Lilah heard through the grapevine that Joss arrived safely the next day. Though she was in a fever of impatience to see him, it was three days later before she judged it safe enough to steal away from the house after supper to pay him a surreptitious visit.
The long, lazy daylight hours, when her father and Kevin were both in the fields and Jane was occupied with the myriad tasks involved in running the house, would have been the best time for her to see Joss with no one the wiser. Unfortunately, he liad been put to work digging cane holes with a gang of field hands the day after his arrival. His day began at half past five, when the plantation bell pealed its summons to the field hands to assemble in the main estate yard for instructions. He was issued a cup of hot ginger tea, and then driven out to the area in which he was assigned to work. His day lasted fourteen hours.
The slave compound offered no privacy, teeming as it was with activity as families prepared their evening meal or tended the small garden plots behind their huts. Lilah 's visit to Joss's hut was sure to be seen and commented on unless it was very late, past the time when the slaves had gone to bed.
Finally, after three days, Lilah realized that the perfect opportunity would never arise. So she suffered Betsy to prepare her for the night, dismissed her, then struggled back into as many of her clothes as were necessary to make her minimally decent. Then she stole from the house.
The hour was just past ten. Her father and Kevin were playing chess in the library, thinking her safely in bed. Jane had retired for the night. As Lilah, shoes in hand, crept across the verandah she heard a voice call to Maisie and froze, her heart in her mouth. But the voice came from the separate kitchen at the back of the house, and Maisie's answer came from there, too. After a heart- pounding moment, Lilah judged it safe to go on.
As she made her way across the grounds toward the thatched-roof slave huts, Lilah was aware of every sound: the murmur of voices and rich laughter coming from the kitchen, where the slaves were still cleaning up after the evening meal and Maisie was setting the morning bread to rise; the soft lowing of the milk cows from the barn across the field; the occasional whinny of a horse from the stable. The night was warm, but a gentle breeze kept it from being unpleasant. The air carried with it a familiar mixture of smells-sweet sugarcane and molasses, manure, odors from the open cookfires that the slaves used to make their suppers, vegetation rotting in the heat, the heady scents of tropical flowers. The breeze whispered through the palm fronds, catching the flat paddles of the windmill where the cane was processed. The creaking sound as the paddles turned in the wind was so familiar that usually Lilah never even heard it. But tonight, with fear of discovery sharpening her senses, she did. Even the chirping of the crickets seemed extra loud, making her jump when one whirred close at hand.
The tiny huts were laid out in neat rows like streets. Lilah knew from Betsy that Joss had been given the hut of a slave named Nemiah who had recently died tragically, crushed to death by the huge stone that ground the cane at the mill. Lilah was too much of a Bajan not to feel uneasy about the hut-Obeahs made a powerful case for violently departed souls haunting their earthly habitats-but she knew Joss would ridicule any such notion.
His hut was at the end of the last row. There were no fences erected around the slave compound, no guards posted. It would have been very easy for him to run-if there had been any place to run to. Barbados was a small island, just fourteen miles wide and twenty-one miles long. There was no way off except by ship, and escaped slaves were hunted down relentlessly. If he ran, Joss would never make it off the island. Harbormasters would be alerted, and watch would be kept. Escape from Barbados was next to impossible. Lilah was sure that one of the slave overseers had acquainted Joss with the hopelessness of attempting such a thing. If not, he would probably already have tried it. Unless, of course, he was waiting to first talk to her.
The shutters had been closed over the windows, but light showed through the chinks in the mud-and-wattle walls. Joss was not asleep.
Lilah pushed at the door. It was closed, not latched, and swung inward easily. Moving quickly so as to lessen the chance that she would be seen and recognized, silhouetted against the warm light pouring from within the hut, she stepped inside, closing the door behind her, this time latching it. Then, her toes curling against the coolness of the dirt floor, Lilah turned to seek Joss.
He was lying on his back on a crudely constructed cot, clad only in his plantation-issued loose white trousers, one hand behind his head. An oil lantern smoked on an overturned barrel behind him, illuminating the hut's single room The remains of a charred-looking meal sat on the rickety table against the wall behind the door. The cot, barrel, and a single hard wooden chair, were the only furniture. He had been reading a tattered copy of a book scrounged from somewhere. The slaves were forbidden to learn to read, but she supposed that Joss, having already known how when he learned of his enslavement, was a different case. As she stepped inside and closed the door he lowered the book. When she turned to face him he just looked at her, green eyes glinting in the uncertain light.
For a long moment they stared at one another without speaking. She drank in the length and breadth of him, the broad shoulders and hair-roughened chest, the handsome face. In that single comprehensive look she noted that his mustache had been shaved, and his hair was neatly shorn. He was clean, surprisingly so considering he had spent the day at hard labor, his hair still damp as though he had recently bathed.
"Hello, Joss." Lilah leaned back against the door, her hands pressed flat against the rough panel, and smiled at him rather tentatively. What his reaction would be to her visit she could not guess.
By way of reply, his eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened. With an easy movement he swung his legs around, his movements careful, precise; he marked his place in the book with a feather and set it on the barrel beside the lantern. Only then did he look up at her. Those hard eyes told her all she needed to know: He was blazingly angry.
"Well, if it isn't little Miss Lilah, the belle of Barbados," he said at last, smiling in a tigerish way. "Tired of your lily-white fiance so soon? Come to satisfy your craving for dark meat?"
His tone was savage, and he stood up as he snarled the last two words. Lilah's eyes widened as he advanced on her. She held up a hand, palm out, to ward him off. Her shoes dropped from her nerveless fingers to land with a soft thud on the dirt floor beside her bare foot.
"Joss, wait! I can explain…"
"You can explain?" His voice was a mere rumble of sound, low and threatening, as he closed in on her. "You tell me you love me, bed me, then betray me the first chance you get and YOU CAN EXPLAIN!"
These last words were a muted roar, and as they exploded at her he reached out and jerked her toward him, his fingers bruising as they dug into her upper arm.
"Joss, sshh… Don't yell!… Stop it! What do you think you're doing?"
"Giving you a little of your own back, Miss Lilah!"
He jerked her across the tiny room, sat down hard on the cot, and yanked her over his lap with a speed and ferocity that left her helpless to do anything to save herself.
"No! Joss San Pietro, you let me up! Let me up this instant!"
As she squirmed to escape, he pinned her on his lap with one hard arm, and jerked up her skirt with his other hand.
"Stop it! Stop it this instant, or I… Oh! Ouch! Stop!"
His hand whacked her backside with a resounding slap. Lilah cried out. Quickly she muffled the sound with her hand pressed tight against her mouth as she realized a scream might well bring someone to investigate. At all costs she could not be found in Joss's hut, much less in such a compromising position! She kicked and squirmed and fought, but silently and to no avail. He smacked her bottom again, hard, and then again, the blows stinging madly. She tried her best to wriggle free, kicking and beating at his thighs with her fists, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from shrieking her rage at him. Her bottom burned with each blow, but he held her in an iron grip she could not break. Finally, as he showed no signs of either relenting or listening to her gasped pleas for a hearing, her temper blew. When his hand slammed down for what must have been the doz- enth time, she bit him as hard as she could through the rough cotton trouser into the hard muscle of his thigh.
"Hell-born bitch!" With this oath he shoved her off his lap. Lilah landed on her hands and knees on the hard-packed floor,
"You low-down, dirty, rotten, smelly son of a bitch!" she hissed, leaping to her feet. So furious she could cheerfully have whacked him over the head with an axe, Lilah drew back her arm and slapped him across the face with such force that her palm stung.
He clapped a hand to his abused cheek, and jumped to his feet. Lilah had to scurry backwards to avoid being knocked over. As he towered over her, emanating rage like a stove gives off heat, her eyes blazed up into his and she gave not an inch. His eyes were as hot as hers, and his mouth twisted furiously. For a moment they glared at each other, murder at the forefront of both minds. Then, when he reached for her, meaning no doubt to shake her or commit some other act of mayhem against her person, Lilah suddenly remembered that this was the man she loved, the man who believed she had betrayed him. With a disgusted sound she stepped toward him, inside the arms that were seeking to hurt her. She lifted her hands to catch him by both ears.
"You dolt!" she said, her voice softening fractionally. Then, without loosening her grip on his ears, stretching up on tiptoe, she slanted her mouth across his.