For Her Love (5 page)

“Perhaps she is unwell,” Jonathan suggested.

“Nay. I asked after her health. Mister Welbourne says it is because she is French.”

Both Jonathan and Naomi raised their brows. “The French do not eat? I’ve never heard anything more ridiculous,” Jonathan said.

Giles nodded. “It struck me false. I tell you, I have a sense that Welbourne is hiding something.”

“And what of Grace?” Naomi asked.

“I have just the opposite sense. She seemed ever on the edge of blurting something out.”

Jonathan rose and clapped Giles on the shoulder. “You are not my son, but I will advise you as I would Isaiah or David. I would not weave myself into another family’s web of deceit by the bonds of marriage. Choose another, Captain.”

Naomi stood up, too, and offered more gentle advice. “Mayhap she is all you say, and mayhap a life with you would give her something that she seeks. You are a good man, and a sound judge of character, I think. She is surely a decent woman or you’d not feel drawn to her at all. Now, you say that her father has extended you a few days’ hospitality. Accept his invitation. Just remember, tales of old tell of rescuers and fair damsels, but they recount naught of the years that follow, when the heroics are done and the real work begins.”

At the Coopers’ invitation, Giles stayed the night in the upstairs cubby that had once been Faith’s quarters. Jonathan’s advice was sound indeed, but he was more inclined to heed Naomi’s. What harm could there be in paying the Welbournes a social call? How high could the stakes possibly be?

*

It did no good to stay inside. Screams of agony pierced the walls of the house, even with the windows shuttered. It was instinctive for Grace to shut her eyes as she heard the whistle of the whip, the sharp crack against flesh, the soul-searing scream. By sheer bent of will, she opened them, kept them open and stared at the pendulum of the wall clock. At the age of fourteen, she had begun to defy Iolanthe’s orders and ceased to attend whippings, but by then, she had witnessed over a hundred. She did not need to see the man being tortured in the front yard. When she closed her eyes she saw far too many others, their dark torsos striped and running with blood, jerking spasmodically. Women not even permitted the dignity of covering their breasts. Children, some younger than she by the time she had found the courage to stand up to Iolanthe.

Even the proudest, most dignified men were finally betrayed by their bodies. Before it was over, they would twist and writhe in their bindings, tearing the flesh on their wrists in an attempt to avoid the relentless lash. And through it all, Iolanthe would stand in front of them. It was not the sight of the blood that she craved. She stood where she could look right into their tortured faces and smile sweetly at them with her rotting teeth while they begged her for mercy.

On and on it went. Grace studied the pendulum and watched the minutes tick by so slowly they hurt. Traitorously, she thought of how marriage to a man who had no desire to own anyone would mean that she would never have to hear these horrible sounds again. Nine minutes later, the hundredth lash fell. There was no more cracking of leather against flesh, no more pleas for mercy from a man now surely unconscious. Only the ticking of the clock dared to break the silence.

Iolanthe breezed through the front door, her face flushed and her eyes unnaturally shiny. She would often become rather giddy, infused with energy after such an event. She smiled at Grace. “Have you been crying, Grace? Feeling a bit ashamed perhaps, letting your own kind suffer while you live in luxury?”

Grace narrowed her wet eyes. “I have no cause for shame, Iolanthe. The shame is upon your head. That poor man only stopped to take a drink of water. Matu told me that ‘twas past noon, and that he had not stopped since morning.”

“He left the area where he was working. They all know that is strictly forbidden.”

“There was no water near him! It is unconscionable, Iolanthe! I hear that we have lost seven slaves this season to thirst and heat.”

Iolanthe shrugged her silk-clad shoulders carelessly. “There are several wenches breeding.”

“The babies seldom live.”

“Then
mon père
will send more adults. Once you lose discipline, Grace, once they cease to fear you, the profits drop and it becomes quite dangerous. Do not think for a moment that any of them would hesitate to murder all of us in our beds. Even you.”

“Who could blame them?”

Iolanthe shook her head and tsked her tongue. “Do not let your father hear such words. He might just put you in the fields, where you belong.”

The door swung open again, and Matu stepped into the room. She held her slight body rigid and kept her face averted, betraying no hint of emotion.

“Matu knows,” Iolanthe continued smoothly. “Best you all keep to your place.” With that, she swept upstairs, where she would spend the remainder of the afternoon.

It is a shame really
, Grace thought,
that looks cannot kill.
If they could, the daggers Matu stared at Iolanthe’s back would have ripped the woman right out of both of their lives. The Negro woman turned back to Grace, her look of defiance dissolving into despair.

Grace nodded in acknowledgement of Matu’s mute sadness and whispered, “Every time it happens, I feel a very liar. I stand here safe in my father’s shadow.”

Matu pointed to Grace and grasped her wrist in the gesture that meant “slave.”

Grace nodded. “I should be. I should be a slave and suffer as you do.”

Matu shook her head emphatically. She pointed to herself and her lips. “I said…” she pointed to Grace, then to her head, shaking it, “you didn’t know…” the manacle gesture, “slavery.” Now she came to Grace, wiped her tears and hugged her close. Pulling away, she tapped her rough finger to Grace’s chest, right over her heart, then made the manacle gesture again.

Grace sniffed back a sob. “My heart is enslaved, Matu. Mayhap it seems shallow, but truly, I do hurt when one of them is beaten. I think I would rather it happened to me.”

Matu made a harsh sound in the back of her throat and shook her head. Her back bore puckered scars of its own. She knew the feel of the lash. She took Grace’s hands and led her to a chair, pushing her gently into it. Then she bobbed her hand up and down like a boat on the waves and followed it with the gesture for freedom.

“No!” Grace shouted, standing right back up again. “I’ll not hear another word about that damned ship’s captain!”

As though it did any good to keep Matu from mentioning him. Not a night had gone by since she’d met him that her mind hadn’t insisted upon bringing up pictures of his handsome face with that smile that went all the way to his eyes. He had seemed like such a
nice
man. Mayhap another would have found the word lukewarm, but Grace knew enough to know that it was a rare quality indeed. Still, for her, marriage was complicated, no matter how nice the man.

Her voice softer, she added, “He is but salt to the wound. There’s no sense wanting what one cannot have.”

But Matu followed up with the same argument she had been using lately. She would point to Grace and flex her arm, meaning strength or power. No matter how many times Grace explained to Matu that she was powerless, the other woman would only shake her head. Then she would point to it and open her arms broadly, “think big” or “think of everything.” Grace had no idea what she meant by that.

“I have no understanding!” she wailed. “All along you have agreed with me that I should never marry, and now you’ve seen this man for perhaps half an hour and you’re set upon betrothing us.”

With a shrug and a sigh, Matu tapped her head and then lightly patted her chest.

“How can you know this in your heart?” Grace asked. “You hardly know him at all. You heard him. He deems slavery a ‘necessary evil.’ He sits upon a fence.”

Matu laughed at her. She pointed to Grace and then acted out the process of hiking up her homespun skirt and straddling something.

“All right! All right!” Grace snapped. “Mayhap I sit upon a fence, too.”

Matu appeared to climb off of her imaginary fence. She gestured for the boat and for freedom.

“I shall never be free, Matu, not really. My heart will always be with the slaves.”

Matu held her own dark arm next to Grace’s light golden one. With a look of resolution on her face, she gestured again for freedom, once on each of their arms.

“Freedom for both of us?” Grace asked. She hadn’t thought of that. She could not take everyone on the plantation, but she could take Matu with her. They could both sail away from Welbourne Plantation and never see it again. But it would not cease to exist. Perhaps she and Matu would be far beyond this place, but the suffering here would go on. And the screams of the tortured ones would still ring in her ears.

*

Iolanthe snapped her fingers impatiently. “Hurry! Hurry up and then get out of here,” she barked at the young black girl who was loosening the laces of her gown. The bodice was stiff and tight, and Iolanthe needed to breathe. The moment she could draw air deeply into her lungs, she shoved the servant from the room, then rushed to the open window and basked in the sultry, warm air.

Her heart pounded furiously, and she had the overwhelming urge to fly. She almost thought she could. There was a deafening hush all about the plantation. The slaves dared not speak. Even the birds and insects in the surrounding jungle had been silenced by the screams of the kindred beast she’d had tortured in the front yard. God, she loved the whippings.

In this primitive, uncivilized corner of the world, Iolanthe might as well not even exist. She had grown up in Saint-Domingue, the French portion of the island of Hispaniola. There, her father had worked ceaselessly, overseeing shipments of Africans; disposing of the many bodies of those who had not survived the journey, assessing what must be done with those who had in order to make them healthy enough for sale. Dysentery and inactivity had taken their toll. Slaves had to be “seasoned,” taught submission and respect, without breaking their spirits entirely. Their spirits would break eventually, but they often died soon after, so ‘twas better to leave that to their masters. In all, these duties left precious little time for his family.

Her mother had pined for France. She had filled Iolanthe’s mind with tales of handsome men and banquets, of clothes and perfumes. If there was nothing more to being a woman than to be an ornament, a possession, at least in Europe she could feel that she was one of great beauty and value. In the Caribbean,
Màman
had said, a woman was of no value at all except breeding. She had said the word distastefully. Breeding was for livestock, not women of culture and refinement.

So Iolanthe had set out to be beautiful, to be the sort of woman a man might treasure and be proud of. But
Màman
was right. There were no grand balls in Jamaica, not even a decent city. There was no one but Edmund to see her in her European gowns, made according to the highest fashion, and he was unimpressed. Unless she took great measures to be noticed, she was invisible.

But when an African was whipped, she was a goddess. And as with God Himself, one could beg all one liked, but mercy was seldom granted. Hadn’t she asked God for happiness? Some measure of satisfaction? She hadn’t asked to be deliriously happy. She hadn’t asked for rapacious wealth or a husband who was an Adonis. All she had asked for was some pliable, undemanding man who lived anywhere but these barbarous islands.

From Saint-Domingue to Jamaica was no improvement, but when she had realized that her father was making no effort to seek her a husband in Europe, she had chosen Edmund. At the time, he had seemed so mild mannered, so biddable. Men were such liars during courtship. He had been polite, genteel, when he had come to visit her at her home. Once they were married, he was just like her father, always working, as obsessed with his farm as her father had been with his business.

She lifted the cover from a little crystal dish of sugared almonds that she kept by her bed. It had ruined her looks, all the damned sugar, but what else was there? Well, besides the lash? She should know better than this, to allow herself to think too hard about how her life had turned out.

Edmund was a bore. He was an oaf in bed, demanding and rough. So what if he slaked his lust on the slave wenches? She didn’t really care about that. She didn’t even care that he’d sired a number of children with them. But to ask her to claim one of them as her own, just because the brat was fairer than most! An animal, under her roof, posing as her daughter!

And the wretched thing wasn’t even grateful. Neither she nor her nurse. Iolanthe’s eyes narrowed, the giddy rush of the beating fading at the thought of the two black vipers nesting in her house. She didn’t trust Matu any farther than she could spit her. If Edmund had had the slightest bit of good sense, he would have cut out her heart, not her tongue.

Iolanthe exhaled slowly, closing her eyes and forcing her body to relax against the frame of the window. Someday. Someday Edmund would die. She was only forty-two, thirteen years younger than he. And women often lived longer, so long as they weren’t propagating like rabbits. It was God’s one kindness to her that she had not conceived in those first few years. Of course, she had done nothing to hide her disgust whenever Edmund had come sniffing to her bedchamber, so he had slowly come less and less often. Iolanthe would never have tolerated Grace at all but that having a daughter had finally ended his conjugal visits entirely. He left his wife alone now and rutted with slaves exclusively.

She snorted in derision. The vile little pretender could marry or not, as she liked. If she married and produced offspring, Iolanthe would reveal the secret the very moment Edmund finally had the decency to die. Grace would be cast off by her husband, the children sold, and Welbourne would be Iolanthe’s. It would be hers to sell, and then she would sail across the ocean and never look back. Who needed God? If a woman wanted a scrap of contentment in this world, she had to make it for herself.