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“Of course.” Frédéric did not wish his stewardship to be unpleasant, and there was no cause to disagree. It was in his best interest to keep Mr. Enrique on.

“And I need these papers signed immediately.”

Rachel shoved a document in front of him, which he scanned, trying to make sense of it, though she was hurrying him along, handing over a pen, pointing out the place for his signature. When he hesitated she put her hands on her hips.

“I see you don’t trust me, but I’m sure you will expect me to trust you,” she said.

“Is business about trust or knowledge?” Frédéric asked. “I’m here to do what’s best for you.”

“This is best. These papers allow Rosalie to be a free woman. I haven’t the right to do the signing.”

Now he understood, Rosalie was a slave. He supposed she was, in essence, part of his uncle’s estate, not that there was any reason for the family in France to be notified of this, for it was a violation of the deepest human right. Rachel was watching him carefully, and he could tell this was a moment in which she would either praise or condemn him. He already knew he didn’t wish to lose her.

“Of course,” he said once again.

When he glanced up, the widow and her clerk were exchanging a pleased look.

Frédéric handed her the document. She did not thank him, but rather studied him more closely than before. She was staring at his jacket. It was as if she could see beneath his clothes. “I presume you gave him my cousin’s clothes,” she said to Mr. Enrique in a teasing tone.

“He wasn’t given them. He took what he wanted, though he swears he’s not a thief.” Mr. Enrique and Rachel often shared jokes, and they did so now, at Frédéric’s expense. “You should be careful that he doesn’t take too much from you without asking.”

Rachel turned to glance at the nephew of her husband, the young man from France who was too handsome for his own good, who dreamed of numbers, who took what he wanted, and who now hung his head, embarrassed at the very idea of being judged untrustworthy, even if they were merely having fun with him.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” Rachel asked him. “Do you plan to steal from me?” She said so to taunt him, but all of her intentions took a turn when he raised his eyes. His look went through her. His eyes were some color that she couldn’t define, a gray or green. They were the color of rain. She hadn’t known rain could have a color; she’d thought it was clear, but she’d been mistaken.

“I would only take what you offered,” he said.

Rachel was impressed by his forthrightness and not at all offended, as another woman might have been. If anything, she felt her interest deepen.

Something had come to her from Paris at last.

FRÉDÉRIC WAS QUICKLY GRANTED
his Burgher Brief by the business association, which allowed him to take over his uncle’s holdings and be accepted into the community. He lived in a spare room in the store, below the apartment, beside the office where he worked. It was expected that he would move to his own lodgings when a property became available, not that he was in a hurry. He didn’t even look for other accommodations, or respond to suggestions offered by the men of the congregation who knew of boardinghouses and rooms to let. He said he was too busy, and his time was taken up with his uncle’s business matters, but the truth was, he did not wish to go anywhere else. In his current room there was a single window that let in more sunlight than had streamed through all of the windows in his family’s home in France combined. Here, every day was a joy, bathed in light. Bananaquits nested outside his window and woke him with their song. Yet no matter how hot the weather, every night he dreamed of rain. It poured down in his dreams, and when he woke he felt much as a drowning man pulled from the sea might have as air rushed back into his being.

Inconveniences did not matter. He did not care for luxury. There was an outhouse beyond the shop and a washbasin on the dresser. He shaved only every other day, and tied his hair back with a string of leather. He sold the houses first, which paid off debts and gave the business a tidy sum to invest. Rachel came with him to walk through the empty houses. First they went to his uncle Isaac’s house. There was an echo on the tile floors, a thickness to the air. She stopped on the threshold of the chamber she had shared with her husband and held out her hands as if in some sort of prayer. Frédéric stood beside her, his throat raw.

“She’s gone.” Rachel’s expression was grave, her black eyes piercing.

“She?” Frédéric asked, thinking he must have heard incorrectly. Surely it was his uncle Isaac to whom Rachel referred.

“The ghost.”

“Ah,” Frédéric said, relieved that she was not still mourning her husband. “So the house was haunted.”

“You don’t believe me?” Rachel threw her shoulders back as if ready for a fight. “She was his first wife. The one he loved.”

“He loved you,” Frédéric said before he thought better of it.

“Why would you say that?”

Frédéric shrugged. “Because he’d be a fool not to.”

They walked along the empty loggia that adjoined the rooms. All the furnishings had been sold and taken away. There was a poppet in a corner, a child’s toy.

“You’ve seen the way he managed the business.” Rachel’s voice was soft. It was terrible to walk through an empty house, lost by mistakes of fortune. “Maybe he was a fool.”

“Well, I’m not,” Frédéric said simply.

They went out to the porch, then down to the gate decorated with herons. The sky was opalescent. Rachel shielded her eyes so that she might look into his. Doing so was like stepping into the rain.

MR. ENRIQUE WAS GIVEN
the title of manager, and in return he worked long hours, teaching Frédéric the business. He was a good teacher and as talented at numbers as Frédéric was. Rosalie often brought them their dinner when they worked into the night. It wasn’t long before Frédéric realized there was something between them, a tenderness brought by years of intimacy. “Your wife?” he asked one evening.

“Is that your business?” Enrique turned away, and Frédéric dropped the subject.

Later, as they were closing up the office for the day, Enrique said, “I had a wife once, but we argued. Now I don’t know if she’s alive. This was all on another island, another lifetime. So how can I marry?”

They kept their attention on the ledgers after that, for a discussion of one’s personal life could lead to trouble. They both agreed that the store was the most profitable piece of the estate, and they concentrated on increasing the importance of sales, as Mr. Enrique suggested, for the shipping business was besieged by bad weather and pirates and taxes. Fate was a terrible business partner, Mr. Enrique told him. Frédéric took his manager’s advice in all things: they would sell molasses and rum and let other men take their chances on shipping and ruination.

When he wasn’t careful, Frédéric dreamed of Rachel. He kept his distance. He heard stories about her at the synagogue. He overheard other women say she thought too highly of herself, that she spoke her mind as if she were a man and was never polite to the other ladies. He walked away from such conversations. It was none of his business anyway. Still, when members of Blessings and Peace invited him to dinners, he had little choice but to attend. They were formal events, and he had only one black suit, which Rosalie pressed for him every time he went out in the evenings. He realized he was being introduced to all of the unwed young women and girls. At one dinner he was so overheated and nervous that he went into the courtyard, taking a glass of rum with him. It was even hotter outside, but at least he was alone. Or so he thought. At first there seemed to be a heron on the patio, one of those strange blue birds he’d spied in the marshes. Then Frédéric realized it was one of the older women from the congregation, wearing an azure-colored dress.

“Do you know what a sin is?” the old woman called to him.

“Pardon?” he said, taken aback. He waved away the moths that seemed to be attracted to the hair tonic he used.

“It’s what you want and know you cannot have.” It was Madame Halevy.

“Are you referring to the rum?” he asked in an amused tone.

“I’m referring to desire,” Madame Halevy said.

“Well, thank you for your interest.” Frédéric was doing his best to keep his wits about him. He thought perhaps he had run into a mind reader. He’d heard there were such women on this island.

“It’s not interest.” The old woman signaled him to help her up from the stone bench, and he had little choice but to do so. “It’s a warning,” she went on. “So you understand there is a covenant against incest.”

“Madame, I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“As a brother cannot lie with a sister, nor a father with a daughter, neither can a nephew and an aunt. You do not need to share blood to be in the same family.”

He felt like thrashing her, old bones and all, but was polite, as he had been taught to be. “I don’t know what would make you say such a thing,” he said in a cold tone.

“Rachel makes me say such a thing,” Madame Halevy said. “She has never understood she must obey the rules. For both your sakes, I’m hoping that you do.”

He helped the old woman inside, then fled from the congregation. From then on, he kept to himself. The old woman’s warning had made him reexamine his actions. Now when he had free time he explored the island. He swam in a waterfall that Enrique mentioned, a secret place set in a marshy area that was a nesting place for herons. Frédéric’s first real bath, not one from a washbasin, was had among tiny blue fish that flashed around him. He quickly accepted the local wisdom that it was better to drink rum rather than wine. Rum kept away diseases, as did the netting that he strung around his small bed. Sometimes he went back to the place where he’d heard bees on his first day in Charlotte Amalie. He closed his eyes and listened to the thrum as bees darted among the flowers, and despite his resolve not to do so, he thought of Rachel.

When he visited his uncle’s widow on Friday night after services, he was schooled in the proper way to hold a baby on his lap while he took his dinner. He tutored the boys with their schoolwork, and thought David had an especially good head for numbers. He told himself, and anyone who might bother to ask, that he went to the Friday-night dinners to be polite, and because it was his duty, and because in some way he was now the man of the house. At these times, and at all times, he did everything he could not to look at Rachel or imagine her in her white shift. Yet he seemed to have memorized that garment: the seams, the pearl buttons, the way it fit her body, the way he might undo it and tear it off her body, the way she might beg him to do so. He was furious with himself for thoughts he could not seem to control.

She was seven years older than he, and had lived a lifetime in those seven years. She had been a married woman, a widow, a mother, and he was nothing more than a young man who was good at numbers. Once, after leaving, he stopped on the street and glanced into the window. He saw her unpin her black hair. He stood there even though he knew she would remove her dress. It was as if his imagining had been willed into being and he couldn’t turn away. Those next few movements when she stepped out of her clothes undid him. He could not look away. He heard bees somewhere, but he couldn’t have told whether they were beside him in a hedge or halfway across the island. Afterward he walked through town, and then into the hills; he trekked for miles and miles, hoping he could walk away his thoughts. He found himself lost in a meadow. Everything was pitch. He felt alone in all the world, more so even than when he was at sea, where no one would have known if he slipped into the waves. He panicked when he saw eyes staring at him through the dark. He thought he had come upon the devil, and that the devil had been the one to give him the thoughts he had about Rachel, and now he would be punished. But when he looked more carefully he saw it was only a goat, kept behind a wooden fence, staring out at him. He laughed at himself and his fears then. He had told Rachel he wasn’t a fool, but now he appeared to be one.

ONE EVENING AT FRIDAY-NIGHT
dinner, Rachel touched his hand with hers while passing him his plate. It was nothing, a passing stroke, yet his flesh burned. He did not care to have his meal. He saw her later, pouring cold water on her own hands, and then, quite suddenly, he knew she felt as he did. After that he worked harder, kept later hours. He wrote to his family in France, long letters about the business, and did not mention her. At night he listened to the whir of mosquitoes and moths. He felt the blue-black darkness all around him. He wished that when he awoke he would find that he’d forgotten the first time he saw her.

There was a night she came to his room when he was asleep. He was dreaming that she was there in her white petticoat, and when he opened his eyes there she was, holding a lantern. She whispered, “Hurry up, get dressed,” then went into the corridor to wait for him. He leapt from bed and pulled on his clothes, hurrying to see if she had been real or the work of a fevered brain. He carried his boots and darted into the corridor. She laughed when she saw him rush from his room, so tall and lanky and disoriented, wiping the sleep from his eyes.