Beyond the Savage Sea Page 14

Drake remained incensed with her and she knew it. On Monday, he did not come to midday meal with the overseers. His empty place at the table was a reproach. Matthew Plum glanced at it several times during the meal and gazed at her quizzically, but it was none of his business. She gave him no explanation, and he asked for none.

  Drake didn’t sup with her that night, either. Where he supped, she didn’t know. Probably down at Matthew Plum’s. The two had become good friends. As for herself, she ate in the large, dark dining chamber, alone.

  It was up to her to apologize. Going up to bed in the dark house after midnight, she paused at his open door. His room lay in shadows, the mosquito netting like a white cloud.

  “I’m not asleep.” His unhappy voice came quietly from within the netting.

  She drew a breath. “Drake, I am truly sorry I said those things.”

  “I’m sorry you said them, too. I’d thought there was the possibility we might become friends. Now I see it’s not possible.”

  “I want to be friends, Drake.”

  He sighed. “Do you? Somehow, I doubt that. I do not understand you, Edwinna. I try. But the truth is I do not understand you.”

  She was glad for the darkness. He couldn’t see the emotion she was feeling. “Sometimes...there are many things I do not understand about myself. But I’m sorry if I offended you.”

  She went down the hall to her door.

  “Edwinna?” he called gently from his bed.

  “Yes?”

  “Good night, sleep well.”

  “Thank you.” She went into her room, closed and locked the door. She sat on the bed and wrapped herself tightly in her own arms, for lack of anyone else to hold her. Dear God, did she want to be held and comforted in Drake Steel’s arms?

  * * * *

  Edwinna was standing in a cut cane field in the dazzling morning sun, holding the rein of her mare and trying to reach a decision as to whether to let a crop of rattoon cane spring up from the stubble for a third year or to dig up the stubble and plant new cane, when a slave came running down the path from the mill, gesturing wildly.

  “Mama, Mama, come!”

  She dropped the reins and ran out of the field as he came toward her, the whites of his eyes showing in his fright, the sweat on his black body catching the sunlight and gleaming like beads of gold.

  “Jehan, what is it?”

  “Mama—” Deserted by the few English words he knew, he could only make beseeching gestures and point frantically in the direction of the mill. Helpless to explain, he imitated the sound of the grinder, “Garooooom, garoooom —Papa—”

  “The grinding platform? Papa Drake? He’s hurt?”

  - He nodded so hard the sweat beads flew.

  “Oh, dear God.” Fear gripped her. For a moment, she stood rooted, unable to move for the terror of it. Then, with only one thought in her head—Drake!—she bolted and ran like a wild woman, arms flailing, braid coming loose, hair flying wild. The mill was a quarter of a mile away. She forgot she had a horse and simply ran, but the faster she ran, the slower she seemed to move. It was like running in one of her terrifying nightmares in which Thomas and Harry needed her, called to her, and she couldn’t get to them. Oh, not Drake, not Drake.

  She came to the end of the cane path, gasping and breathless. The familiar rumble and squeal of the grinder had stopped. She ran uphill to the mill, past the distillery, the curing house, the boiling house, past the affingoes heading toward the loading platform with cut cane.

  Under the grinding platform, men clustered around a lax, booted figure who reclined on the ground, propped against the platform post. Dark hair, broad shoulders. Drake! The cluster of men parted for her as she ran to him and fell to her knees.

  “Drake, Drake—”

  Terrified of seeing him lying dead or dying or maimed, she was struck by a sudden blinding headache and could scarcely see him at all. She groped for his large, tanned hand and clutched it.

  “Drake, Drake—”

  “Edwinna.” He squeezed her hand. Getting his second wind, getting over the initial, astounding shock of the fall, Drake still saw stars. The back of his head, where he’d struck the edge of the platform when he’d slipped and fallen, felt as if it had been whacked by the flat of an axe. It throbbed in rhythm to his heartbeat, goose egg rising. But the real bitch was his shoulder. It had separated. He’d felt it go. Low and humming, seductive as a siren, pain crept toward him, coming for him. The sound of it filled his ears.

  But it was Edwinna who concerned him. Wild-eyed and scared, she was shaking as if chilled to the bone. Her pretty lips wore blue, and fear had constricted the pupils of her eyes to black velvet pinpoints.

  “Edwinna.” Babying his shoulder, he gripped her hand. It was as cold as ice, and he could feel the force of her shaking all the way up his arm. “Edwinna, I’m all right.”

  “Drake—”

  David Alleyne squatted, his fair hair catching the sunlight.

  “Mistress Edwinna, Mr. Steel will be all right. I’ll see to it. He has had a knock on the head, but ’tisn’t serious. His shoulder will be an agony for a week or two, but I’ll bind it well.”

  “Help him!”

  “I will, ma’am, I will. Now, please move aside. Let go of his hand. Let go. Come now, let go.”

  Drake had never seen emotion so strong. He was stunned by it. He hadn’t thought she had so much passion in her. He hadn’t thought she cared. But she did. It was plain in the violence of her shaking.

  “What happened?” she demanded.

  Drake tried to smile for her sake, but the tide of pain was coming in. “I was up on the platform, estimating the amount of cane that needed to be cut tomorrow. My foot slipped on cane juice and I fell off the platform, that’s all.”

  Her eyes were so luminous he could see all the way into her heart. What he saw shocked him. She cared about him!

  “I thought—the grinder.”

  “I know,” he said gently, reaching out to touch her hair. It was wild, disheveled. Her face was flushed, her forehead sweaty. How far had she run? “I know.”

  Alleyne injected, “I had best bind him now, Mistress Edwinna. Before the pain starts.”

  “Do it! Do it at once.”

  “Before it starts?” Drake smiled raggedly at Alleyne. “You jest.” David Alleyne smiled back and went to work binding him—an agony. Drake tried not to cry out. For Edwinna’s sake he gritted his teeth. She watched like a hawk, her lovely eyes scared, an occasional tremble still rippling through her body. He closed his eyes, panting to keep the pain at bay, watching her through his drooping lashes. He thought: When pain is great enough, it is almost sexual. Watching her, he thought about going to bed with her. Her braid had come undone. Loosed from that unattractive prison, her sunny brown hair fell thick and curly to her shoulders. It wasn’t the lovely color of Anne’s hair, but he liked it. It...suited her. The tide swept in and covered him. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. David worked, binding him tightly. When the pain ebbed, he opened his eyes again and looked at her. She was watching him intently. He smiled a little, to show her the pain was bearable. She smiled, too, eyes intense, lips trembling. He’d never seen such emotion.

  Plum showed up. Noting Edwinna’s shaken state, he made nothing of Drake’s injuries, even joked a little. Drake was relieved. A man of common sense, Plum ordered the gawking slaves and bondslaves back to work. The grinder began to rumble overhead, the day returning to normal.

  David Alleyne helped him walk up to the house. Drake had rejected Edwinna’s insistent offer of a litter or a horse. Riding would be excruciating. A bouncing litter would be worse.

  Edwinna felt foolish hovering over Drake, so as soon as David Alleyne and the servants had made him comfortable in bed, she forced herself to go back to her work, leaving him in the hands of Kena and Marigold, who stayed near, seeing to his every wish and need.

  Still shaken, she went to the curing house and for an hour forced herself to check sugar pots that hung
from their racks, the molasses slowly dripping out of them into the pans below. She marked the pots of sugar that were not hardening and would have to be re-boiled.

  But Drake was in every breath she took. What if David Alleyne was wrong about Drake’s “mild” head injury? What if it was worse than that? She abandoned all pretense of working, ran back to Crawford Hall, and breathlessly climbed the stairs to his room.

  The door stood open. To her relief, she found him sitting up in bed in a nest of pillows, his deeply tanned chest bare, his shoulder muscles straining against the tight bindings. He looked to be in great pain.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked from the doorway.

  He managed a smile. “I’ve a grandfather of a headache, but it’s the shoulder that’s a bit of a bitch.”

  “Yes.” More than a bit. She could see a white pain line that outlined his brow where his deeply tanned forehead met his black hair. His hair was neatly combed and clubbed back. Even in pain, he kept himself tidy, neat. “Can I get you something? Is there anything you want?”

  “Company.” He smiled painfully. “Other than simian.” With his good hand, he gestured toward Priscilla and Jocko, who perched on his dresser. Priscilla was brushing Jocko’s head with Drake’s hairbrush. Jocko endured it stoically, eyes closed, head ducked, blinking every time the hard wooden back of the brush hit him. “Come in. Sit with me, Edwinna.”

  She hesitated. The room was not one she ever entered willingly. It had been her father’s room. She’d never known what to expect here—a kind word, a cross word, a drunken rage, blows. The unpredictableness had confused her. She’d lived her childhood confused, terrified. But there had been good years, too—the years before he drank, before her mother ran off.

  She forced herself to step across the threshold. Drake kept his room as tidy as he kept his person—boots and clothing put away in the wardrobe, shaving tools put away in the shaving box, towel folded and hung square on the towel rack. He’d made himself a small, neat calendar grid, which hung on the wall above his writing table. She winced. With neat strokes, he’d crossed off each day as it had passed, as if he wanted to be done with the year.

  “Bring a chair to the bed. Sit with me.”

  She did so, but she was uncomfortable with his near-nakedness. She was used to it in the fields, in the boiling house. But Drake’s nakedness bothered her. He was so...big. His chest was tanned to the dark color of mahogany, and it was sprinkled with crisp black hair that descended in a dark T into his breeches. She flushed, imagining it descending lower, into a soft black bush.

  “Shall I put on a shirt?”

  Her eyes flew to his.

  “It’s not necessary.”

  “Good. Barbados is so damned hot—hot and bright.”

  “Is it? I wouldn’t know. I have never lived anywhere else.”

  “I have and I know. Believe me, it’s hot.”

  “I could have Scipio come up and fan you.”

  He smiled wryly. “Like an Oriental potentate. Send up the harem girls, too. They can pop grapes into my mouth.”

  She smiled. You are falling in love with him, Edwinna, she thought. She quickly looked away, and, flustered, rubbed her hand.

  He gingerly settled his head against the pillow.

  “Does your head hurt badly?”

  “Let’s put it this way. I would sell my soul for a piece of ice to put on my goose egg.”

  “What is ice?”

  Drake lifted his head and stared at her. Their two separate worlds slid into juxtaposition, colliding so loudly he could almost hear the crash. He was a man who knew what ice was, a man raised in England, with enough morality to know that slavery was wrong. She was a slave owner, a woman who didn’t even know what ice was, who thought it natural to have a black half- sister. Never before had their differences been so clear to him. He was wrong to blame her.

  “Ice,” he said “is water that becomes solid as rock and very cold when the temperature drops low enough.”

  “How strange.”

  “In England in winter some ponds and rivers become solid ice and people take sleds and go sliding on them.”

  She chuckled. “I would like to see that.”

  “I would like to show it to you.” He meant it.

  Priscilla swung down from the dresser and stalked to the door, tail a straight, high crook. When Jocko failed to follow, she turned and gave him a piece of her mind, chattering. Jocko obediently swung down and followed her.

  “It’s plain to see who rules the roost.”

  “This is not yet mating season,” Edwinna warned. “In mating season he will likely become aggressive. If he becomes mean and starts to bite, you will have to get rid of him, Drake.”

  “Edwinna.” He smiled gently. “Only stupid males mate aggressively. Most males mate gently, out of consideration for the female.”

  That bothered her and she stared at her hands. Gazing at her through a veil of pain, Drake wished he were mating with her right now. She’d forgotten to re-braid her hair. It was long and as thick as sheep’s wool. The tide came in. He breathed deep and braced himself for its onslaught. Eyes closed, he dog-paddled in a sea of pain. It was a powerful aphrodisiac. He gazed at her through his lashes. He wished she were astride him right now. Shoulder or no, he would let her ride to her heart’s content, and when she had, he would take his turn. He wondered what it would feel like, being intimate with Edwinna Crawford.

  “Drake, do you want kill-devil rum for the pain? I can send Kena to the distillery.”

  He had to smile. He was in bad shape if Edwinna was willing to offer rum.

  “No. I’ll wait until I really need it.” His smile grew wry. “Alleyne tells me the second to the fifth days will be the worst, though I hope he’s joking. I can’t imagine worse.”

  He lay his head back, closed his eyes, and floated on the tide.

  “Drake?” Edwinna said, moving her chair closer. “David Alleyne said you must not fall asleep the first few hours after a head injury. It can be dangerous.”

  He gingerly pulled himself up, and with his good arm, he reached back, captured the goose-feather pillow, and dragged it to the crook of his neck. “Well, then, let’s talk. It will keep me awake.”

  “Yes. We’ll talk. About what?”

  He wished he could talk about bed, about touching each other, but instead he said, “Tell me about your brothers. What sort of young men are they?”

  It was a subject she liked. Her eyes glowed. She wasn’t a beauty, but she appealed to him. He liked the cleanness of her features, the decency in her character. The passion he’d seen displayed today, on his behalf, had knocked him silly. He felt as aroused by it as if he were in a harem full of scantily clad nymphs and not merely sitting with a spinster who wore breeches and men’s shirts. He slid a knee up, lest his arousal become obvious.

  “They are wonderful young men—handsome, high-spirited, adventurous. I remember the day they were born.” She smiled, her expression soft. “I thought they had been brought to the house as a gift for me. I thought they were mine. I remember taking a pallet into the nursery and sleeping there because I knew they were mine.” Her gaze shifted away for a moment, and a stressful line formed on her brow. “After my mother...was gone, they truly were mine. I raised them.”

  “They ran away to sea at sixteen?”

  “Yes. They—they’d had a quarrel with my father. But they’d always yearned to go to sea,” she added quickly. “They’d begged to go, even as children.”

  So, Drake thought, Peter Crawford had destroyed all his children. The drinking fool. The ignorant jackass had been too big-headed to see that a man’s real treasures were his children, not his rum barrel or his damned cane fields. Drake treasured his own children above everything else on earth.

  “Then they are not fanatic planters like you?”

  She smiled at the word fanatic. “No. They think it dull. But I’m sure,” she said, “that when they’re older they will settle into it and be v
ery happy as planters.”

  Drake was sure they wouldn’t. From what he’d seen, planting was not an occupation, it was a calling, like that of priest or nun. It required complete dedication, night and day. You were either born to be a planter, as Edwinna plainly was, or you hated it, as the Crawford twins likely did.

  “Tell me about your children, Drake. What are they like?”

  He smiled despite the tide of pain that was coming for him again. He wanted to ease out of the bed and pace the floor.

  “Well, they say William is my very image.” Edwinna smiled, picturing William, a sturdy, handsome boy with midnight black hair and eyes as blue and clear as the waters of Carlisle Bay. “Though where he gets his aggressive nature from is beyond me.”

  “From you,” she assured him with a nod. “You could not have survived six months on a pirate ship without having an aggressive nature.”

  He smiled. “Is that so?”

  “Yes, that’s so.”

  “Perhaps. But Katherine is totally her mother—blonde, petite, very pretty. It is too early to say for sure, but I think she may have inherited Anne’s beautiful singing voice, too.”

  The description brought unexpected pain. She’d already guessed Drake’s wife would have been like that—very pretty and accomplished—but now she knew for sure. “Katherine sounds wonderful,” she said firmly. “William, too.”

  “They are.” He glanced at his writing table. “I wrote each of them a separate letter last night.” He smiled. Edwinna watched him anxiously. His smiles were taut curves now laced with pain. “Of course, Katharine is too young to read. Verity will have to read it to her. But it will still be her own letter. I wrote William about the cane fields and the mill, and I wrote Katherine about Priscilla. I wish I could draw.”

  “I can draw,” Edwinna offered. “When I was young I used to spend a lot of time alone with paper and pen and ink, drawing. I would go into the cane fields, to the boiling house. I could draw Priscilla in the margins of your letter if you like.”

  “That would be excellent.”

  She fetched letter box, pen, and ink and set to work. Drake watched her as the tide came for him. He tried not to sink; he tried to stay above the water. God! He reached for the flask of kill-devil rum David Alleyne had left on his nightstand, popped the cork out, and took a sip. Edwinna looked up. He managed a half smile.