Trade Wind (32 page)

“What you really mean,” said Hero furiously, ‘is that you have been bribed by the opposite faction, and though you are entirely willing to smuggle in articles that will assist one side, you cannot endure anyone doing the same thing for the other—for fear they might be making more money out of it than you are.”

“But I thought you implied that you had not made any money?” observed Captain Frost gently.

“You know perfectly well what I mean!”

“I do. And I trust you will know equally well what I mean when I tell you that this meddling in matters that are no concern of yours must stop.”

“And who is going to stop me, Captain Frost?” enquired Hero in an ominously level tone.

“Your uncle, for choice. I presume he has some authority over you. But should he not feel capable of stopping you I have no doubt Colonel Edwards would be prepared to deputize for him, since this is likely to be one occasion on which they will find themselves in complete agreement.”

Hero forced a light artificial laugh, and said scathingly: “And do you really suppose that either of them would believe you?—even if they consented to receive you, which I doubt? You must consider me foolish indeed if you suppose that you can frighten me by threatening to take such absurd tales to my uncle or Colonel Edwards, both of whom know far too much about you.”

“And far too little about you, it would seem. You may be right: though I must hope you are not, because otherwise I can see that I will have to deal with you myself. And that, my girl, is likely to lead to a lot of unpleasantness.”

He studied Hero’s compressed lips and flashing eyes with a certain grim amusement, and added pensively: “You know, you may be a good-looking young woman, Miss Hollis, but you appear to me to be spoilt and a termagant; a combination I find excessively tedious. In fact I doubt if it would appeal to anyone—even Mr Mayo—and I would most earnestly suggest that you strive to conquer these defects before it is too late.”

“Indeed?” said Hero in a voice that sounded as though it had been dipped in acid: “I’m sorry, sir, that I cannot offer you similar advice, but I fear that in your case it is already far too late. And now, if you have quite finished and are sure that you have no further suggestions to make as to how I may improve my conduct and character, I should like to continue my ride—
alone!
Goodbye, Captain Frost.”

She pulled on the off-side rein, and though she had never used a whip on Sherif before, she used it now, and the horse reared up and round, and raced back along the way they had come, almost oversetting the startled groom, and raising a white cloud of dust for the wind to blow away between the tangled thickets.

A comforting smell of hot coffee and new-baked bread permeated the Consulate, and Cressy, Aunt Abby and Clayton were already seated at the breakfast table. But although Hero’s appetite was normally excellent-and never more so than after an early ride—this morning she found herself quite unable to eat.

She had ridden Sherif into a lather and she was hot, dusty and tired, but it was anger and not physical exhaustion that constricted her throat and made it difficult for her to swallow more than a mouthful or two of coffee.

A slave trader! A gun-runner and a self-confessed thief, taking that high-handed tone with her and presuming to lecture her as though she had been a naughty Sunday-school child caught stealing from the collection plate. How had he found out? Who had told him? Would he really betray her to Uncle Nat or carry tales to the British Consul? Surely he would not dare to do such a thing. They knew what he was and they would never listen to him. Or would they? If they did, if Uncle Nat were to question her, what was she going to say? Could she refuse to reply to the charge? Maybe that would be the best way out, since she could not possibly betray Thérèse and Cressy and Olivia—let alone the Seyyidas and their brother Bargash, who might all face imprisonment, or worse, if the Sultan came to hear of this.

Yes, that was what she would have to do. If that despicable Englishman came tattling to Uncle Nat she would keep silent, and allow it to be supposed that she considered it beneath her dignity to defend herself against a charge brought against her by such a corrupt and infamous person. (From which it will be seen that Miss Hollis, like many of her sex, held the view that in certain circumstances prevarication and
suggestio falsi
were admissible, but a direct lie was not.)

“What is worrying you, Hero?”

Clayton’s voice interrupted her troubled thoughts and Hero started, and looking up found him regarding her with a frowning intentness that told her how plainly she had permitted her own discomposure to show in her face. She attempted a smile and said: “Nothing, Clay,” but neither the smile nor the lightness of tone she had aimed at were a success, and the frown lines deepened on Clayton’s forehead as he watched her:

“Are you sure? You are looking very tired. I wish you wouldn’t go riding without me. I am not at all certain that it is safe, or that you will not go too far and overtire yourself in the sun.”

“Personally,” said Cressy, buttering a hot biscuit, “it’s not the sun I mind so much as the wind. I know it helps to keep the house cool, but I’m always thankful when it stops. It’s the
noise
…all those palm trees rustling and the sound that it makes through the window-shutters and under the doors. And then the surf all day and every day,
crash, crash, crash,
and never any quiet, until I sometimes feel I’d like to scream. You know. Hero, you
do
look very pale. Is the wind getting on your nerves too? Or is it the heat?”

“Neither. But I am a little tired,” confessed Hero.’ I took a wrong turning on the way back, and my groom never said a word because he thought I wished to go that way.”

Clayton said nothing more, but he continued to watch her, and Hero was seized with a sudden and urgent desire to confide in him. It would be so comfortable to have someone to whom she could pour out the whole story and who would take her part and advise her, and tell her that she had been right.

But then would Clayton tell her that she had been right? It seemed far more likely that he would say ‘I told you so’ which would be insupportable. He had advised her against seeing too much of Thérèse Tissot and Bargash’s loyal sisters, and he would think how right he had been to do so, and might even consider himself bound to disclose the whole affair to Uncle Nat. Men were never to be trusted in such matters, for they had some very tiresome ideas on the subject of Duty, and she could not risk it But when it was all over—when Bargash had become Sultan and the Island was more prosperous and better governed, and freed from the disgrace of a shameful Treaty and the pernicious influence of a shameless slave trader—she would tell him everything, and he would be proud of the part she had played in bringing it about. Until then he must be kept in ignorance…unless Captain Frost betrayed her. If that should happen—

Hero found herself back once more at the same starting point and facing the same arguments, and she pushed her coffee cup away from her with a sudden, violent gesture and rising abruptly, excused herself and left the room. But Clayton had moved with equal swiftness and she had barely reached the foot of the staircase when he came into the hall, and closing die door of the breakfast room behind him said: “Hero, wait—”

Hero paused reluctantly on the bottom step, one hand on the newel post, and he crossed the hall in three strides and laying his hand over hers, said in a low voice: “Something has disturbed you, hasn’t it? Oh, you need not deny it. It was obvious from the moment you came in. Can’t you tell me about it?”

“No, Clay. Not now, please.”

“Why not? You must know that I would wish to protect you from any anxieties. Or if that is not possible, at least to share them with you. It was something that occurred in the course of your ride, wasn’t it? It must be, for you were in excellent spirits last night Who did you meet, Hero? Who has been upsetting you? Was it Thérèse Tissot?”

“
Thérèse
?”

The surprise in her voice was as patent as the relief, and Clayton flushed, and withdrawing his hand said quickly: “I only thought she might have said something to upset you. She has a reputation for making mischief for the mere love of it, and she enjoys setting people at odds. I know she finds Zanzibar intolerably dull, but it is unfortunate that her search for excitement should drive her to inventing and disseminating items of gossip that she knows will cause trouble.”

Hero said a trifle stiffly: “That is a grave charge to bring, Clay. You cannot know that, and surely it is unjust to condemn anyone on mere hearsay?”

The flush deepened over Clayton’s cheekbones, and he looked away, and said in a repressed voice: “I would not wish to be uncharitable towards any woman, if only for your sake; and I admit that at one time I thought her much maligned and greatly to be pitied, for Henri Tissot is an elderly bore and she has no children to occupy and console her. I thought that it was our duty to try and make life more tolerable for her instead of criticizing her, but I soon came to see that I was wrong, and that all I had been told of her was true. That is why I did not want you to become too intimate with her.”

Hero removed her foot from the bottom step of the staircase and came to stand beside him. “How did you come to see it, Clay? Did she tell you herself, or did you discover it from the same people who had maligned her to you before?”

Clay turned his head, and his grey eyes were pained and candid. He said: “If you must know, she told me something that I knew to be entirely untrue and the purpose of which could only have been to ruin a man’s career and a woman’s happiness. That is all I can tell you. But perhaps you now understand why I wondered if you had met Madame Tissot when you returned looking so distraught I thought that perhaps she had been talking scandal about—about Cressy.”

“Goodness no. Why, Thérèse is devoted to Cressy. And anyway it wasn’t Thérèse whom I met.”

“Then you did meet someone. Someone who frightened you and upset you.”

“Yes-no! Clay, I would rather not discuss it if you do not mind. Not just yet.”

“Is it something to do with me? Is that why it cannot be told?”

“Now you are being absurd,” said Hero lightly. “How could it be anything of the sort? It is just
because
it is nothing to do with you that I do not wish to burden you with it.”

“And if I tell you that it would not be a burden, but a privilege?”

“No, Clay. It is something I do not want to talk about at present, but when I do I promise that I will talk of it to you first There, are you satisfied?”

“It seems I shall have to be,” said Clay wryly.

He took her hand and kissed it, and stood watching her as she went quickly up the stairs, the skirt of her habit trailing behind her and her footsteps making a sharp, hollow sound on the polished treads.

She vanished from his sight round the turn of the landing and he heard the door of her bedroom close behind her, but he did not move and he was still standing there staring thoughtfully into space when his mother and Cressy came out of the breakfast-room.

“What is the matter, Clay?” demanded Aunt Abby sharply, disturbed by the look on her son’s face: “Is anything wrong? Has Hero?”

Clay’s face lost its rigid look and he shrugged and said: “I don’t know. Mama. She will not tell me. Something or someone has upset her. And it is not the sun—or the wind either!”

“Perhaps when you become engaged to her…?” suggested his mother tentatively.

“That might come about a lot sooner if Cressy would not encourage her to go around with such persons as Thérèse Tissot,” said Clay with a trace of asperity.

“Oh, pooh!” retorted his sister. “You’re a fine one to talk when this time last year you used to take Thérèse riding almost every day.”

Clayton’s mouth twitched in a way that his sister recognized as a danger signal, and he said coldly: “It is precisely because I know Thérèse better than you do that I do not wish this friendship encouraged. But I fully realize that I have only to express my disapproval of someone for you to take the opposite view—as witness your flirtation with that British bum-kin off the gunboat, whose pretensions you have done your best to encourage.”

“I have not!” colour flamed in Cressy’s pretty face: “I won’t have you saying so! And he has only called once since his ship returned a week ago, and then I had a headache and could not receive him.”

“That is true, you know, Clay,” intervened their mother anxiously. “And when the Lieutenant asked if he might call again and take Cressy riding one morning, she sent down a message to say that she really could not tell when she would feel like riding again. He said that he quite understood, and she has seen nothing of him since because he has not called again; has he, Cressy dear?”

The angry colour faded from Cressy’s face, leaving it looking white and woebegone, and she said in a small desolate voice: “No. No he has not. I thought—I thought…”

Her voice wavered and broke, and turning quickly away she ran up the stairs to her cousin’s room.

Hero’s discarded habit lay on the ottoman and Hero herself, clad in a loose muslin
peignoir
, was standing by the window that looked down at the flower-filled spaces of the garden. She turned and said abruptly, without giving Cressy time to speak: “Come in Cressy, and shut the door. What is your mother doing this morning? Do you know if she will be staying in?”

Cressy closed the door, and impressed by the urgency in Hero’s voice, turned die key as an added precaution against interruption and said: “I believe Mama intends to take morning coffee with Mrs Kealey. Why, Hero?”

“Because I must see Olivia at once. It should be Thérèse, for she has far more sense. But since both your father and Clay seem so set against her, it will have to be Olivia. And I particularly do not wish Clay to know. If he hears that I have asked to see her this morning he will only start being suspicious, and if Aunt Abby knows she will be sure to tell him.”

Cressy drew a deep breath and put her hands to her throat. “Then he was right. He said something had happened. Hero, what is it?”