by Erica Brown
There would be no divorce, no messy recriminations. So long as everyone’s reputations were left intact, no one would know anything untoward had taken place. Captain Tom Strong was running Rivermead Plantation. The sugar it produced would go to Limehouse. There would no longer be any connection between the Strong plantation in Barbados and the family in Bristol.
It would also be made common knowledge that, in the aftermath of a shooting incident she had witnessed, it was felt conducive for his daughter to live in Barbados. His wife, the head of a huge business empire, would stay at home. The fact that Blanche was ill would be made known to the biggest gossips in the city before she left. Edith would make sure of that. Servants in big houses followed the lives of their betters with keen interest. The whole of Bristol would know of her illness within days of them getting the news. Thus, there would be no breath of scandal for anyone concerned.
* * *
Horatia cried after he had left. This is your penance, she told herself. Sacrificing yourself for those you love was the only path left open to you if you were to save your soul.
She’d been determined not to mention her visits to St Mary Redcliffe. Admitting what she was doing was an act of penance would have made him feel guilty at leaving her and she didn’t want that. All her life she had sought the success that only wealth could bring. Much wrong had been done as a result of this. Now was the time to put things right, and she felt that was exactly what she had done. She had her world; they had each other. They also had Emerald. The fact that they did would hurt her for ever, but it was only right that she gave her up, just as she had her son. This was her penance. The pain would always be with her.
* * *
‘I never thought I’d find myself thinking her honest and noble, but I do now,’ said Blanche when he told her the news.
He shook his head. ‘How many of us ever admit that our true self is not as righteously acceptable as we make out?’
‘Perhaps because we don’t dare.’
They decided to visit Edith, Samson and family at Little Paradise before their departure. Hamlet was home from the canals and full of stories about the water meadows, the locks and the cows they milked in the dead of night when the farmer wasn’t around.
Abigail had prepared a spicy meal of lamb and vegetables, and baked a pie containing the few fruits left in the garden.
After dinner, as Emerald ran barefoot with Desdemona and Hamlet, Abigail washed dishes, and Edith and Samson sat smoking pipes on a wall beneath the apple trees, Tom and Blanche walked among the rhubarb, the gooseberry bushes, the winter sprouts and the potatoes.
They’d already told everyone that they were going to Barbados. Edith had cried. Abigail had passed her a large handkerchief and said that sunshine was the best thing for bad coughs.
They passed through the gate at the end of the garden and stood admiring the view.
‘You look wonderful,’ Tom said.
It was true. Her face was bathed in the golden glow of the setting sun and she was wearing a grey evening dress sprigged with tiny mauve flowers. She’d last worn it on the day her daughter Anne had picked dandelions on the common before she’d died of cholera. Accepting illness was all part of life and it was hardly the fault of the dress. She resolved to make out a Will leaving Little Paradise to Edith Blackcloud, and thereafter to Samson and his family.
Max brought his wedding forward to November and Emerald was a bridesmaid. Hamlet was almost a pageboy, but having discovered what he would have to wear, legged it to Aggie’s narrowboat, pleading with her to accept a stinking load of creosote rather than have him suffer what most boys regarded as a fate worse than death.
‘I ain’t wearin’ no knickerbockers and silky, lacy collars,’ he protested.
Aggie, generous as always, duly obliged.
Horatia Strong sent a note that she was unable to attend by virtue of business commitments and trusted that her husband would represent the Strong family.
Two days before the wedding, Mr Darius Clarke-Fisher made one last attempt to procure Max’s assistance to marry his mother.
‘I don’t believe the cheek of the man,’ said Max who was getting fitted for his wedding suit in one room, while Magdalene was in another, complete with her mother, father and goodness knows how many of the girls from Madame Mabel’s.
‘Ma cherie, you look divine,’ gushed Mabel, still affecting a French accent and fluttering around like a lost butterfly.
‘Here,’ said Edith as she heaved a bolt of cream cloth from where it was leaning against the wall onto a nearby table. ‘Are you the Mabel Morris who used to live in Cock and Bottle Lane? Mabel Pudding as was?’
Madame Mabel went scarlet. ‘Certainly not,’ she snapped, but kept a low profile from that day forth until the wedding, hardly an accented word coming from her mouth.
The bride wore a cream dress and a silk bonnet lined with gold damask, acres of tulle hanging down her back.
‘I’ll remember this day for the rest of my life,’ murmured Blanche against her son’s ear as she hugged him for what she thought might be the very last time.
She wiped at her cheek, thinking they were her own tears.
‘They’re mine,’ said Max, and hugged her as though he would never let her go.
Epilogue
The breeze eased the heat of the day. A red slash left by the setting sun made silhouettes of the palm trees.
Blanche and Tom were lying on a double-width wickerwork chaise longue. Her head rested on his shoulder as she lay listening to the encroaching sounds of evening.
Surf made a sweeping sound against the shore, and wooden doors and shutters, baked during the daytime, now creaked into the cooling air. The crickets fell to silence as a solitary bat flew into the matt black trees that separated Rivermead House from the growing cane and the tumbledown huts where the field hands used to live.
Tom’s masculine scent, the warmth of his body was as good for her well-being as the Barbados climate.
A sudden scream disturbed their peace and made them both sit bolt upright.
Blanche clutched at his shoulder. ‘It’s just an animal.’
‘I’ll check anyway.’
Blanche let him go. It would be a while yet before he fully believed that Emerald no longer had nightmares. Barbados had eased that pain too, as well as the one in her chest.
He smiled when he came back. ‘She’s sound asleep.’
After he’d resumed his former position, Blanche snuggled up against him.
‘I never want to leave this place again,’ she sighed, rubbing her chin up and down on his arm.
Tom looked down at her. ‘You’re not going to. We’re here for ever.’
‘Is that a promise?’
‘Yes. And as you know, I always keep promises.’
The breeze stirred the trees, and the moon rose above the sea and the white-painted house.
Also by Erica Brown
The Strong Family Trilogy
Daughter of Destiny
The Sugar Merchant’s Wife
Return to Paradise
First published in the United Kingdom in 2005 by Orion Publishing Group Ltd
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
57 Shepherds Lane
Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2DU
United Kingdom
Copyright © Erica Brown, 2005, 2018
The moral right of Erica Brown to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788630474
This book is a work o
f fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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