For Her Love (28 page)

The procurer grabbed her arm again, but he raised his hand, clearly intending to strike her if she tried to escape a second time. Grace refused to cringe, but neither did she resist. Any attempt to escape here would be futile. She had to wait until she was no longer surrounded. Unable to resist, she looked once more in her uncle’s direction. He smiled at her and rubbed his fingertips lightly together. She had just made him a small fortune.

The man who had bought her shoved her down the stairs and through the streets. Periodically, he would force her to stop while he called out to men that he apparently knew and said something about a
subasta
. The men would nod, and the procurer would rattle the purse that hung at his waist and laugh.

After the seventh or eighth such stop, he pulled her into an airy inn, through a shaded foyer, and into a courtyard that must surely have rivaled a Spanish palace. The décor was Moorish, with a mosaic floor of brilliant blues, purples, and golds. A marble fountain, splashing water down three tiers, dominated the center of the yard. Large cushions of rich silk littered the tile floor. Gleaming white benches lined walls covered by trellises of flowering vines. The flowers lent an odor of overpowering sweetness to the air, and Grace didn’t know how much more she could take before she would lose her battle with her stomach.

On the other side of the courtyard, he stopped, unlocked a door, and shoved her through it. The chamber appeared to be a huge dressing room with an assortment of vanities and wardrobes from which a profusion of colorful silks spilled out. There was one small, barred window that threw a patch of striped brightness on the floor. As in the courtyard, the floor was scattered with cushions, but beautiful women draped in caftans or scanty, silk shifts occupied many of them. Like the women in the pen, they came in varying shades of mostly brown, and they looked up at Grace with expressions of vague interest. The man muttered something in Spanish to them, pointing to Grace. Then he left, locking the door behind him.

A woman with deep caramel skin offset by a dusky rose shift glided over to her and removed the bonds from her wrists. She took Grace’s chin in her hand and moved her face from side to side, inspecting her. “You Mulatto, like me,” the woman said. “You gotta pretty color. De maas sey you a virgin. Him a-go sell you tonight an’ we tell you what a do.”

Grace felt like she was in a dream. No, more removed even than that. Someone else’s dream. She wanted to beg for help, but she couldn’t seem to open her mouth and get the words out.

“No worries. Fight a little, den give up, an’ when him stick it in you, moan
‘Oh muy grande Señor, muy grande
.’ It don’ matta how tiny it be. Dem like dat, an’ it ova in no time.” She snapped her fingers for emphasis. “It hurt a little dis time, but it betta dan a beatin’. You get use’ to it.”

Grace stared blankly at her for a moment before politely asking, “Have you a chamber pot in here?”

The woman jerked her head toward a screen in the corner, and Grace rushed behind it where she knelt and vomited bitter, yellow acid until she thought her stomach was going to turn inside out.

Iolanthe paced the length of the keeping room, blood thrumming excitedly through her veins. How long should she wait ere she could be certain that Edmund was truly on his way to their neighbor’s farm and would not turn back for some forgotten item? Once well away, he would be gone for twenty-four glorious hours, and she would have freedom. It was not enough that he had ruined her life. He had to take away even her smallest pleasures.

Perhaps she
had
been a little overzealous with the last whipping. Now the slaves were being much more cautious. They would rather drop dead where they stood than step out of line and be punished. Several actually had. And of course, Edmund demanded that there be an actual reason before she could bring another to the post. But with him gone, how was he know what had taken place? She could bribe the overseer into backing any story.

With a sigh, she picked up a pillow that she had embroidered for her bedroom and had just finished stuffing. She had to admit that she hadn’t realized how very entertaining Grace had been. Needlework had been more satisfying when she had been able to take as many jabs at Grace as she had at her embroidery. Even that stinking little maid of hers was never around anymore. She had demanded the return of the woman, but Edmund had insisted that he didn’t like having Matu about the house, and Iolanthe wasn’t about to dirty the hem of one of her gowns by traipsing out to the slaves’ quarters to look for her. “Oh!” she said aloud, a sullied smile marking her lovely face. Perhaps she would have
that one
brought ‘round! Aye! Matu would slake her craving!

She had just decided that she could wait no longer when a slave knocked hesitantly at the back door then opened it timidly. He was one of the mill workers, and he was drenched in sweat. Iolanthe wrinkled her dainty nose.

“What are you doing in the house?” she demanded. He wasn’t actually
in
the house, but he was close enough.

He shook his head, a mix of fear and loathing in his eyes, but no comprehension. He mumbled something in an African tongue, then pointed toward the front of the house and said, “Ship.”

“Ship?” Iolanthe repeated impatiently, her hands on her hips. She would have this one beaten, too. Who did he think he was, stinking up her home with his sweaty, black skin?

He pointed to the sugar house. “Bakra—sey—ship.”

Oh. Bakra was their word for overseer. The overseer had sent him to tell her there was a ship. Why did he always send one of these ignorant savages with his messages? For God’s sake, they didn’t speak any English, even as barbarous as that language was. Nothing like French, melodious and civilized. Her upper lip curled. She looked the man over one last time before shutting the door in his face. With Edmund gone, it would be her duty to find out who was on the ship and what they wanted. She had nothing to transport, so she would send the captain and crew on their way.

She took a step outside the front door and then smiled at the sight of the ship entering the bay.
Reliance
. Iolanthe’s mind began to spin with the possibilities. The most delicious, of course, was the prospect that Grace was gone. If her letters had done the trick, she had lured Captain Courtney to Tortuga, and Jacques had slipped into Port Royal. Iolanthe laughed out loud and hugged herself. Grace would be in Havana by now, auctioned off and spreading her legs in a
bordel
. Someplace filthy and teeming with the worst kind of men. Worse than Edmund. Iolanthe, of course, would be entirely unable to help the good captain with his search. Alas, since Grace had not returned home, there would be no telling where his bride had gone.

Of course, it was also possible that her letters had not reached their intended recipients in time. In that case, it might well be that Captain Courtney had learned of Grace and Edmund’s deception. Perhaps he was here to drag Grace home, beaten and finally humbled, so that he could throw her at her father’s feet. If that was so, it was a shame Edmund was not here. Iolanthe would explain that she had been against it all along. She would appease Captain Courtney by having Grace tied to the post where she would pay dearly for both her father and herself. The captain would finally see that Africans were not anything like Whites. They were deceitful and barbaric. He would be so apologetic for how he had spoken to her in her home.

She was so happy she fairly skipped down to the dock and danced impatiently there while he and his friend rowed out to meet her.

*

“I don’t know,” Geoff commented from his seat across from Giles. They rowed together toward the dock, Geoff facing the house, Giles the ship. “She looks happy to see us. Thrilled even. Not the countenance of a woman who has sent a man’s wife to some terrible fate and now has to face the husband. Were she guilty, would she not be cowering in fear?”

Giles looked briefly over his shoulder. “Mark my words, she lusts for suffering, that one. She thinks to celebrate Grace’s plight.”

Geoff shook his head. “Has she no care for her own neck, or think you that she is as fond of receiving pain as giving it?”

“Mayhap she thinks Welbourne can protect her.”

“Is she in need of protection? You have not spoken of it once, Giles. What do you intend to do to her?”

“If she gives me the information I seek, and we find Grace unharmed, then I will leave her to her husband’s justice. He is far from perfect, but he cares for his daughter. If she is not forthcoming, or Grace has been—” he paused. “Well, then I shall delight in wringing her scrawny neck.”

Geoff grinned humorlessly. “You’d never lay hands upon a woman in anger.”

Giles hissed in frustration. Geoff might well have the right of it. He didn’t think that he could do actual harm to a woman, but Iolanthe did not know that. By the time he was finished with her, she would be well convinced that he was within an inch of murder.

As they rowed up to the landing, Iolanthe called down, “Captain Courtney, Captain Hampton, what a pleasant surprise. But where are your wives?”

Geoff tied the boat and Giles leapt out. He reached her in three strides and grabbed Iolanthe’s shoulders in both of his hands, squeezing like a vise. “Where is she?” he growled into the startled woman’s face. “What have you and that filthy, disgusting bilge rat of a brother done with my wife?”

“I—I have no idea what you are speaking of. What has my brother to do with anything? What has become of Grace?”

Giles shoved her away from him, but then began immediately to advance upon her again. Iolanthe tripped and fell over the back of her skirt as she tried to retreat.

“If you place any value on your wretched life, you will not lie to me,” Giles warned. “Your brother has stolen my wife, and he has done so at your bidding! So help me God, if any ill befalls her…”

Iolanthe looked desperately over to Geoff, who stood behind Giles, his arms folded across his broad chest. “Please Captain,” she begged. “Your friend is quite mad. Why would I allow any ill to befall my own child?”

Geoff, famed across the Caribbean for his ability to slay a man without a trace of emotion, gave her a look of bored indifference. “Since we left Port Royal, he’s spoke of naught else but carving you into pieces with his cutlass and feeding you to the fish. The same for your brother, though he’ll feed his balls to them first before his living eyes. I would not continue to lie to him just now.”

She turned her attention back to Giles, and there was unrestrained terror in her brown eyes. “Please, tell me what has happened. What has Jacques to do with it?”

Giles took another step forward, purposely planting both feet on the edge of her skirt and forcing her to remain sprawled before him on the ground. “First, I get two strange missives from a French privateer whom I barely know. An
illiterate
French privateer who bids me come to his aid in Tortuga. I do not find that Frenchman there, but I find another, a man by the name of Jacques Renault.”

Genuine confusion warred with fear on Iolanthe’s face. “Jacques went to Tortuga?”

“As well you knew he would!” Giles shouted. “He deceived me, betrayed my trust. When we arrived at Port Royal he took my wife. I am no fool madam. You are at the root of this! This plan was of your own invention. Tell me what your whoreson brother has done with Grace!”

“Think for a moment,” Iolanthe pleaded. “Grace is my own flesh and blood…”

“That she is not!” Giles yelled. “I know not the particulars, nor do I care. What I do know is that, thanks be to God, Grace is no child of yours.”

By now, the overseer and a guard were running down the hill from the sugar house, flintlocks drawn. “Hold there!” one of them shouted.

At their arrival, evil calculation slowly crept into Iolanthe’s expression. “You know not the particulars, Captain? Then mayhap I
can
help you.”

“You will tell me what I wish to know or pay dearly.”

The woman seemed to grow calmer with each passing second. Her breathing slowed and her cheeks regained a bit of their color. “I will answer your questions. But first you will get your filthy boots off of my gown.”

“Back away!” the overseer shouted, as he and the guard drew near. “Back away or I shall shoot!”

Geoff laced his hands atop his head to show that he was unarmed, though the gesture seemed more like a comfortable stretch than surrender. He strolled over to the two armed men with an air of easy confidence. “D’you see that ship across the bay, mates?” he asked with a grin. The guard nodded, and Geoff lowered his hands before adding, “She has two dozen armed sailors and cannons.” The men traded worried glances.

During the exchange, Giles had stepped off of Iolanthe’s skirt, but he made no move to assist her as she struggled to her feet.

“Where is Edmund?” Giles demanded.

“At our neighbors. He has business with them,” Iolanthe snipped.

Giles shrugged stiffly. “No matter. My business is with you.”

“Quite to the contrary, Captain. Your business is very much with Edmund. I did naught but set to right
his
crime against you.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

Iolanthe turned to the guard. “Fetch Matu.” At his blank look she barked, “Grace’s dumb maid! Bring her to me this instant!”

She muttered under her breath in heated French as the man stumbled off to obey, then looked back at Giles. “I will concede that I wrote the letters. I will even concede that I wrote to my brother and bid him remove that lying baggage from your life.”

Giles saw red, and for just an instant, he thought he might actually kill her after all. He took another step toward her, and she put up her hand in an imperious gesture of halt.

“I must warn you,” the overseer said nervously, pointing his flintlock at Giles while glancing uneasily toward the ship.

“Keep quiet!” Iolanthe snapped. The overseer glared at her. To Giles she said, “You will thank me for it, when you know the whole story. I cannot imagine what possessed Jacques to seek you out in Tortuga. He was to go to Port Royal while you were gone. It was never my intent that you should know of my involvement. It was to be an anonymous good deed.”