The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (95 page)

‘Apparently,’ he went on, watching her, ‘our Mr Kelly has brought his family out for Christmas. Isn’t that sweet? Although of course, the fact that they’re dead does rather put a dampener on things.’ He paused. ‘I hear he’s got the coffins up at the hot-house ruins. Just beyond your family Burying-place.’

‘I know,’ she said with an edge to her voice. ‘Sibella heard it in town three days ago and told us all about it. Don’t you remember?’

‘Ah yes, so she did. Darling Sib. She seems to have developed quite a fascination for our handsome Mr Kelly.’ Lightly, he slapped his gloves against his thigh. ‘It must have been devilish tricky, getting the blacks to handle the coffins at all. Don’t you think?’

Again she did not reply.

‘And I hear there’s even talk of a mausoleum. I call that vulgar in the extreme.’

‘Other people have mausoleums,’ she said.

He smiled. ‘I knew that in the end you’d leap to his defence.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘My darling, I wonder you can even ask, when you’ve been meeting him in secret up in the hills.’

Ah. So that was it. She turned and met his eyes.

He was still softly slapping his gloves against his thigh, and looking very slightly pained. ‘I’m sorry I had to bring it up,’ he said, ‘but I thought it for the best.’

‘How did you know about it?’ she asked. ‘Did you have me followed?’

‘Does it matter?’

Slowly she shook her head. After what he’d done to Evie, none of it mattered. And yet, ridiculously, she felt guilty. She had lied to him, and she’d been caught out. ‘If it’s any consolation,’ she said, ‘it wasn’t an assignation. There’s nothing between me and Mr Kelly.’

‘I never for a moment imagined that there was. The problem is,’ he added delicately, ‘other people won’t see it that way.’

She looked down at the mask in her lap. It was a deep midnight blue, like her gown, and edged in tiny brilliants. She couldn’t wear it now. She was sick of masks.

What is the point, she wondered, of waiting till after Christmas to have it out with him? Why not do it now and get it over with?

She raised her head. ‘I went into the hills to help Evie,’ she said calmly. ‘Do you remember Evie? Evie McFarlane?’

He took that without a flicker.

‘She needed help,’ she went on. ‘You see, someone – some man – has let her down rather badly.’

‘So she ran off into the hills?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Good Lord, the things these people do.’

‘Alexander,’ she said wearily, ‘let’s do away with the pretence. I can’t marry you. I know about Evie.’

Another silence. He ran his thumb across his bottom lip, then gave her a small, rueful smile. ‘Well? And what of that?’

She blinked.

‘I’m most awfully sorry if I’ve hurt you, old girl,’ he said gently, ‘but what you must understand is that it didn’t mean a thing. Those sorts of affairs never do.’

‘It meant something to Evie.’

‘Well it oughtn’t to have done. She knew perfectly well what she was about. And I never made her any promises.’

‘Does that make it all right?’

‘It makes it – well, it makes it the sort of thing which happens all the time. Everyone knows that.’

When she did not reply, he took her hand and squeezed it. ‘You want to punish me. I understand that. And I admit, I’ve been most frightfully wicked. But now I’ve been punished, and I promise that I’ll never do it again. No more wild oats. I shall be the most faithful spouse in Christendom. You have my word.’

She opened her mouth to reply, but he put his finger lightly to her lips.

‘Be reasonable, my darling. Forgive us our trespasses, and all that?’

‘No, you don’t understand—’

‘Sorry to be a bore, but I really think I do. And I think you ought to forgive me
my
little trespass, as I forgive you yours.’

‘You – forgive me?’ she said in disbelief.

He smiled. ‘Well of course.’

‘For what? I told you, there’s nothing between me and—’

‘But there was, though, wasn’t there?’

Again she met his eyes.

‘Seven years ago,’ he went on, still in that gentle, apologetic tone, ‘you – how can I put this without descending to indelicacy – you knew the man, in the Biblical sense.’

She swallowed. ‘How long have you known?’

He gave a little laugh. ‘How very like you not even to attempt to deny it.’

‘Why should I? How long have you known?’

‘Oh, for absolutely ever. Darling Sib put two and two together from something your sister let slip just after you’d left for England. And of course she simply had to tell me.’ He paused. ‘But all that’s beside the point, my love. The point is, you
mustn’t
worry
. I shall never breathe a word to a living soul.’

Something about the way he said it was anything but reassuring. ‘What do you mean?’ she said uneasily.

‘It’s really quite astonishing, the double standards which the world applies to this sort of thing. Don’t you agree?’

She licked her lips. She was beginning to see where he was heading.

‘Say we were to perform a small experiment: say we were to tell the fellows at the Caledonian a little story about Miss Monroe and some dreadful low brute of a groom – and then
another
story about Master Alex Traherne and some pretty little mulatto girl. D’you know what they’d say? They’d slap me on the back for being a jolly good fellow and a confoundedly lucky dog; while you, my poor darling – why, you would be utterly beyond the pale.’ He shook his head. ‘You wouldn’t be able to show your face anywhere. And I shudder to think what the scandal would do to your sister, and that darling little girl of hers. People can be so horribly ill-natured.’

She opened her mouth to reply, but just then they swept up to the house, and liveried footmen ran forward to open the doors, and there was no more time for talk.

It looked to Ben as if everyone was having a bloody good time. Except, that is, for the host.

He watched old Mrs Palairet shuffling along on the arm of her nephew, a tall young lad out from England for the holidays. The old lady gave Ben a gracious nod, and the lad from England threw him a slightly long-suffering smile.

Ben inclined his head as they passed. He had no illusions that they’d accepted him as one of their own. Northside Society – the upper two hundred – had only come to his party in order to tear him to bits in its kid-gloved claws. But then a strange thing had happened. To Society’s surprise, it had found that, thanks to Austen, everything was being ‘done rather well’. So it had decided to enjoy itself instead.

Even Isaac and Austen were having a good time. Isaac – one of about a dozen fancy-dress Sailors – was chatting to a cluster of wealthy banana farmers from Tryall, and even Austen was circulating with that inborn sociability which the shyest of the gentry seems to know how to affect. He’d chosen the Doctor for his costume, and the dark frock coat and severe black mask suited him, and somewhat disguised his nose. And as he was a good dancer, he hadn’t lacked for partners. He’d even stood up with Sibella Palairet, although he’d been too abashed to say a word.

Ben could see the little widow now, circling the ballroom with Augustus Parnell. She’d been one of the first to arrive, with her mother-in-law, with whom she was spending Christmas. Ben had been putting off talking to her ever since.

For the festivities she’d interpreted half-mourning liberally, and wore a heavily corseted creation of mauve satin, with a prettily ineffectual gold lace mask and a headdress of mauve silk lilacs. The lilacs reminded Ben of Kate’s imitation violets.
Sixpence a gross, but you’ve got to stump up for your own paper and paste.
He put that firmly from his mind, and drained his glass.

The little widow had spotted him watching her. Self-consciously she turned and spoke to Parnell, with a sidelong glance of studied insouciance which must have fooled no-one.

Oh, God, thought Ben wearily. He’d been putting it off for weeks, but tonight he’d have to decide. Either he must keep his promise to that old witch down in Duke Street and seduce Sibella, or he must come clean and tell her he was going back on the bargain.

It was a humiliating thought, and it made him feel more apart than ever. He looked about him at the enormous, glittering ballroom. What was he doing here? How had it come to this?

Fever Hill – his beloved old house of peace and silence and mellow sunlight – had been overrun. Everywhere he turned he saw a blaze of electric chandeliers; a brilliant blur of satin; an artificial forest of ferns and huge oriental bowls of orchids.

Those bloody orchids. He’d intended them as a little dig at Sophie. ‘Just keep the tone Jamaican,’ he’d told Austen when they were discussing the arrangements. ‘The food, the decorations, all of it Jamaican. And plenty of orchids. Make sure of that.’

That had been before he’d met her up in the hills. But since then he’d forgotten to change his instructions, so orchids were everywhere. Great showy scarlet Broughtonia; white, waxen Dames de Noce; the delicate veined petals of cockleshells.

The heavy perfume reminded him painfully of Romilly. It also underlined the fact that Madeleine and Cameron Lawe had not relented, as he’d been hoping they would, but had stayed away. And to cap it all, the party from Parnassus hadn’t even turned up yet – and when they did, she probably wouldn’t even remember. She’d forgotten about Romilly. Why else would she be marrying Alexander Traherne in a fortnight’s time?

Yes, the whole thing had spectacularly backfired. A Boxing Day Masquerade! Why had it occurred to him to do it? Had he lied to her that day in the hills? Could it be that he
was
still angry with her, and didn’t even know it?

Suddenly he felt breathless. Ignoring his guests, he walked swiftly from the ballroom, and through to the back of the house.

Supper was being laid out on the newly landscaped south lawns. Down by the cookhouse, a whole jerked hog was crackling over a barbecue of pimento wood; nearer the house, liveried footmen were setting out great silver dishes of Jamaican delicacies on long damask-covered tables. Mountain mullet and turtle soup; oysters in hot pepper sauce; ring-tailed pigeons and baked black land-crabs.

When he was a boy, he would have given an arm for a spread like this. He pictured his brothers and sisters descending on it like a pack of scruffy little harpies, then piling together in a heap to sleep it off.

He longed to go up to the hot-house ruins on the other side of the hill, and be with them in the darkness. Three heavy mahogany coffins sealed with lead and, inside, what was left of Robbie and Lil and Kate. Thinking of them up in the ruins made him feel like a ghost. He couldn’t fit it all together in his mind. His brother and sisters up there, and him down here.

On another table, two maids were setting out Bombay mangoes and figs next to a dish of preserved ginger. In the centre stood a great crystal bowl of purple star-apple and nutmeg and cream: an old Jamaican favourite, named matrimony. That was another little dig at Sophie. Not that she’d notice.

He thought how pitiful he must seem to her. All this, just to show her what he’d made of himself.

Why had it taken him so long to realize that? Even the other day, when Evie had pointed it out once again, he’d hotly denied it. ‘Ben,’ she’d said, ‘when you going to face up to it? All you do, you do because of her.’ He’d been speechless with anger. If she hadn’t been so weak, he would have shaken her.

And yet she was right. Buying Fever Hill. Coming back to Jamaica. Throwing this bloody party. It was all because of Sophie. But what did she care? She was going to marry Alexander Traherne.

He thought of her that day in the hills, snapping at him like a vixen. He’d been wrong about her in Kingston. She hadn’t changed at all.

A footman glided past with a tray of champagne, and Ben exchanged his empty glass for a full one, and went back into the house. It was time to be the dutiful host again: to return to his post on the north verandah, and greet the stragglers. Eleven o’clock. Another seven hours to go. Heigh-ho.

And there she was, coming up the main steps on the arm of her fiancé.

Ben saw her before she saw him, and he was grateful for that. She wore a narrow-skirted, high-waisted gown of midnight blue, shot through with changing sea-green. It was cut in a deep V at front and back – so deep that it left the pale shoulders bare – and was only held up by two slender blue straps. No jewels and no mask. The wavy light-brown hair was tied back at the temples and hung loose down her back, restrained only by a narrow bandeau of blue silk in which was set a tiny enamelled fish.

He knew at once what the costume was meant to be. She was the River Mistress – the shadowy siren who haunts Jamaican rivers and entices men to their doom. Years ago, she had told him that as a child she used to go down to the Martha Brae and ask the River Mistress to watch over him. Had she forgotten that? Or was this some kind of sly dig, just as the orchids and the matrimony were with him?

He moved forward to greet them. ‘I thought the River Mistress only ever appeared at noon,’ he said as he briefly took her hand.

She gave him a practised smile. ‘Very occasionally I make an exception.’

‘I’m honoured that you made one for me.’ He turned to Alexander Traherne and held out his hand.

‘How do, Kelly?’ said the fiancé, just touching the tips of his fingers.

‘How do, Traherne?’ Ben replied, mimicking his tone.

Traherne ignored that. ‘I see that you’re exercising the host’s prerogative, and eschewing both mask and fancy dress. I must say, I envy you the tailcoat. This sailor’s uniform is confoundedly heating. And I never could abide a mask.’

‘Then don’t wear it,’ said Ben with a smile. He turned back to Sophie. ‘You know, I was surprised when I saw that you’d accepted. I never thought that you would.’

‘Alexander said that we ought,’ she replied sweetly.

She seemed on edge, and Ben wondered if they’d had a fight. A lover’s tiff, he thought sourly; with all the fun of making up still to come. ‘So you obeyed your fiancé,’ he remarked. ‘How very right and proper.’