He held out his hand to her, palm up. She looked at his strong hand, the long, blunt-tipped fingers. She felt a shiver run through her. She thought him exquisite. She had never believed she would find a man she would think exquisite. She sighed and climbed onto the bed beside him.
"I don't like the canopy," she said, feeling his hand gently slide from her waist down her hip to her thigh.
"Let us remove it, then."
He leaned over her and studied her face in the moonlight. Lightly, he touched his finger to her lips, slowly tracing their outline.
"Did you like the crab backs?"
"Oh, yes, immensely."
He brought his leg over hers and she felt the crinkly hair slide along her thighs. His hand lightly cupped her breast, lifting it, weighing it in his palm.
"Did you like the shrimp casserole?"
"Most tasty."
A fingertip brushed against her nipple. He was looking down at her intently, his eyes following his finger.
"Do you like me?"
His eyes gleamed. "You are the tastiest of all," he said, and kissed her. "Open your mouth, Diana."
She obeyed him and felt his tongue lightly touch hers. A shaft of pure pleasure skittered down her body, and her hips jerked upward.
"Ah, yes," he said, and deepened his kiss. His hand moved downward, coming to rest on her thigh.
"Open your legs."
She opened her eyes and looked up at him. His gaze was intense and the movement of his fingers was driving her mad. "Will you touch me?" Was that her voice, she wondered vaguely, so high and thin as turtle soup without the turtle?
"You mean like this?"
His fingers gently parted her, and the slight pressure on her woman's flesh made her gasp. She couldn't look away from him and knew that everything she was feeling was written clearly on her face for him to see. She felt embarrassed and urgent.
"And like this?" He slipped a long finger inside her.
"Lyon!"
His eyes were closed a moment, a look of intensity on his face. What was he feeling? His finger was moving in and out of her, and she felt herself stretching, yielding.
She was panting, wanting, aching.
"Bend your legs, Diana. I want to come into you now."
He eased over her, pressing himself against her, now touching his damp fingers to her face, fingers damp with her.
"You are very nice," he said, nibbling on her earlobe. He reared up and she felt him guiding himself into her. Slowly, he eased inside her, and without thinking, she raised her hips to bring him deeper.
He came his full length into her; she looked up at his face and saw strain there, and something like pain. He lowered his body and she felt him pressing against her, and the sensation built like a raging fire.
"I never thought my body would be ---" she began, and moaned as his fingers came between their bodies and found her. "Lyon," she gasped.
"Yes," he said, gaining a bit of control. "Yes, Diana, let me see your pleasure."
She whirled out of control, her body heaving, her back arching back, mewling cries bursting from her throat.
"You are so beautiful." His control snapped and he surged into her, feeling the aftershocks of her climax, the tightening of her muscles about him, driving him wild. He gave it up and gave himself to her.
Lyon stood quietly on the balcony smoking a long thin cheroot. It was just a few minutes before dawn, he thought, gazing toward the lazy white-capped waves that seemed to melt onto the white sand. He'd been told by Captain Carstairs that some men felt the pull of the tropics deep in their souls. Lyon didn't know if his soul was involved, but he did feel something akin to a pull within him. Standing alone in this magnificent setting, it was easy to forget that in but a few hours, black men and women would be toiling beneath a hot sun, black men and women owned by a white man.
He cursed softly. What a damnable situation. He turned slightly to look back into the bedchamber. He could see Diana lying on her side, her beautiful hair tangled wildly on the pillow, only a sheet covering her. She was his wife, his responsibility. And this was her home. He cursed again and inhaled deeply.
Suddenly, his attention was caught by a shadowy movement near a mahogany tree below. He took a step closer to the balcony railing and strained to see more clearly. He saw a woman emerge, her movements furtive and quick. She was covered by a long cloak.
This was interesting, he thought, and stood very still.
Her pace broke at the distinctive call of a turtledove. She paused, raised her head, and her cloak fell back a bit. He could make out long hair, loose, and thought it was Patricia Driscoll.
Then he saw a man behind her. But he was in the shadows and Lyon couldn't make out who he was. The only thing he was certain of was that it wasn't Daniel. What the devil was she doing out here? He watched her hug the man, then hurry away, toward the back of the house. A back entrance, he imagined. Where was Daniel?
The sky lightened, it seemed, from one moment to the next. He saw clearly the thatched huts in the valley to his right where the slaves lived. Their own small village, Diana had told him, complete with their own gardens. At the opposite side of the great house was the overseer's house, where he had lived until six months ago with a black girl who had borne him three children. It occurred to him that Patricia could have been coming from the direction of the overseer's house and that the man had been the overseer, Grainger. Perhaps he would recognize him when he met Grainger today.
He saw red. A betrayed man's cynicism rose in force. A betrayed man's rage. Women, he thought, lying, dishonest cheats, all of them. Here Patricia Driscoll had been married to Daniel for only three months and already she was playing him for the fool, the cuckold. Just as Charlotte had done to him, without even three months on her plate, hell, without even a marriage ceremony on her damned plate! God, was there no end to a woman's treachery?
He heard a soft moan at that moment coming from the bed, and he frowned. His dear wife for how many days now?
He ground out the cheroot on the stone at his feet and walked purposefully toward the bed. Women needed to be kept on a tight rein to keep them honest. Women needed to be mastered. He pulled the sheet off Diana. She didn't wake, but turned onto her back, flinging her arms wide. He grasped her ankles and pulled her legs apart. He came over her and with one powerful thrust entered her body.
She cried out, suddenly coming awake.
"Lyon!"
"Hold still." She was tight, unyielding, not ready for him. He could feel himself stretching her unnaturally. He felt her hands pushing at his shoulders, heard her harsh breathing. He was hurting her, but he didn't stop. He felt her body quivering, not from desire, felt her shrinking from him.
He cursed, thrust deep, holding her hips still in his hands.
He moaned his release and fell over her.
Diana bit her lower lip, but she couldn't stop the tears from sliding down her cheeks.
Lyon came to his senses. He felt dazed. He pulled out of her, easily now, since she was wet with his seed. He rose from the bed and looked down at her. The bedchamber was bathed in early-morning light.
He saw her tears, but she made no sound. She lay as he had left her, her legs sprawled wide. She was staring up at him, her eyes clouded, filled with confusion, with hurt.
"Why did you do that?"
His mind refused to work.
"Why did you hurt me like that?"
"You are a woman, and like all women, you ---" He broke off, his mind torn by what he had done, what he had thought, the ease by which the rage buried inside him had burst out.
"Do something with yourself," he said, his eyes going down her body. He felt himself flinch at the sight of the bloodstains on her thighs. Blood and his seed.
He had raped her. Raped his own wife, torn hear. He felt sick, the betrayed man's rage dead as cold ashes. He'd done it because he'd thought Patricia Driscoll was betraying her husband.
He quickly turned away from her and pulled o
n his trousers.
"I am going to swim in the sea," he said over his shoulder, and nearly ran from the bedchamber.
Diana didn't move until she heard Dido's quick steps nearing her bedchamber.
Patricia looked at Lyonel Ashton, Earl of Saint Leven. How had the self-righteous prig of a sister-in-law managed to trap him? And here she was, stuck with Daniel Driscoll, a young man she'd believed would rescue her from the awful genteel poverty of her aunt's house in Charlotte Amalie, a stupid man who wanted to be a physician, a man who wasn't particularly interested in her.
If she'd had the chance to go to London, it would have been to capture the earl. Wealth and position. It was what she deserved. Not an oaf like Daniel Driscoll.
She listened with half an ear to her father-in-law talking to the earl. "You should be here when the cane is cut and processed. It is bedlam. You know, Lyon, that we make sugar, molasses, and rum, of course. The most of the rum goes north, to the United States. If you like, Diana will show you about the plantation and explain things to you. She knows as much as I do about growing sugar. Diana?"
Diana raised her head and very slowly and deliberately placed her bread on her plate beside a slice of uneaten pineapple. "Yes, Father?"
Lucien gave his daughter a quizzing look. "Would you like to give your husband a tour of the island? He can ride Egremont."
Lyon started at the name. "Egremont, sir?"
"Why, yes, my boy. I know it is the name of one of your famous racing dukes in England. A small joke, I suppose."
Lyon forced a smile. "I should like you to, Diana," he said.
Lucien, of course, took his daughter's acquiescence for granted. "Excellent. I will be meeting with Theo Grainger. Our overseer," he added to Lyon. "A good man, knows the estate and can be trusted."
Like hell he can be trusted, Lyon thought. He wanted to meet the overseer. He looked at Patricia, perhaps seeking a clue, but read nothing in her expression. As for Deborah Savarol, she was markedly quiet this morning.
"Very well," Diana said. "Where is Daniel?"
"There was a sick slave," Patricia said, her voice the epitome of scorn.
Millie, a very substantial black woman, appeared at that moment. "Mr. Grainger here to see you, masse."
"Thank you, Millie. If you will excuse me?"
"I am ready, Diana," Lyon said, and rose.
"I have been riding your mare, Diana," Patricia said as Diana also rose. "She is something of a brute, isn't she?"
Diana paled, then flushed. "No, she is not."
Lyon watched her rush upstairs to change into her riding clothes. He walked slowly toward the library. He wanted to meet the overseer.
"This is my home," Diana was saying to herself as she swiftly changed her clothes. "My home, my mare. If Patricia has hurt Tanis, I will tear her hair out. As for you, my dearest husband, I will make you very sorry for what you did."
21
As always, I am bearable at one moment, unbearable the next.
—GOETHE
"My God! Look at her flank!"
Lyon looked. Tanis, Diana's mare, had had a riding crop slammed into her, hard and repeatedly.
He loved horses, and this unnecessary cruelty appalled and angered him. "That bitch," he said, gently stroking his gloved hand over the mare's flank.
"Yes," said Diana. "I shall speak to her about this, you may be certain!" Diana recalled at that moment that she wasn't at all on good terms with her husband. She said, her voice distant as she flipped her hand toward another stall, "Egremont is over there, Lyon. Salvation is in the next stall. I do believe that Egremont will probably suit you better --- he's the more vicious and unpredictable."
Lyon merely arched a brow at her, but her words hit the mark. He strolled over to regard the huge black stallion with an appreciative eye. "You are quite right, Diana," he said, his voice quiet, "this fellow is a brute."
He watched Diana speak to the stable boys, then she turned back to him. "Do you wish Father's saddle or the Spanish?"
He looked himself and selected the Spanish saddle. It was made of the finest leather and intricately tooled. He stepped back and let the boy, Jessie, saddle the stallion. Diana was acting more normally now, he thought, until she remembered that she shouldn't. He wanted very much to apologize to her, to make her understand thatThat what, you fool? He had been vicious and unpredictable and an utter bastard.
"Diana," he said abruptly, once they were astride their mounts, "what do you think of the overseer, Grainger?"
Diana was in the midst of planning retribution for Patricia, her anger at her husband momentarily forgotten. "What?"
"Grainger. What do you think of him?"
She shrugged. "As Father said, Grainger knows his business, he doesn't brutalize the slaves, and he is trustworthy. He's been on Savarol thirteen years now. I'll never forget when he came, it was on the first day of January at the turn of the century."
Lyon pictured Grainger in his mind. He had met the man briefly an hour before and drawn his own conclusions. Though not tall, he was built like a boxer, massively muscled, swarthy of complexion, and pleasant in his manner, at least to Lucien Savarol and to him, the Earl of Saint Leven. But Lyon was seeing him as Patricia Driscoll's lover. The man had a fleshy mouth, and Lyon thought again, frowning slightly, he wasn't a young man. Forty, if he was a day. But then again, one never knew with women. His lips thinned at the thought, then he realized that he was again falling into the trap and pulled himself up. Diana wasn't Charlotte nor was she Patricia Driscoll, and he had hurt her.
He paused a moment, gently turning Egremont to follow Diana's mare down a winding path away from the great house. The great stallion quivered with power beneath him.
"What do you think of Patricia?"
She looked at him briefly over her shoulder. "She is a vicious idiot." And her expression said clearly that he and Patricia were one of a kind.
"If she hadn't harmed your horse, what would you think of her?"
"Not much more than I think of you at this moment."
"Diana, about this morning ---" He stalled.
Diana said, "Since you despise us so much for owning slaves, I will spare you a visit to their village. I will show you the boiling house."
"Very well," he said mildly. He listened to her speak of how the gangs of men and women worked the long rows of sugarcane, cutting the stalks with sharp machetes called "bills." The stalks were piled onto four-pronged carriers on the backs of mules or into donkey carts. Little boys drove the animals and carts to the mill. She showed him the animal treadmill that stood on a slight elevation so that the cane juice could run from the rollers down a trough to a big copper receiver. This would be, she said, released directly down into the clarifier inside the boiling house.
Lyon thought a clarifier sounded like it purified the cane juice, but her clipped voice didn't invite questions, at least to his mind, so he held his tongue. At least she was talking to him.
"How does one make rum?" he asked finally, pulling his stallion close to her mare. Her scent wafted to his nostrils and he closed his eyes a moment.
"It's made from molasses. We have three cisterns filled with molasses that's a byproduct of the sugar, you know --- enough for estate use and to export north." She pointed out the rum stillhouse, built near the molasses cisterns, telling him about the big wooden vats called butts that held up to one thousand gallons of fermenting mash each.
He listened closely, or tried to, but her voice was a monotone, detached, with no interest in it. She was furious with him and he couldn't blame her. He sighed, wondering at himself for his utter loss of control. He'd acted like a bedlamite. It was an appalling thought to realize that the debacle with Charlotte had affected him so deeply. In the light of day, he knew, oh, yes, he knew that Diana was nothing like his erstwhile fianc, but still, he'd been like a bull enraged by the red cloak when he'd seen Patricia coming from her lover. He sighed, wondering how the devil he was to mend his fences with his young wi
fe. He was aware of the blistering sun overhead, the overwhelming smell of the fermenting mash as they neared the stillhouse, and the constant movement of dozens of black men and women.
"You should be around here during the spring. Your nose would rot off with the smell."
Some humor, he thought. "You appear to know everyone," he said, watching her wave to yet another black, calling out his name.
"Of course. I grew up with them. Do you know the name of everyone who works in your employ? You grew up with them, did you not?"
"What is that?" Lyon asked, ignoring her sarcasm.
"Those are pewter worms."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Hollow pipes made of pewter. They coil around, downward in a spiral shaped like a huge spring. See? They're suspended in a cistern of cold water. When the hot vapors run down the worms they condense --- and out comes rum. It's a pity you will not be here to see the process."
"I shall be somewhere, I suppose."
"Yes, but not here."
She was not going to make it easy for him, of course. He said finally, "If I am not here, neither will you be."
"I wouldn't be too certain of that," Diana flung back at him, and nudged Tanis' sleek sides. He followed her through a narrow path in a cane field. The field ended only a hundred yards or so from the sea. Diana rode down the beach, then drew to a halt. "There is our dock. When we're ready to ship, we load hogsheads into moses boats --- they're small dinghies that are rowed out to sailing schooners."
"I see."
"You probably don't, but it doesn't matter."
"You are a patient instructor, Diana."
She gave him a look at that. "I suppose I could tie you down and beat the information into you. Perhaps you would understand that approach."
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