Raised By Wolves 3 - Treasure (23 page)

“I thought of it that way, once,” I said with a smile. “But we are speaking of plantations and Englishmen. We English, if we are anything, are steadfast in our traditions. We do not like to change our housing or dress to better match the local climes, and we do not eat the local food – this household excepted, of course. We do not even like to make a different style of boot.” I sighed. “And sugar plantations, or even cocoa and indigo plantations, do not grow food. They also do not employ draft animals. All the work on a plantation is done by men, thus they require great numbers of men, who they cannot feed or clothe, thus all things for those men must be imported, as must all things be imported for their owners – even though we live here in a veritable Garden of Eden as regards the climate and fruit of the vine and field. Planters prefer to eat pickled herring and wormy apples rather than assign any of their precious slaves or cleared land to farming to support the rest.

I have been told this all meets with sound fiscal policy as long as the plantation produces well, and that one should not view the entirety of it as a farm, but as a mine.”

He nodded his understanding. “So you stand to benefit from the foolishness of others. Did I hear correctly that there is a plantation in your future?” he asked me.

I snorted and shrugged. “If I produce an heir, my father has promised to give me the plantation he sent me here to start. If, by some fluke of fate, I do manage to produce an heir and he keeps his word, that land will no longer be a sugar plantation.”

The Marquis frowned.

“Sugar is a vile and useless crop,” Gaston said.

His father was quite amused at this pronouncement. “But… is it lucrative?”

“It can be,” Sarah said, “but the real money is made by the import taxes into England and the selling of it there. Our father is one of the men who stands to gain from that, and thus, he cares not whether this plantation does well at all, as long as all the rest produce.”

The Marquis raised an eyebrow and regarded Sarah. “I mean no offense,” he said carefully, “but you seem to possess a great deal of knowledge about business and finance, for a young lady.”

Sarah sighed and awarded him a compressed smile. “I was the youngest and I possessed an interest and talent for such things, and so my father indulged me.”

“Aye,” I added, “truly, if any of my father’s true offspring are to inherit, it should be Sarah. She possesses far more interest in the matter than I, and a better head for it; but women are not considered suitable heirs: pity that.”

The Marquis nodded his thoughtful agreement. “I left the rearing of my daughters to my wife, and by all accounts, they appear to be fine wives.”

“My half-sisters are married?” Gaston asked.

“Oui, one to the son of a Duke, and the other to a Comte,” the Marquis said with pride.

“Do they have names?” I asked.

“The Comte de…” the Marquis began, but my look cut him off, and he sighed and gave a sheepish smile. “Marie and Josephine.” He frowned thoughtfully at Gaston. “I suppose you never knew them.”

Gaston shook his head. “Nor the boys.”

“Your brothers were…” The Marquis sighed sadly. “Perhaps I did not raise them to be lords, either; well, perhaps the youngest; but, as he would not inherit and thus carry the family name in that manner, he chose the military, and it ended him.”

“And neither was married with an heir?” I asked gently.

The Marquis shook his head sadly. I could see the effort he expended in not gazing upon Gaston. At last he apparently decided I was the better, or perhaps easier, target.

“Your father wishing for you to produce an heir seems to indicate his commitment to your inheriting,” he said.

“So it would seem,” I said. “Or that he is as committed as I to maintaining the pretense that I will inherit for as long as it is convenient.”

“You hate him,” the Marquis said. It was not a question, though there was some wonder in his tone.

“Oui,” I said, and as I often did, felt the nagging guilt that perhaps I was wrong: that my father’s intentions were not so nefarious; that perhaps this was all some great misunderstanding; but then many things sprang to mind and stirred my ire. “Non. I feel for him much as he feels for me. I always thought he hated me, but when last we met, he avowed he was merely displeased with me, that I was not the son he would have wished for. Well, I am displeased with him, as he is not the father I would have wished for. And… he has ever placed the welfare of another before mine, and he allowed – both me and my sister – to be driven from his home by this other individual: my second cousin.”

The Marquis frowned slightly and glanced at my sister, whose face was as hard as mine. He gave a shallow nod of acknowledgment to our anger. Then his eyes returned to mine. “Well, all things considered, it is a wonder you have not shot me. You seem to have seen or learned of nothing but trouble and betrayal from noblemen and fathers.”

Understanding passed between us, as it had the night he confessed his sins to Gaston and me. It once again robbed me of my anger and hatred. I took a deep breath and nodded.

I spoke French. “I do not hate you, but I do not trust you.”

He nodded and smiled, and waved off Dupree’s translation. “Perhaps you are not mad in that.”

Everyone was silent; Gaston was tense beside me.

I grinned. “Let us proceed from this new understanding, then.” I raised my glass in toast.

“Let us,” he said, and clinked his glass with mine.

Though the others were curious, the rest of the meal proceeded without incident. Afterward, Gaston played Pete at chess while Sarah and Striker discussed the R&R Merchant Company’s plans to acquire ships, and extolled the virtue of our one possession, the Virgin Queen.

Rucker told me of the plantations he had visited with my uncle while we watched Agnes sketch Pete and Gaston.

When my matelot conceded the game, we bid everyone good evening and retreated to our room in good cheer. I felt we had accomplished much this day, though we had little to show for it that could be measured or remarked upon as resolved. Gaston proved to be of an amorous bent as soon as the doors were closed, and we set about seeing how much the bed would creak from various angles. His earnest listening to the iron frame while thrusting away at me brought me to laughter, and when he joined me in it, I was sure the others about the house heard it far more than they would ever hear the bed. This led to even more antics on both our parts to make the bed move, until at last we fell off the corner of the mattress to finish storming Heaven on the floor, with grins upon our faces and breathless gasps of pleasure at the world.

The next day, we remembered to go and exercise on the beach; and we happily climbed out the window and down the cistern, to give greeting to Bella and the puppies and then slip away through the back gate, before anyone else seemed to have risen. We ran, sparred, and frolicked like fools in the surf before sitting to eat a little boucan and fruit and discuss what we would do for the day.

Our clothes were still drying when we reached Theodore’s.

“I have informed my wife of my intent to divorce her, or have the marriage annulled,” I told him once we were seated in his office.

“And how did she receive this news?” he asked with thinly veiled amusement.

“Poorly,” I said, and then I told him all that had transpired with my wife, and my thoughts on the matter.

“So truly, there is ground for annulment?” Theodore asked.

“Truly,” I sighed.

He shoved papers from the leather blotter upon his huge desk, and leaned on his elbows on it, with his hands clasped and his frowning face resting upon them. “It would be much easier to arrange an annulment, but it should surely weaken your case with your father, as you have already surmised. It would be better for her in some ways,” he added with a thoughtful nod.

“Sarah said you received a letter,” I said.

Theodore nodded and went to the shelves to retrieve the satchel where he stored all mail from my father. He dug through it and handed a thin missive to me.

It was much as Sarah had said. After his daughter had shot the man he wished to adopt and leave as his heir, fled to Jamaica, and married a commoner, all he asked Theodore of was whether I had truly married Vivian Barclay, as I had told him I had, and whether or not she was with child, as my father had apparently heard from other sources.

I wondered what he had heard rumored; if he had heard she was pregnant, he had surely heard it was likely not mine.

I snorted and handed the letter to Gaston.

“In my reply,” Theodore said with a smile, “I told him you had indeed married Lady Marsdale, and that she was indeed pregnant. I made no other remark or indication as to the parentage of said child, or to her behavior.”

“Has there been time to receive a response to that?” I asked.

Theodore shook his head and shrugged. “With the storm season, nay.”

“He is an enigma,” I sighed.

“It is a game,” Gaston said thoughtfully, “like chess, but we do not know if he is planning moves well ahead of us, or merely reacting to unexpected moves we have made. We should ask Pete how to play it.”

He grinned.

I grinned in return. “As Pete is all Horse, he is as mad as we.”

Theodore frowned and I waved it away.

“What would you do?” I asked my matelot. “As a centaur: what does your Horse wish to do?”

He took a deep breath and considered the window for a time. “Fight him, and win. I wish to see him grant you the title and then have you fling it in his face. And even if he will not grant it, I wish to see him have to force you out.”

I listened to my Horse and found it fond of that idea as well. If I gave up now, it proved nothing. Well, it proved I could walk away; but my father expected me to, and it was what he wanted: I did not wish for him to receive anything he wanted.

“If that is to be your course,” Theodore said with amusement, “then you should remain married to the woman, and claim the child as yours, and wait and see what move he makes.”

I swore and slumped in my chair.

Gaston sighed likewise.

With surprise I realized my Horse did not view that as being completely odious. It cared not for marrying and having children whoever the dam might be, though it was not pleased that it must be saddled with a wife I hated and probably inferior children. The Man in me was the one who bridled the most, though. He heard what people saw and thought: the shadows on the wall through which they perceived the situation. But that was not truth, was it?

I looked to Gaston. “Do you truly feel you are willing to risk having children?” I asked quietly in French. “With or without your father’s blessing of your choice of bride?”

He looked out the window again as he thought on it, and at last turned to me. “Do you truly feel we could mitigate their madness?”

I did not have to think before answering. “Oui. And even if they are as mad as you, I feel I would still love them. And you are not such a horror that we should not dare inflict another of you upon the world.”

He smiled. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Then I shall try and make our puppies, and you shall stay married to that bitch to fight your father, and we will see where the game leads.”

I looked back to Theodore and sighed. “We will fight. I shall not put her out. We will see what she produces. We shall see what my father’s next move is.”

And I prayed the Gods would smile upon us, and if they did not grant us that which we thought we desired, that They would at least grant us happiness through some other turn of events.

Sixty

After all that had been said yesterday, I thought I would feel quite the fool if I were to go and tell Vivian of our new decision so soon, so I lead Gaston past her house and into Sarah’s without so much as a hesitant step.

“When will you tell her?” he asked wryly, once we were within the comfortable shade of the atrium.

“I do not know,” I sighed, “and we might change our mind, and I feel it will do no harm if she continues to think I am divorcing her.”

“It might make her reflect upon her actions,” he said with a shrug.

“We can only hope.”

Agnes was about, and I felt some guilt in seeing her. It was foolish: she had never known our plans and probably would have been aghast if she had. Moreover, I could not know how the game would play out and what move we would be upon years from now – or even months from now, for that matter.

We spent the afternoon engrossed in viewing things through Agnes’

lenses. I was both appalled and fascinated at how common things appeared when magnified, especially insects. They are the most vicious-appearing creatures I have ever beheld, and yet no one thinks of them as such, because they are so small we cannot readily see their wicked hooked claws and strange spiky mouths.

As all in the household had come to join in the activity of seeing the unseen over the course of the day, our discussion at supper held more talk of the same; the Marquis asked Gaston many questions – and thankfully expressed fascination and not dismay when my matelot told him he thought the medical theories of humors and the like to be foolishness, not a reasoned way of viewing the human body and how it behaved or the causes and treatment of illnesses.

After we ate, Agnes brought out the telescope, and we saw what we could. I was disappointed that stars looked much the same through it, only brighter and more colorful on occasion. Then Jupiter rose high enough for us to see, and I was stricken with awe at the wonder of it: to think that the striped, orange disk I beheld was another world like our own was a wondrous thing indeed.

Several of us, the Marquis included, chose to wait until the moon rose late in the night. Discussion turned as it once had while roving to how the denizens of other worlds might look or behave. Here again, the Marquis surprised me by not deeming the whole discussion blasphemy, and I was proud he showed such interest in the depth of Gaston’s knowledge of things physiological.

Tired and contented, we slept like babes that night. The next day was very much like the last, only we did not need to go to Theodore’s after frolicking on the beach; instead, we went to the leather shop and tailor’s. My new boots were indeed wondrously comfortable, and the tailor was happy to see Gaston and make a final fitting for his new coat.