ONE EVENING, MAY PULLED a bench close to the hearth and invited Adele to sit with her. The male servants had already retired to their shack. Gabriel had gone out for his ablutions. Nathan dozed in his chair. When he awoke, he would send everyone to his or her bed, then bolt the door for the night. But May was too excited for sleep. She felt like a dull neglected thing that had been polished and made to shine again. Not only had she regained the power and pleasure of her body, she thought she had also, in a way, regained her innocence. She could sit beside the fire with Adele, who smiled at her as Hannah once had. In Adele's eyes, May was every inch the virtuous young mistress. Above rubies.
"You look pretty this night," Adele said shyly. "Belle" The girl sidled up and whispered in her ear, "You no longer need the love charm?"
"No, Adele." She touched her hand fondly, then took the poker and drew random shapes in the ashes. A rose. A circle. A heart.
"You are happy." Adele spoke with awe.
"Yes." The flames leaping in the hearth reminded May of the fire in his eyes, the fire in his flesh when he took her. An idea sparked inside her. Running her sole lightly over the ashes, she rubbed out the shapes she had made. "If you like, I will teach you to read and write." She touched Adele's knee. "We can start with the alphabet."
Adele pointed her thumb toward Nathan, whose snores shook the floorboards. "He would forbid it, no?"
"I will persuade him," May promised. "He is a good Christian and would have his servants be good Christians as well. How can you read the Bible, Adele, if you do not know your letters?" Poker in hand, she went through the alphabet, having Adele trace each letter in the ashes beside her own. They kept passing the poker back and forth. In the meantime, Gabriel returned.
"Are you coming to bed?" he asked her softly.
The girl stood up, prepared to leave, but May caught her hand.
"Soon," she said, smiling at him until he blushed and disappeared behind the bed curtains. She winked at Adele, who swallowed a giggle. Uncommonly clever, the girl mastered the letters in no time.
"Tomorrow night, I will teach you to write your name."
Adele reached down the front of her smock and pulled up a tarnished circle of silver that hung from a string around her neck. When she held it up in the firelight, May saw it was a slender bangle with Adele's name engraved on the inner rim. Taking the poker, the girl copied the letters, spelling Adele Desvarieux in the ashes.
May fingered the bangle. "Who gave this to you?" Flashing the girl a conspiratorial smile, she imagined a secret sweetheart.
Adele's eyes moistened. "My old mistress." She turned the bracelet round and round.
May rested her hand on Adele's shoulder. "Your mistress from the island?"
Adele nodded.
"Do you miss her?"
"She is dead."
The girl's sadness pierced May. "I am sorry. Were you fond of her?"
Nathan snorted in his sleep, but did not wake.
Adele nodded, then looked forlornly at the bracelet. It was meant for a child to wear, May noted. Too small even for Adele's slender wrists.
"It is spoiled," Adele mumbled. "The silver it does not shine."
"I have a trick I will show you. Give me the bracelet, just for a moment."
Adele passed it to her. Scooping up a handful of cold ash, May rubbed it against the silver.
"No, no!" Adele tried to snatch it back.
"Adele, just watch." May patiently rubbed ash against the bangle until the tarnish was gone. "Don't you see?" It shone in her hand, gleaming and pure. She pressed it into Adele's palm. "Just like new again."
***
On a bright afternoon, Gabriel leapt across the creek. May had told him that she and Adele were going into the forest to gather pine boughs and pinecones to make the house pretty for Christmas. It would take a woman to think of such things, he thought fondly. Before her arrival, they had never bothered about decoration. Christmas was when he and the servants received their new set of clothes for the coming year. Father read a longer passage from the Bible than was his custom. Afterward they emptied a barrel of cider while Jack played his whistle, the manservants capering like drunken fools. But this Christmas would be different. May would civilize them.
Her laughter drifted through the forest like a silver thread, drawing him toward her. He had a surprise for her—a pair of soft slippers made of doeskin instead of common pigskin. One night after she had gone to bed, he had secretly traced her shoe soles on the hide to take her measure. Proper shoe leather took six months to bark-tan, but these slippers would do until the shoes were ready. They were for indoors, being too light to wear in the mud and rain, but they would be perfect for dancing, supposing she wished to dance at Christmas. He was too eager to wait for Christmas, or even until they were alone together in bed, to give her the present. He wanted to see her face in the daylight when he showed them to her.
It sounded as though she were singing. Her voice led him uphill, into the dense trees. This worried him. Hadn't he told her to stay near the creek and avoid the hills where his traps lay hidden? As long as he could hear her, he knew she was safe. But before he had walked another hundred paces, a cry stabbed the air. A yelp. He took off running, following the noise of her distress. Behind a stand of blood-red poison ivy, he came to a dead halt.
James was hurting her, pinning her against a beech tree while he hammered away. Hand on his knife, Gabriel was about to charge forward when he saw how her fingers clutched James's flame-bright hair as she moved her body in unison with his. She cried out in pleasure. So that was why she had stopped looking at James. Not because she had ceased wanting him, but to conceal the fact that they had become lovers. And if she coupled with him, her lawful husband, nearly every night, it was to cover her tracks. If she went with child, she would pass it off as his.
Gabriel backed away, his body gone cold. May was false, false. The promise of her had been so sweet, but she was like honey turned to snake venom on his tongue. Poison, he thought, remembering when his mother had been bitten in the neck by a copperhead in their own garden. Father tried to suck out the poison, but in vain. Poison had flooded her, made her face swell up until Gabriel could no longer recognize her. May was venomous as a snake and just as sly. He was tempted to drop the doeskin slippers in the creek as he crossed over again, but he held on to them. It had taken hours to tan the hide, cut the pieces, and stitch them together. He would not allow his labor to go to waste.