Surrender to Love (7 page)

“No,” she screamed hoarsely.  “Stop it!  Let me go!”

She struck out again with a booted foot, and heard a grunt of pain as she made contact.

“Knock it off,” a gruff voice directed sharply, and a filthy hand once more secured itself over her mouth.

She tried to deliver another kick, but it was to no avail.  Her arms were painfully wrenched behind her and roughly tied with coarse hemp.

“Be gentle with her, Gene,” a second male voice warned.  “She won’t bring much money if she’s marked.”

Money?  Marked?  She struggled harder than ever.  This could not possibly be happening.  All the rumors that abounded about illegal activity here….  It couldn’t possibly be happening to her!

But it was.

Her heeled boots slipped on the wet slime that covered the alley floor and she sank to the ground.

“No,” her muffled voice cried out, “let me go!”

She struggled, resisting further, until her world went black.

Chapter Four

A shrill scream jerked Sabine back into consciousness.  She attempted to scramble to her feet, but the intense throbbing in her head quickly subdued any further movement.

Where was she?  The last thing her muddled mind remembered was the darkening alley, and the unknown assailants who had bound her hands and threw a sack over her head.  Groaning, she rubbed the spot at the nape of her neck where she had been clouted, wincing painfull
y as her fingers touched its swollen tenderness.

And the floor seemed to be swaying beneath her prone body.  She swallowed the lump that rose in her throat as she clasped her hands together in silent prayer.  Please let it be Troy.  The blow to her head was simply making her dizzy – it would pass in time; nothing was actually moving.  Please,
please
, let it be Troy who hired a pair of thugs to chase her down.

She never thought she’d find herself wanting him ever again, but the wild scenarios that the little voice in her head offered were far worse than anything Troy could create.  The sordid rumors she had overheard in the marketplace prodded at her,
revealing themselves in a mad rush as her consciousness tried to subdue them.  Kidnappings…murder…

Cautiously she eased her head from the rough planking.  Her heart pounding wildly, she attempted to focus her eyes in the murky darkness.  Vague shapes stirred hesitantly, almost stealthily, beyond her reach.  Panic seized her, clutching at her belly with icy claws.  She was not at all where she thought she was.  She was not alone…and this place was definitely not of Troy’s creation.

Sabine’s slender fingers groped in the obscure dimness until they came into contact with the coarse iron that encircled her ankle, and the links that continued to the bench that lay behind her.  Chains.  She was tied up like some sort of animal for fear that she might escape.

Her hand, trembling wildly, pressed firmly against her mouth, biting back the cries of disbelief that threatened to explode from her.

Stupid, stupid little girl,
the small voice in her head taunted mercilessly. 
You never did stop to think, did you?  Now you’ve run from one terrible situation into one that’s twice as bad.  Your fault. Your fault.

The fragile shreds of composure that remained fell away and Sabine curled up on her side, weeping softly.  She cursed herself a thousand times for running from Troy Markham.  The little voice inside her was right; it had always been right.  She was foolish – always acting before thinking.  If she had just gone straight home…if she had stood up to him…or even demanded further proof to his claim.  If.  If.  If.  There were so many of them.  But it was too late to wonder about all that.  It was too late for anything anymore.

And now the tears.  Ridiculous, weak, silly tears belonging to a weak, silly person who could never do anything right.  She dashed them away angrily, wiping her hands on the torn hem of her gown.

What was she going to do?

Well, she certainly wasn’t going to lie her like a half-wit, bawling her eyes out, she decided. There would be no knight in shining armor to whisk her away from this…this
ship?
  In the dim light she could barely make out the curving sides of a hull and the jutting ribs of a ship’s skeleton.

And she wasn’t alone in her captivity, either.  As her eyes conditioned themselves to their shadowy surroundings, she could see four others who occupied the confines of this cell.

To her right came the clatter of iron and a soft curse.  Shuffling, Sabine turned toward the noise to see who shared her fate.  Smiling weakly, she said nothing.

“Guess the lot of us are all in quite a fix,” her
benchmate announced pertly.  She smiled brightly and ran her fingers through her short, sandy-colored hair.

Sabine did not respond, but desperately fought to hold back the hot pressure that again built up behind her eyes.  A fix?  This was hardly just a
fix.
  Her life – everything she had ever known – had been shattered.  The young woman she thought she was had never existed; that woman was a cruel fantasy, a vicious joke.  And now, in its place, she faced the harsher reality of a life she had never before been forced to envision.  She was never going home, for truly there was no longer a home for her to go to.  She was head for parts unknown, intentions unknown.  And the Sabine who had said there would be no more tears rested her head on her knees and sobbed, despair relentlessly overwhelming her.

“Hey, come on.  It won’t be so bad. At least we’re not
scroungin’ on the streets anymore.”

The last comment only caused the tears to increase their flow.  She was not from the streets.  She did not belong here.  She wanted to go home.

“Don’t cry. You’re gonna need all the strength you can get.  We need to stick together, you know?  By the way,” the blonde held out her hand, “my name is Patsy.”

Sabine sucked in a quavering breath as she rubbed at her swollen eyes.  Ignoring the throb in her temples, she straightened, turning to the freckle-dusted pixie face of her companion.

“I’m Sabine.”

She reached out and clasped Patsy’s hand and held it firmly, feeling her confidence.  Yes, here was definitely someone she would need to get to know well.  Patsy was from the streets, and survival was something she knew a bit about.

Survival.  It was the one instinct Adele had never fostered in her.  Now she would have to learn it – learn the strength she had missed by being sheltered from the world’s evils.  No more tears.  No more self-pity.  The innocent young girl was gone.  She would watch, and learn, and Patsy could be the one to show her how to make it through this ordeal without going mad.

A woman’s scream split the darkness once again, followed by the resounding sound of a slap.  Sabine jumped in her skin, and the acidy taste of fear filled her mouth. 
Her stomach lurched as she instinctively turned to the party of footsteps that purposefully approached.

“I demand you return me home,” came the haughty slur of a cultured woman’s Southern voice.

“Shut up, wench,” an angry voice replied.

They appeared at the iron grate that served as a door, and Sabine’s eyes grew wide at the sight of them.
  The man, a menacing hulk, loomed over the brunette he held securely in his grip; his free hand held a rusty lantern, its pale light washing over the battered surroundings.  The woman’s clothing and hair, once decorated to rich distraction, now hung about her untidily, streaked and soiled.

“My father is very wealthy.  He’ll pay you handsomely for my return.”

The giant delivered another blow, sending the woman crashing to the floor, her cheek stained bright pink from the imprint of his hand.  Sabine swallowed hard.  Her heart racing, a cold chill swept through her while she helplessly watched the scene being played out before her.  What, in the name of her dear Lord, had she gotten herself into?

“I told you to shut up,” he muttered through the shaggy thickness of an unkempt beard.  “
Ain’t got no problem understandin’ English, do ya?”

The brunette shook her head tentatively, whimpering as she inched away from her captor.

“Didn’t think so.  Not that it matters where yer goin’,” came his strangled laugh.  “Welcome to yer new home.”

He jerked a thumb at the cramped cell that already held five women and dragged the society girl to her feet.  With wild eyes she quickly inspected the occupants before turning to her captor with a look of disbelief.

“Surely you don’t expect me to stay with those nigras.”

The banked coals of Sabine’s
anger flared, searing her soul with renewed resentment, momentarily displacing the fears that had encompassed her.  A
nigra?
  Was that all this woman saw?  Was that all she could think of at a time such as this?

Sabine moved against the planked wall behind her, gazing momentarily at the woman before her eyes darted in turn to each of the other occupants who shared the same fate as she.  A teenaged Negro girl cowered in a corner on the floor, her dark eyes wide with fear.  Her hair was cropped close to her skull, covered by a faded kerchief.  Her dress, twice turned and mended in a dozen or more places,
hung loosely about her thin shoulders.  An older woman of perhaps fifty sat on a bench opposite Sabine, her eyes, hard and hateful, peeked from between long strands of dark hair.  The last, a plump girl of about eighteen years, fussed restlessly with the hem of her gown, her cheeks ashen beneath their once-accustomed rosiness.  These were her companions – women who would never typically never give each other the slightest acknowledgement of existence had they met in the marketplace – but because of a simple turn of Fate’s wheel, were now held together by a common bond:  the bond of not knowing where they headed or what the future had in store.

The brunette’s captor fumbled with a set of keys, unlocking the iron gate before shoving her unceremoniously inside.

“My name is Arianna Covington,” she announced loudly to the group as the heavy footsteps retreated into the gloom.  “And I don’t belong here.”

She struggled to her feet from under a tent of silk skirts and tossed her head back defiantly.  The others looked silently on, the air crackling with tension as her gaze locked with Patsy’s.  Patsy stood over her, a cat poised impatiently before delivering a final death-blow.  The tiny blonde’s eyes, coldly inhuman, bored through Arianna as though she weren’t even there.

“None of us belong here,” Sabine replied flatly, her voice no more than a whisper.

“My father is Alexander Covington,” the socialite informed them as she moved freely about the cell, and a slight smile of superiority crossed her features.  “The most important banker in all of New Orleans, I’m sure.  Probably even in the whole South.”

“Well, la-di-da,” came Patsy’s flip response as she sat down next to Sabine.  “We’re bein’ visited by royalty, girls.”

The older woman burst out with a chortling laugh, breaking the eerie silence.

Releasing a weary sigh, Sabine curled her knees up to her chest and rested her forehead against them.  She wanted to be so very far from all this; she wanted to be anywhere…anywhere but here.

The words came back to haunt her.  She had thought the exact same phrase
when she dropped her basket in that narrow alley and took her flight from Troy Markham.  Now she regretted even thinking them; she had received her wish, and no, this was no better than being a slave.  It was worse.

But she wasn’t going to sit there and dwell on it – all that could have been.  There was no use in it. It would never be.

“I want this spot.”

Arianna Covington stood before her, tossing her bedraggled curls over her shoulder.  Gone was the panicked stare of a spoiled, society girl; he dark eyes pieced through Sabine’s with an open disdain.

“I’m sitting here,” Sabine replied simply and did not move.

“I want that spot,” she repeated, “
nigra.”

The slow rage that had burned within her suddenly flared.  Sabine rose from where she sat and stood
unmovingly before the dark-haired woman.  Her emerald eyes blaze with a cold hatred as she set her jaw in determination.

“I’m sitting here.  And don’t you ever,” Sabine said slowly.  Her voice, no more than a whisper, growled with a ferocity that sounded so foreign – frightening – to her ears.  “Don’t you
ever
call me that again.  If my mama hadn’t brought me up to be a lady, I’d slap you.”

“I’d have you whipped if we were back in New Orleans,” the other replied unsteadily, her manner no longer filled with self-assurance.

“Well, we’re not in New Orleans,” Sabine said quietly, “and there are no laws to protect you.”

“I hate you,” Arianna screeched heatedly
, turning to each of the women.  “I hate you all!”

“It breaks my heart,” Patsy drawled.

“Feelings are mutual,” the older woman in the corner grunted almost inaudibly.

With her heart pounding, Sabine resumed her place on the hard bench, the clatter of iron fetters following her.  Her hands, trembling wildly, found a secure home
tightly clasped in her lap.  The venom that dripped from her words terrified her; never had she been so cutting, so vicious.  What was this place doing to her?  Oh, God, was she becoming so base, so animalistic in such a short time that she would completely forget what is was like to be that carefree girl from New Orleans who dreamed?  That girl who lost herself in books and fantasized about heroes and romance?