I. SUNRISE

A trade wind style breeze
Shifting, Sifting, Sliding
Across the room
Rolling the soft white curtains
Like a gentle ocean wave
—from Inland Tropics (2014), by Anthony Renfro

Chapter 1: Father and Grace

[June, 1673]
Somewhere in the Caribbean

THE FIRST TIME it happened, Amélie thought she was going to die. If so, she reasoned, death was nothing to be feared. Other girls and some of the native women talked about this but in low voices, low enough that she was never sure she understood exactly what it was. She had no sisters to ask, only Gérard, the boy she thought of as her brother. Her younger brother died before he was five years old from the same tropical fever that took Mother away. She hadn’t dared to ask anyone, certainly not Aunt Grace, about these feelings.

Gérard’s parents, close friends of Father and Mother, had perished in a fire when he was four years old. The cause of the fire was never determined, and only by a series of blessed misunderstandings had Amélie’s parents been caring for Gérard that evening. He had no other family on the island, so the authorities accepted the request of Mother and Father to have him live with them. He’d been a member of the family—albeit without a legal guardianship or adoption—ever since, and Gérard and Amélie, with only a year or so between them, became inseparable.

When Amélie reached her majority, Father decided she was old enough to ride without his personal supervision as long as Gérard or someone else accompanied her. Amélie sometimes rode with Anne-Marie, who seemed to know everything, and finally it was Anne-Marie who told her what had happened. That was after she stopped laughing. Amélie considered hitting Anne-Marie to shut her up, but she knew there were no other girls her age that she liked nearby. Without Anne-Marie she would be friendless. Amélie couldn’t be friends with the native girls, that wasn’t done by people of her class. She was English, born in Norfolk and brought to the island by her parents when she was three. She’d never known any other life. She and Gérard were close, true, they’d always been that way, but Gérard wasn’t a girl.

By now she was used to the heat, the heat that never quite went away even in the earliest hours of the morning. It was oppressive at mid-morning and unbearable in the afternoon. Life for Amélie and her foster brother and Anne-Marie and the few boys they were allowed to associate with was conducted between dawn and noon and only sometimes, under strict supervision, in the evening after the heat had softened. Only on those days when the rains came did they venture out after the mid-day meal. Even then, whatever coolness there might be was usually overwhelmed by the humidity.

Amélie’s father owned Sunrise, one of the largest sugar plantations on the island. The plantation had hundreds of native workers, many of them slaves, although perhaps only a couple of dozen workers had duties that brought them into or near the plantation house. Father’s sister, Grace, had joined them not long after Mother became ill. Once Mother’s illness worsened, and after her death, Grace ran the household in Father’s name. At first, Amélie didn’t understand the whispers from the kitchen help when Grace was out of the room. There was no end of discussion about her, but no one particularly cared what Amélie thought about anything, which meant they had no hesitation in speaking in front of her.

On some mornings, when Amélie was up very early, she left her room dressed only in her nightclothes to enjoy the relative coolness of the garden. No one seemed to mind, even though Father had warned her about snakes, and the early kitchen staff were used to seeing Amélie wander through the kitchen on her way outside. One or two of the kitchen boys seemed to pay a little closer attention to Amélie as she got older and her nightclothes began to hint of previously unobserved curves under their light covering. Amélie didn’t notice their interest, at first.

During one of these outings earlier that year she happened to glance up at the covered balcony that ran all the way around the plantation house and connected all of the upstairs bedrooms and Father’s study. She and Gérard and Father and Grace often sat out there on warm humid nights to enjoy whatever slight breeze there might be. They all slept with their windows open and trusted to the netting over their beds to keep the mosquitos away.

That morning, she saw Father and Grace come out onto the balcony from Father’s room. She puzzled over this. Perhaps Father had been unwell and Grace had come to help him? They had their arms around each other, so perhaps Grace was assisting Father out to get some fresh air. But Grace had on only her chemise. She would have pulled on her housecoat before going to see Father, wouldn’t she?

As Amélie watched, Father and Grace turned to each other, and Grace said something to Father. She leaned close to him to say it, and Father replied, smiling. Then Grace moved into Father’s arms and kissed him, first on his check, then on the lips. That was a little unusual but not totally unfamiliar to Amélie. Sometimes relatives kissed each other on the mouth, but usually not quite as long as Father and Grace were kissing.

Amélie felt a flutter in her tummy as Father held Grace in his arms, and Grace seemed to be trying to get even closer to him. She was moving her body against Father, gently at first, then harder. Father seemed to like that, as he laughed when they broke their kiss. But only for a moment, long enough for Father to lower his hands to Grace’s bottom and pull her once more to him.

At that point Amélie realized it might be better if they didn’t see her. She stepped back into the foliage surrounding the green lawn that the household gardeners kept closely cropped. She already knew enough to know they were doing something they probably didn’t want anyone else to see. She was receiving signals she barely understood, but they were exciting ones and she wanted to see what happened next. Desperately.

Father didn’t disappoint. When their last kiss ended, he moved his hands up to capture Grace’s breasts, an action that seemed to drive her into a frenzy. Grace writhed on his hands, appearing to push her boobs against Father’s palms, while one of her hands found its way to the front of Father’s dressing gown and began to massage something below Father’s waist.

Amélie’s own hand held her breast and her erect nipple, while her other hand, without her thinking about it at all, moved first to her waist and then, as she moved one foot apart from the other, to her special spot. Her crinkly hair was already becoming damp, even wet, the further she explored.

Anne-Marie had told her about this, after she had stopped laughing that day and after Amélie had decided not to hit her. She was glad of that when she and Anne-Marie retreated to her room and, shutters closed against the sunlight and the room overly warm, they undressed and Anne-Marie gave Amélie a short but very instructive course in her own anatomy. They’d tried to be quiet during this exploration, although Amélie suspected the second-floor maids probably heard them.

As Amélie watched now, her own hands busy, Father gently turned Grace to the balcony rail. Amélie worried for a minute whether they’d be able to see her, until she realized Grace’s eyes were shut. Not in pain, though, if the smile on Grace’s face was any indication. Behind her, Father loosened his robe. Amélie caught a glimpse of his member, but only a glimpse, as Father stepped up close behind Grace and pressed himself against her.