“That is not like him,” Brenna said, “to go running off like that with a pair of handsome gals. Not that I blame him, after what she said to him this afternoon.”
“Yee women underestimate him,” said Uncle Joe with a chuckle. “He know exactly what he is about. I suspicion he asked Kofi-lad to bring those gals by. Look at she, one eye on the gate. Now she shall wonder all evening what he is up to.”
With radicals plotting trouble. What else might he be up to?
They had been good-looking. Far worse than that, they had looked smart and lively. The kind of gals I might be friends with. That is, if I didn’t have to put a chisel through someone’s eye, most likely my own because I certainly could not succumb to this sort of pathetic jealousy over a man I had to set aside until Bee was safe and I was free. If he would even want me after that.
The hour grew late, and folk went home. We washed up and put the benches on the tables, and I swept. Everyone went to bed, but I was too restless to lie down. I sat in the sling chair under the shelter getting bitten up by mosquitoes and so perhaps that was why sleep did not claim me.
Very late, he came in whistling under his breath, tapping out a rhythm on one thigh. A tincture of cold fire hovered in front of him in the shape of a gas flame burning within a glass lantern latticed by gleaming metalwork in the shape of queen conch shell. He was actually spinning it slowly around, checking to make sure it looked real from all angles. And it did, for I would never have known it for an illusion if it had been stationary. Reflexively, without thinking, I drew threads of shadow around me, to hide myself. He paused halfway across the courtyard, and he chuckled in the manner of a man who, having had a little too much to drink, thinks too well of himself.
“There’s a Landing Day areito tomorrow out in Lucairi District. If you want to go, we can. There’ll be dancing and singing. And food.”
I didn’t want to go. I shouldn’t go. It was a bad idea to go.
“Yes.”
“Then we shall. Good night, Catherine.”
25
In the morning I woke muzzy-headed and furious with myself because Vai had already left for his work so I could not tell him I had to change my mind. I’d become selfishly preoccupied and distracted instead of doing nothing but hunting for a way to save Bee. I dressed, grabbed my cane, and tucked into my sleeve a little cloth purse that easily swallowed my paltry earnings.