She calmly made a mental list of what her father might have said if he’d lived. Should she approach the missionary society and see why they’d stopped sending supplies? Try to find another benefactor altogether? Should she build a school in a neighboring village? Find a male missionary in need of a wife and cleave unto him?
This last thought gave her pause. She’d thought of it almost every day since her father had died. She needed a helpmate.
The people of her village had been kind and had helped her just as they had any other villager. Even so, Sarah had gradually realized she was not one of them. When her parents were alive—particularly her mother—Sarah had assumed the young men had given her a wide berth to avoid her parents’ disapproval. But in the almost two years since her father’s death not a single young man in the village had shown any interest in her.
At first she’d believed it a residual worry, but, as more and more time passed, she had to face the truth: she simply did not fit in. But she’d also not fit in with her own family. Oh, her parents had loved her, of course, but she’d seen the looks they’d exchanged when she’d said or done something the way a villager would.
Of course that begged the question—where would she fit in?
She turned onto her back and closed her eyes against the disturbing vision her question summoned. Her wicked mind moved stealthily to her most private thoughts via a very, very circuitous path. As usual, Martín Bouchard awaited her. He was clothed in the same silk tunic and trousers he’d worn that night. He was also aroused. However, his face wore a welcoming smile rather than a sneer of contempt. When he opened his arms, she did not hesitate to step into his warm embrace.
It was not cold, but she shivered.
Martín Bouchard was not the answer to her problem. Martín Bouchard was an entirely new set of problems.
Chapter Twelve
When Sarah showed up at Bouchard’s cabin the following morning, he wasn’t there. She toyed with the idea of tracking him down. How hard could it be to find him on a ship? But she decided to let him be. After all, his message was clear: he was finished with her.
Without those daily lessons, the days crawled. She spent far too much time with Graaf learning to play piquet and cribbage, arguing with him about a variety of subjects, or reading to him, which he claimed to enjoy.
“I prefer to listen to you read rather than do so myself. I cannot seem to stay awake for long when I read anything other than math books.”
Sarah did not point out that he slept more often than not when she read to him.
“I’m afraid I was a poor student of anything other than numbers,” he told her one day, when she’d paused during her reading so that she might take some tea and soothe her throat. “If it wasn’t mathematics, I paid little attention.” He took a sip of tea and then grimaced. “Bouchard’s man does not care for tea, I’m afraid.” He pushed his cup away. “I am spoiled, I know, but the Dutch are accustomed to the finest tea in the world.” He sighed, shifting restlessly. “Tell me, what do you think will happen when we reach England?” It was a question he’d asked her more than once.
“You are related to royalty, Mies, in line for the crown itself. You should know of such things better than I, a mere savage from Africa.”
He appeared not to hear the sarcasm in her voice. “While it is true I am related to King William and the House of Orange, we have little contact with him or any others on my father’s side of the family. I was not raised with any expectation of ever having the connection acknowledged, and none of us ever thought he would end up where he is now, not after his grandfather was driven out at sword point. From stadtholder to exile to king in the course of only a few years.” Graaf sighed. “All I ever wanted was to be left to my studies. I am only suited to understanding calculus.” He turned a speculative look on her. “You are learned, Sarah. Have you made a study of mathematics?”
“Only the most rudimentary. My father was exposed to the work of Newton at university, but I believe he’d forgotten much of what he knew by the time I was old enough to learn.”
Graaf’s face had become flushed, and he didn’t appear to be listening. “Will you open that trunk?” He gestured to the lovely brass-bound trunk that sat in one corner of his small room.
Sarah tugged the trunk away from the wall and unfastened the three straps. She swung open the lid. It contained a few items of clothing and some other personal items, but was mostly full of books.
“I would like the book bound in brown calfskin. There is also a small walnut box. Could you bring me a pair of spectacles? I’m afraid I need them for reading very fine print.”
The box contained three pairs of spectacles. “Which pair?”
“They are all the same. I ruined my eyes when I was a boy by too much reading in the dark. It is most maddening how the functions dance on the page, and I soon get a terrible headache if I try to read without them.”
Sarah stared at the spectacles, a thought in her mind. “May I borrow a pair? I’ve noticed lately it is something of a strain to read for very long.”
“Take a pair and keep them. I find selfish comfort in the fact that I am not the only one on board with an old person’s vision.” He opened the book and placed the silver-framed spectacles on the bridge of his fine, aquiline nose. “See here,” he said, pointing to a page filled with inexplicable figures and numbers.
Sarah listened to his enthusiastic chatter with only part of her mind. Instead she thought of the small circles of glass and fine metal, trying not to hope.
* * *
Martín was in the process of cleaning his pistols—an activity he enjoyed attending to himself—when there was a knock on the door. He squinted at the ornate timepiece on the desk. It was half past nine.
“Come,” he said, expecting Beauville or Daniels. Instead it was the woman. Sarah, as he now thought of her. Which he did more often than he would have preferred, even though he was no longer closeted with her for several hours each morning.
He put the oiled pistol back in the case, watching her face as he did so. A flush spread across her cheekbones as she looked at the guns.
“Have you come looking for my pistols, mademoiselle?”
She cocked her head at his mocking tone and cut him a look that caused a powerful pounding in his chest. When had she begun to appear so attractive to him?
“What can I do for you, Mademoiselle Fisher?” he asked, sounding rather sharper than he’d intended.
She closed the door behind her, and Martín’s eyebrows rose. They had never been in his cabin with the door closed all the way. Except for that first night.
She reached into the pocket of her hideous brown frock and extracted something wrapped in a bit of gauze. “Here, put these on.”
Martín glanced at the object in her palm and then up at her. “Spectacles?”
“Yes, it came to me this morning when Mies, that is Captain Graaf,” she corrected, coloring up, “said he’d ruined his vision by straining his eyes. I thought maybe you might have strained yours at some point. Perhaps being at sea so much? I have noticed I get a headache when I am on deck and stare at the water too long.” She unfolded the delicate metal and held the spectacles out. “Go ahead, try them on.”
Martín looked from her face to the spectacles, several times. When he was certain she was not offering him the glasses in jest, he took them from her, hesitant to put them on. He’d always thought spectacles were hideously disfiguring.
“Put them on,” she repeated, snatching a book from the shelf and placing it before him, tapping her toe with impatience.
He frowned at her. What was she up to?
She rolled her eyes and laughed. “You are as vain as a peacock.”
Warmth crawled up his neck as he realized the truth of her words. He was, indeed, worried how he would appear.
“It is only I who will see you. Please, just for a moment.”
He sighed irritably and placed the glasses on his face, having to push the
frame all the way up the bridge of his nose so the earpieces would clasp behind his ears. He blinked at her blurry face.
“Not me, the page.”
Martín glanced down at the book she’d placed on the desk and gasped. “Merde,” he muttered without thinking. He could see them! The individual letters, the ones she’d been forcing him to write and learn but which he could never see in the pages of a book. There they all were, arrayed on the pages before him—m’s and d’s and s’s and a’s—all of them. He traced a wondering finger over the page and looked over the top rim of the spectacles and met her un-blurry face. She was holding her breath, her eyebrows arched, her eyes wide and expectant.
Martín fought the urge to grab and squeeze her. And kiss her. “I can see them all,” he admitted gruffly, fighting the grin that was threatening to take over his face.
She gave an ear-piercing scream and jumped up and down like a little girl. “I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!” She grabbed him in an awkward embrace, still jumping up and down as she held onto his shoulders.
Martín closed his eyes at the feel and smell of her, rocked to the core by something he could not immediately identify. A warm, soothing sensation that made him feel cherished and secure.
It was a feeling he’d experienced only once before in his life, the night he’d jumped from the second-story window of Madam Sonia’s brothel. The same night he’d killed his master.
He’d been knocked almost senseless when he fell to the cobblestone courtyard, his yelp drawing the attention of the men who kept watch at the brothel entrance. He’d not gotten far before they caught him. They’d been dragging him back inside the house when an enormous shadow had loomed ahead of them.
“Well, well, well.”
The doormen had stopped in their tracks at the sight of the one-eyed giant.
Even at such a moment as that, Martín hadn’t been able to help noticing the details of the man’s clothing. His garments had been simple yet exquisite. And enormous.
“What have we here?” The man had examined them through the gaudiest quizzing glass Martín had ever seen. He’d looked like a golden god as he towered above them, the black patch that covered one eye the only thing that marred his otherwise perfect appearance.
“He’s one of the whores, sir. Trying to escape again,” the head doorman explained, giving the big man an apprehensive look.
“Escape?” the giant repeated, lowering the ridiculously ornate quizzing glass.
“He’s a slave, sir, even though he don’t look like one. He belongs to Madam Sonia. Or he did—she just sold him.”
The man’s expression didn’t change, but Martín would have sworn the very air around him became colder, thicker. He wasn’t the only one who noticed the change. The men tightened their grip.
“He looks most unwilling to go with you,” the stranger pointed out, as if that were unusual behavior in a slave who’d been trying to escape.
“He was trying to escape.” The doorman began to move toward the door, but the big man stepped into their path, no longer holding his quizzing glass.
“I know Madam. Quite well, in fact.” His mouth twisted, as if he were enjoying a private joke. He cocked an inquiring eyebrow at Martín. “What is your name?” asked the man Martín would soon come to know as One-Eyed Standish.
Martín had muttered his name through clenched jaws, mortified he might cry out from the pain in his leg if he opened his mouth any wider.
“Unhand Martín and let him go with my crew, gentlemen.” It was not a request. The giant gestured to the shadows. “Delacroix, Van Ries, Wustenfalke, please help Martín back to the ship.”
Three rough-looking men materialized from the gloom.
“Come with me,” the shortest of them said, his face crosshatched with hundreds of scars.
Martín tried to move, but his captors tightened their grip.
“Let him go,” the shorter man barked, far less amused than the giant who employed him. The tense silence filled with the hiss of swords leaving their scabbards.
Martín’s captors released him.
“Excellent!” Standish beamed down at them, as though he’d just been dealt a particularly satisfying hand of cards. He spoke to Martín, but his solitary eye settled on the two doormen. “Run along with Delacroix. I shall take care of Madam Sonia. Come, gentlemen.”
And then he’d turned and sauntered off.
“Come, you are safe, boy. The captain will deal with your mistress,” Delacroix assured Martín, his face so calm and confident, Martín had been overcome by a crippling wave of an emotion he’d never felt before. And then he’d taken a step on his damaged leg and fainted dead away.
The emotion, he’d decided in the years that followed, was gratitude.
Gratitude swamped him now just as it had done all those years ago. This time he did not plunge into blessed darkness, but had to face the unnerving emotion head-on.
Sarah must have seen something on his face because she stopped squeezing him and released his arms, her own face registering shock at what she had just done. They stared at each other as she backed away.
“Tomorrow we resume our lessons?” Her voice was as shaky as his breathing.
Martín cleared his throat, stalling for time, worried his voice would come out a mere squeak if he tried to use it.
She opened the door a crack. “I shall see you first thing tomorrow.” The door clicked shut on the last word.
“Tomorrow,” he repeated to the empty room. He took off the glasses and stared at the cabin door, his entire being pulsing with gratitude—and something even more foreign. An emotion he had no name for and one he’d never experienced before.
Chapter Thirteen
The lessons sped past quickly and pleasurably, if not necessarily quietly. Sarah and Bouchard still squabbled several times a day, but usually over minor matters, and quills and inkwells no longer ended up on the floor.
Sarah rejoiced at Bouchard’s nimble, hungry mind. When she came into his cabin each morning it was to find books and paper scattered over not only his desk but also the dining table and small nightstand. Watching him discover the joy of books was like rediscovering them herself, all over again.
His progress was doubly amazing given that he was learning in English, rather than his native French. She could not believe that he’d managed so long without books. With a mind as sharp as his, he must have suffered without the stimulation words and language offered. It broke her heart to know that most of his crew could not read either and would probably never have the chance to learn. An idea began to form in her head, and she resolved to tell him of it when he was in a receptive frame of mind.
The opportunity came one morning after they’d just finished a satisfying lesson about verbs. His mood was uncharacteristically placid, and Sarah decided the time was as good as any.
“Do you have a few minutes, Captain?”
“Hmm?” He glanced up from his writing, his golden eyes magnified by the delicate spectacles.
Even after hours and hours together, the sight of his beautiful face was able to rob her of breath.
“You wish to speak to me, mademoiselle?” He laid down his quill and carefully removed his glasses before looking up at her. A small line formed between his stunning eyes as he waited.
Sarah ignored her body’s inconvenient reaction. “Yes, just for a few minutes, if you don’t mind.”
“I am at your service, mademoiselle.”
“I was wondering if you would permit me to read to your men.”
His dark blond brows arched. “Read to my men?”
“Yes. I’ve noticed there are large parts of the day when they are busy with tasks that would be more pleasant with a little distraction.”
“You wish to give my men a distraction?” His piercing eyes flickered down over her neck and bodice before returning to her face.
Her anger flared. “I want to read to them, Captain.”
He laughed and held up his hands. “Plea
se, do not bite off my head. What would you like to . . . distract them with?”
Sarah turned to his bookshelf and pulled Gulliver’s Travels from it. He put on his glasses and looked at the cover.
“Gull . . . Gull ‘I’?” He stopped and looked at her, confused.
“Gulliver. The ‘I’ is soft.”
“What is this book?”
“It’s an adventure novel.”
He opened the cover and squinted at something on the flyleaf.
“What is it?”
He showed her the book. There was something written in a lovely, bold hand on the flyleaf. “What does it say? It is too difficult to read,” he said.
“It says: To my friend Martín, who occasionally makes me glad I did not kill him on our own long voyages. Signed—”
Bouchard laughed. “It is my friend One-Eyed Standish. You do not need to tell me that,” he said, still chuckling.
“He has signed it ‘Hugh Redvers.’” She handed the book back to him.
“Yes, he is the Baron Ramsay, Hugh Redvers, and One-Eyed Standish. He is a big man and carries many names with ease.”
“He must know you very well.”
Bouchard looked up from the book at her not-so-subtle comment and waved a chiding finger at her. “Oh, mademoiselle, that was very ill done of you.”
“Perhaps, but that does not make it any less true. I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who has considered grievous bodily harm from time to time.”
He grinned and looked down at the book.
“You were on his ship before you acquired the Scythe?” she asked.
“I was on the Batavia’s Ghost for almost seven years. I started out peeling potatoes and cleaning the head. But not at the same time,” he added with a playful look that made her heart thrash like an animal in a snare. “I was his second mate by the time we captured the Scythe.”
“He is a great friend of yours?”
He nodded slowly, his eyes still on the copperplate writing, as if he saw something else in the inscription. “There is nobody else quite like him.” He looked up, his eyes distant. “He saved me.”
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