Perhaps it had wine in it. If she helped herself to a healthy portion, the influence of alcohol would be enough to loosen the hold her mind had on her memories, controlling and corralling them lest they hurt her. She lay back on the bunk, letting her mind drift even as her eyes closed. The tremor moved through her arms and into her shoulders. She welcomed the vibrating sensation, welcomed the discomfort that came with it.
And she listened.
The sound of the water crashing reached her ears first followed quickly by the whine of the lantern. She listened harder, willing her ears to reach out and pluck the sounds from around her as if they were tangible objects ready for her picking. She heard a thud in the distance, like boots hitting the floor and then treading up wooden stairs. The sound of water came again, and then the lantern swinging. She listened more. Somewhere in the ship a person sang. She could hear the slurring of words grow louder before they drifted away from her, even beyond the reach of her ears. And then there was nothing but water and the squeak of the lantern.
She wanted Alec here. She wanted to see his face, feel his touch. She wanted to goad him into saying something immature and ridiculous like he always did. She wanted him there to make her laugh.
Her eyes flew open as she sat up on the bunk, her head barely missing the ceiling above her. Realization spread through her like the warming effects of good brandy. And with it came long seething anger.
"Alec Black, you son of a-"
~
The Duke of Kent's Country Party
July 1800
Sarah Beckham scratched at the lace of her collar. She didn't know why the frilly thing was considered so posh or why her guardian felt it was necessary to subject her to such torture. There was nothing wrong with a simple cotton pinafore. Her guardian said girls of her class did not wear such garments. That only those still in the orphanage would wear such a uniform. Besides, she was too old for such things. Sarah was becoming a lady, and she had to dress as such.
Sarah felt no such thing. Barely half fifteen, she still felt exactly the same as she did when she was but an eight year old child at St. Mary's in The City. She may have grown a bit taller and gained a bit of weight, but there was nothing about her that said she was a lady. And why was her guardian always going on about class? Sarah had no time for such things. She knew who she was, and she needn't be reminded every time her guardian told her she belonged to a different one now. Bastards never changed classes, and her guardian should've known that. Funny how no one told her.
Sarah had tried to tell her a time or two, but her guardian had simply muttered some words Sarah didn't understand but presumed they indicated her fresh behavior. She didn't see what was fresh about pointing out someone's mistake. It seemed like simple courtesy to her. But what did she know? She spent her first eight years pulling scraps of food from garbage piles and dodging carriages in the muddy streets. You could stick her in all kinds of lace, and she was still just Sarah, parentage unknown.
And if her guardian had stopped having such inflated notions about what Sarah would one day be, she would not now find herself in such a position that required sneaking through ducal gardens in the middle of the night to find said duke's famed library. If her guardian had just left her at home while she herself attended his country party, Sarah would never have been tempted by such rumors that included tales of stacks that ran four stories high. Sarah knew this rumor to in fact be a lie. The Duke of Kent's country home was only three stories high, and therefore, the stacks could only progress for the height of the manor house.
Unless there was a secret floor beneath the ground. Sarah had not accounted for that.
She hurried more quickly along the path that she felt was headed in the correct direction. It circled around from the east wing, which contained the nursery in which Sarah had been imprisoned or offered quarters in, depending on whom one asked, and snaked its way through some decadent shrubbery, veering in the general direction of the main house. If her calculations were accurate, she would be approaching the rose gardens that were situated off of the library in question.
The moon was full and lit her path with more brilliance than she could have hoped for. The night was silent except for the odd call of an owl and the sound of the wind moving through the shrubs. She had thought she had heard the sound of running feet a time or two and the strange sound of a faded giggle, quite feminine in nature, but she dismissed the noises as her imagination rearing up on her. She did not have time for her imagination to do anything and had plodded on. She rounded the last row of hedges and came to a stop, taking in her surroundings.
Several paths converged at that point just as she had expected. She rolled her right shoulder back, the stiffness from her horse riding injury settling into her bones. She tweaked it without really noticing as she decided which path to take from there. That was when they found her.
There were three of them. All tall and gangly, not quite men but no longer boys either. Their clothes were rumpled, collars loosened and buttons half done. They all had dark hair and were rather plain Sarah noted before she turned to move down the path from which she had come. But she was not quick enough. They had already seen her.
"What do we have here, gentlemen?" one of them said.
His voice was deeper than Sarah had expected, more man than boy, and she felt the first trickle of fear drip down her spine. Sarah was no child. She knew what men did to helpless women. Women who went places unchaperoned.
"That's the Beckham chit. My mother told me of her. Lady Barnstead adopted her or some such nonsense. Says she leaving this girl her fortune."
"Fortune?"
This was from another one. This one was a touch taller than the rest, and his position slightly in front of the others led Sarah to understand he was the leader of the pack.
"I don't care what fortune she has or will have. She's still a trollop, isn't she? That's what her mother was. Isn't that right, gentlemen?"
The trickle of fear that had been working its way down her spine vanished in almost an instant. Rage simmered inside her. The boy may have spoken the truth, but it was a truth that did not settle well on Sarah's shoulders. It made her twitch with an unfulfilled desire to land her fist in someone's face. But there were three of them and only one of her, so she took a step back.
"Where are you going, my lady?"
Her anger twitched. The last part had been spoken with a sarcasm so plain, she expected it to get up and walk about as if it were human. She clenched her teeth and dug her nails into the palms of her hands.
"Gentlemen," she said with equal sarcasm, "I was on my way to the library. You know. A room that houses books. I'm sure you've never heard of it."
While the remark was well placed, it did not fulfill her desire to hit something, and her anger boiled on.
The leader of the pack stepped toward her. Sarah would not back up. Her pride would not allow her. The boy came closer and closer still. Sarah's heart raced, and her mind flashed to the pain a blow could cause. So many times had her cheek been struck by the sisters in the orphanage. She girded herself for another such slap, but one never came.
Instead, a fourth boy did. Right out of the hedge in a somersaulting catastrophe of limbs, dust and foliage. Sarah stepped back to avoid being trampled and waved her arms in front of her face to dispel the sudden cloud of dust. The three boys who had stopped her on the path backed up as well, coughing from the dirt the fourth boy's spectacular entrance had kicked up.
The boy stood, and the moonlight hit him like a spotlight from the sky. Sarah knew the breath had frozen in her chest, but she would deny it if anyone called her on it. The boy was magnificent. She didn't know what it was that tugged at her stomach or made her feel suddenly wobbly, but there was something about this fourth boy that called to her. And it was more than his carefully put together visage. It was his presence. Or lack there of as it were.
"Oh, hello, mates!" he said over brightly, "Do beg your pardon, chaps. Beg your pardon. Be
g your pardon. Beg your pardon."
He said this to each of the three boys in turn as he bowed to each of them. Sarah had yet to see his face in its entirety, and she moved just a bit to see if she could take in more. Her movement must have startled him, because he spun around so quickly, he knocked into her.
Sarah instinctively tucked in her recently healed arm as she prepared to be tossed on her rump, but he caught her at the last moment, his hands firm on her shoulders.
"Oh, I do beg your pardon-"
He stopped, his eyes growing huge and round, and-
Green. They were breathtakingly green eyes. Sarah blinked, but their intensity was all the same when her eyes adjusted once more. He was...beautiful.
"My lady!" he said with a grand sweep of his arm and an expertly executed bow.
Sarah did not say a single word. She had forgotten all of them.
"I do hope you accept my apologies. You see, I was on my way-"
He stopped again and turned back toward the other three boys.
"Oh, I'm sorry, chaps. I'm probably in your way, am I not? How inconsiderate of me. We will just get out of your way here."
At some point the fourth boy had taken hold of her arm and now steered her away from the the other three boys in the direction of the rose gardens. Sarah allowed herself to be taken along, pulled in the wake of this mesmerizing boy. She had never felt what it was that she felt now, and she didn't know what to do. She just let herself be led.
"Have a good night then, chaps," the fourth boy said as they slipped behind the hedge separating the rose garden from the path. The boy held her arm and moved quickly, disappearing deep into the gardens before stopping abruptly and looking back over his shoulder. The whole time he never loosed his grip on her arm. And Sarah never stopped staring.
"You really shouldn't go traipsing about in the middle of night unchaperoned. Your likely to run into hooligans like myself."
He turned his attention back to her and smiled, the moonlight striking his brilliant white teeth.
Sarah still did not speak. Or blink.
"They didn't hurt you, did they?" he asked, and the concern in his voice finally snapped her back to attention.
"How dare you," she said, wrenching her arm from his grasp.
He blinked at her but otherwise did not move.
"I beg your pardon, my lady, I was trying to-"
"I am not a lady, and you will do well not to call me such."
Her voice was flat with the anger she had not been able to release on that boy who had so carelessly demeaned her person.
"Is there something else you'd like me to call you? Because if you're having trouble, I can think of a few suitable names."
Her outrage came out in a strangled gasp and finally her anger released in a right cross, her newly healed arm protesting through the entire swing. Her fist caught him squarely in the eye socket, and the moment she felt her flesh connect with his, she regretted her actions. But the boy did not howl in pain. He made hardly a noise as he gripped the side of his face and staggered away from her.
"I was only trying to make you laugh," he said as he blinked at the ground, his hands on his knees.
Sarah did not stay to ask him what he meant.
CHAPTER TEN
On a ship bound for France
April 1815
"He was trying to make me laugh," Sarah said to no one in particular as there was no one in the berth with her except the lantern and the jug at her feet.
She held her head in her hands, elbows perched on her knees. Her hair hung in filthy curtains by the sides of her face, and she peered through them at the lines of light created by the lantern on the floor of the berth. Her mind felt as if an infestation of ants had invaded and set up home, but there was nothing Sarah could do about it. An entire marriage of events came rushing back to her all at once, overwhelming her in capacity and depth.
Alec was trying to make her laugh.
But what for?
She had never seemed like an unhappy person who required a spot of fun to lift one's spirits. She had always thought of herself as rather polite, positive and simply nice. Why did she need so much cheering? But there was something in the tone of Alec's voice that night in the gardens when he had told her he was just trying to make her laugh. There was more there than just a basic desire to cause fun. There was a need, a primal need, that said if Alec did not accomplish this, all was lost. Sarah didn't understand, but she was beginning to understand that the problem with her husband was not his noble birth. It was the fact that she did not understand him.
In four years, she had never listened to him. She had always assumed the meaning behind his words instead of listening to the meaning of his words. It had only taken a kidnapping and exile on a ship in the middle of the English Channel for her to realize it. Sarah lay back on the bunk, her feet dangling over the side as the ship swayed beneath her. She felt the water getting rougher beneath her and wondered if this was the bad weather they had been expecting. For the briefest of moments, she pictured the ship going down in the stormy waters, of never seeing Alec again. But the pain it brought was swift and unkind, and she quickly pushed the thought away.
Alec had been trying to make her laugh.
All of those times that she had thought he was being immature, ridiculous and poking fun at her lowly class was not at all true. He was just trying to make her laugh. Why was he so desperate to make her laugh though? She didn't have the answer to that question, and she knew she would not get it if she did not ask her husband outright.
She let out an exhale, blowing the strands of hair that had fallen along her forehead up into the air.
But first she had to get out of this damn prison. She had to get them out of this damn prison.
But seeing as how their prison was a ship floating in the middle of a body of water, she did not have the first clue as to how to go about it. She let the water roll beneath her and the ship to carry her up and down.
She had finally realized what her husband had been saying to her for four years, and he wasn't here so she could tell him.
And that just summed up their entire relationship right there. They never told each other things. Alec did not talk, and Sarah simply yelled at him. They never did any listening.
She turned her head in the direction of the door, wondering where the old dark skinned man had come from and how he knew so much. She wondered, too, if she could get him off this ship when the time came. She didn't know his name, but it did not matter. She felt deep down that he was an ally, and when rescue came, because it was going to come, she needed to make sure he came, too.
But as she turned her head back to the boards above her, rescue seemed like a mirage, a glimmer of hope in the distance but nothing solid enough to grab hold of. It was just there, taunting her. Keeping Alec from her.
Sarah stood up and paced. The rocking of the ship made it difficult, but the feelings inside of her kept her from sitting still. She needed action, craved it like a person in the desert craves water. She would simply die if she did not see Alec again and see him again quickly. The ship pitched, and Sarah put out a hand to catch herself. The movement had the floorboards coming precariously close to her face, and Sarah knew the storm was upon them. But as the floorboards swam closer, the light of the lantern swung off the jug the old man had placed on the floor.
Sarah watched it, unmoving in the pitching waters. It must be heavy. It must be very heavy.
Sarah quickly made her way over to the bunk, cautiously keeping one hand on a wall at all times while her feet slid across the floor. She sat on the bunk and pulled the jug closer to her. It was heavy and solid and-
She hefted it up. She could just lift the bulk with two hands, but she was fairly certain that with enough practice, she could handle it deftly. She swung it back and forth in her hands, moved it from one palm to another. Yes, it was indeed heavy, but as she worked with it, it became less cumbersome.
With each move, her confiden
ce grew until she stood, sliding across the room with the jug between the fingers of one hand. She came to rest upon the opposite wall, just beyond the reach of the door should it swing open. She crouched against the wall, the jug resting on a bent knee as she waited. She counted her breaths, inhaling and exhaling as Alec had taught her. He said if she just concentrated on the simplest of things the rest of the world would drop away, and that one thing would become everything. And then she could focus on it, and it would not seem impossible.
So she stayed there crouched against the wall as the ship rolled and waited according to the beats of her breath.
And then she screamed. She screamed as if there was nothing holding her back. As if the very terrors of childhood nightmares had come to life and stalked her now. She screamed as if it were the only way to see Alec again.
The lock in the door began to move almost immediately, but Sarah did not stop screaming. The pitch of the ship was in her favor, and as Harpoon Man's head came into view, the ship dipped suddenly, bringing Sarah ever slightly above the man's head. With all the strength she had left, she lifted the jug and swung.
And even she could marvel at the finesse of the arc she put into it. The jug swung perfectly, hitting Harpoon Man directly on the crown of the head. He fell to his knees, dazed but not defeated. Sarah moved quickly, holding onto the handle of the door to steady her in the rolling room. Raising the jug one more time, Harpoon Man lifted his eyes to her. She looked at him and unflinchingly, dropped the jug once more upon his head.
He fell all the way to the floor then, groaning as he held his head in his hands. Sarah backed out of the door.
"Sorry about that, mate, but you should never trust a lady."
And with that, she brought the door closed and snapped the lock into place.
She stood in the corridor, inhaling drafts of stale, rotten air. She concentrated on her breath again, the jug hanging limply from her fingers at her side. It was a handy little weapon, and as her journey was far from over, she was going to keep it in reach. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears, and for a while, it was the only noise she could hear. But again, she concentrated, allowing all else to retreat, until her ears began to pick up the slightest of sounds.
For Love of the Earl Page 14
