Chapter 28 #3
Even after he had finished, she kept her eyes closed, yet still she saw him. His form, the hollow contours of his face flitted through her inner eye. In doing so she caught sight of him as if for the first time.
Who is this man? Handsome, wealthy and usually courteous to women, yes, but deep down? Who is the man beneath the pose that is almost disdainful and certainly brimming with confidence?
‘It’s all about Venus, isn’t it, Ethan? It’s her you want to make love to! Shame on you.’
He stood at the door, his head bent and a woeful, desperate expression on his face. ‘You’ve got it all wrong.’
‘I don’t think so.’
There comes a time when a decision is faced head on before being openly declared.
This is what Ethan did now. His back resting against the closed door, a cold angry look making his features appear as though they were carved from marble.
That is how hard a decision it was, how resolute the declaration.
‘Venus is my daughter. Her mother Seraph, was the love of my life!’
The slamming of the door reverberated around the room.
For some moments after he’d left the room, Lochranza continued to lie there. Venus was his daughter! How old was he when he fathered her? She’d heard back in England of fathers arranging their son’s first sexual encounter. Ethan was a mature man, early thirties. Venus. Seventeen wasn’t it?
He could not have dealt her a crueller blow, though on reflection the blow she’d dealt him equalled it.
Any chance of reconciliation looked remote.
There would be no marriage, no future for her here.
Bearing in mind the passion between them, it saddened her, but her pride would never allow her to show that.
Certainly not after what had happened tonight.
Love, to her mind, should be tender between those promised to marry.
Ethan had taken her without her consent.
He’d hurt her. She’d hurt him. But ultimately, she wanted to flee, to lick her wounds.
Going to Jamaica would be the salve on her wounded pride and bruised body.
Jamaica was also the place where she might finally put her the bad dream from her childhood to rest.
In a way, Ethan doing what he had done had set her free. They both needed a period away from each other at the end of which they could more coolly assess their emotions.
In the meantime, a lush green island in the Greater Antilles was calling to her.
How she would get to Jamaica and who was likely to take her there were her first priorities.
Certainly not Captain O’Neill. There was no sign of him, though she couldn’t be sure that Ethan had sent a message in the first place.
Even if he had, the man who had rescued her from death and taken her to England would have been here by now.
In the absence of the old man, there was only one alternative.
It had to be Captain Crabbe. The thought of his merry smile made her feel only a little better but did increase somewhat as her plan began to evolve.
Getting a message to him wouldn’t be easy.
She knew he shipped quite regularly into Savannah, trading in contraband he picked up from the Caribbean, most notably rum.
And that, she decided, is the place I have to be.
She would go by carriage to Richmond, then Portsmouth and take a boat to Savannah. Hopefully he would be there.
That part of her journey organised, she began to plan other things. It wouldn’t be wise to leave alone, just her and her handsome pirate and his merry bunch of cut-throats for company. She would have to take a female companion.
Moira Mackintosh had married Clarence Bent, the giant of a man who had rescued her from the house in New Orleans.
Clarence had turned into a hen-pecked shadow of his former self.
What was more he appeared to love it, overseer as he was now on Ethan’s plantation.
A further blessing on the marriage was the fact that Moira, at age thirty-three, was pregnant with their first child.
Lochranza, having no skill with a needle and thread, had allotted the task of making baby clothes to Helen, whose nimble fingers seemed far more suited to the task. Some of those baby clothes would be unfinished.
‘We need bags packed,’ Lochranza said to her, her face throbbing, her head aching.
‘Yes, ma’am. I mean, lady, I mean…’ She broke into a torrent of snivels.
‘Do I have to come? I means… I ain’t never been away from here and…’
Lochranza grabbed her wrist. ‘If you don’t want to come, you don’t have to.
It’s your choice. You do not belong to me.
You belong to my fiancé. He wouldn’t stop you leaving if you truly wanted to.
’ She stated the latter rather grimly. No matter how long she stayed in America, she would never get used to the owning of slaves.
She reminded herself that she was going to Jamaica.
Although the slave trade had been banned, those already in bondage when it ceased were still in bondage.
She would have to face it all over again and baulked at the thought of it.
She refrained from mentioning Venus. The news weighed heavy on her.
If she’d known Venus was Ethan’s daughter, would she have done the same again?
She wasn’t sure. The girl had not been living as a member of Ethan’s family, as truly his daughter.
The question of whether she would have lived as his child if she’d been white was dubious.
She just didn’t know. It depended on the circumstances – and Ethan.
‘I never thought I would ever be free again,’ said Helen, her eyes moist with unshed tears.
Lochranza took hold of Helen’s hand. Her fingers were cool.
Her palm was moist. ‘Neither of us are free yet. But we will be soon. I’m sure we will.
Now. Tomorrow we’re going to Portsmouth, where we will take a ship to Savannah.
There, we will find a man I know named Captain Crabbe. In the meantime, we need a boat.’
Lochranza had changed her mind about a carriage. A boat would get them down to Portsmouth much more quickly than a carriage.
‘I know that Captain Crabbe is in the habit of staying with Mr Bent on those occasions when the law-keepers of one state are after his sorry hide! Just on the off chance that he might be there – a lucky thing if he was – then it means he’s come upriver by boat and there’s a distinct possibility that he can collect us and take us where we want to go. ’
Helen didn’t look entirely sure of what was going on, but she was a brave girl and Lochranza trusted her to get the message through.
This was one occasion when a pictorial message really was all that was needed. She drew a man and a woman in an intimate embrace. Next to it she wrote the word, come.
* * *
The time couldn’t go quickly enough. No sign of a river boat. It would have to be the carriage.
It was with studied discipline that Lochranza swept aside any outer show of either affection or disdain for the man she was to have married. For his part, Ethan viewed her most of the time with aloof embarrassment, at other times puzzled surprise as though he didn’t quite believe what he had done.
Not a day went by when she waited to receive his apology, but it never came.
Over dinner one night, just the two of them dining by candlelight in stilted silence, Lochranza couldn’t bring herself to smile expectantly as she awaited an apology.
Her look was haughty, her glare ripe with accusation.
One more day and she would take the carriage if there was still no sign of Captain Crabbe.
Although she couldn’t confirm any sure feelings about him, he was a man to be counted on – at least by her.
Discomfited by the way she looked at him, Ethan let his cutlery clatter onto his plate and pushed back his chair. ‘Madam,’ he said, addressing her brusquely. ‘You eye me as though I am the one who should be apologising. I will not do so.’
‘Do we have to go into detail in front of the servants?’ She smiled sweetly, though her words sounded barbed, sharp enough to cut the toughest of flesh.
Ethan seemed to regain his senses, ordering both the butler and the serving wench out of the room.
They went meekly enough, though the proud tilt of Jove’s chin had left him.
It had surprised her to realise that he’d always known he was harbouring a cuckoo in the nest. Athene had been foisted on him as a suitable wife, and Venus as a companion to his own daughter.
Lochranza bristled at the unfairness of it all.
Once the servants had left, Ethan broke in afresh. ‘I should have known. That sly old dog at Cleveland Court wouldn’t willingly give away his closest relative unless he had a good reason. Kildare is the sort of man who’d sell his newborn son if it meant furthering British interests.’
‘Should it really vex you for my uncle to have misgivings as to where your loyalties lie?’ she said pertly. ‘You had a foot in both camps, your lordship. You still do, don’t you?’
He winced at her inference but recovered quickly, his anger refreshed.
‘I am Mr MacKinnon whilst in the Americas, madam, and my loyalties are my affair! I never expected you to take such liberties with my trust!’
‘Ah. Our views on the taking of liberties are very much the same,’ said Lochranza, her voice moderate, her eyes full of meaning. ‘Just different liberties, sir! Different liberties!’
Remorse momentarily creased his features, which made her suppose she had won her side of the argument, but Ethan was a proud man. She doubted he’d ever apologised to anyone in his life.
He threw the linen napkin he still held onto the table.
‘Be then as it may. Our time is up as a betrothed couple. It is obvious your mind is made up, but mark this, madam, and mark it well. I will not come running after you. I will not play the knight in shining armour and come galloping to your rescue. If you leave, our parting will be final!’