Corinna, his wife, had stayed in Jamaica the year before, but she had named their home from the description he had given her: they called it Summerhill. In a couple of years, Bruce said, they intended to visit England and France and would buy most of their furniture then. Corinna had left England in 1655 and had not seen it since; and like all English who went abroad to live she longed to return to her homeland, if only for a visit.
Amber wanted to hear about these things and pestered him with a thousand questions, but when he answered she was invariably hurt and angry and jealous. “Ye gods! I’m sure I can’t think how you must pass your time in a place like that! Or do you
One hot bright-skied afternoon in late May they were drifting along the Thames toward Chelsea, some three and a half miles up-river from Almsbury House. She had bought a new barge, a great handsome gilt one filled with gold-embroidered green-velvet cushions, and she had coaxed him to take the maiden trip with her. Amber was stretched out in the shade of the awning, her hair wreathed in white roses, the thin silk of her green gown falling along her legs, and she held a large green fan to shield one side of her face against the sun. The barge-men in their gold-and-green livery were resting, talking among themselves. The barge was a long one and they were not close enough to overhear what Bruce and Amber said.
There were many other little boats on the river carrying sweethearts, families, groups of young men or women on pleasure-cruises and picnics. The first warm spring days brought out everyone who could find leisure to escape—for London and the country were still almost one and every Londoner had an Englishman’s rural heart.
He sat facing her and now he grinned, shutting one eye against the sun. “I’ll admit,” he said, “that I don’t spend the morning in bed reading billets-doux or the afternoon at a play or the evening in taverns. But we have our diversions. We all live on rivers and travel isn’t difficult. We hunt and drink and dance and gamble just as you do here. Most of the planters are gentlemen and they bring their habits and customs with them, along with their furniture and ancestral portraits. An Englishman away from home, you know, clings to the old ways as fiercely as if his life depended upon it.”
“But there aren’t any cities or theatres or palaces! Lord, I couldn’t endure it! I suppose Corinna likes that dull life!” she added crossly.
“I think she will. She’s been very happy on her father’s plantation.”
Amber thought that she had a very good notion of the kind of woman this Corinna was. She pictured her as another Jenny Mortimer or Lady Almsbury, a quiet shy timid creature who cared for nothing in the world but her husband and children. If the English countryside produced such women, how much worse they must be in that empty land across the seas! Her gowns were probably all five years out of the fashion and she wore no paint and not a patch. She’d never seen a play or ridden in Hyde Park, gone to an assignation or taken dinner in a tavern. In fact, she’d never done anything at all to make her interesting.
“Oh, well—of course she’s contented. She’s never known about anything else. Poor wretch. What does she look like—she’s blonde, I suppose?” Her tone implied that no woman with the least pretensions to beauty would have any other colouring.
He shook his head, amused. “No. Her hair’s very dark—darker than mine.”
Amber widened her topaz eyes, politely shocked, as though he had said that she had a hare-lip or bow-legs. Black hair on a lady was not the fashion. “Oh,” she said sympathetically. “Is she Portuguese?” She remembered well enough that he had said she was English, but in England, Portuguese women were considered very unhandsome. Trying to seem nonchalant, she leaned out and made a lazy catch at a passing butterfly.
Now he laughed. “No, she’s English. Her skin’s fair and her eyes are blue.”
Amber did not like the way he spoke of her—there was something in the sound of his voice and the expression in his eyes. She began to feel hot and nervous, sick in the pit of her stomach.
“How old is she?”
“Eighteen.”
She suddenly felt that she had aged a dozen years in the past few seconds. Women were almost tragically conscious of age, and once out of their teens everything conspired to make them feel that they were growing old. Amber, not two months past twenty-three, now felt all at once that she was ancient and decayed. There was five years between them! Why, five years is a century!
“You said she’s pretty,” murmured Amber in a forlorn little voice. “Is she prettier than I am, Bruce?”
“My God, Amber. What a question to put to a man. You know that you’re beautiful. On the other hand, I’m not so bigoted as to think there’s only one good-looking woman on earth.”
