We danced a few times that evening, she radiant and glowing, the silk of her dress slipping through my hands as I struggled to hold her in a fashion that would not appear unseemly. I was nervous and found myself nearly stumbling through the sets. She laughed at my missteps, a deep, vibrant laugh, her breath warm against my cheek when the dance brought us close. “You are new to this music?” she asked.
“Yes, I am,” I replied. “But I am sure I will learn.”
“You will, Fairfax, you will indeed,” she said. She smiled at me, her lips parting to reveal perfect teeth, the hint of a tongue flashing between them. I felt as if she owned me already.
I reminded myself as we danced that I had never cared for dark-haired women, but I had never known—never seen—a creature like her. When she stared directly into my eyes, which, unlike so many women, she often did, I felt as if she saw into my soul, saw all that I was, and when she smiled, I felt the kind of approbation I had always hoped for. When she danced with other men, my heart turned in my chest. I knew it was jealousy, and it made no difference at all that I had no claim to be jealous. She was courted at that ball, and at the balls to come, by nearly all the eligible young men in the neighborhood, and some who were neither eligible nor young. I looked for signs that she preferred me, but I never saw any, but neither did I see a sign that she preferred anyone else.
“So!” Richard grinned as we rode back to Valley View the following afternoon, still recovering from the ball, which had lasted through the night. “Is she not the most beautiful woman you have ever seen?”
“Actually,” I responded, just to tease him, “I have always preferred fair ladies.”
Richard’s head turned so quickly toward me that I thought it might fall right off his neck. “Really? Really? In preference to my sister?”
I laughed. “She is striking,” I admitted. And she was. But I would not allow myself to fall so easily as that. No, it took at least another event or two before I could admit to myself that I must have Miss Bertha Antoinetta Mason as my bride. However, I was sure I wasn’t the only young man with such thoughts, for wherever Bertha went, men dropped whatever they were doing and clustered around her as honeybees to clover. But I hoped, given what my father had told me about his friendship and history with Mr. Mason, that my chances might be higher than most. Indeed, it had almost seemed that my father had promised her to me.
It was Bertha’s custom to arrive late in order to make the kind of entrance I had seen at Monteith. She would dance for an hour or two and then leave. She did not single me out particularly, but we usually danced together two or three or four times, and she always managed to charm and flatter me to the point where it was all I could do to keep myself from running off with her. But inevitably she would flit away with another man, or with her friends, and be, once again, lost to me.
And then one day I had occasion to arrive at Valley View unexpected and unannounced, for I had developed a business idea that I was eager to discuss with Mr. Mason. Although Jamaica was not on the normal sailing route between England and North America, I had noticed that immigration along that route was increasing mightily. In addition, I knew that abolitionist forces within the English Parliament were growing stronger, and I was sure they would win out sooner or later. Moreover, even the short acquaintance that I had with the sugar plantation system made clear to me that such an economy could not endure once slavery was abolished. Then what? I had asked myself: my plantation and the ships that carried its products would be worthless. But, I calculated, the ships could be refitted to carry loads of passengers. I had broached the subject once with Mr. Mason, but he had waved me off, assuring me that while it was true that abolition could end the sugar trade as we knew it, that very fact would prevent Parliament from acting in a way that would endanger such profitable enterprises on both sides of the Atlantic.
At the time I had not been able to convince him otherwise, but I had recently come across a beauty of a ship: a three-masted square-rigged vessel, speedy and reliable for the transatlantic passenger and packet trade. Mr. Mason and I could get our feet into that trade while my current ships were still in sugar. The Sea Nymph was at that time lying in Kingston Harbor, available for purchase, but I hadn’t the funds on hand for it. Somehow, I needed to convince Mr. Mason to take it on with me.
Since my father had handed over all his interests in Jamaica to me, Mr. Mason and I were partners now, our operations intertwined with each other, and this idea of a passenger venture would only solidify that partnership. In my eagerness to consult with Mr. Mason, I hurried to Valley View without sending advance word to him or to his son; I had visited often enough and discussed business on occasion before leaving for various balls, and I just assumed that Mr. Mason would be there, for he always was; he much preferred it to anyplace else on the island.
But that day, as I climbed up the steps to the veranda, a servant opened the door and welcomed me inside with a wordless smile. The vast reception room was empty but for its furnishings. I turned back toward the servant, but she had disappeared. Muffled voices and even a quick outburst of laughter came from an adjoining room, and, not knowing what else to do, I stepped toward the sound and opened the door. I could not have been more astonished at the sight that greeted me there.
The room’s shutters were closed, and in the gloom I could see three or four young women sitting cross-legged on the floor in a far corner, dipping their hands into a bowl of some kind of food and licking their fingers with boisterous appreciation. They were all dressed in the plain and simple shifts that the negro children wore, which all of them—even Bertha—had pulled up above their knees. Even Bertha.
She was not facing me, but I recognized her by her hair, pulled together with a string and falling carelessly down her back. She did not see me until the others, caught suddenly in an indiscretion, silenced their laughter, and she turned to look, her fingers still in her mouth. Staring at me, she slowly rose. I saw that she was barefoot, as the others were—the others, all negroes, suddenly scattering away out of sight—but she stood her ground. “Fairfax,” she said, her low voice caressing my name in a way I had never before heard. “What an unexpected surprise.” But there was neither surprise nor warmth in her countenance. Instead, she simply watched, her head tipped coyly downward, but her eyes on mine.
I made my bow. “But not an unpleasant one, I hope,” I said.
“You have come for my father, I presume,” she said.
“Yes, I have, but it’s a pleasure for me to have encountered you.” That was my manners still speaking, for I hardly knew what to make of the scene I had just witnessed, or of the way she was clothed—barely—or the way she was behaving.
And then she broke into a broad, impish smile, her eyes still holding mine, and she seemed at that moment like nothing more than a child caught with her hand in the biscuit jar. I could not help smiling in return. Then, with another shift equally abrupt, she turned from me and called for the negress who had allowed me into the house. “He has come to see my father, as you should well have known,” she snapped as the woman appeared. “You will wait for me in the kitchen.”
Wordlessly the girl ran out of the room, and without a further glance at me, Bertha left the room as well, her final acknowledgment of me only the words that trailed behind her: “He is not at home. You should have saved yourself the trouble.”
I watched her go, stunned at the mystery of her. The outlines of her body were clear through the flimsy muslin of the shift, and at that moment when I should have been shocked, I could not have wanted her more.
* * *
Mr. Mason and I were sitting on the veranda, mugs of grog in hand. I had sent him a note the day after my unannounced visit, to ensure his presence when I came this time, and I put my proposition to him immediately on my arrival. I could tell he was not impressed with my notion that abolition would come well within his lifetime, nor was he particularly taken with the idea of partnering with me in the purchase of the Sea Nymph. “What do you know about buying boats?” he asked abruptly, and I had to agree that I could only take the word of another shipping agent. He responded to that with a long draw on his cigar. And then he said, “My daughter seems quite taken with you.”
“She is indeed beautiful and charming,” I responded cautiously.
He turned to face me, and I scrambled for more.
“Any man would be proud to have her on his arm. Any man”—suddenly I threw caution to the wind—“I would be proud to have her on my arm. As my wife. If she would have me.”
He was still gazing at me. “You come from a good family. I know your father well, and admire him.”
“And you know my circumstances,” I said. “My plantation is not as big as yours, but, nevertheless…And there is the importing and exporting business.” I did not repeat a mention of the immigrant trade, though it was heavily on my mind. “I am young and in good health, and, as you have said—”
“You are still stuck on that ship, of course,” he interrupted. “You think that this…this migration across the Atlantic would be profitable.”
“I do.”
“But you have never actually started an endeavor on your own, have you. You have no idea of the risks.”
“I have not founded anything, it’s true, but I have worked closely with men who have. I know the way they think, the way they evaluate opportunities.”
“I have two children,” Mr. Mason said suddenly. “My wife is gone; when I die, my son and daughter will inherit all I own, equally.” He looked closely at me, to make sure I understood. “And I suppose you would want a dowry as well.”
“I…I had not thought—”
“I propose thirty thousand pounds,” he said.
I was dumbfounded. I did not know what to say.
“Yours. To do with as you choose.”
“You are very generous,” I said. “But—what of her? Does she want to marry me?”
“Of course she does. I would not have made this offer if I did not already know that. What kind of father do you think I am?”
“I’m sorry, sir, it’s just that—”
“I have only one daughter,” he said. “I want the best for her. I expect you to treat her in the way she deserves and has become accustomed to.”
“Yes, sir, of course,” I said.
“We’ll drink on it,” he said, raising his mug.
* * *
We were to be married on the twentieth day of October, and in those intervening weeks I could hardly think of anything other than that beautiful creature, clothed as simply as a negress, barefoot, her glorious hair tied carelessly back from her lovely face. I lost myself in happy reverie, to know that she had wanted me as much as I did her. Though we were now betrothed, I had little more occasion to spend time alone with her than I had had before, but that distance and mystery only increased my desire. I pined for her, imagining her with one of her many suitors, jealous of all the months or years they had been in her presence and I had not, jealous of the times they had danced with her, their arms at her waist, jealous of her touch, her whisper, her disarming smiles. I imagined her soon tied to me forever in marriage, her wild, mercurial spirit so unlike those docile, simpering, boring, proper women like Mary MacKinnon. Life with Bertha would always be new, always exciting. I was mad for her; I was wild with longing. I could not wait to have her for my own.
Her father welcomed me into the family with a smile and a cigar and a toast of rum punch. He seemed to have come to accept me fully as a partner, to see that I did have a head for business, that my education had been all he would have hoped for in a partner as well as a son. So often in marriages such as this was to be, the arrangements are quite drawn out, as the families argue and bargain over every little jot and tittle. But in this case, they were so easily made that I could hardly believe it myself.
I had imagined that we would live in Spanish Town after the wedding, but when she was told, Bertha wept at the idea. Valley View had always been her home; she could not imagine living anywhere else. I gave in on that, for the house there was large and it was clear that Jonas wanted us there. He had expressed a desire for me to begin keeping an eye on the management of the sugar operations on both his large estate and my much smaller one, in addition to our joint business ventures in Spanish Town. It was not a great distance to Spanish Town, or even to Kingston. The thirty thousand pounds had made it quite possible for me to buy the Sea Nymph, and I already had plans for refurbishing it.
I saw the whole of it as an astonishingly lucky turn of events. I had been in Jamaica for less than three months, and here I was on the verge of marriage to the most beauteous creature I could imagine, and with a golden future ahead of me. It could not have been better if it had all been planned that way.
Which, I eventually came to understand, it had been. All of it. From the time I was put to work at Mr. Wilson’s mill to the time I arrived in Jamaica to the time I had first seen Bertha. The only unexpected event was the one chance encounter I had had with her, and at which, if I had been wiser or more experienced or more prescient, I would have known to flee. As it was, I walked right into it, with my eyes open, believing only that I had been granted an incredible future.