The fish was slightly blackened around the edges, but it was still delicious. Lilah ate it off the plantain leaf Joss had cooked it in, licked her fingers, and then rolled up the leaf and ate that too. Joss, sitting across the fire from her, watched her quizzically.
"Is eating one's dishes another of the quaintly barbaric customs you were raised with?"
"On Barbados, baked plantain leaves are considered a delicacy," she informed him with a lift of her chin.
He rolled his up and took a bite, then made a face. "Barbados must be a mighty strange place."
"It's lovely," she said, and proceeded to tell him all about it. From there she progressed to telling about her family, about her mother's death and Kevin's arrival on the scene soon after her father married Kevin's aunt Jane. A shadow must have clouded her face when she mentioned Kevin, because Joss frowned.
"In love with him, are you? Don't worry, if we survived he may well have too. I don't doubt you'll have a touching reunion when you get home to Heart's Ease." There was the slightest trace of sarcasm to his words.
Lilah shook her head. "I hope so. I'm very fond of Kevin. But I don't think I'm in love with him. My father thought he would make me a good husband, and I'm twenty-one, you know. It's time I was married."
"Fond of him?" Joss snorted. "You almost make me sorry for the bastard."
"Don't call Kevin that-he's a very nice man, actually. You just met him under, um, unfortunate circumstances. But why should you feel sorry for him?"
He looked at her without the smallest bit of humor in his face. "I wouldn't want the woman I marry being 'fond' of me. 'Fond' is cold comfort when the two of you are in bed together.''
"Joss!"
He smiled crookedly. "Does that shock you? Listen, my girl, I'll give you a piece of advice. Don't marry a man you're just 'fond' of. You'll be miserable inside a year."
"How would you know?" A thought then occurred to her and her eyes widened on his face. "You've never been married, have you? For goodness' sake, you're not married now?"
"No, I'm not married, and I never have been. And I'll be thirty next month, in case you're wondering."
She smiled, her expression smug. "So you don't know any more about marriage than I do. You just like pretending to be wise to impress me."
He shook his head at her. "Now there's where you're wrong. I do know more than I ever wanted to about the kind of marriage you'll have with your precious Kevin- a loveless marriage of convenience, whether you like to look at it that way or not. My mother was 'fond' of my stepfather when she married him. He had been my real father's best friend, and when my father died-I was eight years old-my mother leaned on him for advice and comfort. She was a very feminine woman, thought she couldn't function without a man, and she was 'fond' of my stepfather. They married a year after my father died. Within another year they were fighting constantly, and within two he had turned into a bitter, mean- tempered man who drowned his unhappiness in drink.
He couldn't stand the idea that she didn't love him, you see. Five years after they were married, he fell off a Bristol pier. Drunk again, after he and my mother had had yet another fight. If truth were told, I think by that time she was glad to be rid of him. Certainly I was. He was a mean drunk, and I was afraid that one day when I was no longer living under their roof to protect her he'd hurt her during one of his binges."
"You were close to your mother, weren't you?" Lilah asked softly, remembering that it had been his mother's deathbed behest that had sent him to Boxhill.
He nodded, the single bob of his head curt. "She was soft and gentle and sweet and didn't have a brain in her head. She needed a man to take care of her. My stepfather just wasn't that man."
"You didn't know she was, uh…" Lilah's voice trailed off as she couldn't think of a way to phrase the question that wouldn't anger him.
"The daughter of a slave?" he supplied, looking at her keenly. Then he shook his head. "My mother was as pale-skinned as you are. She had red hair and green eyes and was lovely. My black hair and dark skin are from my father, who as far as I am aware was descended from upright British merchants who could trace their ancestry clear back to William the Conqueror. All I got from my mother were her eyes. And she got those from her mother, the notorious Victoria."
"Uncle George seemed to recognize your eyes."
"He did, didn't he? And the shock of finding out that his past sins had come back to haunt him killed him. I'm sorry about that for your sake if you loved him, but the old bastard deserves to roast in hell. My mother never stopped talking about her father, or hoping to see him again. All she knew was that he had sent her and her mother away when she was a little girl and that they were never to return or contact him again. He supported them, though; there was always plenty of money even after I was born. But my mother wanted her father, and could never understand why he was so adamant about not seeing her. Of course she guessed, eventually, that she was illegitimate. But I'm almost certain that she never knew her mother was an octoroon slave. Brainless as she was, she never would have sent me to Virginia if she'd known. My grandmother died when I was young, but I remember her as looking very like my mother. Pale-skinned and lovely."
"I've heard that the octoroons of New Orleans are very beautiful."
He nodded. "She must have been. She caught old George's eye, didn't she? But then, almost anything must have been an improvement over that witch of a wife of his."
"Amanda is my great-aunt." Her voice was mildly chiding, though she wasn't a whole lot fonder of Amanda than he seemed to be. Still, Amanda was an old woman and her kin, and Lilah had been raised to show both estates respect.
"Then I beg your pardon. But you can't expect me to exactly love her after what she did."
"No." She looked at him, smiled. "I'm glad you're going to be free again. Being a slave doesn't exactly suit you."
His eyes met hers, and he grinned. "It doesn't, does it? I swear to you, Lilah my dear, that ordinarily I'm really the most charming of fellows. You've seen me at my worst."
"You have been rather short-tempered."
"I apologize." He looked at her for a moment and his expression changed. "I promise that my disposition will improve now that we've agreed to be merely fellow castaways."
Lilah laughed. "Castaways? Is that what we are?"
"For the time being." He stood up and flexed his back, then grinned down at her. "On your feet, fellow castaway, we've work to do.
"What kind of work?" She eyed him suspiciously.
"If we ever want to be rescued, we need to make a few preparations. I doubt that many ships actually drop anchor in our bay here. But as we've seen, they do pass by the island. So I think what we need is a signal fire."
Lilah watched him kick sand over the small fire, then come around its smoking ruin and hold out his hand to her. For a long moment she just looked at it, then she placed her hand in his. His fingers closed warm and hard around her palm as he pulled her up to stand beside him.