suspicions hadn’t yet occurred to her.

Cameron turned to Sophie. ‘What do you mean, you saw her in Montpelier? Are you telling me that you did know about this?’

‘No,’ said Sophie. ‘It’s just that—’

‘But you said you saw her in Montpelier.’

‘Well – yes. With Alexander Traherne and—’ She was going to say ‘Ben Kelly’ but stopped herself just in time. This was not the occasion for Cameron to learn that the ‘street-Arab’ he’d always mistrusted had been in on his wife’s little scheme.

‘Yes?’ demanded Cameron. ‘And who else?’

‘And I was puzzled,’ said Sophie, looking up at him with a tight-lipped smile. ‘I saw her with Alexander and I was puzzled.’

He gave her a narrow look.

‘Cameron, do come and sit down,’ said Madeleine. ‘All this looming is giving me a headache.’

He glanced from Sophie to his wife, and back again. Then he rubbed the back of his neck, and sighed, and went to a chair and threw himself down. He put his elbows on his knees and shook his head. ‘We would have found a way,’ he muttered. ‘We would have found some way to dig ourselves out of this mess without selling an acre.’

‘How?’ said Madeleine quietly.

‘I don’t know. I’d have found a way.’

Madeleine looked at him for a moment. Then she rose and went to sit on the arm of his chair, and put her hands on his shoulders. ‘And what was I supposed to do in the meantime? Watch you work yourself into an early grave?’

‘Madeleine—’

‘I did it for us,’ she said firmly. ‘And I would do it again. Tomorrow.’

He opened his mouth to protest but she gave his shoulders a little shake. ‘I would do it again,’ she repeated. ‘You’d better just accept that.’

He heaved a sigh.

She smoothed a lock of his hair back from his temple. ‘I know it’s a blow to your pride. I know that. But really, what of it? You’ve suffered worse in the past, and lived.’

He gave a snort of laughter.

‘And you’ll live with this,’ she went on. ‘But I will not let us be forced out of Eden. And there’s an end of it.’

When Sophie left them, Madeleine was leaning against him with her head close to his, talking in her low, firm voice. And he was listening.

‘Maddy, why didn’t you tell me?’ said Sophie the following afternoon when she’d finally caught up with her sister alone. It was Poppy’s half-day off, and they were walking together in the garden, and watching the children chasing an exuberant Scout around the lawn.

‘How could I tell you?’ said Madeleine. ‘That would have been asking you to lie for me. To lie to Cameron. How could I do that?’ She turned sharply away, and for the first time Sophie realized what the weeks of deception must have cost her.

‘Oh God, Maddy. I’m so sorry.’

Madeleine laughed and wiped her eyes with her fingers. ‘Whatever for?’

‘For being such an idiot. For pestering you all the time.’

‘Good heavens, in your place I’d have done far worse. No, I’m the one who’s sorry. What a homecoming for you! I couldn’t believe it when Alexander told me we had to go to Montpelier on the very day you were arriving. I didn’t sleep all night.’

‘But – why did you have to go on that particular day?’

‘It was the only time the attorney could come. He was bringing the papers for me to sign from Spanish Town.’ She paused. ‘Cornelius thought the Montpelier Hotel would be a quiet, unobtrusive place to meet. And look how that turned out.’ She shuddered. ‘I was terrified that we wouldn’t get back to Montego Bay in time to meet you. That was our one piece of luck, when the train got delayed.’

Sophie frowned. ‘I still don’t quite understand. When you met me at Montego Bay, you were with Cameron. How—’

‘I told him I was going in early, to do some shopping, and I’d meet him there. Another lie, I’m afraid.’

Sophie paused. ‘All that was three weeks ago. Once it was done, why didn’t you just tell us?’

‘Because it wasn’t done. The attorney had to perfect the title, or some such thing. I don’t understand all the details, but I did know that I had to wait until it was absolutely irrevocable before I told Cameron, or he’d put a stop to it.’ Suddenly she looked as if she were about to cry. ‘You know how he felt about Jocelyn. The old man was like a father to him. He’d never have consented to Strathnaw’s going out of the family, even though it’s been nothing but a drain on us for years.’

‘How did he find out?’

Madeleine gave a hollow laugh. ‘Oh, that was the most wonderful mix-up you could imagine! The letter from the attorney came through yesterday, confirming that it had all gone through. But the clerk addressed it to Cameron by mistake. He picked it up when he went to town to collect the post.’