by JoAnn Wendt
She swung back to them and whispered in a confidential manner, “They say he’s got him a cod this long. Would you believe, Mr. Steel, eighteen inches?”
“No, I would not.” He couldn’t stop smiling. She was outrageous. He felt the laughter building. It felt good to want to laugh again.
Edwinna was beside herself. “Dinny, I’m glad you came, I want to talk to you, but we’re very busy. Come to the boiling house. I have a new kettle I want to show you.”
“Damn the boiling house. I came to feast my eyes on your pirate, dearling, not your boiling kettle.” A trifle nearsighted, Dinny stepped closer and looked him up arid down. Particularly down.
“Dinny,” Edwinna tried desperately. “Would you like something to drink?”
“Rum, dearling,” Dinny said sweetly. “And don’t go watering it down. It ain’t healthy. If God had meant rum to be watered down, he’d have caused it to grow in a pond like rice, not dry in a field.”
Drake wanted to laugh. “I’ll get the drink,” he said to Edwinna, and she threw him a grateful look—her first. It caught him by surprise. Her eyes were lovely when she looked at him like that, needing something of him. He liked it, and smiled to show her so.
He went to the kitchen, got the rum closet key from Kena. Rum was kept locked in Crawford Hall. The Newgate convicts, including Honor, would swill it down until dead drunk otherwise. When he went back to the dining chamber, Dinny was still cheerfully chirping, but Edwinna’s face had gone brick red. He wondered what Dinny had been asking her.
“Thank you, dearling!” She whirled around with plump grace, took the cup, and polished off the rum in two swallows. He stared in amazement. Kill-devil rum could peel the lining off a shark’s throat. Ridding herself of the cup, she gave them an enormous sunflower smile and linked her arm with Drake’s.
“Now, dearlings, let’s sit and talk. I want to hear all about your life, Mr. Steel—every single detail. My goodness, you’re handsome. Are those shoulders real?” She felt them. “They are.”
Something flashed in Edwinna’s eyes—something he’d never expected to see there. Jealousy. For a moment, he was mesmerized. So, she was enough of a woman to be jealous when someone flirted with her husband, was she?
“I do adore pirates,” Dinny chirped on. “Did you know of the pirate, Niles Goforth, Mr. Steel? Alas, they hanged him in Bridgetown five years back. ‘Twas the greatest loss of my life. We were lovers, you know. But he went in style, my Niles did, laughing at the hangman.”
Enchanted by that jealous flash, he smiled at Edwinna while Dinny rattled on, and wondered if this would be a conjugal marriage after all.
Dinny Fraser! Edwinna wanted to shake her. How dare she paw my husband! Leaving the two of them on the pretext that she had work to do at the boiling house, Edwinna stormed out of the house through the kitchen, stopped at the bath shed, went in, shut the door, doused a towel in a water bucket, and held it to her flaming cheeks.
All that charming banter. All that flirting. Sometimes she hated Dinny. Men were taken by her. She’d seen that sizzle of interest in Drake’s eyes, the way he’d lowered his beautiful black lashes to look at Dinny. She held the towel’s cool wetness to her cheeks until her skin ceased to burn, then tossed it down. Her spirits grew calmer.
It wasn’t true that she hated Dinny. She didn’t—she loved her. Dinny had been a second mother to her when her own mother had broken her heart by running off with a lover, abandoning her, Thomas, and Harry. She’d gone to Dinny whenever she’d needed a hug or a sympathetic ear. She told Dinny many things, but not the terrible ones. Those she hadn’t been able to speak about and still couldn’t. She rubbed the goose bumps on her arms. Nevertheless, Dinny had better leave Drake Steel alone or Edwinna would scratch her eyes out!
Drake spent an entertaining afternoon with Dinny, and when she rode off, he genuinely missed her. He wouldn’t for an instant put up with a wife like her, but somehow, she’d been the perfect antidote for his suffering- She’d made him laugh again, and he was grateful. He hadn’t laughed in a long time. Not since Anne. He felt...almost lighthearted.
He stood on the hill near the boiling house and waved as she rode off. She made a ludicrous arid utterly charming sight, bobbing like a plump cork on her mare, her dyed red hair aflame in the sun, her servant Jumbo in his flashy livery, trotting on foot in her dust. He watched until the cane fields swallowed her up. She’d roused the deviltry in him. She hinted in every way possible that she was curious about his and Edwinna’s wedding night. He told her, in strict confidence, that he’d given Edwinna eight trips to glory on their wedding night. She had stared at him in outright awe. “God help me, Mr. Steel! You put Niles Goforth to shame.”
With Dinny gone, the luster wore off the day and his mood. Evading Priscilla, who’d jumped on his shoulder in jealousy while he’d sat talking with Dinny, he slipped into the house, got ink and paper, settled at the dining table, and wrote a letter to Arthur—in the main, a business letter. Drake hated not having control of his business affairs, leaving things at sixes and sevens. He was a man who chafed to be at the helm, in command.
When darkness fell, he and Edwinna supped alone, as usual, by the meager light of one candle. They’d both fallen silent. Edwinna, stiffly so. Drake, sexually so. Dinny’s flirting had aroused him more than he’d realized. He felt...eager. He ate and gazed at Edwinna. His eyes found the exact spot he would want to kiss first if he were making love to her—that delicate, pulsing hollow at the base of her slender throat.
“Is something wrong?” she demanded.
“No. Nothing at all. Is something wrong for you?”
“No!”
He looked down at his plate smiling, feeling pleased. She was jealous of Dinny being with him. He could see it in her eyes.
“I enjoyed Dinny’s visit,” he said, “but not overly much. She can be a trifle overbearing.”
“Oh?” Edwinna felt a surge of lightness in her chest. “Most men are taken with her.”
“I am not most men.”
Drake glanced as Priscilla came stalking into the dim room on her little curled knuckles, her question mark tail held high.
“If she bites me, I swear she is monkey meat tomorrow.”
Edwinna glanced down at her plate and hid a smile. He would do no such thing. He’d been in her house two weeks, and she was beginning to know Drake Steel’s nature. He was not a mean man. Priscilla had vexed him in every way imaginable—nipping him, hiding in his room, snatching a letter he was writing and running with it—yet he’d done nothing cruel to her. In fact, Edwinna had once caught him holding her, petting her. An interesting thought came to her. If he is not cruel to Priscilla, he would not be to you, either. The thought was so unsettling she didn’t know where to look.
Drake frowned, puzzled. He’d thought he was making progress, but Edwinna suddenly went silent as a stone, not responding at all to his efforts to make conversation. Well, to hell with her. He couldn’t figure her out. Nor was he sure he wanted to bother to try. He gave up and ate in silence.
Kena broke the stillness, quietly entering the dimly lighted room to bring a letter that had come by slave. Edwinna took it, broke the seal.
“It’s from Dinny,” she said wonderingly. “She invites us to dine with her tomorrow. We cannot go, of course,” she said. “Dinny has no concept of the importance of harvest.” She went on reading, and as she read in the meager candlelight, her face grew brick red.
“I was only teasing her,” Drake said, watching.
“How dare you tell her something like that?”
“I’ll retract it. I’ll tell her it was only six times, not eight.”
“Don’t make sport of me!”
“I’m not.” He looked up, genuinely surprised, serious. “I was not making sport of you, Edwinna. I was making sport. There is a difference. Life is a damned hard journey without some sport in it. It is full of knocks; and blows. If a human being can’t take time for a bit of fun on the journey,
then he—or she—might as well turn up their toes and die.”
“You needn’t lecture me on life, Mr. Steel.”
“Drake. My name is Drake. We’ve been married two weeks. The least you can do is learn my name. It’s Drake.”
“Drake, then!” She said his name awkwardly, as if it cost her emotionally. Flushed and angry, she exuded an interesting femininity, breeches, braid, and all. He wondered what she would be like in bed. Soft clouds and thistles. Fire and ice.
“We could make it true.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. You understand it well enough when it concerns slaves—you give each one a wife. What do you think they do each night in their huts—weave baskets?”
“I do not like this conversation, Mr. Steel.”
“Drake.”
“Drake.”
“Then suffer,” he said bluntly. “There are things I want to say. May I ask you a frank question?” Priscilla leaped to his lap. He scooped her up, set her on the floor, then wiped his hands on his linen napkin and went on eating. Edwinna gave him a fiery look that told him she wanted to leave the table, but had too much pride to do so. It was her table, her house.
“Yes.”
“Is this ever to be a conjugal marriage?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Edwinna was dumbstruck. She hadn’t expected him to persist. Her throat grew parched, dry. She felt as if someone had raked all the flesh out of her throat.
“Because I...I don’t wish it.”
“Why not? It seems to me we are two normal people, sexual beings, created so by God. We both have sexual needs. We are both lonely people—at least, I am. I...I’m very lonely, Edwinna, and I sense you are, too. There would be no sin in it. The law says we are wed.”
Her heart pounded. “I—I am not one of your tarts, Mr. Steel.”
“Drake. My name is Drake.” He went on eating.
“Drake.”
“And I don’t have a tart. I’ve never had a tart and never shall. Tarts don’t interest me. I have no use for them.” He looked at her quietly, his eyes as blue and clear as the waters of Carlisle Bay. “To me...the thrill of the sexual is in fidelity—a woman’s body reserved for me alone. Mine reserved exclusively for her and shared with no one else. Her kisses on my lips only. My lips pledged to hers. A clean, faithful bed...chaste...committed...pledged. To me, that is the ultimate sexual thrill.”
Edwinna felt as if someone had wrapped wires around her chest and pulled them tighter and tighter, cutting her lungs in two. She couldn’t breathe. This handsome man, with his black, glistening hair, and beautiful blue eyes, and his breathtaking speech.
“I...I do not wish it.”
“I see.” He cooled visibly and nodded. “Then I assume you wish me to meet my needs elsewhere.”
“Yes. No, I don’t know. Just...do it off my plantation. Leave my slave women alone!” It was a mean, unjustified thing to say. Drake Steel had done nothing dishonorable on her plantation. He’d made no advances on any of the women; intuitively, she knew he would not. He was a proud man.
His blue eyes blazed with indignation, anger.
“Mr. Steel, I didn’t mean—’
“Drake. The name is Drake. Until you can remember it, eat alone.” He tossed down his napkin, pushed back his chair, and stood. “Thank you for supper.” He strode out.
Edwinna forced herself to finish her supper. It was a lonely meal. She had supped alone and lonely for years, but tonight’s meal seemed the loneliest of all.
* * *
Chapter 7
As the days went by, Drake Steel seemed to intrude upon Edwinna’s mind, her senses. Not that he was overbearing; he was not. He was a private man who went his own way and kept his own counsel—just as she did! Whatever thoughts he had, he kept to himself. He did nothing to disrupt her household. When he gave an order to a servant, he did so with courteous firmness, and to her amazement, the servant jumped to obey. His voice carried an authority no one dared dispute, not even Honor. Edwinna began to admire him. She liked the way he was with Marigold and Jeremy. Tutu loved him. Priscilla adored him.
It flustered Edwinna that she should be so...aware of Drake Steel. It flustered her that she knew the cadence of his step and that she found herself listening for it. Suppers with him had become the high point of her day. It flustered her that when she went on the plantation and glimpsed him in the saddle, his black hair glistening in the sun, she felt as if her lungs had suddenly become weightless.
How foolish! She was acting as silly as Marigold over Jeremy. Such behavior was excusable in a twelve-year-old girl, but Edwinna was twenty-six.
She was confusing Drake. She knew it. His perplexed glances at supper told her so. But she was confused herself. She didn’t know what she wanted or did not want from Drake Steel.
A reserved man, a man of pride, he neither made his sexual offer again nor referred to it. The issue stood closed. She told herself she was glad, relieved. Nights, she tossed and turned in her bed. To me, the thrill of the sexual is in fidelity, he’d said. But all men were alike, were they not?
Three nights after their uncomfortable discussion, the gate bell clanged at two of the clock. Hastily dressing in the darkness, she stepped into the shadowy hall to find Drake there, tucking shirt into breeches.
“What are you doing?” She brushed a strand of curly hair off her brow. Her braid was disheveled, working its way loose.
“I’m going with you.”
“Why?”
“Because I cannot let you go alone. It’s unsafe.”
“What nonsense. I am as safe as a babe in a cradle on my own plantation. I know every inch of it. I could find my way blindfolded, in black darkness.”
“Edwinna,” he said with vexation, “that well may be. However, I am not a man who can sleep peacefully while the woman of this house trots off into the night to God knows where. Now, let’s get started. I want to retrieve one or two hours of sleep out of this night.”
Outside the gate, they followed a young Ashanti into the velvety darkness. A million stars twinkled overhead. Here and there, starlight silvered the fields of blowing cane. The balmy trade winds caressed Edwinna’s skin. She loved her plantation passionately—loved it by night almost more than she loved it by day. She glanced at Drake, wondering if he thought it beautiful, but he strode along beside her, his face impassive. No doubt for Drake all beauty lay in England— his wine business, his children, the memory of his wife. He would not come back after his visit to England. She knew it with absolute certainty.
“What is the trouble? I didn’t understand his gibberish.”
“Macaw.”
“The boiling house slave?”
“Yes. A domestic dispute between his two wives. Valentine O’Brien is there, but he cannot calm them down. The women want Mamma to decide the matter. They threatened each other with bill-cane knives.”
“Good lord,” he said, frowning. “You should leave such things to Matthew Plum.”
“I’ve given orders that Mr. Plum is not to be called out, except in dire emergency. Mr. Plum doesn’t know this. Please do not tell him. You see, he suffered heart trouble two years ago, and I worry. I want him to have his sleep.”
“So, instead, you lose your sleep.”
“I like being out at night.” She often woke at night anyway. Going out was better than lying in bed and remembering sad things. They walked along. The wind rustled the cane fields.
“You don’t think it immoral that a slave should have two wives?”
“No. Boiling house slaves always have two, sometimes three wives.”
“Yet you would object if a white planter took two wives.”
“Certainly! What a question.” Her voice grew bitter. “Anyhow, Barbados planters have no need of one wife, let alone two. They have their slave women. Witness the mulattoes all over the island, Mr. Steel.”
“Drake,” he said.
“Dra
ke.” She found it difficult to use his name, as if using it would be a commitment.
“Mulattoes like Kena,” he summed up.
She looked at him. If he touched Kena, she would kill him!
“What about Kena?” she said aggressively.
He gave her a puzzled look. “Only that she’s mulatto.”
“Yes, she’s mulatto. Her mother was black, her father was white.”
They found the women in a nosy row that could rival any fishwives’ squabble in London. They shrieked at each other in their separate, incomprehensible languages. They spat and kicked. Valentine O’Brien restrained one, Alvis Nansellock the other. The tumult was enough to wake the dead. Slaves stood outside their huts shaking their fists at the women, shouting at them. In the midst of the melee stood Macaw, cocky as a rooster, with his ear-to-ear grin and gleaming white teeth. Drake wanted to pop him in the mouth. He hadn’t the slightest doubt what had started this fight—the marital bed.
He stood back, exasperated, to watch Edwinna deal with it. She marched right into the center of the melee, which died the instant the slaves saw her. The women stopped fighting and cried out, “Mama, Mama?”
“Shall I whip ‘em, Mistress Edwinna?” Valentine offered.
“You are not to whip my female slaves ever, not for any reason,” she said sharply. “Do you understand, Valentine?”
“Ay, mistress.”
Getting to the root of the problem proved difficult. The first wife, Juba, did not speak the language of the second wife, Kitta; neither wife spoke the language of their husband. Macaw and certainly Edwinna spoke none of their languages. But with patience and sign language she sorted it out, dealt out their punishment, and made them understand it. First, they would forgo their weekly ration of kill-devil rum, a Saturday night treat that every slave waited for all week long. They wept. Second, their food ration would be cut in half for one week. Third, they were to get no ticket to leave the plantation for one whole month.