“I don’t care about that.”
“But your father might.” And she might after learning how vital was a good reputation for a young lady in London, he thought, but did not say.
She was silent. After a long pause she said, “Tell me, Mr. Heywood, why do you work for Lord Gaston-Reade?”
He struggled with his response as he took up a stick and poked the fire, watching the shower of sparks pop and crackle up into the darkness like the fireflies he had once seen while encamped in the Canadian wilderness. He had pledged to honesty, but how much honesty? And did honesty require him to shatter every fond hope she could have? With emotions awoken within his breast of such depth and fervor that he still did not quite know how he felt, he was apt to say too much, and he could not be sure he would be fair to his employer with his new awareness of Miss Savina Roxeter’s infinite worth.
She perhaps mistook his long pause for unwillingness, for she amended her question, her tone low and her face hidden in shadow. “Rather, tell me something good you know of his lordship. That is more to my purpose.”
Tony nodded. This was reality. She was his employer’s fiancée and must now find peace in her future life. “Lord Gaston-Reade,” he said, “is not an unkind man. When we first arrived in Jamaica there was a perfectly foul man named Jarvis as the overseer on the plantation. Jarvis was like a mad dog: cruel, vicious, impossible to reason with. His lordship soon took the measure of the man and wasted no time in getting rid of him. The outside workers celebrated long into the night, and his lordship gave them an extra measure of rum and a pig to roast for their jubilation. That was all his own idea, and he spoke quite vehemently about the cruelty of the man he had discharged.”
The young lady nodded and heaved a deep sigh. “I think I will be going to sleep now, Mr. Heywood.” She rose, went to Annie and Zazu, and laid down near them, leaving Tony to stare at the fire long into the night.
• • •
The new day brought new determination to Tony. What he had said the previous day about the band’s ability to survive should he be incapacitated had not changed. Someone needed to know what he had discovered so far about the best places for fishing, and he needed to share the knowledge he had long had about survival in the open. Lord Gaston-Reade was clearly out of the question, and Mr. Peter Roxeter was as well, simply by his inability to think of their situation in any realistic light. He seemed to think that some miracle would bring them a ship. William Barker was a jolly fellow, but clumsy and awkward and not too brilliant, though worthy and good-natured. Lady Venture, he knew from long association, was inveterately superior and aware of her position. She would never condescend to do anything to contribute to her own subsistence, and she was adamant that her maid tend only to her own needs.
His best choices were, unfortunately, the ladies who were already doing far too much for the sustenance of the group. Miss Zazu, from her childhood in the Blue Mountains, knew all of the fruits and edible plants of the forest, but seemed unaware of what good food came from the ocean. Miss Roxeter was learning from her maid and combined her native intelligence with a willingness to do things no lady in her position could have been expected to.
But could they learn to dive, swim and fish? Would they even be willing to, when so much of their time was already taken up with work?
The day would tell.
• • •
Savina, coming back after breakfast from a solitary foray into the forest, saw some of the men gathered down on the beach and wondered what was going on. She wandered down the path onto the golden sand and to the group, which comprised her father, her fiancé and Mr. William Barker.
“What’s going on, Papa?” she said, tugging his sleeve as she had as a young girl when she was trying to see something at the fair and was too small.
Affectionate, as he always had been, he put his arm around her shoulders. “It is the most exciting thing, Savina! Lord Gaston-Reade is the most brilliant young man. He is devising a way to get us off this island.”
“Ah, Savina,” Lord Gaston-Reade said, clearly in a good humor, for he only allowed himself to use her Christian name in such a mood. He clapped his hands together, his gray eyes alight with reflected sun. “I have decided, as your father has probably been telling you, that rather than wait for the dastardly American to send word—I’m sure he has no intention or desire to procure aid for us—I shall find a way that we can leave this dreadful island ourselves and get to civilization.”
Savina felt a trill of fear. “How . . . how will you do that?”
“We are going to build a boat!” he said, gathering all of their admiring glances to him, looking around the group and rocking from his heels up to his toes and then down again, his dark boots digging into the sand.
“How marvelous, my lord,” William Barker said, applauding. He blinked and nodded, his weak eyes watering in the tropical sun.
“Stupendous,” Savina’s father added. “What a mind you have, Lord Gaston-Reade, and how proud I will be to call you my son!”
“But . . .” Savina stopped.
“Yes?” her fiancé said with a kindly look in his cool eyes.
“But if the American captain is sending help, it will be to this position, where he last left us. If we leave—”
“I’m afraid you don’t know the way of the world very well, Savina,” Gaston-Reade said, shaking his head. “But it does your feminine heart credit that you would think that riffraff capable of decent behavior. He has no more intention of sending help than I would, in his position.”
Taken aback, Savina fell silent. It was a new and unwelcome vision of her fiancé’s behavior that he could even say that. She could only think that he had not seriously thought through that statement, and that, presented with the same situation, he would be more humane than his words suggested.
As the men went back to their plans, she slipped away, back to the encampment and the work that waited.
The day was long and the work hard, but she had occasions throughout the day to see what progress the gentlemen were making, with Lady Venture deigning to sit in the shade nearby and offer her invaluable suggestions. They had drawn in the sand a gigantic map of the island and where they thought they were in relation to Jamaica and the Windward Passage. With the war against the Americans a couple of years old already, there had been much talk of the strategic importance of the Caribbean, and the British plans to take the United States from a southern vantage point with naval power. It was a topic of much conversation among the gentlemen plantation owners of Jamaica, and so all three of the men were somewhat familiar with the territory. However, in Savina’s estimation that did not equate with being able to navigate the waters in hurricane season on a boat made from, as far as she understood their plans, lashed-together palm logs.
By the end of the day they had made no progress at all on the actual boat building, not being able to agree even in principle on the construction. It was clear to Savina that once Gaston-Reade decided on one model, the others would fall into line, but as yet he had not made his final decision.
As twilight dimmed the view, and the gentlemen, weary from all their laborious efforts, straggled back to the encampment to eat their evening meal, Savina watched carefully the interaction between Lord Gaston-Reade and his secretary. The rift from the previous day had not healed, and neither man was ready to cry friends. She wished she had persisted in her question to the secretary of why he worked for the earl, but supposed the answer would merely have been that it was a good position and lucrative. And she wondered how she could have not even seen the secretary for all those months, and yet now be so very aware of his presence every second he was near.
For that sensation of extreme awareness had not subsided. They had spoken often through the day, and he had tentatively approached her and Zazu about teaching them to fish, which they had both agreed to try the next morning after breakfast, but she had held back, not getting too close, not looking into his eyes too often.
&n
bsp; He had taken her into his arms briefly the night before as she sobbed out her fears of what she had committed herself to, and the memory haunted her; she still felt raw and exposed in his presence. Every second he held her had brought a new sensation, his fingers stroking her back, his rough beard chafing her cheek, his tender voice whispering consolation in her ear. Drawing away had been difficult but necessary because what she had really wanted to do was raise her face and kiss him on the lips, and that impulse frightened her because clearly she was becoming far too fond of him and the attraction she had felt as a frisson of desire was deepening hour by hour, in a startlingly quick time, into friendship, dependence and tenderness, all of the things she had hoped for with her husband-to-be. With the weariness of her daily work her spirit was wearing down, but speaking with him buoyed her and gave her courage to go on. It was what she had always imagined marriage would be, that mutual giving and taking of comfort and support, though she couldn’t think where she had gotten that notion but from her own fading memories of the tender love between her father and mother.
It was not too late to crush those developing emotions toward Anthony Heywood though, and she would be ruthless where she knew she was right. She had given her word to wed Lord Gaston-Reade, and though she was still deciding if that decision must be held to, in light of what she now knew, she would make no hasty moves.
As tired as she was from a day of work, she had fallen deep asleep the moment her body came to rest on her rough pallet. But sometime in the wee hours of the morning she had awoken with the urgent need to relieve herself, had gone as far into the forest as she dared, and then hastened back to sit down by the banked fire for a moment.
She heard someone else stirring, and of course it was the one person she would have avoided if she could have, Anthony Heywood, who joined her at the fireside on the log he had dragged there for them to sit on. Were they the only two people in camp who ever had a sleepless night? They seemed cursed to be perpetually awake at the same moments.
“Miss Savina,” he whispered without preamble, “I’m so glad to catch you alone like this. I have been worrying all day that you would fear the effects of our conversation last night.”
What did he mean? Had he sensed her divided emotions and inappropriate attraction to him? If so he must be ruthlessly disabused of that notion. She stayed silent and stared at the fire, stirring it to a flame and tossing a piece of wood on it.
“I would never reveal to your fiancé that you went into your engagement with a misunderstanding of any kind. It is your secret, and not mine.”
“Thank you, Mr. Heywood,” she said when she could find her voice.
There was silence for a few more moments and then the secretary, clearly sensing that no further conversation on that topic would be welcome, asked her what she thought of the men’s determination to build a boat and go for help.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “It depends on whether one believes the American captain’s vow to send help for us. If he does send help, then it would be foolish beyond belief to risk anyone’s life on the open sea in a boat of such crude construction. But if his veracity is not to be trusted, then going for help may be our only chance at rescue for some time, perhaps years. This cay is not populated, nor does it hold anything of interest except as a provider of tropical fruits.”
“Your summation is admirably succinct, Miss Savina.”
“So,” she said directly, and looked him in the eyes for the first time that day, “do you believe that Captain Verdun will be as good as his word, or do you side with my fiancé and think he was lying?” She examined his face. The gentlemen had taken turns using the razor and strop to good effect, but Mr. Heywood’s beard came in quickly, if rather straggly and patchy. He had assumed the habit of scruffing his chin when thinking. He did so then and gazed into the fire.
“I think he was telling the truth. American naval men are as honorable as our own, from my understanding, and as tender toward the fair sex, but my fear is that as good as his intentions are, he can only do what he can. He may not be able to get a message to the British, his enemy. If he does, he may not be believed. Our naval force may think it is a trick or a hoax, at least until our own ship doesn’t arrive when and where it is supposed to. We have no idea what happened to the Linden and the Wessex, but they may have sailed on for England, or they may have gone down in the storm.” He sighed deeply. “Even then, even if he does manage to send a message to the British navy and they believe it and send help, his directions may not be exact and the navy may find it hard to locate us.”
Savina nodded. She had come to some of the same conclusions herself. “I know it is very much dependent upon chance, but I believe that he will get word out of our position, and it’s possible that even this moment a party is being put together to come find us. To that end,” she said, “I think that we should be setting up a system for making our presence known. I was thinking a signal fire on the rock promontory . . . smoky during the day, and flaming brightly at night. It is vital, in my estimation, that we make our presence known.”
Mr. Heywood gazed at her with open admiration. “You, Miss Savina, are the cleverest person among us. I should have thought of that.”
“Not only that,” she said with a grim set to her mouth, “but I think that it is time for Lady Venture to do something other than sit on a log and complain. I think the signal fire shall be her and Annie’s chore.”
Heywood chuckled. “If you manage to make Lady Venture do that work, I will forever think you a magician, Miss Savina Roxeter.”
Nine
Instead of merely surviving, Savina thought, back on her pallet to try to sleep until sunrise, she had to begin to think of their sojourn on the island differently. If it had never happened, she would be halfway to England by then, serene and unruffled, still thinking that Lord Gaston-Reade was a progressive, kindly, forward-thinking man who, if a bit stiff in his manner, was a man of the future. She would be able to eventually work with her husband, she would still be thinking, to end slavery on his plantation, and free the poor people who labored so hard in the Jamaican heat for his profit and toward their own death.
She lay on her back, beyond the edge of the tarpaulin that protected their encampment, and gazed up at the radiant blanket of stars that arched above her. Around her she could hear the various sounds of the night, from those close by—the snuffling and deep breathing of her sleeping companions—to those distant, the call of some night bird in the forest beyond their camp and the unidentifiable scuttling of reptiles in the underbrush. Though there was unceasing work in this beautiful, dangerous, exotic place, so was there peace for reflection and time to contemplate.
Reality was a bitter potion to take, but sometimes the bitter medicines were those most efficacious. This time out of civilization was given to her as a lesson. What had she done when faced with a difficult reality? She had seized control, asked no permission, and found a way to survive. She was under no illusion; without Zazu and the others she didn’t know if she would have been successful, but she would have died in the attempt.
The lesson for her was that she was far more resolute than she had ever realized, and stronger. Her fear was that those attributes were guaranteed to make her marriage to Lord Gaston-Reade turbulent. The lady-wives of the diplomats she had entertained as her father’s hostess had practiced a kind of gentle submission, for the most part, to their husbands’ wills, preferring to find ways to subvert spousal decrees with devious stratagems Savina had always thought underhanded. Perhaps it was the only way to express their own determination and do as they wished some of the time, but it seemed a poor exchange for an open understanding between marital partners. If she married Gaston-Reade, would she in time become one of those wily wives, devising schemes for getting around his commands? She’d rather die. And yet her father’s one wish was to see her well married, settled in the kind of affluence beyond what he could have ever provided for her. Marriage to the earl was a surety against
poverty or want for her and any children she might bear.
“What are you thinking?”
Savina looked over toward Zazu, who was awake and had rolled over to face her. Moving to her side to face her maid, Savina whispered, “Zazu, what made you leave Jamaica with me? I know you said you couldn’t marry Nelson, but you could have gone back to your village in the Blue Mountains to your family, or found other work. You could have hoped for something to change.”
Zazu, her dark face indistinct in the thin moonlight that peeked from clouds overhead, said, “When I first came down from the mountains to find work, I was afraid. But my mother and grandmother . . . they are descended from a long line of queens. If our people had not been tricked into coming to Jamaica, I would be perhaps a chieftess, or warrior princess.”
“You mentioned that in your confrontation with Venture the other day, but I wasn’t sure if you were serious or merely putting her in her place,” Savina whispered, fascinated by the glimpse into a hidden history. The Maroons did not tell the ancient stories to many people, preferring to keep their history a secret, but Zazu did occasionally tell bits of their history as she had heard it from her grandmother. Propping herself up on one elbow, Savina said, “I can’t believe I have a princess for a maid. It seems backward.”
“Why?” Zazu murmured. “Even being a princess is a kind of servitude.”
“I never thought of it that way. But that doesn’t answer my question.”
“I know. You interrupted me.”
“Excuse me, Princess Zazu,” Savina whispered, ending on a soft giggle.
Zazu pinched her elbow. “Listen; I came down from the mountain because my grandmother thought I should learn about the great world. She wanted to know why your people do what you do, why you keep slaves. She thought I could learn. It is said that our people kept slaves once in the old land; if a man or woman was indebted to you for something, they could pledge their service to you and be your slave. Or, if two nations went to war, those people who were conquered would become slaves, sometimes. My grandmother wanted to know how your people thought, whether all of your people felt they had a right to own us, to enslave us. After the peace, it was thought that the English would leave us alone, but still your government wished to make trouble for us. We didn’t understand.”
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