Savina glanced over at Tony, who had stiffened at his employer’s approach. Tony bowed and said, “You must all excuse me.”
“Wait, Tony, why don’t you take Zazu with you. I’ll take care of Savina, you know.” He turned to the young lady. “Zazu is Savina’s maidservant. Not unusual in Jamaica to have a . . . well, a servant like her, you know. But you were just there, Miss Gable! You would know this.”
“I was not there long, just to visit my father,” the young lady said in mincing tones, her gaze skipping over Zazu and alighting on Savina. “My mother and I would not stay in such a place long, you know. As she says, it is all very well to make your money from the plantations, but one doesn’t actually need to live there in such tropical dissoluteness.”
“Quite right, Miss Gable, and so I was telling my fiancée as we set sail for England.”
“I don’t think the air suits me above deck,” Savina said, turning to retreat, noticing that Tony had slipped away and disappeared. “I shall return to my room.” She took Zazu’s arm.
“Wait, Savina,” the earl said. He took her arm and led her aside, back to the railing. “You are giving the most peculiar impression, and I will not have it,” he whispered, his tone fierce and harsh. “You looked very odd as you were brought on deck, Miss Gable says, almost wild. And if you do not stay, chat, and make friends, she will not have the opportunity to change her mind about you.”
“I don’t care,” Savina said, pulling her arm from the earl’s grasp and glaring up into his wintry eyes. “She is a rude girl, and so is the young gentleman rude. I can’t imagine why you would be concerned in the least about their impression of me.”
“I care because Miss Gable is a gossip, as is her mother.” Lord Gaston-Reade looked past Savina with a tight smile on his face. “Once we are back in London I will not have your name bandied about. It is common, and will not do.”
“I suggest, my lord, that you have never seemed comfortable with me as I am,” Savina said with as much dignity as she could muster. She clung to the railing, refusing to look down into the churning water below them. “If you wish to remake me in some pattern of simpering perfection, it would be simpler to find a girl who already conforms. Perhaps one like Miss Gable.”
“I have already announced you as my intended,” Lord Gaston-Reade said, trying to take her arm again. “Word was sent back to the London papers, and we have spent many weeks together on a deserted island—”
“With six others,” Savina retorted, pulling her arm away from his gloved hand.
“It matters not! No Gaston-Reade has ever had a hint of scandal attached to his name, and I will not be the first.”
“Far better, then, to disavow me now, for I will not be a comfortable wife for you. You must know that by now.” She was exasperated by his stubbornness, his certainty that once he had made a decision, it was the right one. Always. That seemed to be the beginning and end of his insistence on marrying her: he had asked, she had accepted, and that was that. To change his mind would mean admitting he had been wrong.
He gazed steadily at her, the ocean wind ruffling his dark hair and lifting the carefully combed locks. They were interrupted by the arrival of Lady Venture, who was in the company of two of the matrons on board, both wide-eyed as she regaled them with stories of island life.
“—and I am so afraid my complexion is ruined forever!” she exclaimed, patting her face with one gloved hand. They joined Miss Gable and Mr. Collins. “I was intolerably sunburnt, but you know, if it had not been for my efforts, we would never have been rescued. I was the one who suggested that if we expected to be rescued, we needed to make a signal fire. I became the mistress of the flame as they all insisted on calling me!” She gazed off toward the horizon and smiled, the wistful, brave smile of martyrdom.
Savina sighed. She would not be the one to correct Lady Venture’s story. At least a part of it was true; she had served as an admirable flame-keeper, and if she had not been so dogged in her role they may not have been rescued in so timely a manner, for as they had learned, the lookout on the Phoenix had indeed seen the dark puffs of smoke, which had alerted them that they had found the castaways.
“I’m feeling ill again. I think I’ll return to my quarters,” Savina said aloud. She took Zazu’s arm and they returned belowdecks.
“He simply refuses to believe I am calling off our engagement,” Savina muttered to Zazu as they descended and turned toward the passenger quarters.
“It’s odd, isn’t it? He is most adamant.”
Negotiating the narrow hallways in the dimness was not easy, and they took a wrong turn. Like a bird flushed from a covert, Annie, Lady Venture’s maid, erupted from an alcove, her pretty face pink and confused. She curtseyed and bustled by them with a rustle of her borrowed skirts.
“I wonder what— Oh!” They had turned a corner and came upon Mr. William Barker examining the brass fittings of a lantern.
“Ah, ladies,” he said, turning, his hands clasped behind his back. “How . . . how pleasant to stroll about knowing we are sailing ever closer to our home port, is it not?”
“I suppose,” Savina said, thinking how odd it was that he was walking belowdecks when his fiancée was above. “Excuse us, sir. We are returning to our cabin.” She paused and offered, “Lady Venture is on deck, if you and Annie were looking for her.”
“Ah, just so. Yes, just so,” he said. “Thank you for that invaluable information,” he said and bowed, then passed them. “I shall find her directly.”
Savina watched him go; he disappeared down the dim corridor and she turned to Zazu. “I think I know enough of men and women now to know that he was not looking for Lady Venture.”
“Very true,” Zazu said, gazing down the passage after him. “The lady is in for a nasty surprise one day, if she keeps Annie as her maidservant.”
“You don’t suppose he’s forcing the poor girl into an intrigue, do you?”
“No,” Zazu said with a dry tone. “I rather imagine she was the one who began the flirtation.”
“Oh.” Savina considered it, but it still mystified her, since it seemed an affair with no honorable or reasonable end. “To what end?”
Zazu shrugged. “Many a woman has used her charm on a man for the gifts he can bestow. Or, perhaps she genuinely likes him.”
“Mr. Barker?”
Dryly, Zazu replied, “Better him than a third footman in Lord Gaston-Reade’s household, I suppose.”
“I see what you mean,” Savina said, looking down the corridor thoughtfully. “I do see what you mean.”
Savina spent most of her time with her father and Zazu, after that. Tony was avoiding her, and she was confused and uncertain about everything concerning him and her feelings toward him. The trip seemed long, but it was actually very speedy, and one gray, breezy, chilly morning in November, with the mist like a shroud over the city, they made port in Bristol and from there hired a few carriages to take the two-day drive to London.
It had been almost ten years, Savina thought, gazing out the window and shivering as they entered London and her father eagerly chattered on about the house he had leased—knowing he was retiring and returning to England he had made elaborate plans many months ago by mail—and all the old friends he hoped to see. But for her, all her friends and plans and dreams had been left behind in sunny Jamaica. London wasn’t home, to her; Spanish Town was more her home. And for Zazu it must be even worse, she thought, glancing over at her maid, who solemnly gazed out the window taking in her first sight of the city. She hadn’t complained but did appear to grimly accept her fate, as one taking a tumbrel ride to the guillotine.
It had been a dreadful mistake to come back to England, Savina feared. But what choice did a young woman have, hemmed in by social obligations and strictures, condemned to lead the life her father, and then her husband, said she should? Life was simpler on their deserted cay.
She gazed out as they pulled up to their gloomy gray limestone house in what her f
ather was saying was a good section of London, very near Mayfair, and with a park opposite.
“There are bars on the windows,” Savina exclaimed.
“Well, all kinds of rogues around, you know,” her father said. “Just a precaution, I’m sure.”
“But is it to keep the rogues out, or us in?” she asked.
Zazu chuckled, but it was a grim sound in the gray day’s dim light.
Sixteen
Savina despised their London house. It was gloomy, labyrinthine and cold; the chill settled into her bones and made her miserable most days. Although she did her best to conceal her feelings, not wanting to dampen the joy of her father’s homecoming, he sensed her distress and offered to find a house to lease in the country. But she knew she needed to stay in London, and so she stared out at the gray city beyond her window and mourned the loss of her life in Jamaica. It was as if, she thought, gazing out on the gloomy sky clouded by smoke from thousands of coal fires, her spirit was being faded by the dreariness of each successive day.
She was beginning to understand how fundamentally different she and her father were from each other. He was enjoying their return to London, and the dismal weather only seemed to revivify him. Where tropical heat and constant sunshine had made him irritable, rain, sleet and frost made him rub his hands with glee and claim there was nothing like a proper coal fire and good old-fashioned English cooking to make a man feel young again. The notoriety of having survived a marooning on an exotic tropical island at the hands of the American navy had transformed him into a much-sought-after dinner guest in his circle of old acquaintances, and even introduced him to a more lofty class of society. Far from melting into obscurity, as he had thought he would do after retiring from public service, he was now a personage of great importance.
Savina observed his enjoyment of his fame and though she did not understand it, she appreciated it for his sake. For herself, she despised the whispers, the pointing and the invitations that came only because she was “Lady Savage.” That silly title was Miss Gable’s doing. The earl had correctly identified her as a gossip, and so the name had been whispered from her lips to every person of her vast acquaintance; a gossip-starved London had taken up the appellation. Her fame had grown to the point that she could not go anywhere without being accosted and told all about her own story. Among the more serious-minded the turn of the war was the topic of interest, but among those with lighter tastes, Lady Savage was the rage.
Many were kind and congratulated her on her remarkable recovery from the feral state, for she had, they assured her with serious expressions, been unable to walk upright the day of her rescue and had crouched on the deck of the Phoenix grunting and pawing at the boards. Her dress had been ripped to reveal much of her bosom and all of her legs, they said, and her eyes had been bloodshot and wild. She had been as brown as her Jamaican maidservant.
She would have enjoyed obscurity, for there was much she needed to sort out. There were things she should have done immediately, first among them demanding a private meeting with the earl to ask that he release her from their engagement. But Gaston-Reade was her only conduit to Tony. It hadn’t taken her long to realize how constricted her life was to be in London; it would be impossible to see Tony Heywood once her ties were broken with the earl. A young lady risked every shred of her reputation if it got about that she had corresponded with a young man, or had arranged a meeting with him. If she didn’t care about that fragile reputation for her own sake, then she had to care for her father’s dignity.
So she was still, in the eyes of society, engaged to Lord Gaston-Reade, and he insisted that as his fiancé she must be seen at all the proper events; though London society was very thin there were still balls and dinner parties, and he escorted her everywhere. She tried to pull back. She knew she was doing wrong by continuing the sham of an engagement, but she couldn’t think how to right things and didn’t dare to reject the earl until she had spoken to Tony. She should have taken advantage of their time on board ship to talk to him, but there was always someone about in such close quarters; she had mistakenly thought things would be simpler once they got to London. It showed how ill-prepared she was for life in the metropolis that she could have thought so.
What she wanted from the secretary she did not know. Did he love her as she loved him, fervently and completely, or had it been tropical madness, induced by the sun and heat and the relentless fear they had suffered? What was there for them anyway, in a world where wealth—or at least a competence—was needed before marriage could even be considered?
She didn’t have any answers, but still, there were things between them left unsaid. Ten minutes alone with him would have sufficed, if she could have counted on her own courage to pour her heart out and expose all the raw emotions she was suffering. Her fear was that she would look an idiot, feeling everything while he felt nothing. She had no encouragement from him. Although she had been to the earl’s London home three times with her father and had seen Tony twice so far, that was only in passing. Surely if he cared for her he would have tried to see her? She had thought he might even love her, after the many instances of tenderness between them, but if he cared he didn’t deign to show it; he merely bowed to her remotely and wished her a good day when they had chanced to meet, though she stared at him and tried to show him with her expression that she needed to talk to him privately. That coolness left her more confused and sad than even the grim weather and almost as much as Zazu’s unhappiness.
On that front she had made up her own mind. Zazu must return to Jamaica; the poor girl was fading, her vivacity dampened, her inner light extinguished. Savina vowed to canvass every friend and acquaintance she had back in Jamaica to see if there was a position among them that would allow Zazu and Nelson to wed. She didn’t know if Zazu would agree to go back, and it would be like tearing off her own limb to see her dear friend go, but she loved her and couldn’t bear to see the sadness in her warm brown eyes. The grand plans she and Zazu had, of seeing Florence and Rome, of traveling and exploring the world, had died with Savina’s decision not to wed Lord Gaston-Reade—though given the earl’s disposition, they likely had little chance of seeing fruition anyway—and she grew certain that the chill austerity of a servant’s life in England would destroy Zazu’s spirit. It would not do. Perhaps love was a stronger force than she had judged it to be and was worth making some sacrifices for.
Late November brought Lord Gaston-Reade’s thirtieth birthday, and it was to be celebrated with a dinner party at his London home. Zazu, who had accompanied her—her father was suffering a cold and wished to stay home by his fire with a close friend to comfort him—helped her out of her cloak, necessary as London’s chilly fogs closed in. Savina glanced about at the room of the earl’s London home set aside for the ladies’ comfort during the evening, and shivered.
“I hate this house,” she said, gazing around at the dark paneled walls and ornate fireplace. “It’s so gloomy. I don’t think I could ever bear to live here.”
With a throaty, humorless chuckle Zazu replied, “You will be mistress of it soon enough, and then you can tear it down.”
“Even if I still planned to marry Albert I couldn’t destroy this old pile. It is, as his lordship calls it, a gem in the string of jewels of Mayfair.” She turned, allowing Zazu to right her twisted sleeve, and said, “You know I’m not going to marry him; I can’t, not feeling as I do. It’s just . . . how do I get him to believe me? And how do I do it—jilt him—now that he has announced to everyone I am his fiancée? I don’t wish to hurt his feelings, nor do I want to cause a scandal of any kind. I have dithered too long.” She sighed heavily. “And you know I have another reason. I must speak to Tony once more before I end my engagement.”
A couple of ladies entered the withdrawing room with their maidservants, and they collected in a tight knot on the far side, near the windows, whispering and pointing at Zazu and Savina.
“Pardon me,” one of the young ladies said, approaching
but still keeping a safe distance. She nervously smoothed the pale lavender fabric of her dress skirt down. “But you are the earl’s fiancée, the one they call Lady Savage, are you not?”
Savina sighed. “I am that unfortunate creature,” she admitted to the young lady before her, derision heavy in her voice for anyone perspicacious enough to take note of it. There was no danger of that in the present company.
“I told you she was,” she said over her shoulder to the other girl, her friend. The girl threw another look over her shoulder, then leaned forward and whispered, eyes wide and gleaming with fascination, “We have heard that you all lived together on the island and behaved like natives. Is that true?”
Savina exchanged an exasperated look with Zazu.
Zazu took the hint and said, “Miss, if by behaving like natives you mean we survived awful weather, gathered fruit, fished for our meals and slept on the ground, then that is true enough.”
“You can speak English,” the girl cried, staring at Zazu and clasping her gloved hands to her thin bosom.
They were called, at that moment, to dinner and Savina reluctantly left Zazu behind. She learned, as they strolled through the corridors to the dining room, that the two young ladies were distant cousins of the earl’s. Their rapid conversation was full of names Savina didn’t recognize and topics of no interest to her, so she was not sorry when they were parted by the seating arrangement at dinner.
There were thirty people seated in the grand dining room of the earl’s London home, but conspicuously absent was Mr. William Barker. Lady Venture, flanked on one side by an elderly uncle and on the other by a foppish cousin, looked bored and angry, eating a lot, drinking more, but not seeming to notice what. Savina endured sitting at the earl’s right hand. After innumerable courses, many toasts, and far too many clever speeches—including one long one by the earl in which he thanked everyone but Savina for their rescue from the remote cay—the dinner was finally over.
Lady Savage Page 18