—GOETHE
"My God! Look at her flank!"
Lyon looked. Tanis, Diana's mare, had had a riding crop slammed into her, hard and repeatedly.
He loved horses, and this unnecessary cruelty appalled and angered him. "That bitch," he said, gently stroking his gloved hand over the mare's flank.
"Yes," said Diana. "I shall speak to her about this, you may be certain!" Diana recalled at that moment that she wasn't at all on good terms with her husband. She said, her voice distant as she flipped her hand toward another stall, "Egremont is over there, Lyon. Salvation is in the next stall. I do believe that Egremont will probably suit you better --- he's the more vicious and unpredictable."
Lyon merely arched a brow at her, but her words hit the mark. He strolled over to regard the huge black stallion with an appreciative eye. "You are quite right, Diana," he said, his voice quiet, "this fellow is a brute."
He watched Diana speak to the stable boys, then she turned back to him. "Do you wish Father's saddle or the Spanish?"
He looked himself and selected the Spanish saddle. It was made of the finest leather and intricately tooled. He stepped back and let the boy, Jessie, saddle the stallion. Diana was acting more normally now, he thought, until she remembered that she shouldn't. He wanted very much to apologize to her, to make her understand thatThat what, you fool? He had been vicious and unpredictable and an utter bastard.
"Diana," he said abruptly, once they were astride their mounts, "what do you think of the overseer, Grainger?"
Diana was in the midst of planning retribution for Patricia, her anger at her husband momentarily forgotten. "What?"
"Grainger. What do you think of him?"
She shrugged. "As Father said, Grainger knows his business, he doesn't brutalize the slaves, and he is trustworthy. He's been on Savarol thirteen years now. I'll never forget when he came, it was on the first day of January at the turn of the century."
Lyon pictured Grainger in his mind. He had met the man briefly an hour before and drawn his own conclusions. Though not tall, he was built like a boxer, massively muscled, swarthy of complexion, and pleasant in his manner, at least to Lucien Savarol and to him, the Earl of Saint Leven. But Lyon was seeing him as Patricia Driscoll's lover. The man had a fleshy mouth, and Lyon thought again, frowning slightly, he wasn't a young man. Forty, if he was a day. But then again, one never knew with women. His lips thinned at the thought, then he realized that he was again falling into the trap and pulled himself up. Diana wasn't Charlotte nor was she Patricia Driscoll, and he had hurt her.
He paused a moment, gently turning Egremont to follow Diana's mare down a winding path away from the great house. The great stallion quivered with power beneath him.
"What do you think of Patricia?"
She looked at him briefly over her shoulder. "She is a vicious idiot." And her expression said clearly that he and Patricia were one of a kind.
"If she hadn't harmed your horse, what would you think of her?"
"Not much more than I think of you at this moment."
"Diana, about this morning ---" He stalled.
Diana said, "Since you despise us so much for owning slaves, I will spare you a visit to their village. I will show you the boiling house."
"Very well," he said mildly. He listened to her speak of how the gangs of men and women worked the long rows of sugarcane, cutting the stalks with sharp machetes called "bills." The stalks were piled onto four-pronged carriers on the backs of mules or into donkey carts. Little boys drove the animals and carts to the mill. She showed him the animal treadmill that stood on a slight elevation so that the cane juice could run from the rollers down a trough to a big copper receiver. This would be, she said, released directly down into the clarifier inside the boiling house.
Lyon thought a clarifier sounded like it purified the cane juice, but her clipped voice didn't invite questions, at least to his mind, so he held his tongue. At least she was talking to him.
"How does one make rum?" he asked finally, pulling his stallion close to her mare. Her scent wafted to his nostrils and he closed his eyes a moment.
"It's made from molasses. We have three cisterns filled with molasses that's a byproduct of the sugar, you know --- enough for estate use and to export north." She pointed out the rum stillhouse, built near the molasses cisterns, telling him about the big wooden vats called butts that held up to one thousand gallons of fermenting mash each.
He listened closely, or tried to, but her voice was a monotone, detached, with no interest in it. She was furious with him and he couldn't blame her. He sighed, wondering at himself for his utter loss of control. He'd acted like a bedlamite. It was an appalling thought to realize that the debacle with Charlotte had affected him so deeply. In the light of day, he knew, oh, yes, he knew that Diana was nothing like his erstwhile fianc, but still, he'd been like a bull enraged by the red cloak when he'd seen Patricia coming from her lover. He sighed, wondering how the devil he was to mend his fences with his young wi
fe. He was aware of the blistering sun overhead, the overwhelming smell of the fermenting mash as they neared the stillhouse, and the constant movement of dozens of black men and women.
"You should be around here during the spring. Your nose would rot off with the smell."
Some humor, he thought. "You appear to know everyone," he said, watching her wave to yet another black, calling out his name.
"Of course. I grew up with them. Do you know the name of everyone who works in your employ? You grew up with them, did you not?"
"What is that?" Lyon asked, ignoring her sarcasm.