The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (96 page)

She didn’t like that. The little dents at the corners of her mouth deepened ominously. ‘Was that Great-Aunt May’s carriage we saw by the steps?’ she asked. ‘So she really has been as good as her word?’

God, she was quick. If you stung her, she stung right back.

‘We’re all agog,’ she went on. ‘What did you have to do to persuade her to send him?’

He flinched. She couldn’t possibly know anything about that sordid little bargain. No-one knew except himself and Miss Monroe. ‘I made her a promise,’ he said lightly.

‘What kind of promise?’

‘I can’t say.’

Alexander swallowed a yawn. ‘How desperately intriguing,’ he murmured. ‘Come along, darling, we oughtn’t to monopolize our host.’

But Sophie had seen Ben flinch, and she was on to it. ‘And shall you keep your promise,’ she asked, ‘whatever it is?’

At that moment Sibella Palairet appeared in the gallery, trotting out for air on the arm of the young lad from England, and resolutely not glancing at Ben. She looked flushed and pretty, and slightly pitiable.

‘Shall you keep your promise?’ said Sophie again.

‘I don’t know,’ murmured Ben.

‘You don’t know? But when do you mean to decide?’

He turned and looked down into her honey-coloured eyes. He kept looking.

Years ago, when he’d first arrived in Jamaica, old Cecilia Tulloch had warned him about the River Mistress.
Don’t you go meeting her eyes, bwoy
, she’d said, waggling her fat finger in his face,
or you done with
everyting.

Don’t go meeting her eyes, bwoy.
As he stood looking down into those honey-coloured eyes, he thought: Trust me to remember that sixteen years too late.

He glanced from Sophie Monroe to her fiancé, and back again. Ah, but what does it matter? he thought in disgust. She’s getting married in a couple of weeks. What does any of it matter?

‘I think’, he said slowly, ‘that I probably shall keep my side of the bargain, after all.’

‘When?’ she asked.

‘When what?’

‘When shall you keep this mysterious “bargain”?’

He thought for a moment. ‘Later tonight.’

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Every time Sibella saw Ben Kelly, her stomach turned over.

She had never felt like this before, and she hated it. It was terrifying and humiliating. She didn’t want it to end.

She could see him now, waltzing with Olivia Herapath. They made a curious couple: the little fat aristocrat, outrageously colourful in an obeah-woman’s headkerchief and strident print gown, and the tall, slender adventurer in the immaculate black tailcoat and faultless white linen. One had to look closely to perceive the one detail in his dress which was deliberately off: the shirtstuds were not the plain pearls which were
de rigueur
, but very small black diamonds.

‘Black diamonds,’ Alexander had murmured to his friends. ‘I call that devilish vulgar.’

‘Or just plain devilish?’ quipped Dickie Irving.

‘What? Devilish?’ said Walter Mordenner, who was always three steps behind. ‘D’you imagine that’s who he’s supposed to be? By George, that’s a pretty rum sort of joke!’

Sibella didn’t think it a joke at all. Ben Kelly terrified her. He made her feel breathless and confused: desperate to see him again, but speechless with fear when she did. And since that never-to-be-forgotten episode on the Fever Hill Road three weeks before, she had dreamed of him every night. The most vivid, febrile, horrifying dreams, in which he did things to her which— No, no, she couldn’t even think about it.

And yet in those dreams she let him do it. She whimpered and moaned for more. And when she awoke she was still whimpering, and desperate to get back into the dream. She didn’t know herself any longer. There was another woman inside her: a savage female beast, fighting to get out.

It did no good telling herself that he was a gutter-born scoundrel with not a drop of decent blood in his body. She didn’t care about that. She didn’t want to
talk
to him. She just wanted him to kiss her again.

That was why she was here now, in this great crowded ballroom, counting the minutes until she could go to him.
The Burying-place, midnight
, his note had said. Every time she thought of it she felt faint.

He hadn’t danced with her or said a word to her all evening, apart from the briefest of greetings when she’d arrived. If it hadn’t been for that note slipped inside her invitation, she could have pretended that she’d imagined the whole thing. But there it was in that bold black scrawl.
The Burying-place, midnight; if nothing else, to return that token you let fall the other day
.

‘If nothing else’? What did that mean? The Burying-place?
At midnight?
They would be alone together. Absolutely alone. She pictured the long pale grass glowing in the moonlight. She saw herself laid out like a sacrifice on a marble tomb: eyes closed, hands crossed beneath her breasts. Passive. Surrendering to him.

Suddenly she couldn’t bear the ballroom a moment longer. She pushed through the crowds and ran out to the verandah, then down the steps onto the lawns.

She took deep breaths of the warm night air. The scent of star jasmine clogged her throat. The lights strung between the trees became a coloured blur.

‘Are you unwell?’ said a man’s voice behind her.

She spun round. Her heart jerked with disappointment. Gus Parnell stood on the bottom step, watching her. ‘N-no,’ she stammered. ‘That is, I am quite well. Thank you.’

His costume was that of the Doctor: the same as poor ugly Freddie Austen. But unlike Austen, it didn’t suit Parnell. It made him look like an undertaker. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘but you appear a trifle flushed.’

‘It was the crush in the ballroom. Such an unseasonably hot night. Don’t you agree?’

‘I’m afraid I’m not in a position to say what is seasonable and what is not, since this is my first Christmas in the tropics.’

‘Oh, of course. I was forgetting.’

‘However, if you find it too exciting, perhaps you would care for an ice?’

She forced a smile. ‘How thoughtful. Would you be so kind as to fetch me one?’

‘I should consider it a privilege.’

She watched him go. Then she picked up her skirts and ran round the corner of the house and onto the lawns on the west side, so that he wouldn’t be able to find her when he returned.

Every time she thought about Gus Parnell, her spirits sank. If she wasn’t very careful, she would begin to hate him.

They had known each other for seven months, they were on the point of becoming engaged; but he still talked to her as if they’d only just met. She tried to tell herself that things would improve once they were married, but she knew that they wouldn’t. One might as well ask such a man to befriend his valet as to make genuine conversation with a woman.

And yet when he did propose, she intended to accept. If she didn’t marry again, she would be nothing; she might as well be dead. And Papa expected it of her. He’d made it very clear in that awful interview in his study. He needed Parnell to shore up the estate.

Besides, why was she hesitating? Gus Parnell was a gentleman, and enormously rich. She would have everything she wanted. Houses in Belgrave Square and Berkshire; an
hôtel
in Neuilly and a hunting-lodge in Scotland; accounts at Worth and Poiret. She would be the envy of all her friends.

‘But you don’t love him,’ Sophie had said the other day, in that infuriating way she had of speaking her mind.

Sibella had turned on her. ‘What does that matter? I didn’t “love” Eugene, but we got along perfectly well.’

Sophie had looked at her doubtfully. ‘But – did Eugene make you happy?’

‘Oh, Sophie, stop being such a child! What has that to do with anything?’

After that Sophie hadn’t said a word. She’d merely touched Sibella’s shoulder and looked at her with a sympathy which had made Sibella want to shake her.

What did Sophie know about anything? She knew nothing. She still believed that marriage was about wedding presents and ‘making people happy’. Well, it was time that she found out the truth. Marriage means a great red-faced man thrusting into you as he grinds his palm down on your mouth to stifle your cries. Marriage means nine months of the most appalling indignities. It means being treated like an animal by disapproving old doctors with stale breath and liver-spotted hands. It means two days of squalor and agony, and then a dead infant; and being told not to dwell on it, because there’ll be more babies soon enough. That’s what marriage means. And it was high time that Sophie found out.

A burst of music from the ballroom. She turned and saw Ben Kelly on the verandah, moving silently among his brightly costumed guests like a wolf in a sheepfold.

All thoughts of marriage fell away. Gus Parnell ceased to exist. She could think of nothing but how she had felt when that man had kissed her on the Fever Hill Road.

It had begun so innocently. And no-one –
no-one
– could say that her behaviour had been in any way to blame. She’d thought about that a lot, and was quite certain. It was a great comfort.

She’d been in Falmouth, and was just coming out of Olivia Herapath’s little studio when she’d bumped into him on the pavement. For a moment she’d been alarmed. She was quite alone, with no allies in sight and not even a passerby for protection. And the last time they’d met she had tried to cut him, and he’d laughed at her.

But to her relief, he didn’t laugh now. He merely lifted his hat with grave courtesy and asked how she was, and then walked with her the few yards to her pony-trap. Then he handed her in, made a compliment about Princess, her little grey mare, and took his leave.

But after a few steps he turned back, and casually suggested that as it was market day and there was such traffic on the Coast Road, she might do better to take the Fever Hill Road home, thus reaching Parnassus by the back way, through the cane-pieces. It was a perfectly proper suggestion for a gentleman to make to a lady, and she thanked him, without indicating whether she intended to follow his advice.

But as her little equipage bowled along the Fever Hill Road, her heart began to pound. And by the time she’d left town and reached the section of road which giant bamboo turns into a shadowy green tunnel, she was light-headed with anticipation.

It’s simply the lack of air, she told herself. But she slowed Princess to a walk, and strained for the sound of a horseman behind her. Of course there was nothing.

Then she began to fancy that the mare had developed a limp. Not a pronounced limp, but nevertheless Sibella judged it prudent to pull up in the shade of the giant bamboo and wait until someone should come by to assist her. Otherwise Princess might go lame.

And after a few minutes, he came.

‘It’s probably just a stone,’ he said, dismounting and coming round to take a look at the mare. ‘But we don’t want her to get a stone-bruise, do we?’

She sat very straight in the pony-trap and hardly moved her head. ‘Oughtn’t you first to tie up your horse?’ she suggested timidly, for he’d left his reins carelessly trailing on his saddle.

He glanced at her over his shoulder, and smiled. ‘Don’t worry, she knows not to stray.’ And sure enough, the big, sleek chestnut stood patiently by her master, like a dog.

For some reason, that made Sibella blush. She watched him drawing off his gloves and tossing them in the grass with his hat, then gently lifting the grey’s off foreleg and exploring the tender underside with his fingers.

She began to feel dizzy. No gentleman, she told herself, has brown hands like that, with black hairs on the wrists. Her heart began to pound.

‘Here we are,’ he said. He took a small pearl-handled knife from his pocket and deftly prised out a pebble, then set down the mare’s hoof and gave the leg an absent caress.

Sibella looked at the line of his jaw, and the way the dark hair fell into his eyes, and her stomach turned over.

‘You’ll be able to walk her home now,’ he said, flicking back his hair as he looked up into her face. ‘But go gently. She mustn’t be rushed.’

She nodded. She couldn’t trust herself to speak.

‘And when you get back to Parnassus,’ he went on, still looking into her eyes and caressing the mare’s neck with one hand, ‘you might tell old Danny that she’s taken a slight cut in the sole. Get him to wash it out with a little carbolized oil.’

‘Carbolized oil,’ she murmured, watching his mouth. He had a beautiful mouth: chiselled, like the mouth of a statue.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Carbolized oil.’

She tried to swallow. ‘The whole hoof?’ she mumbled. Her lips felt hot and swollen.

He shook his head. ‘Just the cut. Here, shall I show you?’

She didn’t say yes. At least, she couldn’t remember saying yes. But the next moment he was lifting her down from the pony-trap – respectfully, there was nothing wrong in it – and she was standing beside him in that whispering, shadowy tunnel beneath the giant bamboo.

He stooped to pick up the mare’s hoof in order to show her, and she saw how the muscles of his shoulders strained his jacket. Then he set down the hoof again and straightened up, and repeated the instructions for Danny. She watched his mouth and didn’t hear a word. Then he took out his handkerchief and brushed off his hands. ‘You know,’ he said calmly as he pocketed the handkerchief, ‘I’ve been thinking about you.’ Then he put his hands lightly on her shoulders and bent and kissed her.

She’d been over it a hundred times, but she could never recall exactly how it happened. One moment she was standing beside him, thinking that he was taller than she remembered, and that the green of his eyes had little flecks of russet, and was that a sign of danger; and the next moment, without any force or compulsion, he’d placed his hands on her shoulders –
gently, gently, she mustn’t be rushed
– and covered her mouth with his own.

Never in her life had she experienced anything so wonderful as that kiss. The heat, the dizziness, the spiralling down into a pleasure she’d never known or imagined could exist. He parted her lips with his own and invaded her mouth –
gently, gently, she mustn’t be rushed
– and her knees buckled and she moaned like an animal and threw her arms around his neck. She opened her mouth fiercely wide to take him in. She clung to him until she could no longer breathe, until black spots darted before her eyes. Then he broke from her and his mouth moved down to the tender spot beneath her jaw and he sucked at her pulse, and the pleasure was so intense that she nearly passed out.