The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (90 page)

But how could she jilt Alexander – Alexander who was always so kind and considerate, and who hadn’t done anything wrong. It would be the biggest and most humiliating about-turn of all.

She pictured the consternation at Parnassus. She had been their honoured guest for months. Rebecca had showered her with trinkets. Sibella had treated her like a sister. Cornelius had even bought her a horse. And everything was
arranged
. The lawyers had drawn up the settlements. The trousseau was bought. Everyone
expected
the marriage to go ahead.

Besides, even if she did get up the courage to break it off, where could she go? She still hadn’t been back to Eden, not even for an afternoon; she couldn’t face the thought of it. So seeking refuge there would be out of the question. That only left London, and Mrs Vaughan-Pargeter.

The days merged into weeks, and she did nothing. She had endless bitter arguments in her head. She called herself a liar and a hypocrite and a hopeless coward. She let things slide.

In the middle of October, the rains finally came, turning the roads to rivers and confining her to the house. She shut herself up in her room and went through the trunk of ‘odds and ends’ which Madeleine had sent down from Eden. She spent hours curled up with an old mildewed journal of some overseer from Fever Hill, which opened her eyes to the nature of true misfortune, and made her long for the real Jamaica, and the salty company of Grace McFarlane and Evie. She let things slide.

Finally, one afternoon during a particularly thunderous downpour, she couldn’t take it any more, and determined to have it out with Alexander.

She found him in his study, reading a newspaper. ‘Alexander,’ she said as soon as she got in the door, ‘we need to have a serious talk.’

‘You’re absolutely right,’ he said, glancing up with a smile. ‘I’ve been an utter brute. Going off to Kingston all the time, and leaving you on your own.’

‘It’s not about that—’

‘But I
promise
it’ll be different when we’re married,’ he cut in earnestly. ‘For one thing we’ll be living at Waytes Valley, so you’ll have your own house. That’ll give you something to do.’

She gritted her teeth and wondered how to begin.

Alexander must have seen something in her face, for he put down his newspaper and came over to her, and put his arms on her shoulders. ‘You know, old girl, we really ought to fix a date. How about it, eh? When is it to be?’

As gently as she could, she twisted out of his hands. ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’

His face lit up. ‘I can’t tell you how delighted I am! So. When is it to be?’

She looked up into his face. He was so undemanding. So unfailingly good-natured. And so happy. ‘Um – next spring?’ she said. Coward, coward, coward. Now you’ve just made it ten times worse.

‘Oh, I say,’ he murmured with the slightest of frowns, ‘isn’t that an awfully long wait? I was thinking rather of November.’

Her stomach turned over. ‘But – that’s next month.’

He gave her his most charming smile. ‘I know I’m a brute to press you, but it’s just that I’m tired of waiting.’

‘November’s too soon,’ she said, turning away so that he couldn’t see her face.

‘Very well. What do you say we split the difference, and make it December?’

‘How about after Christmas?’ she countered weakly.

For a moment he hesitated. Then he smiled. ‘So be it. January. I’ll run and tell the governor. He’ll be over the moon.’

She gave him a tight smile.

When he’d gone, she went out onto the gallery and stood watching the rain hammering the grounds and making the carriageway run red. She was the worst kind of coward. She had missed her chance, and now it was going to be even harder to break it off.

The weeks that followed were a whirlwind of activity. The invitations were sent out; the wedding breakfast was planned like a military operation; every day Sophie resolved to say something, and every day passed with nothing being said.

Then, on the twenty-fifth of November, something happened which made matters a great deal worse.

Scores of engraved, gilt-edged invitations of impeccable simplicity went out to everyone who was anyone in Trelawny.
Mr Benedict Kelly, At Home on Monday the twenty-sixth of December, at eight o’clock. Masquerade. Dancing. Rsvp
.

Northside Society had a wonderful time being completely appalled.

‘
Outrageous
,’ declared Sibella, opening her eyes very wide.

‘The man’s a cad,’ said Gus Parnell with satisfaction.

‘Of course he is, my dear fellow,’ chuckled Cornelius, slapping him on the back. ‘Only a blackguard would flout the rules by not bothering to make a single call, then expect everyone to kow-tow, simply because of his money. I call it caddish in the extreme.’

‘But how can he
imagine
that we should wish to know him?’ wondered his older daughter, Davina.

‘And how is it conceivable that we could?’ put in Olivia Herapath. ‘A man of no blood? No breeding? Why, who were his people? What were his grandparents?’

‘In my day,’ said old Mrs Pitcaithley, greatly distressed, ‘gentlemen were born, not made. I don’t understand it at all.’

‘I’ve always rather liked him,’ said Clemency, startling everyone. She had adapted surprisingly well to the move from Fever Hill, and now often made the trip from Eden to Parnassus in her little pony-trap.

‘Oh, Aunt
Clemmy
,’ cried Sibella impatiently, ‘you’ve never even met the man!’

‘Yes I have, dear,’ replied Clemency mildly. ‘Years ago, when he was a boy. I gave him a ginger bonbon. In fact, I think he ate several. I wonder if he remembers.’

‘What on earth does that signify?’ snapped Sibella. ‘The point is, no-one can possibly go. That’s the point.’

‘I agree,’ said Alexander, glancing at Sophie. ‘Don’t you agree, my love?’

She put on her blandest smile and said that of course she agreed. And everyone nodded and tried not to show that they were desperate to discover how she really felt.

They would have been astonished if they’d known the savagery of her reaction. For a week she had been berating herself for her cowardice in not breaking it off with Alexander, but now all that was swept away in her fury at Ben. Boxing Day?
Boxing Day?
The very night when she’d gone to him at Romilly – when Fraser had died. How could he do it? How could he do it?

A week later, the fashionable world was set agog for a second time, when word got around that no less a personage than Miss May Monroe herself had
accepted
her invitation: at least to the extent of letting it be known that she would send her carriage and her man Kean.

‘I suppose that that makes it all right?’ asked Rebecca Traherne with her hand to her cheek.

‘I should rather say that it does,’ said Cornelius. ‘One can hardly argue with a family as old as the Monroes.’ And he gave Sophie a courteous little bow.

‘That goes without saying,’ said Olivia Herapath. ‘Indeed, I consider it my duty to attend. Besides, it’s too intriguing to miss. I hear he’s desperately good-looking,
and
a Roman Catholic. I’ve always rather
liked
RCs. A whiff of incense is almost as exciting as sulphur, don’t you agree?’

‘I wouldn’t miss it for worlds,’ said Davina, eyeing Sibella with sisterly acidity.

Sibella made no reply. She was scanning the latest issue of
Les Modes
for ideas for new gowns.

‘But do you think it’s quite the thing?’ bleated poor Mrs Pitcaithley.

‘Depend upon it,’ said Cornelius with a glance at Gus Parnell, who was sitting in moody silence. ‘Everyone will go, simply because they can’t bear to be left out. I hear that even old Ma Palairet hasn’t the courage to stay away.’

Only Clemency declined, out of loyalty to Madeleine and Cameron, who had sent their regrets by return of post.

‘We can’t possibly go,’ said Sophie later to Alexander, having sought him out in his study.

‘Why not, my love?’ he said, looking up with a smile from the letter he’d been writing. ‘I rather think that we ought.’

She stared at him. ‘But I couldn’t. I couldn’t possibly.’

He stood up and came round the side of the desk and took her hand. ‘That’, he said gently, ‘is precisely why we must. We must show everyone that the man means nothing to you now.’

‘I could show that just as easily by staying away.’

‘No you couldn’t,’ he said patiently. ‘Darling, people have such long memories. It pains me to say this, but that little episode did rather demean you in their eyes.’

‘Demean me?’

‘Well, of course. It always lowers a girl to form an attachment outside her own degree.’

She opened her mouth to protest, but he talked her down. ‘I don’t say this to distress you, my love. It’s in the past. But don’t you see, that’s precisely why we must go? To show everyone that it doesn’t signify in the least.’

She felt her blood rise. ‘So I am to attend Mr Kelly’s Christmas Masquerade simply because he means nothing to me, while I’m barred from seeing Evie McFarlane, precisely because she’s my friend. No, Alexander, I have to say that I don’t see the logic at all.’

‘I hardly think that you need to,’ he crisply replied. ‘All you need to do is to be guided by me.’

After Sophie had gone, slamming the door behind her with a force which reverberated through the house, Alexander sat for a moment in silence, kneading his temples.

Confound it all. Everything was such a
muddle
. Sophie was dragging her feet, and the governor was looking thunderous, and there had been a quite startlingly uncivil letter from Guy Fazackerly, demanding to know when the debt would be settled.
TWENTY THOUSAND POUNDS
, he’d written in insulting capital letters,
absolutely due by New Year’s Day
. What was the man worrying about? Didn’t he realize that as the wedding was now fixed, Alexander could go to the Jews and borrow against the expectation? Didn’t he realize that he would get his filthy money, every penny of it? People were so confoundedly disagreeable.

And now to cap it all, there was this other little unpleasantness.

On the blotter before him lay Evie’s letter. He’d been rereading it when Sophie came in, and had only just had time to turn it over. Now he took it up again with weary distaste.

Dearest Alexander,

Why have you not come to see me or written a line? It has been weeks since I told you my news, and I have heard nothing from you. Is that kind? You promised to visit me. You promised to help me. I am so alone. I can’t tell anyone, and I can’t think about anything else. I don’t know what to do. My love, I need you now more than ever . . .

Confound it all. Why did women
get
themselves into such scrapes? After all, men handled far trickier matters every day, and never made such a fuss. Why, he himself had managed to square things with Evie over his engagement to Sophie almost as soon as he’d got off the steamer! It had been tricky, but he’d carried it off. So why couldn’t Evie deal with this little difficulty of hers with similar finesse?

And really, when one thought about it, she had misled him most dreadfully. He’d always assumed that a girl like her would know very well what she was about in these sorts of things. Surely she would either not allow herself to get
into
such a scrape – or, if she did, she would know how to get herself
out
of it? How could he possibly have known that she was so ignorant of the ways of the world? That she would be careless enough to get herself with foal?

No. When one looked at it in the round, he’d been most frightfully misled.

The clock on the bookshelf struck half past six. He heaved an enormous sigh. In another ten minutes he would have to go and dress for dinner. Dash it all, why was there never enough time for a fellow to draw breath?

With a sense of being greatly ill-used by the world at large and by women in particular, he took up his pen and began to write.

Dear Evie,

I particularly asked you
never
to write. By doing so, you have made things confoundedly difficult for me. I know that I said I would see you, and so I shall;
given time
. But you must understand that when you told me your news the other week, I was so taken aback that I scarcely knew what I was about. And forgive me, but I must ask you: are you absolutely sure that it is mine? If you tell me that it is, then of course I must take your word for it; nevertheless I feel it my duty to enquire.

Moreover I must confess that until this rude awakening, I had felt entitled to assume that you knew how to avoid this kind of unpleasantness. You must admit that you never led me to believe the contrary, and that I was therefore justified in my assumption. I might add that your timing in this matter could hardly be worse, given my impending marriage.

Here he paused. His marriage couldn’t really be said to be ‘impending’. But let that pass. Besides, Evie probably didn’t even know what the word meant.

However, no-one can say that I have ever neglected my obligations. I therefore enclose a five pound note, which I trust will enable you to take care of your little difficulty promptly, permanently, and to your satisfaction.

I hope to look in upon you when I next run up to town. In the meantime, pray, pray, pray, do not write again. Yours, AT.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Where are the spirits when you need them? thought Evie as she sat hunched on her grandmother’s tomb.

Every night since she’d got back to Fever Hill she’d come out here to the bottom of her mother’s yard, and asked the spirits for guidance: for some sign as to whether she should have the child, or get rid of it. But nothing came. Only the dark trees leaned over to listen to her thoughts.

Lord
God
, what a fool she’d been! How could she ever have imagined that she was good enough for Alexander Traherne?