Freedom to Love

by Susanna Fraser

  His face was cast in shadow. Somehow in the dark, quiet room, linked to him by the warm clasp of his big, strong hand, Thérèse felt brave enough to be honest. “Jeannette reminds you of your sister, and yet when you found out I wasn’t white...you didn’t look at me in quite the same way.”

  He didn’t speak for a moment. “That was...badly done of me. I was surprised, that I must own.”

  “I know I can pass for white, but I suppose I thought I’d explained myself better than I had.”

  “Would you like to pass?”

  “No,” she said immediately. “At least—it’s convenient that I can now, for a disguise, but I don’t want to be anything other than what I am.”

  “Ah.” He pressed his lips to the back of her hand, and Thérèse had to bite hard on her lip to keep from gasping aloud. “What you are is a beautiful woman and a brave one.” His last words were swallowed by a yawn. “Should sleep. Good night, Thérèse.”

  “Good night, Captain Farlow.”

  “Call me Henry. Or Henri, if you’d like.”

  He shifted, composing himself for sleep, but didn’t let go of her hand. She knew she should pull away. Yet his hand was warm, and she was so tired it seemed easier to stay where she was, perched on the edge of his cot, than to make her way back to her own cabin and her snoring sister.

  She stared at the lantern, fascinated by the tiny flame. When just an inch of candle remained, then she would get up.

  Chapter Six

  Henry awoke in a warm dark cocoon. He couldn’t see a thing, but he could hear the river flowing and feel the boat rocking gently to its mighty pulse of life. And another rhythm just as steady and sure, the breath of a woman sleeping beside him.

  Thérèse, but why was she on top of the blanket while he lay beneath it? That had been unchivalrous of him. He tried to loosen it so he could pull it over her, but she mumbled a protest and batted his hand away. She lay curled on her side, only just touching him with one hand resting on his shoulder. He could smell her hair, a light floral scent he couldn’t identify spicing her earthier woman’s smell.

  Her hair was coming loose. He’d seen it streaming down to her waist the day before, all long and black and straight—a Spanish girl’s hair, or maybe the legacy of her Indian great-grandfather. It was beautiful, wherever she’d come by it, and how would she look naked, with all that hair against the pale gold of her body? If she took the superior position in bedsport, while a man lay on his back and let her ride him, all that hair would flow around them like the finest of bed-hangings, an intimate curtain for the most private of acts.

  His cock grew as hard as he could ever remember it. Without further thought, he rolled onto his good side to face her and tangled his fingers in a loose lock of her hair. So soft, so slippery. She made a contented, sleepy sound and shifted a little closer to him.

  He pressed his lips to her forehead, and she sighed and murmured happily. He edged across the narrow space still separating them. He wanted to get closer, to embrace, to touch.

  Now he pushed back her hair so he could stroke her face and press his lips to hers. After a moment’s startled hesitation she responded, opening her lips to his questing tongue.

  It was a slow, sleepy kiss. He took his time about it, learning her taste, exploring the contours of her sweet, full lips. He threaded his hand through her hair again, finding a few hidden pins and tugging them free.

  After a moment she began her own tentative exploration, stroking his hair, patting then gripping his shoulder. Something about that shy touch inflamed him more than any of the practiced caresses he’d ever known from a seasoned prostitute or experienced widow. He shifted to pull her closer, wincing as he stretched his wounded side, but the pain didn’t matter, not with her so near.

  He kicked free of the blanket and ran his hand down her neck and shoulder, stopping to cup the swell of her breast. She gasped and went rigid for a moment, and he made his kiss softer and more tender, asking, asking, asking, while he gently squeezed her breast until he felt the nipple grow hard under his palm through the layers of cloth. She relaxed and leaned into him again, and he let his hand trail lower, down to her hip, where he pulled her against his cock, then reached farther down to tug at her skirts.

  Again she went still. He tried what had worked before, persuading her with his kiss, but she pulled back and pushed him away.

  “Stop it!” she said.

  It was the first time either of them had spoken since they’d awoken in the dark. Henry grasped for words, for charm, for anything that would get them back to the delicious place they’d been bound for. Yet all he could summon up was, “But—you liked it.”

  She slapped him. In the dark she missed his cheek and struck his temple, just by his eye, instead, and both of them yelped in pain.

  Too late, his mind was horribly clear. She hadn’t meant to sleep in his bed, and he had sworn, less than a day ago, to treat her with the same respect he’d accord to any lady. Now Henry racked his protesting brain for better words—for apology, for some way of explaining that he’d been all but asleep, that he hadn’t been thinking at all, just responding to her presence in what had felt like an especially vivid dream.

  But again she was quicker than he. “Just what do you think I am?” she asked.

  “Beautiful.”

  It was no more than the truth, but she made a scoffing noise. “No. If I were a white girl from a good family—some planter’s heiress, or a daughter of another baron in England, you wouldn’t have done that. You never would’ve thought of me as someone to bed, just as you pleased, only because you could.”

  Henry wanted to protest that it wouldn’t have made a difference, but abruptly he wasn’t sure. Even in his half-asleep state, perhaps some part of him had remembered that she wasn’t white and that her birth was illegitimate.

  “You see. You can’t deny it. You may not value my virtue, but I do, as much as any white girl could. And if I ever get the chance to marry, I mean to go to my husband a virgin, every bit as pure as the most cherished and honored princess in all Europe.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. That was what he should have said from the beginning. What idiocy had overtaken his brain, that the first words out of his mouth had been, But you liked it? “I wasn’t thinking. It won’t happen again.”

  She sat up. “You’re right. It won’t happen again, because I’ll be more careful to avoid your bed in the future. And maybe you’re sorry. But you’re wrong about the other part. What you did showed me what you really think of me.”

  “No,” he protested.

  “Yes.” Now she scooted her way to the edge of the bed and stood up.

  Henry sighed. He did respect her, and he’d meant every word of his promise to Gratien, but he hadn’t lived up to his own good intentions. She had every right to be angry at him. “But I am sorry,” he said. “I cannot undo it, so the most I can do is apologize. We cannot avoid each other, not when everyone on this boat thinks we’re either married or star-crossed lovers eloping.”

  “I know. But not when we’re alone.”

  “Of course not. Look—you should go now. Get what sleep you can. And, Thérèse—I truly am sorry. More than I can say.”

  “So am I.” And with that she slipped out of the cabin.

  He didn’t sleep a minute of the hours of the dark January night that remained to him. What would he have done, if she’d been the white planter’s daughter he’d first taken her for, and he’d awakened with her lying by his side, warm and trusting and desirable? His lusts would have been exactly the same, but would he have acted on them?

  He imagined her as one of the Spanish ladies she so greatly resembled, occasionally allowed to dance with British officers but sheltered by careful dragonlike duennas to protect their virtue against the day they could wed a Catholic gentleman of their own co
untry. If the chance of war had thrown him alone at night with a young lady like that, he might have still kissed her and stroked her hair. Temptation was temptation. But he was all but certain he would’ve remembered himself—and her—before he reached for her skirts. He would have stopped. He would have apologized far more profusely. And most likely he never would have found himself in such a position, for he would have stayed alert enough to send her back to her own cabin before either of them fell asleep, or better yet insisted that she awaken Jeannette so that she wouldn’t have been alone with him in a bedroom at all.

  Good God. He was a cad and a bigot. He, the son and brother of staunchly abolitionist lords, who had been taught to be an officer by a black NCO who’d shown him generous friendship and loyalty—Henry had shown his fine principles by attempting, and crudely, to bed a woman he would have considered in every way respectable if only she’d been white and born to married parents. He’d known she was innocent. Even half-asleep he’d known she hadn’t intended to share his bed in the first place, and he’d still groped her like a common whore.

  She’d never forgive him, and he couldn’t blame her. She shouldn’t forgive him. But still, he would do his best to make it up to her. For whatever time their paths remained together, he would treat her with the same honor he would have shown a duke’s daughter. And if she was still willing to travel as far as England under his...guidance, he wouldn’t call it protection, with all that word implied...then, he would make certain his mother took her under her wing. Even now Mama could make a modiste’s reputation, and with Felicity surely ready to make her debut, they could ensure Thérèse’s success. He would need to be careful though, lest anyone, including Mama, think he was securing the future of a discarded mistress.

  Above all he would never forget what he was capable of. He’d been taught better. He’d thought he was better.

  Thérèse crept back to her own cabin and crawled into bed beside Jeannette, but sleep eluded her. At first she wept silently while her sister snored obliviously beside her. What was wrong with her? She’d vowed, she had sworn on her mother’s deathbed, that she would never repeat her mother’s mistake. She would not let herself be seduced, she would never love a white man, and she would never sacrifice her virtue and claim to respectability by giving up her virginity outside of marriage.

  And yet she’d been drawn to Captain Farlow from the moment he’d knelt wounded at her feet, and him as white as a man could be with that golden hair and those pale blue eyes of his! Her attraction had only grown when he’d been so kind and thoughtful, so willing to listen and sympathize with her troubles. But she shouldn’t have been so surprised that he’d tried to bed her as soon as he’d had the chance. He’d probably planned that all along. He likely thought a woman like her would be honored to be the mistress of the son of an English baron and the grandson of a French duc.

  Jeannette, curse her, greeted the dawn and the resumption of the Enterprize’s noisy engine with a cheerful smile and bright eyes without the faintest hint of dark circles beneath them. “Good morning,” she said. “I can’t remember when I slept like that before. When I’m free in England, I’m going to have a bed like this to sleep in every night.”

  Thérèse scrubbed at her dry eyes and tried to pretend all was normal. “Maybe you’ll have an even better one.”

  It didn’t work. Jeannette frowned and sat up, drawing her knees to her chest. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I didn’t sleep well.”

  “No wonder. It was halfway through the night when you came in.”

  “I thought you slept through that. I’m sorry.”

  Jeannette shrugged. “It didn’t wake me for long. Where were you? Surely dinner with the captain doesn’t last as late as that.”

  Thérèse tugged at a loose thread on the rough blanket. “No. I went to look at Captain Farlow’s wound, to make sure it hadn’t gotten worse. We talked, and I fell asleep there.”

  “Oh, fell asleep. Is that all?”

  “Of course it’s all. It’s—it’s none of your business, and you shouldn’t know about these things. You’re still a child.”

  Jeannette made a noise Thérèse could only describe as a snarl. “No. I’m not. You said yourself I’m a woman now when I started to bleed.”

  Well, yes, she had. Thérèse smote herself upon the forehead. “But that doesn’t mean you’re old enough to—to—”

  “Bertrand thought I was old enough to. And I grew up in a cabin no bigger than this room. I know what men and women do together. I’ve heard it often enough. And I’ve seen what comes before enough times to know you and the captain are panting for it. I thought it would take a little longer, but when a man wants something—”

  “I—I did not couple with him! He tried, but I made him stop, and I—I shouldn’t be speaking of this to you.”

  Jeannette raised an eyebrow. “Who else can you talk to?”

  “Nobody, but you’re just thirteen, and I haven’t even asked you—are you all right after...yesterday?”

  Jeannette hunched farther into herself, blinked hard and swiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “Don’t make me cry. I do not cry.”

  Each word came out hard and staccato. Thérèse wanted to embrace her, but her sister bristled like a porcupine when Thérèse reached a tentative hand toward her shoulder.

  “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it.”

  Thérèse shuddered. Surely it would be better to make her sister face up to it. While Thérèse had never experienced anything as dreadful as an attack like Bertrand’s, in her experience it was better to cry, to live in one’s sadness, anger or fear for a time, than to deny it. But she didn’t want to push too far. It wasn’t as though she and Jeannette were full sisters born of the same mother with a lifetime of love and trust between them. “Well...all right,” she said. “But if you change your mind...”

  “Yes, yes, you’ll be here. You’re not my mother, you know.”

  “I know. I wish she was here. I wish both our mothers were.”

  That won a wry, weary smile. “They would’ve hated each other, you know.”

  Thérèse chuckled and ran a hand through her bedraggled hair. “Probably. And I don’t hate you at all, so...there’s that,” she finished lamely.

  But Jeannette smiled again, this time genuinely. “I don’t hate you either. I can braid your hair, if you like.”

  “Would you? I think half my hairpins have gone missing.”

  “The way I do it, you won’t need many.”

  Jeannette dug a comb out of Thérèse’s bag and went to work, humming softly. Her fingers were deft, and it was soothing to sit quietly and let herself be ministered to. “You’re good at this,” Thérèse commented.

  “Well, you have pretty hair.”

  “Thank you.” Henry...Captain Farlow liked it, too. She’d lost so many hairpins because he’d been so avid to touch her hair last night.

  Both of them stayed silent while Jeannette wound Thérèse’s braid into a coronet around her head and secured it with a few carefully placed hairpins. “You didn’t make me talk, so I can’t make you, but...Captain Farlow didn’t really hurt you, did he? He...I can’t imagine he’d do that to anyone.”

  Thérèse could hear the anxiety in her sister’s voice. Clearly she wanted to think well of her rescuer...and there was no reason why she shouldn’t go on doing so, now that Thérèse thought back on what had really passed between them. “No. It wasn’t like that. We’d both fallen asleep. I’d been sitting up, originally, but I must’ve lain down beside him at some point. When I woke up, he was kissing me. It...felt like a dream at first.” Like the very best dream she’d ever had. “Maybe it was the same for him. I don’t know. But as soon as I came awake enough to really understand what was happening, I told him to stop, and he did.”

 
“Oh, good. That’s not so bad.”

  “I...suppose not.” But how could he forget how he’d promised to treat her, and so quickly, too?

  “You’re angry at him.”

  “Yes. And at myself.”

  “But why? It was just kisses, right? And he stopped.”

  “A little more than that. And—I should’ve stopped him quicker. I should’ve left the cabin before I fell asleep. I shouldn’t let him charm me, with who he is, and how he’s been looking at me since he learned I’m not white.”

  “He’s been looking at you the exact same way since the morning he found us. I can’t make up my mind whether it’s like you’re sizzling bacon and he’s starving or like you’re a saint and he’s praying to you, but it hasn’t changed that I can see.”

  She sighed. Jeannette’s hero worship of Captain Farlow was understandable, but Thérèse wished her sister could summon at least a little of her usual cynicism about whites, men, and especially white men. “The past two days he’s looked at me like I’m some kind of mongrel dog.”

  “If he looked at any kind of dog the way he looks at you, then I’d be scared of him. He looks at you like a man who wants a woman. Trust me. Why do you think he made your Gratien Roche so twitchy?”

  “Gratien had reason to be twitchy without anything like that, with us appearing on his doorstep and demanding passage on the next ship to leave the city. And I know Captain Farlow looked at me differently when he first found out. You probably didn’t notice, with Bertrand and Jean-Baptiste there, but I know what I saw.”

  “He was surprised, that’s all. You do look white, almost. Anyone who didn’t know would never guess. I wish I looked like you.”

  “Don’t wish to be other than you are, Jeannette.”

  “Why not? My life would be easier.”

  “Yes, and what of it?” Thérèse asked, abruptly angry. “My life would be easier if my parents had been married, and if I actually was white instead of just looking it. It would be easier if I’d been born a boy, and if our father had never lost his money.”