The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (74 page)

‘Does that mean you want me to go?’

‘Yes,’ he said without looking at her, ‘I want you to go. You shouldn’t of come.’

‘But I couldn’t just—’

‘I thought you’d be down at Parnassus. At that party.’

‘I sent them a note to say I was ill.’

‘Why’d you do that?’

‘Why d’you think? I was worried about you.’

‘That’s daft,’ he snapped. ‘You shouldn’t of come.’ He reached for one of the crutches to poke the fire, but dropped it with a clatter, and swore under his breath. His movements were awkward, and without his usual grace. Somehow that gave her the courage to take a step forward, and remove her hat, and sit down on a corner of the blanket, a safe distance from him. ‘What happened to your leg?’ she asked.

‘What’s it to you?’

‘Oh, absolutely nothing,’ she retorted. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

He drew a breath. ‘Grace says I’ve bruised the knee bone. Or something.’

She considered that. ‘Your ribs – do they hurt?’

‘No.’ He shrugged. ‘A bit.’ He reached for the can of hot water and knocked it over. ‘
Bugger
.’

She felt herself reddening. She leaned forward and righted the can, then took her handkerchief from her pocket and held it out. ‘Here. Use this.’

He looked at it for a moment, then took it with a scowl. She remembered a thirteen-year-old boy being offered a book, and snarling like a fox-cub because he didn’t know how to accept a kindness.

She watched him dip the handkerchief in what remained of the water, and make a clumsy job of cleaning a long, bloody bruise on his side. Then she had to look away. He was finely muscled, and below the sunburn which ended at the base of his throat his skin was pale and smooth. He looked both familiar and unfamiliar: boy and man, known and unknown. It made her want to cry. She was glad of the shadows beyond the circle of the fire, and of the cool, blue, concealing moonlight.

Around them, night settled on the river. Fireflies spangled the creepers that choked the low ruined walls. Tall spikes of ginger lilies glowed white in the moonlight. The crickets’ rasp had given way to the clear pulse of the whistling frogs, and on the breeze Sophie caught a drifting sweetness.

Glancing about her, she saw a cluster of cockleshell orchids clinging to a block of cut-stone to her left. The pale, twisted petals seemed to catch and hold the moonlight. Their scent was heavy and sweet. Perhaps decades before, she thought, some slave sat where I am now, beside this same stretch of black river, breathing in this sweet, slightly funereal scent.

Raising her head, she saw with a shock that Ben was watching her, his expression unreadable in the moonlight. She said quietly, ‘Why didn’t you meet me at the bridge?’

‘I couldn’t.’

‘Why not?’

He turned back to the fire. ‘Look. I know I hurt you. And I’m sorry. I really am. But I had to stay away. If I’d met you on the bridge, I’d of hurt you more.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You don’t have to.’ He sighed. ‘It’s nothing to do with you. It’s nothing to do with you, or your knee.’

Nothing to do with your knee.
Was she so easy to read? So transparent and pitiful? She tugged at a snag in the blanket.

‘Sophie,’ he said quietly.

She raised her head and glowered at him.

‘Christ, Sophie,’ he said, ‘when are you going to forget about that bloody knee?’

‘That’s easy for you to say. You don’t limp.’

He nodded at his bandaged leg. ‘I do now.’

‘Not permanently.’

‘What would you know? You don’t either.’

‘I do when I’m tired.’

‘So what? Sophie – look at me.’

She met his eyes. He was close enough for her to see the black blood crusting his eyebrow, and the bruises down the side of his face, and the gleam of his teeth between his lips. And as she looked at him, she realized that he did want her to stay, after all.

‘Let me see it,’ he said, startling her.

‘What?’

‘Your knee. Let me see it.’

‘No!’ She drew in her riding-skirt and tucked it under her.

He studied her face for a moment, then nodded. ‘All right.’

She rubbed her palm up and down her thigh. ‘It’s just that I don’t like anyone touching it.’

‘Why, does it still hurt?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then why?’

‘I don’t know, I just don’t.’

Again there was silence between them. In the river a fish splashed. In the trees an owl hooted. A small secret rustling announced the passage of a lizard, or perhaps a snake on a nocturnal hunt.

Without looking at Ben, Sophie pulled her riding-skirt a fraction above her knee. ‘Promise you
won’t
touch.’

‘All right. I promise.’

Catching her lower lip in her teeth, she reached under her skirt and unclipped the stocking from the suspenders, then started rolling the thin black silk down her thigh.

‘Let me do that,’ he said.

‘No!’

‘Yes.’

‘No.’

Suddenly she was breathless and shaking. She was shaking so hard that when she put her hands on either side of her and leaned back to let him approach, her elbows nearly buckled.

She watched him take his crutch and lever himself painfully off the block of cut-stone and onto the blanket beside her. His face was tense and serious as he put out his hand and gently rolled the stocking down over her knee. His fingers were trembling. She hissed as they brushed her shin.

He stopped. ‘You all right?’

She nodded. She wanted to tell him to stop, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t breathe.

He looked down, and his dark brows drew together in a frown. ‘D’you remember when we was kids, in that kitchen of yours, and you showed me your knee?’

Again she nodded.

‘You said, “Look, Ben, I got a bruise.” Only I couldn’t see nothing.’ He paused. ‘You were the cleanest person I’d ever seen.’

She wanted to touch his cheek, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t move.

He peeled back the stocking to just above her riding-boot, and put his warm hand on her shin, and lowered his head and softly blew on her knee. She felt his hair brushing her skin, then the gentle caress of his hand.

‘You said you wouldn’t touch,’ she whispered.

He raised his head and met her eyes. Then his gaze dropped to her mouth. ‘I lied.’

He moved closer to her, and she caught the aromatic tang of Grace’s salve on his skin, and beneath it his own smell: the sharp clean scent of red dust and wind-blown grass. He bent and kissed her lightly on the mouth.

Then he kissed her again, and this time he pressed harder, opening her mouth with his. For the first time she felt the heat and strength of his tongue. She was frightened and curious and excited. She didn’t know how to respond. She tried to do what he was doing, and put her arm round his neck and kissed him back.

With that first real kiss she left everything behind; she struck out into unknown territory. And she knew that it was the same for him, because although he’d done this before, he’d never done it with her. With that first deep kiss they abandoned their old selves and crossed over for ever from being friends to being lovers. And as she felt the roughness of his cheek against hers, and the softness of his hair beneath her wrist, she experienced not only the first deep stab of desire, but also a new tenderness for him, because he was in this with her, taking in the strangeness and the unbelievable closeness, and trembling against her. She buried her face in his throat and clutched his shoulder – and heard him wince. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, and against her neck he gave a crooked smile; then she felt him shake, and the warmth of his laughter on her skin. Then he raised his head to hers and looked at her for a moment, and his smile slowly faded, and he kissed her again, harder and deeper.

They moved closer against one another – carefully, because of his ribs – and he ran his hand down her flank and her thigh and under her hips, and she slid her hands beneath his shirt and grasped the hot, hard muscles of his back.

Suddenly, he broke away with a cry.

‘What’s wrong?’ she whispered. ‘Oh God, did I hurt you?’

He shook his head. He was sitting hunched over, breathing painfully through his teeth.

‘Ben?’

‘We can’t do this,’ he muttered, still shaking his head.

She put her hand on his shoulder but he shook it off. ‘Yes we can,’ she said. ‘I want to.’

‘No. No.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t – I don’t want to hurt you.’

‘Ben—’

‘The first time it hurts, Sophie. It hurts.’

‘I know that.’ She tried to make light of it. ‘I managed to pick up something in my medical studies. But I – I don’t expect it’ll hurt too much. I mean, I’ve done lots of riding, and always astride, and that’s supposed to—’

‘Sophie, shut up,’ he said softly.

She bit her lip. He was right, she was talking too much. But she was so nervous.

She couldn’t believe she was doing this. Sitting in a ruin, trying to seduce a man. And suddenly an image popped into her head of the sampler which used to hang above her bed in Cousin Lettice’s house in London, when she was small.
Fornication Leads to Misery and Hell. Marriage Leads to Happiness and Heaven.

What’s fornication?
she used to ask her big sister.
I don’t know
, Madeleine would always reply.
Something bad, I think
. But years later, Madeleine had taken her aside and calmly told her the truth. She said she’d suffered from not knowing about it, and she didn’t want that for Sophie.

Now Sophie looked about her at the pale clustered orchids and the thick cords of the strangler fig, and finally at Ben, scowling down at his hands with a strange, angry expression which made him seem very young. ‘Do you love me?’ she said in a low voice.

He did not reply. She watched him run his hand through his hair, then grind the heel of his hand into his good eye.

‘Do you love me?’ she said again.

He drew a raw breath. Then he nodded.

‘Then it’ll be all right.’

‘You don’t know that. You don’t know nothing about it.’

‘Then tell me. Show me.’

He was shaking his head. ‘You don’t know how ugly it can be. All twisted and dirty . . .’

‘But not between us.’

Again he did not reply. But this time when she put her hand on his shoulder, he didn’t pull away.

‘Not between us,’ she said again, and lay back on the blanket, and drew him down towards her.

It was past midnight when she got back to Eden.

To her relief, Madeleine and Cameron weren’t yet back from Parnassus, and everyone else had gone to bed. Someone had put a lighted hurricane lamp on the sideboard, for her return.

She led her horse down to the stables, untacked her, gave her a drink and checked her manger for hay. Then she walked round the side of the house to the garden.

Abigail and Scout clattered down the steps to greet her. The older dog gave her a sleepy drop-eared welcome, then trotted back up to the verandah and slumped down to sleep. Scout settled himself beside Sophie on the bottom step, and shoved his cold nose under her hand.

She stroked his silky ear, and breathed in the fresh scents of the moonlit garden: the green smell of the tree-ferns, and the perfume of star jasmine.

She felt exhausted, but incredibly alive. She could still feel the faint throbbing ache inside her, and the tenderness on her inner thighs. She could still feel the weight of his body on hers, she could still smell him on her skin. And if she shut her eyes she could almost summon up the closeness, the unbelievable closeness. She wanted to stay awake all night and not lose a moment of it.

‘Meet me tomorrow,’ he’d whispered as they lay together, watching the fireflies and feeling the sweat cooling their skin.

‘Where?’

‘Here.’

‘Yes, here. Yes.’

Of course it had to be Romilly. It was right for them because in a way it wasn’t a real place at all, just a ruin left over from another time.

But she didn’t want to think about that now. She didn’t want to think about consequences, and what would happen next.

‘Aunt Sophie?’ said a small voice at the top of the stairs.

She turned to see Fraser standing in his nightshirt, squinting down at her. She got to her feet. ‘Darling, you should be in bed,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s horribly late.’

‘My tummy hurts.’

Behind him on the verandah, Abigail lumbered to her feet and tried to nose him back inside like an errant puppy. Peevishly he batted her away.

Sophie sighed, and climbed the steps and took his hand. It was warm but not feverishly hot. She bent and planted a kiss on his sleep-creased cheek. ‘You’ll live,’ she said.

‘But it
hurts
,’ he insisted crossly.

‘Come along then, and I’ll take a look at you.’

Together they went inside, and when they reached the pool of light from the hurricane lamp Sophie knelt and put the back of her hand to his forehead. ‘You haven’t got a fever,’ she told him, ‘and no swollen glands. That’s good; it means you haven’t got mumps. You’ve just had too many sweets, darling.’

‘I didn’t have a single one after Mamma left,’ he grumbled, ‘except what Clemency gave me.’

The qualification made her smile. ‘Then I’m sure you’ll feel better very soon. Come along. I’ll make you some rhubarb powder in milk. Then it’s back to bed.’

A quarter of an hour later she was curled up in her own bed, wide awake, watching the slatted moonlight on the tiles.

Making love to her, he’d been so careful and so serious: as if she were the one with the bruises, not he. But when she’d tried to tell him so, he’d put his hand gently across her mouth. ‘Shh. No more talking.’ And after that they’d done the talking with their bodies.

She pressed her face into the pillow and took a hungry breath, and thought about tomorrow at Romilly.

Outside the window, a tree-fern nodded against the louvres. In the distance an owl hooted. Drifting in on the night air came the faint, cloying sweetness of stephanotis.

She buried her face in the pillow and slept.

At Bethlehem, the scent of stephanotis told Evie that something was wrong. She asked if her mother could smell it too, but Grace only gave her a narrow-eye look and shook her head.