For Her Love (29 page)

Giles stared at her incredulously. “You are out of your bloody mind.”

“Do not speak that way to me!” Iolanthe shrieked. “I will not stand for it! I must tolerate it from my husband. I even had to take his vile little brat’s insolence. From you I demand respect! You owe it to me! You have no idea what I have saved you from!”

“Saved me? Do you honestly think I care that Grace’s mother was a prostitute?”

Iolanthe laughed wildly, doubling over in demented mirth. “A prostitute? Is that what she told you? Her mother was never paid for her services to my husband. The woman was a slave. She cut sugar by day and spread her black legs for Edmund at night.”

“What are you saying? You cannot expect me to believe that. A woman so fair as Grace could not possibly be half-black.”

“Nay, but she could be one-quarter. The bitch who whelped her was mulatto!”

“That is a lie!”

“Is it? Where did she get her coloring, Captain? From her blond father? What about her flat nose, those grotesque lips?”

Nay, he thought to himself. They were beautiful, her nose and her lips. And her skin, it was golden and perfect.

“And that hair,” Iolanthe continued. “Dear God, what white woman has hair like that? Birds could nest in it.”

He stared at her, his eyes wide in disbelief. The guard rushed back up, Matu in tow, and Iolanthe pointed to her. “Tell him, Matu! No need to say anything. Just nod. Is Grace’s blood not as black as yours?”

Matu’s face crumbled in horror. She began to gesticulate frantically, falling on her knees before Giles and folding her hands in supplication.

“Matu—” he began, but his throat constricted.

In desperation, the Matu tried to talk, her words garbled, indistinct, impossible to understand.

“You see, Captain?” Iolanthe said. “Black. African. Negro. Half-caste. Mulatto. It does not matter what you call her. She is an animal.”

He stood there, trying to wrap his mind around what she was telling him. Grace was African. Part African. Did it matter?
Should
it matter?

“Giles,” Geoff said, but his voice sounded like it had come from miles away. “Giles, are you all right?”

Giles looked back at his friend, whose face was no longer a mask of indifference. Pity. Sympathy. Dismay.

“Do not dare to look at me like that Geoffrey Hampton,” he cried. “Do not dare!” He turned back to Iolanthe. “Nay, mistress, it does not matter what you call her. She is my wife.
Now where is she?
”

Iolanthe glared at him with molten hatred. “She is exceeding even her mother’s accomplishment. She is being used by not one, but countless white men in Havana. One after another after another after another…” She began to laugh again, a maniacal, hysterical laugh.

“Sweet Jesus,” the overseer muttered.

Matu continued to try to talk, her hands moving wildly in motions Giles couldn’t grasp. It seemed like everything around him was moving through some thick, clinging medium. He was torn between the desire to slap Iolanthe until she finally shut up and the urge to board his ship and set sail for God knew where. He looked down into Matu’s pleading face. He wouldn’t abandon Grace to Jacques, he knew that much, but he knew nothing beyond it.

“‘Tis all right,” he said to her. “I’ll go and get her.” But she kept staring up at him, weeping quietly now, with yet another question in her eyes. “I cannot say any more than that just now,” he said. “I—I have to think.”

He pivoted toward the deranged Iolanthe, his hand lighting upon the hilt of his cutlass, but Geoff grabbed him. “You cannot kill her Giles.”

“‘Twould be a death more richly deserved than any other I’ve ever caused.”

Geoff nodded in her direction. She was pausing to gasp for breath and then beginning to laugh again. “She’s mad, poor bitch. A raving lunatic.”

Giles stood, fighting emotions more primitive than any he had ever before experienced. Never had he hated anyone the way he hated Iolanthe Welbourne. “But Grace…” he whispered.

“Killing Iolanthe would be a kindness,” Geoff coaxed. “Forcing her to live is your revenge, old friend.”

“Aye,” Giles said, at last. “Aye, it is.” He eased his hand away from his sword, clenching it into a tight fist at his side. If only he could believe that what she had told him was but a symptom of her madness.

“What now?” Geoff asked.

“Havana,” Giles replied.

Grace and Encantadora, the Mulatto, stood alone in the large dressing room. The night was dark outside the barred window, and candles cast a flickering, golden glow. Encantadora wore a thin, purple caftan that skimmed her lithe form. Grace’s own body was barely concealed by her sheer, white, sleeveless gown. It was cut like a shift and belted at the waist, leaving little to the imagination. From the courtyard just outside the door, voices and laughter drifted in.

It was nearly ten, the time advertised for the auctioning of Grace’s maidenhead, and while they waited, Encantadora tried to distract Grace by telling her own story.
Don
Ramon had purchased her at an auction in Jamaica, where she had lived as a child. At the age of twelve, she had come to the attention of her master at the plantation, and he had realized that she was pretty enough to sell to a procurer. She had once had an African name, Ciatta, and though
Don
Ramon had changed it after he had bought her, and she had learned to speak Spanish, she still thought of Jamaica as home.

“How old are you now?” Grace asked.

“Me tink maybe sixteen. Nobody here donkya ‘bout how old me be.”

“Sixteen!” Grace gasped. She had thought Encantadora to be much older. Her skin was still smooth and young, but her eyes seemed a thousand years old. “I would have rather died,” Grace added.

Which was the crux of why Encantadora had been left in the room with Grace. She was there to prevent another incident like the one earlier that evening. Grace had discovered a razor used by one of the women to remove body hair, and she had picked it up, eyeing her wrists. Two quick slices, deep and wide, she had thought to herself.

Encantadora had snatched it from her fingers. “Da maas come in an’ fine you inna puddla blood, him a-go skin us all for lettin’ you,” she had scolded fiercely. “Whey you so worried for, eh? Dis place not so bad. It not de cribs where you gotta take twenty men a night. Dese men, dem gotta lotta money. A lot of ‘em’s clean an’ dem get it ova quick.”

Grace had clapped her hand over her mouth and stared at the other woman in horror.

Encantadora had frowned back at her. “Whey you from girl wit’ you fancy talk? Whey you tink you life a-go be? You tink you a-go marry some fine, free African wit’ big shouldas an’ jinglin’ pockets? Maybe when dese white men be tru wit you. For now, you betta spread you legs an’ ac’ like you like it.” She stopped a moment and cocked her head at Grace. “You eva be on a plantation?” Grace nodded and Encantadora continued, “Den you seen how it be. Me—me lay down for a tousand men ‘fore me go back to one of dem places, dat for sure. Me tellin’ you, it not so bad here.”

“But isn’t it far worse than a plantation? I mean, I suppose it is worse to be whipped…”

“Evr’yting ‘bout de plantation worse. Aye, de lash be de wors’ of all, but sweatin’ in de sun wit no watta, standin’ ova de shugga vats in de steam, draggin’ youself to de huts an’ cookin’ for ev’rybody else. All you tink about be dyin’. Me not seyin’ dis where me wanna spen’ me whole life. Me jus’ seyin’ deh be worse tings.”

“Encantadora,” Grace asked, her face flushed. “Have you ever lain with a man you wanted?”

The other woman laughed. “Me? Me firs’ time happen jus’ like you, right here. Dat mon, him want a girl him can teach. Him like watchin’ me be shocked at what he sey an’ do. Him not mean, but me pretty scared. Since den, dem all de same, pretty much. Some be a little rough, but it get too bad, you call
Don
Ramon. But aye, me tink about it sometime, what it be like wit’ a good man dat you love. A lotta dese men, dem want you to like it, an’ me preten’ me do, but someday, me wanna really feel it, you know?”

A key turned in the lock of the door, and
Don
Ramon stuck his head in. He rattled something off to Encantadora, and she responded, then spoke to Grace. “Him sey it time. Him axe me if you gonna be a problem, an’ me tell him no, you don’ want no trouble. Whateva foolish dreams you got, you betta get rid of dem now. Dreams don’ give you nutten but heartache.”

Grace backed away from the door, shaking her head. “I cannot do this.”

Encantadora gave her a shove. “You do what de maas sey. One of us make trouble, we all pay.”

Grace didn’t want to think about what that might mean. Somehow, she managed to put one foot in front of the other and follow
Don
Ramon out into the torch-lit courtyard, Encantadora behind them. Grace wore sandals that moved quietly across the colorful tile, and her skirt rippled softly around her ankles. The pirate captain in his grime-encrusted velvet leered at her. “Been dreamin’ o’ me since ye left the block, love?” he called out, and Grace shuddered.
Please, God, not that one
, she prayed.

Judging from the murmurs she heard and the style of dress sported by most, the majority of the men were Spanish. Their eyes roved freely over her body, ill-concealed by her clinging gown. One by one, she looked into their lasciviously smirking faces and thought to herself,
and not that one, nor that one, nor that one…

There was no way out. On the morrow, or someday soon after, she might yet find another razor, but for now, there was naught that she could do. She thought of how she had gone to bed with Giles feeling this way, and she knew not whether to laugh or cry at her own stupidity. Now, she would have given anything to see him again. Anything to have given herself to a chance to be loved and cared for. Now she would never understand the mysteries that Faith had spoken of.

Don
Ramon stopped, and she stopped with him. Unlike the first time she had been sold, this auction was conducted entirely in Spanish. She didn’t have to listen to anyone’s cold, calculated description of her in multiple languages, and yet, she would have welcomed anything that might have delayed the inevitable but a few more moments. This sale was similar in that bidding began quickly and finally dwindled. The English pirate tossed a heavy purse back and forth between his two hands merrily, keeping pace with the bids of a corpulent Spaniard with a pock-marked face and rail thin man with teeth as bad as Iolanthe’s and an accent that she couldn’t quite place.

At last, the fat Spaniard dropped out of the race. “Leave ‘er to me,” the pirate shouted. “I speaks ‘er language. I’ll teach ‘er all she needs to know for the rest o’ you swabs tomorrow night!”

The gaunt man bid again, and the Englishman’s confidence dimmed a bit. Grace knew herself to be between the devil and the deep blue sea. Bear the weight of the pirate’s filthy body or the taste of the other man’s rotting mouth.

“
Cincuenta doblóns
,” a new voice called from the back of the room. The bid was met by exclamations of surprise from most, gasps of indignation from the two remaining bidders. Grace’s heart skipped a beat and her breath caught in her throat. It was him! The Spaniard who had spoken to her in the pen and challenged the auctioneer at the block! His arms were crossed and his expression sour. He looked like he would rather be anyplace on earth rather than
El Jardín de Placer
. Their eyes locked, and he almost looked a little angry with her.

“My arse!” the Englishman exclaimed. “Nobody pays fifty gold doubloons for a wench! Not for just one night!”

The Spaniard gave
Don
Ramon a tight smile and said something else, something that seemed to account for the outrageous sum, for a number of men nodded in understanding, and his strange, foreign competitor bared his black teeth in a sneer of revulsion. Standing behind Grace and
Don
Ramon, Encantadora gasped.

“What?” the pirate protested. “What’s that? She won’t what? Talk slower.”

The Spaniard’s dark eyes swept over the pirate’s filthy finery with contempt. In English, he replied, “When I have finished with her, she will not be able to work for several days. Naturally, I am willing to compensate
Don
Ramon for her incapacitation.”

Grace’s knees buckled, but Encantadora was there to catch her and help her to stand more steadily. She had thought that perhaps this man was a friend of some kind, but now she had to face the fact that he was from an enemy country. Who knew what might have transpired between this Spaniard and her once-privateer husband and his friend? What revenge might he enact against her for her association with them?

Don
Ramon and the Spaniard were now in serious conversation, and the rest of the men in the room spoke in whispers, their eyes darting back and forth from the newcomer to her.

Grace met his eyes met again, and what had once seemed the man’s distaste for the auction now seemed contempt for her. She turned away from him and looked to Encantadora for a translation. The pity in the younger woman’s eyes did nothing to ease her mind.

“Him promise him a-go leave no scar,” Encantadora offered weakly. “If de mon do dis a lot, den him prob’ly good at it.
Don
Ramon got skill, never leave no mark wit’ de lash dat don’t fade.”

The lash? Grace wanted to flee in terror, but her feet seemed to have taken root beneath her. Finally satisfied with whatever the other Spaniard had to say,
Don
Ramon took the money and then spoke to Encantadora. She took Grace by the hand and pulled her through the courtyard.

“Deh be a cottage out bak. It where him send you when him know deh a-go be a lotta noise. Now listen good, an’ remember whey me tell you. Only fight a little, den give in. Scream an’ beg mercy even ‘fore him hit you, an’ den louder evr’y time de lash fall. It more ‘bout makin’ you beg dan really hurtin’ you.” The three of them slipped out of the back gate, past two African guards. Sure enough, a tiny cottage sat just across the back alley. Encantadora continued in a soft voice. “When him take you, go ahead an’ cry. Act like him got de biggest
pene
in de whole Caribbean an’ ev’ryting be jus’ fine.” She gave Grace what was surely meant to be a reassuring smile. “Dis be de worst it get, me promise, an’ you see, it not so bad if you cry an’ beg a lot. You make it tru dis night, an’ de rest be so easy. Me soon come an’ see how you be.”