[Chapter Fourteen]
"I've always called it 'Little Island,' since nobody's ever troubled giving it a name." She reined in her mare and directed Winston's gaze toward the atoll that lay a few hundred yards off the coast. The waters along the shore shimmered a perfect blue in the bright midday sun. "At low tide, like now, you can wade a horse right through the shallows."
"Does anybody ever come out here?" He drew in his gelding and stared across the narrow waterway. The island was a curious anomaly; there was a high rocky peak at its center, the lookout Katherine had described, and yet the shores were light sand and verdant with palms. Little Island was less than a quarter mile across and shaped like an egg, almost as though God had seen fit to set down a tiny replica of Barbados here off its southern shore. Looking west you could see the forested coast of the mother island, while to the east there was the road leading to Oistins and the Atlantic beyond.
"Never. I've ridden out here maybe a dozen times, but there's never been a soul."
He turned and surveyed the coast. "What else is around this place?"
"Nothing much, really. . . . Just the Walrond plantation, up the coast, inland a mile or so, about halfway between here and Oistins."
"Good Christ! I'm beginning to understand it all." He laughed wistfully. "I'll wager you've probably come out here with that gallant of yours." Then he looked at her, his eyes sardonic. "Didn't he get his fancy silk breeches wet riding across the shallows?"
"Hugh, not another word. Try to understand." She turned and studied him. These occasional flares of jealousy; did he mean them? She wasn't sure. Maybe it was all just a game to him, playing at being in love. But then, she asked herself, what was she doing? Perhaps wanting to have everything, a lover and a husband. But why couldn't you? Besides, Hugh would be gone soon. Better to enjoy being in love with him while she could. "I mean that. And Anthony must never learn we came here."
He was silent for a moment, letting the metrical splash of the surf mark the time. Somehow she'd managed to get away with her little game so far. Anthony Walrond was too busy rallying his royalists to take much notice of anything else. Or maybe he was willing just to turn his blind eye to it all.