Page 32 of Surrender to Love

“Ah, but you can have no idea what our Portuguese-Brazilian families are like. Marriages, even for sons, are arranged very early, almost from the cradle, in fact. And being the third son of my father, my only prospects lay in marrying a girl with an extremely large dowry. Only—my future bride was as fat and ugly as she was rich, you see, an

d she had been chosen for me by my father when I was not yet fourteen years old!” Paul gave a short laugh as he shrugged his shoulders, looking down at Alexa with a half bitter, half-humorous twist to his mouth before he continued more lightly: “So to make a boring story short, I decided to use my father’s generous allowance to make my escape before there was any talk of our formal engagement being announced. I decided, in fact, to seek both adventure and my fortune at the same time by embarking on a ship bound for Australia.”

“But...”

“Ah, the reason I ended up here is nothing to be proud of, I’m afraid. I was bored on that ship and took to gambling to while away the time, losing a good portion of my passage money; and the deposit I had put down was only sufficient to bring me as far as Ceylon. Fortunately for me I had the luck to meet with some kind souls who advised me that since I had some knowledge of coffee planting I should have no difficulty in obtaining employment here if I looked in the Gazette. And as you see, I was lucky again, for Letty happened to be visiting Colombo at that time, and here I am! Fortunate once more in that I have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance as well.”

“Letty is indeed a very wonderful and exceptional woman,” Alexa said rather too quickly. “I shall always love her for her kindness and understanding. But does she know that you are on your way to Australia and do not mean to stay here?”

“She’s not the kind of woman one might feel inclined to keep things from, is she? I have always been honest with her, and she with me. I have promised her that I will see her through until the end of the season, at least, and she pays me very well indeed. You are right; she is a most exceptional woman, and I feel enriched by having had the privilege of knowing her. But tell me...” He had stopped suddenly and the abruptness of his question took Alexa by surprise. “Are you in fact planning to be married soon?”

“I...” Striving for honesty to match his, Alexa found herself almost stammering at first. “I do not really know yet. I know I mentioned something about it over dinner, and...but you see, what makes it so difficult to conceive of is that I have always called him ‘Uncle’ John, and everyone knows that. And then there is Papa, who needs me so desperately now, and Aunt Harriet, and the estate, and—Uncle John only offered to marry me because he wanted to protect me from gossips like that nasty Mrs. Langford, of course! He said it would be a...a marriage in name only and that he had already decided that I was to be his heiress in any case. But he’s so ill, although he doesn’t show it, and the doctors have told him he’s dying. And... Oh, you don’t know how good and kind he’s always been to me, ever since I can recall! If he might need someone to be with him and look after him, if I would be helping him by doing something for him... Oh, I really don’t know what I should do!”

“So you are torn between duty and destiny, are you, Alexa? And after all, who can tell which choice is which? You will have to make your own decisions in the end, you know. It is very much like the toss of the dice, I’m afraid. But once a decision is made, then it will become easier, I think. Knowing that right or wrong, the choice you have made is of your own free will.”

Long after Paul had taken her back to her room, kissing her hand at the door before he left her, Alexa found herself lying awake with her thoughts turning cartwheels in her head. How much they had talked about, she and Paul. And how frankly. Two hours or more must have passed until she had mentioned almost timidly that perhaps Letty...

“Part of Letty’s beauty is that she understands everything and condemns nothing. Yes, we are lovers, Letty and I, but only on those occasions when we are both of the same inclination. And it is not as incongruous as some may think, for Letty is a beautiful woman, and a giving one as well. A combination of mother and friend and courtesan all in one, although I do not think that you can completely understand yet what I am saying. I can see that you are not quite ready yet to be able to give with joy instead of guilt; with laughter in the midst of loving. Ah, I am sorry, Alexa. Sometimes I tend to say far too much!”

But what had Paul meant to explain to her? She had longed to ask him, but a sudden fear that he would think her silly and naive if she did had held her back; and he had casually steered their conversation to other, safer topics as he guided her back to the house—holding her arm. Not once had he attempted to make love to her, although she knew somehow, without knowing how she knew, that he would have liked to have done so. Why, he had already made sure that she knew that Letty wouldn’t have minded, because she was not jealous or possessive and would never even dream of asking questions. But then he had told her that she wasn’t ready yet. How different Paul was from...

Nicholas. The Spanish cousin. She had actually managed to forget what his last name had been, although she remembered too many other things about him. His manner of walking—the deep-forest greenness of his eyes against sun browned skin and his smile that wasn’t really a smile at all. The unfamiliar, lazy drawl of his speech and the dark thickness of his hair. Even the very feel of his skin and the way his muscles moved under it. And most of all— oh, worst of all—she remembered what she wanted most to shut out of her mind forever. The way he had kissed her everywhere and touched her everywhere in such a diabolical manner that she had lost both reason and will.

Dear God— why did she continue to remember everything so vividly? Stirring restlessly in bed Alexa pulled the thin cotton sheet over her head to shut out the silvered moon-streaks that had crept in through a half-closed window to lie against the polished floor. It had been the moonlight... Paul... the turn of their conversation.... But then why, even if she did succeed in not thinking about him, did she have those certain dreams to haunt her on some nights?

I hate him. Oh, I despise him, her mind repeated like a familiar litany until she heard herself sigh in the darkness and thought at last, Yes, I hate him—but I want him too, at the same time; want everything he made me feel and crave and...oh, most of all I want to be the one to turn and walk away without a backward glance! She welcomed the gathering of anger that warded off other thoughts as she told herself fiercely, Some day perhaps I will have my chance! Some day when I have learned enough...when I am ready...

Chapter 18

“I must say I’m quite relieved to see you back early. Your papa was rather upset when he discovered I’d let you go alone. Perhaps you might make some small extra effort to please him tonight? You know he has grown to depend on seeing us both at the table when he comes down.”

“Yes, I know,” Alexa said evenly as Muttu helped her dismount. “Should I go up and see him now, do you think?”

“As you ought to be aware, he’s usually asleep at this time,” Harriet said acerbically. “And for his sake we really should try to keep to a familiar routine during the next few months. You have not made any more dinner engagements, I hope?”

She had never realized before how domineering Aunt Harriet could be at times. But then she had never been away from her aunt’s influence for long enough to think about what she had always taken for granted. Aunt Harriet had always been there as a part of her life, Alexa thought later when she had gone up to her room to change. Like Mama’s fluttering sweetness and the sound of a piano somewhere in the background. Was it only because Mama and Freddy were no longer with them that everything seemed so drastically changed, or had the greatest change really happened within herself? Suddenly she had become irritable and even critical of things she had always accepted before; and now, with a feeling of being hemmed in somehow she understood that the freedom Aunt Harriet had talked to her about and that she’d thought for a while she really had was not real freedom at all. Rather it meant the taking on of responsibilities that would eventually absorb more and more of her attention and her time until in the end it would be the business of the plantation that would be running her instead of the other way around.

I won’t be manipulated into feeling guilty if I’m away for just one evening! Alexa thought rebelliously while her drowsy-eyed ayah helped her change into one of her

old cotton gowns that had faded from brown into an indeterminate, rather muddy shade. I refuse to give up my options and turn into a sour, self-sacrificing martyr just to please Aunt Harriet.

“I’ll see you for tiffin,” Harriet had said in parting. "No doubt you’ll want to change and lie down in the meanwhile.” Arranging her hours for her, reminding her of the daily routine she was supposed to fall into. And now, after poor Ayah had gone off with her rolled-up sleeping mat to catch a nap in some corner, Alexa’s dark brows drew together in an unconscious frown while she considered the consequences of avoiding tiffin and Aunt Harriet’s inevitable questions as well. She would send word that she was not hungry...was too tired...had a headache. She did not even feel like sitting down to the daily accounts as she usually did after tiffin or like performing any of the other usual tasks, for that matter. Even if it was only to prove something to herself, she would do something different for a change. Something... Almost absentmindedly Alexa opened the lacquered jewelry box that had been one of her Christmas presents last year in search of her favorite garnet earrings as a change from the jet she was wearing and had begun to detest. And there, right on top, lay the small key she had tossed in there and forgotten about—the key to her mother’s battered tin trunk that held her girlhood memories and secret, youthful dreams—Victorine Howard’s only legacy to her daughter. Almost involuntarily, Alexa’s hand went out to it, picking it up. Now, while she was feeling strong, was perhaps the best time to go through it—to begin, at least, to sort everything out. Suddenly, filled with a strange, new feeling of separation from Harriet, she felt an impulsive need to understand Mama better and to know more about her.

The trunk had always been kept in Mama’s room, under the broad window seat that opened outward on hinges that squeaked. Inside the same boxlike cavity, Alexa remembered that along with the little faded blue trunk there had been several old boxes tied about with string. Hatboxes containing some of her favorite bonnets that Mama had explained once she could not bear to throw away.

“But what is in the trunk, Mama?”

“Oh, nothing in particular, dear. Old clothes and letters and papers—more things I could not bear to part with, I’m afraid. And now you must stop being so inquisitive!”

Strange, how small, tucked-away memories could surface quite unexpectedly, Alexa thought as she found herself hesitating before the closed door that had never seemed forbidding before. Strange, how suddenly, clearly, she could recall every detail of Mama’s room, like seeing a picture in her mind. Mama had died in this same room, in the bed with its pretty covers and soft sheets that always smelled faintly of violets and Mama. Sometimes she had taken Freddy into her bed with her, but never Alexa, who had always wriggled and thrashed about in her sleep, so Aunt Harriet had said. Before her thoughts could wander further or her courage fail Alexa turned the brass knob on the outside of the door and was almost surprised when it turned easily under her hand.

Pushing the door open, Alexa stepped barefooted over the threshold, forcing herself to look about her, her jaw squared. She had half expected to be greeted with the familiar smells, but now she found her nose wrinkling at the strong odor of carbolic. The bed looked bare with only a thin cotton blanket thrown over the mattress; no pretty covers and dainty satin throw pillows to add what Harriet had called with a sniff a “frivolous look.” No pretty ruffled curtains at the windows, no gaily colored rugs on the floor. This was a different room from the one she remembered so well; a room that looked as if no one had ever lived in it, like one of the many guestrooms before they had been made ready for visitors. And the connecting door that led to Papa’s room and which had always stood open for as long as Alexa could remember, was shut and bolted.

Harriet, of course. Her practical, levelheaded Aunt Harriet, making sure that there were no traces of that warm vivacious presence that had been Mama left behind in that room to remind Papa and make him even more distraught Everything personal was gone—burned, most likely. Had the blue trunk and the hatboxes been thrown away too? Almost sure now that she would find nothing, Alexa crossed the room, pushing closed shutters apart to let some light in before she looked. And there they were, after all! The trunk, and the hatboxes as well; all dusty and cobwebbed. And when she reached down a trifle gingerly to push one of the boxes aside, an enormous spider ran out and almost scared her to death. She had always hated spiders! And no doubt there were probably a few centipedes lurking in there as well. She should have thought to bring one of the servants with her to poke about with a broom first just to make sure, or else have had the trunk dusted off and carried into her room, where she could look through it at her leisure.

Sitting down on her haunches as comfortably as one of the native women, Alexa grimaced with distaste as she peered into the dusty aperture. Spiders! Huge, hairy, loathsome creatures that had always made her flesh crawl, even though she knew that most of them were quite harmless. Perhaps this was not a good idea after all. With another grimace, Alexa had just started to rise to her feet again, dusting off her hands on her skirt, when Harriet’s voice from behind her made her whirl about with a jump of her heart.

“And might I ask what on earth you’re up to this time? You couldn’t come down to tiffin because you were too tired after your long ride and needed to rest, and now here you are poking about and meddling with...”

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