Free Mistress of Darkness by Christopher Nicole Page A

'You are too sudden, sir.'
'Then will I wait, if you will but consider my proposal,'
    'Of course I shall. I am utterly flattered. I wish the ground would stop whirling about my head. Will you allow me to go home now?'
He stepped away from her. 'But you'll come again?'
‘I shall walk on Thursday, Mr. Hilton.'
'And you'll bring with you an answer?'
    She could never remember her reply, or indeed if she had i-epfied at all. She could never remember returning home. She ate her dinner in a dream, and Mama Nicholson asked her if something was the matter. To which she replied that she had a headache, and retired immediately after the meal to the privacy of her bedchamber at the back of the little house.
    She locked the door and threw herself across the bed, on her face, eyes tight shut. Now for the first time she could think. For the first time she dared think, dared remember, dared contemplate what might happen next. She had sought to turn him away by gratifying herself; for too long had she wanted to confess her background to someone. And yet, how incredibly stupid to confess it to a fellow West Indian. Was it not a recurring nightmare that one day an agent from Hodges would discover her whereabouts? If she could reassure herself with the reminder that in England she could never be reclaimed as a slave, yet was she living proof of Papa Nicholson's crime. As if a man like Matt Hilton could ever be less than honourable. And even as she had found the resolution, she had dreamed of how wonderful it could be if he had refused to be driven away.
    So now, for the first time she dared attempt to reason, what she was, what she had been, what she might become. Hodges had faded from her memory. She could recall the warm days, and she could remember exactly the awful night of a hurricane, when the rain had blotted out conversation, and the lightning had struck the heavy wooden shutters with a sound as if a giant had been standing outside wielding a whip, while the wall had turned black. She could remember the day Papa Hodge, she was careful to keep her two fathers separate in her mind, had presented her with a pony and trap.
    These were pleasant memories, even the hurricane, because always she had been aware of the web of security which surrounded her. She could remember black people, slaves. There had been women servants who padded barefooted about the Great House, serving and cleaning. And when she had driven her trap into the fields there had been gangs of men weeding and cutting the cane, and she could remember the tremendous hustle and bustle when the grinding season arrived, and her occasional visits to the mill, to stare in horror at the ponderous machinery, creaking round and round, driven mostly by wind power on the exposed Nevis slopes, and the pleasure with which her nostrils had dilated to the overwhelming smell of the fermenting sugar in the great vats.
    She could remember other things too, but only vaguely. There had been days when she had not been allowed from the house, and in the distance she had heard men, and women, screaming. Many days? She could not be sure. But Papa Hodge had been a humane man, surely, or Papa Nicholson could never have been his friend.
    And she could remember Mama, a tall, handsome woman with long black hair, like hers, who controlled the house and her daughter with a will of iron, but who always spoke to Papa Hodge in hushed tones, and who bowed her head in patient acceptance whenever he gave an order. Then she had not understood. But the fact that Mama had been that white man's plaything had haunted her dreams. So Papa Hodge had valued his particular toy, had perhaps even loved her. She had remained only his toy.
    That future would never be hers. Thus Papa Nicholson. It might be possible to find a man who valued his toys. It was far easier to find a man who played until sated, and then threw his toy aside, or worse, deliberately broke it to make it useless for anyone else. Papa Nicholson, when he spoke