Six days passed in a sleepwalking delirium of Angelique going about her mundane chores in a passionless daze. She answered when spoken to, "Oui mademoiselle," and "Oui monsieur," and "Oui Madame Countess," but did not initiate conversation herself.
She politely served oolong tea and butter cookies to each of Josette's gentleman suitors, who alternately came to the house each day. Gilbert Louis Bellefleur—the one bound for Quebec—seemed very sure of himself and on the second visit dared to kiss Josette full on the mouth. She pushed him off but he only laughed with the callous lustiness of a Navy man, and Angelique pouring tea pretended not to observe. Maurice Rene Monteau—the slave trader's son—was a nervous fellow who had very little to say. He carried a silver snuff box and never put it away. Every so often, while Josette prattled on about flowers and fashion, Monsieur Monteau snorted a pinch of snuff powder. Whenever he sneezed into his kerchief, Josette politely turned aside.
One evening, Josette complained to her aunt in the privacy of her bedroom. She was seated at her dressing table, as usual, looking at herself in the gilded oval mirror. "I can't bear the thought of either one of them as a husband. What should I do, Aunt Natalie?"
Angelique fussed with arranging the sheets and blankets in bed where Josette would sleep alone. Poor Josette, she thought, biting down on a prideful grin. She will sleep alone tonight, a porcelain doll stored in its box. As darkness approached, she became restless, hurrying through the last of her daily chores. Slapping and fluffing the pillow, she thought of her own pillow where she would soon thrash about in ecstasy shared with her beloved.
"Be patient," said the countess, strolling about the room in her long brocade dressing robe. "You are winning the game. I have been observing him closely, and I see a change in him. Barnabas is distracted and moody. He starts a sentence and does not finish it. He stares off at the window."
"What does all that mean?" Josette opened her crystal perfume bottle, releasing the strong scent of jasmine.
"It means, my dear..." Countess duPres glided up behind her at the dressing table. She put her hands on Josette's shoulders. "Barnabas is clearly in love."
Angelique turned aside to conceal her smile. Yes he is, with me.
"Then why doesn't he say something? Why doesn't he do something?" Josette forcefully put the perfume bottle back on the table. The other perfumes and tins of face powder rattled.
"He will," the countess assured her. "He will! You are driving him mad with jealousy, and soon he will break."
Angelique coughed into her hand to stifle the wild laughter that threatened to erupt out of her. What ridiculous advice! You take your strategy in romance from a fifty year old spinster, and you wonder why you fail? Barnabas comes to me because I am honest about what it is in my heart. He trusts me. He is safe with me.
Night darkened the windows. Her blood came alive with warmth. Angelique bowed a curtsey. "Will that be all?"
"Yes, Angelique, you may go."
#
Six nights in a row, he visited her room after dark. Like a cicada, he molted out of his shell of gentlemanly clothes. In his true form, he devoured her whole. This was reality—not the polite restraint of the daytime. Unclothed, naked limbs entwined, touching everywhere, kissing everywhere, rolling around like porpoises at play, they took turns on top and underneath each other.
On the seventh night, in an early hour between midnight and dawn, they rested in each others' arms. Angelique cuddled with him. Knitted into his limbs, she had to recline sideways and be latched onto him so she would not topple off the bed's narrow frame. By the faint moonlight, she observed him sleeping.
His closed eyes fluttered in a dream. He frowned in his sleep. Fitfully, he mumbled, "No, no, no."
"What do you see, my darling?" She stroked his forehead and tasted his dream, feeling the sound of it like a cello quartet playing in another room. The string instruments in his mind were melancholy in a minor key. Through a murky curtain of his skull, she viewed the scene that he suffered in his sleep.
A granite structure as small as a fisherman's hut.
Four steps lead up to a wrought-iron door. A latch lock on the left.
An empty crypt. At the far wall a lion's head with a ring in its mouth.
Beyond the bricks of the wall, a secret chamber.
A coffin wrapped in chains.
Inside the coffin, a loudly beating heart.
Barnabas woke up startled. He thrashed to the side. She could not hold on; she toppled off, bringing the sweat-drenched sheet with her when she thudded naked to the floor.
"I'm sorry!" He sat up to look at her. "Are you hurt?"
"No." Angelique laughed softly as she climbed back onto the cot's frame to be with him. "It is not so far to fall."
He lay back to the pillow. She rested her cheek on his smooth bare chest. His heartbeat was deep like a kettle drum and sounded the same as the pulse in the dream.
"I had a nightmare," he said quietly.
"Oh?"
"It was terrible."
"What did you see?"
Barnabas drew a deep slow breath, held it, and exhaled a long sigh like an ocean wave drawing back from the sand. "I was in the mausoleum at the Eagle Hill cemetery, buried alive in a coffin wrapped in chains. Why would I dream of such a horrible thing? Is it a premonition of some doom that will befall me?"
"Do you often have premonitions of the future?" she asked, even though she knew the answer.
"No, never."
She raised herself up and slithered on top of him, spreading her thighs to straddle him. She curled forward to kiss his chest that was moist in the warmth of the night. She felt his heartbeat throb beneath her lips. "Don't be afraid," she murmured. "It was just a silly dream. You're safe here in the night, in the dark, with me."
#
On the eighth day, a carriage arrived with his uncle Jeremiah Collins traveling alone. He brought a satchel full of signed contracts that he delivered to Andre duPres. The two men had their meeting in the new study at the back of the house, where the servants had recently moved his desk. The papers of the old study were packed away in crates in the attic. Jeremiah also brought a bottle of sherry imported from Spain, and the two men toasted the success of their business ventures.
Angelique lingered at the tail of Barnabas's shadow as he strolled the long corridor. Sunlight beamed in from the windows. The waxed floorboards reflected the glare like mirrored glass. His lone silhouette made a core of darkness that consumed all brightness into itself. He was not aware of her presence; not aware that she watched him from behind; not aware that she thrilled to the strength and grace of his casual movement. She counted the hours until nightfall when he would come to her room again.
Barnabas knocked twice on the study door, then without waiting for a response, he entered the drawing room. "Uncle Jeremiah, welcome back."
"It's good to be back. How are you, Barnabas?"
"Fine thank you. Mister duPres, would you mind very much if my uncle and I have a conversation?"
"Of course not." Andre duPres rustled some papers. His heavy boots lumbered to the door. Angelique ducked out of sight and waited for him to pass by.
"I received Father's letter from Bermuda yesterday, telling me that your orders are to bring me back to Collinwood. Must I go?"
Jeremiah answered, "Is there some reason you don't want to go home?"
"Well... that is..." Barnabas's voice grew fainter as he moved off to the window. Angelique crept closer to the half open door and listened at the crack.
"It's about a woman, isn't it?"
"Yes! How did you know?"
Jeremiah chuckled with fondness and pity for his nephew. "At your age, what else could it be? You're thin and pale. You look as if you haven't slept in a week."
"I've been trying to make a decision," Barnabas said wearily. "It hasn't been easy."
"Would you like to talk about it?"
"I'm not sure." In the pause, Angelique heard him pace the room. The heavy steady cadence of his footsteps was a rhythm as familiar as the beating of her own heart. "I need more time!"
"You don't have time," Jeremiah told him. "In a few weeks, the Atlantic storms will hit. Joshua wants you to return to Collinwood, now, and supervise the last stages of construction of two more brigs. Next year in the spring, we're going to sail to Canton."
"China!" Barnabas exclaimed.
"I'm sorry, but surely you didn't imagine that you could spend the rest of your life here? The contracts are signed. The shipping schedule is plotted out for the next two years. Frankly, there's no practical reason for you to stay in Martinique."
Dizziness rocked her. Angelique clutched the door frame to keep from fainting. Barnabas leaving!
"When do we ship out?"
"Tomorrow morning," Jeremiah replied.
"So soon?"
"I'm sorry, but Joshua's waiting for us in Bermuda." A clink of crystal was the sound of Jeremiah putting his sherry glass back on the silver-plated tray.
"Then there's something I must do. Excuse me."
Angelique dashed away from the doorway. She ducked into a nearby linen closet and stood there, quietly hidden among shelves of bedsheets and blankets. She waited listening for his bootfalls to fade away. Only when she was sure, did she emerge into the sunlight. She stared down the long straight empty corridor at her own shadow casting a long pole on the floor. Where have you gone, my darling? What are you planning to do?
#
Angelique went to the kitchen on the pretense of helping to prepare supper, but what she really wanted was access to the blazing fire. The logs sprouted flames as tall as flower stalks, bright orange and crackling with heat. It was still a bright afternoon, and July made the weather a bit warmer than usual, so it would have looked suspicious for her to build a fire in her own room.
Other servants worked around and behind her. They chopped vegetables at the cutting block. They scraped and gutted fish. They skewered shrimp. She stood at the hearth fire and stirred the soft custard with a wooden spoon in backwards figure eights, around and around.
Quietly she whispered to the orange shadows between the flames, "Eyes of fire. Eyes of light. Show me what I cannot see."
Her awareness blurred and swirled on the smoke, becoming smoke, and drifted away on the warm afternoon breeze. Her sights floated through the corridors of the house, out the back doors that shined with sunlight, to the garden alive with colors.
Barnabas and Josette strolled together beneath the flickering shadows of the acacia tree. In his green tailcoat, he matched the color of the leaves. Her pale ivory gown was like the gown of a Grecian nymph. Arm in arm, they strolled around the fountain. He gazed constantly at her, but Josette turned her head avoiding his stare.
They stopped by a sprawling tangle of oleanders and geraniums. Barnabas dropped to his knees. He kissed the tips of her fingers.
Josette bowed over him. She rested her hand on his shoulder, her arm stretched straight like the blade of a sword held by Queen Guinevere bestowing knighthood on her faithful Lancelot.
Barnabas looked up to her. The smile that broadened his face was full of more joy than Angelique had ever seen on him, or on anyone. He rose to his feet, encircled Josette with his arms, and drew her into a long deep gentle kiss.
"No!" Angelique cried out.
The Gascon chef trotted to the fireside to see what was wrong. He took the wooden spoon from Angelique's trembling hand. "Oh, you've burned the custard. What a waste! It's completely ruined."
Angelique raised her apron to her face and screamed rage into her clenched fists. She no longer cared what any of them saw, or what any of them thought. She dashed out of the kitchen, running, just running as fast as she could down the corridors, without direction.
The trickster spirits must have guided her feet. She turned a corner and had to skid to a stop to keep from crashing into Josette.
Those molasses brown eyes were full of tears—happy tears—and Josette smiled so widely that she could hardly talk. "Oh Angelique, isn't it wonderful? My prayers have been answered! Barnabas has asked me to marry him!"
"I... I..." Angelique choked back her rage, clutched both hands to her gut. "I burned my hand in the kitchen. Excuse me."
Angelique pushed away from Josette, and she ran madly out the back door. Her feet in flat shoes scrambled along the sandy path that seemed to tilt and sway. It felt like miles to reach the servants' quarters. She bashed her way through the door and hurled herself onto the narrow cot. Alone, she clutched her pillow into her face and wailed and screamed. Alone, she convulsed in sobs and wept for hours. Darkness fell. The room turned black, and Barnabas did not come.
#