"You do that, Betsy. And thank you all for the welcome home. I've missed every one of you more than I can say."
She swept up the steps and into the house with Jane and the slaves trailing behind her. Her father and Kevin would see to the horse and buggy, then most likely go about their business. The work on a sugar plantation the size of Heart's Ease was never ending, and required both men's full-time attention.
"Lilah, honey, is that you?"
Katy Allen occupied a small room at the top of the three-story house. Blind and bedridden, she scarcely ever went downstairs. She had come over from England with Lilah's mother, some sort of poor relation who was years older than the girl she was hired to chaperone, then stayed on until her charge's wedding and beyond. After Lilah's birth and her mother's death, Katy had taken on the role of the baby's nursemaid and, later her governess. She occupied a place in Lilah's heart second only to her father, and she wept as Lilah came to where she sat in the big rocking chair in the corner of the room and embraced her.
"It's me, Katy." Lilah felt her throat tighten as she hugged the frail old body, breathing in the sweet powdery scent that clung to the woman and had comforted her from earliest childhood.
"It is I, dear." Even at moments of extreme emotion, Katy could be counted on to remember her mandate as governess. This prosaic reminder made Lilah smile as she pulled back to look lovingly at the pale, lined face under its cap of snowy hair.
"It is I, then."
"I knew you hadn't drowned. No child who got into as much mischief as you did and survived would be taken like that."
"You shouldn't have worried." Lilah, undeceived by Katy's brave words, hugged her again. This time a tear, followed by a laugh and a sniff, coursed down the paper- white cheek.
"Don't you go away again, you hear?"
The old woman reached out and drew Lilah's head to her lap, where it had rested many times awash with childish tears, and stroked her hair.
"No, I won't, Katy. I won't," Lilah whispered. As the well-loved hand moved comfortingly over her shorn locks she vowed that she was home to stay.
XLVI
Lilah heard through the grapevine that Joss arrived safely the next day. Though she was in a fever of impatience to see him, it was three days later before she judged it safe enough to steal away from the house after supper to pay him a surreptitious visit.
The long, lazy daylight hours, when her father and Kevin were both in the fields and Jane was occupied with the myriad tasks involved in running the house, would have been the best time for her to see Joss with no one the wiser. Unfortunately, he liad been put to work digging cane holes with a gang of field hands the day after his arrival. His day began at half past five, when the plantation bell pealed its summons to the field hands to assemble in the main estate yard for instructions. He was issued a cup of hot ginger tea, and then driven out to the area in which he was assigned to work. His day lasted fourteen hours.
The slave compound offered no privacy, teeming as it was with activity as families prepared their evening meal or tended the small garden plots behind their huts. Lilah 's visit to Joss's hut was sure to be seen and commented on unless it was very late, past the time when the slaves had gone to bed.
Finally, after three days, Lilah realized that the perfect opportunity would never arise. So she suffered Betsy to prepare her for the night, dismissed her, then struggled back into as many of her clothes as were necessary to make her minimally decent. Then she stole from the house.
The hour was just past ten. Her father and Kevin were playing chess in the library, thinking her safely in bed. Jane had retired for the night. As Lilah, shoes in hand, crept across the verandah she heard a voice call to Maisie and froze, her heart in her mouth. But the voice came from the separate kitchen at the back of the house, and Maisie's answer came from there, too. After a heart- pounding moment, Lilah judged it safe to go on.
As she made her way across the grounds toward the thatched-roof slave huts, Lilah was aware of every sound: the murmur of voices and rich laughter coming from the kitchen, where the slaves were still cleaning up after the evening meal and Maisie was setting the morning bread to rise; the soft lowing of the milk cows from the barn across the field; the occasional whinny of a horse from the stable. The night was warm, but a gentle breeze kept it from being unpleasant. The air carried with it a familiar mixture of smells-sweet sugarcane and molasses, manure, odors from the open cookfires that the slaves used to make their suppers, vegetation rotting in the heat, the heady scents of tropical flowers. The breeze whispered through the palm fronds, catching the flat paddles of the windmill where the cane was processed. The creaking sound as the paddles turned in the wind was so familiar that usually Lilah never even heard it. But tonight, with fear of discovery sharpening her senses, she did. Even the chirping of the crickets seemed extra loud, making her jump when one whirred close at hand.
The tiny huts were laid out in neat rows like streets. Lilah knew from Betsy that Joss had been given the hut of a slave named Nemiah who had recently died tragically, crushed to death by the huge stone that ground the cane at the mill. Lilah was too much of a Bajan not to feel uneasy about the hut-Obeahs made a powerful case for violently departed souls haunting their earthly habitats-but she knew Joss would ridicule any such notion.
His hut was at the end of the last row. There were no fences erected around the slave compound, no guards posted. It would have been very easy for him to run-if there had been any place to run to. Barbados was a small island, just fourteen miles wide and twenty-one miles long. There was no way off except by ship, and escaped slaves were hunted down relentlessly. If he ran, Joss would never make it off the island. Harbormasters would be alerted, and watch would be kept. Escape from Barbados was next to impossible. Lilah was sure that one of the slave overseers had acquainted Joss with the hopelessness of attempting such a thing. If not, he would probably already have tried it. Unless, of course, he was waiting to first talk to her.
The shutters had been closed over the windows, but light showed through the chinks in the mud-and-wattle walls. Joss was not asleep.
Lilah pushed at the door. It was closed, not latched, and swung inward easily. Moving quickly so as to lessen the chance that she would be seen and recognized, silhouetted against the warm light pouring from within the hut, she stepped inside, closing the door behind her, this time latching it. Then, her toes curling against the coolness of the dirt floor, Lilah turned to seek Joss.
He was lying on his back on a crudely constructed cot, clad only in his plantation-issued loose white trousers, one hand behind his head. An oil lantern smoked on an overturned barrel behind him, illuminating the hut's single room The remains of a charred-looking meal sat on the rickety table against the wall behind the door. The cot, barrel, and a single hard wooden chair, were the only furniture. He had been reading a tattered copy of a book scrounged from somewhere. The slaves were forbidden to learn to read, but she supposed that Joss, having already known how when he learned of his enslavement, was a different case. As she stepped inside and closed the door he lowered the book. When she turned to face him he just looked at her, green eyes glinting in the uncertain light.
For a long moment they stared at one another without speaking. She drank in the length and breadth of him, the broad shoulders and hair-roughened chest, the handsome face. In that single comprehensive look she noted that his mustache had been shaved, and his hair was neatly shorn. He was clean, surprisingly so considering he had spent the day at hard labor, his hair still damp as though he had recently bathed.
"Hello, Joss." Lilah leaned back against the door, her hands pressed flat against the rough panel, and smiled at him rather tentatively. What his reaction would be to her visit she could not guess.
By way of reply, his eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened. With an easy movement he swung his legs around, his movements careful, precise; he marked his place in the book with a feather and set it on the barrel beside the lantern. Only
then did he look up at her. Those hard eyes told her all she needed to know: He was blazingly angry.
"Well, if it isn't little Miss Lilah, the belle of Barbados," he said at last, smiling in a tigerish way. "Tired of your lily-white fiance so soon? Come to satisfy your craving for dark meat?"
His tone was savage, and he stood up as he snarled the last two words. Lilah's eyes widened as he advanced on her. She held up a hand, palm out, to ward him off. Her shoes dropped from her nerveless fingers to land with a soft thud on the dirt floor beside her bare foot.
"Joss, wait! I can explain…"
"You can explain?" His voice was a mere rumble of sound, low and threatening, as he closed in on her. "You tell me you love me, bed me, then betray me the first chance you get and YOU CAN EXPLAIN!"
These last words were a muted roar, and as they exploded at her he reached out and jerked her toward him, his fingers bruising as they dug into her upper arm.
"Joss, sshh… Don't yell!… Stop it! What do you think you're doing?"
"Giving you a little of your own back, Miss Lilah!"
He jerked her across the tiny room, sat down hard on the cot, and yanked her over his lap with a speed and ferocity that left her helpless to do anything to save herself.
"No! Joss San Pietro, you let me up! Let me up this instant!"
As she squirmed to escape, he pinned her on his lap with one hard arm, and jerked up her skirt with his other hand.
"Stop it! Stop it this instant, or I… Oh! Ouch! Stop!"
His hand whacked her backside with a resounding slap. Lilah cried out. Quickly she muffled the sound with her hand pressed tight against her mouth as she realized a scream might well bring someone to investigate. At all costs she could not be found in Joss's hut, much less in such a compromising position! She kicked and squirmed and fought, but silently and to no avail. He smacked her bottom again, hard, and then again, the blows stinging madly. She tried her best to wriggle free, kicking and beating at his thighs with her fists, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from shrieking her rage at him. Her bottom burned with each blow, but he held her in an iron grip she could not break. Finally, as he showed no signs of either relenting or listening to her gasped pleas for a hearing, her temper blew. When his hand slammed down for what must have been the doz- enth time, she bit him as hard as she could through the rough cotton trouser into the hard muscle of his thigh.
"Hell-born bitch!" With this oath he shoved her off his lap. Lilah landed on her hands and knees on the hard-packed floor,
"You low-down, dirty, rotten, smelly son of a bitch!" she hissed, leaping to her feet. So furious she could cheerfully have whacked him over the head with an axe, Lilah drew back her arm and slapped him across the face with such force that her palm stung.
He clapped a hand to his abused cheek, and jumped to his feet. Lilah had to scurry backwards to avoid being knocked over. As he towered over her, emanating rage like a stove gives off heat, her eyes blazed up into his and she gave not an inch. His eyes were as hot as hers, and his mouth twisted furiously. For a moment they glared at each other, murder at the forefront of both minds. Then, when he reached for her, meaning no doubt to shake her or commit some other act of mayhem against her person, Lilah suddenly remembered that this was the man she loved, the man who believed she had betrayed him. With a disgusted sound she stepped toward him, inside the arms that were seeking to hurt her. She lifted her hands to catch him by both ears.
"You dolt!" she said, her voice softening fractionally. Then, without loosening her grip on his ears, stretching up on tiptoe, she slanted her mouth across his.
XLVII
"Dolt, am I?" he muttered against her mouth, but his hands were not bruising her. Instead they settled almost reluctantly against her waist, not exactly holding her but not pushing her away, either.
"Yes, dolt," she repeated, her mouth lifting scant millimeters from his but her hands retaining their grip on his ears. "Stupid, blind man! If I hadn't claimed you as my slave to Captain Rutledge he'd have hanged you as a pirate!"
She kissed him again, lingeringly, using the lessons he had taught her against him. His mouth was warm and firm, tasting faintly of ginger. Resisting, he sought to pull his mouth away. Lilah tugged sharply on his ears. He yelped, and his hands came up to free the prisoners.
"Did I not keep you safe and whole, have your wounds treated? How else could I have managed that, pray, without claiming you as… as property?"
Hands held fast in his now, she kissed him again, running her tongue over the obdurate line where his lips remained firmly closed, nibbling his lower lip with her teeth.
"I'm the one who should be angry, not you! I've dared as much as my life is worth to come here tonight, and how do you greet me? What do you do? You beat me, that's what! For shame!"
"I did not beat you…"
He was weakening under her ministrations, not surrendering but weakening. Lilah pressed her lips to the bristly underside of his chin, freed her hands to slide them around his waist, her palms relishing the contact with the satin-over-steel muscles at his waist.
"Then what would you call it?"
"Lovepats?"
"Hah! Lovepats! When I won't sit for a week!"
She ran her hands over the bare skin of his back, stroking the flat muscles on either side of his spine, rubbing her fingertips over his shoulder blades, pressing herself against him all the while.
"Whatever they were, they were well-deserved, and well you know it, witch! A small price when you consider your words cost me my freedom!"
"Saved your life!"
"I thought we agreed that when we were rescued, you would say naught of my circumstances? I'd not be digging bloody holes for sugarcane every waking hour if you'd kept your tattling little tongue between your teeth!"
Despite his scolding words, much of the heat had left his voice. His arms had wrapped around her waist, his hands gently stroking the area they had so recently bruised.
Lilah pulled back to look up at him. "I truly had no choice. It. was either tell them who I was and that you were my slave or watch them hang you. I would not have said what I did under circumstances that were any less dire, truly I wouldn't. It was no betrayal, Joss."
He looked down at her for a moment, his eyes moving over her face. One hand left its gentle massage of her posterior to ruffle her shorn hair, now shining clean and curled but definitely not the long seductive silk he had loved before. Still, as he had observed on the deck of the Bettina, it suited her.
"You know, I like you like this: a curly blonde boy with the face of an angel and the body of a woman. Tantalizing. I suppose Keith thinks so?"
The bite was back. Lilah's eyes widened. Kevin was a subject she definitely did not want to discuss with Joss at the moment.
"I don't want to talk anymore. Aren't you ever going to kiss me, Joss?"
Her voice was plaintive, her eyes soft as they met his. He looked down at her for a moment, his eyes shining hotly as she pressed her legs against his.
"Please, Joss?" It was a seductive murmur, and he was a willing victim. One hand came up to cup the back of her head, tugging it backward, tilting her face up for his mouth. As his head came down he muttered something, but her blood was drumming so loudly in her veins that she didn't hear it.
His mouth touched hers, and her eyes fluttered shut. His lips were warm and soft as they found hers, his kiss gentle.
"I've missed you," she said against his mouth, her eyes opening. His eyes were dark with passion as they met hers.
"Now I don't want to talk," he growled, and took her mouth again.
This time the kiss was hard and deep. When he lifted his head a second time he led her to the cot. She sat on his lap, her arms twined around his neck, her head arched back against his shoulder as he pressed stinging kisses into the soft skin of her throat.
"What the hell are you wearing underneath this? Nothing?" His hand was moving over her breast, making the nipple spring visibly to life beneath the
thin muslin.
"Just-a petticoat." Her voice was unsteady, and she shivered under the ministrations of that caressing hand.
"Is going around half naked another of your barbaric island customs?"
This growl surprised a tremulous little chuckle out of Lilah. "We wear as many clothes on Barbados as you do in England. But I had to dress myself. I didn't want Betsy to know…" Her voice trailed off guiltily.
"About me," Joss concluded, his voice grim, his hand stilling in its fascinating journey over her body.
"Oh, Joss…" she began miserably, sitting up in his lap.
"Hush," he said, pulling her back to kiss her again, fiercely, as if to stop her mouth and his thoughts. Then he was pushing her back on the cot, stretching out beside her, turning her toward him so that he could get to the buttons at the back of the gown, his mouth never leaving hers. She was scarcely aware when he peeled first the dress and then the single petticoat from her body. When she was naked, he shed his own trousers, nudged her over on her back. She arched and her legs parted instinctively as she waited with trembling anticipation for him to come into her.
But he did not.
Instead, he pulled her legs even farther apart and knelt between them. His hands slid, warm and strong, up over her slim calves, over the quivering softness of her thighs. He stroked her belly, her breasts, came back to her thighs again. Lilah caught her breath at the exquisite tightening that began inside her, in the place he so scrupulously forbore to touch. When his hands passed over her again, still without touching the place that needed touching most, she moved sinuously, inviting his hand to come where it would not. He concentrated instead on rubbing his thumbs over her nipples, kneading her breasts and belly before sliding his hands maddeningly down the insides of her thighs. When he began his teasing assault, for the third time, she made a small protesting sound and her eyes opened.
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