Leopard in Exile (17 page)

of her other life, the skills of patience and stealth. She voyaged to America as a hunter, and it was a

hunter's skills she would need.

This trans-Atlantic passage was very different than her first. She traveled as a woman of privilege and

property instead of as a terrified orphan. She traveled not into an uncertain future, but back to her

childhood home, and if, deep inside, a warning voice told her there was something she overlooked, Sarah

ruthlessly shunted it aside.

She had come to regret her hasty action in leaving Knoyle behind. This world expected great ladies to

travel in state—with servants—and regarded anything else with deep suspicion. Sarah doubted that her

story of a maid taking sick at the last moment truly convinced anyone, but her confidence and obvious

wealth silenced wagging tongues, and no one was foolhardy enough to present her with the cut direct.

Her fellow travelers were mostly Anglo-Albioners who had traveled to England on business and were

now returning home to their plantations and estates. A few women journeyed to rejoin their

husbands—Sarah discovered that the tropical climate of the New World was considered unhealthy for

children, and many of the upper classes sent their children home to England for the first years of their

lives.

It was on the tip of Sarah's tongue to denounce such foolish nonsense, for certainly no American had

ever entertained such a pernicious notion, when self-preservation stopped her. Sarah Cunningham might

know what it was like to have been born and raised in a free New World nation, but the Duchess of

Wessex should have no notion.

But the masquerade—for such was her life—was often very hard.

Her one consolation was the company of one of her fellow passengers, a man whom Sarah instinctively

liked, even though she was sure he flew beneath colors falser than her own. He was a tall

piratical-looking gentleman, black haired and grey eyed, with the look of being more comfortable on

horseback than shipboard.

Morgan,
soi-disant
Marquess of Carabou, traveled with only one servant, a thin nervous boy whom

Sarah privately felt he must have acquired from the nearest pothouse. The Marquess had a silver tongue

and winning ways—he was undoubtedly a rogue and a scoundrel, but Sarah had little else to distract

herself with in the next month, and vowed she would know the truth about him before they docked in

Boston.

"The man's no more a Marquess than I am, Peter Bronck," a woman's voice scolded angrily. Sarah

ducked back out of sight and eavesdropped shamelessly.

Dorcas and her husband were fur traders; each year Peter Bronck traveled from his offices in Nieuw

Amsterdam to Fort Chingcachook along the Great Lakes to meet with his suppliers and to buy furs.

Dorcas had been the most suspicious of Sarah's claim to be the Duchess of Wessex, for she and her

husband were members of the rising middle class—what the
Ton
called Cits—and Dorcas, at least, held

herself far higher in the instep than any queen. It was a particularly American attitude, Sarah realized with

an inward shock, and that it was strange to her was a sobering benchmark of how strange the whole

world had become. When had she become used to the groveling deference from her fellow men that she

had always used to mock?

"Now Dorrie," Mr. Bronck answered. "Surely a man may call himself as he pleases?"

His wife's response to that was an indignant snort. "He may call himself the King of Spain, so long as he

does not ask me for money! But that has nothing to say to the point—the man is no aristocrat, and I'll be

burned if I treat him as one!"

Sarah smiled to herself. Each scrap of information was another clue she could use to weave her snare for

him. But the Marquess was a slippery fellow. His table manners were direct, but no worse than Sarah

had seen elsewhere in polite society; no clue to his background there. He wore a sabre at his hip, but so

did many men. The most interesting thing she knew about him was that he had four silver-mounted

horse-pistols and the harness to match. Perhaps he was a highwayman fleeing the notice of the Bow

Street Mounted Patrol.

All Sarah was truly able to discover was that he had spent his early years in Wales—and that only

because she had chanced to be nearby upon the occasion when he spilled a full lamp's-worth of oil down

the front of his new velvet coat.
Then
there had been language of a pungency Sarah had not heard for

some time, but even upon that memorable occasion my lord of Carabou had not beaten his servant,

whose fault the accident had been. Sarah decided she liked him, whoever he really was. Marriage to

Wessex seemed to have given her a taste for the company of rogues and scoundrels.

"The captain tells me we shall be docking in Boston Harbor in a day or so," Sarah said to Morgan one

evening. It had become her habit to take the air with the mysterious Marquess each evening after dinner.

Her cabin, while lavish by shipboard standards, was cramped and confining, and she spent as many

hours away from it as she could. "I suppose it's as good a place as any to find a ship heading south," the

Marquess said.

"I'm heading south as well," Sarah offered. The tactical difficulties of making her way to Baltimore to

search for Meriel, which had seemed so negligible at Mooncoign, now seemed to loom insurmountably.

"Are you suggesting that we travel together?" Morgan asked.

"Perhaps I am," Sarah admitted. "I need to get to Baltimore immediately. I'd thought to charter a ship,

but…"

But I'm not certain that this America is at all like the one I remember
, she admitted, if only to

herself.

"The Royal Mail would be faster if you can flash the ready," Lord Carabou said frankly. "Or if Your

Grace has New World properties, perhaps your man of business would be kind enough to put one of

your ships at your disposal."

Sarah bit her lip in consternation. Perhaps Wessex did own land or commercial enterprises in what in this

world was still the British colonies, but she'd never thought to ask, and now it was too late.

"I'm sure you think me the veriest greenhead—or worse?" she suggested.

"A rank impostor like myself?" Morgan grinned impishly, to take the sting from the words. "No, I don't

doubt you're every inch a duchess. Nowt but the nobility can get quite so tangled in its own schemes.

Why, I recollect the last time I was in a position to help out a member of the gentry—t'was the Duke of

Wessex himself, as it happens, little though he'd care for the likes of me to know his proper handle—"

"I don't actually doubt you," Sarah interrupted with a sigh, "as my husband gets himself into the most

peculiar scrapes. And I don't care who you truly are, or where you're bound. But I need to get to

Baltimore as fast as may be!"

Morgan studied her face in silence for several moments before a slow smile of acceptance broke over his

lean, weather-tanned features.

"Aye, well, I can help you as far as that, my lady Wessex."

And so it was that barely a week later, Sarah prepared to descend the gangplank of a second vessel

onto the bustling Baltimore docks. With her were a manservant and a maid hastily hired in Boston by her

enterprising companion—a necessity, or so Morgan had told her, to handle her baggage and uphold her

consequence.

"Well, Lord Carabou. I suppose we shall not meet again."

"Not if either of us is lucky," Morgan answered with a grin. "I'm bound for Corchado—I'll buy me a

large
rancho
and a pretty wife, breed blood cattle, and end my days at peace in my own vineyard."

"It sounds an excellent plan," Sarah answered solemnly. She held out her hand, and after a moment,

Morgan took it. "Fare you well."

"Farewell, Duchess. And good hunting."

He turned away, and Sarah followed her trunks down the gangplank and onto the Baltimore docks. They

seemed much larger than she remembered them, with large numbers of British and Danish ships docked

for loading. To her surprise, she saw large numbers of The People working side-by-side with the colonial

dockworkers.

This is not the same world I left
, she reminded herself. She had accepted all the bowing and curtseying

her rank commanded when she was in England, but she found it oddly jarring to receive the same

deference from those she unconsciously thought of as her countrymen and peers. It brought home to her

as nothing else could have that the America she had unconsciously expected to find was not here at all.

With Morgan's worldly-wise assistance, Sarah had messaged ahead by heliograph, and so a coach from

the Royal Baltimore was waiting for her at the foot of the dock. Her trunks were quickly loaded, and the

coach moved off toward the hostelry from which she would begin her search for Meriel.

So far she had weathered all her surprises with at least the appearance of equanimity, but now, as she

moved through a landscape she had once known so well, the differences struck as hard as blows.

Instead of rows of whitewashed brick or clapboard houses surrounded by orchards and gardens, the

town she saw could have been London in miniature. Sober English tradesmen and their ladies walked the

streets in equitable company with Native men and women in their own accustomed dress—another

extraordinary sight to Sarah's eyes.

I feel as if I've fallen through a mirror
, Sarah thought in bewilderment. She realized mat she had

unconsciously counted on her familiarity with Baltimore to aid her in coming to Meriel's rescue—but this

was a world utterly alien to her. Here no Revolution had divided America and England to make them two

separate nations, nor set the colonists in opposition to the land's first peoples… but what was such an

America like?

It does not matter
, Sarah told herself fiercely.
All that matters is rescuing Meriel
...
and Louis
.

"Where is she?" Sarah demanded, hearing her voice go shrill with stifled anger.

"I'm sure I don't know, your fine ladyship," the woman said. Her manner was more than insolent, despite

the fact that Sarah had provided a
douceur
of good English gold in recompense for her time.

"But she
was
here," Sarah said desperately. She had come directly to the address Meriel had given in her

letter, and only now began to realize how out-of-place even her sober traveling dress and plumed bonnet

were in this shabby neighborhood. She had never feared to walk wherever she would in Baltimore when

she had lived here, but born the town—and she—had changed.

"Not these four weeks gone," the woman repeated.

"Happen it you'll be wanting to pay the rent herself left owing? You can have away her traps for that."

Sarah grimaced. She doubted extremely that there was any rent owing to this slatternly landlady, but she

wanted Meriel's luggage. It might contain some clue to where her friend had gone.

"How much did she owe?" Sarah asked resignedly.

Three days passed, and Sarah spent them exhausting every official avenue she dared to employ in her

search for Meriel. She had investigated workhouse, madhouse, prison, and hospital, and found no sign of

either Meriel or Louis. If not for having taken possession of their luggage—for Louis' had been lumped in

with Meriel's—she would have begun to doubt they'd come to Baltimore at all. But even Meriel's diary

failed to give her any clue. It ended abruptly five weeks before, just before the date on the letter that

Meriel had dispatched to her.

Today she had managed to get an audience with the Governor-General, and to her despair, he had also

been unable to help her. Sarah trudged up the street to her lodgings, her steps heavy with weariness. She

had chosen to walk rather than to be cooped up on the jarring stuffy coach, but now regretted her

impulsiveness.

I cannot believe they are gone! I cannot stand by and do nothing
! Sarah told herself stormily. For

one painful instant, she longed for Wessex. Surely he would have some notion of what she could do next!

'Someone knows something. Depend on it. All that remains is to ask until you find them.'

She could almost hear Wessex's lazy drawl in the words, and slowly she realized there
was
someone left

for her to ask. Sarah's steps quickened with new purpose. She was not defeated.

Hie brief time she had spent in Baltimore had taught her the need for circumspection. She was no longer

Miss Sarah Cunningham, a nobody whom anyone might easily overlook, but the Duchess of Wessex, a

Personage whose comings and goings were matters of note. She dismissed her maidservant and waited

until the hour was late and the hotel was quiet—it was the same coaching house that she had left

Baltimore from a lifetime ago, but the Royal Baltimore was a far grander establishment than its American

counterpart. Discretion was called for.

While she waited, Sarah took down her hair and combed it out into two long braids. She garbed herself

in a pair of tight-fitting moleskin trousers and a shirt of rough homespun she had provided herself with

back at Mooncoign. Over the shirt she wore a vest of chamois leather into which she had sewn much of

her gold during the long sea voyage. The vest fit as heavily as a medieval coat of mail, but the wealth it

concealed could be transported silently, and the coins would turn a bullet if need be. Last of all, Sarah