Jason, Veronica

by Never Call It Love

  She and Patrick continued to be invited to dinner by the French planters, and to entertain them in turn. But lately she had sensed a certain coolness toward Patrick and herself at those elaborate dinners. One night they had dined at a spacious upland villa. Now that the spring rains were over, the throb of voodoo drums higher in the hills came through the jalousied windows to mingle with the sounds of polite conversation and the faint tinkle of cutlery. As the carriage, driven by Jules Burgos, took her and Patrick home through the warm darkness, Elizabeth said, "Did you notice how... distant everyone seemed tonight?"

  "I did not." Patrick yawned. The five kinds of wine served at dinner had made him sleepy. He added, "Although I would not blame them for being annoyed about that rum contract."

  "What contract?" Here on St.-Denis, Patrick of course was less reticent about his activities than he had been back in Ireland. Nevertheless, there was much she did not know about his business affairs.

  "A three-year contract I signed with a rum buyer from the American colonies." He chuckled. "Colin and I did it by underpricing every distiller on the island."

  "I don't think it was that which made people seem so strange tonight. I think it was something else, something to do with the drums."

  "The voodoo drums? Well, of course the whites don't like hearing them. They are afraid of having the blacks assemble in large numbers for any reason, religious or otherwise. That's why voodoo has been outlawed on this island Nevertheless, I guess we'll go on hearing the drums several nights each week all through the dry seasons."

  "But did you notice how everyone looked at you when the drumming began?"

  "Nonsense. The Frenchies can be annoyed with me for beating them at their own game, but they can scarcely blame me for anything the blacks do."

  Less than a week later she learned that the Frenchies not only could, but did. Invited to a morning coffee at a Madame Ribeaux's, Elizabeth sensed the tension in the atmosphere as soon as she entered the elaborately furnished salon. The usually languid ladies sat bolt upright on red plush chairs and sofas, coffeecups rigidly poised, smiles fixed.

  Madame Ribeaux, a brunette of forty-odd, who somehow, despite rich food and little exercise, had remained thin to the point of scrawniness, evidently had been chosen spokeswoman for the group. As soon as she had served coffee to Elizabeth, she leaned forward and said, "Lady Stanford, we all hope you can influence Sir Patrick."

  Puzzled and wary, Elizabeth said, "Influence him? How?"

  Madame Ribeaux's reply was indirect. "I am sure you know that the blacks still hold their illegal gatherings in the hills. Don't you realize that we all live in fear of a slave revolt?"

  "A revolt? With a fort filled with soldiers on the island, and warships in the bay more often than not?"

  "But once our war with England is over, the ships will be gone, and many of the soldiers too. Who will protect us then?"

  "I don't know. But I cannot see what this possibly has to do with my husband."

  "Lady Stanford! Everyone knows that Sir Patrick and his brother oversee operations at his distillery."

  "And?"

  "That alone would be bad enough," the Frenchwoman rushed on. "Other distillers and plantation owners use mulatto overseers. But it is also said that sometimes Sir Patrick and his brother work alongside the blacks, chopping the cane and carrying it to the hoppers!"

  Aware of the ring of hostile faces, Elizabeth tried to speak calmly. "Sometimes a great quantity of cane is floated down from the plantation above. My husband and brother-in-law must lend a hand at the chopping tables, if operations are to continue smoothly." An indignant tremble came into her voice. "Is there a law against that?"

  "There should be!" a woman on her right cried, and Madame Ribeaux said, "Exactly! Every one of us must maintain a position of superiority at all times, and in every relationship, with the slaves. Not to do so may encourage them in... rebellious ideas."

  Elizabeth got to her feet. "If the slaves on this island ever revolt, it will not be because my husband sometimes stands at the chopping table! It will be because they feel a not unnatural disinclination to go on being slaves. Good day, ladies," she said, and walked out.

  Driving home in the gig, she seethed with anger. Lazy, greedy women! French bourgeois snobs! How dare they criticize Patrick? Whatever his faults, he was vastly superior to them, just as he had been superior to the other Anglo-Irish landlords on that other island far to the north...

  With a sense of shock, she realized the significance of her emotions. Why, she was not only proud of him, but defensively so. When had her bitterness slipped away, leaving her free, not just to desire him, but to feel this pride, this fierce protectiveness? She did not know. She only knew that until he came riding home from the distillery for luncheon, every minute was going to seem an hour.

  Her anger did not abate even after she reached home. She was pacing up and down the bedroom when she heard Patrick's footsteps along the hall. The moment he appeared in the doorway, she flung herself into his arms. "Oh, Patrick! Those awful, awful women!"

  "Here, now! What is all this?"

  "The women at Madame Ribeaux's this morning! They... they acted as if you and Colin were about to get them all murdered in their beds. I mean, just because you two sometimes work at the chopping tables, they think you are encouraging the slaves to revolt. Oh, they made me so furious! I told them that if the slaves ever revolt, it will be because they don't want to go on being slaves. What makes them think that black people enjoy sweating out their lives so that fat, lazy women like them can get lazier and fatter—?"

  "Here, now!" he said again. He was laughing. "Apparently you gave as good as you got. And what do we care what the Frenchies think? They will continue to ask us to their houses, if only in hopes of learning how well or badly my distillery is doing." He kissed her. "What sort of meal are we having?"

  Her arms tightened around him. "Later." Her voice sounded drowsy. "We can have it later."

  "Well!" he said after a moment.

  Fingers busy with the hooks at the back of her gown, he went on, "Promise me something, Elizabeth. Take coffee with those harpies four mornings a week. Not more often than that. I need to save enough energy each afternoon to ride back to the distillery."

  "Don't make jokes!" He often teased her at such moments, and Elizabeth, single-minded in her feverish need, found it distracting.

  "Very well. No more jokes."

  As Patrick had prophesied, the French families continued to ask them to dinner. After an interval of almost three weeks, the island women again began to invite Elizabeth to morning coffees. She accepted some of the invitations. Evidently the women had given up hope that, through her, they might induce Sir Patrick to keep a proper aloofness from his workers, because they never brought up the subject again.

  His rum business continued to prosper. On some nights both Patrick and Colin returned to the distillery after supper to work on the books and to answer correspondence from importers in America and Europe. Elizabeth felt a growing hope that Ireland, and the fiasco in which the long-planned-for revolt had ended, were fading from Patrick's consciousness. As for herself, she found life on St.-Denis increasingly pleasant. With the steady trade winds mitigating the tropic heat, the days were cool enough that she could work in that lush rear garden. Some evenings she and Patrick sat on a stone bench she had placed out there, enjoying the fragrance of jasmine and frangipani, and the sight of wild white orchids, ghostly in the darkness, which clung to the trunks of palmettos.

  One afternoon Elizabeth lay on a wicker chaise lounge on the terrace outside her bedroom, relaxing until it was time to start preparing supper. The eaves shadowed her face and closed eyes from the sun, but she could feel its pleasant warmth through the thin fabric of her white gown and petticoats.

  Light footsteps sounded along the terrace. She realized it must be Jeanne Burgos. Even though her wages were not due until the next day, the little maid had asked if she might come by for them that afte
rnoon.

  The footsteps stopped. Someone's shadow blotted out the warm sun from Elizabeth's body. She said, not opening her eyes. "Your money is on the dining-room table."

  An amused voice said, "So there is where it is. And I thought I had lost it in South America."

  Elizabeth's eyes flew open. A vision in yellow silk and a black hat ornamented with a yellow ostrich plume, hands crossed on the handle of the closed yellow parasol she held planted on the terrace flagstones, Moira Ashley smiled down at her.

  CHAPTER 31

  Elizabeth sprang to her feet. Shocked out of any semblance of courtesy, she cried, "What are you doing here?"

  Moira's eyes widened innocently. "Why, when my knock on the door was not answered, I came around to see if there was a side entrance. Tell me, don't you keep a servant?"

  "I meant, what are you doing on St.-Denis?"

  "I came to make my fortune, or rather to try to recoup it." She glanced about her, as if looking for another chair. "Is there a place where we can talk?"

  Aware of the pulse hammering in the hollow of her throat, Elizabeth looked at the woman in whose arms her husband had spent so many nights. After a moment she managed to answer, "Come this way."

  She led her visitor through the bedroom, aware that Moira's gaze must be lingering on the bed, and then into the hall. As they moved along it, Elizabeth asked, "How did you find out...?"

  "That Patrick was on St.-Denis? In Dublin some weeks ago I met a couple named Lestrand. Madame Lestrand was a Dubliner before her marriage. They are from your neighboring island. What is the name of it? St-Michael?"

  "St.-Marc."

  "Oh, yes. The Lestrands mentioned that an Irish baronet, Sir Patrick Stanford, had taken refuge on St.-Denis."

  Elizabeth led the way into the parlor, not caring how poor the wicker furniture and straw rug might appear in Lady Moira's eyes, and waved her to a chair. Then she asked, "May I serve you something? Wine? Tea?"

  "No, thank you. I can stay only a few minutes. I must not keep Lieutenant Serraut waiting. We were introduced at the inn, and he asked to escort me here."

  Elizabeth looked through the window. One of St. Denis's three carriages for hire stood out in the road. Seated in it was a young man with reddish sideburns and a surpassingly handsome profile showing beneath his tall officer's hat. The sight brought Elizabeth small comfort. It would be foolish to hope that Moira, after following Patrick these thousands of miles, would be distracted by a lieutenant, however handsome.

  She sat down opposite her visitor. "You said you came here..."

  "To try to mend my fortune. Surely Patrick can help me. He always has given me good financial advice, which unfortunately I haven't always followed." She paused. "He is not at home now?"

  "No, he's at the distillery."

  "Ah, yes, the distillery. I heard about it from the Lestrands and also from the innkeeper here. You see, I intend to invest what money I have left either in a sugar plantation or in the manufacture of rum. Perhaps Patrick can guide me in the purchase of a plantation or distillery."

  "As far as I know," Elizabeth said coldly, "there are no such properties for sale on St.-Denis."

  "Unfortunate. Perhaps on one of the other islands...." She got to her feet. "It has been pleasant to see you again, Lady Stanford."

  Elizabeth wanted to make the conventional response, but the words stuck in her throat. Moira's smile seemed to say she knew that. "Well, good day, Lady Stanford."

  "Good day, Lady Moira."

  Four hours later, Elizabeth, white-faced and saying little, sat opposite Patrick at dinner. She knew Moira must have sent a message to the distillery, or perhaps even gone there, and yet Patrick had said nothing about it. He would have to be the first one to speak of the Irishwoman. Certainly she would not

  A night-flying insect struck the jalousied window. At the sound, Elizabeth's overstrained nerves snapped. She blurted out, "Moira Ashley is here."

  His eyes, half-hooded, met hers through the candlelight. "I know. She sent a message to the distillery."

  "A message?"

  "She wants to see me at the inn at nine tonight"

  "Why?"

  "Her note said that she needed my advice about financial matters. I gather her South American investment did not turn out well."

  "She told me it did not." In answer to his startled look, she went on, "Yes, she was here today, looking for you. But I don't think she has come all this way just for your advice."

  Patrick remained silent. He had his own suspicion about why Moira Ashley had come to St-Denis.

  "Are you going to see her?"

  "Of course. No matter why she is here, she is an old friend and neighbor, many miles from home."

  Elizabeth cried, "I forbid you!"

  Patrick's right eyebrow arched. "Forbid?"

  "Yes! As your wife, I forbid you!"

  He laid down his fork. "As my wife, you have certain rights. Those do not include dictating whom I shall see or not see."

  Certain rights, she thought bitterly. She had a legal right to his support, and if he had no male heir, to inherit his property. But she had no right to keep him out of Moira Ashley's bed, or any other woman's.

  She had a heart-wrenching vision of what her life, if her path had not crossed that of the saturnine-faced man opposite her, could have been by now. A quietly happy life with a faithful husband in that vicarage at Hadley. A living child, and perhaps another on the way. But as it was, she had no child. And even though she had accompanied this man into exile, thus making herself an enemy of her native land, even though she had striven to make this once slovenly house pleasant, even though she had brought to their bed a passion that matched his own, he still felt free to flaunt that tided strumpet in her face.

  Head held high, mouth set in a bitter line, she pushed back her chair and walked out of the room.

  ***

  A few minutes after nine that night, wearing an almost transparent champagne-colored peignoir of which Patrick had pleasant memories, Moira Ashley admitted him to her room at the inn. He had speculated as to what she might look like now. Tense and anxious, as befitted a woman who had lost a fortune? Outwardly smiling, but with eyes holding a trace of the bitter fury he had seen there at their last meeting? Instead, he saw a woman of undiminished beauty, smiling the serenely seductive smile with which she had greeted him so often at Wetherly.

  She said, "Well, Patrick how long has it been? Seven months?"

  "Nearer eight."

  When they were seated together on a wicker settee, glasses of the white wine she had poured resting on a nearby table, he said, "I gather that your diamond venture was a disaster."

  She wrinkled her lovely nose at him. "Don't scold, Patrick darling. I didn't come all this way to be scolded."

  "For what reason did you come?"

  She picked up her glass and looked at him over its rim. "At least two reasons. I still have a little money. I hope to make more of it, perhaps enough to buy Wetherly back. I hope you can guide me to making an investment in St.-Denis sugar or rum."

  "At the moment, there are no such investment opportunities on St.-Denis."

  "Not even in your distillery? Wouldn't you welcome someone with five thousand pounds to invest?"

  "No. My enterprise is still too small to return a reasonable profit to even my brother and myself, let alone a third person."

  "Then I might consider another island, such as St.-Gertrude. It's less than a hundred miles away, and I have heard there are properties for sale there. Perhaps you would be kind enough to make the journey with me. As I understand it, no large ships call there, but we could take passage on one of the interisland trading boats."

  He had been expecting her to make some such proposal. It would be at least a twenty-four-hour sail to St.-Gertrude, in a boat manned by only one or two natives. He pictured an English frigate, suddenly appearing out of the darkness...

  "Tell me, Moira, how much did you lose in that South American venture?"


  "Almost sixty thousand pounds."

  "Then with fifty thousand pounds you would be nearly as well off as before."

  She appeared puzzled. "Fifty thousand pounds?"

  "The amount you would receive if you could manage to lure me off this island, so that the English could get their hands on me."

  "Patrick!"

  The hurt shock in her face appeared genuine. But then, she must have known when she first thought of the St.-Gertrude proposal that he might suspect her of a trick. Knowing that, she'd had ample time to rehearse a response to his accusation.

  "Do you believe that I would betray you to the English for any amount of money in the world?"

  "Perhaps not." But if she had done it once for revenge, he told himself silently, she might well do it again for money. He went on aloud, "Nevertheless, I intend to stay safely on St.-Denis. I am sure you will find no lack of male escort if you decide to make the trip to St.-Gertrude."

  He thought of the stir this beautiful and frankly amorous woman would make in St.-Denis. Every unmarried planter or army officer, and many of the married ones, would be panting after her. He felt a twinge of jealousy at the prospect. True, she had ceased to be his mistress even before he left Ireland. And true, under his tutelage his wife's slender body had become as eager for physical love—and almost as skilled—as Moira's voluptuous one. Just the same, the displeasure he felt at the thought of St.-Denis men trying to take her to bed made him realize that he still felt a male possessiveness toward her.

  Almost as if she had read his thoughts, she leaned closer to him, full breasts swelling above the peignoir's low decolletage. "Very well. Perhaps it would be best if you did not venture off this island. But you have not asked me my second reason for coming here."

  Patrick said nothing.

  "I thought I hated you when you walked away from me that last time. But when I heard that you'd had to flee Ireland, leaving everything behind you, I knew that I loved you as much as I ever had. As soon as I learned where you were, I started making plans to come to you."