The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (37 page)

The mastiff trotted over to investigate her, and sniffed her hand, then trotted back to Cameron and slumped at his feet.

She said, ‘I take it that’s the famous Abigail.’

‘Sophie told you about her?’

She nodded. ‘She’ll be annoyed to have missed the introductions.’

Another awkward silence, while they both thought how unlikely it was that Sophie would ever be allowed to visit Eden.

Madeleine took a sip of her drink. It was freshly pressed cane juice: pearl-grey and fragrant and wonderfully steadying.

‘Would you like some rum in that?’ said Cameron. ‘You must have got rather wet.’

‘No. Thank you. But you go ahead.’

He poured a measure of rum into his own glass and added a splash of cane juice from the pitcher, then took a chair by the campaign chest. She noticed that he only used his right hand, and that his left remained in the pocket of his shooting jacket, where a dark blotch was beginning to soak through. She said, ‘You’ve hurt your hand.’

‘I caught it on a nail, that’s all.’

She remembered the moment when he had seen her in the cane-piece. The wagon’s lurch and his quick recoil. He must have been concealing it in case she was squeamish. ‘You ought to see to it,’ she said. ‘Go on. I’ve seen blood before.’

Looking slightly embarrassed, he took his hand out of his pocket, and she saw that the handkerchief he’d wrapped about it was mostly scarlet. He unpeeled it to reveal a messy cut across the palm. Abigail raised her head and sniffed, and he pushed her nose away.

Madeleine said, ‘Does it hurt?’

‘No.’ He shrugged. ‘Yes.’

They exchanged slight smiles. He went inside and came back with a clean handkerchief from the chest of drawers, and sat down again.

She ought to tell him now why she had come. Just tell him and get it over with. But she couldn’t do it yet. Let him bandage his hand and have a drink. Yes, let him have a drink. He was going to need it.

Behind him on the campaign chest stood a leather travelling frame containing a pair of photographs. In one of them she recognized a younger Jocelyn, much less rigid and hawk-like. In the other, a young man with wavy fair hair. He looked happy and handsome and unafraid. He was her father.

Cameron said something, but she didn’t hear.

She had forgotten what her father looked like when he smiled. How could she have forgotten something as important as that?

‘Madeleine? What’s wrong?’

She dragged her gaze away. ‘Is that Ainsley?’

‘I’m sorry? Oh. Yes, that’s Ainsley. Abby, go
away
.’

‘He looks young.’

‘He was twenty-two when it was taken. Just before he took off with Rose.’

‘What was he like?’

He picked up the bottle and splashed rum over his palm, hissing as it began to bite. Abigail lapped blood and liquor off the floor until he shoved her aside with his boot. ‘He was clever,’ he said without looking up. ‘Imaginative. Enormously self-critical. Which could be infuriating at times. And kind.’ He paused. ‘I think that’s why he could never be happy after what he did. Because of all the people he’d hurt.’

At Cairngowrie House when her father had been home for more than a few weeks, he would become pensive and quiet, and her mother would say that he was beginning to feel guilty about being with them.

‘Have you really forgiven him?’ she said.

He glanced at her in surprise. ‘Of course. He was so young when it happened.’

‘Have you forgiven Rose?’

‘She was young too.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

He considered that. ‘I was thirteen when they left, and a little bit in love with her myself. But yes. Of course I’ve forgiven her. Poor Rose. One can’t be angry for ever. But it’s strange. I still—’ He broke off with a frown.

‘What were you going to say?’

‘It’s just that I still dream of him. Ainsley. And they’re not peaceful dreams. I don’t know why.’

Don’t you? she thought. He had never once mentioned Ainsley’s children. He seemed to have driven them from his mind. Strange that such a perceptive man should be able to deceive himself for so long.

She said, ‘Do you still miss him?’

He laid the handkerchief across his knee and folded it to form a makeshift bandage, and began winding it round his palm. ‘Imagine how you’d feel if Sophie went away and never came back.’

In the garden a flock of crows settled squabbling in a mango tree. Abigail gave a gruff bark and hurtled down the steps to see them off.

Madeleine said, ‘You know, I read the transcripts of your court-martial.’

He raised his head and stared at her. ‘Why?’

‘To find out what you did.’

‘I told you what I did.’

‘No, I mean really. I wanted to know everything.’ She looked down at her lap. ‘Mrs Herapath told me about Clemency’s letter.’

With his teeth he pulled the knot tight. ‘Olivia Herapath talks too much.’

‘I don’t think so.’ She paused. ‘Why have you never tried to make it up with Jocelyn?’

‘Why should I?’

‘Because you could.’

He made no reply.

‘I think’, she said, ‘that you’ve become accustomed to living like this. It’s become a way of life. Just as it has for Jocelyn. You’re so alike. You could be father and son.’

She watched him pour himself another drink and look at it, and put it down untasted.

His hair was still damp, and as he wasn’t wearing a necktie she could see the droplets of rainwater trickling down his neck. Heat rose to her cheeks.

‘Madeleine, ‘ he said, ‘why did you come here?’

‘I needed to see you.’

‘It only makes things worse.’

‘Yes. I know.’ She spread her hands on the rust-coloured serge of her skirt. Now was the time to tell him. Just tell him and have done with it.

She tried to imagine what he would say when he knew that she had been lying to him from the beginning. She looked at him sitting there with his elbows on his knees and his injured hand held a little stiffly, and his damp hair curling on his neck like a boy’s. He seemed so capable and strong, but he could be hurt. Especially by her. How could she do it? She couldn’t hurt him. All she wanted was to keep him from harm.

‘I needed to see you,’ she said again.

‘Why? What good does it do?’

She shook her head. She couldn’t tell him. It was cowardly and wrong, but she couldn’t do it.

He rubbed his good hand over his face and gave her a look that she couldn’t read. ‘That night at the Trahernes’,’ he said, ‘I wanted to kill Sinclair. My own brother. And I wanted to kill him for what he said about you.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said you’re not as innocent as you seem.’

She got up and went to the balustrade. ‘He’s right,’ she said. ‘I’m not.’

‘I don’t believe that.’

‘It’s true.’

‘What do you mean?’

She shook her head. She heard him get to his feet and come to stand beside her.

They stood together in silence, looking out over the steaming garden. Again she felt herself growing hot. She wanted to touch him, to put her fingers to the base of his throat and feel the cool rainwater and the warmth of his skin.

He said, ‘If things had been different, we’d be living here together, you and I.’

‘Don’t say that.’

He turned to her. ‘Leave him. Leave him and come to me.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Yes you can. You don’t have to follow the rules, you can break them. I know, I’ve done it.’

‘Well, I can’t. He’s Sophie’s guardian.’

‘Bring her with you. She’d love it here. She’d get better.’

‘He’d come and take her away. He could do it. He’d have the law on his side.’

‘So you have thought about it?’

‘Of course I have.’

‘So what are you saying, that there’s nothing to be done?’

She paused. ‘The only way out’, she said, ‘would be to run away. Leave Jamaica and forget about everyone else. Just like Ainsley and Rose. But that would only start the whole wretched cycle over again, and I won’t do it. So yes, I am saying that there’s nothing to be done. And you know it, too.’

He opened his mouth to reply, then shut it again. She was right.

Rainwater dripped from the eaves. An egret sped upriver, brilliant white against searing green. In the garden, Abigail rooted around in the undergrowth.

She glanced at his hand on the railing. He had rolled back his shirtsleeve to deal with the cut, and she looked at the broad wristbone and the fine fair hairs and the thick vein snaking up his forearm. Why couldn’t she touch him, just once, so that she’d have something to remember?

She reached over and put her fingers on the back of his hand, just above the bandage. She felt his grip tighten on the balustrade; the muscles moving beneath the skin. She felt the tension in him, the holding back.

She put her hand on his shoulder and raised herself on her toes and kissed him. She had meant to reach his mouth, but in her nervousness she missed, and her lips found the roughness of his cheek. He smelt of rum and horses and cool, rain-washed skin.

He put one hand on her waist and the other on the nape of her neck, and bent and kissed her mouth. Softly at first, just finding her lips. Then more deeply.

Startling, unfamiliar, strange. She was spiralling down into heat and strength and otherness; warmth and closeness, unbelievable closeness; no barriers, no holding back, no more being alone.

She put her arms round his neck and felt the heat of his skin against her wrists, and his damp hair, and his grip about her tightening. She didn’t want it to end. She wanted to drown in him and never wake up.

At last they had to draw apart for breath. They stood with their heads together, taking in each other’s scent. She was shaking and so was he.

‘I don’t understand you,’ he said. ‘Is this what you came to tell me? That you want to be with me but can’t?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s why I came.’

‘You know I’ll never accept that.’

‘You don’t have a choice.’

‘There’s always a choice.’

She put her hand on his chest and felt his heart beating beneath her palm. Why must it be like this? she thought. Just when everything’s so clear, it has to end.

‘Madeleine—’

‘It’s getting late,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to go back.’

His arms tightened about her. ‘You can’t go. Not after this.’

‘Cameron—’

‘You can’t just leave.’

‘Let me go. I’m sorry. Let me go.’

‘I don’t understand you. It’s always as if there’s something missing.’

‘I know. I do know.’

‘Why won’t you tell me?’

She put both hands on his chest. ‘I have to go,’ she said again. ‘It’s late. Please. Fetch my horse.’

‘Madeleine, you can’t just—’

‘Yes I can.’

She had promised herself that she would not look back, but of course she did. She was halfway down the track to the cane-pieces when she reined in.

Already Eden had slipped back into the past, but she could still see Cameron standing on the steps, watching her go.

She hated herself. She had told him nothing and achieved nothing, except to hurt him and make everything a hundred times worse.

She turned and put Kestrel into a canter, and rode blindly through the cane-pieces and across the sliding river, and down the muddy road towards Fever Hill.

It was six o’clock by the time Sinclair returned from town, greatly calmed by his interview with Dr Valentine. But he was granted no time to dwell on that, for as he brought the pony-trap to a halt outside the house, Kean descended the steps with a note from Great-Aunt May.

I must speak to you. The west grounds, forthwith. We must not be overheard.

A cold sweat broke out on Sinclair’s forehead. What could possibly be so momentous that Great-Aunt May would break the rule of a lifetime and go into the grounds in daylight?

Without stopping to wash or change his clothes, he hurried round to the back of the house.

In the shade of the great, half-dead silk-cotton tree, two straight-backed chairs had been set on the hard brown grass. In one, beneath an enormous black sun-umbrella, sat Great-Aunt May: rigid, unmoving, and armoured against the sun by a floor-length dust-coat of flint-grey silk, the ever-present grey kid gloves, and a wide-brimmed hat swathed in veils of pewter chiffon.

Trembling with nerves, Sinclair took the chair beside her.

She turned her head to regard him, and through the veils he caught the gleam of her inflamed blue gaze. Her imperious ivory features were as inscrutable as ever.

He licked his lips. ‘I confess, Great-Aunt, that I do not understand what—’

‘Indeed you do not,’ she said coldly. ‘But you shall.’

He passed his hand over his throat and chin. She did not seem to be angry; at least, not with him. If he hadn’t known her better, he would have said that she was excited. Or perhaps grimly satisfied. His pulse quickened.

‘This afternoon,’ she began, ‘Kean overheard an exchange between two persons on the Eden Road. Your wife and another. An undesirable.’

He opened his mouth to protest, but she quelled him with a glance. ‘Regrettably,’ she went on, ‘Kean did not hear all, for he was disturbed by field-workers and forced to move on. But he heard enough.’ She paused. ‘Your wife has not been honest with you, Sinclair.’

‘That I know,’ he said hotly.

‘No,’ she said, ‘you do not.’ She folded her long narrow hands in her lap. ‘Your wife,’ she said evenly, ‘is not who she says she is.’ She glanced down at her hands. ‘Your wife is Jocelyn’s granddaughter.’

Chapter Twenty-Five

Power and knowledge fizzed in Sinclair’s veins as he rode out in the early morning to see his brother.

He looked about him and relished everything he saw. The young cane glistening after yesterday’s rain; the blacks weeding the rows with brute, unthinking vigour; the pickneys scurrying for the quatties he tossed in the mud. Yes, everything knew its purpose in God’s grand design.

And now his own purpose had fallen into place with startling grace.
The old man’s granddaughter!

When Great-Aunt May had first told him, he had been stunned. But she had cautioned him not to act rashly, and she had been right. So he had kept his silence and spent all night in prayer, seeking to grasp the full glory of God’s plan for him.