Following instructions, she turned right, then left, a fixed smile on her lips. Suddenly two horsemen appeared from around the corner, riding at a rapid trot. Both were in uniform, and as they approached both lifted their hats to her and bowed low in their saddles. Her step almost faltered, but she managed to return the salutation and to keep going. Once they had passed out of sight. Dirk called to her softly.
"Who was they? I didn't dare look at 'em for fear they'd see my face 'n' maybe recognize me."
Janine answered without turning. "One was Colonel Martin, Her Grace's chief military aide-de-camp. The other was the brigade adjutant here."
"Fryin' Jehos'phatI That sad Airedale Martin knows me sure without a-seein' my face. Oh well. It don't really matter. Ye can't go gack t' King's House anyhow."
The girl was not prepared to have her future settled in so summary a fashion, and she would have pursued the point, but at that instant Dirk directed her to turn in at the gate immediately ahead. She walked through a small garden ablaze with hibiscus to a modest single-story frame house painted white. Dirk joined her and pounded on the door. After what seemed to be an interminable wait a man opened it, and to Janine's infinite relief he was dressed in the sober black of the clergy.
Dirk wasted no time. "C'n we come in, Mr. Pennywell? This here is Mistress Groliere, lady in waitin' t' the Duchess, *n' we got somethin' t' tell ye."
"By ail means, by all means!" The minister's face showed both pleasure and astonishment. "It isn't often the gentry condescend to visit me. I am humbly pleased to receive you into my home. Mistress Groliere. The fear of the Lord is the instruction of wisdom; and before honour is humility.' Proverbs, 15."
Beyond a tiny entrance hall was a small, severely furnished drawing room in which several plain chairs of bamboo predominated. Bamboo-slat blinds were lowered to keep out the sun; the floor, after the manner of most Jamaican homes, was bare of rugs and the walls were without ornamentation. Esther Mary Pennywell, attired in her shirt, ragged trousers, and belt, was curled up on a window seat, sucking a pulpy local fruit known as star apple. Her dog, sprawled on the floor, paid little attention to the new arrivals. And Esther Mary remained where she was, indolent and insolent, as her uncle introduced her to Janine Groliere.
As Dirk began to explain the reason for the call, the two girls studied each other covertly from beneath lowered lids, but the expressions of both remained blank and innocent. Then the big American asked Janine to tell her story, and the atmosphere changed at once. Lost again in the horror of her tale, she forgot her immediate and instinctive hostility to the unusually dressed brunette, and Esther Mary dropped her pose of boredom, lifted a blind and pitched her apple into the yard, then sat upright, her eyes blazing. When Janine finished, there was an instant of shocked silence.
" 'We wrestle . . . against spiritual wickedness in high places.' Ephesians, 6," Reverend Pennywell murmured.
Janine stared at him. "Master Bartlett may be dead by now,"
she cried.
"His name is Jeremy Stone," Dirk shouted, " 'n' I wish t' Hades—beggin' yer pardon, Reverend—that ye'd stop a-sayin' he's dead!"
Esther Mary and her uncle exchanged a long glance. "I think," the brunette said slowly, running a strong but feminine hand through her crop of short hair, "that I'd better find out what has really happened to him."
Dirk jumped to his feet, beaming, and slapped her on the back with such force that he almost knocked her from the window seat. "I knew ye'd help us!" he boomed.
Coughing, Esther Mary glared at him. "I'd like to help a man who has certainly been foully treated and who may have been murdered. I'd try to help you too if you were in trouble, Master Friendly." She rose abruptly and started for the door, her dog at her heels. "Wait here until I come back with information. I don't know how long I'll be gone."
She was almost out of the room when Janine stopped her. "Mistress Penny well! Please! I can't stay here! If I'm not back at King's House in the shortest possible time "
Esther Mary eyed her coolly and tried without much success to keep her annoyance from her voice. "You have technically committed the crime of treason. Mistress Groliere," she said. "If the governor general and his butchers have any notion that you came to—^Jeremy Stone's friend—and told him of the incidents of the other evening, your petty neck might be stretched on a gallows before the sun sets tonight. I have no way of knowing whether you've been seen or not. Neither do you. If you care to take the risk, you are certainly free to leave here at once. On the other hand, if you value your life, I think you'll agree to the wisdom of accepting Uncle Jonas' hospitality for a few hours."
She grinned impishly and slipped through the door.
As the long hours of the day dragged on, Janine sank deeper into a lethargy of gloom despite the efforts of the Reverend Pennywell to comfort her. An impulsive gesture dictated by her conscience had placed her outside the law, and she saw with painful clarity that she had jeopardized her whole future. No matter what might have happened to Jeremy Stone, she could not remain in Jamaica now, and it was probable that neither England nor any English colony would ever be a safe haven for her.
She wished fervently that her father would return to the island and spirit her away in the Bonnie Maid, but the mere thought of the wrathful explosion that would occur when he discovered what she had done made her shudder. Gone now were his dreams for her of a brilliant future and a life as a lady. At best she could hope for an existence of sorts in France, and she had no illusions as to what would be expected of a maiden without family or background in a land where the manners of Louis, the Sun King, were copied slavishly at every level of society.
As her sense of despondency increased, her worry over the missing Jeremy Stone became greater, too. While it was true that she was in an unenviable position, it had been one of her own making, and because of a man whom she believed she had every reason to despise. Yet she did not hate him, and knew that she could not. On the contrary, despite every effort to put him out of her mind, she suspected that she loved him.
She could think of no other logical reason for her behavior; she had known from the moment that she had decided to go to Dirk Friendly that she was taking great risks, but she had not cared. And as she thought now of Jeremy, the same giddy feeling of exhilaration that she had felt so often before flooded her again. But the sensation lasted for no more than an instant.
For all she knew, he might be dead, and she could not picture life without him. The uncertainties of her own future were insignificant when she tried to visualize what he might be going through, and she realized that nothing really mattered except his safety.
A sense of panic welled up in Janine, despite her attempts to curb it, and she dug her nails into the palms of her hands to keep herself from crying hysterically. At last she grew a little calmer and with a great effort managed to push her anxiety over Jeremy into a far comer of mind. She would learn something about him eventually, perhaps all too soon.
In the meantime there were immediate problems. By now all of King's House surely knew that the Duchess's lady in waiting had been disloyal, and an alarm had undoubtedly been given. So it was logical to assume that a search was already under way, and in a community as small as Port Royal it would be only a matter of time, and very little of that, before they found her. Every instinct urged her to flee, but she did not know where to go or how to get there. Her money, her clothes, and her few personal belongings remained at King's House; her fate was in the hands of total strangers who were concerned over Jeremy Stone and were giving no real thought to her problem.