Jason, Veronica

by Never Call It Love

  None of these women, though, would have welcomed Christopher as a suitor for a marriageable daughter. There was a rumor, perhaps started by Lady Moira, that he had been involved in some dreadful scrape in London, something that had resulted in the death of a seventeen-year-old girl. Some even maintained that the girl had been Sir Patrick Stanford's ward. That part, of course, could not be true. Otherwise, Christopher would not even be on St.-Denis, let alone keeping the accounts at Sir Patrick's distillery. In fact, when Christopher looked at them from those gentle, candid blue eyes, they could not believe that any of it was true. Nevertheless, they were glad that at parties and balls he treated their daughters with distant politeness, not even seeking them as partners for the gavottes and polkas.

  What they did not know was that Patrick had issued him a stern warning. "Stay away from respectable young girls. If you want a girl, there are plenty of them on Harbor Street."

  With amusement Christopher recalled those words one night, about a month after his arrival in St.-Denis, as he lay beside Moira Ashley in a bedroom of her secluded house. He smiled, head resting on his elbow-propped hand, face and naked torso illumined by a swath of moonlight.

  She asked, "Of what are you thinking?"

  "My esteemed brother-in-law. He warned me away from the maidens of St.-Denis. I was to confine my attentions, he told me, to the Harbor Street whores."

  "I hear you are not unacquainted with the establishments along that street."

  "I have gone there solely as a sightseer," he said blandly. "But the point is this. When he issued that warning, I wonder if it occurred to him that you and I might—"

  "I am sure it did not," she interrupted coolly. "And in fact, I am really rather surprised at myself. You are a beautiful boy, Christopher, but compared to Patrick, or even Victor Serraut, you are an inadequate lover."

  "He said, "Inadequate? I should think that thrice in one evening..."

  "It is quality, rather than quantity, which counts."

  "Perhaps, although other women have not found me inadequate in either respect. But then, most of them were less experienced than you." He had not really expected her to take offense, and her shrug told him that she had not He went on, "Besides, having me in your bed brings you another satisfaction, perverse though it may be."

  "What satisfaction?"

  "Revenge. I'm the brother of the woman you hate. You hate her because she is Patrick's wife, and you hate him for the same reason. Oh, yes, Moira, I have seen you looking at them, and I know you hate them both. You've probably been obsessed with loving him, and hating him, for a long time. What better revenge than pleasuring yourself with me, a man he'd like to kill?"

  That word again. She lay motionless, too angry to speak.

  "Perhaps even before this you enjoyed another kind of revenge. Who was it, I wonder, who told the English that your neighbor Sir Patrick Stanford plotted treason?"

  "You prate of things you know nothing about" she said coldly. "You must swear not to talk of such matters again, not if you want to continue coming here."

  He said swiftly, "I swear." Moira was not only beautiful. The wines and Port-au-Prince pheasants, brought by Lieutenant Serraut from the fort to his mistress's house, were excellent indeed.

  "And now you had best leave. It must be getting on toward dawn."

  " 'Oh, no,'" he said, fingers playing with a lock of her silky dark hair, "'it was the nightingale, and not the lark.'"

  "What nightingale? What nonsense are you talking?"

  He leaned over and kissed her. "Sometimes your beauty makes me forget you are not an educated woman. I quoted Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet, act three, scene five."

  "I may not know Shakespeare, but I do know Victor Serraut. If he ever learns that you have been coming here, he will kill you. Now, go."

  CHAPTER 34

  For the first time since her arrival on the island, Elizabeth found that the very perfection of the weather in the dry season had begun to fray her nerves. Each day the sun shone from a cloudless sky, and the placid sea shimmered, and the lush vegetation around the little white house rustled in the faint breeze that blew ceaselessly from the west. She began to long for the sight of leafless elms and beeches against a gray English sky, and muddy roads with crusts of ice in the ruts.

  But she knew it was really not the monotonous perfection of the weather that oppressed her. It was the presence of both her brother and Moira Ashley. True, she was almost certain that Patrick did not visit Moira Ashley's house. True, she knew that her brother, under Colin's alert supervision, was performing his work satisfactorily. And yet she had a sense of impending disaster, almost as if she could hear rumblings from inside the long-extinct volcano that formed the island's central peak.

  When disaster came, it came swiftly, and on a morning as bright as any that had preceded it Tramming back the ilex and hibiscus bushes that always threatened to engulf the garden paths, she heard the swift beat of horse's hooves along the drive. She straightened, Patrick reined in beside the stable entrance, his face dark with rage.

  The garden shears dropped from her hand. She said, hurrying toward him. "What is it?"

  "Your brother." His voice was thick. "He's disappeared. So has almost six thousand dollars in gold coins. He broke open the strongbox at the distillery sometime during the night"

  She whispered. "Oh, no!" Then: "Are you sure? Perhaps some of the blacks—"

  "Don't be absurd, Elizabeth. It's your brother who has disappeared."

  She said, still dazed. "Six thousand dollars. So very much money..."

  "Yes! A lot of money, full payment for the last two shipments of rum. Enough money that if I can't recover it we will be about as poor as when we arrived here. The American agent came up to the distillery after dark yesterday. Only Colin and I were there. We decided to leave the money in the strongbox overnight"

  "But how did Christopher...?"

  "He must have passed the agent on the road, and guessed he was carrying money. Colin's gone over to the cove to see if he can find a trace of him." Elizabeth knew what cove he meant, a shallow one on the southern shore of the island from which small boats in the interisland trade sailed. "I am going down to the waterfront to learn if he managed to sneak aboard some ship in the harbor."

  As he whirled his mount, the skirt of his coat fell back, and she saw the pistol he had thrust into the waistband of his breeches. She watched until he disappeared around the corner of the house. Feeling numb, she walked to the kitchen door.

  The brief tropic twilight had fallen by the time Patrick returned. From the parlor window she watched him tether his horse to the gatepost. She could not make out his facial expression, but frustrated rage was evident in his very stride as he came up the walk.

  She met him just inside the front door. "What—?"

  "Has he come sneaking back here?"

  "No." All day she had feared that he might All day she had wondered what she would do if her handsome, monstrous young brother came slipping into the house, pleading for her protection.

  Patrick's dark gaze searched her face. Apparently satisfied that she told the truth, he said, "There's no trace of him. We've searched everywhere on this side of the island. The police commissaire and I even went aboard that Portuguese ship in the harbor and those two American merchantmen, and searched them from stem to stern."

  "Did Colin, over at the cove...?"

  "He talked to freedmen who live in the shacks there. They said that only one trading vessel had sailed from the cove since yesterday afternoon, and that there had been no one of Christopher's description aboard it"

  "And the people at the inn?"

  "They have not seen him since yesterday morning, although he must have been there sometime last night He left that hired mare of his at the inn stable and then just... disappeared."

  Because she could think of nothing else to say, she asked, "Have you had food? I have made some—"

  "I want no food," he said, and turned toward the door.


  She cried, "Where are you going?"

  "I don't know. Perhaps to St. Amalie." That was the settlement on the Atlantic side of the island. "Although how he could have gotten there on foot, through fifteen miles of jungle..." Not completing the sentence, he went out the door and closed it behind him.

  Unable to eat the supper she had prepared, unable to do anything except sit in the parlor, hands clasped in her lap, she waited until almost midnight for his return. Then she went to bed and stared, wide-awake, into the darkness.

  ***

  Christopher lay on the sagging bed in the tiny top-floor room, hands crossed behind his head, and watched the girl. She sat with his coat across her lap, fingers stitching still another tiny pocket in its lining. Light from the oil lamp on the rickety table beside her gleamed on the gold coins stacked around the lamp's base, and on her bent dark head and the needle she plied so awkwardly.

  Her name was Solange. Her mother was a quadroon, and so she knew she had at least some African blood, but as to the nationality of her various white ancestors, she had no idea. She looked fourteen, was actually sixteen, and had been a prostitute for more than a year. Christopher liked her, not only because she was pretty but also because of the childlike awe in her face whenever she looked at him.

  For almost fifteen hours now, ever since he had left his horse at the inn stable in the predawn darkness, crossed the deserted square, and walked down the alley to the rear door of this brothel, Solange had been sewing those pockets into his coat lining. There had been interruptions, of course. Several times she had slipped downstairs to fetch him food or brandy. Once the brothel-keeper, a stout man with a cast in one eye, had looked in and said apologetically that Solange must come down to a room on the floor below. Otherwise, a favored customer would make trouble. And less than an hour ago Christopher himself had slipped out into the alley, made his way onto the beach and then the wharf, and struck his bargain with the master of the Portuguese ship.

  He looked at the stacks of gleaming coins. They numbered a few less than when he had taken them, in their stout leather bag, from the distillery strongbox. He had given two coins to the brothel-keeper. Even though he knew it was not necessary, he had given one to Solange, who had stared down at it with her usual awed expression, either not understanding or not believing him when he told her that it was more than she could hope to earn in several months. And he had given three gold pieces to the Portuguese captain. Just before the ship sailed with the predawn tide, he would slip aboard.

  Uneasily, he frowned. He did not entirely trust that captain. There was at least a chance that once the ship was well out to sea the Portuguese colors would come down and the death's-head flag go up. But Christopher thought not. What cargo he had seen, sugarcane and West Indian mahogany, was that of an honest merchant ship. And even if the captain did demand an additional bribe, Christopher would still reach Lisbon, and eventually Paris, with enough that he would need no Yvette Cordot this time, and no employment. He would be able to live comfortably for five years, or, if he chose, luxuriously for half that long.

  Solange bit off a thread with her sharp little teeth. Christopher rose, took his coat from her hands, and spread it, lining up, on the bed. Swiftly his eyes swept over the rows of awkwardly stitched little pockets.

  "All right, Solange. I'll put the coins in, a few at a time, and you will sew up the pockets."

  ***

  Elizabeth came groggily awake in the dawn light, aware that she could not have been asleep for more than an hour. Patrick was in the room, taking off his coat. She said, memory rushing over her, "Patrick..."

  "No trace of him." His voice was harsh. "I want to get some rest if I can. Now, go back to sleep."

  She lay back down. Dimly she was aware of Patrick getting into bed beside her. Then exhaustion overwhelmed her, and she slept.

  She awoke to early sunlight The clock on the bedside stand pointed to a little past six. Patrick could not have rested for long. He was gone from the bed, and as she discovered a few minutes later, from the house as well. Had he gone to the distillery, she wondered dully, or had he set out on another search for Christopher?

  She forced herself to dress, brew tea in the kitchen, carry her cup and saucer back to the parlor. She had taken one sip and was just sitting there, staring down into the cup, when she heard a vehicle stop out in the road. She went to the window. The Burgoses' wooden cart, drawn by a spavined gray horse, stood just outside the gate. Jules held the reins. Jeanne was running up the walk. Elizabeth felt bewilderment. Never before had either of the part-time servants come to the front entrance.

  She hurried into the hall just as Jeanne began to knock, and opened the front door. The maid's café-au-lait face beneath her white turban held frightened distress.

  "Oh, milady! Monsieur Montlow..."

  She broke off. Elizabeth said, her stomach knotting with fear, "What has happened to him?"

  Apparently Jeanne could not bring herself to say. "Oh, milady! Come with us."

  Elizabeth hurried down the walk. As she climbed to the wooden-plank seat, it did not occur to her to think of how anyone abroad at that early hour might react to the sight of her riding between her two servants in their cart. The vehicle lumbered down the road, across the empty square, down the slope past the shuttered grog shops and brothels. Now she could see, not far from the foot of the wharf, a group of people gathered around something on the crescent beach. They appeared to be blacks, mainly, barefoot men in white cotton breeches and shirts, barefoot women in brightly colored dresses and white turbans. Elizabeth found herself out of the cart and running awkwardly over the sand.

  The knot of people parted at her approach. She stared down at the sprawled figure—the soaked breeches and coat, the waxen face with its pale-lipped wound, no longer bleeding, along the left temple, the fair hair matted with sand. She had no doubt that he was dead. And yet, as she dropped to her knees beside him, her first emotion was not grief for Christopher, but anguish for her mother and his, that frail woman who felt, not just love for her son, but blind adoration.

  CHAPTER 35

  A hand touched her shoulder. Someone said, "I am sorry, madame."

  She looked up. It took her several seconds to recognize the thin, middle-aged white man standing beside her. Armand Montreux, one of the two deputies of the island's police commissioner. She asked, even though she already knew the answer, "He is dead?"

  Montreux hesitated, and then answered, "I fear it is of a certainty, madame, although it is the duty of the commissaire and the surgeon to pronounce him so. Someone has gone to fetch them."

  "How...?"

  "Bertrand here found him." The deputy looked at a tall young black man, who ducked his head shyly. "He came down at dawn to fish, and saw Monsieur Montlow's body being washed ashore."

  "How did it...? What do you think...?"

  The deputy said, after a moment, "Perhaps he was not quite himself last night, and fell from the wharf."

  Not quite himself. Her numbed mind made the translation. Stupefied with drink.

  "Perhaps," Montreux went on, "he received that head wound when a wave washed him against a piling, either before or after he drowned."

  It was the kindest explanation. No doubt that was why Montreux had made it. But it could not be the true one. If Christopher had washed against a barnacle-encrusted piling, there would be more lacerations on his waxen face. Instead, there was just that one straight-edged gash.

  Almost as if she had been there, she saw the two shadowy figures on the dark wharf, saw a raised hand bring the pistol barrel down on Christopher's temple, saw him fall—already dead, or at least too stunned to save himself—into the black water below.

  She said, "His coat..." One side of its skirt had fallen away from his body, so that she could see the lining. Gray muslin patches, awkwardly stitched, almost hid the dark blue satin. Her hand reached out.

  "Best not to touch him," Montreux said, "until the commissaire arrives." He adde
d, embarrassment in his voice, "One would say, madame, that there is money sewn into his coat."

  Patrick's money.

  She felt hands under her armpits. "Please, milady," Jeanne Burgos said. "Please let us take you home."

  Elizabeth allowed herself to be drawn to her feet.

  ***

  Around eight that night she sat in the parlor, hands clasped rigidly in her lap, face almost as white as her dead brother's had been. She heard the muffled clop of hooves on the road and then along the drive beside the house.

  Before noon, a note from the commissioner had arrived, expressing his sympathies and telling her that Monsieur Montlow's body was at the hospital, which also served as the small community's morgue. She could claim the body tomorrow after "certain official matters" had been attended to.

  Aside from reading that note, she did not know what she had done that day except wait for Patrick. Patrick, who had murdered her brother, come back to the house, and actually lain down beside her in their bed.

  The rear door opened. Footsteps in the hall. "Elizabeth?"

  She got to her feet and said in a voice she would not have recognized as her own, "I'm in here."

  He appeared in the doorway, his dark face looking bleak but controlled. She said, "Did you get your money?"

  She could tell, by the widening and then the narrowing of his eyes, that he had not expected her to greet him with that question. "The commissioner will release it to me when I call at his office."

  She said, in a thick voice, "I have always known there was hatred and violence in you. Who could know that better than I? But until now I did not know that you were also a coward."

  He said slowly, "What in God's name are you talking about?"

  "You could have shot him, and then surrendered to the commissioner. Nothing much would have been done to you. After all, he had stolen your money. But you did not want to take the responsibility for his murder. And so you struck him down, and then pushed him—"