Never Call It Love (32 page)

They
moved on down the platform past a long table on which lay a number of
formidable-looking cleavers. "That is the chopping table," Patrick
told her, "where the cane is cut into short lengths for boiling in the
vats."

Ahead
of them at the platform's edge stood a slender black youth holding a long pole
that ended in a stout metal hook. As they moved toward him, he deftly fished a
rope-tied bundle of stalks—in appearance rather like cornstalks—and deposited
it on the platform.

Elizabeth
asked, "Sugarcane?"

"Yes,"
Patrick said. "It is floated down to us from a plantation higher in the
hills."

Near
the end of the platform they came to the distillery's wide doorway. Because
he'd had former experience with rum manufacture, it was Colin who explained the
equipment to her. "In those big vats we'll reboil the sugar from the
cooking sheds. Do you see those coiled metal pipes? The distilled liquor will
run through those."

"And
the big hogsheads over there in the corner?"

"We'll
use those to store and age the rum."

A
few minutes later, leaving Colin to eat the midday meal packed for him by the
cook at the inn, Elizabeth and Patrick drove back to the house and to the
luncheon that, with the help of Jeanne Burgos, she had prepared that morning.

In
the small ingrown community of St.-Denis, the Stanfords' arrival had caused
quite a stir. Even before they moved from the inn to their house, the
invitations had begun to arrive. Monsieur and Madame Raoul Gaspard begged the
honor of Sir Patrick and Lady Stanford's presence at dinner. Madame Reynard
requested the pleasure of Lady Stanford's company at morning coffee. Patrick
and Elizabeth accepted some of the invitations. Unlike the Duval menage, none
of the households
presented a slatternly appearance, but again and again Elizabeth saw expensive,
plush-upholstered furniture that seemed so unsuitable in the humid heat of the
tropics. And an upland villa they visited, whose owner had started out in life
apprenticed to a Paris apothecary, was grand indeed, with a mirrored ballroom
and gilded furniture that might have graced a French château.

That
night, as they undressed in the airy bedroom of their little house, Patrick
said, "I hope those people don't expect to be entertained here on the same
scale. I will be damned if I will spend money on French champagne and pheasant
shipped from Port-au-Prince. I need every cent for the distillery."

"Don't
worry. The people here will be glad to come to your house, no matter what we
serve. After all, you're a baronet."

"I
am also," he said sardonically, "a fugitive, probably with a price on
my head by this time."

"To
these French people, that is all to your credit Yon are a fugitive from their
enemy."

As
often happened, she felt a twinge of sadness at the thought that now she would
be considered an enemy of the land of her birth. But she had made her choice
that night at Stanford Hall when she had said, "Take me with you."
And the sadness slipped away entirely when, in bed a few minutes later,
Patrick's stroking hands and nipple-teasing lips and tongue aroused hunger deep
within her. Eagerly she accepted the weight of his body and the pounding thrust
of him, so pleasurable that it was almost an exquisite torment as it brought
her closer and closer to the long, ecstatic, shuddering release.

But
afterward, as she lay quietly beside him in the darkness, she felt a return of
that melancholy. Her body and Patrick's each seemed designed to satisfy the
physical passion of the other, a passion that only moments ago had fused them
together so that they seemed quite literally
one flesh. Yet tonight, as always,
their minds, their spirits, had held aloof from one another. It had not even
occurred to her to tell him of the sadness the thought of En-land brought her.

Aware
that she was slipping into self-pity, she commanded herself to think of
something else. Colin, for instance. Now, there was someone who had reason to
pity himself, because he was alone in every sense of the word.

Colin
had also been a guest at the upland villa that evening. She had observed that
several unmarried young women present, and their mothers too, had bestowed
encouraging smiles upon him. As the three of them, with Jules Burgos driving
the carriage, rode home from the party, Elizabeth had commented upon how
attractive the girls were. Colin said, in a light tone, "Don't start
hoping to marry me off, Elizabeth. No woman would have me."

"That,"
Elizabeth had said firmly, "is so silly that it does not deserve an
answer."

Seated
beside her in the left-hand corner of the carriage, Patrick said, "She is
right, Colin. You can have little hope of passing yourself off as a
thirty-six-year-old virgin." In the darkness, Elizabeth could not see his
expression, but she could hear the amusement in his voice. "Many a wench
in the countryside around Stanford Hall could testify that you are not. And
besides, there is Catherine Ryan." Patrick paused. "Have you thought
of writing to her that you would like her to join you in St.-Denis?"

Several
seconds passed before Colin answered. "It is a rare woman who will follow
a man into exile, especially if she is not married to him." As if
determined to change the subject, he added swiftly, "Patrick, I saw you
talking to Etienne Duchamps tonight. Did you gain any idea of how much rum the
Duchamps distillery produces?"

As
she listened to the business talk of the two men, Elizabeth realized that Colin
really had not said whether
or not he had asked Catherine Ryan to join him.
Perhaps, self-effacing man that he was, he had felt he had no right to do so.
Or perhaps he had asked her, and the widow had been too afraid to travel to a
strange land, or too loath to leave her almost grown sons.

Well,
perhaps sooner or later some St.-Denis girl would snare his interest.

She
became aware that Patrick's breathing had taken on the slower rhythm of
slumber. Emptying her mind of thought, she too drifted toward sleep.

Less
than a week later, when a ship from Calais arrived with Georges Fontaine aboard
it, Patrick learned that indeed there was a price on his head. At dinner that
night in the little Stanford house, with the first spring rains drumming on the
roof, he told them that the English had offered a reward of fifty thousand
pounds for Patrick's capture.

"Good
God!" Patrick said. "That's a fortune." He added, with a short
laugh, "I suppose I should be flattered."

"The
English need desperately to lay their hands on you. They have found only a few
arms caches, and those only by accident. And they have the names of none of the
other leaders."

Patrick
said, pleased but astonished, "I should have thought that by now..."

"Apparently
whoever informed the English knew no other names, or else chose not to give
them. As I told you before you left Ireland, someone had written an anonymous
letter to the English government denouncing you. Agents of ours in London got
wind of the letter. While the English were still making arrangements to cross
the channel and arrest you, our agents dispatched a message to me by an Irish
fishing boat."

Patrick
sat silent, frowning. At last he said, "Then probably Henry Owen was not
the informer."

"I
agree," the Frenchman said.

"If
Owen had been the one who turned his coat," Patrick went on, "he
would have made a thorough job of it. He would have given the names of other
Irish rebels he had met with."

Fontaine
nodded. "And he would have given my name. I would not have been free these
past few months to travel all over Ireland taking orders for wine."

Then
who was it, Patrick wondered, who had written that anonymous letter? He thought
of Moira screaming at him the last time he saw her. "You'll be sorry for
tonight!" Could it be that during one of those many nights he had spent in
her ornate bed he had said something in his sleep, something that had led her
to suspect him? Or, careful as he had always tried to be, had he carried some
betraying paper to Wetherly in his clothing? He had a vision of Moira in that
luxurious bedroom, going through his pockets while he lay asleep.

He
shot a glance at Elizabeth. Much as he wanted to ask Fontaine about Moira
Ashley, it would be best to wait until later. And so instead he began to
question the Frenchman about events at Stanford Hall. "When the English
confiscated my house and lands, did they dismiss the servants?"

"Only
some of them. I hear the housekeeper and the head footman are still there, as
well as the cook and one or two of the maids. An empty house deteriorates, you
know."

Patrick's
nod was grim. "And of course the crown is interested in preserving its
newly acquired property. Now, what has been happening to my lands?"

"Your
brother's steward... What is his name? Sullivan?"

"Slattery."

"With
Mr. Slattery acting as overseer, spring planting has begun on both your land
and your brother's."

"Then
Colin's land..."

"Confiscated
along with yours, of course." The Frenchman shrugged. "If he had stayed,
he might have saved them."

Poor
Colin, Elizabeth thought. Although he had taken no part in planning the
thwarted rebellion, he had lost even more than Patrick had—not only his
property, but the companionship of the only woman who, apparently, had ever
suited him.

Less
than an hour later, Fontaine kissed Elizabeth's hand in farewell. Patrick drove
their guest in the carriage back to the inn. On the way, Patrick asked,
"Do you have any news of Lady Moira Ashley?"

"Ashley?
Oh, yes, your neighbor. I did hear something. She mortgaged most of her
properties to buy stock in some South American company, and lost her entire
investment Now she may lose her lands, too."

Well,
Patrick thought, he had warned her. But despite his suspicion that she might
have been the writer of that anonymous letter to the English, he found he could
take no satisfaction in her plight. He thought of how woebegone she had looked
that last night, with the tears of rage and pain running down her face. Always,
despite her beauty and wealth and arrogance, he had sensed something pitiable
in her, something maimed.

And
certainly he had reason to be grateful for the many hours he had spent with
her. Driving beside the silent Frenchman along the stretch of jungle-bordered
road, he recalled the touch of Moira's amorously skilled lips and hands, and
the suppleness of her body. His thoughts were untinged by any sense of guilt
concerning that other woman, now probably undressing in their bedroom. He still
felt guilty for his rape of her, and for the quarrel that had led to the loss
of their child, and for the circumstances that had made her an exile in a
strange land. But sexual infidelity was another matter. Just as he
had never felt
guilty for enjoying Moira in actuality, he felt no guilt in memories of
pleasures in her arms.

He
turned onto the town square and stopped before the inn.

Jeanne
Burgos, the mulatto housemaid, came in for only a few hours of housework each
morning. Since they were short of money, Elizabeth had insisted to Patrick that
it was best not to employ a servant full time. The truth was that she wanted to
keep busy. She had no intention of slipping into the languid idleness, and
consequent overplumpness, of some of the women who played hostess to her and
Patrick, and in turn came to dinners served by Jeanne and her husband, Jules.
Too, keeping busy helped her hold at bay any tendency to brood over the past.

Even
so, she found herself with leisure time. She spent it reading, or writing to
her mother, or driving about in the pony-drawn gig once owned by the Duvals.
Sometimes she stopped at the distillery, where Patrick and Colin, in their
eagerness to keep the rum vats supplied with cane juice, often stood with their
workmen at the long chopping tables, cutting the cane into sections for the
huge copper kettles. After that she sometimes took the road that wound up the
mountainside—through rapidly cooling air, through vegetation that changed from
vine-entangled jungle growth to tall pines—and stopped at a jumble of rough-hewn
stones, the remains of an ancient fort. From there her gaze could travel down
to terraced
cane fields carved out of the jungle, and to the pretty little town, and then
out over shimmering water, emerald and turquoise and aquamarine, to the
French-held island of St.-Marc and to the dark blue blur on the horizon that
she knew was Haiti.

She
and Patrick continued to be invited to dinner by the French planters, and to
entertain them in turn. But lately she had sensed a certain coolness toward
Patrick and herself at those elaborate dinners. One night they had dined at a
spacious upland villa. Now that the spring rains were over, the throb of voodoo
drums higher in the hills came through the jalousied windows to mingle with the
sounds of polite conversation and the faint tinkle of cutlery. As the carriage,
driven by Jules Burgos, took her and Patrick home through the warm darkness,
Elizabeth said, "Did you notice how... distant everyone seemed
tonight?"