HF - 03 - The Devil's Own (71 page)

'Is Mama dead, Papa?' Tony asked.

He raised his head to look at the woman.

'It was Marguerite's instructions, in her letter to me. Kit, that the children were to be brought to you, wherever you were, when she began to die. If only I had understood then what she meant.'

'Aye,'
Kit
said. 'She is dead, Tony.'

'And will Miss Christianssen be our new Mama, Papa?' Rebecca asked.

Lilian's head jerked.

'That is what Mama said, before we left her, Papa,' Tony said. 'She came out to see us go, wearing her veil, and she said, you are going to have a new mo
ther, children. Miss Christians
sen.'

Kit
released them, and stood up. Lilian waited, her skirt fluttering in the breeze. 'I loved her,' he said. 'I could not stop loving her, even when I fell in love with you. Can you understand that, Lilian? I cannot. But there is so little I can understand. Yet is it true.'

'I understand that, Kit,' she said. 'I always did.'

He sighed, and took her hands. 'But she'll not stand between us in the future. You'll be my wife. Although I could not blame you for refusing even that, after so much.'

'Is
it
not what I have always dreamed, Kit? To act out of pride or pique, now, would be childish. And I hope Marguerite will ever stand
beside
me,
Kit.
To be the wife of Kit Hilton, with so much to do, can be no simple task.'

Kit turned, to watch the slaves filing up the hill, and into the compound. 'I would say, looking at their grief, that they loved her too. And that also I cannot understand.'

'Perhaps
it
is because they have known no better life,' Dag said. 'From what Agrippa told me, I doubt their existence in Africa was any less brutal, any less cruel. There they belonged
to their kings, here they belonged to Marguerite. But Kit, do they not
deserve
something better?'

Kit hesitated; Lilian's fingers were tight on his own. 'Aye,' he said. 'You'll build a chapel, Dag. In the slave compound itself.'

'I cannot teach them Christianity, with all it implies, unless I also teach them to read and write, and think,' Dag said.

'That has never been permitted,' Astrid said. 'The planters will hate you for it, Kit.'

'They have ever hated me, for something, Astrid. They hated me for being a buccaneer, as they hated me for being Meg Warner's husband, as they hated me for revealing them as they really are, an oligarchy of treacherous scoundrels. But now they will have to love me. Now, now I am master of Green Grove.'