I laid my head on the window and looked out at Mamaí’s garden. Her Bwa Kwaib flowers bloomed, but the peacock flower, the orange and red petals, caught my gaze. They were pretty even if they carried a dark power.
I was thirty-one. That was a lifetime for some. I wanted this babe, babe number six, until Thomas started traveling.
“Morning, Doll.”
He came up behind me and snuggled my neck, that weak spot behind my ear. Three forbidden words burned in my throat, I’m with child.
“What has you in such deep thoughts? A new business venture and expansion?”
His fingers slid down my sides heading to my belly, my soon-to-be-expanding belly.
I turned in his embrace and kissed him. This babe should make him choose us over the Garraways. He said he understood me. Then he should know separating was the worst.
Haphazard and maybe crazed, I led him back to the bed we’d shared.
Half undoing my corset, he stopped. “Why do you have to be this delectable when I have to be about business?”
Business.
That word held a sense of doom. “Must you leave now?”
He drew his hand away and sat on the edge of the mattress. “Yes. John Garraway himself is coming. This time with a deal.”
When he turned back from tying his cravat, his face had a frown. “Don’t look like that.”
Like what? Thought I was better at lying with my smile.
He leaned over the mattress and kissed my forehead. “I’ll be back in an hour or so, and if you’re done with your bookkeeping or training more housekeepers, I promise to remember where we left off. How many do you have now?”
“Twenty-two.”
His smile widened as he tugged on his jacket. Happy for me, maybe, but that was his way of reminding me that I worked on my business all the time, that he should be allowed to do so, too, without complaint.
Garraway didn’t care about him bedding me and playing father to brown children. He’d say anything to get Thomas doing his bidding.
My head knew the future. My man would be gone. My luck of children with no fathers would continue and he wouldn’t be here to help me brave my storms.
The strain of my last birth pulled me into pieces. I feared for me, but what type of woman was I if I held on to Thomas too tightly? “Bye.”
“Now, Doll. Don’t be like that. You’ve won enough.”
“What?”
“We’re here together in Dominica. The lucrative activities are in Grenada. It’s a difficulty to my partners to come here to meet.”
“And I serve them, on silver with the finest wines. I support you. You’re not happy?”
“Doll, it’s not a question of happy. It’s about my livelihood.”
He knew a lot of big words but he was using those singular ones—my: my activities, my partners, my livelihood.
Pulling my knees to the belly that hid ours inside, I folded my arms about my legs. My nightgown with tiny embroidered roses draped me, covering toes that had grown cold. “When will you be traveling, Thomas?”
His eyes veiled. He tied his loose locks with a ribbon, making a great show of the knot. “I must leave to go see Garraway at Mr. Bates’s.”
He grasped the brass door pull. “Doll, I have to try one last time. I can partner with Garraway directly, importing goods from India, the East India Company. It’ll be lucrative.”
“Mercantilism. That’s huckstering for men.”
“It’s not a competition. I’m going beyond Dominica. There’s Jamaica, Barbados, Nevis, Trinidad, even Demerara. Garraway has a plan to trade in these colonies. I can be a part of it.”
“I see.”
“Do you? This is for us, Doll, for our family. I want to leave something with my name to not only Charlotte and Edward and Frances but to any sons that bear my name. If you don’t have any faith in me now, then you never will.”
“I do.”
“No, you don’t. Or you’d see how badly I need to win this.”
He clasped the door’s edge. “I’ll be back tonight. Will you be here waiting for me?”
“Guess you’ll have to come and see.”
A smirk briefly settled on his face, but he still left.
I lay back among our pillows smelling his sage soap. I needed to gird my strength. If this babe breathed air and I survived, I needed to prepare to be strong and alone.