Secret Harbor (4 page)

“I cannot marry him!” she said beneath her breath.

She thought if her father came home alone she could explain why it was impossible for her to tolerate such a man, and try to make him understand.

It would be easier, she thought, if she could talk to him without that horrible, red-faced Roderick Maigrin listening and plying her father with drinks.

She sent up a little prayer to her mother for help and felt that she would somehow save her, although how she could do so Grania had no idea.

As they drew nearer to the house, it was easy to see that the windows were covered by wooden shutters, and the shrubs had encroached nearer than they would have been allowed to do in the past.

It flashed through Grania’s mind that it was like the Palace of the Sleeping Beauty.

Bougainvillaea covered the steps of the verandah and had wound its way up onto the roof of it, while the pale yellow blossoms of the caccia and a vine which was called “Cup of Gold” had crept prolifically over everything within sight.

It was beautiful but had something unreal about it, and for a moment Grania felt as if it was only a dream that might vanish and she would wake to find it was no longer there.

Then she forced herself to say in what she hoped was a matter-of-fact tone:

“Put the horses in the stable, Abe, and give me the key of the house, if you have it.”

“Have key back door, Lady.”

“Then I will go in at the back,” Grania smiled, “and start opening the shutters. I expect everything will smell musty after being shut up for so long.”

She thought too without saying so that there would be lizards running up the walls, and if there had been a crack anywhere in the roof birds would have nested in the corners of the rooms.

She only hoped they had not damaged the things her mother had prized—the furniture she had brought from England when she was first married.

There were other treasures which she had accumulated over the years, buying them sometimes from planters who were going home, or receiving them as presents from their friends in St. George’s and other parts of the island.

The stables at the back of the house were almost covered with purple bougainvillaea so that Abe had to pull it aside to find the entrance to the stalls.

Grania dismounted, leaving Abe to unsaddle the horse she had ridden and lift the trunks from the other two horses.

She suspected that in a short while the slaves would be awake and there would be somebody to assist him, but for the moment she was interested only in going into the house.

She went up the steps to the back door seeing that they badly needed repairing, and the door itself looked dilapidated with the paint peeling from the heat.

The key turned easily and she pushed open the door and walked inside.

As she had expected, the house smelt musty, but not as badly as it might have done.

She walked in through the back premises past the large kitchen which her mother had always insisted be kept spotlessly clean, then into the hall.

The house was not as dusty as she had expected, although it was hard to see in the dim light.

She opened the door into what had been the Drawing-Room.

To her surprise the sofas were not protected as they should have been by Holland covers, the curtains were drawn back from the windows and the shutters were not closed.

She thought it was careless of Abe not to have taken more trouble over this particular room.

But it certainly did not seem to have come to very much harm, although it was difficult to see every detail.

Grania instinctively tidied a cushion that was crooked on a chair, then she told herself that before she started opening up the house she had better change.

The day was already beginning to grow warmer, and her riding-skirt which was not of a very thin material would soon become uncomfortably heavy, while the muslin blouse she was wearing had sleeves.

She thought she would have grown out of all the clothes she had left behind but there would doubtless be something of her mother’s she could wear.

When they had left for London the Countess had not packed her light cottons gowns knowing she would have no use for them there, and they would also be out of fashion.

“I will put on one of Mama’s gowns,” Grania told herself. “Then I will start to make the house look as it used to be before we left.”

She went to the Drawing-Room and up the stairs.

A rather beautiful staircase swept round artistically and up to a landing on which the centre room had been specially designed for her mother.

As she neared it Grania was thinking of how it was to this room she had always run eagerly as a child first thing in the morning, as soon as she was dressed by the coloured maid who looked after her.

Her mother would be in bed propped against the pillows that were edged with lace and had insertions through which she would thread pretty coloured ribbons to match her nightgowns.

“You look so pretty in bed, Mama, you might be going to a Ball,” Grania said once.

“I want to look pretty for your father,” her mother had replied. “He is a very handsome man, dearest, and he likes a woman to be pretty and always to make the best of herself. You must remember that.”

Grania had remembered, and she knew that her father was proud of herself too when he took her to St. George’s and his friends paid her compliments and said that when she grew up she would be the Belle of the island.

Grania in her own mind had always connected her father with things that were beautiful, and she asked herself now how he could possibly contemplate marrying her off to a man who was not only ugly in appearance, but ugly also in character.

She opened the door of the bedroom and was once again surprised to find the shutters drawn from the large windows that covered one wall of the room.

Through them she could see the palm trees against a sky that now held a tinge of gold in it.

There was a fragrance in the room that she had always connected with her mother, and she knew that it was the scent of jasmine whose small star-shaped white flowers bloomed all the year round.

Her mother had distilled the perfume which she always used, and which in consequence now brought her back so vividly to Grania’s mind that instinctively she looked towards the bed as if she expected to see her there.

Then suddenly she was very still as if rooted to the spot, staring as if her eyes must be deceiving her.

It was not her mother she could see against the white pillows, but a man.

For a moment she thought she must be imagining him. Then almost as if the light grew clearer she could see quite distinctly and unmistakably there was a man’s head on her mother’s pillows.

She stood for a moment staring, wondering whether she should go or stay.

Then as if in his sleep her presence communicated itself to him, the man stirred and opened his eyes, and now they were looking at each other across the room.

He was good-looking—handsome she supposed was the right word.

He had dark hair sweeping back from a square forehead, a clean-shaven face with distinctive features, and dark eyes which for a moment stared at her blankly.

Then his expression changed, and there was a smile on his lips and a sudden twinkle of recognition in his eyes.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” Grania asked.

“Your pardon,
Mademoiselle,”
the man replied sitting up against the pillows, “but I have no reason to ask who you are when your picture hangs before me on the wall.”

Without really meaning to Grania turned her head to where facing the bed over the top of the chest-of-drawers there was a picture of her mother painted when she
had first been engaged to her father and before she had come to Grenada.

“That is a picture of my mother,” she said. “What are you doing in her bed?”

Even as she spoke she realised that the way the man had spoken to her showed that he was not English.

She gave a little gasp.

“You are French!” she exclaimed.

“Yes,
Mademoiselle,
I am French,” the man replied, “and I can only apologize for occupying your mother’s room, but the house was empty.”

“I know that,” Grania replied, “but you had no
...
right. It is an
...
intrusion for you to
...
come here. And I do not understand
...
”

Then again she stopped and drew in her breath before she said:

“I think
...
perhaps I have
...
heard of you.”

The man made a little gesture with his hand.

“I promise you I am not famous, but infamous,” he said. “Beaufort—at your service!”

“The pirate!”

“The same,
Mademoiselle!
And a very contrite pirate if my presence here upsets you.”

“Of course you upset me!” Grania said sharply. “As I have said, you had no right to intrude because we were away from home.”

“I knew the house was empty, and may I add that nobody expected that you would come when you returned home to Grenada.”

There was silence. Then Grania said hesitatingly: “You
...
speak as if you knew I was
...
coming back to the island.”

The Pirate smiled at her and it not only seemed to make him look younger, but gave a touch of mischievousness to his expression.

“I should think everybody on the island knows it. Gossip is carried on the wind and in the song of the birds.”

“Then you knew my father had gone to England.”

The Pirate nodded.

“I knew that, and that you sent for him because your mother was ill. I am hoping that she is better.”

“She is
...
dead!”

“My deepest condolences,
Mademoiselle
.”

He spoke with a sincerity which did not make it seem as if he was being intrusive.

Suddenly Grania was aware that she was talking to a Pirate and he was lying in her mother’s bed, his shoulders above the sheets showing that he was naked.

S
h
e had half-turned towards the door when the Pirate said:

“If you will permit me to dress myself,
Mademoiselle,
I will come downstairs to explain my presence, and make my apologies before I leave.”

“Thank you,” Grania said and went from the room closing the door behind her.

Outside on the landing she stood for a moment thinking that now in fact she
must
be dreaming, and this could not really be happening.

How could she have come home to find a pirate in the house, and a Frenchman at that?

She supposed she should have been frightened not only because the man was a pirate, but also because he was French.

Yet in some way she could not explain, he did not frighten her.

She had the feeling that if she asked him to leave he would do so at once, only making sure before he left that she accepted his apologies for having used the house in her absence.

“It is an intolerable thing to have done!” she told herself, but she was not angry.

She went to her own room and found it as she had expected the whole house to be after what Abe had said.

When she opened the shutters the dust was thick on the floor, on the dressing-table, and on the cover which protected the bed.

Two little lizards shot behind the curtains when she
appeared and there was a smell of mustiness which was over-powering until she opened the window.

She pulled open the wardrobe and knew she could not change into any of the cotton gowns that hung there because she had grown so much taller in the last three years, and although she was still very slim, her figure was no longer that of a child, but had the first curves of maturity.

“I must stay as I am,” Grania decided and tried to feel angry because the presence of the pirate was inconvenient to her, but in fact she only felt curious.

There was nothing she could do in her bedroom and she therefore went downstairs.

As she reached the hall she heard the sound of voices in the kitchen and felt she should warn Abe that there was a pirate in the house.

Then as she went towards the kitchen-quarters she heard a man’s voice saying in broken English:

“We not expect you. I go wake
Monsieur
.”

“Good idea,” Abe replied, “a’fore my Lady see him.”

Grania walked into the kitchen.

Standing beside Abe was a white man who looked, she thought, extremely French.

He was small, dark-haired and she thought that if she had seen him anywhere in the world she would have known that he was of French origin.