What the Duke Doesn't Know

by Jane Ashford

  “No Latin, or thrice-damned Greek,” James mused. How cheerfully he would have skipped those onerous subjects. “What did your mother teach you?” he asked, curious.

  A tremor of loneliness shook Kawena. She missed her mother and her home. It was harder than she’d imagined to be so far away from every person she knew. “Useful things,” she said. “How to plait palm leaves and make bark cloth and gut a pig.”

  “You can gut a pig?” he wondered.

  “Of course.” She didn’t see why this should be surprising. “And how to judge people’s words by the look in their eyes and the way they move. How to hear the silence. How to care for your…property.”

  “Property?” It seemed a grand word for the village he’d seen on the island.

  Kawena didn’t seem satisfied with it either. “The homes and gardens on Valatu belong to the women. They tend the earth. I know it is not so here. My father told me. Island men own their boats. They take the canoes out to fish and sometimes make long voyages to trade or explore. Women hold the trust of the land.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well…” It was true that the idea didn’t sound right in English. This happened to her so often, and the other way around as well. Kawena considered how to explain. “Years ago, when I was small, my father wanted to build a bigger trading center out of timber, to impress the foreigners who anchored in our harbor. He said they would respect such a building more than one made of palm and bamboo. And my mother asked, ‘What if it is blown down in a storm?’ As it would have been, of course, sooner or later. Nothing can stand against the great storms. And my father said, in that case, he would rebuild it. My mother asked about the next storm and the next. He got impatient then, as if she was being stupid, and said he would rebuild each time. ‘And when the trees are gone?’ my mother asked. ‘For storms come faster than trees can grow.’ And so, we do not have a trading center made of timber.”

  James puzzled over this tale. It took him a while to work it out, rather like one of those parables vicars liked to pose. “Bamboo grows more quickly,” he concluded finally.

  “Much.”

  “Sounds like your mother knows her own mind,” he said then.

  “Oh yes,” replied Kawena, with feeling. “She’s wise and funny and very smart.”

  He was much struck by her choice of words. “Mine’s like that, too.”

  “When I’m with her I often feel four years old again. It seems she can see right through me.”

  “Exactly.” How odd that two people from opposite sides of the globe, and completely different families, should feel just the same, he thought. It was like meeting an old friend in the street, and yet not like that at all.

  “She didn’t want me to come here,” Kawena continued. “Because it was dangerous, of course. But I think sometimes she’s afraid of my outlander half.”

  “Outlander?”

  She looked up at him, her dark eyes fathomless under the brim of a borrowed bonnet. Ariel had gotten her to wind her cascade of black hair into a braided knot at the nape of her neck. James found he missed that shining fall. It suited her so much better.

  “I have an island part, her part, and an English part from my father. They fight each other sometimes.” She pressed the palms of her hands together and pushed back and forth. “I think my mother was afraid that the English part would win me over if I traveled here,” she added. “But the strange thing is, I feel the pull of all she taught me far more from this great distance. I miss her,” she finished, her voice melancholy.

  James didn’t know how to respond to the sadness in her expression. Long naval voyages gave one very little opportunity to talk to young ladies about personal subjects. Or any subjects, really. But he was driven by a desire to comfort her. “You’ll inherit her house, though,” he tried finally. And cursed himself for a clumsy idiot. How was that helpful, to make her think of her one remaining parent’s death?

  Kawena shook her head. “It will go to my half sister. My mother had a husband who died before my father came to the island. I will always have a place in my sister’s home, of course, but… That is why my father promised to provide for me.” Kawena had forgotten her problems for a while as she saw new sights and spoke with this interesting man. Now they came rushing back. “England is so large,” she said. “Perhaps I was a fool to think I could recover his fortune.”

  The mournfulness of her words, in her face, shook James. “If someone on my ship stole those jewels, we’ll find them,” he responded. His former reluctance had somehow evaporated. The grateful look she threw him sealed the change.

  They came out of a twisting lane into a more open space, with a wider sky above. In the center of a square stood a circular domed structure, embellished with columns and balconies. “I do recognize that building,” James said in an effort to lift the mood. “Alan’s mentioned it. It’s the Radcliffe Camera.”

  “Camera?” wondered Kawena.

  “It means ‘room’ in Latin. Scholarly types love their Latin. This one’s not as old as some of the other places we’ve passed. A fellow—Radcliffe, I suppose—left them money to build it about sixty years ago. It’s a library.” They stood gazing at the ornamented brick and stone. “Would you like to go in and see the books?” James dutifully asked. Alan had raved about the collection, declaring it was not to be missed.

  Kawena shrugged. “I would rather walk. The building is pretty, though.”

  James laughed with delight.

  Kawena turned to blink at him.

  “You don’t have the least interest in staring at a bunch of loaded shelves, do you?” James said.

  She looked vaguely guilty. “I’m sorry, did you want to look…?”

  “No more than you. Less, perhaps. Alan’s dragged me through a library before. And I can tell you they’re deadly dull. Just leather spines and flaking gilt and dust.”

  “But why did you laugh?”

  “Because you made no bones about it,” he answered.

  “Bones? What do bones have to do with it?” Kawena appeared quite bewildered.

  “It’s an expression.” James thought about it. “It’s a deuced odd expression, isn’t it? What do bones have to do with…anything, really? And who ‘makes’ bones? Butchers? No, that can’t be it.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Kawena.

  She was gazing at him dubiously. “Can’t blame you,” James responded. “Nor do I. But what I meant was, you don’t pretend to be interested in things when you’re not.”

  “Why would I?”

  “There’s a question.” In James’s limited experience, polite society did little else, as well as pretending not to be interested in what actually fascinated them. He’d always had a devil of a time navigating the resulting shoals.

  “Are you feeling quite well?”

  James couldn’t help laughing again. “Actually, I am. Very well indeed. Shall we abandon our pursuit of architecture?”

  Still frowning at him, Kawena nodded.

  He led her up Catte Street, then turned down Holywell toward the deer park. The route would loop them back toward Alan’s house, with a look-in at the water meadows on the way.

  As Kawena walked, she tried to decide if he’d been laughing at her in that strange exchange about books and bones. All in all, she thought not. There’d been no mockery or contempt in his voice. She’d experienced instances of both on her travels and had come to know the tone. Still, it was hard having so little common ground. Here in England, she felt as if she were floating on the surface of things. She knew just enough to be aware that she had no understanding of the depths. Every so often, things popped up to startle and confuse her. Her natural assumptions were often wrong. It could be quite tiresome. And perhaps more. She realized that she felt a strong desire to understand James Gresham. He was so far from what she had expected when she set out
to find him, and the more she learned, the more attractive he appeared.

  They crossed another bridge. The little river made a soft gurgle below, nothing like the surge and hiss of waves. “Do you miss the sea?” Kawena said. “I’ve never been away from it for so long.”

  “I do,” admitted James. “It’s been ten years since I was ashore more than a couple of weeks.”

  “And more than the sound,” she went on, her voice gone dreamy, “the sea is a…presence. On my island, it’s all around, in all the colors of blue, stretching out forever, full of life and…mystery. You should see some of the strange things that have washed up on the beaches.”

  “And its dark moods can take you down like the flick of a giant’s finger,” he replied.

  Kawena stopped and looked up at him. “It’s told that in the days of my mother’s grandmother, a wave as high as a mountain rose out of the sea and swept the island. The old people say there was a roar like thunder, and then water crashing over everything, breaking houses like so many twigs. Many people were killed.”

  James nodded. “I’ve watched my ship ride up waves higher than the main mast, rising so fast your breath catches. A moment on top of the world, then you’re plunging just as far into the trough, falling, it seems, into the very maw of the sea. You can’t imagine you’ll ever come out again. Then it starts all over again.”

  They stood at the entry to the deer park, gazing at each other, conscious of a kinship not shared by others in this university town. A wealth of knowledge and experience seemed to vibrate between them, framed by memories of the world’s greatest ocean. It was a recognition and a bond.

  Then the moment was gone. They were strangers again, though standing quite close together. The merest movement would bring them into an embrace.

  Kawena took a step back. She looked around as if startled by her surroundings.

  James gathered his scattered faculties. “Shall we walk back beside the river?” he said, pointing across the meadow.

  “That tame little bit of water is called a river here?” Kawena replied.

  “Even the Cherwell has been known to flood.”

  They headed across the grass to the line of willows that marked the stream, more self-conscious now than they’d been when they first set off. Conversation on the remainder of their walk was limited to observations about the landscape. Oddly, though nothing in the terrain suggested it, James found himself recalling a time when he’d pushed his way out of a tangle of undergrowth on an unknown shore and very nearly shot over a precipice, just inches from his feet.

  * * *

  Back in her bedchamber at the house, Kawena took off her borrowed bonnet, which she’d been told she must wear whenever she went out, even if the day was quite fine. Her reflection looked back at her from the mirror above the dressing table, a likeness more perfect than any quiet pool could render. Her face looked very bare, with her hair braided and twisted into a knot. The style created an odd combination of heaviness at the back of her neck and absence everywhere else. She longed to pull out the pins and let it tumble down her back, to appear more like herself. Her cheeks were flushed from exercise, or perhaps from that breathless moment on the walk when they’d spoken of the sea. Remembering it, she felt again that tug of connection. Was he what her mother called a kindred spirit? Her parents had been such, she’d been told—drawn together despite their many differences.

  Recalling the way some of those differences had echoed through their household, Kawena shook her head. She’d come all this long way to find her father’s jewel hoard. She’d intended nothing more. That task had to come first. All else depended on it.

  She put the bonnet down, and wriggled a bit inside constricting undergarments. She hadn’t worn English dress for such long periods before. There was no choice here, but… Kawena fingered the blue cloth of her gown. Every single thing she wore belonged to Ariel, and she would have to have more clothing while she stayed here to search for the crew of the ship. There would be other expenses as well. There were bound to be. And her money was all gone. Her father had always said that where there was take, there also must be give. She needed to find a way to earn these things.

  Kawena found her hostess in the parlor that opened onto the garden. Unfamiliar birdsong and the scent of exotic flowers wafted in from outdoors. Ariel was bent over a book, but looked up with a smile when Kawena entered. “I’m reading the funniest old play,” she informed her. “It’s full of lost babies who turn out to be royalty, even more than usual, and secret meetings that go wrong, and lovers who overcome the most astonishing obstacles to be married in the end.”

  Kawena knew what a play was. Her father had made her read several from a great fat book he cherished. This sounded rather like Shakespeare, though she couldn’t have said which story. She’d never been able to keep all of them straight.

  “First a prince, then a princess. Everyone seems to be someone they’re not.”

  “Because they are in disguise?”

  “Exactly.” Ariel smiled in sudden delight. “Like you in your boy’s clothes, jumping out of the bushes. Why, your great journey might be a splendid play.”

  “They would have to leave out a lot. Hanging over the ship’s rail to relieve yourself in a storm, for instance.” No story she’d read among her father’s books had included such information. And it might have been useful to know.

  Ariel looked startled, then rather intrigued. “Did you really…?”

  Kawena nodded. “There was a little canvas cubby, held up by ropes. It had a board with a hole in it.”

  The other woman gazed at her, hazel eyes wide, a slight smile curving her lips. “I don’t think anyone else would tell me that.”

  She shouldn’t have, Kawena realized. The English had many rules about what was proper to say, and this subject was not acceptable. “Is the play Shakespeare?” she asked quickly.

  Ariel smiled as if she’d followed some of Kawena’s thoughts. “No, the author is John Dryden. It’s called Marriage à la Mode.”

  “Mode? I have not heard that word.”

  “It’s French,” Ariel told her. “The title, I mean. The play is English.”

  Kawena had heard of French—France. Her father had imported a globe to show her the world he came from. Just as he had made her study a dictionary. And yet she continually found that to know the definitions of words didn’t necessarily mean that you grasped their sense when they were strung together. “What does it mean?”

  “Well…” Ariel tapped a finger to her lips. “Fashionable marriage, I suppose.”

  Kawena puzzled over this. Did English marriage have fashions, like clothing? Did they change with the passing years? She put the idea aside with a shrug. “You have been very generous to me,” she said to Ariel, holding out a fold of her gown. “I thought there might be some work I could do for you in return.”

  “There’s no need—”

  “I do not like to take so much without giving,” Kawena interrupted. “Surely there’s something I could do around the house?” She realized that she knew little of English housekeeping. She’d seen a woman presiding over the basement kitchen, and two younger ones fetching and tidying upstairs. There was a boy also. She hadn’t been here long enough to get to know them, and they seemed to live separately from Ariel and her husband.

  Her hostess gazed at her. “You could keep me company.”

  “Company?”

  “Indeed.” Ariel smiled again, as if quite taken by the idea. “It’s pleasant to have you here, to talk to. Alan is very busy in his lab just now. His experiments are at a crucial point.”

  “Experiments?” This meant trying some operation, as a test, Kawena remembered. But she couldn’t form any picture of what that might be.

  “He studies the nature of light.”

  Kawena examined this sentence, made up of simple words and yet conveyin
g absolutely nothing. She looked at the sunlight streaming in through the French doors. “Nature?”

  Ariel laughed. “I know. I was just the same when he first told me. How do you study something that is just there, all around us? But it turns out that you can bend light, and separate it.”

  “Separate?” Kawena had thought that her grasp on English was fairly solid. Now she began to doubt.

  Ariel closed her book and rose. “I’ll show you.” She went over to a writing desk in the corner and picked up something small. Returning, she held up a transparent stone in the shaft of light from the outer doors. Color sprang up on the wall opposite—red, orange, green, blue.

  “You can make rainbows?” Kawena exclaimed, astonished and delighted.

  Ariel laughed. “A prism can. By picking out the…elements of the light. Alan intends to demonstrate that light is a wave, rather than a corpuscle, and you needn’t ask me what that means, because I don’t know.”

  Watching the play of colors on the wall, Kawena marveled. “Can I see it?”

  “Of course.” Ariel handed over the stone.

  Kawena tried various angles until she called up the colors on the wall again. “I have only seen rainbows in the sky,” she marveled.

  Her hostess nodded. “They are made when water, raindrops, act as prisms. Or so Alan has told me. He could explain it better than I.”

  “It’s amazing.” She moved the stone, made the colors shimmer.

  Ariel let her play with the display for some time. Then she said, “So, will you keep me company?”

  Kawena turned to her. She was by no means averse, but she still didn’t understand the request. “You have many friends here.” She’d seen the garden full of guests.

  “Acquaintances,” Ariel corrected. “Friends of Alan’s. He has lived in Oxford for years, but I moved here just a few months ago. And the people I’ve met…” She paused, frowned. “Most of them seem to think that a young woman, if she is at all…pretty, must be stupid.”

  Kawena pondered this idea. “That makes no sense,” she said.

  Ariel nodded. “Except that girls are not well educated here, as these Oxford types think of education. Even many of their own daughters.”