For Her Love (3 page)

Edmund looked behind him, then back with a smile. “My daughter, Grace Welbourne.”

Giles flushed a bit. He had been staring quite openly, and with her father standing right there! He cleared his throat and tried to keep his voice nonchalant. “A lovely girl.”

Having had a chance to catch his breath, Giles now noted a small black woman attending Welbourne’s daughter. She carried a basket lined and draped in white linen in one hand, a bottle of wine in the other. A blanket was folded over her arm. Another African woman followed behind them, toting a wide tray filled with goblets, plates, cheese, meat, and fruit.

“Grace, dear,” Edmund called out, “allow me to present Captain Courtney.”

Grace stopped a bit farther away than good manners might require and cocked her head.
A ship’s captain
, she thought to herself. This was an unexpected development. It was progress. Much better than the slave trader (what had possessed her father?), the numerous other planters, and the various, lower-ranking members of French and English nobility. Of course, she would no more accept this sailor than she had any of the others.

“How do you do, Captain Courtney?” she said, dropping into a graceful curtsey.

“Miss Welbourne,” he replied, bowing crisply.

He was handsome. She had to admit that. He looked just what a captain ought, clean and tidy. His face was mature, with lines around the eyes, and yet there was something boyish about it. His eyes were gray, kind, and sharply observant. Although he was not overly tall, he was broad of shoulder and had an air of quiet authority. Judging by his gaze, he also thought she was beautiful, that much was evident, but most men did.

“So,” Edmund interrupted, his eyes cutting back and forth between the young people with keen interest, “my message?”

Giles shut his eyes lightly for a moment. Apparently he was going to have to have this confrontation in front of Welbourne’s beautiful daughter. “About the slaves?”

“Aye. I know you do not count yourselves actual traders. I but need transport for a handful of bucks.”

Squaring his shoulders, Giles said, “I’m afraid I cannot help you there, sir.”

Edmund blustered a bit. “But you’ve Blacks of your own. I can see them on board your ship.” He gestured across the bay.

“Aye, well, they’re free, sir.”

“The devil you say!”

“Quite. They’re paid, same as the white crew members.”

“Paid?” Grace asked. “You pay your Africans?”

“Aye, Miss Welbourne. They do the same labor, give the same loyalty. Some of the best sailors on the sea are Negro.”

“How extraordinary,” Grace replied, her face acutely interested.

Edmund shook his head, obviously perplexed. “Hardly economical.”

Giles only shrugged. He wasn’t here to preach to the man, but neither would he apologize for his principles.

The little black woman smiled at him and raised the bottle of wine in invitation. Then she and the other slave spread the blanket in the shade of a sea grape tree. Grace and Edmund sank down next to one another, while Giles took a seat opposite. From there, he could converse while keeping a watchful eye on the bay and the men loading cargo several hundred feet away. The serving women passed around fine porcelain plates, an obvious sign of wealth in a land of wooden trenchers and stoneware. The basket held fragrant, freshly baked bread, and the wine was sweet. Although he remained ever mindful of the business at hand, Giles allowed himself to enjoy the repast, the company, and the breeze that blew in off the water.

While Captain Courtney and Edmund spoke of the weather and other meaningless trivia, Grace’s mind churned. In her home and among her neighbors, absolutely no White shared her view of Africans as human beings. In fact, her father had forbidden her to speak of slaves at all whenever they were among other planters. He found her outspokenness an embarrassment. She was truly surprised that he had reacted so mildly to Captain Courtney’s statement. There had been subtle censure in the captain’s words to her father, a bold move considering that he wanted Edmund’s business. But that thought gave her pause.

She looked straight into Giles’s face and said, “So, you do not deal in slaves, Captain Courtney, only the crops they sweat and die to produce. And your conscience is assuaged?”

“Grace!” Edmund chastised.

“Nay,” Giles protested. “It is a fair observation. Aye, I suppose slavery is a necessary evil. My profession relies upon plantations and the like. As for my personal dealings with Africans, I’d just as soon not be in a position of ownership.”

“A necessary evil,” Grace repeated, biting thoughtfully into a slice of cheese.

She entirely disagreed with the sentiment, but it was a far cry from the patronizing explanation of slavery that her father and his peers professed.
They’re savages, beasts of burden, hardly different from horses or oxen.
If one abused an animal, Grace had reasoned, that animal was ever after hateful and mistrusting. Matu had been doomed to a life of silence for Grace’s sake, but she loved her and cared for her like Grace was her own child. Matu was a far better person than Iolanthe and Edmund, those deemed fit to own her. And as for Grace herself, well, she always felt wholly human, if never wholly white.

Nay, she did not agree that slavery was necessary, but there was something to be said for a man who knew that it was evil.

“Forgive her,” Edmund said, casting a cross look at his child. “She is an idealist. I’ve sheltered her far too much, I must confess.”

Again, Giles shrugged and smiled benignly. “Nothing to forgive. ‘Twould seem she’s far from sheltered. Many a planter’s daughter knows nothing of the plight of the people who serve her.”

Grace arched a golden brow at him. His subtle barb found its mark. She, too, benefited from slavery. But
she
had no choice. Or did she? She did with that thought what she had done with it for over ten years. She buried it ere she was tempted to let it surface entirely. What sort of choice was it?

She chewed at her lip in consternation. How dare her father bring this man here, a man who, by his own willingness to acknowledge his failings, made her all the more aware of her own? And how dare this man do so with such a charming smile and gentle manner?

“Do you live in Port Royal?” she asked, her voice a little too crisp.

Giles nodded, washing down a bite of bread with his wine. “Aye, when I’m not at sea.” He smothered another grin. One could watch her every thought tug at her lips and furrow her brow, and he sensed that this was a young woman whose mind was seldom at rest. He rather imagined that Edmund Welbourne had had his hands full with his daughter.

“I have never been to the city, though I should very much like to go,” she said. She frowned at Edmund. “My father says it is too rough.”

“Well,” Giles said, “women of your quality are rare there. Most live outside of the main area of town. There are comings and goings a girl like you would do just as well not to know about.”

She gave him a cynical little smile, her eyes suddenly brittle, and Giles wondered what to make of it. He let his gaze wander over the slaves who rowed boats full of crates out to
Reliance
and helped to hoist them up the side of the ship. His first mate directed the operation smoothly. It didn’t feel at all right, to be sitting here eating while the others worked, but he had learned much in the last two years about courting customers. It wouldn’t do to offend the man after he had already criticized him for holding slaves.

“‘Tis a shame your wife couldn’t join us,” he said, by way of conversation. “I hope that she is not ill.”

“Nay,” Edmund assured him. “It is only that she is very fair-skinned and burns in the afternoon sun.”

“Ah well, at least we are
graced
with your daughter’s presence.”
Ouch!
He could see by the look on her face that he was not the first to have made such a pun.

After an initial shake of the head, she smiled again, that enigmatic, almost bitter smile. “Nay, I am not so fair as Mistress Welbourne. What my father will not tell you is that my—mother—never takes her meals with us.”

Edmund laughed uncomfortably. “Iolanthe is one of those strange women who does not take regular meals. She prefers to nibble upon this or that throughout the day. Perhaps it is because she is French. Who knows?”

The daughter laughed. “Aye, ‘tis a well known fact that formal meals are not the custom in France.” And now her expression was one of undeniable disgust.

Giles laughed, too, although weakly. It seemed as if it might have been a joke, an irony, but he felt as though he had missed some crucial detail.

Edmund Welbourne appeared no more successful than Giles in appreciating the remark. He scowled at Grace and cleared his throat. “Bad form, you know, discussing a lady who is not in our presence.”

“We do everything in the best form here,” Grace concurred, but her tone was no different than it had been for her last remark, ironic and scornful. And yet in her eyes there was such longing, as though she wanted so much to mean what she said.

The mood had grown intensely strange and uneasy, and Giles rose, unable to sit still in the midst of it. “Well, though I trust my men, I think I’ll check on the loading of your goods myself, and then we’ll be off.”

“So soon?” Edmund said, rising too. “I hope we’ve not offended you in some way. Grace, entreat our guest to stay.”

She looked up at him, and Giles knew not whether he truly saw entreaty in her eyes or only wished that he did. “Can you not linger, Captain?”

Captain. From her lips, the title sounded real, sounded natural.

“I wish that I could,” he explained earnestly. “But I can’t start a voyage with the crew thinking I shirk my duties. Perhaps, when I return with your father’s profits, I could stay a bit longer?”

She regarded him for a moment. He was, in every way, so unlike the other men that her father had brought to call, arrogant men, all so impressed with their own importance. A whole ship’s crew entrusted their captain with their lives, obeyed his orders, and yet he asked permission to see her again as though her answer genuinely mattered to him. With a start, she realized that she very much did want him to return and stay longer, but that was a path that she well knew she could never travel down with any man. Like all of the others before, she had no choice but to send him on his way. Her shoulders actually ached when she shrugged them carelessly.

“No doubt you’ve other business to attend to,” she said, turning her back to him and helping Matu clear away the dishes.

In the brief time he’d spent with Grace, Giles had seen myriad emotions dance across her expressive face, but the look of bleak despair that she had tried to hide by turning away went straight to his heart. What was going on here that Edmund’s daughter should be so scornful one minute, so profoundly sad the next?

Welbourne’s slave but deepened the mystery. The small, African woman shooed Grace away with her hands while she sharply jerked her head in Giles’s direction. Welbourne’s daughter stared at her in obvious shock, but the servant made a strange sound and gestured back to Giles.

Edmund chuckled. “It seems that our Matu approves of you,” he said.

“Uh—I’m flattered,” Giles replied.
What is a matu?

“That may be more important than you realize,” Edmund explained cryptically.

Grace frowned at the maid and shook her head, but the maid gestured back toward Giles and firmly tugged on a plate in Grace’s hands.

“Give me that,” Grace snipped.

The maid shook her head, and Edmund chuckled. “Your assistance has been refused, Grace. Come, walk our guest to his boat with me.”

She turned abruptly to Edmund. “You know very well that this is all perfectly futile. ‘Tis cruel, that’s what it is.”

She spun back to Giles, and for one horrifying moment, he thought that she might cry. God knew, he’d rather face a bloodthirsty pirate with a cutlass in his hand than a comely wench with tears in her eyes.

“Godspeed, Captain Courtney, and a safe journey to you.” She released the plate over which she and the maid had been battling, curtseyed briefly, then lifted her skirts and ran back toward the house.

The two men watched her retreat: Giles entirely nonplussed, Edmund scowling sourly. Giles broke the tense silence. “‘Tis quite all right, sir. I’d not force my attentions upon your daughter. Please, do not fault her too harshly. She is entitled to her preferences.”

Edmund crossed his arms. “If ever a man suited my child’s preferences, it would be you. I thought that perhaps…well, never mind. Even so, I hope you’ll plan to spend a few days here when you return. We’re actually quite hospitable here at Welbourne. Won’t you give me a chance to show you?”

Welbourne’s voice was entirely too cheery, his stance too studiously at ease. He was far from ready to let the matter go. Giles murmured something suitably unintelligible and ambiguous and, gathering up his pride, strode back across the lawn to the bay. Upon reflection, he reminded himself that it would be ill advised to court a customer’s daughter. Besides, he had been a captain but a few scant days. He’d no time for courting.

On impulse, Grace turned near the front of the house. She watched the captain’s strong, fit form move with purpose and grace back to the boats, her father tripping after him. Of course he was fit and graceful. He was clearly a man unopposed to labor, one who asked nothing of others that he would not do himself. She had seen how he chafed at sitting on the lawn throughout the meal. He was a man of action, disinclined to sit idly by.

“Stop this Grace!” she whispered to herself. “For goodness sake, twenty minutes in his presence, and already you imagine him some paragon. You cannot have him.”

Her father caught up to him and stopped him, speaking in a most animated manner, though she couldn’t hear what he was saying. Captain Courtney seemed to be trying to make an exit, but then he looked up at the house. ‘Twas too far to see his face clearly, but she knew that he was looking at her. She should dismiss him. She should turn her back and go inside, but she could not tear herself away. He must have said something that pleased her father, for they began to move back toward the boats, and Edmund’s step was a little lighter.