Elyse saw herself race to the line of trees. Before she reached them, a shadowed figure emerged from their darkened depths. Elyse saw herself stop, frozen to the spot. Then she recognized the lean, powerful torso and saw the smile with which Brace Denham favored her.
The amber flecks within his blue eyes glowed, while the handsome, chiseled angles of his face held her captive. He reached out to her, his hand open, his palm inviting.
“Come to me,” he said in a low voice. “Come to my arms.”
Then she saw that all he wore were pants. His chest rose and fell seductively, desire written across his features; her blood raced madly, heated by her own hidden needs.
“Help me, Brace,” she pleaded.
“Come to me,” he said again, this time his voice more demanding.
“I…I can’t,” she said, the bursting desire commanding her to go to him, to find safety within his arms.
His sensuous lips twisted into a sneer. “Go back to England. Go back to where you belong!”
“Damn you!” Elyse screamed when Uncle Carl grabbed her and pulled her away. The last thing she saw was Brace mocking her helplessness, looking even more handsome than before.
An instant later Elyse awoke from the dream. She fought to calm her breathing, and when she succeeded, realized sleep was gone for the moment. Rising slowly, Elyse left the bed, walked across the hallway and stepped out onto the balcony.
She breathed deeply of the night air. Why did I have that strange dream?
Perhaps because of today. It had been a long day, the morning spent in anxious waiting as the Brittania sailed to Bluefish Bay. The walk to the house had not been tiring in itself, but the strain on her nerves as she’d neared her home had been tremendous.
The encounter with Brace had left her shocked and surprised, but the warmth of Ann and Charles’s reception had chased away the bitter aftertaste of their son’s hard words.
She and Ann had spent the remainder of the afternoon exploring the house she had not seen in sixteen years, bringing up hazy memories that gave evidence that she did in fact remember her home.
What a home it was! On the main floor were five rooms, not counting the huge, entry hall. The second floor consisted of five bedrooms and a nursery.
Elyse had been astonished to see that although her father had been dead ten years, the Denhams had kept the house in such perfect condition no one could ever tell it had been empty for a decade.
After entering the house, she’d found herself fighting the constant feelings of dèjá vu, until she’d willed herself to relax enough to see what was around her.
The entry hall was larger than she had remembered, and there was not one, but two curved staircases leading to the second floor.
To the right of the entry hall was the study and office, which was not overly large, but pleasant and simple. Two large windows dominated the study, directing the light onto the mahogany desk at the center of the room.
Elyse remembered that as a child, she’d never been able to see above the desktop—she had been too small. A painting hung on one wall, a portrait of her mother, in the background, the Chatsworth house in Devon.
Going through the pocket door at the end of the office, Elyse had found herself in the library. It was equal in size to the office; its walls lined with dark wood shelves. Hundreds of volumes rested on the shelves, and Elyse had known she would have many pleasant hours of reading.
Instead of going back through the office, Ann had led her through another set of pocket doors that opened into the breakfast room, where the sideboard, filled with pewter cups, had drawn her eyes. The small stool at its base was the same one she had stood on as a child, when she had reached for her cup. The long teak table was oiled and glowing with the iridescence of daylight. Eight chairs of matching teak surrounded the informal table. the breakfast room, they had gone into the formal dining room.
The dining room was enormous; the crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling was magnificent—French crystal, connected by golden fillets, supported by gold candleholders.
“It’s strange,” she’d said to Ann, “but I don’t remember this at all.”
“You shouldn’t. The salty air does not allow fixtures or materials a long life. This room and the salon must be redecorated every five years.”
Elyse had looked more closely at the walls, covered with fine hand-painted silk. Scenes of birds in flight and birds at rest decorated a background of soft cream shades.
”Come.”
Following Ann, who had kept smiling at Elyse’s darting glances, she entered the salon. This room, almost square in shape, was light and airy. Three sets of chairs set off its atmosphere, and the velvet swayback couch added much. The salon’s walls, Elyse had noticed, were covered with white wallpaper, scenes of flowers painted on it. Two portraits hung on the salon walls. She had recognized the first, her mother and father in formal dress. She was unable to remember the second portrait.
“Who is that?” she asked.
“Your great-grandfather, the third Earl of Chatsworth.”
Elyse stared at the portrait for several seconds, studying the hard lines of her ancestor’s face, and saw that only one feature was the same as her father’s and her own: his eyes. They were jade green.
“You must choose a bedroom.”
She followed Ann up the curved stairs. At the top, when Ann started leading her toward one doorway, Elyse stopped her. Standing in the center of the long hallway, she looked around at the silk-covered walls. Five doorways faced her, one on each end of the hallway, and three along its length.
Elyse turned and walked to the small balcony overlooking the back of Devonairre. She stepped onto it, and in doing so, saw the magnificence of the courtyard below and the multitude of flowers lining the walks. The courtyard was centered, equidistant between the main house and the east and west wings. The two wings were only half the height of the main house, but each was as large. Set further back, in order to prevent any possibility of fire, was the kitchen.
When she turned back to Ann, they finished her tour. She had already seen her parents’ large bedroom and the attached nursery where she had spent all her young years at Devonairre. Dolls she’d played with, made by the plantation’s slaves, looked up at her with sad, longing eyes. The crib and cradle looked new, although the quilt in its center was discolored with age.
“Will you take over your parents’ room?” Ann asked.
Elyse shook her head. “Another room.”
Ann nodded, leading Elyse to the next largest bedroom in the house, which consisted of two separate rooms, a sitting room and a bedroom. A large hand-carved four-poster bed, surrounded by white netting, stood against one wall. Soft, blue curtains covered the two windows, and an open-arm settee rested beneath one window.
An armoire of the same wood as the bed was against the far wall, the same wall leading to the pleasantly appointed sitting room, complete with a writing table. From the windows of both rooms, Elyse saw the blue-green water and sparkling white sand beach of Bluefish Bay.
“This room is lovely,” she said to Ann.
Ann smiled in her knowing way. “This was not intended to be a guest room. Your parents designed it for you, for when you left the nursery. I shall have it ready by tonight.”
After leaving her new bedroom, Ann showed Elyse the remaining three guest bedrooms. When the tour ended, Ann turned to Elyse. “Will your trunks be arriving tomorrow?”
Elyse shook her head. “I arrived here with only what I carried. My belongings were lost.” Although it was not fully the truth, she had not lied. Her personal belongings were lost to her as if they’d gone overboard at sea.
Ann looked stricken for a moment, but another bright smile chased the lines of worry from her face. “Then tomorrow I shall have a seamstress begin a new wardrobe. In the meantime, I’ll rescue some of your mother’s things from the cellar storage.”
When the tour was finished, Elyse turned to Ann, a myriad of emotions
filling her eyes. “I... I don’t know how to thank you for all you’ve done, for caring for Devonairre all these years.”
“We knew you would be coming back,” she said simply. “I know this will sound funny to you, but for the last ten years, I’ve never felt the house to be empty, it was just…waiting for you.”
Ann called a servant and ordered a bath drawn. , which Elyse took eagerly. Dinner was at eight, and she, Ann, and Charles ate in the formal dining room.
During dinner, she learned a great deal of what had been going on in Jamaica during her long absence. So much had happened that she could not possibly have taken it all in, but what she found most interesting was the fact that her father had freed all the slaves on the plantation a half year before he died.
“How could we have made such profits after he’d done that?” she asked Charles, unable to hide the shock in her voice.
“Your father was a man who had a sense of the future. He knew what would eventually happen here, and acted on it before it happened. Most of his peers thought him foolish, if not outrightly insane, but he proved them wrong. He sensed the turmoil in the hearts of the slaves. He sensed what would happen not long after his death.”
Charles told her about the slave uprising of 1831; and of the death of the White Witch of Rose Hall, killed by the slave who had helped her murder two of her three husbands.
“There was not much news in England about the uprising,” Elyse mentioned. “But when I heard of it, I was worried that something terrible might have happened at Devonairre.”
“Your father insured that nothing would happen to Devonairre,” Charles stated simply. “He was a wise man, not only in business, but in his feelings toward others. Shortly before his death, Harlan Louden read the atmosphere of the island and the people. He saw how slavery was in a moribund state, and its death throes would cost many lives. On the day he made his decision, he called all the slaves together; mind you, that was two thousand men and women. Standing before them, he spoke out, offering them freedom. He told them they could leave the plantation and claim land for themselves, or they could stay and work for him. He would pay them a fair wage for a fair job.”
Elyse stared at Charles, almost able to hear her father’s voice issuing from his lips.
“More than half stayed. The rest left, but they all returned to work during harvesting season. And,” Charles said with a smile, “it seems that even with paying wages to the former slaves, we were making more profits, for they worked harder than before. When the slaves revolted, our people surrounded the plantation, stopping any slave who came for destruction. Devonairre survived and prospered because of your father’s foresight.”
Moved by Charles’s story, Elyse stayed silent for several minutes. “Thank you for sharing your memories with me,” she finally whispered to him.
“Your father was a great man, Elyse. What he did, he did for himself, for you, and for all the people for whom he was responsible.”
“I know,” she whispered.
It was true, Elyse thought as she stared out toward the mountains, still illuminated by the low glow of the moon. A sweeping, sharp breeze tugged at her and she shivered.
“Will I be as strong and fair as my father?” she asked the night air. She didn’t know the answer; she could only pray she would have the strength.
What she did know is, with Charles Denham’s help, she would make it. Charles had worked for her father for many years before she was born. He had been loyal to Harlan Louden during life and after his death.
It was an amazing story, Charles Denham and her father; it had been the basis for a scandal both here and in England. She remembered the way Aunt Elizabeth had ranted on at every chance she had, upon her father’s death, about allowing a convict to administer her brother’s estate in Jamaica. However, as hard as Elizabeth Sorrel had tried to break the will, it remained firmly in place.
“Thank the Lord,” Elyse whispered aloud. Charles had been more than her father’s employee; he had been a friend. Elyse felt with the certainty of her father’s trust that Charles Denham had run Devonairre just as Harlan would have, had he not died.
“I am safe here,” Elyse told herself, taking in a long, deep, sigh-like breath. She felt tiredness reaching out to her again, but this time it was a gentle feeling. As she was about to turn from the balcony, she caught a glimpse of a figure walking through the garden.
Her breath caught when she recognized the tall silhouette of Brace Denham. She watched, unseen by him, as his long, graceful steps carried him across the courtyard to the east wing, where he lived in one of the bachelor apartments. Just as he reached the entrance, she saw him pause. His shoulders straightened. He turned slowly.
Before she could step back, his face turned upwards and his eyes swept across her face. She stood, frozen in time, until she forced her legs to move her back from the balcony. Closing the glass doors, she returned to the security of her bedroom.
Chapter Seven
Elyse’s first week back in Jamaica sped by at an alarming rate. Upon waking on her first morning, she’d looked out the window at the new day, breathing deeply of the sweet air of her home. She’d made up her mind to put the past behind her, burying her shame, promising herself never to speak of those terrible years to anyone.
Each morning thereafter, she rose with the sun to gaze at the blue ocean. Birds flew everywhere, their cries heralding the day; the trees swayed in the same ocean breeze that carried to her scents of the tropical mornings.
After watching the day turn bright, Elyse dressed. Every day brought a new dress. Although they were far from what England considered high fashion, they were lovely in themselves. Cory, Devonairre’s seamstress, was a large black woman who, as she measured Elyse, told her of her childhood, speaking in the melodious dialect prevalent among the black people on the island.
“You was a sweet little girl child, I do tell! You never be still for more’n a minute, you had so much life in ya. An my o’ my, child, you come back all growed up so pretty-like,” she had said on the first morning.
That night, Elyse had her first dress. It was simple, cut smoothly across her bosom, and not overly tight at her waist. Its skirt was light, and she wore only one petticoat beneath it.
As the days passed, and her wardrobe grew, she found herself following a schedule, of sorts. She’d eat breakfast on the rear veranda, gazing at the gardens while enjoying succulent fruits. Usually Ann joined her for a few minutes, and they’d drink a cup of tea together.
After breakfast, Ann would go about her duties while Elyse went into Charles’s office in the west wing, near his apartment, to sit with him for several hours as he explained the accounts to her.
In the afternoon, she’d accompany Charles on tours of the estate. Because of the size of the plantation, they only saw one small section each afternoon.
In the evening, she and the Denhams would dine in the formal dining room, served by the household servants who appeared to be extremely happy.
“Are they always this cheerful?” Elyse asked one night.
Ann smiled. “Wouldn’t you be, if for ten years you had cared for a house that no one lived in, and finally there was life in it again? Now that you’re here, they find themselves doing something for a living person, not for the ghosts of the past.”
Each night she learned something new about her home, whether it was about the voodoo superstition that so many of the people believed in, or about one of the nearby plantation owners who had done something noteworthy or scandalous.
Elyse was very much aware that Brace Denham was never around. She had heard him, on several occasions, come in very late at night. He always left before she woke and she knew he was doing his best to avoid her.
“Why?” she asked Ann one night when they sat in the salon.
“What do you remember about Brace?” Ann asked.
Elyse closed her eyes and concentrated, willing the memories of early childhood to come back to her. “I seem to remembe
r that he was always with me, wherever I went.”
“Yes, he was. He watched over you, helped you, and was at your beck and call.”
“I remember his patience, too,” she said as a particular memory flashed. “I was trying to climb a tree to get a coconut. Brace told me not to, but I tried anyway. I fell down and cried, and he picked me up, smiled, and took me back to the tree. Then he showed me how to climb. I didn’t get very far, but he was there, under me, just in case I fell.”
Ann sighed. “Brace is a good person.”
“Then why is he avoiding me?”
Ann closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, Elyse saw sadness. “Because neither of you is a child anymore. He is trying to come to terms with who he is, and who you are.”
“I don’t understand,” Elyse admitted truthfully.
“When the time is right, you will.”
Three days after that conversation was the start of Elyse’s second week back at Devonairre. As she had done each day, except Sunday, she went into Charles’s office after breakfast for her next lesson. But Charles did not open any of the ledgers; instead, he gazed intently at Elyse.
“It’s time to go into Montego Bay. We must see your attorney. You are past your twenty-first birthday, and we must file your inheritance legally. You need to sign the papers that make you the owner of Devonairre.”
“But I have so much to learn…I’m not ready yet,” Elyse protested. “Do you want to leave the plantation now? Is that why?” she asked, fear suddenly rising within her.
Charles laughed. “Where would I go? Surely you know my story,” Charles said, his face growing taut as he spoke.
Elyse knew only that which her aunt and uncle had told her, and she had never believed them. “I was told that you were a convict…”
Charles nodded his head. “And it is time for you to learn my history, and the reason why I will never leave Devonairre willingly.”
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