With Coak gone, Elspeth found herself more and more in the company of George Lisle. He was a much admired – not least by himself – and risqué humorist. He liked to inform everyone that he was a disciple of the philosophy of Free Love. “Naturally, it’s the theory which appeals, intellectually. Not necessarily the vulgar practice.”
She was perfectly aware that Lisle’s position allowed him to take mistresses, all the while conspiring with his father to marry well. But wouldn’t the former of the two destinies – lover rather than wife – be a cannie adventure! Elspeth felt she had the skills required to play the scandalous innamorata.
Like any other young woman, she had dreamed of a handsome young man – a gentleman not unlike George – falling so deeply and irrevocably in love with her that he would horrify polite society, sacrifice his heritage, and take her publicly as a wife. But there was enough of the hardened travelling player in her to know that such romanticism was best left between proscenium arches. She could waste her life hoping for such a bold champion to happen along. A more realistic proposition was to settle for being mistress, and enter into an arrangement which would allow her to live independently while continuing unhindered with her career. If any children were to result from the liaison, she judged it preferable that they enjoyed a moneyed, rather than a legitimate, start in life. In Scotland, she had heard tales of supposed noblemen without a farthing to their name. And, even if George tired of her, she calculated he was not the type to throw her overboard altogether. When the time came – as come it must – when he forsook her, she considered it likely that he would continue both their friendship and his financial support. She even considered suggesting such a scheme to George himself. But it occurred to her that, should he reject her and the snub become known, it would have a detrimental effect on her standing, and be too harsh a blow to withstand personally. And what would Lord Coak make of such an arrangement? Four months her patron would be gone – not long enough for her and George to live out the three-act drama that was forming in her head. And doubtless, even from abroad, Coak was being kept up to date of goings-on at Bridgetown by Philbrick and others.
So, for the meantime, she let the friendship grow. George became more liberal in his attitude towards her: taking her hand in company, remarking openly on her figure and costume, kissing her delicately on the cheek. All this in the bare light in open society. On those nights when Isabella made up her Dalby’s Turbo, the kissing became less subtle. On the mornings following those parties, events of the night before were a little hazy. Certainly, they all drank, played dice sometimes with the gamesters, swam, always talking and always cavorting. She could taste George’s lips on her own, but sometimes, too, she thought, Derrick’s, and even Christian’s, though he and Nonie were devoted fiancés. As the sun trickled early into her room, before Tuesday or Dainty brought her her bowl-and-water, her drowsy head was strewn with pools of dark seawater, the tang of mauby, twinklings of stars, of Nonie’s white and Isabella’s brown breasts, suggestions of the boys’ naked backs, and suspicions that she might well have surpassed them all in acts of public indecency. No one ever made mention of what they had got up to the night before, until they reconvened, by which time all details were lost or dismissed.
During waking hours she practised her poem in a room made specially available for her by Mr. Philbrick. At luncheon, and of an evening – sometimes instead of joining the others at the View – George took her to the Careenage, where they walked and talked, and sipped tea on the porches of grander hotels. She loved how the boats – from tiny skiffs to magnificent yachts and ocean-going ships – rocked on the water, masts and ropes chiming like Sunday bells. Just as he had taught her the names of plants and animals, George instructed her on shipping, pointing out across the harbour, distinguishing clippers from windjammers, sail from steam.
“The old three-master is a supply ship. Raises its sails thrice a year to return to Bristol. You ought to see it at full rig – a sight dying on our seas, sadly. It’ll be replaced by the likes of that ugly great hulk there. A steamship, bringing wood and coal in from the forests and mines of America.”
They sat together on the terrace of the Regency Hotel, the waiters bowing to her in her distinguished company.
“The clipper out beyond the quay? You won’t see many more of those either, if there’s any justice. A slave ship, ferrying its foul cargo from Senegal to Liverpool to here.” George declared himself to be an Emancipist. “Though don’t tell my father. That’s a little surprise I’m saving up for when I’m master of my own fate.”
He spoke to her about politics as if she were already tutored in the subject, and took for granted her interest in it. Wilberforce and the Houses of Parliament in London, the local contest between the aristocratic Pumpkin faction and the merchants of the Salmagundi alliance. For that fortnight in the summer of 1831 Elspeth dallied with her beau, planned her stage debut, dreaming of great achievements from Georgetown to Washington., while she learned about the evils of slavery, and tasted the delights of the beau monde.
Excitement was building for the imminent debut of the new young talent from the British stage. Playbills had been pasted up and the local newspapers carried half-page advertisements. The financiers of the Lyric were animated by her long-term plans. She brought to their attention new works which had been highly praised in Great Britain, by Sir Walter Scott and her own namesake Joanna Baillie. She caused great argument with the suggestion, casually mentioned during an interview with the Gazette, that the Lyric produce its own version of Mrs. Shelley’s terrifying tale Doctor Frankenstein. She went so far, on the whim of the moment – the memory of her meeting with Henry still fresh in her mind – as to suggest that a Negro be cast in the role of the Creature. George and even Mr. Philbrick congratulated her on achieving more publicity in one fell swoop than the Lyric had received in its entire existence. The radicals were divided on the issue. Of her own circle, Virginie and Nonie argued passionately about it, while the traditionalists – including Mr. Bartleby and, to her alarm, her landlords Mr. and Mrs. Overton – were outraged at the very idea of a darkie performing on a civilised stage. Whatever the politics of her sally, Elspeth succeeded in making a name for herself throughout the island.
George convoyed her daily from the theatre to her lodging house, trying to shock her with jokes and remarks and off-colour observations. Elspeth laughed and remained staunchly unshocked. Together they made their way, she with her parasol and Mr. Lisle in his hat, across the Careenage, past the bright clean stone of Lord Nelson’s statue, along Bay Street, the sea to their right stretching all the way to South America, where lay jungles and mountains and savage Indians who tore the beating heart from maidens to offer as sacrifices to the gods. And on towards Garrison where the comely couple would pass companies of soldiers on drill and the officers commanded the men to salute the lady.
“They can’t realise I’m just an actress.”
“It’s your beauty they’re saluting. They don’t give tuppence for your status. Sensible chaps.”
A short six months ago it was all so unimaginable. Elspeth Baillie, elegantly dressed and parasoled, hair gleaming like the setting sun, complexion bright, traversing a capital city on the arm of an affable, young heir to a fortune. She had sworn to herself that she would never write home. She would never again make contact with those dreary people of the drenched and muddy world she had been made to inhabit utterly against her nature. The only shame of it was that now she couldn’t describe all the wonderful things that were happening to her dismissive father, her timorous mother, or her faithless friends, not one of whom had seen her off on her life’s journey, nor even congratulated her on her stroke of extraordinary luck.
Her debut recital at the Lyric Theatre was scheduled for the eleventh of August. The announcement was made on a Wednesday, at the end of the run of the present season of plays. One last gala performance at the season’s official close – traditionally a short play accompanied by sketches and comical interludes – was advertised to take place that weekend. Calderon de la Barca’s La Aurora en Copacabana, severely edited and freshly translated by a young colonial scholar, John Colliemore, distilled the saga of the Conquistadors down to several moving scenes between Pizarro and an Inca Princess. That role was to be played by Mrs. Bartleby, though the father, in the shape of Christy Bloom, was twenty years her junior. Virginie and Derrick were to perform the finale, the death scene of Dona Sol and Hernani, from a piece that was pitting audiences against critics in Paris, while Nonie spoke a soliloquy from The White Slave. The gala ensured the biggest audience of the entire year, and it was at the second interval – after a performance of dancing dogs – that Elspeth Baillie would be presented to the people of Bridgetown.
Her final rehearsal was effected before an audience of fellow players, stagehands, writers, investors, and all their partners. She made few mistakes, found a rhythm suitable to the occasion and, all in all, discharged her duty well enough in difficult circumstances. Taking her bow, Mr. Denholm and Mrs. Bartleby offered her from their pews some little notes of advice, to which Elspeth paid no attention. Mr. Philbrick’s anxiety on her behalf – that she would have to soften her Scots, move less busily around the stage, work on her projection – insulted her, while the vociferous encouragement of Nonie and Ginny, Bella and Christy buoyed her almost as much as George’s obdurate trust in her powers.
George Lisle had turned up faithfully for each and every one of her rehearsals, offering his own nuggets of advice, but in such humble tones, as from a pupil to a maestro, that she listened attentively to him.
“I think you will do well enough now, Miss Baillie.”
“Well enough?” cried George. “You’ll hear gasps and sighs such as you, Philbrick, are a stranger to.”
He ran up to the stage, took her hand and stood proudly by her side. “I predict instant success. If this woman is not completely and immediately the official darling of the entire colony, I’ll eat my best hat, and then yours.” He presented her with a variety of boxes, tied prettily with ribbons, one marked “Robe en style Pauline Bonaparte”. Inside, a beautiful, diaphanous dress, double-layered in muslin and crinoline, the outer part hanging low at the neck, the inner, more translucent still despite its intricate laced pattern, would cling closer, and not much higher, to the décolleté. An exquisite little box contained silk slippers with silver stitching.
Virginie and Isabella were more excited by the raiment – so unusual now that bustles and pantalettes were the standard fashion, and so fragile that they must be breathtakingly expensive – than by Elspeth’s performance. They managed, eventually, to tear themselves away from the boxes and say everything expected of them. Nonie clapped loud and long. Derrick and the rest of the boys cheered at the tops of their voices. Christian stood up on his seat and declared, “She won’t leave a dry eye in the house!”
“Nor even a dry seat!” rejoined George.
“Especially if she wears that on stage!” whispered Virginie to Isabella.
The young Turks left the older members and repaired to the Ocean View, and after an innocent tea and rum, George walked Elspeth back to her quarters, strolling arm-in-arm, saying their halloes to all who passed, and then, when the rain came on unexpectedly, making a sudden dash, laughing and shouting.
Elspeth revelled in the new experience of warm rain, the drops soaking her hair, running down her neck and back like fingertips stroking her. She held her face up to the sky, marvelling that such puffy little clouds in a blue, blue sky could produce any kind of downpour. The rain showered her eyelids and lips – without a hint of the stinging cold that used to permeate her skin and make her insides shiver. She and George ran into her rooms and took off their outer layer of clothing, leaving George in his shirt and she in her shift. They laughed at the audacity of it, like children illicitly dressing up in their parents’ clothes.
“No harm in it. The dressing rooms are like this all the time,” said Elspeth.
“You must invite me round sometime.”
“Back home we were always like this. Cattle sheds don’t have changing rooms. Aunts, cousins, brothers, parents all together.”
“But did they all feel quite so naked as I do under your glare?”
To warm their innards, George concocted a cheroot of tobacco and another leaf she had already seen, but never tasted, at the Lyric. Nonie had advised against it.
“She says bang enslaves the mind.”
“Nonie’s mind does a good enough job of enslaving itself. If I were to worry about the ill-effects of crops on public health, I would be more concerned by cotton than bang.”
“Cotton!” Elspeth laughed. “I’ve never seen anyone drink or eat cotton to their detriment.”
“Cotton does something much worse – enslaves the majority of humankind. One way or another.”
The cigarette smoked, they shared a nightcap of rum, and finally fell together onto Elspeth’s bed as the evening outside brightened after the rain.
Her hair was still wet and she was drenched through to her undergarments, though she could no longer discern what moisture belonged to the shower and what was her longing for George. In her dreams of how it would be to make love to a fine and sophisticated gentleman, she had imagined crisp, clean linen and a large bed, something approaching both of which she now had. But she had also pictured the scene to take place in darkness, yet here there was still a soft light flushing the room. The gentleman would have whispered to her in French – a language she knew nothing of, save for the odd word or phrase in speeches she had learned. He would undress her slowly in the velvety darkness, kiss her gently, woo her into submission. She would be wearing exactly the kind of garments George had just given her that day: delicate, sensuous fabrics, revealing more than was decent. She’d never got round to opening the boxes and changing into the exquisite clothes. The remainder of the reverie was lost in a blur of enchantment, but had very little in common with her rather more mundane experiences with ploughboys.
Now that she was with George she found to her surprise she had no desire to follow that dream. Nor, it appeared, did he. Thomas in the field handled her more subtly at his tree-trunk, had not gone at her in the frenzy that George suddenly displayed, and Elspeth, in the heat of the moment, was glad of it. The ploughboy hadn’t gawked and spluttered quite as clumsily as this polished young gentleman. Those old notions of gentle caresses seemed to her suddenly a child’s fantasy. She found herself wanting to utilise the arts she had developed for her patron and have a younger, lustier man gaze upon her. Her peach-coloured skin and supple body – more radiant and slender, she knew, since her transposition to the Indies – should be enjoyed by more than an old fop who had no interest in touching the fruit he gazed on.
No man apart from Albert Coak had pondered her gentle slopes and tidy lines, or appreciated the autumn leaf of her sex, or noticed how her hair twined round her neck and streamed down the delta of her back. He may have given no sign of wishing to approach her, but at least he had appreciated the view she offered. With George she had lost any vestige of shyness. It seemed to her that in that moment, in the mysterious light of another continent she was her body. No more and no less, and she took pleasure in exhibiting herself boldly, joyfully, pushing herself away from her lover so he could exploit the spectacle better. Her body itself, as if by itself, demanded to be seen, and she curled herself rudely round him, hearing his lust, grasping at every part of him, and being grasped in return. Her mind was aware only of their limbs and their combined movements – apart from involuntary lines and strophes learned in the heaths of Scotland flitting through her carnal desires. Flickering hummingbirds in a thunderous sky.
“I have immortal longings in me.”
And, perhaps because his gaze was so intense and grateful she found that she too wanted to gaze. To wonder at the porcelain skin of a well-kept and kempt young man. The angles of him, the dark curls around his head and haloing his sex. “I’ve always loved a standing ovation.” They laughed in mutual gratitude and complicity; then became serious again, intent on the grave business between them. They locked eyes and saw reflected between them youthful devilry. Yet, annoyingly, her rational mind began to stir again. The room, the bed, the rain all impinged on her; her clothes, the sound of her own voice and accent, could not quite be silenced. As on stage, she would have to work harder, push the part she was playing to its limits, to inhabit it completely.
Thomas had used the worst kind of language towards her and though at the time she felt she ought to be offended, she now wanted to use those very words – and hear them in return. She hissed words in George’s ear she hardly knew the meaning of herself and which an English-educated colonial could only guess at. She voiced expressions she’d heard the gamblers at the View use as they played their killer cards to force the hand of an opponent. Her calls of coggie, prick, pap, drove George to include, amongst more amorous murmurs, obscenities of his own. His blurts of quim and fuck excited her, but also returned her to the reality of their situation: low-born Scot debauching a superior landowner’s son. As on the Alba when she considered which of all the possible Elspeths she must one day become, she was bewildered – happily so – at what kind of Elspeth she was now. Lusty lass of the soil? Bohemian free-thinker? The artful mistress or virgin bride? Her body seemed decided on lusty lass and the language she found them both using eliminated virginal maiden. She remembered poor Tom’s pleas, as if they were lines in a script by a forgotten master, and turned them into urgent commands, ordering her social superior where to look, when to touch, when not to, what to say. George pulled at her shift, bit her hair; they kneeled on the bed, his body pressing her up against the wall behind.
At last their urgency began to blot out the room, the night outside the window, her sense of herself. He seemed to move around her in disconnected flashes: his eyes staring, penis below her then behind her, his hands clutching her, then himself, as if they both might break up, spin away from the centre of themselves.
Instead of laying her down he pushed her upwards, his head working its way down her body and sucking, not kissing. She knew from colleagues at the theatre it was common practice for well-born men in this Colony to be introduced to intimacy in the brothels of Bridgetown. George’s display was clearly more than mere instinct. She felt envious of those scarlet women – of their knowledge and candour, and dearly wished to outperform them in her new lover’s eyes. She thrust her flank out for him and, as she did, some distant part of her wondered if this was how a high-born man would abuse a commoner like her, and remembered her father’s dire warning – she’d become nothing more than a weel-travelled hoor. Even if that was so, she didn’t care. She would use this slim young gent, his skin and hair soaked with lust, as much as he used her.
“Open yourself for me,” he said in a low tone, as if in the voice of some other; some being lost inside him. She did, and knew she had found another role to excel in – temptress, fallen woman. If this was the future her father had predicted – wantonness and immorality – then she felt no shame in the least. She returned George’s look with a brazen stare of her own, savouring every sharp angle, the tightening of his buttocks, his livid sex, the drops of sweet sweat on gold skin and black hair, the pain of desire in his eyes. Her body took over completely once again, her movements like thoughts. Each had captured the other utterly, and in that captivity Elspeth wondered at this new version of herself.
She waited for George to leave before sunrise, readying herself for the inevitability of many clandestine farewells to come. She anticipated lonely mornings, sudden desertions, the hollowness of absence. There was nothing to be done about it. George was her illicit lover for the time being only. She let him slumber for as long as she thought safe, then kissed him awake. They lay apart for a moment, as if astonished to find themselves alone in bed with last night’s words and actions buzzing around them, biting, like mosquitoes. George looked down at his own body, like a man looking at a stranger.
But he did not, as she expected, leap from her bed, pull on his clothes and run to the door, embracing her hastily before leaving – maybe forever. He lay on, hardly waking, nuzzling in to her.
“Shouldn’t you be home before breakfast?”
“I should.”
“Then better wake up. I don’t want you banished from here quite so soon.”
But when George refused to go home, she said, “If we’re discovered, there’ll be all manner of trouble.”
“If you’re worried for your own sake, then I’ll leave…”
“What sake would that be? I’m an actress. I’ve no one to scandalise.”
“And nor do I care a jot what anyone says.”
“Not even your father?”
“Least of all.”
Young gentlemen were no doubt permitted a limited number of mistakes. The dawn was calm and warm and soft, and she wanted nothing more than to keep George’s body close to hers and gave up persuading him to go.
When morning proper came they woke to a sun shining heartily, the air crisp and clean and fresh, their bodies touching one another at ankle, thigh and shoulder. Still George did not rise from the bed, but lay there as if in a trance, beaming smiles at her, his fingers clasped around hers. The sun rose higher over the most perfect of days, with hardly a wisp of wind to blow the casuarinas and laburnum trees outside her window, or convince a bird to sing more than was necessary. The whole world seemed in a stupor, induced by the beauty and violence of their first night together. At last Elspeth mustered the willpower to stir, wrapped herself in her nightgown, and went to Daisy’s and Tuesday’s room in the basement.
“If anyone from the theatre calls, tell them I’m resting today.”
Tuesday and Dainty tried to hide them but she caught their smiles as they turned their heads away. Should she be angry – scold them for their prying and presumption? They were only doing what she would have done in similar circumstances. They must have heard George and her last night. Not in detail, she hoped, just activity in the room above them. Even that made her shuffle in front of the two, now over-serious, faces. But Tuesday and Dainty weren’t the Overtons, or even their English-educated handmaids. From what she had heard at the Ocean View, Africans were creatures of love and lust. They coupled continuously and according to Virginie so randomly it was almost inadvertent.
Elspeth had the idea – from where, she didn’t know – that these foreign couplings were torpid, spiritless affairs. An act darkies were driven to perform, the very acceptability of it amongst their own kind robbing it of any danger and passion. Whatever they had heard the night before was just more strange behaviour from white people. She instructed them that she was not be disturbed all day, and that only a tray of fruit and a jug of water should be left outside her room later in the morning. The maids smiled more openly – as if she had made some confession to them, allowed them a degree of intimacy. And perhaps she had. Their stifled laughter reminded her of younger cousins back home, herself a short while ago, sniggering at the slightest suspicion of adult intimacy.
Back in her room, she dressed for the day. George rose and dressed, too. Both feigned composure, but dressed themselves quickly, backs half turned to each other.
“You’ve no regrets?”
The question took her by surprise, but she knew what he meant. That they should have made love was beyond question unregrettable. It was the manner in which they had done it that was causing them to worry. Now, literally in the light of day – a sharp all-disclosing tropical light – she panicked. She felt more naked than she had last night, shameful parts of her soul exposed that no hand could modestly cover. She felt her colour flame high and saw images of her previous self, only a few hours ago, flash before her eyes. How wanton! How crude she had been! Those fierce words she had spoken – no, shouted – like a wildcat! She had twisted and distorted herself so that he – a well-born gent, almost a stranger to her – could peer into her most personal corners. Now it appeared to her that their lovemaking was not only vulgar but that, instead of being elevated by a social superior, she had degraded his sensibility.
Then she became aware of the same vexation in his eyes. He had not asked the question in triumph, callously, but hesitantly, anxiously. “I was a little earthy with you last night.”
He saw the crime as his, not hers! Having had his fun with a gullible actress, he was now concerned for her. The shame she had momentarily felt began to lift from her. Yet still, those acts that had seemed natural at the height of their passion belonged to a new class of encounter, and to a new inexplicable Elspeth, that she could not bring herself to speak of directly, or even refer to them. With some effort, she replied, “Perhaps I was not so ladylike myself.”
George Lisle threw his head back and laughed. “You were not! By Christ you weren’t!” He took her hand and cradled it, kneading out of her the last drops of embarrassment. Strange, how some parts of life cannot be spoken of, even thought of, but are easily undertaken, acted out. We think of ourselves as children of words, of actions that can be considered, or at least reflected upon, but there were great furrows of her life that could not be talked about openly. Events so real to her but which, later, had to be tucked away, even from herself. The embarrassment began to grow again between the two of them, and the only way out of the predicament was through touching again. He kissed her and brought her tightly against him, until she was lost in his bulk, fumbled through waistcoat, linen and serge for the touch of him. Her body responded to the rustle of her own garments, the silks and satins and brocade that Lord Coak had gifted her.
Before their passions rose beyond control, they retired quickly to the window-seat and wondered at the change of hue daylight gave to their skin: her rose-pink and auburn of last night diluted in the sun to peach and amber; burgundy strands in his coal-black hair. The scents, sounds and movements of her tropical garden pervaded the room. His fingertips frisked for her through shift and drawers, birds delving and digging for flesh. Some feelings are to mortals given, with less of earth in them than heaven. She saw his shoulders and elbows and sex as palms and succulents that looked hard and unforgiving but which became pliant to the touch. She felt strong and straight, her skin renewed by the morning sun and fresh sea air. The steady, building heat of the day drew them towards the same ferocity and tenderness they had experienced the evening before.
They luxuriated in the yards of time they now had at their disposal – George, clearly, had no intention of going anywhere. Last night had seemed to her urgent; now they felt no hurry and she found more in him to look at, found new textures, new sounds, gentler words than before. They each whispered how beautiful the other was. They broke off from their urges to enjoy a simple caress of the face, a kiss on closed eyelids and lashes. Their initiation over, they could ease each other, lose their fear of what was permissible and what was not. Nothing was improper between them now. There was not a touch, a kiss, a posture, a word in this or any other language denied to them. No part of their combined bodies was out of bounds, or something one feared the other might shield or withhold.
As their second night approached, they sat again by the open window, though the air outside felt hotter than the room. The sun – a glow of such perfect crimson that even George admitted to never having seen such a beautiful sundown in all his days in the Tropics – began setting over the ocean. The only movement was the swiftly scudding clouds high in the darkening sky. From behind them came the odd flash of lightning; then thunder in its wake, low and distant. But whenever they relaxed, left off from touching and returned to the realm of words, Elspeth would worry again about the consequences of his staying with her so long.
“Don’t ye have a hame t’ gang to, my jo?”
The rustic talk was meant to cover her anxiety – after all, their love-vocabulary included the bawdiest of vulgar Scots. Words which young George Lisle was quick to learn. But immediately she had done so, she feared that, rather than impress him with her talented mimicry, she had shown her true, low-born self. George did not appear to notice. He simply shrugged and said, “They’re used to me being out all night.”
The look on her face was enough to betray an additional anxiety – but George assured her, between caresses, that his absences had not been with other women, but those nights carousing and gambling at the Ocean View. They ate the last of the fruit the maids had left for them, feeding one another papaya, mango and orange, sharing the escaping juices.
Then, quite literally out of the blue – there was not a rain cloud in the sky that they could see, only wisps of scarlet trailing high in the sky – it began to rain. After the intense, oppressive heat of the long day, the shower was like a blessing, as if the heavens were reassuring them that their sin – if sin it was – was being washed away. They leaned out of the window and let the water fall on their hair and cool their skin. The coconut and banana trees swayed and bowed outside in the grounds, and as the shower became heavier, the drops began to fall fast, straight as a die, a curtain of sparkling steel, dense as mail, severing them from the rest of the world. Elspeth prayed that the weather would imprison them, if not forever, then at least up to the last moment before her heralded entrée at the Lyric theatre. The wind rose, and fell, then built again. The sun had all but dropped into the ocean, blood-red and surrounded by a halo of black. George had never witnessed this particular pattern of natural events before.
“You have the profoundest effect upon the world, Ellie. To change me was a good trick – but to change the aspect of the sun itself!”
“Perhaps there’s a real storm brewing.”
“Then let it last for a century!”
It was unwise for George to take to the road, and they were fated to spend a second night together. The constant low grumbling of thunder grew steadily more ferocious. George strained to peer out the window, looking south along the coast.
“Perhaps the storm’s on the other side of the island.”
They dressed – enough for modesty – and Elspeth called out for one of the servants. Dainty told them that a storm was indeed raging, and not so very far from them. Housemaids of the Overtons had just returned from town, having seen the wildness of the sea playing havoc with ships at Carlisle Bay.
By nightfall, the rain had abated but the winds were worse. They went back to bed and he cradled her in his arms, looked deeply and long into her eyes, and told her he loved her. He said it with such sadness, as if he knew the loss implicit in his words. And she believed him; began to feel that perhaps, she too, was capable of real love for this man. She lay awake hours into the night listening to the trees being blown about, and her gentleman’s soft, regular, breaths. She rehearsed in her head the Lady of the Lake for tomorrow’s first performance, while stroking her lover’s brow.
“Each purple peak, each flinty spire,
Was bathed in floods of living fire.
But not a setting beam could glow
Within the dark ravines below…”
This storm was no accident. Like the sailor sacrificed at her departure, here was a further sign of things to come. The sea whipped itself into a frenzy and Elspeth shivered with delight at the sweeping away of the past, and the advent of further pleasures and accolades to come.