“You'll find a number of the wives in a small sitting room just beyond the library,” he continued. “And might I recommend a sip of my wife's ambrosia? Don't fear,” he added in an aside to Cormac. “It'll be sure to put the color back in your wife's cheeks.”
He turned back to Marjorie. “It's a recipe from her aunt. From the Indies, of course. There they distill the most decadent spirits. Rumbullion, it's called, and I daresay it tastes as dark and as dangerous as the tropics themselves.”
An elegant, black-haired woman floated up to his elbow, the cobalt-blue feathers in her hair a perfect match to her low-cut gown. She was more exotic than beautiful, with a prominent nose and a small, pursed mouth.
“Ah, but here is my dearest Adele now.” The bailie put his arm at his wife's back.
The woman sketched them a flirtatious curtsy. “You were speaking of Aunt Sesane's punch? Or by 'dark and dangerous' did you mean me?” Her laughter trilled over the din. She spoke in a peculiar accent, and Marjorie wondered if she was the most appealing or most unappealing creature she'd ever met.
She eyed Adele, and suddenly the prospect of sampling a forbidden drink lifted her mood considerably.
“Your
husband spoke to me of your aunt's rumbullion, and dare I say, it sounds lovely.” Cormac shot her a warning glance, but Marjorie only smiled. She was no stranger to the occasional brandy; surely she could handle a taste of some tropical concoction. And besides, she'd likely get more information from a roomful of punch-drunk ladies than Cormac ever would from the bailie and his cronies.
“Fine, fine,” Forbes said at once, clearly eager to be done with the wives. “Come, Lord Brodie, I know just the men you need to meet. Tell me, how are you at the billiard table?” Adele linked arms with Marjorie, sweeping her from the room. It was a promising start, and Marjorie estimated she had approximately one hour and no more than two of these rumbullions to wrest as much information from the woman as possible.
“Adele,” she mused. “It's such a lovely name. French, is it?”
“Well reckoned, Lady Brodie.” The woman bowed her head, a kittenish smile curving her thin lips. “My mother was French, the daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner. She met my father in Barbados. He hailed from Edinburgh, a worker from one of the more… how to say mal fame?… from one of its dodgier neighborhoods. A servant dallying with his master's daughter? It was quite the affaire.”
It seemed owning slaves was routine practice. Aidan popped into mind, and Marjorie wondered if Adele's father had been transported by force or had gone to Barbados willingly.
The bailie's wife flicked open her fan, its mother-of-pearl handle glittering in the candlelight. A wicked smile lit her eyes. “But who could blame my mother, non? A sheltered girl, but with Parisian blood in her veins, meets a handsome field worker with thick arms and an equally thick… “ Her laughter chimed like crystal bells. “Bien sur que oui! A healthy dowry, a generous inducement to shut the mouths of the other workers, et voila, I appear seven months later.”
Marjorie hung on her every word. At first she'd found Adele vaguely unattractive, but charisma alone was transforming the woman into something fascinating and oddly beautiful.
She swept them down a marble-tiled hall into a small room. Thick, smoky scents and the chatter of a dozen women assailed her. Gold-embroidered pillows in dusky colors littered the place, a patchwork of rugs and animal skins underfoot. The wives all lounged on sofas, reclining informally, despite the elegance of their gowns.
Marjorie couldn't stop her gasp.
Adele laughed her peculiar, harmonious laugh. “Perhaps my husband warned you, my lady. In the Indies, you shall find a world quite unlike any you've known before.”
“Indeed,” she responded, and before she knew it, a cool pewter tankard was placed in her hands. It was large and heavy with drink, its contents smelling of sugar and sin. She sipped, and a shiver ran up her spine.
“Come,” Adele said, leading her to one of the sofas. “I insist you tell me where you are from, where you are going.”
Marjorie sank into the feather-stuffed silk upholstery. Concerned she was in over her head, she took a fortifying sip
of her drink. The rumbullion tasted of exotic fruits, and it went down surprisingly easily. She sipped again, this time for the flavor of it.
She decided to be as vague as she could. Though, with her luck, Malcolm and Adele Forbes owned a summer home on the banks of the Clyde.
“Hugh and I hail from the south, near the Clyde.” She drank again, and the alcohol buzzed up the backs of her legs, rendering them warm and loose. She eased back into the pillows. “But we are very excited to be embarking on this new chapter in our lives. Jamaica. The name alone is magical.”
“Ah, off to our corner of the world?” another woman chimed in.
Marjorie nodded her response, judiciously sipping rather than speaking.
“And you've never been?”
“No.” Marjorie shook her head, and it set a little wheel spinning deep in her skull. She took another sip of her drink in an effort to quiet her mind. “This will be our first trip.” A chorus of exclamations went round the room, the women chattering all at once about the heat, the help, the sun, Scotland, and everything in between.
“This is my first trip back to Scotland in twenty years,” one said.
“Imagine!” a few exclaimed in harmony.
“We needed help,” another began, “and I'd almost forgotten what strapping lads there are to be found here. My Arthur has become a bit… doughy in his later years.”
“My husband, too.”
“It's native life, you know. And the heat. The men pay to see the work done from the comfort of their hammock, drink in hand.”
They couldn't truly be so idle as all that,
could they? Marjorie couldn't imagine Cormac indolendy issuing orders from the comfort of a hammock.
“I'd forgotten what a real Scotsman was like,” someone said with a naughty tease in her voice.
Marjorie cringed. These women were all married, and yet they spoke of Scotsmen as studs in the field. What of their husbands? If she were married, she couldn't imagine ogling anyone but her own man.
She'd sworn herself to spinsterhood, though, so that meant if she were married, the man in her bed would be Cormac. Ogling Cormac at her leisure? She took a cooling sip of her drink, forcing herself to follow the conversation.
“Highland stock is quite… strapping, no?”
A wave of lascivious giggles swelled through the room. One of the women clapped gleefully, sending an armful of bracelets clattering. Marjorie's eyes were drawn to the obscene array of rubies and gold glittering in the firelight. Just one of those bracelets would feed a poor Aberdeen family for a year.
“But we have simply to ask Adele's mother for the answer to that!”
“Oh indeed,” the bailie's wife purred. “You have simply to ask ma mere, and she will tell you of a Scotsman's superior flesh.”
These women. They had such elegant veneers, and yet deep down they were common, as crass as wenches in a dockside pub. But they were worse still than that, because they pretended to more. And though they could be more, they were too selfish, too shallow for their scruples ever to come in line with their elevated station.
“But truly,” an older woman added seriously, “there is no better help to be found. And so convenient to be able simply to choose.”
To choose. Marjorie's stomach turned.
“We found a fine Glasgow boy years ago,” someone said. “He'd been begging on the streets.” There was a round of exclamations before another asked, “How did he do with the transition?”
“Oh, you have to be careful. Sometimes the lads adopt quite the attitude and need a firm hand to lead them straight.”
Fury wavered Marjorie's vision, her outrage fueled by the liquor in her veins. She bit her tongue not to lash into all of them.
“The Scottish blood,” someone tsked knowingly.
“But our lad has grown into quite the piece.” The woman smiled proudly. “I daresay, my maid can't take her eyes from him.”
A disgrace. Marjorie's mouth opened, then she snapped it back shut again, worrying for a moment that she might've accidentally barked her thoughts aloud.
“It's the tropical air,” someone agreed. “It's much healthier for them than playing catch as catch can in a filthy alley somewhere.”
Marjorie's blood pounded until the women's voices blended together into an amorphous hum.
“Oh, indeed. These lads go from climbing chimneys—”
The hum of conversation translated into a buzzing in her skull. Climbing chimneys.
God help you, Aidan.
Had Cormac's brother ended up in some man's field? As the curiously coarse dalliance of some lonely plantation wife?
“So dreadful!”
“Yes, and so many die! But, with us, the lads have their fill of fresh air and sunshine.” Marjorie put her fingers to her temple. She needed to focus. Aidan was long gone, but not Davie. She could still help Davie. Concentrate. She needed to ask something.
“I… I should like to find some help, too,” Marjorie said, her voice cracking.
“Not with that fine cut of meat you came in with!”
The women tittered wildly.
“Cor-?” She caught herself and forced a saucy laugh, sounding tinny in her ears. “Do you mean my Hughie?”
“Hughie?” Adele mimicked, fanning herself. “Don't be coy, ma cherie. Surely you know the fine specimen your husband to be.”
Fine specimen? Is that how women saw him? Had he ever taken advantage of what would be women's obvious interest?
Her jaw clenched, and she adjusted herself on the sofa, attempting to sit straighter in the deep pillows.
“No, I need help of a different sort, for the plantation work. Where does one… “ Marjorie faltered, unable to bring herself to use the word buy. She cleared her throat. “Wherever does one secure such a boy?” Her eyes scanned the room. These women, who'd seemed such exotic birds of paradise, now struck her as merely obscene. To steal children, to make five-year-old boys do their work for them. It was unconscionable.