The Davenports(30)

“I didn’t think anyone else was out here,” she said. Tempted though she was to watch the notch where his neck met his chest, she kept her gaze on his. His steps were slow, purposefully sidestepping the tree roots, as he drew near. A chill raced through her as his body came close enough to block the next gust of wind rustling through the gardens, filling the air with the scent of freshly cut grass and his cologne with its heady balsam notes. She inhaled deeply and resisted the urge to close her eyes.

John bent down and picked up her notebook. “This is precious,” he said.

Amy-Rose blushed under the power of his smile and reached for her book.

“Do you want to sit with me awhile?” He looked so earnest.

“I could sit a spell,” she said. Amy-Rose followed John the short distance to the small bench beside a bed of red columbine. It was the perfect quiet corner for two lovers, she thought, as the heat from John’s body warmed her leg where their thighs lightly touched. It was intimate and comfortable and only served to confuse her more. She watched his profile. His jaw was tight and brow scrunched to a thin line.

“Is something on your mind?” she asked. It wasn’t her place. She was still the help. The words had bubbled up before she’d had a chance to caution herself.

John wiped his face with his hands and heaved a great sigh that she felt in her bones. It was a kind of weariness she knew too well.

“How did you end up here?” he said, instead of answering her question. Even in the moonlight, she could see his eyes burn with a curious intensity that made her look away. “I’m sorry for not knowing. It just feels like you’ve always been here, part of this family. I only just realized.”

“That I had a life before here?”

“I meant no offense. I guess—it’s just more of a realization that I’ve been caught up in myself—what my parents want for me. Things are different away from here.” He pinched his bottom lip and those butterflies in Amy-Rose’s stomach began to soar. “I know they mean well, but I—”

He stopped so abruptly, Amy-Rose feared he’d decided to leave her alone with her thoughts. Jessie’s warnings played in the back of her head, taunting her. The Davenports will move on, and so should she.

“I apologize, here I am complaining about two parents worrying about me and—” He moved as if to place his hand over hers but stopped. She thought of his brief touch that night in the kitchen as he rushed to get ready for the Tremaines’ ball. She took his hand, and found comfort in its warmth. He looked at their hands. “I’m sorry.”

Amy-Rose remembered the day her mother was buried not too far from here. Everything had been arranged by Mrs. Davenport. Amy-Rose barely recalled anything that happened between her mother’s passing and the moment her rose-laden casket was lowered into the ground. She closed her eyes and saw her mother and the journey that had ended at the front gates of Freeport Manor.

“I was pretty young when Mama and I came here. We’re from Saint Lucia originally. It was always ‘home’ to Mama. All I remember was being surrounded by people all the time. I was never short of companions or adults spoiling me terribly, even as they whispered about my mama being fooled by a sailor who would never return when they thought I was too young to understand.” A chill ran up her spine when she thought about what had happened next. The rain, the wind, the storm that took everything away. Her voice shook as she recounted the dread of waiting for it to pass. “When the sky finally cleared, it was bright and beautiful, as if nothing had happened. Most of our town was destroyed, even our home. Mama said neighbors offered us a place to stay, help to rebuild. But she said there were too many reminders of the people we’d lost.”

“So you didn’t stay long after?”

Amy-Rose shook her head and smiled. “Mama said it was the perfect time to have an adventure. We had nothing but a few belongings that fit into one bag. My father lived in Georgia.” Amy-Rose glanced at John. His gaze fixed on her, he nodded for her continue. “He was a white man, from the States. Mama used to say they fell in love one magical summer while he was on holiday. She always believed he’d come back for her. She wrote him letters even after his replies stopped coming. I have a box of them in my room. You can still make out the design of the wax seal on some of them. A five-petaled flower with the letter G woven through.” Amy-Rose picked at the fraying corner of her notebook. A sadness she rarely let herself feel washed over her. “It wasn’t until we arrived on his family’s plantation that we were told he’d died. Fever, they said, before turning us away.”

A Black man with stooped shoulders had answered the door that day. He hadn’t invited them in, but told them to stay put and closed the door. They waited. And waited. Clara Shepherd paced, pausing to readjust Amy-Rose’s collar, to tell her daughter to stop fidgeting. It felt like forever before the door swung wide. Amy-Rose clung to her mother’s leg as Clara spoke to the white couple on the porch. She didn’t like the way they stared at her. They were frowning, their lips pressed into thin lines before they began speaking. As Amy-Rose listened to her mother tell them the familiar story of her father, she looked through the door and into the face of a blue-eyed girl, older than she was, with a pointed chin and a smattering of freckles like hers. Their voices rose in her memory, and with them, a tightness in her throat now as John watched her. He gave her hand a gentle squeeze.