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“Really?” he said, in as inviting a tone as possible.
“Really,” she said, and smiled unpleasantly. “But let us not waste time in discussing a . . . a person of such low character.” The smile altered, and she leaned toward him, touching his hand, which surprised him. “Tell me, Colonel, does your wife accompany you? Or does she remain in London, from fear of fevers and slave uprisings?”
“Alas, I am unmarried, ma’am,” he said, thinking that she likely knew a good deal more than her brother wished her to.
“Really,” she said again, in an altogether different tone.
Her touch lingered on his hand, a fraction of a moment too long. Not long enough to be blatant, but long enough for a normal man to perceive it—and Grey’s reflexes in such matters were much better developed than a normal man’s, from necessity.
He barely thought consciously, but smiled at her, then glanced at her brother, then back, with the tiniest of regretful shrugs. He forbore to add the lingering smile that would have said, “Later.”
She sucked her lower lip in for a moment, then released it, wet and reddened, and gave him a look under lowered lids that said “Later,” and a good deal more. He coughed, and out of the sheer need to say something completely free of suggestion, asked abruptly, “Do you by chance know what an Obeah-man is, Miss Twelvetrees?”
Her eyes sprang wide, and she lifted her hand from his arm. He managed to move out of her easy reach without actually appearing to shove his chair backward, and thought she didn’t notice; she was still looking at him with great attention, but the nature of that attention had changed. The sharp vertical lines between her brows deepened into a harsh eleven.
“Where did you encounter that term, Colonel, may I ask?” Her voice was quite normal, her tone light—but she also glanced at her brother’s turned back, and she spoke quietly.
“One of the governor’s servants mentioned it. I see you are familiar with the term—I collect it is to do with Africans?”
“Yes.” Now she was biting her upper lip, but the intent was not sexual. “The Koromantyn slaves—you know what those are?”
“No.”
“Negroes from the Gold Coast,” she said, and, putting her hand once more on his sleeve, pulled him up and drew him a little away, toward the far end of the room. “Most planters want them, because they’re big and strong, and usually very well formed.” Was it—no, he decided, it was not his imagination; the tip of her tongue had darted out and touched her lip in the fraction of an instant before she’d said “well formed.” He thought Philip Twelvetrees had best find his sister a husband, and quickly.
“Do you have Koromantyn slaves here?”
“A few. The thing is, Koromantyns tend to be intractable. Very aggressive, and hard to control.”
“Not a desirable trait in a slave, I collect,” he said, making an effort to keep any edge out of his tone.
“Well, it can be,” she said, surprising him. She smiled briefly. “If your slaves are loyal—and ours are, I’d swear it—then you don’t mind them being a bit bloody-minded toward . . . anyone who might want to come and cause trouble.”
He was sufficiently shocked at her language that it took him a moment to absorb her meaning. The tongue tip flickered out again, and had she had dimples, she would certainly have employed them.
“I see,” he said carefully. “But you were about to tell me what an Obeah-man is. Some figure of authority, I take it, among the Koromantyns?”
The flirtatiousness vanished abruptly, and she frowned again.
“Yes. Obi is what they call their . . . religion, I suppose one must call it. Though from what little I know of it, no minister or priest would allow it that name.”
Loud screams came from the garden below, and he glanced out to see a flock of small, brightly colored parrots swooping in and out of a big, lacy tree with reddish fruit. Like clockwork, two small black children, naked as eggs, shot out of the shrubbery and aimed slingshots at the birds. Rocks spattered harmlessly among the branches, but the birds rose in a feathery vortex of agitation and flapped off, shrieking their complaints.
Miss Twelvetrees ignored the interruption, resuming her explanation directly the noise subsided.
“An Obeah-man talks to the spirits. He—or she, there are Obeah-women, too—is the person to whom one goes to—arrange things.”
“What sorts of things?”
A faint hint of her former flirtatiousness reappeared.
“Oh . . . to make someone fall in love with you. To get with child. To get without child”—and here she looked to see whether she had shocked him again, but he merely nodded—“or to curse someone. To cause them ill luck, or ill health. Or death.”
This was promising.
“And how is this done, may I ask? Causing illness or de
ath?”
