The Art of Persuasion: Book 4 of The Swashbuckling Romance Series

by Myers, Heather C.

  "I know you," she replies, looking me up and down with distrust on her face. I can't blame her. I've been here a few weeks but I'm still a stranger. It's not like I've gone out of my way to get to know the girls here. Maybe I should change that.

  "Are you going back" - I almost say to the brothel but I stop myself. "Home. Are you going home?"

  She hesitates before she shakes her head. "I was going..." She doesn't want to tell me - doesn't know if she can trust me - but something inside of her wants to be able to share it with me. This secret she has. It's almost as though she's kept it all to herself. It's almost too big for her.

  "You can trust me," I tell her and I hope I sound as sincere as I feel.

  "I've met someone," she tells me, and it's like she needed an excuse to tell me her entire life story because she starts talking about everything. I almost feel bad for her because it seems like she doesn't have any friends. Clearly she doesn't have anyone to talk to. "He's going to take me away from all of this. From this life. I never asked to be a whore. I didn't have a choice! Sarah is good, but I can't..." She lets her voice trail off and shakes her head. "I can't give my body to multiple men. I can't look at myself the same way. I can't look at myself in the mirror. Henry will change all that."

  Henry?

  As in, Sarah's Henry?

  Lots of people are named Henry now, right? Surely it's just a coincidence... Except I have a nagging in my stomach that says it's not just a coincidence.

  "I can't be there anymore," she continues, shaking her head. "He's not ready to leave but I can't stay..." Her eyes look big and they fill with tears. "Karina was going to tell. So was Briyella. They walked in..." She shakes her head again. "I can't do this anymore. Please, don't say anything. I can't have any more blood on my hands."

  With that, she disappears in the crowd before I can stop her. My head is swimming. My thoughts are muddled. I have more pieces to a puzzle I can finally put together.

  Sarah. I need to speak to Sarah.

  I turn on the heel of my boot and run back to the brothel. I get weird looks because I'm running in a dress. My hair is flying, my boobs probably look amazing, but I run awkwardly - I never know what to do with my arms - so I don't look all that great.

  When I push open the doors, the first person I see is Henry. I'm so startled, I step on the hem of my skirt and faceplant on the floor. I groan and my eyes seize up with water because, fuck, that hurt, but Henry is at my side in an instant, and starts to help me up. I flinch because I can't control myself but thankfully, he doesn't seem to notice.

  "You all right?" he asks. He's looking at me with what may be suspicion, but then again, he's always looked at me that way. I hate when I'm supposed to keep a secret because I am terrible at keeping secrets. Even my face can't keep a secret.

  "Yeah," I say, wiping my hands together. I know I'm going to bruise somewhere but I can't even feel that heavy pain just yet. My intuition is kicking because there's something not right with Henry, and until I figure it out, it's going to leave me unsettled.

  "Do you know where Sarah is?" I ask, and I'm ashamed to say my voice comes out shaky and I think my hands are shaking too so I clutch them together behind my back and hope he doesn't notice how weird I am right now.

  "She's in her room doing the accounting." He furrows his eyebrows and looks me up and down. It's not predatory - at least, I don't feel gross due to how he's looking at me - but he's searching for something in my face, he's trying to figure something out, and I'm not comfortable with it at all because I have no idea how good he is at reading people. In fact, I don't know anything about the guy except he's cheating on Sarah with a whore and probably killed her friends because they found out about his affair.

  Damn, I'm good.

  "Why?" he asks. "Is everything all right?"

  He sounds genuine but I don't buy it. The guy doesn't like Matt in the least so I'm sure I don't rank high on his list by association. It's those eyes. They're dark and I can't make out what color they are so already I don't trust him. Plus, why didn't he offer to help Matt when Matt was planning to rescue Sarah? Maybe the guy doesn't like piracy and being part of something illegal, but Sarah's his wife. You should do anything for your wife.

  "Perfectly fine," I say. I'm screeching for some reason, which is already obnoxious but I can't control the pitch to my voice if I tried. My head is spinning with excuses but I can't think of anything except - "my period just came and I need to figure out what women do here since there aren't any tampons."

  He gives me a puzzled look.

  I inwardly smack myself at my modern lingo and try to remember my Jane Austen movie collection.

  "Monthlies!" I exclaim. "I have them and I need her" -

  "Off you go," Henry says, ushering me away. "In her room. You know the way."

  I snicker to myself as I thank him. Men are the same, no matter what time I'm in.

  Chapter 15

  I don’t consider myself a crime buff. I never watched crime dramas except How to Get Away with Murder and I’m not sure if that even counts. Either way, I’ve picked up a few things from the media, from real life documentaries, and from common sense. Sarah believes that I’m from a different time with better technology. Somehow, she thinks this translates into me being a reincarnation of some kind of Sherlock Holmes. I think she’s crazy and I try to tell her but she’s just like her brother and refuses to listen.

  “What would normally happen?” she asks me one day, pacing around my room while I sit in bed, biting into a juicy strawberry. A lot of the fruit here is imported from the Americas, making them expensive. It doesn’t even taste the same since it’s been on a ship for who knows how long but strawberries are my favorite fruit and I haven’t had any in so long that I won’t complain. “In your time?”

  “In my time,” I say, shifting my weight and pressing into the pillows behind me, “I would have been able to examine the body before it was disposed of.” I take another bite to give me some time to think. “Are you sure you don’t want to tell the cops – or whatever you call policemen here? They’ll be better assets to you than I will, at least in terms of resources.”

  Sarah adamantly shakes her head. “I nearly escaped death with my life,” she says. “There’s no way I’m interacting with them so soon. I won’t let that happen. It has to be you. I don’t trust anyone else with it. Not even Matt.”

  This is a big admission. I pause, trying to figure out the best way to handle it. The fact that Sarah trusts me is a miracle by itself. I still don’t think she likes me but admitting that she trusts me is big. However, I think that the fact that she has no choice definitely plays into it but I digress. I’m not going to split hairs over it. I make note of it and store it away. Something shifts inside of me, something that makes me proud of who I am, something that wants to make sure I don’t let her down.

  Instead, I swallow the remnants of the berry and shoot my eyes over to her. “Why?” I ask. “Why don’t you trust Matt?”

  Sarah shrugs dismissively. “Because he would worry,” she says like it’s not a big deal. “That’s what Matt does. He worries. It can be endearing, but most of the time, I want to knock some sense in him and remind him that I’ve taken care of the two of us the majority of our lives. I know how to survive.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t want you to just survive anymore,” I say before I can stop myself.

  Sarah shoots me a look that says I’ve over stepped my bounds. I shrug now because I don’t care. If she wants my help, I’m not going to cower because she wants me to be weak, bend to her every whim like grass in the wind. Certain things I’ll let go, but not everything. Not this. She’s in denial and she shouldn’t be.

  "Matt cares about you," I say, pushing her even further. She gets this big, fat wrinkle between her brow but I don't give in to her snarl. She needs to hear this, and since I'm doing her a favor here, I don't care what she thinks about it. "I don't know his side of the story. I only know what you’ve told me. But ob
viously, he cares more about you than you realize. Or, if you do realize it, you don't care. You take it for granted."

  "Don't presume to tell me" -

  "No." I don't mean to but I snap. Sarah flinches, which I kind of feel bad about but not really. She can't go around talking to people the way she does. "You tell everyone what to do, how they should feel, but when someone does it to you, you refuse to listen. You're stubborn, Sarah, to the point where you're going to push people away. It's not possible to know everything and be right all the time. I know what you've endured. Your life. I know how strong that has made you. And I know this anger that you project to the world is the mask you choose to wear because it's easier to keep people at a distance that way. I get it."

  "And how could you possibly understand, girl from the future?" Sarah asks, crossing her arms over her chest and looking at me like I'm dirt on her shoe. "Isn't your life hunky dory over there, where technology is great and nothing bad happens and" -

  "Bad stuff still happens in the future," I tell her. "It's not the same, but it's still bad. Just different." I pause and swallow. "And I know because I used to do the same thing. Except, instead of being angry all the time, I used to sleep around. With guys. Guys that I did like and I did enjoy my time with. It just wasn't because I was in love. It was because didn’t want anyone close to me so I used sex as a way to protect myself from letting myself get too deep with anyone. I pushed people away and thought I was strong because I didn't need anyone but myself. But that's shit. You know it. And I know it." I let out a breath I don't realize I'm holding and then feel compelled to add, "Also, just so you know, it's normal for girls to sleep around even though they aren't engaged or married or even in committed relationships. It's normal."

  Sarah rolls her eyes and waves my comment away. "I don't care about your sexual exploits," she says. "Have you forgotten I run a brothel filled with such things?" She looks away and I decide the question is rhetorical. "I protect Matt because that is all I know how to do. It's what I've done my entire life."

  "You don't have to do that anymore, Sarah," I say. "You're allowed to be taken care of. You're allowed to be catered to. You deserve it. You need to figure out how to trust Matt. Because he wants to help you just like I do. And don't think for one minute that I don't know the only reason you're letting me help is because I am from the future." I press my lips together and look back at her face. "The difference between me and Matt is that I don't care. Matt does. Don't push him away. He doesn't deserve that, and neither do you."

  Sarah is quiet for a long moment. To me, that is a victory. Her eyes narrow on her lap and I think she's processing my words, taking them in and letting them settle inside of her. She's a good big sister. There's no doubt in my mind of that. And she wants to do what's best for Matt. She wants to protect him from things, even though he's an adult. Even though he can handle himself. There's a tugging in my heart and it makes me wonder if I yearn for the close bonds of a sibling. I've never really cared all that much beforehand except maybe when I was little and got lonely but now that I see what Matt and Sarah have, I can't help but wish I had it for myself. Maybe if I did have it, I wouldn't be so torn up about whether I should stay here or go back home.

  "So what do you suggest I do?" Sarah asks, turning her face up so she's looking at me. "Henry wants to call the guard - the same guard who arrested me and wanted me to hang. I don't want them anywhere near my establishment. In fact, I have no idea why they haven't come and arrest me again. Surely they know I'm still on the island, resuming my practices that got me arrested originally."

  I shrug. "Maybe Matt is protecting you too," I say. I give her a look that implies she should at least consider what I'm saying, that as protective as she is over her brother, there's a good chance he feels the same way about her.

  "What do you suggest I do, then?" Sarah asks, and I can tell it takes a lot out of her to ask me this. In fact, she adds, "since you seem to know everything."

  I refrain from rolling my eyes at her pettiness and shrug my shoulders. "I actually have no idea what I'm talking about," I tell her. "I don't have a brother or a sister. I just know that Matt wants to be your equal. He already has a mom and a dad, and even though you were more of a parent to him than they were, you're still his sister and he needs his sister right now, not anyone else. He needs you to trust him, to see him as the man he is, not the boy he was."

  "And how do I do that?" she asks, quirking a brow. "How can I see him as a man to be trusted with important things when I hear he's still trying to woo my girls?"

  Sarah has a point but her reminder is like a punch to my heart. I've been trying to forget what I saw a few hours ago, and even though Matt has tried to seek me out, I've become the coward I've always hated and avoided him like the plague. I don't want to hear excuses or justification or any explanation of what I walked into. Clearly, the two have a history and I don't need - or want - to hear about it. At all.

  "I don't know what you want me to tell you," I say. "I'm not going to defend his actions or explain them. But he's still a man, Sarah, free to do what he wants. Even if it is stupid."

  Sarah's lips quirk up. Another victory.

  "May we talk about Briyella?" she asks.

  I nod, appreciating the change in subject. I can't talk about Matt with other girls right now. It's just not in me to do it. It's like my heart is a crumpled up piece of trash that can't find its way into a garbage can.

  "Where do we go from here?" she asks. It's then that I notice that dark circles under her eyes. Her grit, that determined glint in her darks eyes, looks as though it's been snuffed out. "We examined the body. Matt found a good place to bury it. Investigators weren't called, the guard knows nothing of her death, but I feel as though besides the residents of my establishment, no one knows what happened to her. You took your notes. Have you discovered anything? Or are you too consumed with my brother to actually think about anything else?"

  I feel my face get set on fire after she doused me with gasoline. How can I have assumed Sarah lost her grit? Why would I ever think that?

  "I" - Sarah stops, looks away. Then she looks back at me. "I don't mind. I like you. And he does too. I just feel overwhelmed. I feel like I'm not doing anything to honor her. I can't just sit still when my girls are still in danger. Yet I don't think I'm doing anything productive. She's in a graveyard with an unmarked grave. I don't even know if she has a family we need to be aware of. I don't know anything."

  Tears spring into her eyes and I swallow because I'm surprised and can't believe that she's so open to sharing this side with me.

  "Okay," I say. I don't coddle her. I don't dare go over and hug her. The best thing I can do for Sarah is to pretend I don't notice the tears or the quiver in her voice. "Let's talk. Obviously, whoever did this had an issue with Briyella. She was strangled to death by hands. That’s an intimate death. I’m sure we can assume she would have struggled, which means her killer has to be strong. Do you know of anyone that would harm Briyella?"

  I pause. I know I should tell Sarah about my encounter with Stephanie. But I don't feel confident accusing her husband of possibly having an affair with her, killing any people who may have found out about it, and then trying to find his lover and possibly kill her too. Sarah may or may not believe me - probably not - and I may get thrown out of the brothel for even accusing him. It wouldn't matter how much Matt likes me. He's Sarah's husband. She's in charge. And right now, I have a roof over my head, food in my stomach, and no psycho trying to kill me to keep quiet.

  Yes, a voice says, but said psychology is trying to find Stephanie so he can kill her. You don't want the blood on your hands, do you?

  I don't. I chew my bottom lip and ring my hands together. I'm trying to think of the most appropriate response without giving myself away. Maybe I shouldn't tell her for the sake of my life, but there are other ways. Sarah could figure things out on her own. She's smart enough. I just need to plant the right seeds.

  "How well d
o your girls know one another?" I ask, crossing my arms over my chest.

  "What do you mean?" Sarah asks.

  "You know," I say. "How many of them are friends? How many talk to each other, that sort of thing?"

  Sarah thinks for a moment, teasing her thumb nail between her teeth. "We're all friendly with each other," she says. "I want my girls to feel like they're part of a family. I want them to feel comfortable coming to me about anything. I know they fight but I can't say for sure how friendly they are."

  I inwardly curse. I needed Sarah to realize Briyella, Karina, and Stephanie are all friends. More than typical brothel-buddy friends.

  "I do remember," Sarah says and I hold my breath, "that Stephanie ate breakfast with both Briyella and Karina." Her voice gets a tone attached to it, like the clinks in the clock is turning and she's coming to a conclusion. "And we have two bodies and one missing girl." Sarah slams the table and stands. "You're brilliant, Isla! Stephanie did it."