by Debra Dunbar
In his current distracted state, it was fortunate that no other problems had presented themselves these last two weeks. Indeed, the Nightwood slaves had seemed downright cheerful, and the Gilbee slaves had caught their mood. It was all whisperings of Enzili, when they thought he couldn’t hear. Poor, superstitious people. The Reverend Birkett and the Church simply couldn’t compete with a mysterious goddess who promised so much to those with so little.
And even the drums at night, muttering in the jungle around Spanish Peak, had not seemed to cause the upset it sometimes did with the slaves. It was as if Enzili had suddenly manifested before them and made good her promises.
If only—
His deliberations halted as Agnes opened the door and Lady Margaret entered the room. The very breath stilled in his throat.
She was luminous; there was no other way to describe her.
Her raven hair was piled on her head in the Roman style, with ringlets escaping to brush against her ivory skin. Even in the rich light of the lamps, that skin was so fair. It made her eyes stand out like pools of clear, Caribbean blue, and her lips seem to blush like coral.
She wore a dress of the palest aquamarine, bordered with tulle frills, edged with embroidered rosebuds. The décolletage was square-cut, this year’s daring fashion in London.
She floated across the room, and Charles felt as if he were being pulled forward to meet her; as if he’d lost control of his own body.
“Lady Margaret,” he managed to say, and bent over her proffered hand. “You look splendid.”
“Why, thank you, Charles. I may call you Charles?”
“Of course, my lady.”
His heart was hammering against his ribs again.
Don’t make a fool of yourself.
She had invited him here with not enough time to discuss business, but maybe with enough time to discuss his other proposal.
She’d started by using his Christian name!
She smiled, as if she read his thoughts.
“Come. I have something for you.”
Her words sent a thrill through his body. He’d been hearing her voice in his dreams, but the effect was even more profound in real life. He was walking on air as she led him, through billowing gauze curtains, to the paved courtyard outside.
Agnes remained inside, standing behind the curtains.
Coming from the well-lit drawing room, the relative darkness was a shock and Charles stumbled to a halt to allow his eyes to adjust.
The moon was full. The world had become the deepest blue, all edged in brilliant silver. It gave the scene an otherworldly feel, not helped by the fact that the middle of the courtyard was taken up by one of Lady Margaret’s coffins, lying on top of a stout table.
He felt drawn and repelled by it at the same time.
For me? What on earth is it? And why is it here?
Lady Margaret seemed not to notice his hesitation.
“You have been the very soul of discretion with regard to your offer of marriage, Charles.”
Her voice seemed to drift on the scented air, as if she was a part of the night itself. He strained his eyes and was startled to find how close she was to him.
He liked the sound of her saying his name. He liked it very much.
“I didn’t deem it any person’s business but our own, my lady,” he said.
“And my father’s, of course.” She walked past him, trailing the fragrance of English roses.
Charles’ choice of her father, the Lord Willoughby-Lazaure, for his business proposal had been carefully thought through. As the owner of an estate which Charles managed, he would be best placed to profit from it. Also, the earl was wealthy, a clever and successful businessman. But far more important than those elements, the earl was known to be a staunch supporter of the West Indies situation and all that it entailed. Indeed, it was believed he was the real principal behind the West Indian trade lobby in London. He would understand exactly the problems that Charles had described, he would see the brilliance of Charles’ solution, and he had the ability to fully exploit it.
The offer of sealing the agreement with marriage to his daughter hadn’t been so carefully thought through.
But it wasn’t the earl here tonight.
“I am not my father,” Lady Margaret said, seeming to read his thoughts. Her voice was very quiet against the singing of crickets. “And I have a great regard for men who can keep secrets.”
“I assure you of my continuing discretion,” he said, “in all matters concerning us.”
She had completed a circle of the table with its bizarre load, and came to stand in front of him, her features mercifully hidden in shadow, else he might lose what little he had left of his faculties.
Her perfume was making his head swim as it was.
“Good. For I must tell you a secret, Charles: I own Nightwood outright now. The earl has seen fit to pass it to me. As such, your proposals came directly to me, and remained entirely with me.”
“My lady,” he stammered, his head truly reeling now.
His finely worked proposal, the elegance of his analysis, the laborious drawings of his engineering project...none of it had got to his intended target: the commercially astute mind of the earl.
What could he say? He was ruined.
The guild would seize his assets and his crop, and his project, and have him thrown in jail, where he would die.
Perhaps he could flee the island now.
“I found your personal proposal somewhat forward, Charles.”
Oh, God. She had read the offer of marriage that he’d intended for the earl’s eyes only.
He swallowed and amended his assessment. Humiliated first, then ruined, and then imprisoned. He had to flee. This very night. A fishing boat. A skiff. Anything.
“But not entirely without merit, all in all,” she said.
His mouth fell open from shock, but his heart leaped and, being a quick-thinking man, he managed to recover himself.
“My lady, forgive me, but does this mean you look favorably on both my proposals?”
She turned back to the table and coffin. “Perhaps.” There was the hint of teasing laughter in her voice now. “Come, Charles, recover yourself with some physical activity.”
What? What does she mean?
“This chest contains something for you,” she said. “Consider it a sign of my serious intent and commitment. On both proposals.”
A touch on his arm made him catch his breath again. He stood in front of the coffin, and he could see that a crowbar lay on top of it.
A gift in this macabre setting? I must be dreaming.
What else could he do? The crowbar was cold and heavy in his hands. Like a sleepwalker, he prized the enormous coffin lid loose with a screech of nails that seemed to chill his heart and set his limbs quivering.
The blackness yawned before him.
The smell. Not the smell of some disturbed corpse. Indeed, it seemed...
At a quiet request, Agnes had passed Lady Margaret a lamp from inside. Now it shone, bold and yellow, on the contents of the coffin: lying on thick beds of straw, the great shapes that had haunted his dreams for the last year.
“My presses,” he whispered. His mind shut out everything else. These were the remaining components, the very heart of his project—his steam-powered trapiche mill, the Tynes Engine. The components that could not be manufactured locally, and that he had been unable to afford. His presses, to his specifications, with the reassuring stamp of the best Sheffield steel marked on them.
“My lady! I am saved.” His voice was scratchy. “With these, I can extract fifty percent more cane juice. Fifty percent! And I have built kilns so that—”
“So that they are twenty-five percent more efficient than others on the island, and will be able to use the residual fiber from the new pressings as fuel without the need of delay for further drying, or diminution of heat released in their combustion. The resulting increase in efficiencies will near double the yield of
the estates, and the increase in capacity will allow us to process neighboring estates’ cane for a share of their profit. Indeed, we will be able to process more than the rest of the island combined, and for a lower cost. In time, with the entire island’s output, we can match the quantity and price that larger islands are able to offer, and at greater profit to us. And so on, and so forth. I have read and understood and believed your commercial proposal, Charles, and agreed it, as far as the technical and commercial aspects are concerned.”
He blinked. She’s read my proposal! Understood it! Agreed it!
“My lady, I…” he stuttered. “I am impressed. Very much. Overwhelmed.”
To recover himself, he concentrated on replacing the lid of the coffin reverentially.
My presses. My machine will be running in a week.
I cannot let my plans fail now. I must take control.
But it was Lady Margaret who spoke first.
“To answer your commercial proposals, Charles, yes, we must bring together the entire Nightwood and Gilbee estates, and your Tynes Engine, under our joint and equal ownership.”
“Equal shares?” He could scarce believe his ears. He knew the earl would have taken at least seventy-five percent. He would have opened negotiations with a demand for ninety percent. Nightwood was the larger estate. And there were the earl’s connections in London. The ready line of credit.
She was offering him fifty.
Marry her, and have it all, a small voice spoke deep inside him.
“Yes,” she replied to his spoken question. “Equal. But now is not the time for details. You must excuse me; I must prepare to receive my other guests.”
“I am your servant, my lady.”
“What you are, or will be, remains to be decided by us,” she said, with another of those smiles that made his stomach muscles clench. “Dinner this evening will preceded by a dance, short but formal. Please, Charles, attend on me for the Grand March.”
She turned back toward the house. The lamplight caught her features, made them golden, and unutterably beautiful. Further questions escaped him; indeed, all sensible thought seemed to have escaped him. At that moment, she could have asked anything of him. He would leap off the edge of the courtyard to the garden, thirty foot below or more, to prove he could fly, if she had demanded it.
She returned inside while he remained rooted to the spot, oblivious to the crickets singing in the trees, to the moths flying over his head, or the whispering bats that harvested them.
The Grand March was the first dance. A processional, barely more than a way of introducing people. And even here in the Leeward Islands, isolated from London society, for an unmarried lady to be led through the steps by an eligible bachelor was taken as a statement of intent on their part. A level lower than the formal announcement of an engagement, but only just.
Everything was coming together for him.
He could feel it, as if a tide had turned in his life.
Nothing could possibly go wrong now.
Chapter 6
Enzili
Charles remains behind, exhilarated and shocked, in the dark courtyard.
We need him. A lady alone in this society, even the daughter of an earl, is still just a woman in a man’s world. Even worse if she succeeds. Tolerance of aristocratic eccentricity would become curiosity would become suspicion would become envy and fear and hate. And that hate would end in death.
We are newcomers here. We need a face that is familiar to the island. A protection against curiosity. A reason for success. An answer to the gossips.
That is Charles, if luck is with us.
He cannot be compelled against his will to help us, not for any length of time. He must choose to be one with us, with our secret. Which means he must come to trust me absolutely.
And that is difficult.
He looks at me now and he sees only what society has taught him to see. If he guesses my true nature, we will be at risk far worse than this commercial tangle.
His engine is the key to him. Perhaps.
We will see.
Chapter 7
Charles
The guests assembled in the glittering ballroom, and Caerdrys Park became wonderfully alive with people and music.
Lady Margaret had persuaded the island’s only reasonable quartet to play, and Charles doubted that even one of her invitations to the notables had gone unanswered. That was despite her not receiving anyone in the previous fortnight, and not attending church on either Sunday. He heard some comments about that, but more about the fact that a member of the aristocracy was here on St. Mark’s. No other Leeward island had that privilege.
Charles wondered if they’d ever let her leave.
They were there of course. The guild. He forced his shoulders to loosen, and smiled.
They would not serve a demand on him to redeem the promissory note at Lady Margaret’s dinner. Doubtless they had not even been expecting him to be invited.
Well, they were in for a surprise tonight.
One of them turned and saw him, the long, sallow face made appropriately piratical by the black eye patch he wore.
“Ah! Well met. How goes it, Mr. Tynes?”
“Very well, thank you, Mr. Wolcott.”
“We are heartened to see the revitalization of Nightwood. We hope that might extend to Gilbee’s?”
We. Not the royal prerogative, but the arrogance of the money men.
“Oh, undoubtedly, sir. Gilbee’s has good management, good crop, the soundest procedures and the best yield in the island.”
“And all yours. What splendid fortune.”
Wolcott was nothing if not smooth and subtle. It was a question, however it was framed—have you got the deeds of ownership yet?
“I believe so. Correspondence with London is so slow, you understand, let alone with Lincolnshire, where Mr. Gilbee resides.”
In other words, no.
The promissory note had been sufficient, in the eyes of the guild’s representatives, for the purchase of Gilbee’s. Indeed, Gilbee would probably have agreed with alacrity if Charles had offered the full amount. However, Charles had had to split the credit. Some for the offer to Gilbee, but the rest he’d used to prove the validity of his project and build the basic machine, lacking only the presses.
He had omitted to tell the money men about the engine.
He was sure Gilbee would accept the lesser amount, next year. He was sure that the increased yield of the plantation would cover the promissory note, next year. The traders’ guild, however, would be demanding payment this year.
It mattered little now.
With the credit of the house of Willoughby-Lazaure behind him, he was untouchable by them.
So he smiled and bowed and left Wolcott.
Across the room he saw Lady Margaret passing from group to group—a word here, a word there, laughing and charming every person in the room. The London cut of her dress was daring enough to raise eyebrows, but Charles knew, at the next gathering on St. Mark’s, every dress would be styled exactly so.
As she passed, the people in her wake stirred and spun, and seemed half-drawn to follow her, like the eddies that Charles observed from passing his hand through water.
The men and women she spoke to looked dizzy, almost mesmerized.
“Quite something, eh?” George’s sardonic, low-voiced comment from behind him interrupted his reverie. “And I hear she’s found a French chef. We should be royally treated tonight, a feast for our bellies as well as our eyes.”
“And ears,” murmured Charles, waving toward the quartet and pretending not to understand.
She saw the gesture from across the room. Their eyes met and he felt the physical shock of it down to his toes.
The quartet’s violin player stood and announced the Grand March.
“If you would excuse me, George,” Charles said, and walked proudly to her side while a background of murmurs rippled through the room.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
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Lady Margaret had excused herself after the Grand March, citing her need to circulate among her guests. Charles had taken a rest, only getting back on the floor to escape George’s questions about her ladyship. Not that dancing provided an escape from questions, just a change of questioner.
It was forty minutes later when the quartet announced the final waltz before dinner.
Lady Margaret left a group of the plantation families’ eldest sons, all obviously keen to dance with her, and crossed the floor to claim him.
Immediately, he sensed something was wrong. His hand resting gently against her back could feel a tension in her body, like the hum of a machine.
She spoke quietly, for his ears only, but anger crackled through her voice.
“It is amazing what men will say when they believe the saying of it somehow enhances them in a lady’s eyes.”
“My lady?” It was not at all the comment he’d expected. Had someone insulted her?
“I am afraid that Mr. Wolcott and his friends were astonishingly open about their dealings with you.”
For a minute, he didn’t say anything—couldn’t say anything. Such a breach of confidence by the traders’ guild was unheard of. It laid open his strategy and destroyed his case with the earl.
And his daughter.
Fool.
He thought frantically.
“I would have mentioned the promissory note earlier, but surely, with the wealth and power of the earl behind us—”
“It is not behind us,” she said, her voice suddenly sharp as the kiss of a whip. “I have not the time to explain further at present, but we cannot look to the earl for loans or credits.”
Charles stumbled and caught himself just in time.
The earl was in financial difficulties? Or was his daughter estranged?
No. The gift of Nightwood was not the action of a father at odds with his daughter, or one in financial straits. It had to be that he was fully committed to some greater enterprise.