a smile. “If you’ll both excuse me? I…I didn’t sleep well last night and really believe I’d like to lie down for a while.”
Morgan snorted—yes, snorted—and Julia suddenly wondered how many people knew that she and Chance…that she and Chance had…oh, blast!
“Excuse me,” she said again and quickly left the room. She needed time alone to think up at least a half dozen horribly painful ways to torture Chance Becket.
Her mind filled with the glories of hot pitch and feathers, Julia was halfway into her bedchamber before she realized she was not alone.
“I beg your pardon. But who are you and why are you in my chamber?” she asked, already fairly certain of the answer to the first part of the question.
The tall ebony-skinned woman put down Julia’s hairbrush and smiled in a broad white-toothed grin. “I’m Odette, of course, and I go where I wish to go. Today I wish to see you, so I am here.” She shrugged. “Simple, yes?”
“Actually, I suppose so,” Julia said, taking a seat beside the fireplace and motioning for the woman to sit down in the matching green chair. If she just thought of the accepted rules of every possible polite convention, then turned them on their heads, she would have gone a long way toward understanding Becket Hall and its inhabitants. “Callie mentioned you. She’s very much in awe. You’re some sort of priestess, I believe? From Haiti?”
Odette sat down, smoothing the skirts of her black gown over her knees, and her pride was evident in her ramrod-straight posture. “I come from Dahomey, my family stolen from our home to be carried across the sea and sold like cattle in the marketplace. Saint-Domingue, Haiti, the name makes no never mind. For me, I have learned my home is where I am.”
Julia was amazed. And saddened. To read about such happenings was one thing, to see this woman, this proud woman, was quite another. “I’m so sorry.”
Odette cackled, her dark eyes twinkling. “For what, girl? You had nothing to do with my life. I am happy here. Are you happy here?”
The abruptness of the question startled Julia. “Why, yes. Yes, I am. The Beckets are lovely people and I—”
“You belong to Chance now, and he to you.” She stood up, reached into the pocket of her gown and extracted what Julia now knew to be a gad, the tooth thankfully small but still more than a little ugly. Odette lowered the thin circle of leather over Julia’s head, the tooth falling at the end of the strip to hang down between her breasts.
Julia felt a shiver run up her spine, but she was certain that was her own superstition, not any power in the gad. “Why, thank you. It’s…it’s lovely, really. I’m truly honored. Has Chance renewed the magic in his?”
“It is done. The boy would not disobey me. We settled that a long time ago, when he first came to the island and he put up a fuss about going into the bath I’d got ready for him.” Odette grinned again and actually winked at her. “There’s nothing I don’t know about that boy.”
Julia could feel color rushing into her cheeks even as she grinned. “You dumped him into the tub? How old was he?”
“Nine, or so we all decided. Too old for a young black woman to be sitting on him, stripping off his filthy britches and giving his bare backside a good whacking. Not that I could do that now, with him thinking himself a man grown. All you need with Chance is to let that boy know you won’t swallow any foolishness from him, that’s all.”
Was that what this visit was all about? Odette was giving her instructions on how to handle Chance Becket? Did the woman think she needed lessons? Of course she did. Julia thought so, too. But she did take issue with the notion Chance was just a boy being foolish. “Is that what you call his stubborn pursuit of what he thinks is best no matter what anyone else might think? Foolishness?”
“Anything a man does that a woman does not like is foolishness in one way or another,” Odette said, patting Julia’s shoulder. “You stand up to him and only bend when you want to bend. Marry strength with strength, and together you will be invincible. All the shadows of his past will disappear and you will both walk in the sun.”
Julia turned in her chair, put a hand on the woman’s arm. “Wait, please. I’d really like to know more about Chance, about his childhood. About the island.”
Odette smiled down at her. “Then ask him. The day he tells you, his heart is yours for the keeping. Do you want his heart?” The woman shook her head yet again. “No, say nothing. It is not yet time, I don’t think.”
“But you came here,” Julia said as she lifted the gad. “You gave me this. Have…have you cast a spell on me? I mean, not that I believe such things, turning people into animals and such, but…have you?”
“I use my magic for good,” Odette said, gathering herself up to her full height, which was impressive. “Callie is a child and likes stories, so I amuse her. Black magic is for those whose souls live in the dark, those who embrace the bad loa.”
Julia nodded as if she understood, which she didn’t. “Forgive me for questioning you, Odette.”
Odette grinned again, not a shadow in her eyes. “Questions make no never mind. Only be sure you wish to know the answers. I must be off.”
And, with no explanation as to why she must leave, Odette walked out, leaving Julia to sit alone in her chamber, to await Chance’s arrival to, so he’d said, discuss the nuptials.
Well, the devil she would! If he wanted to speak with her, he could very well come find her, not expect her to be sitting there waiting for him. Besides, it was probably best to let him find her somewhere there was no bed in the room with her.
She went to the wardrobe to gather up her pelisse, then remembered she’d left it in the main salon. “Blast!” She pulled open drawers until she found the knitted shawl Mrs. Kester had made for her—to thank her for staying with her, holding her hand until the midwife had come and all through the birth of her son Henry—then headed for the back stairs.
This area of Becket Hall was new to her. She was fairly sure it would take three solid days to see it all, admire all the fine furnishings, but she did stop a few times to touch an exceedingly beautiful vase, to bend down to slide her hands over one of the silk carpets.
Eventually she made her way to a set of French doors in the music room and from there she was soon outside on the terrace and then making her way down to the shoreline.
The sun shone brightly, so that Julia wished she’d thought to bring her bonnet with her, and the breeze had stiffened, coming in from the Channel to ruffle her skirts and tease her hair around her head.
The wind coming in from the Channel on a fine day had always been considered invasion weather, and she wondered if Lieutenant Diamond and his men still believed a French invasion possible. What would it be like to look through one of the windows of Becket Hall and see a thousand small boats heading in toward the shore, the sunlight twinkling on ten thousand rifles, ten thousand bayonets?
Julia wrapped her arms around her as gulls circled overhead, and turned in the opposite direction of the stables and small village, minding her steps as the sand and shingle eventually turned mostly to sand. She then turned inland, as she’d heard the stories about the shifting sands of Romney Marsh and the dangers they presented the unwary.
Luckily there was a narrow
