Whispers of Heaven (37 page)

"I know," said Jessie, stricken with guilt. "But I do now."

"It's too late."

Jessie shook her head, her throat working as she swallowed. "It's not. It won't be too late until after the marriage vows are said."

Beatrice arose with a stiff rustle of expensive silk, her movements controlled, dignified. She went to lock away her jewel box, then turned to face her daughter. In all her years of disappointing her mother, Jessie thought she had never seen Beatrice's face so severe, her eyes so icy with fury. But then, except in her desire to attend the academy, Jessie had rarely set up her will deliberately against her mother's.

"We are not talking about legalities, Jesmond. We are lalking about duty, honor, disgrace. A rigid code of acceptable behavior. A gentlewoman does not withdraw from such arrangements. If I were to allow you to end your betrothal now, you would be ruined. We would all be ruined, never able to appear in public again. Have you given even a thought to your brother? To the effect such a disgrace would have upon his position in society? And what of his friendship with Harrison? His marriage to Philippa?"
What about me?
Beatrice's entire tone suggested, although she didn't say it.

Jessie swung half away, one hand coming up to pinch the bridge of her nose. "Mother, Warrick doesn't want to marry Philippa. You know that. The marriage covenants that Papa and Malcolm Tate arranged between them might have seemed a good idea at the time, but they were wrong. You can't raise children together like brothers and sisters and expect them to grow up and marry."

Beatrice's thin nostrils flared in scorn. "You know nothing of such matters. We do what we must in this world, and you must marry Harrison Tate."

Her head held high, her body trembling badly, Jessie walked to the door. "I am sorry, Mother, but I plan to tell Harrison immediately upon his return from Hobart Town that I cannot be his wife."

She reached for the door handle, but her mother's voice stopped her, the voice that had cut Jessie so cruelly as a child and still had the power to make her bleed inside. "You have always been a selfish, self-serving child," hissed Beatrice, taking a quick step toward her. "You think only of yourself. Of yourself, and your own ridiculous, petty wishes and interests. You have never tried to please me. Never made the least attempt to behave as you ought."

Visibly shaking now with a confused mingling of hurt and raw anger, Jessie swung to face her mother. "You are wrong. I have tried. Ever since I was a little girl, I have tried and tried to be what you wanted me to be, but it has never been enough. I have never been good enough for you. All you have ever told me is how much I disappoint you and how ashamed of me you are."

Beatrice stared at her. "Is that why you're doing this? To punish me?"

"No. I'm doing this because I must."

"Because you must?" Her mother gave a brittle laugh. "You break your betrothal to Harrison, and everyone will believe that he is the one who called it off. They'll think he discovered that he was being tricked into accepting used goods. No one will ever marry you."

Jessie shook her head. She felt a stranger to the woman before her, this woman who had given her birth. "I am not going to live my life in fear of what other people might be thinking. What kind of morality is that?"

"Jesmond—" Beatrice took a step forward as Jessie wrenched open the door. "You do this, and I will never forgive you."

Jessie looked back over her shoulder, her throat so tight and sore it hurt to speak. "I'm sorry, Mother. But if I don't do this, I will never be able to forgive myself."

They sat on the jumble of rocks at the base of the cliffs of Last Chance Point, Genevieve dangling her bare feet in the gentle surge of the receding sea, Jesmond Corbett with her legs drawn up close to her, her arms crossed upon her upraised, bent knees. The wind of the previous evening had died, leaving the day calm and balmy, the sky a glorious Tasmanian blue.

It had been weeks since they had last met, but then, their friendship had always been like that, something snatched at in stolen moments, a vital connection that owed itself less to the frequency of contact than to a common way of looking at the world, a profound sense of mutual understanding. Over the years, Genevieve had come to love this troubled girl like the daughter she'd never had. She had listened, today, while Jessie poured out the story of her confrontation with Beatrice, the decision about Harrison. But she couldn't help feeling there was something the girl was holding back.

"Where is the line, Genevieve?" Jessie asked now, her brows drawing together thoughtfully in that way she'd had since she was a child. "Where is the line between what a woman owes to others, and what she owes herself?"

Genevieve blew out her breath in a long sigh, her gaze on the endless turquoise-blue swell of the sea. "I'm not sure there is only one line that's the same for all of us. Perhaps it comes down to the choices we each must make in our life. Each of us knows in our heart when a choice is wrong."

"But if a person is selfish—"

Genevieve reached out to touch Jessie's sleeve. "You're not."

Jessie bowed her head, the faint breeze stirring the small wisps of hair at the back of her neck. "My mother thinks I am."

"Perhaps your mother feels the need to justify to herself the choices she once made."

Jessie looked up, her gaze narrowing. "You mean her marriage to my father?"

"That's right."

Jessie stared down at a strand of seaweed caught on the rocks, thin brown streamers dancing gracefully with the action of the waves. "She never loved him, did she?"

Genevieve shook her head. "She had only met him once when her parents arranged the match. And under the circumstances, one could hardly expect affection to flourish between them." She saw the confusion in Jessie's eyes, and added "Beatrice always considered Anselm a touch beneath her, you see. Her family were old gentry. Poor, but old."

"While the Corbetts were mushrooms," Jessie said wryly.

Genevieve smiled. "Something like that. Although I'm surprised she used that phrase to describe your father's family."

"No. But she uses it when speaking of people who have wealth yet are of inferior birth. Every time she used to say it around my father, she'd look at him in that way she has. It wasn't difficult to understand what she meant."

A goshawk arced overhead, screeching. Genevieve leaned back, watching the sun gleam bright and golden on the bird's outstretched wings. "She hasn't changed, has she?"

"I didn't realize you ever knew my mother," Jessie said, stretching out her legs to let them dangle over the edge of the rock.

"I knew her."

Jessie's head tilted, her gaze hard on Genevieve's face. "How?"

The soft eddy of the breeze brought with it the scents of brine and wet rock and eucalyptus, from the trees at the top of the Point behind them. Genevieve closed her eyes and drew the familiar smells deep into her being. "I promised your mother I'd never tell you that," she said, her heart heavy with new and old pain.

She was afraid the girl would press, but she didn't. A silence fell between them, a companionable silence filled with the quiet music of the waves and the raucous calls of the gulls. Then Jessie said, "Did my mother love someone else? When her parents arranged for her to marry my father?"

The girl's face was drawn, troubled.
Have you learned nothing from your life, Beatrice?
Genevieve thought with a spurt of anger. Aloud, she said, "Oh, yes. His name was Peter Fletcher. He was only a lieutenant in the army, but his family was old and proud ... and even more poor than your mother's."

"Did he love her?"

"Profoundly. When her marriage to Anselm was first suggested, the lieutenant wanted her to run away with him."

"She never would."

"No. Never. Your mother's line has always been drawn very narrowly."

A ship had appeared some hundred yards or so off the mouth of the cove, the sun brilliant on its white sails as it plowed through the sea, running south. "All these years," Jessie said quietly, her gaze on the plunging prow of the ship, "and I never knew."

"She has probably forgotten, herself. She would have made herself forget. She's like that."

Genevieve brought up her hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the sun. The ship was a frigate, the
Repulse,
running back into port. She glanced thoughtfully at the girl beside her. "She hasn't guessed how you feel about that Irishman, has she?"

Jessie shook her head. "I've never had a chance to ask how you knew."

"I saw your face," said Genevieve simply. "The night of the storm. When you looked at him, everything you felt for him was in your eyes."

"Perhaps I should take to wearing hats with veils." Jessie tried to laugh, but it came out twisted, frightened. "If my mother knew ..." Her lips pressed into a thin, painful line, and she shook her head. "I'm not sure what she would do. But she would make him suffer, I know that. She would blame him for my decision to break off my betrothal."

"When does his sentence expire?"

Jessie bowed her head, her clasped hands coming up to press against her nose and mouth. "Never. They're never going to let him go, Genevieve."

The frigate was so close, they could hear the sails now, flapping in the breeze, hear the rush of the water against the sleek hull. Genevieve reached out and caught her friend's hand in hers. "Oh, Jessie."

"He says ..." She looked up, her voice breaking, so that she had to pause, swallow. "He says there are ways a woman can keep a child from growing inside her. Do you know them?"

Genevieve studied the girl's strained features. She had sensed that something powerful and life-altering had happened to her young friend, something that went beyond her decision about Harrison and her confrontation with her mother. Now, Genevieve understood what it was. "Yes, I know. If you want, I can tell you."

Jessie nodded, her eyes glittering with unshed tears. She'd always been so fierce and strong, so demanding of herself, Genevieve thought. Even as a child, Jessie had rarely cried. "You want to tell me it's a dangerous thing we do," she said now.

Genevieve tightened her grip on the girl's hand. "Yes, it is dangerous. But you don't need me to tell you that." She knew a terrible fear, deep within her. A fear, and a sadness, for she could see no way out for this pair of star-crossed lovers. Ahead lay nothing but heartache and disaster, and there was nothing Genevieve could do to stop it. "My dear," she said softly, "simply remember that I am always here for you, whatever happens."

The boy sat with his back pressed against the rough stones of the hut, his legs sprawled out in front of him, his hands idle in his lap, an old felt hat pulled low over his face. "She's in the meadow out the back, watching the sheep while they graze," said Dicken, not bothering to look up when Warrick reined in before him.

"Thank you," said Warrick. He started to turn his horse, then paused, his gaze, considering, on the youth before him. He was a strange boy, Dicken, almost disturbing in a half- wild, barely civilized way. In the weeks that Warrick had been coming here to this crude hut on the coast, he had seen the boy bring down everything from magpies to wallabies with his slingshot. Every time he killed, the boy smiled. And every time he smiled, Warrick wondered if it had been this boy, Dicken, who had left the gaping stab wound in Parker Jones's back.

"That black man, the convict I was looking for," Warrick said suddenly, asking the question that had been bothering him for so long, "did you kill him?"

"Me?" One eye opened, the battered brim of the hat lifting as the boy peered up at Warrick. "Nah. I use a slingshot. Faine's the one who likes knives."

Warrick's hand tightened on his reins hard enough to make his chestnut gelding throw up its head and snort in alarm. With soothing words, Warrick steadied the horse, then kneed it toward the sheep he could see grazing in the distance.

"Why didn't you tell me the truth?" he asked Faine later, as they lay sated and naked in each other's arms on the cloak he had spread for them beneath a blooming black wattle tree. "Why didn't you tell me that you're the one who killed that black man I was looking for, that escaped convict?"

She lifted one slender shoulder in a careless shrug. "How was I to know the way you'd be reacting to such a truth?" She twisted her head so that she could see his face, her light brown eyes shadowy with thoughts he couldn't begin to grasp. "And you don't like it, do you? The fact that I killed him, for all he was a thief and a convict, and a black man besides."

"Don't be silly." He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand, his voice as gentle as his touch. "If he was threatening you violence, trying to force you, you had no choice."

"He weren't trying to do me nothing. It was the donkey, McBain, he was after."

Warrick's hand stilled against her face. "You killed him over a donkey? Stabbed him in the back?"

She rolled onto her side and raised herself up on one arm so that she could look down on him as he lay, flat on his back. "There, you see? You don't understand. You don't know what it's like to be poor." She rested her hand on his naked chest, her caress slow and enigmatic. "You think it's all lying about in the grass, and making love under the stars, and being care- lice and easy because we've nothing to lose. Well, that donkey's important to us, and I wasn't about to lose him."

Warrick stared up at her. He had always discounted the differences between them, between his life and hers. Now, those differences seemed suddenly to open up between them, wide and unfathomable. No, he didn't know what it was like to be poor. He wasn't sure he'd ever even considered what it would be like, before now. Perhaps this was a part of it, he thought, this callous disregard for human life. Except...

He put his hand over hers, stilling it, his eyebrows drawing together in a frown as he searched her face. "Don't you feel anything? No remorse? No sadness, even? The man is
dead."

She shook her head, her jaw hardening, her eyes flat. "He shouldna been trying to steal our donkey."