Читаем Forever Amber полностью

He smiled. “Never mind, Amber. No excuses are necessary. I believe I know what you thought. May I present you to Lady Almsbury?”

She gave him a quick glance of indignation—for she wished he would not understand her motives so readily, or would be more offended by them when he did. But he seemed not to notice the look, took hold of her arm and began to make the introductions.

As Amber saw at once, Emily, Lady Almsbury, was by no means a beauty. Her hair, her eyes, even the clothes she wore, seemed indefinite in colouring, though there was nothing otherwise amiss in her features, and her teeth were white and even. Paint and false curls, a few patches and a low-necked gown, as well as a little natural audacity, might have made quite another woman of her. And it was noticeable that she was pregnant again.

Lord! thought Amber. How unprofitable it is to be a man’s wife!

Bruce and Amber went to ride in her coach and with them went a little Negro boy who could have been no more than five or six and who had much ado to keep his master’s cloak, which he carried, from getting into the mud. He was perfectly black and shiny, so that the whites of his eyes gleamed in his face, and as Amber smiled at him he gave her a broad ingratiating grin.

“This is Tansy,” Bruce explained. “I got him a year ago in Jamaica.”

Some of the nobility owned black servants, but Amber had never seen one of them at close range before and she examined him as though he were some small inanimate object or a new dog, looking at the pale-coloured palms of his hands and admiring the dazzling whiteness of his teeth. He wore a splendid suit of sapphire-blue satin and his head was wound in a silver-cloth turban, stuck through with a large ruby pin. But his shoes were shoddy and much too large for him and he was then easing the heel of one down off his foot with the toe of the other, while his big solemn eyes stared up at her.

“Oh, Bruce, what a pretty little moppet he is!” cried Amber. “Can he talk?” And without waiting for an answer she immediately asked him, “Why do they call you Tansy?”

“ ’Cause my mother ate a tansy puddin’ before I was born.” He had a soft liquid voice which it was difficult for her to understand. He stood up in the coach, leaning with one elbow on the seat beside Bruce, and he did not once glance out the window at the busy streets through which they were passing.

“What does he do? What’s he for?”

“Oh, he’s very useful. He plays the merry-wang—that’s a kind of guitar the Negroes have—and makes coffee. And of course he sings and dances. I thought perhaps you’d like to have him.”

“Oh, Bruce, is he for me! You brought him across the ocean for me! Oh, thank you! Tansy—how would you like to stay here in London with me?”

He looked from Amber to Bruce, then shook his head. “No, sir, mam. I’s goin’ back to see Mis’ Leah.”

Amber looked questioningly at Bruce, and caught a quick passing smile on his face. “Who’s Miss Leah?”

“She’s my housekeeper.”

Instant suspicion showed in her eyes. “Is she a blackamoor too?”

“She’s a quadroon.”

“What the devil’s that?”

“It’s one who has a quarter Negro blood and the rest white.”

Amber gave a mock shudder. “They must be a scurvy lot!”

“Not at all. Some of them are very beautiful.”

“And do they call ’em all ‘miss’?” she demanded sarcastically. “Or only yours!”

He smiled. “That’s the way Tansy pronounces ‘Mrs.’ ”

She gave him a sidewise glance of jealousv and mistrust, and though she wanted to ask him point-blank if the woman had been his mistress he was still a little strange to her and she did not quite dare. I’ll ask Tansy, she decided. I can find out from him some way.

At that moment they stopped before her lodging-house. Bruce helped her out and whatever she was about to say to him was cut short by the appearance of Almsbury’s coach, which had followed close behind them. She and the countess walked upstairs together, chatting about the weather and the play and the audience, and Amber found herself liking her very well, for she seemed kind and generous and apparently had none of the envy or malice which Amber habitually expected in a woman.

The meal was everything that Amber had hoped it would be.

There was a hot thick pea soup, steamingly fragrant, with leeks and chopped bacon and small crusty meat-balls that floated on the surface. There was roast duck stuffed with oysters and onions and walnuts; fried mushrooms; sweet biscuits; and an orange pudding baked in a dish lined with a crisp flaky puff-paste and decorated with candied orange-blossoms. And she had ordered a potful of black coffee because she knew that Bruce liked it—it was becoming a fashionable, though still an expensive, drink. The men were enthusiastic and Amber was as pleased as though she had cooked it all herself.