Ryder gave him a languorous smile. "We'll go, naturally."
Grayson left to write an acceptance and Ryder closed his eyes again. He didn't move much; it was too hot. He knew he couldn't go swimming just yet else he'd be baked within ten minutes by that inferno of a sun and his face and arms were already a bit burned. Thus, he sat there quietly and soon he slept.
When he awoke, afternoon shadows were lengthening and Emile was sitting beside him, his long legs stretched out in front of him.
"Your father says I will become accustomed," Ryder said. "I think he's lying to me."
Emile grunted. "A bit, but the summers are particularly brutal."
"Is it ever too hot to make love, I wonder?"
Emile laughed. "Yes, it is. I hear we are to go to a ball at Camille Hall this Friday night."
'Yes, I am to be honored. I think, however, that [ would prefer swimming, perhaps even trying to shinny up a coconut tree again or even chase a villain who is wearing a sheet."
Emile grinned. "It should be amusing, Ryder. You will meet all the planters and merchants from Montego Bay and their wives. You will hear so much gossip your ears will ache. There is little else to do here, you see, except drink rum, which most do to excess, unfortunately. Also, Father is much taken with Sophia Stanton-Greville, and she is Burgess's niece and hostess. I don't doubt he would challenge any man to a duel if he dared say something insulting about Father's goddess."
"I also understand that she is a whore."
"Yes," Emile said, not looking at Ryder, "that's what is understood."
"This displeases you. You've known her a long time?"
"Her parents were drowned in a storm four years ago on a return voyage from England. Sophie and her brother, Jeremy, were given into the guardianship of Theodore Burgess, her mother's younger brother. She has lived here since she was fifteen. She is now nineteen, nearly twenty, and her exploits with men and thus her reputation began over a year ago. You are right, it displeases me and dis
appoints me even more. I had quite liked her. She was a spirited girl, fun and without guile or vanity. Indeed, I once thought that we might—but that's not important now."
'You know it as a fact then?"
"She meets her lovers at this small cottage that fronts the beach. I chanced to visit the cottage following a night she spent with Lord David Lochridge. David was still there, naked, and drinking a rum punch. The place reeked of sex. He seemed quite pleased with himself. He was rather drunk, which surprised me because it was only about nine o'clock in the morning. He spoke of her freely, her attributes, her skills at pleasing a man, her daring at flaunting convention."
"This woman wasn't there?"
"No. Evidently she leaves her men to wake up by themselves, that's what David said. However, there are slaves there to tend to them. None of the men seem to mind her habits."
"You believed this Lochridge?"
Emile's voice was emotionless, but still he didn't look at Ryder. "As I said, the place reeked of sex. Also, he was too drunk to make up something that hadn't happened. I don't like him particularly, but there was no reason for him to lie. The cottage is on Burgess land."
Ryder swatted a mosquito. He said, his voice meditative, "So she turns eighteen and decides to flout convention. It doesn't make a lot of sense, Emile. Surely no man would wed her now. Why do you think she started making herself available in the first place?"
"I don't know. She was always a strong-willed girl, spirited, as I told you, and very protective of her little brother. One of the planters called her a hellion because once she was angry at his overseer for calling her brother names and she smashed him on the head with a coconut. The man was in bed for a week. That was about two years ago. She could have wed any gentleman on the island for it is known that she is handsomely dowered. I have always been given to understand that females don't wish to have; sex as much as men do. Thus, why would she want it so badly to give up everything that women are raised, even expected, to want?"
"There is always a reason for everything," Ryder said. He rose and stretched. "Thank God, I do believe it's cooling off, just a bit."
Emile grinned up at him. "I heard Father order Cook to make you something cool for dinner, a bowl of fresh fruit, perhaps, and some iced-down shrimp. No baked yams or hot clam chowder. He doesn't want you to shrink away for lack of sustenance."
Ryder swatted another mosquito. He looked off over the sugarcane fields shimmering beneath the sun, to the endless stretch of blue sea beyond. So beautiful it was, yet so alien. "As I said, there is always something that drives men and women to behave as they do. There are three different men involved, I understand, and there were probably others before these three. There is of course a motive, and you know something, Emile? I rather fancy that I will amuse myself and just find out what it is that makes this hellion part her legs for so many men." "It is depressing," Emile said, and he sighed.
By Friday night, Ryder was actually beginning to believe that he could endure the heavy still heat, even though he was sometimes so hot it hurt to breathe. He had even swum that afternoon, but not long, for he didn't want to burn too badly. To his disappointment, after the incident his first night, there had been no other strange occurrences. No burning sulfur; no sheeted man; no moans or groans; no guns or bows and arrows.
Nothing at all out of the ordinary had occurred. He had met Samuel Grayson's "housekeeper," a young brown woman with merry eyes, a compact body, and a ready smile. She lived in Grayson's room and worked in the house during the day. Her name was Mary. As for Emile, he also had a "housekeeper," a thin slip of a girl who answered to Coco. Her eyes were always downcast in Ryder's presence, and she never uttered a word that Ryder heard. She couldn't have been more than fifteen. Emile paid her no attention whatsoever, except, Ryder assumed, at night, when he took her to his bed. She cared for his clothing, kept his room straight and clean, and was utterly docile. Ryder was amused and put off by this custom, one considered quite respectable on Jamaica by all parties concerned.
Grayson, of course, had offered him a woman, and Ryder, for the first time in his adult sexual life, had refused. It simply seemed too cold-blooded to him, too contrived, too expected. That was it, he didn't want to do the expected thing. He laughed at his own conceit, at the affectation of his own behavior.
The three men rode to Camille Hall at nine o'clock on Friday night. It was just growing dark and the moon was full, the stars lush overhead. Ryder had never seen such a sight as this; it still made him stare.
They could see the lights of Camille Hall from a mile distant. There were carriages despite the condition of the main road, and at least three dozen horses, all tethered close to the great house and watched by a dozen small boys. The house glistened and shimmered. All the veranda doors were wide open.