Mistress of Darkness

by Christopher Nicole

  'Bah,' Robert said. ' 'Tis only for a season, and we must show our mettle. These prancing dukes and duchesses, they could live off my charity. I'm a Hilton, boy. So are you. They call us nabobs. There's no one in all this miserable wet country controls our income. Remember that, and act the part. Cricket, Bah.' He stamped up the steps, and the door was hastily opened by a curtseying parlour maid. 'But the wenches are pretty.' He dug his fingers into the girl's head, removing the white linen cap to ruffle the yellow hair beneath. 'Aye, pretty.' He turned her round, slapped her backside, and clapped his hands. 'We'll have some of this poison you call claret. You handle a sword, no doubt. Matt? All Hiltons handle a sword.'

  'Perhaps if I could try yours ...'

  'You've none of your own? By God, but I feel old age overtaking me, minute by minute.' A butler stood in front of him with a tray on which waited a silver decanter and three goblets. Robert seized one and drained it. 'They smuggle this, by God. Give me a glass of rum, any day. You'll come with me, Matt. I'd speak with you in private.' He seized the decanter and climbed the stairs.

  'Am I not included?' Georgiana demanded. 'Matt's future is my own.'

  'Begone, harlot,' Robert bellowed. 'Get to your needlework. I'll see to your backside before this night is out. By God, I will.'

  Matt, already at the foot of the stairs, hesitated, and Georgiana smiled at him; once again her tongue came through her lips. 'Oh, be off to your secret conclave, I'll learn of it soon enough.'

  Hastily he followed his cousin. But suddenly he was aware of how tired he was, and realized as well how bemused he was by the remarkable events of the evening. Certainly he should be happy, he reflected. Today had been a triumph. For the village to beat the Hambledon men, and for him to notch forty-seven runs against Lumpy Stevens, there was fame. How magnificent it would have been if Gislane had been there to see it. He had hoped. The Hambledon men did not appear close to London every day, and the match had been well publicized. But her absence was his only disappointment. And then to have Robert and Georgiana descend upon him as if from heaven, when he had not expected to see them again for at least another three years ... except he was not sure that it wasn't a case of having ascended from hell.

  The fact was, the West Indies was a different world, and he had forgotten that. Perhaps he had never known that. He had been born on Green Grove in Antigua, the oldest of the Hilton plantations, owned by Kit and Meg Hilton in the early colonial days, long before the great boom in sugar prices had raised the planters from the level of country gentlemen to the wealth and power of a landed aristocracy. He had taken money and power for granted, had never thought about slaves as other than a vast dark cloud at the bottom of the hill on which stood Green Grove Great House, or as a host of white clad soft-footed females who cleaned the house, and prepared the food and weeded the garden. And any notions he might have retained of his own innate superiority had been knocked into perspective at Eton, where he had shared the same discipline as the sons of earls and the pauper students. He had, of course, always known that he was destined to manage Green Grove one day, one day soon since the tragic death of Papa at sea three years ago, but he had not really considered what would be involved. No doubt Robert was right, and when it came to a choice between profit and lives, it was the lives which had to be sacrificed, supposing they were only slaves, but he wondered if he would have had the backbone to take such a decision, or the conscience then to travel across the ocean and rent a most expensive house. As for personally mutilating and then executing a black youth who had tampered with his sister - well, no doubt he was fortunate in having no sisters, and even supposing he would be left head of the family, Suzanne was safely married and Georgiana soon would be.

  But what was he to make of Georgiana? His old playmate, who had sat on his shoulders and driven him as her horse round and round the rose garden during his visits to Hilltop?

  So then, he was not happy, after all. The sudden appearance of his family had reminded him that he could not play cricket or spar with Jack Broughton for the rest of his life. But Robert was surely being unduly pessimistic.

  He knocked on the door of the master bedroom.

  'Come.' Robert was alone, and undressing himself. He had already removed his boots and his coat and shirt, to reveal a torso any pugilist might have envied.

  Which suggested a cue. 'You'll yet marry,' Matt said. 'Why should you suppose you'll not have children? There are those who claim forty is the prime of life.'

  'I'll not marry, and I'll not have children,' Robert said. 'Not even brown ones, boy. I'm ninety per cent a cripple. You'll have heard that.' He filled their glasses.

  Matt frowned, more dim boyhood memories drifting back to him. 'Nothing I'd credit.'

  'You'd do well to credit them all.' Robert dropped his pants, and Matt stared in horror at the misshapen mound which hung between his cousin's legs. 'A kick from a horse. When I was scarce older than you, boy. Thus I recommend you enjoy yourself while you may, never knowing when such a fate will overtake you.' He pulled on an undressing robe. 'You do not use a sword or a pistol, preferring a heavy club, and you take your sport with men rather than girls. Tell me, boy, is it in your nature to find no joy in the female flesh? Am I that unlucky? If so for certain our line ends here, and that were a sad fate for an old and illustrious family.'

  Matt sipped his wine. 'By no means, sir.' He hesitated; a secret of Gislane's quality was pure torture, when kept to oneself, and there was no one else he had dared confide in. But, Robert, his boyhood's idol, who now but waited to share with him the richest inheritance in all Europe ... 'Indeed, perhaps I wish to find too much joy in it, but in a single direction’

  'God's teeth,' Robert bellowed, and clapped him on the shoulder, causing him to spill his wine. 'There's a Hilton speaking. You've a mistress?'

  Matt shook his head. 'No, sir, I have met the young lady but once. I have written to her, but my letters are unanswered. I have called, but been refused the door.'

  'And you still love the creature? She must be a charmer. Or you are a perverse fellow. Yes, you are a perverse fellow. Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha. But you love. By God, Matt, we'll see about this beauty. Writing letters! There's an art I never mastered with any success. Ha ha ha ha ha, Gome on, lad. We'll tell Georgiana.'

  Matt stood in front of the door. 'I would rather the secret was ours, if you don't mind. At least for the time being.'

  Robert frowned, and then laughed again. 'Why, so it shall be. And I am honoured at your confidence. Then we'll celebrate our reunion, eh? Aye, we'll knock back some of this rotten blood, that we will. And you'll tell me more about this goddess, tomorrow.'

  God, how the bed moved. It seemed to float, on a rough sea, but every few minutes it struck a rock with a shuddering jar which sent Matt's spine thrusting through his brain. Yet he was content, lying on the soft mattress with his pillow clutched in his arms. Gislane, Gislane. Today she seemed closer than ever. He did not know why. Before she had been just a face, and a voice, and a scent, a fading memory, from their one meeting. Now she was a body as well. Because ... because... he sat up, wine sweat trickling down his face.

  Last night. Last night he had confessed her existence to Robert, and thereby made a dream become reality. Or so it had seemed. And then he had made a fool of himself, drinking far too much, and being put to bed by Richards the butler. And then he had dreamed. He threw himself face down on the pillow again, holding it close, hoping to return to the dream world, wishing his head would stop aching.

  'Swine,' Georgiana said. 'Oh, the swine.'

  Matt sat up, violently, dragging the sheets to his waist. She stood just inside the door, her hair loose as usual, her shoulders barely concealed by the linen nightdress. 'For God's sake,' he said. 'I do believe Robert is right, and you are nothing but a harlot. Have you no robe?'

  'Robert made me take it off.' She came across the room, and Matt retreated up the bed until his back reached the headboard. 'Shall I show you the stripes?'

  �
��I do not believe it,' he said. 'He cannot whip you every day.'

  'Every day for a year,' she said. 'My punishment. Look.'

  She turned round, her nightdress pulled to her waist. Matt hastily shut his eyes. 'Please,' he begged.

  She shrugged, and let the nightdress fall, then sat on the end of his bed, combing her hair with her fingers. 'Ow. I do believe Robert is right about you, and you are an unnatural wretch.'

  'You seem to forget that we are cousins,' he said. 'And grown men and women, now.'

  ‘I should hope so,' she said. 'And as for cousins, what stupidity. We have the same great-grandfather. I see no relationship after four generations. And from all I have heard of that old buccaneer he'd have not refused his cousin, had he one.' She commenced to crawl up the bed. 'Let me under the sheet.'

  'No,' he protested. 'You are the most shameless hussy I have ever come across. I've a mind to whip you myself.'

  'Oh, would you?' she asked. 'I'd rather have you do it than Robert. He's a brute, you know. He enjoys it, and he hits as hard as he can. I sometimes think he imagines he's my father. Except that Papa was such a sweet man. But Robert ... horrible misshapen beast. He won't marry, you know, because he's ashamed of himself. He won't come and live in England, because he's ashamed of himself. Or at least, because he is afraid he won't be able to do what he likes. Everyone else has come to live in England, if they can afford it. Old Mr. Beckford, and those Lascelles people, oh everyone. And Robert has more money than all of them put together. But he just locks himself away on Hilltop, with his brown-skinned women, and broods. I was going desperate.'

  'And so you seduced a slave? Did you really do that, Georgiana? I still can't believe it.'

  'Feel these.' She thrust the front of her nightdress at him, the nipples making Little darts against the material.

  'Stop it,' he shouted at her.

  'Oh, you're nothing better than a ... a cripple yourself,' she said, throwing herself on her back across the bottom of the bed, feet kicking, nightdress riding up to her knees. 'Yes, I seduced Jonah. It just came over me. I was going mad, just wasting away there on that great plantation with only Robert and those stupid overseers and their stupid wives .., you know, it was all right when Sue was still there. We could ride together, and talk, about when we got married ... and then she did get married, to that stupid Dutchman ... I told you she didn't love him.'

  Matt sighed. He could hardly recall what Sue looked like, except that he did remember that she had always been much prettier than Georgiana, with yellow rather than brown hair, and a disturbingly steady way of gazing into your eyes, as if she was trying to penetrate your soul. But if Georgiana had changed so much, perhaps Sue had also.

  'And then I was riding my mule through the canefields one morning, and it was very hot, and there was this buck peeing in the ditch, and he looked so ... so gorgeous. That's what he looked, Matt, just gorgeous. That's why I want to see yours, Matt. To see if you'd be as gorgeous.'

  Matt hugged the pillow against his stomach.

  'He wanted to run away when he heard me coming,' Georgiana explained. 'But I told him to stop, because I wanted to look at him, and I dismounted. And do you know, I touched it... it was all right, I was wearing gloves, of course ... and then I heard a horse coming, so I threw myself on the ground and screamed, and it was Ridding, the overseer. You remember Ridding?'

  'But... Robert said ...'

  'Well, of course I told them that,' Georgiana explained. 'I thought he'd be certain to send me away, then. I didn't realize he'd come himself. The nasty brute.'

  'But... didn't they have a midwife to you?'

  'Of course not. Robert wouldn't hear of it.'

  'And the boy was hanged. After being castrated.'

  'Oh, it was tremendous,' she cried. 'I watched, from the bedroom window. It made me feel all soft inside.'

  'Soft?' he cried. 'He'd done nothing.'

  She pouted. 'Don't sound so outraged. You're carrying on as if he'd been a white man.'

  'By Christ,' Matt said. 'I don't believe you. I can't. You just don't do something like that. What difference does the colour of his skin make? He was human, wasn't lie?'

  'He'd let me touch him,' Georgiana pointed out, coldly. She got off the bed and walked about the room. 'He shouldn't have let me do that. Even Peter the head man said that.'

  'And suppose he hadn't let you touch him?' Matt demanded.

  'I'd have had him flogged, of course. But that would have been better than being hanged, for him.'

  Matt scratched his head. 'Anyone would think we were still living a hundred years ago, with Kit the buccaneer. This is 1780, Georgiana. You can't just have someone flogged or hanged because it happens to suit you. Can you?'

  'I wasn't talking about anyone,' she pointed out. 'I was talking about a nigger slave. Anyway, I didn't come in here to talk about him. Matt, marry me.'

  'Eh?' He hugged the pillow tighter.

  'I thought about it all the way across. Of course I wanted to wait until I saw you again to make up my mind, to see if perhaps you'd gone all ugly or fat or something. But you haven't. Why, you're handsome, I think. And I know you. And you know me. We understand each other. And you see, Robert is so determined to marry me off, he's going to land me with someone like Dirk. Imagine, poor Sue having to lie with that great hulk of a man, and he's old enough to be her father in any event, just because he and Robert were friends as boys? How do I know what awful people in England Robert was friends with as a boy? The whole thing just terrifies me.'

  'I'll talk to Robert,' Matt said. ‘I’ll find out who he has in mind, But of course I can't marry you. We're ...'

  'We're not related at all,' she shouted. 'So my grandfather was the son of Kit and Marguerite Hilton, and yours was the son of Kit and Lilian. That was sixty years ago. So the two halves of the family chose to stay close together, mine taking Hilltop and yours Green Grove. That was economics, not blood. They had the sense to realize that keeping all the Hilton money together was better than splitting it up. And now that you're going to inherit the lot it makes more sense than ever. And don't you see, you'd be doing what everyone always wanted? Keeping it all, the money and the power and the name and even the blood, in one place. Look.' She lifted the nightdress over her shoulders and threw it on the floor. 'Aren't I lovely?'

  He supposed she was. He thought of silk. Pale flesh which shone at him, although even her shoulders were speckled with the light brown freckles; white breasts, surprisingly large for so young a woman, criss-crossed with blue veins which seemed hardly below the surface at all; silky belly hair which dominated the spreading thighs; slender legs which scarcely looked capable of supporting the splendour above. It occurred to him that he had never seen anything quite so beautiful in his life.

  And then it occurred to him that not even this could compare with Gislane. Surely.

  Her smile was fading, and frown lines were gathering between her eyebrows. 'Don't you like me, Matt? Don't you think I'm beautiful? Even Robert thinks I'm beautiful. That's why he likes to whip me. For being beautiful.' She turned round, and at last he looked at the red lines on her buttocks. 'You could beat me, Matt. I wouldn't mind. In fact, I'd rather enjoy it. I like being beaten, even by Robert. "What's that?'

  There was no mistaking Robert's bellow, echoing upwards through the house, and coming closer. 'Matt. Matt. Still in bed, by God. Up boy. Up.'

  'Oh, God.' Georgiana gathered her nightdress into her arms, glanced around the room, and then dropped to her hands and knees and crawled beneath the bed. Matt hastily got out of it, and began to search for his clothes.

  The door burst open. 'There you are,' Robert bawled. 'Barton's here. You've met Barton?'

  Matt nodded. John Barton was the Hiltons' London agent.

  'Must have happened just after we left,' Robert declared. 'We had a bit of a gale a week out. There's been a hurricane. No one has ever experienced anything like it before. Half the ships in Kingston Harbour are wrecked. Martinique is all b
ut destroyed, they say. Well, the frogs deserve it. But Hilltop has been hit too. I must take ship this week.'

  'But you've only just arrived.'

  'No matter. No matter. That fool Ridding will have no idea how to cope. I must get back. This was a senseless venture anyway. I should have sent that whore to a convent. That's what I'll do. I'll send her to a convent. But you, boy, I want you married. Or at least bedded. I'll have no backsliders in my family.'

  'But...'

  'So get dressed, boy. Get dressed. You love the girl. You write her letters. I'll go see her for myself.' 'But...'

  'Close the door on a Hilton, would they? By God, we'll see about that. We'll take Georgiana, by God. Where is that girl? Sulking, I'll wager.' He stamped out of the room.

  For their assault on the Nicholson home, Robert elected to use the carriage, although they would do no more than cross Hyde Park. 'We'll let them know who we are,' he growled. 'Ignorant savages, by God. The name should have been enough.'

  He sat with his back to the driver, and stared at Matt and Georgiana, while Matt felt his nervousness becoming a heavy lump in his belly. It was not merely the excitement of actually going to call on Gislane, and apprehension at what might happen if Robert was also turned away at the door. It was the simmering silence of Georgiana beside him. She had escaped from his room immediately Robert had left, without a word. And she had spoken not a word since making her official reappearance, dressed in her favourite pink silk gown with a matching bonnet. He did not know a great deal about women, and he had come to the conclusion that he really did not know anything about his cousin at all, but it occurred to him that she was angry; no doubt she felt that he could have stopped her proposal at once by telling her his heart was elsewhere engaged. Now he could almost hear her breathe, and her freckles were lost in the pink which suffused her cheeks.

  'So now, boy,' Robert said. 'Tell me how it came about. You met her at a cricket match, you say? Down in that beastly place, Dorking?'