Jason, Veronica

by Never Call It Love

"You're sure they are English?"

  "In these waters? Of course."

  She understood the captain's decision. If his little ship was seen, he could have no hope of outrunning men-of-war. And so he had chosen to reef sail, bringing the ship to a halt. Lights out, it lay rocking in its cocoon of fog, like a rabbit trying to hide from coursing hounds.

  Through the hammer of her heartbeat she could now hear other sounds, growing more distinct by the moment. Creak of canvas; even faint, fog-distorted voices. A diffused light shone through the smother, although the ship itself was invisible. With agonizing slowness, the blurred glow passed and was lost in the fog, only to be replaced by a second ghostly spot of radiance. It too passed, but as the third ship drew close, she realized with a leap of terror that the fog was thinning. Already, below the bulwark a streak of black water widened where only moments before there had been swirling grayness. And she could see other lights on the English ship, perhaps deck lights, or the glow of confidently unshrouded portholes. She could even make out the blurred bulk of the ship itself. How soon would one of her countrymen, moving about on the deck over there, or perched as a lookout in a mast, see the shadowy shape of the French merchantman?

  The warship kept its steady course. Its light and the voices of the men aboard it faded into the fog. Now she could hear no sound except her own thudding heartbeats and the gentle slap of water against the hull. With a shuddering breath she turned to the man beside her and collapsed against him.

  For a moment he stood motionless. Then he made an inarticulate sound. His arms went around her, and his mouth, warm and desirous, came down on hers. The sweet shock of that kiss seemed to go through her whole body. Then it began, that warm yearning, as if something deep within her had begun to melt.

  Around them the ship was coming alive. On the raised afterdeck Captain Marquette's voice issued crisp commands. Running footsteps sounded, and unfurling canvas snapped. Not speaking, arm around her waist, Patrick drew her along the deck and into the cabin. "Where is the flint box?"

  "On the right side of the door." She was aware that already her voice sounded strange, heavy with desire.

  Lamplight bloomed. He looked at her for a long moment and then said, in a thickened voice, "Turn around."

  She felt his hands undoing the hooks at her back, felt them rush over her erect nipples and then her belly and thighs as he pushed her garments downward. Naked, shameless in her need, she stepped out of the circle of crumpled clothing and turned to face him. He held her tight against him for a moment, warm mouth covering hers, and then said in that same constricted voice, "Lie down."

  Stretched upon the bed. she watched him as he undressed and lay down beside her. For a while her body stirred only languorously as his hands stroked her, as his lips kissed her mouth and her throat and his tongue teased her nipples. But as the hunger deep within her intensified, she heard herself whimpering with desire, found her body arching against the leg that, bent at the knee, had placed across her. Then his weight was upon her, and his thrusting body was carrying her higher and higher toward the long, exquisite, almost painful fall.

  For a while afterward they lay side by side, spent and silent. Then he propped his dark head on one hand and looked down at her. His lips smiled, but his eyes were somber. "Was it still only your body?"

  Weighted with languor, she did not want to even think about that question. "I don't know."

  "Let me rephrase it. Do you still hate me very much?"

  Reluctantly she forced herself to consider. "You have given me every reason to."

  "I know. I realize I evened the score between us well before last night And now you are even cut off from your country."

  She answered slowly, "Somehow that does not seem to matter." Then, unable to bear the conflict between her physical need of this man and the thought of all the havoc he had wrought in her life, she cried, "Leave it bel Don't talk."

  After a moment he said, "Yes, we have better things to do than talk," and leaned down to cover her mouth with his own.

  This time their coming together was less frenzied. To the gentle rolling of the ship, they made long, slow love. Afterward they lay silent for a while. Then he said, "Shall we sleep now?"

  He got out of bed and crossed the cabin toward the lamp swaying in its gimbal. She looked at the wide shoulders, the lean waist and flat buttocks, the long-muscled legs. Not knowing quite what the words meant, she thought: Perhaps you are my country now.

  CHAPTER 28

  To Elizabeth, standing on deck beside Patrick and Colin as the little ship neared the wharf, St.-Denis looked like an island out of a young child's dream, magical in its perfection. In its interior, jungle-clad mountains rose, appearing not green in the late-afternoon light, but a deep, velvety blue. She could made out the white thread of a waterfall descending from near the top of the loftiest peak. Not far from the falls, the gray-stone turrets of what she knew must be a fort poked above the trees. Her eye, sweeping downward toward the island's shore, found the dazzling white square of the town of St.-Denis, surrounded by pastel-colored buildings, yellow and blue and pink. From the square a road, also bordered by houses, sloped down to a palm-fringed crescent of pinkish beach. Jutting out from it was a long wharf with three ships moored beside it.

  She did not know then that the buildings that bordered that sloping street were grog shops and brothels. As yet, she'd had no experience with the insects that infested tropical kitchens and the mildew that attacked carpets, furniture, and clothing. Nor had she met her future neighbors—planters and their bored wives, enjoying luxuries and status they could never have attained back in France, but always afraid of the sullen black slaves sweating in the cane fields and rum distilleries. No, to Elizabeth the island appeared like a bit of Paradise afloat on an opalescent sea that shifted in color from blue to turquoise to emerald.

  She had enjoyed these past weeks. Once the ship was well out of English waters, she had moved freely along its decks. Each evening she and Patrick and Colin had dined with Captain Marquette in the master's cabin. Eagerly she had listened to her husband and brother-in-law make plans for the future. Always, Captain Marquette said, there were planters in the islands who wanted to sell their properties and go back to France. Right now there was such a man on St.-Denis, a distiller named Armand Duval.

  "Duval's trouble," Captain Marquette said, "is that he likes his own product too much. Already he has stopped operating his distillery. I assume he and his family are living off what money he obtained from the sale of his slaves."

  Patrick asked, "How much do you think he would want for his distillery?"

  "In pounds? I should think a thousand would buy it."

  Patrick looked at his brother. Colin nodded. "At that price, we should have enough left to start operations and to keep ourselves fed and housed until we began to make a profit."

  "Of course," Captain Marquette said, "you'll have to buy slaves."

  Elizabeth felt an inward shrinking. True, she already had had some experience with slavery. In London several women of her acquaintance had owned black "pages," small boys who were petted and pampered and dressed in satin pantaloons and ostrich-plumed turbans. As soon as they were no longer small and cuddlesome, they were banished to the scullery or, in some cases, turned out into the London streets to make their way as best they could. Repellent as such careless cruelty was to Elizabeth, it seemed less so than the thought of men and women working all their lives for nothing more than some sort of roof over their heads and enough food to keep them alive and productive.

  Patrick said, "I am not going to tie up my capital in slaves. It will be cheaper to contract with some planter for workers."

  Elizabeth looked at him. Was that his only reason, that it would be cheaper? Whatever his motive, she was glad of his decision. True, the planter, not the slaves themselves, would receive whatever money Patrick paid for their labor. Still, it seemed to her a less repellent arrangement than outright ownership of other human beings.
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br />   Slowly the ship had moved south, exchanging hails now and then with other merchantmen—French or American or Spanish—but sighting no more English warships. Spending most of each day on deck, Elizabeth had seen the first dolphins arching playfully beside the ship, the first flying fish, and swimming several feet down in the green water that slipped past the hull, the first tropical turtles, large and brown and grotesquely awkward.

  For Elizabeth the voyage had not been without its worrisome moments. One night as she and Patrick lay in the bunk bed, her head on his shoulder, she asked hesitantly, "Will you mind it so very much, never seeing Ireland again?"

  "But I will see it again! Not only see it, but fight for it It may take me years, but I'll get back there."

  She tried to keep her voice mild, unchanging. "But, Patrick, already you've given ten years of your life to the cause of—"

  "And I failed. Is that what you were going to say? Elizabeth, do you know how long the Irish have been struggling against English invaders? More than six hundred years! What are ten years compared to that? I'll keep fighting, and other Irishmen will too, and someday we will win. It may not be in my lifetime, or even in my grandson's, if I have one, but someday we will win."

  She wanted to cry out against his stubborn folly. How could he dream of returning to a country where he was landless now, and where his neck would be in danger the moment he stepped ashore? But no. Best not to argue with him, lest she only strengthen his resolve. If he found success and contentment in the West Indies, eventually he might abandon the thought of returning to Ireland.

  Now she said, gaze fixed on that distant waterfall, "How beautiful, more beautiful than any of the other islands we have seen." Entering the West Indian archipelago at a point north of Haiti, they had passed many islands, some little more than uninhabited dots of sand and palmettos, others with settlements visible near their shores. All of them were either unclaimed or in French hands.

  Patrick, eyes fixed on the shore, merely nodded in answer to Elizabeth's remark. But Colin said, "Yes, ifs beautiful. Be prepared, though, for the unpleasant things—the spring and fall rainy seasons, for instance, and the roaches all year around."

  "Roaches?"

  "A variety of what we call black beetles. But down here they are brown, and they fly, and they are almost the size of hummingbirds. And you should be prepared, too, for the voodoo drums." Seeing Elizabeth's puzzled expression, he added, "or perhaps it is called obeah on this island. Anyway, it is a religion the blacks brought with them from Africa. Their nighttime ceremonies involve drumming, and that gets on white people's nerves."

  Patrick said, "It won't get on mine. And as far as I'm concerned, their religion probably makes as much sense as anybody's."

  Behind them, crewmen swarmed through the rigging, securing the sails already wrapped around the yardarms. In the bow, a sailor stood poised to toss a line to a dock worker standing on the wharf. Patrick said, "Have you finished your packing, Elizabeth?"

  "Not quite. And I want to change my gown."

  "Take your time about it. I want to talk to Captain Marquette. Perhaps he'll arrange for me to meet this Armand Duval yet today."

  She did take her time about it, dressing in a green lawn gown and in the one hat she had brought with her, a wide-brimmed leghorn straw which she had placed in the hand trunk atop folded garments. Carefully she scrutinized her image in the mirror above the washstand. Since she hoped fervently that Patrick would be content to settle down here, she wanted to make a good first impression upon the townspeople.

  Her husband opened the cabin door. "It is arranged. Marquette will ask Duval to call upon us at the inn this afternoon."

  "Is my appearance all right?"

  He looked at her face, shadowed by the leghorn hat. A wide green ribbon the same shade as her gown ran beneath her chin from one side of the wide brim to the other, holding the hat in place. "You don't need my opinion. I am sure your mirror has already told you you look lovely."

  She said, still worried, "I am afraid my complexion... Perhaps I should have stayed on the shady side of the deck."

  "I like your face when it's that sun-warmed color." He always had, from the moment he saw her.

  When they emerged onto the deck, they found that the ship, now tied up at the wharf next to an American merchantman, was deserted. Captain Marquette and Colin, seated in an open public carriage, waited on the dock below. As the carriage, drawn by two aged gray horses, rattled over the wharf planking, Captain Marquette said, "I regret, madame, that I must take you along what is called Rue du Port, or Harbor Street. Although most unsavory, it is the only approach to the town from the wharf."

  Elizabeth said demurely. "Thank you for warning me. I shall keep my gaze fixed straight ahead."

  She did not, of course. Her eyes, shadowed by the hat brim, shot glances right and left as the carriage moved past small blue or pink or yellow houses, most of them scabrous with peeling paint, where women of every shade from white to coal black sat invitingly at windows or in doorways. From the shadowy recesses of an open-fronted café came the wheeze of a concertina and the sound of drunken shouting. Along the sidewalk moved French soldiers from the fort and merchant seamen from those ships tied up at the wharf. Some seemed fairly sober. Others tacked wildly from one side of the sidewalk to the other, like vessels beaten by conflicting winds. She wondered if any of those men were off pirate vessels. All of the merchant ships in the harbor had flown either the French fleur-de-lis or the red-and-white-striped flag, with its white stars set in a circle on a blue field, of the rebellious American colonies. But that, of course, proved nothing. No pirate ship would enter a port flying its death's-head insignia.

  Glancing to her left, Elizabeth saw someone she recognized, the shy young sailor who had brought her all her meals her first few days aboard ship. Moving down the sidewalk with a half-empty rum bottle in one hand and the other arm around a pretty mulatto girl, he did not look in the least shy now. Elizabeth said, before she could check herself, "Captain, isn't that Richard from your ship? Why, he can't be more than seventeen."

  "He is not yet sixteen. Boys grow up fast at sea. But do not be alarmed, madame. The... er, feminine inhabitants of Harbor Street never invade the respectable part of town, nor do off-duty soldiers and merchant sailors, unless they are completely sober. To do so would bring instant arrest."

  The carriage entered the limestone-paved square. Along the sidewalks, shadowed by second-floor balconies, moved a motley crowd—soldiers in groups, white men and women in European dress, and black women, graceful as Greek caryatids, balancing bundles on their white-turbaned heads. On the far side of the square the carriage stopped before a three-story pink building with tall jalousied doors on the ground floor and lacy wrought-iron balconies above. This, Captain Marquette explained, was the combined coffeehouse and inn.

  "I will find Armand Duval now, and tell him you would like to see him as soon as possible."

  The accommodations to which the inn's proprietor showed them—a sitting room and bedroom for Patrick and Elizabeth, and a single room across the corridor for Colin—looked clean and comfortable, although not luxurious. Carpets of woven straw covered the floors. The bedsteads and even the washstand were of white-painted iron. In the tropics, the innkeeper explained, where only constant vigilance could keep wood-boring insects at bay, it was wise to use metal wherever possible.

  Elizabeth had just finished unpacking when Armand Duval arrived. He was a man of about forty-five, with a once-husky body now gone to fat, and a yellowish tinge to the whites of his eyes. He declined Patrick's offer of brandy. Obviously he feared that the weakness for liquor that had ruined his business might now interfere with his disposal of it.

  Elizabeth sat silently by while the two Irishmen and the Frenchman discussed the distillery. It was not her husband but her usually self-effacing brother-in-law who took the lead.

  Colin asked, "How many vats for cooking sugarcane do you have, Mr. Duval?"

  "Th
ree, and two vats for distilling rum."

  "Do you employ molasses or fresh cane juice?"

  "I use the fresh juice. So does every other distiller on St.-Denis."

  "I see. And how many gallons of rum have you produced in your best year?"

  Duval hesitated momentarily, puffy hands tightening on the knees of his fawn-colored breeches. "Oh, around six thousand"

  Colin's dark brows lifted. He repeated, with a smile, "Six?"

  The Frenchman's face flushed. "Forgive me. I meant to say almost five thousand."

  Colin said smoothly, "Yes, that is about the maximum output I would expect for a distillery of that size."

  Elizabeth felt surprised and impressed by her quiet brother-in-law's shrewd knowledgeability. It was indeed fortunate for her and Patrick, she reflected, that he had chosen to come with them. Then she saw Colin look at Patrick, as if stepping aside to allow his brother to start the bargaining.

  Patrick asked, "What is your price, Mr. Duval?"

  The distiller named a sum in French louis. Not even trying to translate the figure into pounds, Elizabeth looked at Colin and saw him nod. He said to his brother, "It sounds fair. Of course, we must see the distillery first, and we can't do that today."

  Elizabeth understood why. The light streaming in at the jalousied windows had already taken on the reddish tint of late afternoon. And aboard ship she had learned that in these latitudes, once the sun had set, darkness descended swiftly.

  "But you could see my house yet today. You will need someplace to live." Elizabeth noticed that his hands, resting on the knees of his none-too-clean breeches, trembled visibly. "The house is sound, although a bit rundown. And you can have it very cheaply. I want to sell everything, including my carriage and pair, my saddle horse, and the pony and small gig my wife and daughters sometimes use."

  Patrick said, "Elizabeth?"

  She nodded. "I would like to see the house."

  At the curb outside the inn, two bay horses stood between the shafts of a carriage badly in need of polishing. With Monsieur Duval handling the reins, they left the square by a road opposite the one by which they had entered it. On either side, separated from the road by low plaster walls and surrounded by luxurious tangles of palmettos and scarlet hibiscus, were houses of one or two stories. They belonged, Duval told them, to small-plantation owners and the town's shopkeepers. "The few large-plantation owners, of course, live in fine big villas in the island's interior." The resigned melancholy in his voice told Elizabeth that once, before his addiction made the dream impossible, he had hoped that one day he would live in such a villa.