The Hellion Bride

by Catherine Coulter

  THE HELLION BRIDE

  Catherine Coulter

  CHAPTER 1

  Montego Bay, Jamaica June 1803

  IT WAS SAID she had three lovers.

  Rumor numbered those three as: the pallid thin-chested Oliver Susson, an attorney and one of the richest men in Montego Bay, unmarried, nearing middle age; Charles Grammond, a planter who owned a large sugar plantation next to Camille Hall, the plantation where she lived, a man with a long-faced, strong-willed wife and four disappointing children; and a Lord David Lochridge, the youngest son of the Duke of Gilford, sent to Jamaica because he'd fought three duels within three years, killed two men, and tried unsuccessfully, because of his phe­nomenal luck at cards, to spend his grandmother's entire fortune that had been left to him at the tender age of eighteen. Lochridge was now Ryder's age— twenty-five—tall and slender, with a vicious tongue and an angel's face.

  Ryder heard about these men in surprising detail —but nearly nothing about the notorious woman whose favors they all seemed to share equally—on his very first afternoon in Montego Bay in a popular local coffeehouse, the Gold Doubloon, a low sprawling building whose neighbor was, surprisingly enough to Ryder, St. James's Church. The crafty innkeeper had gained the patronage of the rich men of the island through the simple expedient of using his beautiful daughters, nieces, and cousins to serve the customers with remarkable amiability. Whether or not any of these lovely young girls carried any of the innkeeper's blood was not questioned.

  Ryder had been made welcome and given a cup of local grog that was dark and thick and curled warm­ly in his belly. He relaxed, glad to be once again on solid ground, and looked about at the assembled men. He silently questioned again the necessity of his leaving his home in England and traveling to this godforsaken backwater all because the manag­er of their sugar plantation, Samuel Grayson, had written in near hysteria to Douglas, his elder broth­er and Earl of Northcliffe, describing in quite fabu­lous detail all the supernatural and surely quite evil happenings going on at Kimberly Hall. It was all nonsense, of course, but Ryder had quickly vol­unteered to come because the man was obviously scared out of his wits and Douglas was newly mar­ried and to a young lady not of his choice. Obvious­ly he needed time to accustom himself to his new and unexpected lot. So it was Ryder who'd spent seven weeks on the high seas before arriving here in Montego Bay, in the middle of the summer in heat so brutal it was a chore to breathe. At the very least, what was happening was a mystery, and Ryder loved mysteries. He heard one of the men say something about this girl with three lovers. Had the men no other topic of conversation? Then one of her lovers had come in, the attorney, Oliver Susson, and there had been a hushed silence for several moments before one of the older gentlemen said in a carrying voice, "Ah, there's dear Oliver, who doesn't mind sharing his meal with his other brothers."

  "Ah, no, Alfred, 'tis only his dessert he shares with his brothers."

  "Aye, a toothsome tart," said a fat gentleman with a leering smile. "I wonder about the taste of her. What do you think, Morgan?"

  Ryder found himself sitting forward in the cane-backed chair. He had believed he would be bored on Jamaica with backwater colonial contentiousness.

  He found himself, instead, grinning. Who the devil was this woman who juggled three men in and out of her bedchamber with such skill?

  "I doubt it's cherries he tastes," said the man named Morgan, tilting back his chair, "but I tell you, young Lord David licks his lips."

  "Ask Oliver. He can give us his legal opinion of the tart in question."

  Oliver Susson was a very good attorney. He blessed the day he arrived in Montego Bay some twelve years before, for he now controlled three sugar plantations since all three owners were living in England. Not one of the owners seemed to mind that he was a competitor's attorney. He sighed now. He had heard every provocative comment and he never showed any emotion save a tolerant smile.

  He said with an easygoing bonhomie, "My dear sirs, the lady in question is the queen of desserts. Your jealousy leads your tongues to serious imperti­nence." With that, he ordered a brandy from a quite striking young woman with wild red hair and a gown that offered up breasts as creamy as the thick goat milk served with the coffee. He then opened an English newspaper, shook the pages, and held it in front of his face.

  What the hell was the woman's name? Who was she?

  Ryder found that he really didn't want to leave the coffeehouse. Outside, the grueling sun was beating down, piles of filth and offal on all the walkways, thick dust that kicked up even when a man took a single step. But he was tired, he needed to get to Kimberly Hall, and he needed to soothe Grayson's doubtless frazzled nerves. Grayson was probably even now at the dock wondering where the hell he was. Well, he would discover all about this so-called tart soon enough.

  He paid his shot, bid his new acquaintances good­bye, and strode out into the nearly overpowering heat of the late afternoon. It nearly staggered him and he found himself wondering how the devil one could even want to make love in this inferno. He was immediately surrounded by ragged black children, each wanting to do something for him, from wiping his boots with a dirty cloth to sweeping the path in front of him with naught more than twigs tied together. They were all shouting "Massa! Massa!" He tossed several shillings into the air and strolled back to the dock. There were free blacks in the West Indies, he knew, but if they were free, they couldn't be more ragged than their slave brothers.

  On the small dock, the smell of rotting fish nearly made him gag. The wooden planks creaked beneath his boots, and there was a frenzy of activity as slaves unloaded a ship that had just docked. Both a black man and a white man stood nearby, each with a whip in his hand, issuing continuous orders. He saw Samuel Grayson, the Sherbrooke manager and attorney, pacing back and forth, mopping his fore­head with a handkerchief. The man looked older than Ryder knew him to be. When he looked up and saw Ryder, Ryder thought he would faint with relief.

  Ryder smiled pleasantly and stretched out his hand. "Samuel Grayson?"

  "Yes, my lord. I had thought you hadn't come until I chanced to see the captain. He told me you were the most enjoyable passenger he's ever had."

  Ryder smiled at that. The fact of the matter was, he hadn't slept with the captain's wife, a young lady making her first voyage with her much older husband. She'd tried to seduce him in the compan-ionway during a storm. Captain Oxenburg had evi­dently found out about it. "Oh yes, I'm here, right enough. I'm not a lord, that's my older brother, the Earl of Northcliffe. I'm merely an honorable, which sounds quite ridiculous really, particularly in this blistering sun, particularly in the West Indies. I believe a simple mister in these parts is quite suf­ficient. Good God, this sun is brutal and the air is so heavy I feel as though I'm carrying an invisible horse on my shoulders."

  "Thank God you are here. I've waited and won­dered, I don't mind telling you, my lor—Master Ryder, that we've trouble here, big trouble, and I haven't known what to do, but now you're here and, oh dear, as for the heat, you'll accustom yourself hopefully and then—"

  Mr. Grayson's voice broke off abruptly and he sucked in his breath. Ryder followed his line of vision and in turn saw a vision of his own. It was a woman . . . really, just a woman, but even from this distance, he knew who she was, oh yes, he was certain this was the woman who dangled three men so skillfully. When she bade them dance, they doubtless danced. He wondered what else she bade them do. Then he shook his head, too weary from the seven weeks on board the comfortingly huge barkentine, The Silver Tide, that he simply didn't care if she were a snake charmer from India or the whore of the island, which, he supposed, she was. The intense heat was sapping his strength. He'd never experienced anything like it before in his life. He hoped Gr
ayson was right and he'd adjust; that, or he'd just lie about in the shade doing nothing.

  He turned back to Grayson. The man was still staring at her, slavering like a dog over a bone that wouldn't ever be his because other bigger dogs had staked claim.

  "Mr. Grayson," Ryder said, and finally the man turned back to him. "I would like to go to Kimberly Hall now. You can tell me of the troubles on our way."

  "Yes, my lor—Master Ryder. Right away. It's just that she's, well, that's Sophia Stanton-Greville, you know." He mopped his forehead.

  "Ah," said Ryder, his voice a nice blend of irony and contempt. "Onward, Grayson. Pull your tongue back into your mouth, if you please. I see flies hovering."

  Samuel Grayson managed it, not without some difficulty, for the woman in question was being helped down from her mare by a white man, and she'd just shown a glimpse of silk-covered ankle. To render men slavering idiots with an ankle made Ryder shake his head. He'd seen so many female ankles in his day, so many female legs and female thighs, and everything else female, that he by far preferred an umbrella to protect him from the relentless sun than seeing anything the woman had to offer.

  "And don't call me master. Ryder will do just fine."

  Grayson nodded, his eyes still on the Vision. "I don't understand," he said more to himself than to Ryder as he walked to two horses, docilely standing, heads lowered, held by two small black boys. "You see her, you see how exquisitely beautiful she is, and yet you are not interested."

  "She is a woman, Grayson, nothing more, nothing less. Let's go now."

  When Grayson produced a hat for Ryder, he thought he'd weep for joy. He couldn't imagine riding far in this heat. "Is it always this unmerci­fully hot?"

  "It's summer. It's always intolerable in the sum­mer here," said Grayson. "We only ride, Ryder. As you'll see, the roads here are well nigh impassable for a carriage. Yes, all gentlemen ride. Many ladies as well."

  Grayson sat his gray cob quite comfortably, Ryder saw, as he mounted his own black gelding, a huge brute with a mean eye.

  "It's nearly an hour's ride to the plantation. But the road west curves very close to the water and there will be a breeze. Also the great house is set upon a rise, and thus catches any breezes and winds that might be up, and in the shade it is always bear­able, even in the summer."

  "Good," Ryder said and clamped the wide-brimmed leather hat down on his head. "You can tell me what's been happening that disturbs you so much."

  And Grayson talked and talked. He spoke of strange blue and yellow smoke that threaded sky­ward like a snake and fires that glowed white and an odd green, and moans and groans and smells that came from hell itself, sulfurous odors that announced the arrival of the devil himself, waiting to attack, it was just a matter of time. And just the week before there'd been a fire set to a shed near to the great house. His son, Emile, and all the house slaves had managed to douse the flames before there'd been much damage. Then just three days before a tree had fallen and very nearly landed on the veranda roof. The tree had been very sturdy.

  "I don't suppose there were saw marks on the tree?"

  "No," said Mr. Grayson firmly. "My son looked closely. It was the work of the supernatural. Even he was forced to cease going against what I said." Grayson drew a very deep breath. "One of the slaves swore he saw the great green serpent."

  "Excuse me?"

  "The great green serpent. It symbolizes their pri­mary deity."

  "Whose primary deity?"

  Grayson actually looked shocked. "One forgets; that Englishmen don't know about these things. Why, I'm speaking of voodoo, of course."

  "Ah, so you believe all this the work of the super­natural then?"

  "I am a white man. However, I have lived in Jamaica for many years. I have seen things that would make no sense in a white world, perhaps things that could not exist in a white world, But the strangeness of the things happening, sir, it gives way to doubts."

  Ryder had no more belief in the supernatural than he had in the honesty of a gaming hell owner. When Grayson paused, Ryder was frowning. ''For­give me, but I have no doubts. Simply mixing certain chemicals would produce the smoke and the strange-colored flames. It is a flesh and blood man, no great green serpent behind this. The question we must answer is why and who. Yes, who would do this?"

  But Grayson clearly was not convinced. "There is another thing, Ryder. After the French Revolution, there was a revolt on Haiti led by a man named Dessalines. He butchered all the whites and forced many priests and priestesses of voodoo to leave Haiti. These people are powerful; they spread throughout the West Indies, even into America itself, and with them they took their demons."

  Ryder wanted to laugh, but he didn't. It was obvi­ous that Grayson felt strongly about this voodoo nonsense. And Grayson was right about one thing: a white man couldn't accept such things as being real, particularly not if he'd lived his entire life in England. He said, "We will see soon enough, I imag­ine. Ah, I didn't know you had a son."

  Grayson puffed up like a proud rooster then he fidgeted with his light gray gloves. "He is a good boy, sir, and he does a lot for me—for the Sherbrookes— now that I am getting on in years. He is waiting for us at Kimberly Hall. He didn't wish to leave the plantation house unprotected."

  They passed dozens more children, all of them ragged, all of them black, children of the slaves working in the fields, but these children were silent at the sight of the two white men riding in their midst.

  Grayson said, pointing to the right and to the left of the narrow rutted road, "We are in the mangrove swamps now. Take care whenever you ride this way for crocodiles come out of the swamps and many times appear like fat logs lying across the road. They will normally eschew the presence of humans, but there have been stories where they didn't, very unpleasant stories."

  Crocodiles! Ryder shook his head, but he kept one eye on the sides of the road. The smell of the fetid swamp water was nearly overpowering. He urged his horse forward. There came a flat stretch, the Caribbean on their left and field after field of sugar­cane on their right, even climbing the hills that lay in the distance. And there were goats everywhere, sitting on low stone fences, chewing at flowers left on graves in the church cemeteries. There were egrets sitting on the backs of cattle, cleaning them of ticks, Ryder knew. And there were black men, tall, their bare upper bodies oily with sweat, working in the sugar fields, wearing only coarse trousers made of stout osnaburg. They didn't seem to notice the heat, their rhythm steady, as they plowed or pulled weeds or dug deeper trenches between the sugar plant rows. And there were women as well, their heads covered with bright bandannas, bending and straightening like the men in a steady rhythm. Not far away sat a white man on a horse, an overseer, sitting under a lone poinciana tree, its feathery, fernlike leaves shimmering in the sunlight, to see they didn't slack off. The whip in his left hand ensured their continued work.

  It was utterly foreign to Ryder. It was exotic, too, with the thick, sweet smell of the frangipani trees that were thick alongside the dirt road, and the startling blue of the water coming into sight at unex­pected moments. He was pleased he'd done reading on the voyage here. He wasn't completely ignorant of the local flora and fauna. But he hadn't read about any damned crocodiles.

  "We are nearing Camille Hall," Grayson said sud­denly, his voice falling nearly to a whisper.

  Ryder raised an eyebrow.

  "It's her home, sir. Sophia Stanton-Greville's home. She lives there with her uncle and her younger brother. There is one plantation between Camille Hall and Kimberly Hall, but as I under­stand it, her uncle is soon to buy it and thus add substantially to his holdings."

  "Who is the owner?"

  "Charles Grammond. Some say he wishes to move to Virginia—'tis one of the colonial states to the north—but it is a lame reason, one with little cre­dence, for he knows nothing of the colonies or their customs and manners. He has four children who haven't become a father's pride, all of them sons, none of them ambitiou
s or willing to work. His wife is difficult, I've heard it said. It's a pity, yes, a pity."

  Ryder was certain he'd heard the man's name in the tavern. He said slowly, "I understand that this woman, this Sophia Stanton-Greville, has three men currently in her bed. I seem to recall that one of them is this Charles Grammond."

  Grayson flushed to the roots of his gray hair. "You have but just arrived, sir!"

  "It is the first topic of conversation I heard at the coffeehouse, the Gold Doubloon, I believe the name is. And I heard it spoken of in great detail."

  "No, no, sir, she is a goddess. She is good and pure. It is all a lie. There are many men here who are not gentlemen."

  "But it is the gossip, is it not?"

  "Yes, it is, but you mustn't believe it, Ryder. No, it's a vicious lie. Don't mistake me. Customs, the local mores, if you will, are different here. All white men have black mistresses. They're called housekeepers here and it is considered a respectable position. I have seen men come from England, some to work on the plantations as bookkeepers, some to earn their fortune, and most change. They take wives and they take mistresses. Their thinking changes. But a lady remains a lady."

  "Has your life changed, Grayson?"

  "Yes, for a while it certainly did. I was my father's son, after all, but my wife was French and I loved her dearly. Only after her death did I succumb to local custom and take a mistress or a housekeeper. Life here is different, Ryder, very different."

  Ryder subsided, letting his body relax and roll gently in the comfortable Spanish saddle. He closed his eyes a moment, breathing in the salty fresh smell of the sea, the coastline no longer obscured by thick clumps of mangrove. "Why is Grammond selling out then, in your opinion?"

  "I'm not completely certain, but there are, of course, rumors. It was a sudden decision, that I do know. He and his family are leaving next week, I have heard it said. The plantation is quite profitable. It is said he lost a lot of money to Lord David Lochridge, a young wastrel with whom you must avoid gambling, sir, at all costs. It is said he has sold his soul to the devil, and thus his incredible luck."