Lady Savage

by Donna Lea Simpson

  Savina stared at it for a moment, and when she looked up again it was to find Venture’s prominent eyes fixed on her, her expression unreadable.

  “You and Bertie were having a set-to, hmm?”

  “How do you know?”

  “My brother’s voice carries when he is upset, which is fairly often, since he has a rather choleric disposition, just like our father did. When he is old he will be fat and angry and red-faced and die of apoplexy. Just like Father.”

  Savina almost laughed out loud at the satisfied tone in Lady Venture’s grim pronouncement. On impulse she asked, “Venture, do you love Mr. William Barker?”

  “Love him?” The woman’s gaze slewed around to Savina, but returned almost immediately to her fire. She threw another branch on it and stood back, dusting her hands off. “Good Lord, no. I would never marry a man I loved.”

  “Why?” Savina stepped back from the roaring blaze, keeping her balance on the rocky surface with difficulty.

  Lady Venture stared again at Savina, her gaze holding longer this time. “You cannot imagine?”

  Savina shook her head.

  The gleam of the fire lit the other lady’s eyes with a cold, silvery glitter. “When you love them, they have you,” Lady Venture said, holding out her hand, palm-up. Then she fisted her hand. “And then they can make you do or feel anything, by twisting you around into knots.”

  Taken aback by the vehemence of the other woman’s tone, Savina said, “Not all men are like that, Venture. Aren’t you being unfair?”

  “You’re too young to understand.”

  “You aren’t that much older than I.”

  “I’m twenty-nine, Savina.” Her mouth was turned down in a grimace and she suddenly looked older than her years. “Or at least I tell people I’m twenty-nine,” she admitted. “And I will until I’m married. Then I can get old.”

  The hurt was so firmly embedded in Lady Venture, it was a part of her, Savina thought sadly. Someone had hurt her in the past, but it wasn’t her place to pry. “So, do you think I should marry your brother?”

  “Of course,” Lady Venture said. “You’re lucky to get him. Just make sure the marriage lines are drawn up so you have good pin money, jewels, and a carriage of your own, and hire good-looking footmen. Once you have borne the future Lord Gaston-Reade and another in case that babe dies, you can take into your bed whomever you please.”

  Shocked, Savina turned away and climbed back toward the beach. She couldn’t face going back to the encampment just yet; she needed to sit alone and let the venom wash away from her. Lady Venture’s outlook on life was repellent, but it was reflective of her own experience, it seemed. How justified was it, and how much would become her own experience in time? She found a quiet spot on the beach in the shadow of the rock promontory and sat in the sand to watch the sun set while Lady Venture stood alone and stared out to the horizon.

  • • •

  Tony built a fire for their camp, teasing the banked embers into a blaze with dried beach grass and placing what wood he had gathered over it. Annie, Lady Venture’s maid, had come back from the forest a few moments before and was bustling around her and Lady Venture’s pallet. Mr. Roxeter was already asleep, his resonant snores competing with the night noises of the tropical forest for precedence. A more different night than the one before could not be imagined, and the benign night sky, a blanket of stars overhead, seemed to beg forgiveness for its fit of temper. The earl, too, had returned from the beach and was laying down to sleep.

  The flames leaped and danced, and Tony saw William Barker come out of the forest empty-handed. It had been Tony’s impression that the fellow was gathering wood for his fiancée’s fire, but it appeared that he was wrong. Barker came and sat down by the blaze.

  “Barker,” Tony murmured, sitting back on his haunches, “is it your impression that his lordship does have a good idea of where an inhabited island is? You worked in the Jamaican government, you should have some idea. Does he know what he’s talking about?”

  “I don’t have any better notion than you do, Heywood. I’m going along with his lordship. He appears to know something about it all. You know him better than I do.”

  Tony nodded. That was what worried him. His employer was the kind who took a bit of knowledge, inflated it into certainty, and could bluster his way into making others believe him. In his business dealings that often worked to his advantage, and to some extent he was a natural-born leader of men. Or, in this case, he could be telling the truth. He was not a stupid man by any means, but he did have that tendency to overconfidence. On a couple of memorable occasions since Tony had been his secretary that overconfidence had led to trouble. “So, will you get on the raft with him?”

  “I have no choice,” Barker said with an edge of desperation in his voice.

  “What do you mean, you have no choice?” Tony took a seat on the log nearby. “No one can make you if you don’t want to. I tell you this, man to man: I will think nothing less of you if you refuse.”

  “No, I have to, Heywood. Venture will not let me be until I do, I know it.”

  “She wouldn’t want you to do anything you were uncomfortable with.”

  Barker looked at him with astonished incredulity. “You’ve known her longer than I. Do you believe that?”

  Tony considered the matter. “She will badger you,” he admitted at last. “But if you stand firm . . .”

  But Barker was shaking his head. “No, you don’t understand. She is a woman who will not be refused. I’ve tried saying no to her before. It doesn’t work.”

  Tony fell silent, hearing an edge of desperation in the younger man’s tone. He had been a witness to their courtship and realized that Lady Venture made the decision, and then swept Barker along, like a crab on the tide. And yet, she had done much the same thing to him when first he began working for Lord Gaston-Reade and he had refused to be impelled by the force of her personality; she had abruptly desisted and now treated him with frosty formality as if she had never implied that she would welcome him if he chose to court her.

  “I’m tired. I’m going to sleep now,” Barker said, rising and making his way back to their crude sleeping area.

  Heywood sat and contemplated the flames for a while, then saw a dim shape approaching; it was Savina, he knew it by how his heart thumped at her proximity.

  “Come and sit by the fire,” he whispered.

  She did so, but on the far side, cross-legged on the ground, her tattered skirts spread around her. “I see you have put the tarpaulin back up.”

  “Yes. It wasn’t damaged too badly, though some of the grommets were ripped off by the force of the wind. I think we were better sheltered last night than our friends.” He fed the fire with more wood. “What do you think of the boat building?” he asked.

  She stared into the fire, the brilliant gold of the leaping flames lighting gold highlights in her dusky hair, which flowed over her shoulders in dark waves. The light burnished her cheekbones to glowing pink and lit a fire in her eyes, and he stared, unable to believe that hours before he had held her and kissed her.

  “I’m worried, Tony. Albert can’t—or won’t—answer any of my questions. He doesn’t even know if the thing will float, or for how long. Or what he will do if a storm comes up while he and whoever goes with him are out on the ocean.”

  “And how is he going to steer it? I have some grave doubts myself.” Tony paused and poked at the fire with the long stick kept nearby. “But what if he’s right, Savina? What if Captain Verdun doesn’t send help? We could be stranded here for years . . . or forever.”

  “I know. I’ve thought of that. I don’t think my father could stand it, Tony, I don’t.”

  Her voice was clogged with tears, and he wanted to comfort her, but there was a wedge between them now, it seemed. She had avoided him all day, veering off when he approached and keeping her distance even at mealtimes. Their closeness of the night before had reversed into a sensitivity, on her part, that he
didn’t quite understand.

  She cleared her throat. “So I think he may as well try, Tony. And he’s going to anyway. He is implacable once his mind is made up to something.”

  “How well I know that,” Tony answered. “But William Barker will likely be browbeaten into accompanying him.”

  “Mr. Barker is an adult male, quite capable of making up his own mind,” she said acidly. “Men have all the power, they may as well use it any way they please. But I will not,” she went on, defying her own argument, “allow my father to take part in the expedition.”

  Tony stood, circled the fire and crouched by her. “Don’t worry, Savina, I will do anything I have to to keep your father on dry land.”

  “Thank you, Tony,” she said, leaning on his shoulder. “Thank you.”

  Fourteen

  Morning light drifted through the canopy of palms and fruit trees. Zazu and Savina cut fruit and whispered together while the others did their morning business. Savina’s father had taken to tidying the sleeping area in the morning, his natural sense of order reasserting itself even in such primitive surroundings. Annie, with a shy smile, offered to take food to Lady Venture, who, having volunteered to take a night as well as her usual day turn watching the fire, would be exhausted and looking for food and relief.

  The other men wandered back into the encampment and the crude shelter of the oiled canvas tarpaulin. The various boxes and barrels of water, flour and utensils were pressed into service as benches and seats and placed around the perimeter of the refuge, with one barrel used as a table, where Savina placed the platter holding breakfast. After their Spartan meal of fruit and water—tea was rationed ever more sparingly as the days passed, as were the food items Captain Verdun had allowed his captives—Lord Gaston-Reade stood and said, “I think that the raft is ready to set sail. I would like to do it at first light tomorrow, assuming the weather holds.”

  “You are still intent on this, my lord?” Tony said.

  “Yes, Tony,” he said with exaggerated emphasis. “Your friend, the American captain, is not going to send help, and unless we do something, we will be stranded forever.”

  Savina saw Tony’s expression darken at the earl’s taunting tone.

  “Are you sure you know what direction you need to go to get to an inhabited island?” he asked, staring steadily at his employer. “And how are you going to steer the thing, anyway?”

  “You have not been interested until now,” the earl said with an edge of resentment in his refined voice. “You have no right to question. It is sufficient that we think it’s ready to go,” he finished, indicating Savina’s father and William Barker. “Now we need only decide who is to go along.”

  Savina held her breath, but her father did not volunteer.

  “I should sink you like a stone,” he said ruefully, looking down at his paunch, which though deflating from a steady diet of fruit and fish was still considerable. “And I don’t think I would be a jot of help. I wouldn’t be able to row very fast.”

  “You have already done your part, my dear sir. How about it, Savina?” Gaston-Reade said, looking over at her, an unpleasant edge in his voice. “Shall we test our life partnership by setting sail alone?”

  “Are you mad?” Tony said, leaping to his feet. “You can’t mean to take Savina with you?”

  “Why not? You spent the whole night with her in some deserted cave. Why shouldn’t I have some time?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Albert,” Savina said. “Tony and I had no choice.”

  “You and Tony seem to have become very close friends. I don’t like it, Savina, and I won’t tolerate it.” The earl’s enmity toward his secretary had finally been stated aloud.

  “My lord,” Savina’s father said, staggering to his feet, alarm on his gray, stubbly face. “Please do not speak to my daughter in that fashion. Of course she cannot go with you. I know you wouldn’t seriously suggest it.”

  “It was said in jest,” the earl said irritably. The shadows of the tarpaulin shrouded his face, but his petulant expression was clear in his tone. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m sorry some seem to have lost their sense of humor.”

  How sad, Savina thought, that when faced with opposition he retreated to the tired it was only a joke defense. She realized that though he did not deign to show it, her night alone with Tony had rankled and festered. It was natural, if he cared for her, that he would be a little jealous of her and Tony’s easy friendship—and more than friendship that she hoped he did not sense or suspect—but she would have liked him better if he had shown his anger in a more forthright manner.

  “Barker? How about it?”

  Mr. Barker, with a frightened look on his pinched face, stood. “Of course I will go with you, my lord.”

  “Good man,” the earl said, clapping him on the shoulder. “I knew I could count on you. Going to be brothers, and now we will be companions in this grand adventure.”

  It was settled as easily as that, though Savina doubted that William Barker was enthusiastic about the adventure of it all, as Lord Gaston-Reade claimed to be.

  The next day, though, dawned cloudy, and the earl deemed it too possible that a tropical storm would overtake their island refuge. They were in an uncertain time of year, when storms of vicious proportions could sweep through at a moment’s notice. The next day, too, was thought to bring storms, though it was calm with only some gray clouds on the horizon. Savina wondered if Gaston-Reade was fearful, and perhaps not as certain as he pretended that he knew how to get to safety. She had hoped that his confidence was backed by a solid foundation of knowledge, but it seemed to her that he was delaying doing what he had so buoyantly planned.

  The third morning she strolled down to the beach, thinking that she would help the indefatigable Lady Venture with the signal fire. The woman had not had much of a break, except to sleep at night, and she was becoming brown, drawn and tired-looking, her bony face haggard, her sturdy frame gaunt, her prominent eyes bloodshot and wild. Savina, with an armful of green wood and bunches of leaves, was descending the sloped beach as the earl, Mr. Barker and her father again stood looking at the raft as if it would miraculously sprout wings and fly them to a safe place. Tony, now recovered completely from his strained ankle, was diving off the other rock promontory to spear fish for their dinner, and Zazu and Annie were back at the encampment cleaning up.

  Savina envied Tony his task that morning. She had learned to swim, much to her own surprise, and though she wasn’t as proficient as Tony, she had managed to spear a fish on her tenth or eleventh try. Swimming under the water was the real joy, though, seeing a different world under the surface of the water, a world that teemed with life and vivid color, a world that swirled and moved and swayed to forces they didn’t even notice above the surface. She and Zazu had shared the adventure privately, stripping off the heaviest of clothes so they could swim relatively unfettered in their chemises. She always paid for her underwater adventures with red, sore eyes the rest of the day, but it was worth it.

  Though she longed for civilization for the creature comforts it had to offer—the deprivation was harsh and they were all losing weight and becoming drawn—she knew she would miss much of their life on the island for what she had discovered about herself and would have to deny once she was constrained again by stays and societal expectations. If they returned to society. The calm and prim demeanor she had assumed for her life in society was a mask, and had so little to do with what was inside of her that going back to that behavior would be arduous.

  She looked up at Venture, who stood on the edge of the rock promontory, her eyes shaded, looking out to the horizon. Even she had lapsed some, her fastidious hairstyles a tangled mat brittle from the constant exposure to the sea breeze and sun. Venture stiffened that very instant and cried out, waving her arms, and for a horrible moment Savina thought she was going to fall from the edge to the dashing waves below, but then she turned and called out to the rest of them, her words incoherent in
the stiff breeze.

  Turning back to the sea, the woman waved her arms and hopped up and down in a mad dance, and Savina, frozen, watched in confusion. She glanced down the beach at the men, and they appeared bewildered too, but then she looked up and Tony was standing, stiff and watchful, on the other rock promontory that framed the scythe of white sand. He shouted out and pointed to the horizon.

  Finally Savina got the pantomime and raced the rest of the way along the beach, stumbling and losing precious leaves in the process. With one free hand she climbed the rocky outcropping and scaled the treacherous length to the signal fire.

  Breathless, she approached Lady Venture. “Is . . . is it—”

  “A ship! A ship, there, on the horizon!”

  Savina strained her eyes, could see nothing, but then followed the line of Venture’s outstretched arm and saw, glory of glories, distant white sails against the azure of the skyline. Feverishly, she fed the fire with the green banana leaves and palm fronds, trying to get the smoke going. In her haste she almost smothered the fire and fell to her knees, weeping and blowing at the tiny flame left, trying to get the greens to catch. She kept looking over her shoulder but lost sight of the boat.

  She stood. “Where is it?”

  Lady Venture slumped in defeat. “It’s gone. They didn’t see us.” She turned on Savina, fists clenched. “You were so slow! You just . . . just . . .” She fell to her knees and covered her eyes, wailing and knuckling her eyes with her grimy fists. “I can’t do this anymore, I can’t!”

  Finally, the greenery caught and billowing puffs of smoke floated to the sky . . . too late. “Venture, I’m sorry,” Savina said, patting her back, trying in vain to calm the hysterical woman. “I didn’t know what was going on at first, and then the leaves wouldn’t catch. I’m sorry.”

  Tony watched, incredulous, as the boat disappeared, slipping back over the horizon. No. It could not happen thus. He climbed down the rocky outcropping and pelted across the sandy beach. “My lord,” he yelled to the earl, “We can’t let this happen. Why don’t we use the raft . . . row out and try to get in sight of the damned thing.”