Desire in the Sun (38 page)

H
ome! Lilah had never been so glad to see any place in her life as she was to see Heart’s Ease on that sundrenched afternoon. As the carriage turned in to the long drive that led to the main house, Lilah felt the welcome shade from the twin rows of tall, leafy palms that lined the drive like an embrace. She looked toward the red-tiled roof of the house, which could just be glimpsed through the trees. Her excitement was such that she could hardly sit still. On either side of her, Leonard and Kevin smiled in indulgent amusement at her sudden attack of the fidgets. Aware of their grins, Lilah nevertheless craned forward eagerly to get her first look in nearly six months at the sprawling white stuccoed plantation house where she’d been born. She hoped never again to leave for much longer than overnight.

“Lilah!”

“Miss Lilah!”

At the sound of the carriage wheels, her stepmother, Jane, was first out on the verandah, and down the stairs. Behind her came Maisie, her skin shining like polished ebony in the heat as it always did, her whipcord thin body belying her reputation as the best plantation cook in Barbados. The rest of the house slaves piled out behind Maisie, tumbling down the stairs to greet the beloved daughter of the house.

“Lilah, welcome home!”

Lilah half fell out of the carriage into her stepmother’s arms, hugging the gentle woman whom she had grown to love dearly over the years. Maisie stretched out her hand to pat Lilah’s shoulder, then saw that her fingers were white with flour and drew back with a chuckle.

“Miss Lilah, we done thought you was dead!”

“Oh, Maisie, it’s good to see you! It’s good to see all of you!”

Once Jane released her, Lilah hugged Maisie, laughing as she disregarded the old woman’s protests about floury hands. Looking over Maisie’s shoulder at the smiling, weeping slaves, Lilah met a pair of eyes she had feared never to see again.

“Betsy! Oh, Betsy! I was afraid you had drowned!” Lilah fell into Betsy’s arms and the two girls hugged each other soundly.

“You came a lot closer to drownin’ than I did, Miss Lilah! Our lifeboat was spotted by another ship in less than a day! The lifeboat you and Mr. Kevin was in was the only one that was lost—and when Mr. Kevin got home and said that your lifeboat had wrecked and you’d been swept away by the sea—well, I tell you, I never want to live through time like the one just passed! And to think of the adventures you’ve been havin’, while we’ve been breakin’ our hearts over you!”

“Terrifying adventures, Betsy,” Lilah said, drawing away from her maid to smile at the rest of her slave family. “I am so glad to see you all I declare I could cry! But I won’t—at least not until after I see Katy. How is she, Jane?”

“She’s been grieving herself to a skeleton over you, of course. Her baby, lost at sea! You’d better go straight up.”

“Yes, I will.”

“I’ll carry up water for your bath, Miss Lilah, and
lay out some clean clothes. I know you’ll be wantin’ to get into your own things as soon as may be.”

Lilah looked down at the cheap but pretty dress that her father had bought ready-made from a seamstress in Bridgetown when he discovered to his horror that she had only men’s clothes. Compared to what she had been used to wearing ever since the
Swift Wind
went down, this gown was magnificent. But as Lilah remembered her own wardrobe, from underwear to day dresses to the most elaborate ball gowns fashioned of the finest materials with the finest workmanship, she was suddenly eager to change. To be herself again.

“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

L
ilah 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 had 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 is 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 fiancé 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!”