Disaster clutched the island in its hideous dark talons...the cold breath of the grave wreaking its vocation. A yellow flag flew over Port Royale. The governor hailed the cataclysm a catastrophe. Mary cried the tragedy an evil. The clergy heralded the debacle, the end to the world. The townspeople shuttered their doors. The harbor closed. All commerce and visitation halted. Everyone crossed themselves, hoping to evade the Grim Reaper. For Claire, the calamity produced a miracle.
The plague. Smallpox. Rich, poor, young, old, it did not discriminate. The priest used his bully-pulpit, calling everyone forth to give aid where possible. The church evolved into a hospital, flowing with the sick. Since Claire, Cookie and Lily experienced the pox when they were young, they offered their services, working to mend those in need. Some of the healthier islanders retreated inland, isolating themselves while others chose to leave the island. The first to sail out was Sir Teakle.
To Claire’s joy, Sir Teakle’s departure came sweet as the rain at noon. She met him at the door of the great-house, wiping her hands on her apron. She gazed innocently at him. He grew stressed to see her dressed like a common woman.
“I have just come back from doing my Christian duty at the church,” she informed him.
“Good God. You have been working in the house of plague? Are you mad?”
Claire touched his sleeve, congratulating herself on her cunning. His eyes had grown round with horror. It was all she could do to keep from laughing. “It is a terrible contagion, is it not?” She coughed twice to add emphasis.
He backed away from her. “I am departing for England. I had planned to take you with me. I-I’ll return for you as soon as possible.”
“Do not tarry. This illness is bad business. Dreadful, I assure you, one never knows where the pox will strike next.” She looked pointedly at him. “What’s more, the lasting effects stay in the air for an indefinite time. Years some say.”
Her ploy turned him on his heel, fleeing in his carriage in direction of the harbor. The satin coat she touched, torn off and tossed onto the road. That was the last she hoped to see of him.
Claire, Lily and Cookie expended ungodly hours fighting the plague. There were times, Claire thought, as she scanned the ocean of bodies, the hospital would close in on them, eating them all up. A welcomed sight brought relief. A small group of slaves from different plantations, supplied to aid assistance, filed into the hospital, blinking at the virulent devastation before them.
In strode Devon.
Her heart skipped a beat.
He gave her a scorching look.
She refused to let him bother her. But he did. The dreadful things he must think of her. Would he suffer from the pox? Without Jarvis, or any other authority about, he took over the hospital operations.
He did not attempt to address her. Never a, “Good Morning” or “Good Evening” as he was inclined to do with everyone else, disregarding Claire’s inquiries with off-hand nods or short, terse directions. What would it be like to hear him say, “Claire”? He remained determined to disregard her. Why wouldn’t he? She had insulted him, intimating he was not fit for her. Sir Teakle created a monster of an impression. An impression, a man like Devon could never forgive.
Claire shrugged. The damage was done. Besides she could not allow herself to get close to Devon. The unfortunate path would lead to her ruin.
She looked at his broad back, his short heavy wisps of hair, dark as a ravens. Stripped of his coat, the sleeves of his coarse shirt rolled to the elbow, and holding a bloody rag in his hand, he barked out an array of orders.
He fit here in the hospital with his work, tending the sick. Yet in Claire’s mind, he didn’t fit. As she had speculated earlier, she again considered him in the same mysterious light. He seemed alert, aware, with a restrained wildness about him, ready to fire a reaction at a moment’s notice. The assured poise he demonstrated in dictating where patients were to be set in order of their weakness and severity disproved the nature of an ordinary physician. His pleasant yet authoritative voice ringing out those commands with innate confidence belied a man of a different mien that she couldn’t quite identify. He remained a puzzle to her, a man of contradictions.
“Malaria, smallpox, usual remedy is quinine or “the bark”. Opium pills−I’ve cut it down so they can rest,” he snapped to his stewards. “Smoke and lime to kill the contagion. Lay sails over the courtyard and set more beds beneath. Get to the apothecary.” His commands ripped through the air like a cannon down the coast.
“What are you doing here?” His sour tone matched his mood.
Claire didn’t turn around. She squared her shoulders. She remained impressed for out of devastating chaos; he had restored order of epic proportions with improvisation and invention. It surprised and galled her how the islanders deferred to him, despite his status as a slave. Her hands dropped slowly with the cloth she held to a fresh basin of water.
“I will thank you to address me properly−” Claire did not desire a fight. She pressed the cloth to her patient’s fevered brow.
“The man’s a slave−” he said.
She squeezed the cloth, twisting and twisting until every last drop wrung out.
“The tone of your discrimination is noted. It stands an ignorant and false assumption on your part, Doctor,” she rebuked him. “Nonetheless, the man is a human being.”
“Your uncle would be of a different sentiment. He regards such chattel as vermin, better left to die of their miseries.”
“As you can see, I am not my uncle.” She turned, frowned and stared at him a moment with increasing haughtiness. “What is it that makes you think that my uncle and I share the same opinion?”
“It is a kindness, your efforts, but if your uncle were to learn of it−” he shrugged.
“I shall deal with my uncle when the time comes. The concern is mine, not yours, Dr. Blackmon.” She turned her back to him.
“You are at risk.”
“How wonderful of you to voice concern. But never worry. I am immune. I survived the pestilence my eighth summer as did my cousin and Cookie in her youth.” There stood too much work to do to bicker further. With so many people crying out in fever and pain, Claire decided to let him wallow in his contempt of her.
By Devon’s orders the islanders and slaves were divided into pairs to maximize resources. Cookie worked with an older giant of a slave, and Lily with a slender golden-haired slave. Claire chose to work alone.
She grimaced at the hideous corpuscles, oozing with blood, inflicted on a poor woman. Claire had been spared the scarring from her battle with the horrid pestilence. For this woman, the scarring would be nothing if she survived. Mrs. Bennett. Claire did not recognize her. She had met her twice at the governor’s mansion and regretted never being able to learn more of her father. Claire procured a pillow to make her more comfortable. The woman’s eyes fluttered.
“Claire. You are a dear girl.” Her breaths came labored. “I know you own the plantation. I feel it in my bones. I found a hint in my old journals that were not destroyed by fire.”
Claire listened. What did you discover?”
“You do not have to be forced to marry anyone. Find the deed.”
Claire sponged her forehead. She needed Mrs. Bennett to talk more. The woman lay limp. Claire was at a loss for she did not know what else to do. She looked up, regarding the yawning beams of the belfry. The bell hung, despairingly solitary. She needed help. She hated to ask him.
“Dr. Blackmon?” she said, as she moved beside him.
He didn’t seem surprised to see her. Did he know she was coming?
“Is there a problem, Madame?” he asked without turning to her. A barely controlled hostility simmered beneath his formality, if released, would roll her over with the force of a tidal wave. What lay between them could never be openly discussed.
“The patient by the column, Mrs. Bennett, I-I do not know what else to do.”
“Johnnie. Move that woman out−the west side.” He jerked his head to where Mrs. Bennett lay.
Claire closed her eyes and said a prayer, the west side−a silent assignation for the patients that would soon die. “Is there not something you can do?”
“A friend of yours?”
Claire nodded.
He crossed the room and examined the patient. “The pox has done its job. She has passed onto the next world.” He covered Mrs. Bennett with a sheet and checked the man beside her. Johnnie appeared. “Take this man as well.”
Claire stared down at her hands as the men carried the dead out to be buried. She liked the older woman. Her life ended in tragedy. The man next to Mrs. Bennett was a pewter merchant with four children, his wife now a widow. Claire swiped at a tear.
“What else?” Devon snapped, breaking her out of her reverie.
“I-I was going to offer you an explanation about Sir Teakle, but there isn’t enough room for me and your pride.”
He ordered the blond-haired slave working with Lily to his side and whispered. “Ames, send a message to the governor and order a crew to dig more plague pits for the ones who are not so fortunate. We need to move them out with haste. Their air multiplies the contagion.”
“Surely now, there is no explanation needed.” He threw a bloody rag into a basin. “You can attend to yonder patient. He needs water. Perhaps you can offer him something else.”
Claire froze as if she had been turned to marble, the subtlety of his suggestion obvious. She turned her back to him, refusing to let him see the tears gather in her eyes. What did she expect? A ringing endorsement of what he had seen in the carriage with Sir Teakle.
Claire weaved, whether from exhaustion or emotion, she couldn’t tell. Everything blurred. A miasma rent the air, spread from infected bodies. She could not breathe. Claire doubled over, her stomach nauseous. Bile rose to her throat.
“Dammit! Open the shutters,” Devon ordered. “Whose idea was it to entomb us?”
An islander protested. “The way to cure this disease is to suffocate the evil.”
“It’s madness. Let the fresh breezes in and carry out the plague to Poseidon. Next you’ll be telling me to eat toads and bathe in milk. Johnnie, take Madame Hamilton outside.”
Devon watched her through the window. He looked for any signs that might convince him she contracted the disease despite the fact she had told him she had already survived the pestilence. The fresh air revived her, and soon, she entered the hospital again. Devon breathed a sigh of relief. Why did he care?
She was Sir Teakle’s whore or soon to be wife. He remembered her embrace with that corpulent mass of human flesh, remarkable how she played the innocent with him and threw herself at nobility. Did she moan in pleasure when he touched her?
Annoyed where his thoughts veered, he turned to his next patient, noting, Claire did not work alone as she did earlier, but chose to work with Johnnie. He glanced at her slim hands as they gently lifted a woman’s head, coaxing her to drink. You would not find the governor’s wife working in this pestilence, nor did he see any other fine ladies from the island.
As the hours passed, Devon listened to young Johnnie’s humorous anecdotes of his family and ironic villagers back home while Claire gently laughed, returning witticisms of her own. Her puckish wit lightened his mood.
Lily appeared beside him. “Listening to Claire is like drinking a fine wine. Pretty soon you feel giddy too,” Lily said, following where his eyes rested. “Claire lives her life in sunny optimism, and always believes in the innate goodness of people. Her laughter is contagious and generous, her take on life and how it should be lived−you’re envious of it and want to emulate it. There is no one like her.” Lily gave him the medicines he had ordered and returned to Ames.
For a moment, Devon imagined himself in another time and place, wishing he was nothing more than a country gentleman come to flirt a few hours away at a dance, inhaling the sweet scent of apple blossoms and listening to the soft strains of a quintet. The need to live a free and carefree life flung so far from his grasp.
A hand touched his and pulled him from his dreams. Devon looked down, the grim reality evident. The wretch did not know he was dying. He offered some words of consolation. In a few hours he would be untroubled.
Bloodsmythe arrived, surprising Devon with a package from Anne Jensen. He tore open the wrapping and stood amazed, a fine coat, a cast-off, no doubt, from a former customer of the prostitute. He had cured two of her girls, and this was her way of thanking him. He tried it on and reveled in its exact fit.
Every once in a while he saw Claire glance in his direction, her eyes disdained to look anywhere the sight of him was possible. Still he preened in his coat, delighting in a small kindness that made him happy for the moment. She lifted her chin in the air and resumed her activities. That stayed fine with him. The strain of maintaining schooled disinterest waxed a heavy toll on his patience.
Devon plunged his hands into his pockets. He stood stock-still, fingered deeper, feeling round heavy bits of metal sewn into a thick padded lining. The exact size of a gold sovereign. Too afraid to assume his good fortune, and unable to conceal his joy, he strode to the sacristy. Behind locked doors, he used a scalpel to slice through the stitching. One gold coin emerged and another. Anyone else would have overlooked the bounty but his skills as a physician in fingering tumors and veins assisted him uncovering the coins through the dense layers of wool padding. “Sixty pieces of gold!”
A flapping of feathers drew his attention. Abu Ajir perched on the window sill. “My good friend, enough to buy a skiff to get off this hellhole.” Devon sewed the coins back into place. Anne Jensen never would have parted with the coat if she knew the fortune it contained.
Released from hard labor into this catastrophe had given Devon hope to renew his escape efforts, but now the eventuality of that escape became real. He grew anxious for a meeting with that rascal, Tom Dooley, the single man who could procure a boat. Devon rounded the baptismal font and stepped back into his makeshift hospital. Whistling a happy tune from his boyhood days, he observed Claire rising from her labors.
“I have hardly eaten in two days,” she said to Johnnie. She yawned then stretched her back, the outline of her soft breasts taut against the fabric.
Devon’s whistle broke off.
“You must fortify yourself, madam if you are to keep up this pace,” said Johnnie.
Offer in sympathy was the easiest way to a woman’s heart. A vein in Devon’s neck pulsed and swelled dangerously.
“Please escort me,” she allowed. “You must have sustenance as well.”
Devon hated Johnnie.
Johnnie a trifle unsure, but with a warm, reassuring smile Claire bestowed on him, easily complied. Claire tripped on the hem of her dress. Johnnie caught her.
Devon felt his breath burn raw in his throat.
He followed her with his eyes.
They had gone into the little garden aside the church. Slaves had dropped off foodstuffs at the rectory donated by islanders for the sick and those who cared for them. Claire and Johnnie broke fast on salt-breads and fruits laid out on a table. Rich sweet papaya juice flowed down her chin. She patted it with a clean cloth and laughed at her indiscretion, a secret joke to share with an infatuated young Johnnie. Claire used that same cloth to wipe the crumbs off Johnnie’s face. He sat there grinning like a foolish child. She weaved her spells around every man. Devon felt a dull pain in his hand and looked down to see his nails digging into the palm of his closed fist.
Two weeks into the plague, Claire had overslept arriving at the hospital later than everyone else. She observed Lily quietly working with the blond-haired slave named Ames, the one she had been so taken with that day on the docks. Ames whispered something to Lily. To Claire’s complete consternation, the look on her cousin’s face entirely transformed. As Ames’s steady gaze appraised her cousin in silent expectation, Lily beamed. Gone was the austere, non-indulgent, practical Lily. Claire did not know what to think. In the corner she saw Cookie unleash orders with that hefty Bloodsmythe fellow. He followed her around all dewy-eyed like a great big hulking puppy. What on earth was going on beneath her nose?
At last, her eyes fell on her quarry, exactly where she knew he would be at this hour. He sat reviewing a list next to the altar, making adjustments with his quill. She bit her tongue, putting up with Devon’s snubbing and innuendos long enough. She stood prepared to do battle. In fuming silence, she stalked past Lily and Cookie, stopping inches from him.
“What is it?” Devon leaned back on a cane chair, his black hair rumpled and falling over his forehead in an untidy fashion. He looked tired, his eyes had lines beneath them, and his mouth formed an impatient scowl. “What is it?” he repeated and glared at her.
Claire put her hands on her hips.
“Are you feeling well, doctor? Perhaps you are exhausted?” she said sweetly. His struggles were not lost on her. He did not know how to react.
“Thank you for your concern, Madame Hamilton.” He clearly enunciated each word, and in doing so lost some of the musicality of his Irish lilt. He regarded her with a deceptively lazy stare.
She let out a satisfied sigh. “I wanted to make sure your health is fine, whatever it takes to protect my investment.”
Claire heard his indrawn breath, saw his dark lashes sweep down to veil his glittering eyes. But when he straightened his demeanor was formal. “Good day, Madame.” He rose and left her.
When he was gone, Lily set down a bucket of water. “You shouldn’t toy with him. Your baiting him could come to a bad end.”
Claire folded clean linens, surprised to find that she was smiling. “I’m well aware of that. But the rewards far outweigh the risks. To provoke him is to repay him for his lack of civility.”
Lily gave her a hard look. “Do you dare taunt a caged lion? Do you see the way he looks at you, Claire?”
“He looks at me?” Claire asked. “I haven’t noticed him looking at me. He’s barely spoken a word to me.”
“He looks at you. He watches you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Lily.” Claire moved across the room and knelt on the floor next to Johnnie. Working together, Claire had built an easy friendship with the young slave. She shook her head, realizing the circumstances of disease and death, vanished social mores. Strange to feel at home with Johnnie’s company.
“Johnnie,” she said, “Isn’t it strange that Dr. Blackmon should show kindness to most but others he seems to−” She did not want to say it aloud, nor did she desire to admit how Devon brought out the worst in her.
Johnnie stood up with the bucket in hand. “Dr. Blackmon? He’s always going out his way for people. You don’t believe it? Madame Hamilton, I could tell you stories...and I know, too, seeing as I’ve known him for the past year. You’ll never meet a better a man. I have to fetch some fresh water.”
Claire was silent, digesting Johnnie’s words. “I’ll go with you.” She held out her hand and Johnnie pulled her to her feet. They were high praises from a young man like Johnnie who wouldn’t be afraid to speak his disapproval to her. “Really? He seems otherwise to me.”
“Well you just don’t know him real well. He took care of us in the gaol, then during the crossing, even a couple weeks back, he saved me from a whipping by your uncle, taking on the master’s wrath to earn a whipping himself. It was last minute orders from the governor that saved him from harm. But he saved me nonetheless, and I won’t forget him for it.”
Claire mulled over that bit of information. Devon had sacrificed himself?
He had complete respect of the rebel-convicts. He had emerged as their leader. That could be menacing and dangerous if they collaborated. They walked outside and pumped fresh water into the bucket from an open well. Johnnie jerked the bucket. Water spilled over the rim onto the stone walk at the exact spot where Claire set her foot. With a cry, she skidded and would have fallen, but Johnnie caught her arm and held her erect, upsetting the bucket and dumping all of the water. Claire, supported by Johnnie’s solid arm, turned to meet his eyes, a combination of surprise and laughter widening her own. They stared at each other for an instant and then amusement defeated dismay. They started to giggle, then laugh, Johnnie still supporting her, each lost in the merriment of the moment encouraged by their absurd position.
All but the ill, stopped and stared. In the middle of this exuberant scene, Devon looked up from his labors. He scrutinized the pair, his annoyance increased as he advanced toward them. When he spoke, his voice was laced with sarcasm.
“This is a charming little scene. Claire, I had no idea you would find a slave’s life so amusing.” Claire stood immobilized. Johnnie removed his hand from her arm.
“We had a little accident, is all, Doctor Blackmon,” he explained. “Madame Hamilton slipped on the water.”
“That is amusing,” Devon replied with bitter irony.
Claire stared at him. “There is nothing of it and nothing improper to find a little humor in this terrible devastation.” She kept her voice confident, asserting the objection in her reply. Bitterness and anger rested in his voice, a dramatic departure from the frigid formality of the past few days.
Claire lifted her nose in the air. “I think you presume too much.” She dared him, intimating he was getting above himself. She walked past him. “You’ve taken command of the whole hospital. Has your new kingdom gone to your head?”
Startling her, he grabbed her arm and propelled her into the sacristy, closing the door behind them. Claire attempted to wrench away from his impossible grip. Her heart thundered at the anger she provoked in him. The silence grew oppressive. Light spilled from a stain-glassed window, heating the stone floor with a golden iridescence, back-lighting his powerful frame. Devon lifted his gaze, coolly regarding her. “You have a problem, Madam. You maintain a predilection for collecting men.”
“You twist and distort, perverting everything with your own foul mind. I can see it is no use to go any further. If you’ll excuse me.”
“Why waste time with frivolous deception? Off to see young Johnnie. I’m sorry to interrupt your plans for a lover’s tryst.”
Her head jerked up. The color drained from her face.
“Bastard.”
The weeks of dreary labor, of her uncle’s commands, Sir Teakle’s vileness, Devon’s taunts, obedience, fear, had all taken its toll. She lunged and slapped him, raging with pent-up strains and tensions, she attacked him. She wanted to punch his chest, to hit him over and over again.
He grabbed her wrists as she threw herself at him. Claire struggled to break free−to strike out at him, but she was powerless beneath his solid grip. In fury and despair, she began to sob, her diatribe never ending, but becoming high-pitched, hysterical sputterings of all the wrongs incurred on her.
During her outburst, Claire’s vision blurred with her tears. She did not see Devon, his expression undergoing a myriad of changes. Although the softening of his features escaped her, she heard with surprise the quietness in his voice as he released her.
“Sit down and compose yourself. We need to talk.”
She collapsed on a chair, still sobbing, her head bowed, her body slumped.
He stood over her. “Tell me everything, Claire.”
Did he see the torment and sorrow that ravaged her heart? The isolation of the sacristy somehow made sharing confidences less condemning. This was her one chance to say everything that had been bottled up in her for so long. “A chance encounter in London brought me face to face with my uncle. I had not seen Sir Jarvis in years and never hoped to lay eyes on him again. He informed me I was under his control and peddled me in the marriage mart. Since I was a poor relation with no dowry, Jarvis demanded a huge settlement with the offers narrowed down to one. The Duke of Hawthorne provided an enormous sum quickly contracted by my uncle.”
She shivered then took a deep breath, sinking into the rhythm of her story. “The Duke of Hawthorne is a very old man, withered and wrinkled as a prune shriveled in the sun. I cringe even now from the remembrance. He touched me. Like a claw from a grave, cold and clammy, his fingernails like yellow corkscrews. An employee of the Duke’s, an old acquaintance of Cookie’s gave warnings of her employer. He had raped and beaten four of his earlier wives, all chosen because of their youth and unfortunate financial circumstances. Within two years of marriage every one of them died. After all, who would question a peer of the realm?”
His body tensed.
She shook her head. “I don’t know why I am telling you this.”
“Go on,” he encouraged, but his voice hardened. Then he spoke more temperately, and she shoved away the self-protective caution she hid behind. “You can confide in me, Claire.”
“With single-mindedness born of desperation, I set out to fend off disaster. I told you in the gaol how I called on an old friend, Sir Thomas Durham. I had shared every sordid detail, believing he would understand my dilemma. Then I did the unthinkable. I asked him to marry me. That was when he informed me he was to be married to a very wealthy heiress. All was not lost, he promised. He assured me once he was married and had control of his wife’s money he’d make me his mistress. Then he grabbed me. ‘Why wait?’ he said. I don’t remember much after that−except shoving him into a fountain. That’s when I sought you out after Cookie informed me of the Newgate alternative. After foiling my uncle by marrying you at Newgate, I thought I would be free. That was not the case. My uncle forced us to go to Jamaica.”
Her voice broke. His jaw clenched so hard, it ached. “My uncle beat me with his cane when I defied him by marrying you. He can force me to marry anyone he chooses even one as despicable as Sir Teakle. If I don’t, Jarvis will put Cookie and Lily out. I have to protect them.” Fresh tears ran down her cheeks. “I’m as much a slave as you. It’s tearing me apart. My future a mere whim of men.” He offered her a cloth.
“Here now this won’t do. Dry your tears,” he said with the same gentleness he had shown his patients.
Claire raised her tear-stained face to peer at him, tentative, still unsure if she heard him right. He’d steal her soul even as he scorned her heart. She closed her eyes, her chest ached. It was so easy to listen to his soothing words. She came under control, but she felt drained from the release of tears and all the pent-up emotions of the last months.
He took the linen from her hands and wiped away the tears then made her blow her nose. “I have not been fair. Better now?” he asked, pulling her chin up to see her eyes.
Claire nodded a little sheepishly. She found his gesture at odds with his earlier aloofness, and answered with a quavering smile.
He extended his hands to her.
This was more than a simple plea for friendship, but something much much more. Something more lasting. Eternal. She looked at his long supple fingers, so strong and caring. She remembered his hand as it held hers in the gaol when they recited their vows, how it had closed around hers. An intimation of trust, fire and steel, capability, confidence−safe−could be read in those hands of his. Her heart wanted desperately to try, but some tiny voice of reason warned her that it was a mistake. Her mind screamed with skepticism, a reality that what he offered led to nowhere but the sweetness of pretending, just this once, to forfeit reality and live in a dream for a short time. She almost capitulated.
“This is wrong−” she whispered and shakily placed her hands in his.
“This is right,” he answered fiercely and pulled her to her feet. He leaned over, his lips covered hers, parting them with familiar, insistent skill.
Claire closed her eyes and commenced to dream. Lily’s warning reverberated in her mind, but his mouth tormented and enticed her, drawing from her meager experience, she answered in return. Claire shifted and moaned, with an accumulation of awakening pleasure, and slid her hands to the nape of his neck. She fingered the soft curls, reveling in the silkiness then stroked his neck, the warmth of his body beneath her fingers. His mouth became more demanding, his hands so near her aching breasts, but not touching, thumbs playing over her ribs. Feelings she could not identify shot through her body, tingling with strange, familiar stirrings. Truths so beautiful and painful, it made her ache. All she knew was that Devon’s presence affected her in ways she did not understand, and she grew frightened. She pushed away, breathing heavily. What did he do to her?
She didn’t understand how this man came to be in her life, but most of all, she didn’t understand why her body felt like it was about to rise up in flames. “I don’t think we should hazard this again,” was her strangled response.
Devon was struck by how this girl he had vowed to have nothing to do with, could get under his skin. She had kissed him, responding at first hesitantly, tentatively, sweetly to the touch of his lips, and then he felt her open up and give him something incredibly more−her trust. If he had been pleased with their initial intimacy, then it was the soul-drenching assertion relayed in her kiss that sent a profound message of belief in him. It slammed into him, sending him over the edge.
Given that, she sure as hell wasn’t going to want to risk her heart or her future on Devon Blackmon. The ramifications of getting involved with him were too overwhelming for her to contemplate. The likelihood of having a relationship with a slave lay forbidden and nonexistent.
She was no coward. Despite the harsh conditions of the hospital and severity of the smallpox epidemic, the backbreaking hours, smell…and death, she exhibited a cheerful disposition, her sense of humor and gentle laughter lit the dreary ward, endearing herself to all of her patients and to him.
She suffered his insulting attack on her, accusing her of the worst kind of decadent behavior. Jarvis, the worst kind of vile bastard, beat her with a cane and sold her to a monstrous lecher, then when that didn’t work out, he sold her to Teakle. Selfless, she withstood her uncle’s demands at peril to herself. Under Sir Teakle, she’d be treated abominably. He knew the man, had seen his kind many times before. And she did it all to protect her cousin and Cookie. How he’d like to string those poor excuses of humanity up by their entrails. Too think, out of fear, she kept secret her humiliation.
His face grew rigid, without emotion, except for the tick in his jaw. Images of Sir Teakle pelted him like a hail storm. “What are you going to do about Sir Teakle?”
“Sir Teakle?” Claire broke out in laughter, and he bridled more. Smiling, she shook her head gravely. “I’m afraid I won’t be seeing Sir Teakle,” she giggled again.
Devon frowned. It consumed him so completely that at first he didn’t comprehend what she said. “Did you say you won’t be seeing him?”
Claire nodded. “I think I’ve rid myself of the odious Sir Teakle forever. You see he left on the first boat, frightened of the plague. He’s gone forever.”
He regarded her for a moment, realizing that he’d made a mistake−a ridiculous one, but that didn’t help to end his agitation either. He concluded he’d had good reason to be angered. And that anger he directed at himself for being such a fool where she was concerned. “I have been unfair. Do you accept my apology?”
She looked up to him with all the sincerity in the world mirrored in those golden eyes of hers. “Only if you accept my apology for vain and ungracious behavior.”
“Dr. Blackmon, we need your assistance,” Robert Ames whispered from the other side of the sacristy door, a hint of warning in his voice. “A man named Tom Dooley has arrived.”
Devon cursed. His fists tightened. The revelation of what she went through with Jarvis created a desire to beat the man senseless. “I must go.” He turned at the doorway. “When you are ready, you will work with me.”
Devon strode to the garden. Tom Dooley hovered about the table of food, glancing around while secreting foodstuffs into his pockets.
“Faith. If it isn’t Mr. Dooley filching noonday supper.”
“Who me?” He spun around, sausages cascading from his pockets, a loaf of bread tucked beneath his arm. His mouth gaped with pretended innocence, but his chagrin grew unmatchable.
Devon towered over him, his hands fisted on his hips. “A thief in addition to your other crimes?” he provoked. “Your secret is safe with me.” Devon allowed Dooley a moment’s relief and laughed.
Dooley’s mortification tempered. He was a short spare man, his dark eyes, the shining quickness of a sparrow. “Well, I hear you’ve been asking of me. And I’m wondering what a slave wants with a free man such as meself?”
“Need I remind you, you’re not a free man until you pay off your debt, and at the mercy of his governorship? I do recall that day in the courtroom rather well. Your fate was determined by my opinion. You should be inclined to thank your benefactor. As the governor’s doctor and main counsel−if you follow my drift.”
Tom Dooley stood comic, another snatched square of cake arrested halfway to his mouth.
“A good fellow I am, answered your summons, so the likes of you can blackmail a poor soul like me?” He actually pouted.
No.” Devon stroked his chin. “You’ve answered my summons to make a profit. A proposed business venture between you and me.”
Dooley’s eyes grew big-round like saucers. “You, a slave? No way. If caught, I’d be off to Gallows Point, swingin’ in chains.”
“And off to prison, and a certain future of slavery if not.” Devon let the threat fall on his new business associate. When he trembled, he aggravated him further. “Why not consider a handsome profit and ticket off the island?” Devon flashed a gold sovereign and Dooley’s greed won out. Devon slapped him on the back and laughed. “There’s a good man come to his senses.” Devon put his arm around Dooley’s shoulder. “There’s a skiff to be bought and outfitted with supplies. Enough for twenty men. Bargain on speculation, with promises in the future. The payment will be forthright, but not until we are near to depart.”
After several minutes of finalizing his plans with Dooley, Devon strode off to the hospital with an extra lightness to his step. Claire startled him standing in the doorway. Warily Devon glanced over his shoulder. Dooley had vanished along with half the booty of the noon day’s meal. He put his mind at rest, satisfied she had heard nothing of their conversation. Her eyes were still puffy and he’d do anything to remove those smudges. “Will you do me the honor of assisting me?”
“Do you think you could humble yourself and tell me a little of your history?” Claire said an attempt Devon felt to put awkward emotions behind them and build a friendship.
“With humility?”
“Is there such a possible thing?” she laughed.
In a rare good mood, perhaps from the gold in his coat, or more likely from an understanding he formed with Claire, Devon revealed a part of his past. “Conceived in Ireland, I am the son of an Irish doctor and Scottish born lady. From my mother’s veins ran a wildness in me that my peace-loving father, often alarmed, curtailed by resolving to put my quick and ready mind to study. It was my fortune that my father’s singular desire determined my Baccalaureus Medicinae Degree at the age of twenty-two. My sire died three months after my graduation.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Claire said.
Devon looked up into the massive hand-hewed beams of Christ’s Church for a moment, reflecting the pain of those long ago memories. “Circumstances coupled with my restless nature led me to leave Ireland. I signed on with the Dutch in their war against France which served my predilection for the sea. I fought several engagements in the Mediterranean under De Ruyter. Ironic, I didn’t think twice about joining France’s fight in their war with the Spanish. Again, my love for the sea was fulfilled on long voyages. Captured, I rotted two years in a Castilian prison.”
He searched her eyes, eyes with gold flecks, mesmerizing eyes that searched his soul, weighing with gravity what he imparted. He assessed no negative opinion on her part only curiosity. Had she seen more than he wanted to reveal?
“At the plum age of thirty-one, a festering war wound and my appetite for adventure abated. I yearned for the smell of my homeland. Destiny brought me to England where hostile seas ran my ship aground. I had significant fortune in my pocket from years of soldiering and discovered a modest village in Somerset County and settled there. My health returned, and soon I set out my shingle to at last take up the profession my father had prepared me.” He shrugged his shoulders. “The rest of my history attaches itself to my heedless mercy with the Duke of Monmouth during his uprising against the King.”
Claire shook her head. “I don’t understand. You’re trained to be a doctor, yet you−”
“Lived a decade of my life as a soldier,” he filled in for her. “Medicine, a pastime at best. My true calling, the life of a soldier brought me some fortune where doctoring brought me into slavery. An irony bestowed by the Heavens, favoring more to kill men than to heal them.”
“I am truly sorry. The fates have not been kind. You deserve so much more.”
Her reaction stunned him. Here he thought he’d receive some judgmental dismissal, but instead, she apologized for what happened to him. In fact, she looked at him, if he was to believe it, with an expression that looked almost like tenderness and contrition.
Devon squared his shoulders. “Have you given any thought to the plight of the orphans left from the plague?”
“It has been impossible to think about the future. Getting through each day has been enough of a trial. There will be orphans and something will need to be done.” If only she could wave some miracle over the populous and make this all go away.
A duo of pigeons fluttered across the church. In the heat, patients lay quiet except for a few isolated moans. Claire smoothed back a tendril of hair. “What is on your mind, Claire?”
After a few moments, she lowered her hand to her side. “My father leaving everything to my uncle, and nothing to me, I have always thought strange. Mrs. Bennett, God rest her soul, told me before she died that my father did not trust Jarvis. My father was not married at the time she knew him and informed her, he would leave everything to charity unless he had children.”
“Seems logical. Knowing Jarvis the way I do, he seized everything for himself. For a change in coin, a dishonest solicitor can have documents changed.”
“How do I prove I own the plantation?”
That had his complete attention. “I thought Jarvis owned the plantation.”
“I believe I own the plantation. I didn’t know of Jamaica until I met my uncle in London. Yet there remains a vague memory of conversation between my parents about the estate. Mrs. Bennett believed that I own the plantation. Her last words to me were, ‘find the deed’.”
Devon wiped his head with his forearm. “There must be documentation. Duel deeds were given to citizenry of England when they owned foreign properties. Jarvis would have destroyed or forged the deed in England to lay claim to ownership. If Mrs. Bennett was correct in her assertions of your father’s wishes then I’ll bet there remains a deed in Jamaica. Search the house when Jarvis is not about. Look everywhere. Your father would not leave the deed in an obvious place. He would have secreted it behind a wall or in a drawer. I’ll inquire of some elderly patients who might have known your father. Perhaps they can offer more.”
Claire frowned. “I believe what Mrs. Bennett said to be true. I feel so close to my father in Jamaica. It has to be true.”
“Ask Governor Stark.”
Claire nodded. “Mrs. Bennett claimed my father performed many improvements.”
Devon stroked his chin. “I’ve had ideas on improvements but not inclined to help Jarvis.”
Her eyes widened. “What would you do?”
For some reason he wanted to impress her. “I’d build a lumber mill by the river, construct a sugar mill on top of the ridge near the falls, erect a rum distillery and increase production of cane by using an irrigation system with diversion dams I observed the French use.” He warmed to the topic. The Irish in him craved to carve the raw wilderness and make the land productive.
A slow smile spread across her face. “You are so like my father.”
He was distracted by the smile that spread across her face. The declaration that he was like her father, the man she cherished and admired, humbled Devon. He’d walk across coals for her, or better yet, kiss her senselessly. Dammit all to hell. He’d keep his impulsiveness in check, for anything beyond the impersonal barrier he erected would serve no purpose for her future. He did not want to hurt Claire. A rare jewel such as she deserved love from a good man. He offered friendship and let it be at that. When the winds blew right, he’d be leaving. It gave him pause. How would he ever forget her?
Two weeks passed, the pestilence abated with many souls saved on account of a miracle from above, or likely Claire conceded, from Devon’s steady hand. A bottle she reached for wobbled then fell before she had a chance to right it. Glass shards ripped through her hand. She cried out. Devon was beside her and took Claire to the garden behind the church. He began to pull the glass splinters from her hand. Claire bit her lip and focused on a cloud in the sky, attempting to blot out the pain.
“What were you thinking? I would have fetched it for you.”
Claire grimaced. The tug of shards from her hand hurt terribly.
“You’re a brave girl,” he calmed her. “You have gentle hands. Hands that offered a lowly slave such as me a friendship.”
Friendship?
He finished bandaging her hand.
Claire rubbed her forehead with her good hand. Since their understanding in the sacristy, they had worked side by side, yet he yielded nothing but polite cordiality. There was no mention of the kiss they shared or any inclination toward that end. His polite cordiality hurt her the most. He need only to look at her−really look at her, to let his eyes fall on hers, deeply green and penetrating, to see her soul laid bare. Worst of all, he seemed to have no idea the ache he caused in her heart.
Claire grew stubborn. She had seen him shiver from her touch and decided on an entirely different tactic. With deliberate intention, she became bold, and let both her hands rest upon his face. She saw a light smolder in his eyes, heard his indrawn breath, before he grabbed her wrists.
“Stop this Claire. I can offer you nothing.”
They stood like characters in an artist’s portrait, rooted in the bosom of the sun’s dreamlike haze. Claire saw him gazing tenderly into her eyes, her senses ascending to a keen awareness. She smelled the sweet spicy scents of tamarind and nutmeg trees, and she felt the warm caress of the gentle breeze on her face. She listened to the low drone of bees buzzing in the hibiscus flowers that glowed red in layers of verdant foliage. It was as if they stood alone in the palm of the world, as if the sequestered beauty of the garden existed only for them.
The world seemed to close in on her, and she realized it was because he still held her wrists, his thumb moving in lazy circles across her skin. His gentle caress set off an intense yearning in her. She wanted to be closer to him, but he deliberately held her at a distance. She yearned for him to let down his defenses, to erase the differences that kept them apart. It hurt more than when he had taunted her with his sarcasm and neglect.
“This can go no further.” He shoved her away from him.
His denial scourged her like a knotted whip. Tears stung her eyes, but she refused to shed them, refused to let Devon have the satisfaction of his denial of her. Frustration slashed a deep, agonizing wound of what could be, and what could never be, and it spiraled uncontrollably, yielding to resentment. Resentment with the way things were, anger for the differences dividing them, and rage against the prospects of no future.
It galled her that he stood pious enough to make the moral decision for both of them. Her weakness toward him chafed raw and blistering. Her mind wavered and shook like a wind-swept leaf, twisting and perverting, she projected months of tension and aggravations, channeling all her vexations on Devon. “What were you really talking about with Mr. Dooley in the courtyard two weeks ago?”
“Now lass, never mind your pretty head about minor things like that.” His face hardened.
“What did Dooley want or what did you want?” He was defensive, hiding something. She was furious with her vulnerability.
“Ah that man,” Devon commented. “For sure, he’s a rascal, that one. He desired counsel on an infirmed relative, is all.” Devon narrowed his eyes. “Is it not right for a man to have a private discussion? His curt voice lashed out, fueling a cruelty rising inside her. She wanted to wound him where it would hurt the most because thorns were weaving around her heart.
“You are a slave. You have no rights.
He glared at her with savage fury.
“What about husbandly rights?” he blasted her. “Ah then−” he bit out with ruthless sarcasm. “There would have to be a woman for that. I believe there will never be enough of a woman in you for that notion. You guard your independence, yet freedom comes with the chains of a desperate promise made long ago in a faraway gaol. One simple promise, Madame, yet you are not woman enough to keep it nor ever will be.” He stalked away from her.