Beyond the Savage Sea Page 21

  “You stir me.”

  Her breathing grew ragged, and her bosom rose and fell visibly. “Drake, please don’t ask anything of me.” The stable smelled clean, of well-kept horses and fresh cane toppings that were strewn on the floor, used in place of straw.

  “I’m not asking for anything. I just want you to know you stir me. Sometimes I lie in bed at night and I know you are down the hall and I ache in need. Tell me, Edwinna. Do you ever ache in need?”

  She looked at him.

  “Yes.”

  “Then...”

  “Drake, I must go up to the house!”

  “Of course.” He reluctantly let go of her waist, and she picked up her skirts and walked rapidly out of the stable and up the path toward the house. Now and then her hand went tensely to her hair, tightly smoothing it back, controlling it in the same tight way she tried to control her life.

  The gesture filled him with despair, because he did not know why she was the way she was, and so he had no hope of changing her.

  * * *

  Chapter 14

  On the day of the Bridgetown executions Edwinna awoke sick at heart. Thirteen of her own bondslaves would be executed. Guilt flooded her. If she had managed the plantation better, differently, would they have rebelled?

  She knew that to be foolish thinking. They were convicts, men who lived on the edge. It was their way. Still, she felt she’d failed. Unable to sleep, she rose and dressed in the darkness. For days planters and the curious from all over the island had been traveling to Bridgetown to watch the public burnings. She was glad Drake had been as repulsed by the thought of going as she. She could not have continued to...to feel for him if he’d shown interest in it. And she did feel for him. Her feelings grew stronger every day.

  Dressed, she went quietly down the dark hallway, pausing at Drake’s open door. His room lay shadowy. Only the distant sound of the grinder disturbed the quiet. Mosquito netting cascaded around the bed. Through the netting she could see his dark head on the pillow, the outline of shoulder and chest. She drew a deep breath, remembering the one kiss they had shared.

  It had been a mistake to put Drake Steel in this room, her father’s room. The memories here loomed too darkly. Yet perhaps that was to the good. One day he would leave Barbados, and when he had left she could come to this room and remember that a handsome London wine merchant had once lived here. It would cancel the other memories.

  “Edwinna.” His voice came from the bed. “Try not to feel too bad about today.”

  She hadn’t thought he was awake. The unexpected tenderness in his tone, the intuitive understanding, made her throat fill with emotion.

  “I’m trying not to,” she said. “Still, I cannot but feel if I had run the plantation differently...”

  “Today is not your fault. The men brought it down upon themselves. There is nothing you could have done to prevent it. Believe me, the world is full of such people. They set a course for their own destruction and follow it to the end.”

  She nodded, her voice too thick to respond.

  “Are you going to the mill?”

  “Yes. To the curing house,” she said.

  Drake lifted up on one elbow and gazed at her in the darkness. He was beginning to understand. She used work to keep her own personal demons at bay. Work could be measured and controlled and predicted. She could knock on a sugar pot and predict if the sugar was going to cure, but she could not knock on the head of a bondslave and predict whether he would someday rise up against her.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “It isn’t necessary. You have hours yet to sleep.”

  “I want to.”

  Concerned for her, filled with a fierce fondness, he stayed with her throughout the morning. As the hour of the scheduled executions drew closer, she grew so pale that he took her firmly by the elbow and marched her up to the house to eat something. Then he sent for the horses.

  They rode east to the wild, savage beauty of the Atlantic coast, tethered their horses in the shade, and sat on a cliff looking out over miles of rugged coastline. They watched the whitecaps roll in and batter the shore. The trade winds blew fresh and clean. Speaking little, they waited for noon. Edwinna was closed in her own private thoughts as a clam is closed in its own shell.

  He felt helpless, unable to aid her. She lived behind a barrier and he couldn’t get through. He longed to take her in his arms and comfort her, but he knew better than to do that. He would scare her.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  He brought out his timepiece and looked at it ruefully.

  “It doesn’t work anymore. The humidity.”

  “Why do you carry it?”

  “It was a gift from my wife.”

  She gazed at the timepiece, touched it with one finger, tracing the scrollwork, the English birds and flowers, the rich embellished silver and gold case. He was glad she didn’t know of the engraving inside the case—his and Anne’s names linked with a heart. She held the watch for a long time, as if absorbed in it.

  “She must have loved you very much to give you so fine a gift.”

  He drew a careful breath. “That is the whole point of marriage, Edwinna, isn’t it? To be loving to each other?”

  She looked into his eyes, tense, intense. Caught in the wind, unbraided wisps of sunny brown hair blew around the edges of her face. The wind molded her shirt to her breasts. He ached to touch her there, in the gentlest way.

  “Yes.”

  As the sun neared its zenith, her lips grew tight. She sat with her knees up, her arms locked around them, head on knees. The sun passed its zenith. She seemed not to want to notice, as if by not noticing she could prevent the executions. When an hour had passed, he grew worried and gently prodded.

  “It’s over, Edwinna.”

  She nodded. Pale but staunch, she got to her feet. When she hesitated and glanced south toward Bridgetown, he put a hand on the small of her back and walked to her horse.

  “It was a matter of justice, Edwinna, and justice was meted out. Justice has been served.”

  She nodded. “I know.”

  “Then don’t grieve. It was not your fault.”

  Two evenings later, he and Edwinna were working by candlelight in the office, entering the day’s harvest figures into ledgers, when David Alleyne and Kena appeared in the open doorway and hovered there expectantly.

  Glancing up, Drake knew their mission at once and smiled. Kena was radiant, her eyes shining and her dusky skin flushed with happiness. David fairly shone. Joy emanated from every pore, from his fair, suntanned skin, from his blond hair, his blue eyes. He held Kena’s hand as if it were a fragile treasure.

  Edwinna knew instantly, too. Drake saw her stiffen, go pale.

  “Mistress Edwinna?”

  “Come in, David,” Drake said, since Edwinna was silent. He put down his pen. The pair stepped in, glancing at each other with excitement and uncertainty.

  “Mistress Edwinna?” Alleyne said respectfully. “Kena and I have come to ask your permission to wed. I love your sister with all my heart, and she loves me. We wish to be man and wife. If you will grant me permission, I will wed her properly and with all honor, saying our vows before a minister of God, kneeling at the altar in St. Lucy’s Parish Church. And I swear to you,” he finished, voice trembling with emotion, “I swear to you I will love and honor her, cherish and protect her, to the best of my ability for the rest of my life on this earth.”

  It was a moving speech. Drake was touched by David’s sincerity. All eyes swung to Edwinna. She sat gripping the table edge. She looked as if she’d been assaulted. Oblivious, blinded by their own happiness, David and Kena waited eagerly.

  “Mistress Edwinna?” David prompted.

  “No.” The word broke deep in her throat. “No!”

  Kena’s happy look disintegrated. David’s eyes grew huge. Drake leaped to his feet to usher the stunned, crestfallen young couple out the door.

  “David, take Kena to
the dining chamber and wait there.” David nodded, blank with bewilderment. Putting his arm around Kena, who wept softly, David led her away. Drake closed the door, then went around the worktable and squatted beside Edwinna’s chair. She sat with elbows propped on the table, her head in her hands.

  “Why no, Edwinna?”

  “She is my sister!”

  “That is a fact. It’s not a reason to deny them wedlock.”

  “You don’t understand!”

  “Maybe I do. I have a sister. I remember how I felt when she wed. Arthur had been one of my best friends, yet I felt he wasn’t good enough for her.”

  “No, you don’t understand!” Seizing the finished ledgers, she leaped to her feet, went to the wall shelves, and started shoving them into their slots, roughly, one by one, with noise and banging. “You don’t understand. Six years ago my father gave Kena to a boiling house slave as wife. To a boiling house slave. His own daughter!”

  Drake slowly got to his feet. He raked a hand over his brow. “God, Edwinna.”

  “I begged him not to. Kena begged, too. She was only fourteen and frightened. She didn’t even speak the slave’s language. He was a bush slave out of Africa. But my father and my uncle thought it funny. Funny! The boiling house slave used her so brutally that she miscarried her first child and nearly lost her own life.”

  “And you think David Alleyne would be like that?” Drake said, incredulous. “You can watch David Alleyne doctoring on this plantation and you can believe that of him?”

  “He’s a man, isn’t he!”

  Drake breathed quietly. She went on shuffling her ledgers, banging them about on the shelves, putting them in a new order, needing something to do with her hands.

  “Yes, he’s a man, Edwinna. A good man.”

  “There aren’t any good men.” When he took that, when he calmly let the insult pass, she glanced at him. “He’ll take her away from me,” she burst. “And he’ll take Tutu away,” she added intensely. “I don’t want to lose them.”

  Now they were nearing the truth. He gazed at her with understanding. Thomas and Harry were gone. Kena and Tutu were all she had left.

  “He hasn’t said so.”

  “David is from England. He’ll want to go back someday. All Englishmen do. He’ll take her back there. Drake, she’s mulatto! How many mulattoes are there in England?”

  “Few,” he admitted.

  She banged the ledgers around. “She’s my sister. I love her. In England she would be a curiosity, something freakish for people to stare at. It would break her heart. I won’t let that happen to her. She has to stay here—where mixed blood is accepted, where I can take care of her.”

  “Edwinna, David Alleyne loves her. Surely, he has thought of this. If you could listen to what he has to say, hear him out, discuss his plans...”

  “No.”

  He didn’t know how to deal with her, help her. He sensed the matter went even deeper than Kena and David; it went to themselves. If she couldn’t let go and trust and give Kena to a fine man like David, she would never be able to give herself to him.

  “Edwinna?” Upset, she moved to another shelf, rearranging the ledgers there. “You say you love Kena, then think of Kena. She’s not cut out to be a spinster widow all of her life. She’s a normal young woman with a normal woman’s wants and needs. She wants a husband to love, children to love. She wants...sexual love, the marriage bed.” He added, “Think of her. Perhaps she wants to take the risk. Perhaps she’s not like you, Edwinna, neither wanting or needing any sort of love.”

  She looked over her shoulder, her eyes glistening.

  “I need love.”

  He drew a breath and shook his head helplessly.

  “That, I sincerely doubt. To get love, you have to be willing to give love, Edwinna. And you are unwilling. I know you feel something for me. I see it shining in your lovely eyes every day. Yet you won’t take me into your confidence, you won’t share a bed with me, though I have offered until my heart is bruised from rejection. Granted, in a sense I am still a widower and in mourning for Anne. I can’t offer you blazing, glorious love. But I can offer you fondness. Fondness is a form of love...”

  He eyed her gently. “What do you do for your sexual needs? You’re a mature woman, Edwinna. Passions run deep in you. Do you meet your physical needs alone in bed at night?”

  Her face went scarlet. She snapped her head around to the wall and rested her hands high on the bookshelves, her breathing ragged, her head bowed. She was incredibly silent.

  He was ashamed. He stepped forward and put his hands on her shoulders in apology. “Edwinna, I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair. “I shouldn’t have said that. I had no right to say it—no right at all. I meet my own needs that way.”

  He rested his cheek against her thick, curly hair. “And it’s lonely. Very lonely. Isn’t it?”

  She nodded stiffly.

  “Of course it is. We’re both lonely, Edwinna. I’m going to put my arms around you and hold you tightly for just a little while. Only hold you, nothing more. This arm goes across your chest to your shoulder, my hand gripping your shoulder.” He could feel her heart pounding. “There, that’s lovely. This arm crosses it to your other shoulder. There. Lean against me, Edwinna.”

  She did so, breathing rapidly, eyes closed. He could feel her heart thudding against his chest. He pushed her hair aside with his mouth and rested his warm cheek against hers.

  “There,” he soothed. “Only this...nothing more.”

  * * * *

  With Edwinna’s permission, David Alleyne and Kena rode to St. Lucy’s Parish Church two days later and were married. Glowing with joy, they returned an hour before sunset.

  Edwinna had to brace herself for their return. She smiled to welcome them back. She kissed David to congratulate him, to welcome him into the family as her brother-in-law. She kissed and hugged Kena. But inside she was devastated. She’d lost her sister. She saw it in Kena’s eyes—eyes that saw only David.

  The four of them ate a wedding supper by candlelight in the dining chamber that night. Edwinna put on her best gown and tried to make the supper a special occasion. Drake made the event celebratory, too. He dressed handsomely and toasted the young couple with wine. Edwinna even sipped a little wine and smiled to show her goodwill, but inside, her heart was breaking.

  Drake understood. His glances told her so. But that made her feel...oddly violated. She wasn’t used to sharing her feelings. She was used to guarding them, keeping them tightly closed inside her, where she could control them. Yet, when she thought of how he’d held her—just held her in his strong arms—she was filled with longing.

  As the supper party went on, she saw gentleness in his eyes, but another, more basic interest, too. The old anxiety rose; the dark memory came flooding back. When supper ended and David had to go check on his patients, he and Kena parted with a soft kiss, David reluctant to leave her even for a moment. Edwinna watched with fierce envy. When she glanced at Drake and found him looking at her, his blue eyes smoky with desire, her heart pounded.

  Inviting David and Kena to live with her had been a mistake. How could she stand it, knowing they were in the room across the hall, consummating their marriage night after night while she lay alone and lonely? She felt as if a war were being fought inside her body, inside her head. She wanted Drake! But then memory took hold of her with its sharp ugly talons.

  When they rose from the wedding supper, Drake came to her in the candlelit dining chamber and said, “It’s a lovely evening. Shall we go for a walk?”

  Her chest tightened. “No.”

  “Edwinna, what’s wrong?”

  “I don’t want a walk, that’s all.”

  She pushed past him, went to the office, and locked herself in. Trembling, she groped for the tinderbox on the table in the dark room, lighted a candle, took ledgers down from the shelf, opened them, and began to work. She could cope with facts and figures. What she could not cope with were wedding nig
hts and loving Drake Steel and losing her sister. When a tear ran down her cheek, she brusquely brushed it away and concentrated on the day’s harvest.

  A candle burned in Kena and David’s room nearly all night, its light spilling under their door and flowing to her door, settling under it as a faint glow. It made her breathless, restless. She slept poorly.

  David and Kena’s wedding night had been a strain on Drake, too. She saw it in his sleepless eyes the next day, in the shortness of his temper. He was testy. They quarreled about inconsequential things, the stacking of the cut cane on the loading platform, for one. They quarreled so foolishly on the platform that the slaves stared, and even Matthew Plum lifted an eyebrow in disbelief.

  “You should stack the cane crosswise, Drake.”

  “I will have it stacked the way I want it stacked.”

  “If you stack it lengthwise it will roll into the grinder.”

  “If I stack it crosswise, it will roll off the platform.”

  “We always stack it crosswise on Crawford Plantation.”

  “Then you do the stacking, and I’ll do your job, hopping around in a dark curing house all day, banging on sugar pots.”

  “I do not bang on sugar pots, I knock on them.”

  “Fine, then I’ll knock on them. You supervise stacking the cane.”

  It was so foolish a quarrel, even to their own ears, that they both stepped back and looked at each other. Drake wiped sweat and cane field grime from his forehead with his sleeve. “Edwinna,” he said, “we’re both upset with that damned honeymoon going on in the house right under our noses.” She nodded and swallowed tightly. “Let’s try not to be.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll have the cane stacked crosswise.”

  “You needn’t. It can be stacked lengthwise.” He smiled, reached out, gave her ridiculous braid a tug, and went back to his work.