Enemy In The House (9 page)

“It’s cool.”

Neville glanced down at his velvet and lace. “I prefer a gentleman’s dress.” His blue eyes laughed. “So you were spying on me just now in the garden!”

“We couldn’t help seeing,” Amity said. “Leave her alone, Neville.”

“Oh, now, Cousin—” He took Amity’s hand and, laughing up at her, kissed it; his gesture was graceful as the step of a minuet.

Charles said quietly, “You did seem on rather good terms with her.”

Neville’s eyebrows arched again, carelessly. “Oh, as to that—” He made an airy gesture, paused to admire his own white hand below its lacy ruffles and said, “She can hold her own, though, you know. Why did she come to Jamaica, Amity? Didn’t you ask her?”

“Because she wanted to. She was available. China needed a maid.”

“Well,” Neville said, “I’ll swear I’ve seen her somewhere.”

Charles looked down at the darkening sea. “Where?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere. Different clothes. Everything was different.” Neville half shut his eyes. “I swear I think she was wearing a ball gown. White with a green pattern—her hair done
à la mode
and powdered. A little patch near her upper lip—”

“Really, Neville!” Charles said. “You sound lyrical.”

“The trouble is I can’t be sure. A Charlestown ball last winter—no, I’d remember that. Perhaps the winter before. You live in Charlestown, Charles. Have you ever seen her?”

“Never,” Charles said flatly.

“Oh. Well—it doesn’t matter. But she’s a damnably attractive girl.”

“Didn’t you tell her you had seen her before?” Charles asked, still watching the colors of the sea changing from blue to purple.

Neville sighed. “She wouldn’t listen to me. Laughed and—oh, well, it doesn’t matter. I could be wrong. You have an eye for a pretty face. You would certainly remember her if she lived in Charlestown and went to the balls.” He gave Charles a flashing blue glance, which held more than a spark of skepticism.

“I never saw her anywhere until she came aboard the ship,” Charles said positively.

Neville laughed. “Now, Amity, promise not to say anything of this to my mother. She’d have the girl off the place in no time. Unless, of course, Hester could prove she’s a Princess Royal.” He slid off the railing, shook his green velvet coat into place with one airy gesture, and sauntered into the house.

“Do you suppose he really did see Hester somewhere?” Amity asked.

Charles shrugged. “I don’t think it matters—” He checked himself and Amity, too, heard heavy footfalls on the curving steps to the veranda and turned. Grappit, his white linen suit now limp and wrinkled, was coming up the stairs. His face was livid, his pale eyes burning with anger.

Amity knew at once what had happened. A path ran from the driveway, around the east end of the house, parallel with the garden. Grappit had come from that direction and he had seen what she and Charles had seen—or more.

His first words left no doubt of that. “Niece, you’ve got to get rid of that nursemaid. Immediately.”

It was contrary, it was natural; Amity ranged herself at once with Hester. “There’s no place for her to go, Uncle. We employed her.”

“China employed her. She has no more common sense than a child. I tell you that girl has got to go—”

“We brought her here. It is our place to see to her—”

He gave her an angry glance, flung open the door and shouted. “You—Hester—whatever your name is—come here at once!”

Aunt Grappit came sailing out instead, fanning herself with a great palmetto leaf. “Mr. Grappit! What is all this?”

“I want that girl—” Grappit strode into the house and shouted again. “Hester—”

Neville sidled out in his mother’s wake, looking rather scared. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

They all listened. They couldn’t have helped listening, for Grappit’s voice came out rasping with anger. “You, girl! You’re to leave. At once.”

Hester’s voice came from the lounge, too, composedly. “I don’t understand you, sir.”

“It’s plain enough. You’re to leave. Now, tonight—”

Amity started for the door. Hester’s cool voice checked her. “Madam employed me.”

“You’re not doing your work. Dolcy sees to the boy. You’re not needed.”

“Dolcy is an excellent nursemaid,” Hester said calmly.

“Oh, Lud,” Neville whispered, beside Amity. He shot a guilty glance at his mother, who held the palmetto leaf quiet in order to listen, too.

Grappit shouted, “Where did you get that dress? God’s life, it’s silk—”

“My mistress, Madam Tooke, was kind enough to give it to me.”

“Dressed like a fine lady! I’ll have none of this—this—”

“This what, sir?” Hester asked coolly.

“You’re to leave, that’s all. Go to Kingston. Go to Spanish Town. Somebody will hire you. Or you can live another way—easy for you, wench—”

Hester’s voice was suddenly icy cold. “You are insulting.”

Amity went swiftly into the lounge. Candles were lighted and Hester stood in the middle of the circle of light, flaunting her green silk, her pretty face both sulky and defiant.

Amity said, “Hester stays here. We are her only friends in Jamaica.”

Grappit wiped his glistening face. “Why did she come to Jamaica? To get herself a rich husband, I’ll be bound.”

“Is that a crime?” Hester said, softly but defiantly again. “You saw me with your son. Can I help it if he finds me attractive?”

Neville, his face white and scared, came into the lounge. “Pa, it was only—you can’t just send her away—a strange country. It was my fault, sir, entirely my fault—”

Hester gave him a long, enigmatic look. Amity said crisply, “Go and see to your duties, Hester. China and I will settle this, Uncle. Neville meant no harm.”

China fluttered out from the corridor looking scared, too. She stared at Hester, who paused at the entrance to the corridor and made a deep bow in Grappit’s direction. She was at the very edge of the pool of candlelight so her face with its strange mixture of weakness and obstinacy was half lighted, half in the shadow, and Amity was sure a little smile wavered across it. “I think I’ll stay, sir,” she said. “As long as I wish. Perhaps as long as this house stands at Mallam Penn—if I so desire it.” She rose from that deep, rather mocking bow. In a swish of green silk she vanished along the corridor. She was mocking them, choosing words of defiance, mere words. Yet Amity stared after her, obscurely troubled.

Grappit gave an angry mutter and strode out to the veranda. China turned to Amity with wide eyes. “La, what’s Hester been doing?”

Neville recovered. He shot one glance at his father’s retreating back and came, all grace, to give China his arm. “Nothing,” he said. “It was my fault. I was flirting a little with the girl—Pa saw it and—oh, you know Pa. You can’t turn her out—strange place, all that.”

With all the grace of a courtier he offered his arm to China, who was quite capable of negotiating the threshold to the veranda herself, and China took it with a little coquettish air. “I vow, Neville, you mustn’t turn my nursemaid’s head.”

Hester had routed Grappit, for the moment at least. Yet there was something about the girl’s defiance and assuredness that troubled Amity. She took a candle and followed her along the corridor and found Hester at the mirror in her own room.

She turned as Amity said, “Where is Jamey?”

“Dolcy is giving him his supper.” Hester replied promptly and respectfully enough, except that mocking smile still lingered on her full, pretty lips.

“Hester, why did you speak like that?”

“Like what, ma’am?”

“You said you’d stay here as if—why, as if you meant forever.”

Hester’s white eyelids drooped. “I was angry, ma’am. The words came to my lips.”

Unexpectedly, contrarily again, Amity felt sorry for the girl. “Hester, we are your only friends here. I must ask you to—to—” She faltered. It was not the girl’s fault that Neville was drawn to her like a moth to a candle flame.

Hester smiled, openly this time. “Avoid your pretty cousin? La, ma’am, tell
him
that!”

Amity was bested, no doubt about that. She said, “It takes two to play that sort of game,” and left.

She was irritated as much with herself as with Hester. She sounded exactly like Aunt Grappit in one of her haughtiest moods. Neville could look after himself. She wasn’t so sure about Hester, in spite of her self-assurance, having once incurred Grappit’s anger. He had looked, just for a moment, fully capable of wringing the girl’s neck. Parson Shincok’s fat neck that bulged over his white linen had been broken. There was no proof of murder; none. All this nonsense of Neville and Hester was a tempest in a teapot.

Amity was seeking out a fresh, thin dimity dress when a maid opened the door softly, saw Amity and made an embarrassed little duck. Amity thought she said that she was sorry, she had not knocked, she thought no one was in the room. The maid muttered it all so rapidly that no one word was distinguishable. “Jalousies,” said the maid. “Storm coming—”

“Storm? But it is so clear!”

The maid’s bright red and green skirt and yellow turban flashed across the room. She closed the jalousies. “Bad storm.”

“When? Tonight?”

“She not say when.”

“She?”

The maid sidled toward the door. “Obeah woman.”

“W
HO?”

“Obeah woman. I go now, lady.” She flashed past Amity in a blur of red and green and yellow.

Obeah woman, Amity thought perplexed, and then remembered something she had heard, something her father had once written. Yes. “—in fact the place near seems to be run by a kind of witch woman, they call her the obeah woman. What she does, aside from pretending to prophesy and to cast spells, I don’t know, but she is cursedly powerful—”

It was only a sentence or two; Amity wasn’t sure that she remembered it exactly but she remembered enough. So it was the obeah woman who had said it would storm. Naturally, the servants believed her. Certainly there was nothing anybody could do about the power of the obeah woman. Amity had another swift recollection of her father, a glass of Madeira in his hand, discoursing to her and Simon as he was wont to do after their lessons in Latin.

“Mores,” he said. Amity remembered the sense of it, almost the exact words. “Now that means folkways which have become a fundamental moral belief of a social group.” He waved one elegant hand at them. “Never try to change the mores of a people. Like hitting your head against a stone wall. Besides, it’s damnably impolite. So remember your manners, Simon, Amity. And learn ten more Latin nouns by tomorrow.”

She had thought of her father twice in the moment, so clearly that it was as if his indulgent, smiling presence had touched her. If he had been there in fact, what would he have done? He’d have ignored the Grappits and gone his own way. She couldn’t merely ignore the Grappits. And once she and Charles had spoken the word
murder,
she couldn’t really ignore that either.

She fastened herself into the fresh white dimity dress with its scarlet ribbons, and went to dinner. The meal was again hot, heavy and too highly spiced. Nothing was said of the scene with Hester although Grappit’s lantern jaw looked set and hard and Neville seemed a little subdued.

That night the men lingered around the table, taking port; the ladies sat in the lounge, waiting for the cooling night breeze which that night, however, failed to arrive. China had heard about Madam Grappit’s one trip to London many times before. It had taken place at least four years ago, before the trouble with the colonies flared up into gunshots at a place in New England called Bunker Hill. She described the gardens at Vauxhall and the night she had been there when the King’s party arrived and she was sure that the King had recognized her and nodded. But when she finished and nodded her head complacently, China asked her to tell of her presentation to the King and Queen, her baby-blue eyes wide as if she’d never heard the story before. Aunt Grappit preened herself and began.

The men came out; tea came out; Aunt Grappit poured. Neville handed the cups with what struck Amity as rather nervous desire to please, seeing that China had the sugar she wished, and bringing a small table to stand beside her and hold the cup.

Charles said nothing but looked extremely thoughtful. Grappit had recovered his self-possession and indeed seemed obscurely pleased. He even went so far as to suggest, smiling, that China walk to the gate with him. “A little fresh air before retiring,” he said and offered his own lanky arm.

China yawned. “But really, Uncle—”

“Nonsense, go on, child. I vow I’d walk, too, if I could after such a dinner,” Aunt Grappit said quickly.

Charles gave China an odd glance as if debating something within himself but then shrugged. “I’ll say good night,” he said and kissed her lightly, bowed to Aunt Grappit and Amity, and left the lounge. China, looking as if there was no way out of the trap, took Grappit’s arm.

Amity said her good nights, which neither Neville nor Aunt Grappit seemed to hear, and went to her own room.

She was about to blow out her candle when China tapped on the door and without waiting for a reply came quickly into the room, cautiously closed the door behind her, looked at Amity and giggled. She wiped her eyes and sank down, bubbling with glee, into the big chair. “Guess what! A declaration in due form! Your Uncle Grappit!”

“Uncle Grappit!” For a second a mad notion of dalliance on Grappit’s part struck Amity.

“Oh, I don’t mean for himself! Lud, Amity—” China choked with laughter. “What would he do with Aunt Grappit! Plunk her in the sea with weights tied to her? Small loss if he did—”

“Who then?
Neville?
”

“Neville, of course. It was all in great form, I assure you. That’s why the men stayed so long in the dining parlor. He spoke to Charles first, that is, Grappit did. Asked for my hand, all very proper. Then he spoke to me—took me for a walk—oh, lud, I shall die.”

“Why didn’t Neville speak for himself?”

China went off into fresh giggles. “Uncle Grappit said that as my guardian he wished to tell me that Neville had asked for my hand. He spoke to Charles because Charles was my brother and Charles told him that I must make my own decision. Uncle Grappit said it was a delicate situation, I would understand that. He said Neville wished to marry me—”