“From then on, I thought my childhood was typical, even though I was usually kept within the confines of my bedroom. On most days, Father would come and eat meals with me, play with me, and tuck me into bed. Those days were full and happy. I would get a glimpse of joy being with him, then he would be away for days at a time. When he was gone, Mother would beat me and starve me without mercy. Then she would give my brother the superior food, clothes, and respect. She wanted it imprinted in my mind that my brother was superior to me.”
My voice became rough, not out of grief, but now out of anger. “Once, I repeated the things that mother said to me and Father was so angry. He confronted her and she denied it profusely. The next time Father left, I paid dearly. That was my first broken bone and the last time I confided in him about her dealings with me.
“Once I came of age, Mother began to dress me up in beautiful gowns and jewelry. I relished the new clothes. To me, they represented how she had always secretly cared about me. I thought she was using them to apologize for everything she had done.”
Speaking became more difficult as the memories grew more fresh and painful.
“After I had a proper coming into society, Mother would find ways to … get me alone with eligible men.” I paused, then added, “I … don’t want to talk about that.”
The captain’s chest sunk as he held his breath in shock. Somehow I knew he was angry and was trying to control that anger. The thought softened my heart. He loosened his arms around me slightly and touched his forehead to my temple, my warm and gentle captain. I dared, in my mind, to call him Benjamin. I continued.
“Father thought I was slipping into Mother’s world. My mother is a supreme actress, and I could have inherited it. He wanted to save me from being greedy, spiteful, and useless like her. And since I wouldn’t talk to him about what was happening, he thought I would do well to work in the service of others.”
I paused for a moment to collect myself. The tears started again. I couldn’t hold them back. I began to choke words out, hoping he would understand them.
“He took me to the cottage of a woman who had recently lost her husband. It was a young lady, now a widow, and her little baby girl, maybe six months old. They were starving, living in a hole of an existence. Father took them to a bigger cottage where he and I supplied them with food and water for almost a year while Father tried to find them a better situation. Finally, he found a large house in Ireland in need of a governess, with a family who would look after her sufficiently. Father needed time to travel and set the way for them to follow him. He was going to be gone two weeks. I wanted to beg him to stay so that Mother couldn’t subject me to any more abuse. But I knew that Maria and Anna’s futures depended on finding a permanent home, so I did not ask him to stay. He left and I kept visiting the two with food and supplies. Mother had no idea that we were helping them. We kept it a secret from her because we knew she wouldn’t approve of us spending money.”
I needed another moment to breathe. The captain still seemed to be intermittently holding his breath.
“She found out. Somehow she found out about them. On my way out to their cottage one morning, she grabbed me by the arm and locked me in my room with no way out. She had one of her loyal footman stand as security guard over me, and another over Maria’s cottage.”
I could barely choke out this story. It was too real, too painful.
“Mother gave me one meal a day. Enough to survive. She didn’t do the same for Maria and Anna. She left them with nothing. She—” I choked on my words, but forced them out. “She … discarded them, as one would a litter of rabid field mice.”
I had tried so desperately to convince myself that it hadn’t happened, or at least that it wasn’t my fault. I turned slightly to look at the captain’s reaction to my horror-filled life. His jaw was set and his eyes were stone-cold, set straight ahead.
“Did they die?” he asked through set teeth.
I nodded miserably.
“I screamed at her to feed them, to care for them. I told her they had nowhere else to go. I begged her to make sure they were safe. I screamed in my room until I was sick. My arms and hands bled from pounding on the door. I had no idea she had locked them into their own home to starve. I survived the two weeks it took for Father to come home. They didn’t.”
A long quiet moment passed. Tears ran down my face. “I remember the look on my father’s face as he burst through my bedroom door and saw my bleeding arms. When he had gotten the story from me he had rushed to Maria’s cabin to check on them, with me tight on his heels. He nearly killed Mother’s guard, he hit him so forcefully. Finally we made it to them. But we were too late. They had died in each other’s arms.”
The tears fell freely now. “I had watched the baby learn and grow. She had come to almost recognize me when I came in the door.” The captain held me tighter as I lost control of my words. “She must have died so slowly. How could my mother do that to a child?”
The captain held me as I sobbed. I cried out so many months of hating myself, because I had survived her and they hadn’t. Hating my mother for giving me a meal a day to survive. Hating myself for eating it. And now hating myself for watching as Motsatsi was taken away from me as well.
“My father, he went after Mother in a fierce way. I listened to the muffled sound of his booming threats. Mother defended herself by accusing him of spending their fortune on widows and bastards.
“After a few days, Father took me into the library and told me of his plan to move to America. He cut my hair. He gave me boy’s clothes so that I could be discreet and so that the voyage would not be as hard in my heavy skirts. We were set to leave the next morning. But my mother must have known about the plans, because by morning he had been poisoned, and lay dead in his bed. I sat with him, soaked in grief. Mother was there too, slowly slipping the rings from off his fingers.”
I had stopped crying. Our breathing coincided and comforted me.
“How did you come aboard the Madras?” he asked quietly.
“While my father lay dead in his bed, and I lay next to him weeping, Mother informed me there would be a funeral, wherein I would have the responsibility of placing roses atop his casket. She then told me as soon as the funeral was over, she had arranged my marriage to the cruel and heartless Duke of Solven.
“After the funeral, I stood tearless in my room. I could not sleep. I couldn’t cry any longer. I simply stood still. I knew that soon my engagement to the Duke of Solven would be announced and that would give Mother more opportunities to leave us alone together. He was a truly perverse and malicious man. I was terrified of my future. And yet, I stood perfectly still. I felt trapped in my own body. There was nothing I could do to save myself.
“Then a voice came.” I smiled, remembering the moment my life changed, and spoke in hushed tones, more to myself in that moment than to him. “A voice as clear and brilliant as the sound of a church bell. It was Father’s voice. ‘Run, Anna. Oh please, run.’”
“I knew I could not have imagined it, pure and clear in that way. I knew it was Father. I knew that he knew of my situation. And I knew that only a kind and loving God could have allowed one of his angels to direct me. He used the name Anna, the baby’s name, to encourage me to take a new name. And what better name to take than the name of the precious dead?
“I knew a hiding place where Mother kept a large amount of money, to be hid from Father. I took every pound she had hidden and walked out the front door. I moved forward, completely confident, from that moment on.”
I felt as though literal bricks had been balancing on my heart, moving and causing frictions every time I moved too quickly. Now they were removed. They had been picked up and removed by this patient man. Finally, I could breathe. He sensed my relief and mirrored my breaths. We sat still for several moments.
After a while, he chose to tell his own story, his breath warming my hair
“I was lucky enough to be raised in a happy home. My mother al
most died while giving birth to me. I was destined to be an only child. My mother, my father, and I spent most of every day together. They were true, honest, loving people. I never knew we were different than any other family. I was proud to be an Ashmore.”
“When I came of age, I noticed that girls would flaunt and boast in front of me. I asked my father why they would suddenly act this way, when they had mostly ignored me until this point. He said, frankly, it was because their mothers told them to impress me because of our money,” he said with disdain. “That was the first time I realized we were wealthy.”
“The older I got, the worse it became. They would pretend their horse had gone lame or that they themselves had sprained an ankle just to attract my attention. Soon, I spent the majority of my time rescuing damsels from make-believe catastrophes. I felt absolutely ridiculous. I was useless except to perform random acts of fake gallantry.”
“Soon, however, I came of age and my mother and father approached me about the real possibility of my getting married. They said I should watch for those who would only want me for my estate that I was promised. They said to find someone with an honest disposition.
“I searched for her. All I saw were fluttering eyelashes and lying mouths. I disliked them all so thoroughly for their materialism. If I couldn’t spend an hour with any of them, how would I spend a lifetime with one?
“You approached me, that night, with most unfortunate timing,” he ducked down and pecked me on the cheek, sending a thrill through me. “I had spent an entire day saving these defenseless females. I thought you were coming to ask me to fetch punch, or to aid you in the rescue of a lost dog. I could not handle another rescue.”
I nodded, understanding.
“Then Marianne Steele came in with a flourish. Everyone was impressed with her. Everyone said how genuine and kind she was. I wasn’t excited to meet her, however. I had heard so many good things about mindless, insipid girls before that I could barely trust anyone’s word.”
I wondered if his jaw would ever relax, or if his gaze would ever break from the opposite wall. His words seethed with bitterness. He continued.
“When I met her, I thought somehow she didn’t know I was wealthy. It surprised me. She did not pretend at anything. She got her own drinks. She had no inheritance to speak of, yet she refused suitors she did not admire. I could not help but be drawn to her. Because I could not have her, I wanted her all the more.”
“After a lengthy courtship, and three proposals from me, she finally accepted my offer. We were married quickly. I thought my happiness was complete, but within a day she had revealed her true character to me. To this day I curse my own blindness. She was expertly manipulative, drastically emotional, and corrupt to her very core. For months I wondered what I could do to get my Marianne back, while she spent my father’s money like a queen.
“When we went out into the polite world, and it was often, I could count on her acting badly somehow. She refused to be seen with my parents whom she declared to be monstrously dull, and whom she spread vicious rumors about. She would take flight with small groups of people she did not know, and usually end up in a gaming house, or other functions that no lady of integrity would find herself. Time after time I would search for her and find her disheveled and unconscious on the floor of another filthy establishment. Her own circle of friends knew nothing of her true behavior and habits.”
I listened in shocked disbelief. So that was why they had fought that day. I never could have guessed Marianne’s true character.
The captain continued. “So quickly I could hardly believe it was happening, Father approached me to say she had spent not only what was my allotted amount per month, but also theirs. She was out of control. I approached her again and again. She would simply laugh and say she would slow her purchases. But she didn’t slow them. Instead, they doubled. We gathered as a family and tried to speak reason to her. She would not heed.
“One day, my mother went into Whiteleys to purchase a day dress. The store clerk refused to fit her for it, because our debt had not yet been paid. We had not realized that Marianne had been intercepting the largest bills and hiding them.
“We held another family meeting. While Mother sobbed, my father brought up the idea of us removing to the country for the season to try and regain what had been so recklessly spent. The calm persona Marianne normally portrayed broke loose. She screamed and kicked, proclaiming she was being stifled and she would never be taken from her friends and belongings. My perspective became clear in a moment. In my view, my mother sat to one side crying soft tears, Father was directly in front of me—he looked ten years older—and my new bride on the other side screaming about being treated badly. I looked at them all, and finally saw what Marianne had wrought. I knew what had to be done. The time had come for me to become a tyrannical husband.
“I placed the both of us in a carriage destined for our country home. I did not wait for luggage to be packed, or friends to be notified. She cried and screamed for days, and I did not think there would be an end. I started the rumor that I had taken her to the country because she was ill. My parents followed us even though I begged them to stay in town. They would not let me go through the ordeal alone.”
He stopped thoughtfully.
“Marianne contracted a fever from an unknown source not two weeks after our arrival in the country. Only hours after, my parents were ill as well.”
He paused.
“It was scarlet fever.”
I gasped.
“I caught the fever, but it left me quickly,” he said, bitterly. “It did not affect me the way it did them in their old age, or her, in her heightened state of stress. My parents died within a week of each other.”
He did not elaborate. I knew he must have been by their sides to the end. I knew he must have watched the light go out in their eyes. I knew he must have dug their graves with his own hands. Yet he could not admit those things.
“My bride held on for three long weeks. She would not let me comfort her, nor would she let me hold her hand as she suffered. I brought flowers into her room and she got out of bed only to pick them up and throw them against the wall. In her anger, she would yell for hours how I had brought this on her and how much she hated me.”
This explained why he was so wary of me when he first began to care for me after my injury.
“Near the end, she said she would bring shame to me as her revenge. She said she refused to be a good wife, or to treat me well. She said she refused to be my puppet any longer. She swore if she lived she would only work to make me miserable. As her final act, she used crude scissors to cut her hair to stubs. She died with mutilated hair and an angry expression.” He paused, looking down on me. “You may understand now why I was upset when you cut your hair.”
I nodded, understanding at last, as he continued speaking.
“She had not left us completely destitute. I had the Ashmore estate left, which I could not bear to sell, and a small amount that I could have lived comfortably on for the rest of my days. However, I could not stay in the place where my parents had died, or where my wife cursed me for marrying her. My parents had come there to support me in my trial. If they had stayed away, Marianne would have passed away alone in her misery. I had brought her into our happy family. I felt responsible for their deaths because of my ignorance. I could not move to town either. I would, no doubt, be invaded by the social atmosphere.”
“I used a large portion of my inheritance and bought the Madras. I changed my name from Ashmore to Dunna so I would not raise gossip from that group of stupid girls I had come to avoid.
“I began a new life as a ship’s captain. I knew very little when we started out, but I learned many new things every day. I divulged my past to my first mate, Anderson. He instructed me on everything, down to the fine details of ship life. He became my mentor, my steward, my father. I had almost achieved a mental tranquility with the help of the sea. I was finally beginning to heal, when suddenly
a girl trounced aboard who seemed to me, at the time, the epitome of social prowess.
“She walked around as prideful and lofty as the best of them. She came unbalanced up the gangway to the ship, and I had to help her step down. The memories of other young ladies in need of help flooded my mind and clouded my vision. I knew her mother and others like her. I thought the mother was crafty enough to send the girl after me, seeking my fortune again. She may not have known that my fortune was diminished, but still, this seemed another performance of a damsel in distress.”
He broke his stare at the wall and turned to look into my face.
“I did not know you, Anna,” he said gruffly. “I was so wary of all social women that I shunned you as best I could.”
“I am glad to understand,” I said finally.
He gently placed both hands on the sides of my face. I took in a sharp breath.
“I love you,” he confessed suddenly, sweetly. “I used to watch you in social settings, but I did not trust myself. I knew you to be honest, straightforward, and quite possibly in trouble. Yet you asked for no help. I would have helped you. I watched you around your mother and I knew you were afraid of her but I did not know the extent. I did not know how to help you, and I had come to distrust my own judgment.”
My heart raced.
“Please say that you forgive me. I saw you in pain, yet I did not assist.”
My right hand began to move without consulting me. It moved slowly up to cup his left cheekbone. I expected a hard, rough face and found it tender and warm instead. He closed his eyes. I moved to his hair and put my hands deep inside of it. He looked up again and we looked into each other’s eyes.
“Of course I forgive you,” I told him, smiling.
In Spite of Lions Page 27
