For Her Love (11 page)

“Are you sure that you want to start over?” she returned.

“How can the woman I saw in the slaves’ quarters today possibly be the child of those two out there?” he asked, gesturing to the front door.

“How indeed? Tell me something, Captain, when did you decide that you wanted to marry me?”

Giles scratched his head. Women had a way of asking questions more volatile than a loaded flintlock. “I came here to get acquainted with you, perhaps to court you.”

“Why?”

Now he shrugged. He was, after all, just a man. “You are beautiful.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Ah.”

“And intelligent and honest.”

“Honest?”

“Your comment about delivering goods from plantations, and you laughed at your father.”

“What?” Grace asked, shaking her head in confusion.

“Your father and his absurd comment about the French not eating regular meals.”

She smiled slightly. “Oh, that. That makes me honest, does it? And that’s important to you, honesty?”

Giles cleared his throat. Honesty was not always easy, and often, someone had to lead the way. “I think perhaps you have spent your life guarding what you say, and mayhap you think that means you are not honest, but the whole world is not like this place. At least, there are some people in the world to whom you can speak your mind.”

“And I can speak so to you?”

“Aye, you can.”

“And yet, you have not truly answered my question. You have told me that you came here to court me because I am beautiful. But you have not told me when you decided that you wanted to marry me, or for that matter, why.”

Giles squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his fingers to them. He was so bloody tired. “Let us talk on the morrow.”

Grace felt an insistent tug of pity inside her chest. The man looked like he was about to fall over. No one was going anywhere, and the morrow was soon enough. “Might you show me your ship, Captain? After breakfast, perhaps.”

He nodded and gave her a brief smile. “I’d like that.”

*

Matu had stripped down to her shift and lay on her pallet on Grace’s floor, where she had lain every night for twelve years. At first, it had been to reassure a terrified child, but in time, the two had become an indispensable source of comfort to one another. Once, the master had insisted that Matu leave after Grace was asleep, but the first night that she had tried it, Grace had a nightmare and woke up screaming in her empty chamber. She begged Matu, pleaded with her never to leave her alone again, and Edmund, shaken by the little girl’s terror, nodded silently to the nursemaid.

Sometimes, she still could hardly believe her own luck in having been chosen for this position. The sacrifice she had made for it had been a small one. It meant better food, better shelter, and oh, how she loved Falala’s girl! Matu closed her eyes and remembered her beautiful, mulatto friend, Falala, who had been thrilled when her perfect, golden daughter had been taken into the big house to be raised by the master. So thrilled that she had gladly accepted her own fate. Of course, the mistress was angry. Of course, she had insisted that Falala be sold, but none of that had mattered to Falala. Her child would be free. There was no way that Matu would allow Grace to jeopardize that now.

Through the floorboards, Matu could hear the hushed voices of Grace and the sailor. He was a good man. She had sensed it the moment that she had met him, and a slave’s instincts had to be good. A Negro who couldn’t read a white man was as good as dead.

No, this man was not color-blind, Grace was right about that, but who was? Would she love Grace as she did if the girl were not such a pretty gold, if she were as pasty white as Iolanthe? Matu wasn’t sure.

She sat up when Grace slipped quietly into the dark room, but it took the young woman a while to notice.

“Oh, Matu! Did I wake you?”

Matu shook her head, but since she could barely see Grace, she doubted Grace could see her. She got up and fumbled to help Grace out of her gown. How differently the day had gone than she had planned when she’d dressed Grace with such care earlier. Folding the dress carefully, she decided that it would have to be laundered on the morrow if it was to be saved from the day’s dirt.

“Don’t bother folding it,” Grace murmured. “‘Tis ruined. Leave it on the floor for now.”

For all that Grace had a much better understanding of a slave’s plight than most planters’ daughters, the child was still so white. How many slaves wore the same set of rags day after day until they had nearly disintegrated from their bodies? And Grace thought that this gown was ruined. She was so careless with her possessions. Matu folded the gown anyway and set it at the foot of Grace’s bed.

Grace sighed. “He’s taking me to his ship tomorrow.”

Matu smiled, and a little flame of hope lit inside of her. She had been appalled by her own actions when she had struck this child of her heart earlier, in the kitchen, but now it occurred to her that Grace had needed a bit of sense slapped into her. Guilt over a situation that was not of her making was a foolish reason to toss aside this chance at, not just freedom, but happiness. Matu would have sacrificed her tongue a hundred times over for such a chance. Falala, exquisite, cream-and-coffee-colored Falala, would have forfeited her life to give her child this chance. If Matu had to, she would beat the girl senseless to make her marry the sailor.

“Mind you,” Grace told her, “I’m not making any promises, but he is kind and strong, and I would be the worst sort of liar if I didn’t admit that I would love to leave this place and never come back.”

Oh baby
, Matu thought to herself,
someday you gonna come
back. You and dat mon, you a-go come back. Me feel it in me belly, an’ Matu belly not eva wrong.

But of course, she didn’t say anything. Sometimes silence was a blessing.

From time to time, Grace had traveled in one of her father’s rowboats. Several strong-shouldered slaves would row her family up the coast to a neighbor’s plantation for a visit and then back again, just as they now rowed her and Giles to
Reliance
. But the ride today was different. For the very first time in her life, she was being rowed out to a tall ship, the kind that sailed clear across the ocean, and her heart pounded with the adventure of it.

Sitting next to her on the narrow wooden seat, Captain Courtney smiled and said, “We’ll weigh anchor and sail out a ways—not all that far, but probably farther from shore than you’ve gone before.”

Grace laughed, feeling a little foolish about all her excitement. “Undoubtedly farther than I have gone before. Your ship looks big from the dock, but from so close, it is truly enormous!”

“Once you sail from the sight of land, it gets much smaller,” he quipped.

His jest only confused Grace. “What do you mean?”

“No matter how big your ship is, the ocean is much bigger. When you leave sight of land for months, and then you finally spy a new and distant shore, well, you understand life a little better.”

Grace looked up at him, her eyes wide with wonder, serious, but not cynical. “Do you?”

“Aye. Life is like that. Sometimes you sail with nothing to trust but the stars and your sextant and compass, nothing really tangible. You think of all of the miscalculations you might have made, and you wonder if you will die there in all that cold, blue emptiness. Then you see it, pale and indistinct on the horizon, another place, different people, a new experience. It all works out if you plot your course carefully.”

“But if you are rash,” Grace argued, “if you do miscalculate, then you
may
die out there. Or even if you do everything right, there are storms, and mutinies, and a dozen other things you might not have anticipated.”

“Aye, all of that is true. Sometimes, a good sailor must act quickly, rely upon his instincts.”

“Have you good instincts, Captain?”

“Call me Giles,” he replied.

As he had many times in the past twenty-four hours, he wondered about his instincts. They were usually sound, but Geoff’s were often better. What he wouldn’t have done to have his friend here to talk to about all of this. Still, sometimes the weather had blown them off course, and Giles was as skilled as Geoff at finding their way again. He studied Grace, who was gazing at
Reliance
with the dancing, eager eyes of a child.

Damn!
How very amusing it had all been when he was the one watching Geoff’s world turned upside down by a woman. Grace was blowing his ship off course with all of the unpredictability of a hurricane.

“How shall we get from this boat onto yours?” she asked.

His eyes widened. “My what?”

She pointed. “Your boat.”

Giles gave her a look of mock indignation. “Pardon me, madam, but did you just call my
ship
a
boat
?”

She grinned mischievously and fluttered her lashes. “Forgive me, sir. How shall we get from my father’s tiny little boat to your great big boat?”

He laughed and shook his head. “I daresay you’ll have a bit more respect for my
boat
once we’ve hauled you up the side of it on a wooden plank tied to rope thrown over a pulley.”

He had wondered if Grace would be afraid of being carried up the side of the ship by a rope, but she only sang out, “Really?” An eager grin spread across her face, and she jumped up and leaned forward, craning her neck to see the apparatus by which this would be done.

Unfortunately, her enthusiasm well-nigh capsized the rowboat. With a little shriek and flailing arms, she nearly went backwards into the water, but Giles caught her by the skirt and pulled her onto his lap.

“Careful, or you’ll have us all in the drink and we’ll not have our little adventure after all.” He laughed, even as he admonished her.

Grace leapt from his lap, nearly upsetting the boat again. She didn’t know which was the greater cause for her mortification, the fact that she had been on his lap or that she had nearly drowned them all. But embarrassment couldn’t hold up under the onslaught of excitement that she felt. She put a little more distance between them and beamed at him.

“It shall be just like a swing, only way up there!” She pointed to the ship’s deck. “I had a swing when I was a little girl. ‘Twas tied to a poinsiana tree. As far as I was concerned, my father could never swing me high enough.”

Giles laughed again. “I shouldn’t like to swing over much in that thing. ‘Twill send you right into the side of the ship, and you’ll be back to the very fate I saved you from—waterlogged in the Caribbean Sea.”

Still, when they reached the ship, and each pull from above carried her higher and higher, Grace squealed in delight. She didn’t give an instant’s thought to propriety as she climbed over the rail, hiking up her skirts and petticoats to show a shapely calf. Giles took a moment to appreciate the sight from the boat below her and smiled happily. For the first time since he had arrived at Welbourne Plantation, he felt like he was actually courting Grace.

Once she was firmly aboard, Grace stared up at the tall masts. There were two, something Captain Courtney (
no, Giles
, she corrected herself with a slight blush) had told her was true of Brigantines. He had said that his company owned two such ships, and that this one was new to them. There were also a series of ropes and rolls of canvas that stretched high above her. She watched several men climbing around up there among them. Her gaze was so intensely locked upon the men that she didn’t realize that she was stepping backwards until she tripped over a bucket and landed hard on her bottom, her skirts drenched in dirty water.

Giles jumped from the plank that had just pulled him up to the deck, vaulted the rail, and was at Grace’s side. “Are you all right?” he asked, his eyes full of concern.

She gave him a wry grin. “Well, you see, I
wanted
to get wet one way or another today, and you kept
saving
me. I had to be creative.”

He chuckled and lifted her into his arms. “Well, had you but said so…” he replied. He carried her to the rail and swung his arms back as though to hurl her overboard.

“Nay!” she squealed, hardly able to get the word past her convulsive laughter. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on for dear life.

God, she smelled sweet, Giles thought. The heady scent of jasmine and the feel of her light but nicely rounded body begged an immediate response from him, and he had to fight the urge to kiss her long and hard.

Grace grinned up at him, pleased to see the lines on his face deepen with laughter rather than worry. Then his eyes left hers, dropping to her mouth, and she could feel the heat of his gaze nearly palpable upon her lips. Something happened inside of her, a peculiar pull that made her pulse quicken. Her smile faded, and she said primly, “You may put me down.”

“Of course,” Giles said, doing so. He cleared his throat and tried to clear his mind.

Averting her gaze, she resumed her scrutiny of the deck while she gathered her wits. ‘Twas big, and peopled with very few crewmen. Seven, by her count. There was a hatch in the floor, leading to the lower decks, and stairs leading to a higher deck at the rear of the vessel. Up there was the great wheel used to steer the ship.

“May I?” she asked, pointing to the wheel.

“Certainly,” Giles replied. He followed her up the steep stairs, both to protect her from taking a tumble and to enjoy the way her hips gently swung her skirts to and fro. He felt lighter, certainly more himself, here on familiar territory. He called out to his men, and the sails were unfurled to the brisk breeze. The canvas filled quickly, and in no time, they were gliding away from Welbourne and all its sorrows.

Grace didn’t know which was more fascinating, the sea or the man. He was back to his former self, dark hair back in a tight queue, impeccably smooth shirt and jacket, boots polished. He called out orders, and the men instantly obeyed, but his voice was not harsh. Indeed, it was quite merry. He held no whip, and ‘twas obvious that the men felt no fear. He shouted to a particularly young sailor to pick up the bucket and swab the puddle that Grace had left behind, but the lad was so entranced by the sight of Grace that he slipped in the water and went down as hard as she had.