A Certain Latitude

by Janet Mullany

  “No I’m not. I’m ruined. But regarding Blight—do you really think it wise to make an enemy of him?”

  He stood, tapping the letter against his thigh. “It’s somewhat too late to worry about that, Clarissa. If I were you I would not think about it. I assure you I barely think of Blight at all.”

  “Mr. Pendale?” Captain Trent’s voice from on deck interrupted them. “We’re taking the cutter over to the ship, if you’d care to accompany us.”

  Allen bowed. How ironic; the Earl’s son bowed to a woman who knelt at his feet with a scrubbing brush in her hand—and left dirty footprints over the freshly-scrubbed floor as he left.

  His head ached liked the devil and he wished there had not been quite so many toasts to the King, Nelson, and God knows what else, last night. Clarissa was still cool with him—he’d somehow made it belowdecks without breaking his neck, and had fallen onto his berth with all his clothes on, although he’d fully intended to pay her some attention.

  He blinked in the morning sun and looked at the very pleasant sight of Clarissa and Elizabeth Blight in their shifts, washing linen. Mrs. Blight’s shift, trimmed with lace, showed off her unfettered bosom to great advantage. Clarissa’s shift, however, was threadbare and almost transparent; he could see the outline of her slender body, the darkness of nipples and pubic hair through it. Although a piece of sailcloth had been strung across the deck to give the women some privacy, crew members drifted toward it frequently until Allen glared at them.

  He had stripped down to a pair of cotton drawers and, dirty shirts, neck-cloths, and stockings in hand, hoped Clarissa would offer to wash them for him. She, however, had only smiled and returned to her own laundry. Beside her, Mrs. Blight, bosom jiggling, scrubbed industriously at one of Blight’s shirts. She glanced at Allen, a quick, appraising look, before bending to her task.

  Blight looked at him and smirked. “Now, if she were mine, I wouldn’t stand for it.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Allen made his voice icily cool.

  “Miss Onslowe. She’s impertinent. She needs a good whipping.”

  “Indeed.” He returned Blight’s sneer. “She’s not your property, or mine, either. I think you confuse the lady with one of your slaves.”

  “There’s a lot to be said for an obedient woman.”

  “I prefer a woman who can speak for herself.”

  Allen called out to the ship’s boy, Peter, who lurked nearby. Whether the lad was trying to take a look at the women—at his age Allen would certainly have done so—or whether he was trying to help Allen keep the crew away, wasn’t quite clear. “Peter, bring me a tub of water and some soap if you please.”

  “Aye, that’s right. Show her you’ll take no nonsense,” Blight said.

  “I intend to,” Allen said.

  Peter appeared, red-faced and sweating, his face wreathed in steam from the hot water, and set the tub down. Allen thanked him and tossed his soiled linen in the water.

  “What—?” Blight looked horrified.

  Allen reached for the soap. Well, how hard could it be to wash linen? If women could do it, then it must be fairly simple.

  Clarissa and Mrs. Blight looked at each other and giggled.

  The sailors, ever watchful, wandered closer, their attention now on the sight of a gentleman about to do his own laundry.

  “’Tis women’s work,” Blight spluttered.

  Ignoring them, Allen picked up the soap and a shirt, and smeared some—as much as he could with the smooth, shiny substance—onto the cuffs and collar of a shirt. He repeated it on another shirt, on a pair of stockings, and swished the water. It turned gray and cloudy with a greasy tinge to it. The soap slid from his fingers and disappeared in the murky depths. The devil with this. He remembered women in Italy gathered in the shallows of a river, beating creamy linen on rocks, and with skirts kilted up, treading garments in the water.

  He stepped into the tub and trampled his linen, grinning broadly at the embarrassment and consternation on Blight’s face, while the two women laughed and clapped their hands.

  “Mrs. Blight would be ashamed to see me so,” Blight said.

  “Indeed? You think it’s unmanly?”

  “Since you say so, Mr. Pendale, then, yes, I do.”

  “Very well.” Allen paused in his stamping and splashing. “I challenge you, Blight. I’ll race you to the top of the mainmast. We’ll see who the better man is then.”

  Blight hesitated for a moment. “Done.”

  “But,” Allen continued, hauling dripping armfuls from the tub, “you’ll have to wait until I’ve rinsed my linen.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Land.

  What they first saw as a smudge on the horizon now defined itself in shades of green, other colors—white, brown, yellow—added in as they sailed closer, along with the misty blue of distant mountains. Although it was the island of their destination, it hardly looked inhabited to Allen. Only the sparse columns of smoke far inland indicated otherwise.

  And this—the area, where, according to Captain Trent, sugar was loaded for the journey back to England—boasted only a modest wooden jetty. Allen had expected something like the Bristol docks. And then he realized: there were slaves, lots of slaves, who would do the work of cranes and machinery. There was no need for anything more elaborate.

  Clarissa chatted with the Blights, Captain Trent and Mr. Johnston, while Allen stood apart, staring at the land and feeling profoundly unsettled.

  He was to leave Clarissa. In her plain, demure dress and unadorned straw bonnet, she looked every inch the governess, a cultured, respectable woman past the first bloom of youth.

  But I know what you really are. I’ve tasted my spunk on your quim, I’ve made you scream and yell.

  She’d made him scream and yell, too, but that was hardly the point. Their paths would separate now, she to her mission for the abolitionists under the guise of respectable governess, and he to … Well, he wasn’t quite sure. That was something else he hadn’t really thought about properly, he who considered himself such a legal tactician.

  Clarissa guessed, of course. Your father doesn’t know you’re arriving, does he?

  He’d laughed and denied it, and challenged her, in his passable French, to recite Racine to him, which she did in her beautiful accent. She’d shown her accomplishments further by playing a Handel aria, using his leg as the keyboard, with some fancy finger-work in the upper octaves, until she couldn’t sing for laughing. And then he stopped her mouth in the way they both liked best.

  Very odd, the things a man and a woman could get up to in an enclosed space with limited resources. He heaved a sigh, reached into his pocket and fingered the small pot, well-wrapped in a scrap of sailcloth that he’d bought, with some embarrassment, from Lardy Jack. It might well be too late for escapades with goose grease.

  Oh, good Lord. Young Peter was weeping at the prospect of Clarissa’s departure and she kissed him in a sisterly sort of way that made him blush. Several of the other sailors pretended to burst into tears and Allen glared at them.

  Captain Trent made an exclamation and raised his spyglass. A trap, led by a mule, emerged from the greenery. The sailor, sent ahead to announce to Lemarchand that his ship had arrived, waved from his seat beside the driver. A substantial ox-drawn cart followed, to take the piano and other precious items to Lemarchand’s house.

  There was a brief flurry of activity as the longboat was lowered and a final round of farewells. Allen wrung the hands of the captain and Mr. Johnston, and swung himself down into the longboat where Blight and their luggage waited. The two women were lowered down on ropes—Allen tried not to look at revealed ankles, but he was only human—and the arrival of Mrs. Blight, fragrant and pillowy, almost knocked him overboard. Clarissa landed with a long, sensual slither down his body that almost made him groan aloud with regret.

  He planned to travel to Lemarchand’s, pay his respects, and borrow a horse or some other conveyance to his father’s estate. He knew L
emarchand would ask him to dine and stay overnight, and he was in two minds whether to accept such an offer. He should probably make a clean break with Clarissa. It annoyed him that she seemed so cheerful, excited even, at the prospect of her new life. He wondered, with a touch of sourness, why she was not more upset at leaving him.

  She clutched his sleeve. “Look, Mr. Pendale, palm trees. So many of them and so tall!”

  He smiled, amused at her enthusiasm, and determined to be cheerful for her sake. Besides, he was finding it difficult not to be optimistic under the bright sun and at the prospect of once more being on dry land.

  He was astonished to find that when the longboat drew up onto the white sand and he jumped out into the shallows, the land rocked and moved as though he were still aboard. Clarissa, skirts lifted—he couldn’t help taking a look at her legs, and neither, he noticed, could Blight—clutched his arm and giggled. “You don’t think we’ll be seasick on land, do you?” She let go of him and darted away to pick something from the dazzlingly white sand. “Oh, look. What a beautiful shell.”

  Blight said. “Best get into the trap before the damned driver falls asleep, Miss Onslowe. You’ll find they’re naturally lazy.”

  Placing her shell in her reticule, Clarissa allowed Allen to hand her up into the trap and they set off for Lemarchand’s estate.

  She was being driven by a slave, who was someone’s property, like the mule and the trap. She wanted to touch his sleeve, to talk to him as she would a servant in England—ask him about his family, how long he had been on the estate—questions which here would have an entirely different meaning. An English servant would probably not be shy of conversation with his betters, but this man stared resolutely ahead, concentrating on the mule and the road.

  The air, so pleasant on the beach, became more humid as they traveled inland, passing from dazzling glare to moist shade. Vines cascaded from trees and unfamiliar birds darted and called. She loosened the fichu at her throat and wondered how the men, in their wool and cotton layers, fared.

  “I expect you’re anxious to meet your charge, Miss Onslowe.”

  “Yes, I am, Mr. Pendale. I hope she likes music. I’m looking forward to playing again.”

  While she appreciated his discretion—it would certainly not do for Lemarchand to know his governess not only had abolitionist sympathies but had spent almost the entire voyage cavorting with a fellow-passenger—already she missed the Allen Pendale she had come to know so well. To her relief —she had never quite trusted the sponge—her courses had started a few day before, and Allen had seemed equally relieved. They had never spoken of what would happen once ashore, but she was sure their association must end now. And she felt, with some sadness, that she might never experience such intimacy or pleasure again.

  The trap rounded a corner and a vast expanse of emerald lawn dotted with old-fashioned, formal flowerbeds lay before a substantial stone house with a long portico running its length. On the second floor, a balcony wrapped around the house, with long windows in the French style opening onto it. A number of slaves—she assumed they must be so, dark-skinned and clothed in creamy undyed cotton—worked in the garden and lingered on the portico. The thrifty housekeeper within her wondered exactly what so many found to do.

  As the trap drew up in front of the house, the front door opened and a young girl of about fifteen years of age, slender and with fair hair curling onto her shoulders, darted out.

  Another woman, a slave, followed her, holding a book, parasol, and bonnet. “Miss Celia, de sun too hot—” she backed away as a tall man, Mr. Lemarchand himself, Clarissa guessed, stepped through the doorway.

  “Papa, Papa, where de pianoforte?” To Clarissa’s surprise, the girl spoke just like the slave, with the same accent and lilt to her voice.

  The man shook his head affectionately. “Try again, miss.”

  “Papa, where is the pianoforte?” She grinned and swung on his arm. “Dat better?”

  Allen stepped down from the trap and offered Clarissa his hand to help her alight.

  Lemarchand hesitated. “Mr. Pendale?”

  “Mr. Lemarchand.” Allen bowed, his tone a little cool. Of course, she remembered his comment about not looking like his family, and without a hat—lost overboard long ago—and in his rumpled state, he certainly didn’t look like an earl’s son.

  “Delighted to meet you. You’ll dine with us, I hope, and stay the night? Some of the other planters will be here.” He murmured a polite greeting to Mrs. Blight and turned to Clarissa. “Miss Onslowe, I trust you will teach my daughter some civilized ways. Celia, this is your governess.”

  Clarissa curtsied.

  “Where dat lazy girl?” Celia demanded. “Rissa, you come here. Bring my parasol.”

  “Say please, Celia,” Clarissa said, before wondering if she’d be sacked from the job without ever having started it.

  There was a short silence, broken by Lemarchand’s laugh. “You’ll see me in my study, Miss Onslowe, when you’ve had a chance to take off your bonnet. And Celia, do as your governess bids.”

  Scowling, Celia muttered, “Give me de parasol. Please.”

  The slave sidled toward her, holding the parasol out at arm’s length, and ducked as Celia aimed a slap at her.

  “That’s enough,” Lemarchand said. “You will not be allowed to play the pianoforte if you do not behave.”

  Celia scowled and prodded at the floor with the tip of her parasol.

  “Can’t see much point in bringing a pianoforte,” Blight said. “The ants’ll eat it as fast as Miss Celia plays it.”

  “Thank you, Blight,” Lemarchand said. “We’ll talk later. Pendale, I expect you’d like some refreshment. Please come inside…”

  He led the way inside the house, leaving Clarissa alone with Celia.

  “Is de pianoforte coming?”

  “The pianoforte. Yes, it’s coming. They have to unload it from the ship, along with the other things Mr. Lemarchand ordered.”

  “Miss Celia?” The slave, Nerissa spoke. “Miss, de master, ’im say I take de miss governess to her bedchamber.”

  “Of course.” Celia, her former rancor toward the slave apparently forgotten, took Clarissa’s hand. “Rissa, you get hot water for Miss Onslowe. You come upstairs wid—with—me, Miss Onslowe, if you please, that is. I picked your bedchamber for you.”

  Alone with Clarissa, Celia seemed to be more of a normal young woman, despite her outlandish speech. As they climbed the stairs together, Celia prattled of clothes and novels, and admired Clarissa’s very plain bonnet.

  “What lessons have you had?” Clarissa asked, as they entered her bedchamber, a room simple furnished with a chest of drawers, a pier-glass, and a bed swathed in a mosquito net as well as bed curtains. She crossed the room to doors that led to a balcony and smiled with pleasure at the view of the sea.

  “Mama taught me to read and write.”

  “I see. How about geography? French? Drawing? Embroidery?”

  “No.” Celia hung her head. “Papa, ’im say you teach me to be a proper young lady.”

  “Of course,” Clarissa said.

  Clarissa curtsied, as Lemarchand rose from his chair in the study.

  “Miss Onslowe.” He bowed and gestured to a chair.

  She sat and waited to see if she still had a job. While she did so, she studied Lemarchand. He wasn’t young—he had to be in his late forties—but he was lean and slender. His hair was unfashionably long, tied back in a queue, still dark apart from one white streak at his temple. His eyes were gray and perceptive under finely arched brows, set in an angular face with an aristocrat slash of a thin, high-bridged nose.

  “Tell me about yourself, if you please.” He leaned back in his chair, his hands—long and elegant, she couldn’t help noticing—toying with a paperweight on the desk.

  “I was housekeeper at Lord Thelling’s for five years. My father is the Reverend Henry Onslowe of Cadminton in Somerset. I attended Miss Redding’s Academy in Bath
and taught there for a while. I—”

  “The Reverend Henry Onslowe? Author of numerous pamphlets against the slave trade?”

  “That is correct, sir.” She paused. If she was going to be sacked, then let it be with a flourish. “To be strictly accurate, those pamphlets were not written by my father. They were written mostly by me.”

  “Well, well.” He grinned. “And the irony is that you are here. Life is exceeding strange, Miss Onslowe.”

  “Lord Thelling—the present Lord Thelling, that is—persuaded my family that it was in everyone’s best interests for me to take this position. You must be aware that a woman has little say in such matters.”

  He stood and strolled over to a sideboard. “You’ll take some wine, Miss Onslowe? I can send for lemonade, if you prefer.”

  “I should like some wine. Thank you.”

  He handed her a glass and stood leaning against the desk, his booted legs close to her skirts. “I’m quite used to people working for me against their inclination, Miss Onslowe, so your scruples do not worry me overmuch. I suspected you might well have connections with the Reverend Onslowe who, I must admit, has been something of a thorn in the flesh of those who practice the trade. I need an intelligent and cultured woman to educate my daughter, and when old Thelling described you as such, I thought you were just the sort of woman I had in mind.”

  She smiled. “I was very fond of his lordship.”

  “And the present Lord Thelling?”

  “A fool.”

  He laughed. “I think we shall do well, Miss Onslowe.” He clinked his glass against hers. “To what shall we drink?”

  “To liberty?” She glanced up at him to see his response.

  “Worse and worse,” he said. “A toast, then, to your fine eyes.”

  “You’re flirting with me, Mr. Lemarchand.”

  “Call me March.”

  She cleared her throat. “I’m not so vain I can drink a toast to my own eyes, Mr. Lemarchand, and I don’t think you should flirt with me. I’m your servant.”

  He looked at her with distinct approval, a measuring, carnal gaze.