The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (99 page)

But – what if?

They might be man and wife, and living together at Fever Hill. They might have children. She tried to imagine what their children would be like. Would they be dark and beautiful like him? Or mousy and plain like her?

Around five o’clock, the song of the crickets changed from a low, pulsing night-ring to an early-morning rasp. A breeze began to blow off the sea. A flock of grassquits descended on the hibiscus bushes around the steps.

She drew up her knees beneath her nightgown and pulled her shawl closer around her. December the twenty-seventh. Seven years ago, she’d spent the night with Ben, and Fraser had died.

She wondered if Madeleine was sitting on the verandah at Eden among the tartan cushions, with her knees drawn up beneath her nightgown, thinking of Fraser. She pressed her knuckles to her eyes. Everything was wrong, wrong,
wrong
. Why was she down here in this great cold-hearted house, while Ben was up there with Sibella? Why was she down here, while Madeleine was at Eden without her? How had she let this happen? And how could she make it right?

Around eleven o’clock she was woken by a maidservant tapping her on the arm.

Blearily she raised her head. Her eyes felt scratchy, her neck sore from sleeping curled up.

The maid told her that Miss Sibella was downstairs in the blue drawing-room, and that she needed to speak to her ‘quick-time’.

Sophie was instantly awake.

‘I had to see you,’ cried Sibella as soon as Sophie reached the drawing-room.

Sophie glanced over her shoulder to check that the door was closed, then turned back to Sibella. She looked terrible, her gown haphazardly fastened, her face puffy and blotched from crying.

Sophie couldn’t find it in herself to feel sorry for her. She could only remember how Sibella had gazed up at Ben as they’d stood together in the ballroom; how she had watched his mouth as he spoke. ‘What d’you want?’ she said harshly.

Sibella twisted the rings on her plump fingers. Then she threw herself onto the sofa and burst into tears.

Sophie stood in stony silence, wishing she were a million miles away.

‘I feel so
ashamed
,’ sobbed Sibella. ‘So dirty and – and humiliated. I – I wrote to him. I begged – I even waited at the house for a reply.’ She made a gobbling sound in her throat. ‘Do you know what he did?’ She pushed back her hair from her face, and her eyes were red-rimmed and outraged. ‘He sent word that there was no reply. Can you
imagine
?
No reply
.’

Sophie didn’t want to imagine anything. She was trying hard not to picture Ben and Sibella together.

But Sibella clutched her hand and pulled her down beside her onto the sofa. ‘You’ve got to go and talk to him.’

‘
What?
But—’

‘Sophie, you’ve got to! There’s no-one else who can help.’

Sophie tried to withdraw her hand from the feverish grasp, but Sibella clung to it. ‘You’re not making any sense,’ Sophie told her as gently as she could. ‘You’re tired and overwrought. You need to go to bed.’

Sibella stared at her with incomprehension. Then she broke down again.

The maid put her head round the door, but Sophie motioned her out, while Sibella clutched her hand and sobbed.

Gradually, reluctantly, Sophie pieced together the story. There was something about a missing scarf and a diamond brooch – both gifts from Gus Parnell – and a promise by Ben to return them: a promise which hadn’t been kept; and a midnight tryst at the Burying-place. The idea of the tryst hurt more than anything. A lovers’ tryst among the Monroe tombs. It felt like a calculated stab at herself.

And now, according to Sibella, Parnell was ‘cutting up rough’ and demanding that she produce the wretched things, and Papa was being horrible to her, and what was she to
do
?

‘You’ve
got
to get them back,’ she cried, clutching Sophie’s hand so tightly that her rings bit into the flesh. ‘He’s a liar and a scoundrel, but he’ll listen to you, I know he will. He’ll give them back if you ask him to.’

‘Sibella,’ she said wearily, ‘he won’t listen to anyone. Least of all me.’

Sibella took a shaky breath and wiped her eyes with her fingers. ‘But there’s no-one else. You’re my only, only friend.’

Her only friend?

Sibella pounced on her hesitation. ‘Say you’ll go. Oh, Sophie,
do
say you’ll go!’

What can you possibly say to him? she wondered as she rode between the great cut-stone gatehouses of Fever Hill.

For the Masquerade the gatehouses had been cleared of creepers, and for the first time since she’d known them, the Monroe crest could plainly be seen. She wondered when Ben would get round to having it removed. For a man who had kept a lovers’ tryst at the Monroe Burying-place, it was presumably only a matter of time.

Slowly she rode up the carriageway. Twice she reined in and resolved to turn back. Let Sibella sort out her own sordid little affairs. Thoughtless, insensitive Sibella, who – if she remembered it at all – had doubtless assumed that Sophie had got over her feelings for Ben years ago.

The men taking down the coloured lanterns strung between the palms watched her pass with undisguised curiosity. She ignored them. For the hundredth time she cursed Sibella. For being vain. For being weak. For being pretty.

At last she reached the house, and there was no more time for second thoughts. A boy ran out to take her horse. A maid came down the steps to conduct her inside. She was shown straight into his study.

It had been her grandfather’s study, and she was surprised to see how little it had changed. It still had books from floor to ceiling, and oil paintings of Jamaica on the walls, and at the far end, in front of the doors leading onto the south verandah, a great walnut desk.

Ben was sitting behind it with a sheaf of what looked like blueprints spread out before him. When she was shown in, he stood up, and his face briefly lightened. Then he caught her stony expression, and his own became unreadable. He looked pale and tired, with dark shadows under his eyes.

As well he might, she thought grimly, remembering Sibella’s blotchy, tear-stained face.
I feel so humiliated. So dirty and ashamed.

Ben and Sibella at the Burying-place. It didn’t seem possible. She pushed away the images that kept floating before her eyes. ‘I didn’t think you’d see me,’ she said as she walked the length of the study.

‘I didn’t think you’d come,’ he replied. He motioned her to a chair on the other side of the desk, and resumed his own.

She sat down and clasped her hands in her lap. They felt shaky and cold. ‘How could you do it?’ she said quietly.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘What have I done this time?’

‘Don’t try to get out of it. I’ve just come from Sibella. She’s in a terrible state.’

‘I take it that means she didn’t enjoy the party.’

She looked down at her hands. It didn’t seem possible that he could treat this as a joke. ‘I know it’s because she’s a Traherne,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I know that’s what this is all about. But I never thought – I never imagined you’d sink this low.’

‘And you do now?’ He gave her a slight smile. ‘You’re quick to believe the worst of me, aren’t you?’

‘You
used
her. You used her to curry favour with Great-Aunt May.’

A flush darkened his cheekbones. But he recovered swiftly. ‘And of course in polite society’, he said drily, ‘nobody ever uses anyone. I’m always forgetting that.’

‘The least you can do’, she said between her teeth, ‘is give me back those trinkets of hers.’

‘Ah, so that’s why you’ve come.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘She’s in trouble with her sweetheart – her sweetheart whom, I might add, she cordially detests – and now she’s sent you to do her dirty work.’

Sophie coloured.

‘You see,’ he went on, frowning, ‘you indicated just now that I was a blackguard for using her. But to the uninitiated, it might appear that
she
was using
you
. Although that’s impossible, isn’t it, because, as I said before, in polite society nobody ever uses anyone. I mean, she isn’t
using
Gus Parnell to buy herself a comfortable future. And her father isn’t
using
her, or Parnell, to buy himself back to financial security. And her brother certainly isn’t
using
you to get out of his own little spot of trouble.’

‘Alexander isn’t in any trouble,’ she snapped. Then she felt annoyed with herself for standing up for him.

‘That shows how much you know,’ he remarked. Thoughtfully he tapped his fingernail against his teeth. ‘And what about you?’ he said suddenly. ‘What are you using Alexander for?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why are you marrying him? Is it to buy yourself a bolt-hole? Somewhere safe and secure and far away from Eden, so that you won’t ever need to—’

‘I didn’t come here to fight,’ she broke in. ‘Just give me the scarf and the brooch and I’ll go.’

‘Why should I?’

‘Because you don’t need them! You’ve got what you wanted. You’re just keeping them to make a point.’

‘Am I? And what point is that?’

‘To show us all how powerful you’ve become.’

He laughed. ‘And you think I need a couple of trinkets to do that?’

‘Apparently, yes.’

Abruptly his smile vanished. He got to his feet and came round to her side of the desk and leaned against it with his arms crossed on his chest, looking down at her. His eyes were glittering. With a flicker of alarm she wondered if he’d been drinking. ‘You’re so quick to think the worst of me,’ he said in a low voice.

‘You’re not giving me much choice.’

For a moment longer he looked down into her face. Then he pushed himself off the desk, moved past her to the bookshelf, opened a large cedarwood box, and took out a small brown paper parcel. He tossed it onto the desk in front of her. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘One scarf. One brooch. Both slightly used. Just like their owner.’

She took the parcel and stood up to go. ‘Thank you,’ she muttered. She felt sick.

He moved back behind the desk, and opened the doors onto the south verandah, and stood with his back to her, looking out. ‘If she’s angry with me,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘it’s not because I met her at the Burying-place. It’s because I didn’t.’

She stared at the package in her hands, then back at him. ‘What? You mean—’

‘She waited, but I didn’t turn up. There. Now you know.’

She thought of Sibella’s outraged face.
I feel so humiliated. I begged – I wrote to him. There was no reply
. ‘You – you never intended to meet her there. Did you?’

He laughed. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. The truth is, I didn’t think too much about it. It was sort of a spur-of-the-moment decision.’

‘She waited for hours. In the dark.’

‘Did she really?’

‘Then she risked scandal to come here and beg for her things.’

‘So?’ He turned to face her. ‘It’ll do her good. The silly little cow’s probably never had to beg for anything in her entire life. Now she knows how it feels.’

Again she looked down at the parcel in her hands. Somehow it almost made it worse that he’d been playing with Sibella. ‘If I hadn’t come and asked for this,’ she said slowly, ‘would you have sent it back anyway?’

‘Probably not.’

‘Why not?’

‘Why should I?’

‘But – you would have ruined her.’

Again he laughed. ‘Isn’t that a bit melodramatic?’

She shook her head. ‘What’s happened to you, Ben?’

He shot her an impatient glance.

‘Look at you. You’ve got everything. An enormous house. Fine clothes. Beautiful horses. But inside, something’s gone.’ She tapped her breastbone. ‘In here. It’s gone.’

In the glare from the doorway his face was dark. ‘I think you’d better go,’ he said quietly.

‘What happened to you? Did getting rich burn it all away?’

He turned back to the verandah. ‘It wasn’t the money which did that.’

Chapter Thirty-One

From the Journal of Cyrus Wright – Volume the Second

January 28th, 1832
Terrible, terrible calamity. I write this from Falmouth, whither I have removed with Mr Monroe & Family, as the country has been over-run with havoc. Slaves running amok with irresistible fury. Fever Hill burnt all to ashes, & Seven Hills, Parnassus, & countless others. Only Mad Durrant’s place at Eden spared, for he always was unnatural soft to his Negroes, & never would flog the women but only the men.

The militia patrol night and day. I pray to God to deliver us from the evil designs of our slaves. Have put Congo Eve in the collar to prevent her going runaway, for Mr Traherne’s Strap is among the rebels.

Plick!
A swallow dipped to drink from the aqueduct. Evie glanced up from the page.

She’d only been back an hour or so, but already she was in her old place on the wall, leaning against the trunk of the ackee tree, with her bare shins stretched out in the sun. To her relief, her mother had been out when she’d arrived.

Strange. She’d been eager to get home, but now that she was, she longed to be back in the hills. Up in the cave, she’d felt safe. It was as if there were a presence watching over her: a shadow at the corner of her eye. Down here she felt exposed. And what was more, she had a strange, taut sense of suspense. She’d felt it as soon as she woke up that morning. She’d felt it all through the ride down from the hills with Ben. She felt it now. A prickling in the air. A sense of something ready to happen. She glanced down at the book in her lap. Was this it?

The second volume of the Journal of Cyrus Wright. Sophie had brought it to her as a present, a few days before Christmas. She’d told Evie that she’d found the first volume a few weeks ago among some things Madeleine had sent to her, and read it in one sitting. Then she’d got Miss Clemmy to ferret through the boxes of Master Jocelyn’s books up at Eden, and this second volume had emerged.

Sophie had been quietly triumphant, and Evie had been touched. But she hadn’t wanted to read it in the cave. She’d been afraid of what she might find. She didn’t want to learn that Cyrus Wright had finally broken the spirit of Congo Eve, or that he’d beaten her once too often and left her dying in a ditch.