Desire in the Sun (11 page)

“Kevin is the right man for me.”

“Mr. Kevin’s the right man for your pa and Heart’s Ease. He’s not the right man for you. And you know it, Miss Lilah, deep down. You’re just too stubborn to admit it.”

“That’s enough, Betsy. I don’t want to talk about it anymore!” Lilah glared at her maid. Betsy went on inexorably.

“You don’t even like him to kiss you! What you going
to do when he gets into bed with you when you’re married?”

Lilah’s cheeks flushed. “You were spying!” she accused heatedly, knowing that Betsy referred to the scene that had taken place between herself and Kevin the night before.

He had walked her to her cabin after a late turn about the deck. When she opened the door to go in, he had surprised her by stepping inside with her, pushing the door almost closed behind them. Betsy had been asleep—she’d thought!—in the upper berth, but still the cabin was dark and it was late and they were much too private to be completely respectable. She’d looked up at Kevin inquiringly; it wasn’t like him to be unconventional. Without a word he’d pulled her hard against his body and covered her mouth with his. The impression she’d formed of his kiss was that he was trying to eat her lips with his mouth. The greedy wetness of his tongue slobbering over her clamped mouth made her feel sick to her stomach. This kiss was nothing like the soft fire of …no, she must not remember that. Angry, she’d pushed Kevin away. He apologized immediately, and kissed her hand in gentle remorse before taking himself off, but the whole incident had left her uncomfortable. Was that the kind of thing she could expect from him when they were married? And then it would not be so easy just to push him away. …

“I was awake,” Betsy corrected, very much on her dignity. “I saw him try to kiss you, and I saw you act like you was going to throw up. That’s no way to feel about the man you’re meaning to marry, Miss Lilah.”

“What do you know about it?” Lilah retorted heatedly, angry because Betsy’s words came too close to her own misgivings.

Betsy looked smug. “I know plenty. I kept company with John Henry for a year, and then there was Norman and—well, never you mind. What I’m tellin’ you is that
I never felt like that when any of them kissed me. And if Ben ever kissed me. … Miss Lilah, he’d have to pry me off him with a boat hook! That’s how you should feel about the man you’re going to marry.”

“Ladies don’t feel that way about things like that,” Lilah said, though with another slight twinge of unease as she once again remembered the excitement of other lips on hers. … Resolutely she pushed the forbidden memory away. That single night of madness was not going to be permitted to color her whole life. It had been a night apart from reality, no more substantial than a dream. And she’d better keep that firmly in mind!

Betsy hooted inelegantly. “If you say so, Miss Lilah. But you know and I know you’re only fooling yourself. Ladies and maids, we’re all alike under the skin—we’re women.”

The slaves, finally done with their exercising for the day, slogged past, chains clanking as they headed toward the hatchway. Lilah averted her eyes to avoid looking at Joss, now chained securely at the end of the line. Betsy’s eyes sharpened.

“You telling me you didn’t feel like that with him?” Betsy asked softly, watching Lilah’s face with keen knowledge. “You forget, Miss Lilah, I’ve known you since you was a little girl. And I saw how happy and excited you were, changing into something ‘ravishing’ for him. You ain’t ever been like that before or since! All right, he wasn’t the right man for you either, but if you could feel that way about him you could feel that way about another man one day. Don’t just settle for Mr. Kevin ‘cause you think he’s safe! Settling’s for old women and old hens, not for a pretty young lady like you!”

“I’m not settling! And I don’t want to discuss it anymore!”

“All right, bury your head in the sand if you want to! Me, I’ve got work to do!”

With a sniff, Betsy took herself off, leaving Lilah to brood. Secretly she feared that there was more than a grain of truth to what Betsy said. Kevin’s gentlest kiss did nothing more than rouse in her a desire to wipe her mouth. The one he had tried to give her the previous night had brought with it a tide of revulsion so strong that it had made her feel physically ill. She was not a child; she had a fair idea of what the physical side of marriage entailed. She had just never before taken the time to apply that knowledge to herself and Kevin. Could she let him kiss her like that for the rest of her life, or permit him the kind of intimacies married people shared, the exact details of which were a trifle vague in her mind but she knew involved sharing a bed and begetting children? Could she stand his hands on her naked flesh, not just once or twice but night after night after night for the Lord knew how many years? Lilah actually shivered at the thought. But then her mind ran over all the other men who had begged for her hand over the years, and she realized she couldn’t bear the idea of their hands on her either. The only man she’d ever felt the slightest response to was …

She shut her eyes at the shameful image. The only man whose touch she thought she might have been able to bear was at that moment chained in the hold with the rest of the slaves Kevin had bought for Heart’s Ease.

Her heart lightened fractionally as an idea occurred to her. Once she was safely home again at Heart’s Ease, she might speak to her father about freeing Joss. If Kevin was right, he would probably be nothing but trouble, worse than the Africans brought straight from their mother country to work the fields. Leonard Remy refused to have gullahs on the place. Without generations of slavedom behind them to make them docile, gullahs were too unpredictable, he said. They frequently tried to escape, and were capable of stirring up unrest amongst the other slaves with their hankering for freedom.

Her father wouldn’t be hard to convince, she thought, as long as he did not get hold of the idea that she wanted the man freed because she was attracted to him. Which was, of course, an entirely ridiculous idea. She wanted him freed because he was a human being like herself. That that might also apply to Betsy and twenty other slaves at Heart’s Ease she refused to consider. This man had no business being enslaved, and should be set free. Once he had his freedom, he would depart from Heart’s Ease and Barbados and she need never see him again.

The sun had almost disappeared beneath the horizon, and it was getting increasingly colder by the rail. Lilah shivered. Her dress was long-sleeved, but the thin muslin was no protection against the brisk sea wind. Perhaps she should not have been so swift to turn away Amanda’s shawl—but she couldn’t wear it. Not after what her great-aunt had done to Joss. … There he was again, in her thoughts. Did everything have to remind her of him?

X

“T
here you are. I was beginning to worry about you. I thought you would be in your cabin by now, but Betsy said she hadn’t seen you since she left you up on deck. I certainly didn’t expect to find you still up here in the dark.”

Kevin stepped out onto the deck just as Lilah was about to go below. The wind immediately caught his hair and blew it around his face, making him look like a hearty seaman with his broad, weathered face. Despite his stocky build and lack of fashionable accoutrements, he was an attractive man. She smiled warmly at him in the soft glow of the lanternlight that spilled over them both from the passageway behind him. She was fond of Kevin, and she saw absolutely no reason why, after marriage, she should not grow to love him. She knew him well; he would hold no surprises for her, and that was a good thing. Starry-eyed dreams of romance were not going to get in the way of what she knew was the right decision. If Kevin’s kisses did not appeal to her—well, it was very likely that she would grow accustomed to them. After all, physical intimacy with a man was very new to her. She could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times a man had kissed her mouth, and Kevin accounted for most of them.

“I was watching the sunset,” she said, accepting the
arm he offered and allowing him to help her down the stairs. The passenger cabins were just below the main deck. Roughly a dozen of them provided lodging for perhaps twenty-seven or twenty-eight travelers bound for Barbados. Some of them Lilah knew. Irene Guiltinan ran a dress shop in Bridgetown, and John Haverly owned a smallholding near Ragged Point, which was fairly close to Heart’s Ease. Like herself, they were returning from visits to the Colonies. Others, whom she didn’t know, were bound for Barbados for various reasons that she didn’t trouble herself about. After the voyage, she would probably never see them again. The big planters such as her father lived in a kind of splendid isolation, open only to others like themselves and those who served them.

“I’m glad you’re not still angry with me.” They had almost reached the door to her cabin. Lilah stopped walking and turned to look at Kevin as he spoke. Light from a wall-mounted lantern illuminated each end of the walnut-paneled passage, but the center, where they stood, was in deep shadow. The narrow passageway was deserted, and except for the creaking of the ship, silent. This was the closest they were likely to come to any privacy aboard ship.

“I want to apologize again for my behavior last night. I’m afraid that your beauty quite went to my head. I know I frightened you, and I promise it won’t happen again. Well, at least not until you’re ready.” He added this last with a quick, almost disarming smile.

“You don’t have to apologize, Kevin.” Lilah took a step closer to him and put her hand on his arm. It was firm and muscular through the fine wool of his coat, and she fought against making the inevitable comparison. This was the man who would be her husband, and this was the man who must fill her thoughts. She was determined it be so. “I was as much at fault as you. I should not have reacted as I did. Being kissed is rather new to me, you see.”

He grinned, his hazel eyes twinkling down at her. “Well, I should hope so,” he said, and lifted her hand to his lips. “We’ll go slow,” he promised, and kissed her fingers with a pretty display of gallantry that was totally at odds with his bluff appearance. Lilah, though she tried her best, felt not the smallest tingle. The contact was certainly more pleasant than when Mr. Calvert had slavered over her hand; on the other hand, it did not nearly compare with …

“May I kiss you, Lilah? Properly? I won’t if you’d rather I didn’t.”

He sounded so much in earnest, so intent on winning his way back into her good graces, that she had not the heart to deny him.

“It’s all right. Go ahead,” she said, closing her eyes and lifting her face. Her lips remained primly closed, a silent reminder that he was not to take the privilege too far. She waited.

Kevin bent his head to press his lips to hers. The kiss was soft and not unpleasant. Lilah did not pull away, or repulse him in any way. Eyes tightly shut, she concentrated, willing the feeling to come—but it would not. His kiss meant no more than a kiss she might have received from any relative of whom she was moderately fond. It was just as she had told Betsy—ladies did not have feelings like that. And if she had, once, she must not remember it.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Kevin asked when he lifted his head. A slight smile curved his lips. Lilah could see that he was feeling mighty pleased with himself. He had enjoyed the kiss, and the knowledge cheered her a little. At least he seemed to find nothing lacking in her response. That he could be content with so little augured well for the success of their marriage.

“It was very nice,” she told him, patting his arm as one would to humor a nice child. Looking down at her, his smile broadened and his hands, which had been resting
lightly on her waist, slid clear around her. To Lilah’s dismay he bent his head to repeat the exercise, more lingeringly this time. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth and endured. At least he wasn’t devouring her with his mouth as he had tried to do the night before. …

“Oh, Lord Jesus, somebody help me! Millard’s took bad!” A woman erupted from her cabin three doors down the passage, her pale face lined with fright and her gray hair untidy. Lilah remembered that her name was Mrs. Gorman, and she was traveling with her husband and grown daughter. At the interruption, Kevin lifted his mouth from hers, his arms dropping from around her waist as he took a quick step backwards. Lilah, secretly relieved to be freed so opportunely, turned toward the woman who was hurrying toward them.

“What’s wrong, Mrs. Gorman? Is your husband ill?” Lilah caught the other woman’s arm when she would have rushed past them. Only then did Mrs. Gorman seem to become aware of their presence in the passageway. Her eyes, before they focused on Lilah, were wild.

“Aye, he is, and it’s Dr. Freeman I’m needin’! Let me go, please, I’ve got to fetch him?”

“Kevin—Mr. Talbott—will find him for you, if you like. If you want to return to your husband in the meantime, I’ll be glad to accompany you.”

“You’re a sweet gel. I’ve said it to Millard more than once during this trip.”

Taking that distracted compliment for assent to Lilah’s plan, Kevin nodded and stepped briskly away. Mrs. Gorman turned back down the passageway, so agitated that she hardly knew what she was doing. Lilah followed, though she was not sure that Mrs. Gorman was even aware that she was behind her.