'Why, I ...' Kit looked the length of the table, to where Astrid Christianssen also smiled at him. 'It is strange, to be drinking alone.'
'Why so?' Astrid asked. 'If you like the taste, and the quality.'
'The taste and the quality are delicious. The meal was delicious.' His gaze drifted across to Lilian, sitting opposite; her hair was loose and she wore a simple grey gown, as shapeless as ever. He had not spoken to her in nine years. Then she had been seventeen. Now she would be twenty-six, a tall, handsome, grave young woman. 'I really do not know how to thank you all.'
You all. Agrippa sat next to Lilian, and Abigail sat next to himself. She was a plump, pretty girl, very dark-skinned, and looking more so in her white dress. She was a true Negress, as opposed to the many northern tribes included in the generic term by the planters. There was memory from the past. Sitting down to dinner with a Negro and his wife. Sitting down to dinner with a friend.
'You may pay for your dinner, Kit,' Dag said. 'By telling us whether you feel we are really in imminent danger of a French invasion.'
'I'm afraid I believe we are,' Kit said.
'Oh, no,' Astrid cried. 'But what must we do?'
'I'm afraid we will have to fight them,' Kit said. 'They are, as we are constantly reminded, no more than buccaneers, not soldiers. Any Great House, properly defended, will be discouraging to them. If you will remember their raid on Jamaica, the only plantations which fell were those which were surrendered or abandoned. As for St John's, I do not think they would even consider an assault.'
'Right,' Dag said, half to himself. And sighed. 'No doubt you are right.'
'But you would not contradict your beliefs, old friend. Nor should you. On the unlikely mischance that a Frenchman should break in here, you may safely leave your life in the care of Agrippa, surely.'
'I pray it will not come to that,' the Negro said.
Dag smiled at Kit's astonishment. 'Agrippa thinks as we do, now. And Abigail.'
'By God.' Kit scratched his head. 'You'll forgive me. I had not supposed Christianity was of interest to you.'
'Nor was it,' Agrippa acknowledged. 'Until Dag got to talking.'
Kit picked up Abigail's left hand; she wore a thin gold band. 'And you also?'
She smiled at him. 'You got for ... I'm sorry, Agrippa spends so much time making me speak good English. You have to thank Dag for that too.'
'I wish you would tell me how it came about.'
'He purchased my freedom, Captin. You could say he bought me. I belong to him, double.'
'And you've children?'
'No, Kit,' Agrippa said. 'I'd not wish a child on this world unless his skin could be as white as snow.'
Astrid gave a nervous smile. 'Or perhaps until the world changes for the better, he means, Kit. It must.'
'Aye,' Kit said. 'But I'd have thought yours was not a Christian concept, Agrippa.'
'I am new to the religion, Kit. Would you describe planting in Antigua as a Christian profession?'
'You'll not quarrel at my table,' Dag said.
'I'll not quarrel with Agrippa under any circumstances, Dag. But our conversation leads me to wonder why you have not tried your persuasive tongue on more of the Negroes.'
'Would that I could, Kit. But I have been expelled from too many plantations in my efforts to do so.'
'I fail to see why. You can hardly be accused of preaching sedition.'
'Oh, but I am. You cannot enslave the body of a man, efficiently, unless you also enslave his soul. It is impossible to be a Christian, and not believe in the eternal freedom of your soul. Therefore it is impossible to be a slave and Christian at the same time. Logic'
'Yes,' Kit said. 'You are all too deep for me. I can only say that you have not attempted to preach on Green Grove.'
Dag smiled, sadly. 'And what do you suppose would be the reaction of your wife to that, Kit?'
Kit gazed at him for several seconds.
'I must sec if I can find you a horse,' Agrippa said.
'At this late hour?' Dag demanded. 'You'll spend the night here, Kit.'
'Of course you will, Kit,' Astrid insisted. 'We shall be pleased. Unless you feel your wife will be worried.'
'To say truth,' Kit admitted, 'Marguerite is not at the moment very pleased with me. She sympathizes more with the point of view of Mr Harding than I supposed.'
Dag smiled at him. 'Then perhaps it would be as well not to return until tomorrow. Time is the great healer in family differences. They are infinitely preferable to quarrels and harsh words, or harsher deeds, which may be regretted."
'Yet must we not interfere between husband and wife,' Astrid said. 'Believe me, Kit, we should be more than happy to offer you a bed. But only if you feel it would be best.'
Kit scratched his head again, and found himself staring at Lilian. He had drunk the entire bottle of wine himself, and he had drunk it while still in a state of some agitation. The room was swaying unevenly, and he had an erection. He was angry with Marguerite and with himself. He had wanted to fight Harding. Instead he had all but quarrelled with his oldest friends. His only friends. Now he wanted ... what?
And Lilian had taken no part in the discussion, either for her religion or against the planters. And now, having met his eyes for only an instant, she lowered her head to stare at the plate.
'No doubt Dag is right,' he heard himself saying. 'Marguerite's rages seldom last very long.'
'Then it is settled,' Dag said. 'And the hour is late. I am sure we shall all be better for a good night's sleep. Lilian, you'll make up a bed on the floor of the office, and sleep there. Kit, you can have Lilian's bed.'
'I could not possibly evict Lilian,' Kit protested.
'You may have our bed. Kit,' Agrippa said. 'If it does not concern you.'
'Now, why should it do that?' Kit demanded.
'Gentlemen,' Dag said. 'This happens to be my house, and you will surely allow me to make the arrangements within it. I am sure Lilian has no objection to sleeping in the office, Kit.'
'I should be delighted to offer Kit the use of my bed,' Lilian said.
'Then you will show him up,' Astrid said. 'Dag, you and Kit are much of a size. No doubt you can discover a nightshirt to fit him.'
'That I shall.' Dag left the table, bustled towards the back of the house. Kit stood up, found Agrippa looking at him. 'Sleep well, Kit,' the Negro said. 'And sound.' 'I usually do.'
Lilian had already gone up the steps, and waited for him there.
'I'll say good night, Astrid.'
'It is our great pleasure to have you under our roof once again, Kit,' Astrid said. 'I hope, in the future, that you will not only seek to visit us in times of crisis.'
'Be sure that I shall not.' He climbed the stairs, watching the gown moving in front of him, obscured in the gloom, for she carried the candle. 'Your parents are uncommonly kind."
'I think they look on you as the son they never had.' She opened the door on the landing. ' 'Tis a small room, and uncommonly untidy.'
He stood in the doorway beside her, and his arm brushed hers. Here was no magnificently scented rush of air, as with Marguerite, but a subtle quality of freshness, such as he had not known in a very long time. But he had known it once. In Panama City.
'I wish you would allow me to sleep downstairs,' he said. 'It is not right.'
'You are our guest.' She moved forward, lifted the pillow on the pallet bed, and took out a wisp of white. Then she placed the candle in the holder. 'It is also a somewhat hard bed.'
'I am tired enough to sleep on anything.' He stood beside her again. I want you, his mind said. I wanted you years ago, and then my wanting was overwhelmed by my desire for Marguerite. Now ... was it just the anger talking? The anger and the wine? The desire to spite Marguerite? But was that not the reason he was here at all? Come down to it, was that not the reason he had been invited? Antigua was cleaving down the centre, and Kit Hilton was a catch, for the common party. Could they but hold him. If that were so, then wh
y should he spare them a thought of gratitude, of concern? This night he wanted a soft, fresh, unexpected home for his weapon. His body demanded it. And here it was, in front of him.
God curse the invention of wine.
'I will wish you good night,' she said, and made to step round him. His left arm moved, and she stopped, his hand just brushing her thigh. 'Why, Papa,' she said, 'you have found a clean nightshirt after all.'
'It is old, and mere linen,' Dag confessed. 'Yet will it cover your nakedness, Kit.'
He took the garment. 'And I am again grateful. If I can ever repay this kindness, you have but to ask.'
'Debts, repayments, are for enemies, Kit,' Dag said. 'A friend is just happy to help a friend. Now we shall bid you good night.'
He changed his clothes, put on the borrowed nightshirt, blew out the candle, and lay on the bed. What torture. It also smelt of her, and wherever he moved, whenever he turned from side to side, his body touched sheets which only twelve hours before had brushed against her. Yet surely would he soon be asleep, and awake, sober and controlled, once again.
He settled on his back, staring at the darkened ceiling, listening to the creaking of the stairs outside as the Christianssens mounted to their bedroom. What did Quakers do, in bed, together? Was there an abandonment of humanity, a realization of the joys of being animals, such as existed between Marguerite and himself? Such as had existed. And would again. Today she was angry. She was ambitious. And because she was a woman, she could never realize her ambitions in herself, and so desired them for her husband. What cruelty, what a waste of talent, was caused by the historical conception that women were inferior. What a magnificent Speaker of the House would Marguerite make. And had she not already proved herself without an equal at that most masculine of tasks, plantation management?
But was she not also the possessor of that most feminine of attributes, an imperious, unforgiving rage? Which was now no doubt in full flow.
So then, was he afraid of her? He sat up. By God, why should he be? He was her husband. She belonged to him. To his bed, whenever he chose to summon her. To his will, whenever he chose to make it known. To his hand, if he chose to inflict it upon her. By God, and he had run away from her this morning. As she had herself pointed out, time and again, he was unable to recognize his true stature, his true place in the world. But she knew it. Then she could expect nothing less than to feel the weight of his anger. And soon.
He stood up, found himself swaying, and steadied himself against the wall. He had no tinder, and could not relight the candle; he found his clothes by feeling towards the chair where he had left them. Yet was he making too much noise. He scooped them under his arm, opened the door, and blinked. Out here was much lighter; there was a full moon, shining through the skylight at the top of the stairs. And reaching all the way down to the foot. This was safer. His last sway had all but set him tumbling downwards.
He descended the stairs, cautiously, hugging his clothes to his chest, grasping the rail with his left hand, and saw Lilian, standing below him.
'Kit?' she whispered.
'Oh, Christ,' he muttered. 'Oh, Christ.'
'I heard you move,' she said. 'The office is beneath my room. Is something the matter?'
He reached the floor, and could pause for breath. But surely this was a mistake. A sway of less than a foot to his left would carry him against her. 'I want to go home,' he said.
'Now?'
'I must ...'
'You did not feel that way earlier, Kit.' 'Then the wine spoke for me.'
'As it is doing now,' she said severely. 'But in a different voice. I doubt you could sit a horse the distance.' And then her face broke into a smile, so relieving when set against her normal solemnity. 'And you have none, unless you will take Papa's mule. Then will you ride until this hour tomorrow.'
He leaned against the wall, gazing at her. The moon shone full on her nightdress. Not through it, certainly. Her body was a dark shadow. Yet it was there.
'I must go,' he said. 'And so must you. Back to bed. You do not know me, Lilian. You do not know of my crimes.'
'I know you well enough,' she said. 'I know the goodness in you, Kit, which you are constantly trying to bury beneath some assumed characteristic of villainy. I think I know the true Kit Hilton. Now come, I will assist you back to your bed.'
Her hands closed on his arms, and he sat down on the steps. Perhaps his weight was too much for her. But not enough. His clothes slipped to the floor, and he found his fingers on her thighs.
'Kit,' she whispered. 'Let me help you, Kit.'
He pulled her down, on to his knee, and his right hand searched the front of her nightdress.
'Kit,' she whispered, suddenly alarmed. 'No, Kit, you cannot.'
Here was softness. Softness he must know better. There were ties at the neck of her nightdress, neatly bowed. He wrapped his fingers in them and pulled them apart, carrying the material with it, laying her bare to the waist. She gasped, and pushed against him, found she could not get free herself, and swung at his face instead with her closed fist. He ducked beneath it, and found his face against her breasts. He nuzzled them and kissed them, sucked the nipples into his mouth. The arm swung round his head and came to rest on it, for a moment hugging him yet closer.
'Kit,' she whispered. 'Kit, in the name of God ...' she bit the words back. Because God was not present here. Kit was already slipping from the step, turning as he did so, completing the ruin of her nightdress as his mouth moved from her breasts to sink lower. Her legs closed, but too late; they only enveloped his neck, and now her body sank forward, over his head, and he felt her fingers on his back.
Nothing had changed. Green Grove was basked as ever in the warm morning sun, flooding out of the eastern coast of the island to bathe the western, brilliantly illuminating the bright green of the young cane shoots.
He rode into the compound, slowly, because the mule would go no faster, and the dogs raced forward, growling and barking, to greet him. The mule stopped, and scraped at the dust with its hooves. But George Frederick was also running forward, to take the bridle, and Kit was dropping from the saddle, to stroke and slap the eager mastiffs.
'The mistress does be aback, Captin,’ George Frederick said. 'But she going come home soon.'
Kit nodded, walked up the steps, stopped to look along the verandah to where Miss Johnson was leading Anthony in his Latin grammar while Rebecca played by herself at their feet. But Anthony had also seen his father come in, and now jumped up and down in his seat. 'Papa, Papa, you're home.'
'Hush, child,' Miss Johnson insisted. No doubt she was not as old as she looked and pretended, but she was older than either Kit or Marguerite, and was severely conscientious in her duties as governess; her father was the manager of the Ice House, and so she occupied a privileged position, by no means a planter's daughter, but by no means a poor white either; she approximated Lilian on the social scale, he supposed, although she would never have admitted to equality with a Quaker.
'Aye,' he said. 'You'd best obey Miss Johnson, or she'll have her stick to you, I've no doubt. I'm back, Tony. I'm back.'
He took off his hat, and went inside. Lilian, Lilian, Lilian. Then what was he doing here? There was an unanswerable question. Save that here was the fount of his strength, and if he was to put this behind him, then must he be sure what he was doing.
If he must put this behind him. There was the opportunist speaking.
Ellen Jane waited at the foot of the stairs. 'Is good to see you home, Captin,' she said. 'You going aback?'
'No. I'll have a bath, I think. And a jug of sangaree.' He went upstairs, into the great bedroom. The bed was made, and the room might never have been touched by human hand. But Marguerite's perfume filled the air. Was he afraid of her? Of her reactions? Of her denunciations? Or was he more afraid of what he had done to Lilian? Of what he had caused Lilian to do to herself.
He took off his coat, threw it across the bed, and sat beside it, staring through the
window at the canefields. Now he was sober, and sufficiently tired to be dispirited. Thus true evaluation of the situation should wait until he had had a rest, and a chance to think. And before these, a hot bath. There was the solution.
He stripped off his shirt, turned to face the still open door, and gazed at Marguerite, hatless, her coat open. 'Welcome home,' she said.
He licked his lips. Christ, how nervous he was, on a second. 'Am I then, welcome.'
'Silly darling,' she said, coming into the room and closing the door behind her. 'I apologize for yesterday, without reservation. It was the one thing I was determined we should never do, air our differences in public. Be sure that on our next appearance in St John's I shall be the most contrite of wives.'
'I disappointed you,' he said. 'You were entitled to anger.'
'No wife is entitled to do anything but support her husband,' she insisted. 'I had forgot that.' She picked up his shirt, held it close for a moment, and then put it down again. 'Was your dinner satisfactory?' Her head half turned. 'I had George Frederick return to oversee the situation. I should also ask, was her bed soft?'
Kit inhaled. There was never any possibility of subterfuge or dissembling, with Marguerite. In that she was superior to any of her sex.
'I returned to speak with you of that.'
'Indeed?' She sat on the bed, her hands on her lap. 'Your bath is ready. I will assist you, and you can say what you want, then.'
'Will you want to listen? It must be mainly goodbye.'
A slight frown, but gone in a moment. 'Is she then, so much softer than I? So much more willing than I? So much more passionate, than I?'
He cursed the flush on his cheeks. 'None of those things, Meg.'
'Is she, then, insistent that you declare your love, and make an honest woman of her to the world?' 'Of course not.'
The Devil's Own Page 25