by Erica Brown
Chapter Sixteen
A warm breeze was blowing in from the tropics and the last flight of sugar birds had flown inland to their night roosts in the trees or beneath the eaves of houses and mills.
Someone was singing and the tinkling of wine glasses came from inside a well-lit house with a long veranda. In her dream Blanche floated towards it, her heart full of joy because she was about to see her mother again. Why, she would say, have you been so long, child?
And there she was, walking along the veranda, the frail muslin of her empire-line dress no more than a cobweb around her body. Just as Blanche started to move towards her, a roll of thunder sounded. Slowly the orange glow of the setting sun faded away along with the dream, but the thunder continued.
‘Wake up, Blanche! Wake up!’
Strong hands gripped and shook her shoulder.
Blanche blinked. Edith was bending over her, a candle in one hand and a rough woollen shawl clutched haphazardly around her shoulders.
‘The baby’s coming. You’re wanted.’
Bleary-eyed, Blanche got out of bed and reached for a shawl to throw over her nightgown.
Edith grabbed her arm just before she got to the door.
‘You’ve got to dress, Blanche. You can’t go down like that.’
Blanche shook her off. ‘Is the baby going to care how I’m dressed?’
‘No, but Lady Verity—’
‘Pah!’
Blanche took off along the draughty corridor and down the three flights of stairs to the first floor. Housemaids were standing outside the bedroom door of Sir Emmanuel and Lady Strong. Two held pails of steaming water, others had clean linen and towels. The housekeeper, a Mrs Hedron, was standing over them like an army sergeant major, just in case they should make a move before she gave them leave.
Her chin seemed almost to disappear into her collar and her eyes almost popped out of her head when she saw Blanche.
‘Brown!’ she said, her face a picture of bruised respectability. ‘You are not properly dressed.’
‘The baby won’t be wearing any clothes at all, and Lady Verity won’t be at her most dignified either. And please take note that my name is not Brown.’
Mrs Hedron looked as though she’d been slapped with a wet fish. Even the maids sucked in their breath. She managed to collect herself.
‘One does not talk of one’s betters in such a vulgar manner.’
Blanche was in no mood to justify her comments. ‘Is the doctor here?’ she asked jauntily.
Mrs Hedron’s black eyebrows rocketed skywards. ‘Yes, but he’s not ready for us yet.’
Blanche was about to say that if that was the case, why had she been called from her bed, but the voice of Emmanuel Strong intervened.
‘Mrs Brown. Would you come down here, please.’
He was standing in the hall down below, paintings of his ancestors at his back beneath the galleried landing that ran around three walls of the marble reception hall. He did not appear to have heard what she had said.
From the top of the stairs she saw him pass into the broad doorway of the library.
Mrs Hedron looked as though she were about to burst a blood vessel. ‘Surely you’re not going down like that?’
Blanche said nothing but smiled in a wickedly coquettish way, the voluminous folds of her cotton nightgown swinging around her bare, brown legs as she headed for the top of the stairs.
He was drinking something darkly golden from a squat cut glass. Not rum, she decided, but perhaps whisky. Judging by the redness of his face, he’d had more than one. Such is childbirth, she thought.
He looked at her awkwardly. ‘Close the door.’
At first she hesitated. Suddenly she felt vulnerable, dressed as she was in her nightclothes. But he’s drunk, she decided, and I’m strong and can move quickly if I have to. Confident that she could handle anything he attempted or said, she closed the door and turned boldly to face him.
He was standing in front of the fireplace, wearing a quilted smoking jacket and a round hat with a long silk tassel, which hung over his right ear. He had an awkward look in his eyes as though he couldn’t quite focus. She’d seen gentlemen and working men take on that look after they’d had a few slurps of rum. Truth, or the truth as they saw it, bubbled to the surface, inhibitions unlocked by alcohol.
‘I’m sure you’ll do your best by my latest child. I know it isn’t really what you’re used to but you must understand, it’s the best I could do in the circumstances.’
Blanche frowned and renewed hope surged in her chest. ‘My father—’ she began.
‘Could have been anybody.’ He laughed into his glass. ‘Pretty thing. Kept a good table and entertained well, so I understand.’
‘Otis—’ she began.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he snapped. ‘My brother was fond of her, but he didn’t own her. And he was fond of you.’ He pointed a finger at her. ‘Just be grateful for that. Your mother was less than respectable. She didn’t want you going down that particular path, which is why you are here, young lady. As I have said, be grateful!’
She had it in mind to say more, but the thought of the agreement she’d signed made her hesitate. In time Reverend Strong would tell her the truth. Sir Emmanuel would never do that.
She started for the door, and glanced back in time to see Emmanuel tilting his head backwards as he upended his glass and tipped the contents down his throat. His balance tottered along with his legs. They gave way and he fell forward on to the couch the drink slopping on to her nightgown. She immediately imagined Mrs Hedron’s face; a nurse in charge of a newborn baby smelling of drink and dressed in a nightgown.
Just as she reached the door, it swung open, almost sending her flying back into the room.
‘Nelson!’
They stood staring at each other, both looking startled and stuck for words. Suddenly he burst into poetry, just as he had in Barbados:
Oh nymphet of my wildest dreams,
The sea in your hair, at your feet,
Your heart and mine in glorious meet,
And erre the sun god’s glorious path…
He was looking at her as though already seeing her naked, her hair streaming over her shoulders and her body aching with desire. It was hard to find the words.
‘I’m not going to Barbados with you,’ she blurted.
‘What?’
Blanche felt cold in her cotton nightgown.
‘I have to stay here – at least, for now.’
She didn’t want to tell him about the Reverend Strong having known her mother and about to confirm Otis as her father. Back in Barbados when she’d voiced the subject, he’d considered it of little consequence.
‘I wish I didn’t know my father,’ he’d said with a grimace. ‘But unfortunately I do, and he is not a man you’d like to get to know well, I can tell you.’
‘Give me a little time,’ she said, wondering at her own lack of emotion. After all, weren’t they made for each other? Hadn’t they said as much in Barbados?
‘Do I have any choice?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said apologetically. ‘Do you forgive me?’
Nelson sighed heavily, his eyes still raking her body with great interest. ‘How can I not forgive you?’
Smiling, he held out his arms. In an instant they were wrapped in a tight embrace, her head on his shoulder.
‘Blanche,’ he said, stroking her hair back from her face.
She closed her eyes tightly, relishing the feel of his body through the flimsiness of her nightgown. His hardness pressed against her pelvis, almost painful, but pleasurable too.
Completely forgetting that Nelson’s father was lying out of sight and comatose on the sofa, she allowed Nelson to take liberties. He breathed heavily, his hands fondling her neck, her shoulders and her breasts, untying the garment at the neck so he could more easily slip his fingers inside and run his thumb over her nipple.
Things might have gone further if Nelson’s fat
her hadn’t woken up and poked his head up over the back of the sofa.
‘Stop that! Stop that at once!’
Clothes dishevelled, his face still red and his eyes blazing with anger, he struggled to his feet. Blanche stepped back. Earlier Emmanuel had looked at her with something resembling affection. Now he looked as though he could kill her, as though she were just a servant again – or something much worse.
He staggered between them, pushing them apart with clenched fists, then looked from one to the other.
‘I forbid you to see each other. Do you hear me? I forbid it!’
Nelson gaped and seemed uncertain what he should do. Blanche seized the initiative. Feeling small and insignificant, but not daring to let it show, she stood with head held high and said, ‘You have to understand. We fell in love in Barbados. We met on the beach.’
Emmanuel Strong could not have looked any angrier. He glared first at his son. ‘So that was why your Uncle Otis sent you home before time. And he said nothing, though that’s typical of the man. He always was soft.’
Nelson shook his head so hard that his slicked-back hair fell forward around his face in silky blond strands. ‘I don’t understand.’ He glanced at Blanche. ‘She’s everything I desire in a woman.’
‘You will not think of each other like that,’ growled Emmanuel, his face like thunder.
‘Because I’m a servant?’ said Blanche.
‘As good enough a reason as any,’ he snapped. ‘You are a servant.’
‘I wasn’t a servant back in Barbados,’ she said with a look that left her master in no doubt as to what, or rather whom she was referring.
His hesitance passed, Sir Emmanuel Strong’s eyes glittered. ‘Well, you are here.’ His face, already swollen with the effects of good brandy, turned redder and redder. ‘Out!’ he shouted at Nelson, and pointed to the door. ‘Within the week I want you working in my stead in London, and while you’re there you can attend on Adelaide Tillingham again. That’s the woman for you, my boy.’
‘She’s the one you’ve picked for me,’ Nelson snapped defiantly, ‘not the one I want.’
‘While you are under my roof, you obey my wishes. You will marry Adelaide Tillingham—’
‘Along with her fortune,’ Nelson interrupted. He turned to Blanche. ‘My father wishes to breed a dynasty, a family as well as a company, to control the sugar industry.’ He turned back to his father. ‘It’s a bit like being put out to stud. You even made sure I knew what to do in order to achieve your ambition, didn’t you, Father?’
Emmanuel bristled with rage. ‘Get out of here!’
Nelson bowed in mock respect. ‘I will, Father, but only because your presence and your ambition make me sick.’ He bowed to Blanche, his eyes locking with hers.
Emmanuel turned his attention to Blanche. ‘And as for you—’
She was burning inside, trying to understand this sudden venting of such a terrible anger. There could be only one explanation.
‘Just because my mother was once a slave doesn’t mean you can treat me as one.’
The colour seemed to drain from his face. Hot anger had turned cold and the sound of his voice sliced into her heart. ‘If that is what you wish to believe, then so be it. Nelson is not for you. It is only for the sake of the regard this family had for your mother that I will allow you to stay. But tread carefully, my dear, or back to Barbados you will go.’
Blanche opened her mouth to protest, but this time there was a knock on the door that turned out to be Mrs Hedron. She curtsied and said, ‘The nurse is needed.’
Blanche attempted to catch his eye before she left to follow Mrs Hedron back up the stairs, but he refused to look at her.
I’ll speak to him again, she thought, and convinced herself that somehow she would win Sir Emmanuel round. The whole scenario lay heavy on her mind until the sight of the baby softened her resolution. She was sure that Nelson would seek her out again. In the meantime, the children would occupy her time and with Edith’s help she would visit the Reverend Strong again, the one man likely to tell her the thing she most wanted to know.
* * *
Nelson had breakfast brought to the privacy of his room. He’d slept badly the night before on account of the racket going on around his stepmother’s door.
Duncan brought breakfast on a silver tray, complete with chunks of sugar cut straight from the loaf, cream in a small silver jug, and a wooden box inlaid with jade and ivory figures. There were also kippers, bacon, kidneys, lamb chops and eggs – plenty of variety to satisfy his appetite.
‘Your tea, sir. Shall I pour?’ asked Duncan.
‘Please,’ said Nelson.
‘And your biscuits, sir. Shall I place them on the plate for you?’
‘No,’ said Nelson. ‘I can deal with those myself.’
Heaven. He could sit here in his favourite chair, drink China tea and indulge in two or three of the delicious biscuits Cook made for him. She’d asked him if the ground-up leaves he gave her as a special ingredient were sage or basil. ‘I was just wondering, sir,’ she had said, embarrassed by her own boldness.
‘Just medicinal,’ he’d told her. ‘Something, my dear lady, with which I could not possibly do without.’
Chapter Seventeen
The smell of linseed and oil paints overwhelmed the sweeter smell of the dark green leaves that shaded the orangery from strong sunlight.
Tom paused. If he’d known Nelson was here, he would have gone elsewhere to think about the problems facing him at the refinery.
Softly, he retraced his steps, but as if by instinct alone, Nelson sensed his presence and stopped painting, his brush poised over his shoulder. ‘A beautiful subject, don’t you think?’
Intrigued, Tom moved closer, looked at the portrait, and felt his breath catching in his throat. Nelson was an excellent artist. He’d not only captured Blanche’s likeness in oils, but also her very essence, the spark in her eyes. Not only that but the sleeves of Blanche’s dress were halfway down her arms and her breasts were bare above her bodice. Tom clenched his jaw.
‘This is how I remember her in Barbados,’ Nelson said, his eyes searching Tom’s face for a reaction. ‘I’ve always liked exotic women. They’re so sensual, don’t you think?’
Tom said nothing to Nelson’s inference that he knew Blanche intimately and merely nodded.
Nelson turned back to the painting, his blue eyes hooded. ‘I saw you coming out of her room. I would appreciate it if you did not visit her again.’
Tom flinched. It wasn’t like Nelson to give him ultimatums. Their relationship had always been cordial, perhaps because they’d both lost their mothers when children. Perhaps also because both, in their own way, were relatively easy-going.
‘You didn’t see me coming out of her room. You saw me leaving the nursery. I go kite-flying with her and the children.’
‘All the same, old boy,’ said Nelson in a slow, low drawl. ‘You shouldn’t be quite so attentive. She might get the wrong idea.’
‘And your intentions,’ Tom said, flicking his fingers in a brisk tap of the painting, ‘are strictly dishonourable. After all, she is only a servant. Your father would disapprove!’
Nelson shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t be the first in this family to set up a little love nest. In fact, such arrangements run in the best of families.’
‘And what makes you think Blanche would agree to be a mistress?’
Nelson dipped his brush in yellow ochre. ‘We care for each other, so should not let that stand in our way. As a servant she’s almost penniless. As a mistress she’d be kept in style. I think she’d agree to that.’
Tom barely controlled his anger. The Strongs thought everything had a price, including a young girl’s honour. It didn’t matter that Blanche had been brought up in a free and easy manner and might have given herself back in Barbados. As far as he was concerned, she still deserved some respect. He stood, head bowed and fists clenched.
Nelson carried on painting, but watc
hed Tom warily, just in case he had to defend himself, though God knows he was no match for Tom’s brawn. Of course he couldn’t offer Blanche marriage, but that didn’t stop him feeling possessive about her. She was still his and he wanted to continue the relationship they’d begun in Barbados in whatever form it might take.
Then the door between the orangery and the main house opened. Tom looked up, hoping to see Blanche, but was disappointed. As usual, Edith blushed the moment she set eyes on him.
‘Beggin’ yer pardon, Captain Tom, but me and Blanche got today off and I was goin’ into Bristol to see me mother and Blanche promised she’d go with me. But there’s no carter going that way, and I wondered…’
‘I should have known it was your day off,’ said Tom, determined to hold her attention so she wouldn’t look at the revealing portrait of Blanche. ‘Is that your Sunday best you’re wearing? You look very…’ He searched for the right word to describe the blue striped dress that did nothing to enhance Edith’s plump features, ‘…nice.’
Edith simpered and smoothed the coarse wool of her full-skirted dress and straightened her bonnet. ‘Yes, it is. Do you like it?’
‘I do,’ he said, taking hold of her elbow. ‘Now you just tell me where you and Blanche want to go and I’ll take you there. I don’t mind putting myself out to take two pretty girls into the city.’
‘Oooh, you are kind, Captain Tom. Me mother’ll feed you when we get there. I’m sure she will! And we’ll be back for the evening service at St Mary’s in the village. I promise.’
Tom had intended going into Bristol to see Conrad Heinkel anyway, so it was hardly out of his way, but he wasn’t going to tell Nelson that.
‘A pleasure. Best to set off as soon as possible, that way you’ll have plenty of time with your mother,’ said Tom as he guided her towards the door. ‘She lives in the Pithay, I believe?’
