Once inside the soothing, mint-green sitting room, she practiced breathing deeply while staring at the letter in her hands. His handwriting looked bolder and more confident since she’d last seen it; he’d been practicing.
Why had he written instead of coming to see her? It could not be good.
She swallowed several times, forcing back her fear.
Was she going to merely sit here and stare at it?
“You’re a big girl, Sarah,” she muttered.
She pulled open the heavy cream envelope and spread the pages before her; there were four of them.
She took a deep breath and began.
“My Dearest Sarah,”
Her heart fluttered. She was his dearest? Hope sprouted and grew inside her as she stared at the loving salutation. Was it possible—
“Just read the letter, Sarah,” she scolded herself.
“My Dearest Sarah,
I have tried to speek to you many times of the way I feel about you. Each time my eforts have ended in failure—or at least in a bad argument. I do not no why this happens. But I think may be a letter will be best.”
Sarah’s lips twitched at the small errors. How hard it must have been for him to write this letter—and yet he’d done it. What an amazing man he was. Six months ago he could do no more than write his name and now—
A drop of water hit the page, and the words Dearest and Sarah blurred and mingled into a small black puddle.
“Oh, drat!”
She blotted at the stain with her finger and smeared the words below it. She muttered and pulled her handkerchief from the sleeve of her morning gown and dabbed at her eyes.
It took her several minutes of sniffling before it was safe to resume reading.
“The story of my past is not fit for the drawing rooms of London. When you met me I only wanted one thing in my life: to hound, herry, and capture every slaver that crossed my path. Well, and maybe I wanted to dress in fine clothes, eat good food, and enjoy the company of women, two. But, in any case, I could not forsea a life where I was not a privateer.
And then I met you. You tot me to read and write and you opened a hole new world to me.
Of course I still burn to capture slavers, but I am no longer a slave myself. You freed me, Sarah. But then you enslaved me, two.
When I lerned about your rich and powerful family I new I was not the man for you.”
Sarah crumpled the pages in her fist. “Foolish, stupid, arrogant, idiot man! Why do you think you know what is best for me without even asking?”
She scowled at the wrinkled paper and smoothed the sheets flat.
“I new you were ment for better things, but I culd not stay away. And Ramsay, he nagged me and nagged me to tell you the truth and let you decide. (You no how bad he can be.) He said I culd marry you and we culd live happily at Oak Park.”
Sarah grinned. “Well done, Hugh!”
“I started to beleev him. But then my past cot up with me, just as I was going to tell you the truth.
Oh, Sarah, what a terrible truth it is.
I will try to keep my story short, and not just becus my hand is cramping, but becus it is not a happy story or the kind of thing a gentlewoman should here.”
“Foolish, stupid, arrogant, idiot man! Can you really be so blind when it comes to me?”
Sarah realized she was squeezing the pages as if they were his neck. She took a deep breath and released her death grip on the unoffending pieces of paper.
“My father was John Bannock. The Bannocks had been in French held territory for sevral generations. They once owned huge tracts of land, but had lost most of it threw gaming and bad stuardship. My father was the last of his line.
Well, except for me, I suppose.
I never knew my mother. She died when I was born.
My father was a gambler and lost everything when I was somewhere between ten and twelve. He had to sell everything: his house, cattle—both human and animal—and all his land.
I was young and stupid and scared and ran away when I herd I was to be sold. The first time I ran and they cot me, it was a beating, the second time, I was branded a runaway.”
Sarah sucked in a breath and held it, her heart pounding in her ears. Branded?
Oh, Lord.
Sarah closed her eyes, but tears leaked out anyway.
When she had no more tears left, she opened the letter again.
“Bannock sold me to a brothel.”
Sarah’s vision clouded, and it was several minutes before she could reread the sentence again. A brothel? The man sold a little boy—his own son—to a brothel? She felt as if somebody had kicked her in the chest. Good God. Did she want to know what came next?
Her face heated at the thought. If Martín had survived it—only a mere boy—surely she could read about it? Or was she really as fragile as he believed?
She gritted her teeth and turned to the next page.
“Life at Madam Sonia’s was far better than I could have hopped for. Even then I had a love of fine clothing and Madam saw to it that all who worked for her were dressed better than any other brothel in a town which had many.
I lived above the stables with an old man named Etienne Bouchard. Bouchard had forgotten more about horses than I would ever learn. He was a meen old bastard, but he tot me all he cud before he died. I had no last name and was called only Martín, which was a name I pikked for myself after a story I once herd. So when the old man died I took his name, thinking I wood also take his place.
I loved caring for madam’s horses and I foolishly believed life would go on that way. But of corse things changed.”
Sarah closed her eyes, terrified to read what had happened next. How had he survived?
“I was sixteen or so when Madam Sonia told me it was time to take up my reel job. There is no way to say this that is polite, Sarah. I became a whore.”
Sarah looked up from the page and blinked. A whore? But . . . he was a man.
“You are such a sweet innocent Sarah. I hate to be the one to take your illushuns, but the truth is some women are willing to pay for the pleasures of the flesh, Sarah, just like their male counterparts. And, of course, some men prefer men or boys. But that was not my purpose. Not at first. At first I was used to provide more . . . exotic entertainments. Some of these involved other slaves—other whores.”
Sarah’s hands shook as she lowered the letter to the dark green velvet settee. She stood and began to pace the room in restless circles, lacing and unlacing her hands as Martín’s words bounced and ricocheted endlessly in her head.
His past—his life—was unimaginable to her. Who could do this to another human? What kind of person could buy and sell others? Her hands curled into fists. Who could use others in ways that not only violated common decency, but the very heart and soul of another human being? They’d taken physical love from him and made it commerce. No wonder he spent his time in brothels. What else did he know?
Fury coursed through her and tempered her pity into rage. She marched back to the divan and snatched up the letter.
“Not long after Bouchard died, Madam Sonia moved me to the howse. That was also when I first met Valerie—the mother of my son.”
“What?” Sarah’s voice was so shrill she didn’t even recognize it as her own.
Sarah reread the last sentence.
It said the same thing.
He had a child? She collapsed back against the settee and read the words over and over. Why had he never told her? She felt as if a giant, black pit had opened inside her.
Was he married?
Sarah cursed herself for even wondering such a thing. What? Was she actually hoping he’d fathered a child outside of wedlock? She ignored the howling pain in her chest and picked up the letter with numb, clumsy fingers.
“Madam bot Valerie off a slave ship. She was maybe a little older than me, a dimond hidden in a dung heep, far two butiful to waste on common labor. She spoke hardly a word—at least no English or Frenc
h—and we never even talked to each other.”
Sarah stared at the words in gape-mouthed astonishment. How could they be married if they’d never spoken? Her head felt light and dizzy—as if it might come detached from her neck and float away.
She turned the page.
“Madam Sonia had many slaves but Valerie and I became her most popular attraction. To say it now makes me sick. I shuld have refused—may be we both shuld have. But we were yung and skared and without any power. And to refuse wood only leed both of us to wurs things, and we both new it.
I don’t know how many men and women paid to sit in a darkened room and watch us, but Madam was nothing if not a good bisnesswoman. She whipped her buyers into a frenzy and drove our value to the roof before finally selling both of us to the hiest bidder: the Marquis d’Armand bot us.”
“That bastard!” Sarah startled at the curse word and bit her lip. She stared down at the page, the name swimming before her eyes and the hatred she’d felt in the park that morning now making sense. Why had nobody told her? How could a man like that even show his face in decent society?
She glared at the letter and resumed reading.
“The man I speak of was the current marquis’s father. D’Armand was notorius in New Orleans for his debachery and when Madam told me the marquis had bot me, I paniked. D’Armand sent men to take Valerie away furst—and I never saw her again. D’Armand was to take me, but I ran.
I wasn’t ignorant of what went on between men and boys at the brothel, Sarah, but I did not want to live my life that way, being given to whoever wood pay for me.”
“Oh, Martín,” she whispered, staring blindly at the pages before her.
“I tried to escape the very night I fownd out but I had no money, no nowledge of anything outside the doors of the brothel, no friends other than those trapped inside. I acted impulsively and it was beyond stupid.
The marquis lerned of the escape and must have baulked at the notion of purchasing such an untamed animal. To convince him, Madam drugged me and invited the marquis to sample me while I slept.”
“Oh God,” Sarah murmured, her head bowed. For the first time since she’d begun reading, she seriously considered stopping. Half an hour ago she’d believed Martín Bouchard to be an arrogant, confident, wealthy, beautiful man whom she loved and who did not love her in return.
And now?
Well, he was still all those things—especially arrogant—but he was also unspeakably damaged.
But he had written this letter to her. It showed he must hold her in some esteem—mustn’t he? Perhaps, just perhaps . . .
She picked up the pages.
“The old man wasn’t satisfied. He told Madam he wanted compliance, not drugged and sleeping. Madam told me I would have one last chance to please d’Armand. She then pointed out there were other buyers waiting behind him. I new what she meant. Ether way, I would end up kept by some man. I could not live that way, Sarah, do you understand me? I wood do anything to escape. Anything. And if I culd not escape, I wood rather die.”
Sarah’s eyes began to brim over, and she dashed her tears aside. She turned to the last page.
“I pretended my spirit had been broken, that I had axcepted my fate. The old man came for me wearing a sly smile and making witty comments about how much he had enjoyed our prior engagement but how he was looking forward to an eager participant.
When he came toward me I flung him away and told him I would not submit. He became enraged and came after me again. I pushed him back but he wood not stop coming at me. The last time I pushed him he stumbled and struck his head on a piece of furniture.
He did not get up.
So, you see, I killed him, Sarah. I did not mean to, but the fact is, I did. And I could not be sorry.”
Sarah bit her lower lip until it bled.
“I injured myself jumping from the bilding and alerted my captors in the process. It was then that I encowntered Lord Ramsay. You know how Hugh is, he can be stubborn. He wood not let them take me.
When Madam Sonia lerned what had happened in her own brothel, she was glad to be rid of me and to take his help. Ramsay arranged for the marquis’s body to be found in the reckage of his carriage—just another victim of the poor roads in the area.
The rest of the story you no. I became one of Hugh’s crew and worked my way up to have my own ship. With every year that passed I worried less and less about discovery. But the feer was always with me and I cannot say I was surprised when d’Armand showed up in London.
My past had finally cot up with me—just as I was hoping to leave it behind and start a new life with you, Sarah.”
Sarah stared at the letter, but saw Martín’s beautiful face. “Why didn’t you tell me all of this before? Why?” she whispered.
“D’Armand showed me that my dreem of marrying and settling down was foolish. There is no place for me in England, Sarah. And I knew you would never want to leave your family and the life you were bilding for yourself heer.”
“You idiot!” she yelled at the top of her lungs.
Feet thudded outside the sitting room, and the door flew open. Her uncles’ staid butler stood in the doorway.
“Miss Fisher, is something the matter?” he asked, his eyes flickering around the room.
Sarah’s face burned. She must look and sound like a lunatic. “I’m fine, Sedgewick. I apologize for startling you.”
There was a long pause as his eyebrows crept slowly up his forehead. “Very good, miss,” he said, bowing before quietly shutting the door.
Sarah looked at the page. There were only a few sentences left. How bad could it be?
“When I met with d’Armand I larned he didn’t just want justice for his father’s death, he wanted revenge on me.
It shuld not have surprised me that Valerie had a child, but I am ashamed to admit it did. His name is Gaston and he is thirteen years old, Sarah. He is very handsome and looks much like I did when I was his age.”
Sarah’s lip twitched at his unconsciously vain comment.
“D’Armand holds title to him and Valerie and the only way to free them is to fight for them. I cannot leeve her a second time.
But that is not all. D’Armand has somehow learned the truth about his father’s death and I have been accused of murder. Any man who captures me will receive a substantial reward if he returns me to New Orleans to stand trial.
I am a fugitive, Sarah. I tell you this so you will understand why it is best for you if I go. I also tell you this because it is possible I will not leave—that I will die. If that is so, I would prefer you to know the truth in my own words.
Tomorrow I will meet d’Armand and we will dule for the freedom of my child, his mother, and myself and I will—”
Sarah grabbed the other sheets of paper and looked at each; there was no date anywhere on the letter. She lunged to her feet, and the pages fluttered from her limp fingers.
A duel? Had it taken place yet? Was it about to take place?
How could he do this to her?
“You arrogant ass!” Sarah ran for the bellpull and yanked it so hard the heavy velvet rope came off in her hand.
A duel? His son? What of the woman? Was he to marry her now? Why had nobody said anything to her? Surely Hugh would know, and if Hugh knew, Daphne must know. Why had none of them told her?
She stared at the sheets that lay scattered on her uncles’ expensive carpet, and fury blossomed inside her. How dare Martín make not only his decisions, but hers as well?
The door opened, and a footman stood in the doorway, his gaze dropping to the bellpull in her hands. “Yes, Miss Fisher?”
“Send word to the stables. I’ll want my uncles’ post chaise made ready.”
The man’s eyes flickered to the late afternoon sky outside the sitting room window.
“Post chaise, Miss?”
“Yes, post chaise.”
The young man hesitated.
“Do not worry. I will speak to my uncles. You wi
ll not get in trouble.”
The lines of worry on his forehead dissipated. “Very good, miss. Can I tell the coachmen how far you will be going?”
Sarah gathered up the sheets of paper before turning a grim smile on him. “Tell him our journey could be as short as Davenport House or as long as Eastbourne.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Martín wasn’t really surprised when he opened the door to Exley’s carriage and found Ramsay waiting inside it. The carriage was lighted with a small lantern, but Martín didn’t need to see Ramsay’s face to know he was angry.
Martín turned to Exley, who raised a slim, black-gloved hand.
“Don’t bother scowling and scolding, Bouchard. Ramsay did not hear about it from me.”
Martín dropped onto the seat beside the smaller man. Ramsay took up the entire opposite bench, his knees almost at his chin, a fact that also wouldn’t improve his humor.
“How did you find out?” Martín asked.
Ramsay’s face shifted into the hard, unemotional mask that usually scattered men in all directions. Martín had to admit he did not appreciate being the recipient of such a murderous expression. Here was yet another man eager to kill him.
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