Nkiruka was present daily and helped Jane make arrangements with the slaves, being well aware of their abilities. After consulting with Frank on the usual practises in Antigua, Jane and Vincent had determined that it would not raise any eyebrows if they were to offer the slaves a small fee for their labour.
Some of these were older women that Nkiruka had suggested Jane speak to about her book, but some were young men or women who were quite gifted. The young women, in particular, had been trained in European-style glamour for their roles as lady’s maids, but several had begun by learning Igbo-or Asante-style glamour from their mothers. None of them could be engaged for long, perhaps only two hours one day and then not again for another three days, but it was well worth it. It relieved Jane to have glamourists who could take some of the burden off of Vincent.
Still, she and Vincent were often the last ones to leave the ballroom. He had stopped trying to help at the estate altogether. Whether it was that or sheer exhaustion, he had been sleeping deeply at night. The dark circles under his eyes had begun to fade, and his appetite seemed to have returned.
As they were working one evening, Jane amending her notes by candlelight and Vincent putting the last touches on a frozen waterfall, a sudden boom cracked the air. Jane dropped her quill. It sounded like nothing so much as cannon fire. Vincent spun towards the open doors of the ballroom. He staggered for a moment and caught himself on a chair.
“Vincent!”
“Only dizzy. I turned too quickly, nothing—” He broke off as another crack sounded, this time with a flash of red.
Straightening carefully, he stepped towards the doors, Jane close behind him. Three more of the cracks fired in rapid succession, each accompanied by a different colour of light. Jane relaxed as they walked outside. “Fireworks.”
From the prospect of the Whitten estate, they could look south towards English Harbor. From the fort that stood on the hill over the bay, a series of fireworks painted the sky. Vincent smiled at them for a moment, then sobered. He slipped his arm around Jane and pulled her close. “Let us go back in.”
“What is—oh.” She had forgotten the date. For most of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Ireland, and Faerie, the sixteenth of June represented a major holiday. It was the day that Wellington had defeated Napoleon in the Battle of Quatre Bras.
It was also the day that Jane and Vincent had lost their first child.
She pulled his hands down so that his arms went around her stomach. They stood thus, leaning against one another so that it was not possible to say who was supporting whom. Jane leaned back and rested her head against him, caressing his hands where they held her. “It seems strange to think that we would have had a three-year-old with us.”
“Mm…” He kissed her temple. “I doubt we would have come.”
“No. Nor to Murano, for that matter.” She sighed. “I might have resented that, but for now all I can think is that after we return to England, I never want to leave home again.”
He chuckled. “Travel is not always this fraught. Most of our tour of Europe was completely without incident, your mother’s nerves excepted.”
“Agreed, though I suppose the presence of a child would at least have made your father more reasonable on the subject of heirs.”
“Not—” Vincent cut himself off and sighed, apparently recognising that it was too late to stop the sentence. “Not really.”
Jane had never asked about the sex of their child. She had been too frightened of all that being with child had entailed, so when she miscarried, her guilt made her want to pretend that it had never happened. Vincent must have asked, or been told. “A girl?”
She felt him nod more than saw it. Perhaps because of Melody’s son, Jane had somehow expected it to have been a boy. Though her own parents had had only daughters. “Did you name her?”
“It did not seem right to do so without you.” He left unsaid that she had not wanted to know.
Knowing that it had been a girl, a daughter, made the loss tangible in ways that it had not been even in the immediate aftermath. Somewhere, among the soldiers who died at the Battle of Quatre Bras, Jane and Vincent had a daughter buried. Jane found herself weeping.
They remained thus until the fireworks had faded and only the stars and moon lit the sky.
*