His eyes were far away. “Yes. Of course.”
Cathy’s heart was pounding as never before while a chorus of worries and fears swirled round inside her. “Adam? Did you notice that your friend ignored dear Alice...?”
Chapter 13
“It occurs to me,” Cathy finally dared to remark, “that I really don’t know much about your past.”
For a moment, their eyes met, then he looked away into another endless green cane field. What a long day it had been. From Bridgetown, they had boarded a schooner headed north through the aqua Caribbean Sea to Speightstown, where Simon, the son of an elderly family retainer, had been waiting with an open landau pulled by a pair of thin horses. Then they had started inland, bound for Tempest Hall, with Alice lying on the seat opposite Adam and Cathy. No matter how much Adam talked about various aspects of island life— such as green monkeys, fanciful bearded fig trees, and the fluctuating value of sugar cane— he could sense Cathy’s thoughts.
Her worries, he supposed, weren’t far off from his own. What the devil had Gemma been implying ? Was it that her son was conceived before Adam had left Barbados in 1901, and that Paul was Adam’s son, too?
The very thought, however fleeting, made his palms sweat. If it were true, then he was in more trouble than he’d ever imagined during the worst period of his gambling debts in England. Why couldn’t Byron have minded his own business? At least, without Cathy on the scene, Adam’s problems would be manageable.
“Are you ignoring me,” Cathy asked now, “or simply at a loss for words?”
“You asked about my past, wasn’t that it? I was just wondering how to begin. Did you want to hear about my childhood in Kent? My father, who was killed in an avalanche when I was twelve? The years I spent studying the law at Oxford?” He shrugged. “To be perfectly honest, my past is rather boring.”
“Only to you, I’m sure,” she replied with a touch of irony. Alice, who had been dozing with her chin resting on crossed paws, opened her eyes and took stock of the situation. Cathy leaned over to pet her silky head. “I wish Alice could talk to me. I’ll wager that she could relate stories from your past that wouldn’t be boring in the least.”
He had to smile at that. “You must realize that that is exactly why I’ve had a dog rather than a human companion. I don’t have to worry that Alice will have too much to drink one night and tell my secrets, the way Byron might easily do.”
“That’s why you didn’t invite him to come to Barbados!”
Adam only laughed at that, then opened his collar, looking around as the carriage climbed a hill. The soil along the roadside was reddish-coral, the fields of cane plants were pale green, and the sky was a vivid shade of azure punctuated by puffs of clouds. Barely visible to the north were the rolling waves of the Atlantic Ocean, and for a few moments Adam and Cathy could see a village nestled at the base of lush, wind-swept hills.
“Do you see the tiny, bright-colored houses?” Adam asked, pointing.
Cathy nodded. The little cottages were everywhere, marching along the roads, clustered in towns, popping up unexpectedly in cane fields. She thought that they looked too small to be real houses, but often there were goats tied in front and old folks peeking out through half-open shutters. The tiny dwellings were painted fantastic colors like cobalt blue, mango, lime green, hibiscus pink, or turquoise, and they were crowned by roofs of corrugated metal.
“They’re called chattel houses,” Adam explained, “because when Barbadian slaves were emancipated, they weren’t allowed to own land. The chattel houses became their possessions; they can be dismantled and moved by ox-cart to a new location.”
“I never dreamed it would be so different here,” she murmured again. “It really is a different world from New England.”
“I know.” A roguish smile lit his face. “I love it. I think that Barbados is the best place on earth.”
Looking at Adam, Cathy thought wistfully that if he would draw her into the circle of his embrace, she would feel less lonely and out of place. Finally, she worked up the nerve to whisper, “Don’t you ever feel... nervous, being white when nearly everyone else is black? My mother would be quite terrified.”
“My feelings and your mother’s rarely are the same on any subject,” he replied sardonically. “I try to judge the people on this island by their characters.”
Suddenly, Simon spoke up from his driver’s perch, causing Cathy to jump in surprise and embarrassment. He’d been so quiet, she’d forgotten he might be listening to them. “M’lady, you do get use to we wit’ time. We all need patience, I t’ink.” Simon turned back then, bestowing an encouraging smile on his mistress and giving Adam a quick, meaningful glance.
“Thank you, Simon,” she said. “That was a very understanding observation.”
“Change take time, ma’am.”
Leaning back in the upholstered seat, Adam propped his feet up by Alice’s tail and lit a thin cigar. “Simon’s been at Tempest Hall as long as I can remember. How many years is it, Simon?”
“I born dere, sir, in 1845. We do see many t’ing change over all dese year, but Tempest Hall still in de Rav’neau family an’ we still dere.” His smile faded before he added, “Plantation need work, sir. You goin’ to stay dis time?”
“Yes, of course. You know, Simon, I would have returned much sooner if not for the smallpox epidemic. The island was quarantined.”
Lips pursed, he nodded slowly and loosened the reins. “I guess I forget why you had to leave at all?”
“As I recall, I had matters to attend to in Kent.” Adam fell silent. Somehow he sensed that Simon knew he’d left Barbados simply because he’d grown bored and wanted to return to London for a round of gambling and wenching. Tempest Hall had needed so much care, and Adam had felt weighed down by the responsibility. “I was here only for a visit the last time. I never meant to stay permanently then.”
“Tempest Hall need a master to care for it.” Simon shook his head again. “Since Mistress Adrienne die, nobody in charge, an’ you know de plantation goin’ to pieces long ago, even before de money she leave us run out.”
Adam wished he had a drink. What a miserable excuse for a man he was! Not only had he gambled away his own estate in England, he hadn’t bothered to stay in touch with the servants at Tempest Hall. Of course, he couldn’t have sent them any money even if he had written. Until his settlement with Jules Parrish, the only possession of value Adam had left was his title.
Cathy spoke up then. “Was Mistress Adrienne your grandmother, Adam? Didn’t you tell me that she came here with your grandfather in 1818? How could she have still been alive so recently?”
“Gran lived to be ninety-nine. I think she died early in 1897.” He exhaled cigar smoke, his eyes far away. “She was an amazing lady, wasn’t she, Simon?”
“Very, very fine,” he confirmed. “We all do miss her. We feel Mistress Adrienne’s spirit, wishin’ dat you come home and take care of Tempest Hall. She hope dat even when she alive.”
“I get your point, Simon,” Adam snapped. “I feel every bit as guilty as you’d like, so you needn’t say any more about it. I’m home now; home to stay. Better still, I’ve brought a wife! Even Gran, if she is indeed watching over us in spirit, could not ask more of me.”
Simon pressed his lips together and shook the reins. “Mmm hm.”
The closer they got to Tempest Hall, the more Cathy felt as if she’d fallen into an exotic, timeless world that had no connection to anything familiar. Passing hot cane fields and abandoned, thatch-roofed slave huts, she shivered. It seemed she could hear a whispered message of blood, gold, and the broken dreams of African people who had once been torn from their homeland and enslaved.
A pair of monkeys capered across the narrow, weed-choked road. “This part of the island isn’t very well populated,” Adam explained. “We’ll have to do some work on the roads. The best ones are paved with crushed coral stone.”
Cathy nearly remarked that it was lucky her dowry was large enough to encompass public works, but she bit her tongue instead. It wouldn’t improve her shaky marriage if she put her finger on that sore spot. No matter how careful she and Adam both were to avoid talking about money, his outburst that day on the Free Spirit was imprinted on her memory.
Something else he’d said that day came back to her then; something she’d discounted and pushed aside. Adam had told her that men had darker secrets than women. Cathy had assumed he was trying to shock her, but now she thought of Gemma Hart and a cold chill swept over her.
“It’s time for you to come back from wherever you’ve gone,” he whispered. Something in her eyes caused him to take her chin between his thumb and forefinger and kiss her, slowly and deeply. “We’ve just turned down the drive to Tempest Hall.”
The taste of him and the texture of his tanned cheek replaced her chill with a surge of sensuality. “I’m excited to see our home, Adam.” Holding his hand, she leaned forward and looked out. They were emerging from a shadowy mahogany forest onto a hilltop from which they could see the crumbling buildings of the plantation below. There were giant windmills, a sugar boiling house, a water catchment tank, and an empty mule pen. The surrounding fields, which swept all the way to the island’s north coast, were barren except for weeds.