Surrender to Love (6 page)

But Troy’s words still nagged at a tiny part of her conscience, and his reminder almost spoi
led her afternoon.  She still had not concocted a feasible way to approach her parents with his threats and accusations.  Each one seemed so contrived, inadequate.  And she felt ashamed that she had ignored all Mama’s warnings and stolen out of the house like a thief in the night. Every time she looked at Adele, she wanted to throw her arms about her neck and confess her sins – make things right so that Sabine could feel whole again.

Hoisting her basket onto her arm with a sigh, she picked her way through the vendors’ stalls, carefully choosing produce that had not wi
thered in the heat of the day.  Her peach cotton frock, damp with perspiration, clung to her uncomfortably.  What would she not give for a nice, cooling downpour to relieve the heat and humidity that hung heavily in the air.

“How dare you – “

Startled from her thoughts, Sabine’s words came out in a gasp as she felt a foreign hand grip onto her shoulder.  Instinctively she swung around to confront the person who boldly accosted her.

“What do you know about this?”

She looked up into familiar, angry eyes.  Troy’s eyes.  His free hand gripped her shoulder tightly, unwilling to let her go.  The other brandished a piece of paper in her face.  Fresh feelings of disgust rose again, churning with the bitter bile that contracted in her stomach.

“Please, Mr. Markham,” she insisted coldly.  “Just leave me alone.”

She tried to wrest free of him, but he held her firm, his fingers digging deeper into her flesh.

“What do you know about this,” he repeated.

“Know about
what?”

Troy dragged her into the alley and pinned her against the coarse brick, shoving the paper in front of her.

“You know I-I can’t read,” she fumbled.

“Don’t give me that,” he shot out savagely as he shook her hard.  “You can write, and you damn well can read.  You
think I’m an idiot? It doesn’t take a genius to see what’s been going on behind my father’s back.”

“Stop it,” she stated as she attempted to twist out of his grasp.  “I’ve had enough of your lies.”

“My father died earlier this week, Sabine,” he informed her through clenched teeth as he bit back a harsh laugh.  “You were mentioned in the papers he left.”

“What?”

Her body went numb, her words wooden.  It made no sense, no sense at all.  Clinton Markham didn’t know her; and even if he did, why would he have even thought to mention her in writing?

“Read this.”

He jabbed a finger to the middle of the neatly penned page.  Sabine read the words carefully, her eyes widening in disbelief.  Her eyes shot frantically to the bottom of the paper. 

“No,” she breathed incredulously,
panic rising within her.  “It can’t be true.”

A bitter, self-satisfied laugh came from within him, and the cold blue of his eyes pierced hers.

“You’re mine, Sabine,” he said bluntly, “to do with as I please.  So I suggest you come along quietly, my dear.  You’re going back with me.”

A wave of numbness swept over her, mingling with the fog of disorientation that enveloped her brain.
Everything she had been led to…the stories she had been told for seventeen years…they had been lies – all lies!

“But – “

“And John and Adele DuBois have already been notified that they’ll no longer have your services,” he told her with a smirk as he held her fast.  “How else would I have known how to find you?”

Her hands flew to her ears in the hopes of blocking out the words she did not want to hear.  The market basket fell to the ground, its forgotten contents scattering about her feet.

“Listen to me,” Troy bit out as he snatched her hands away. “That’s not all.”

Sabine stared at him, her emerald eyes brimming with tears.  She didn’t want to hear any of it.  What other horrid stories would he tell her?  Could he not see that her world was already shattered?

“That three-thousand-dollar debt your parents owed?  I found out it was to support you all these years.”

“I don’t believe you,” she told him in no more than a whisper.  It couldn’t be true; it just simply did not make sense.

“Clinton Markham is your father, little sister.”

“No!”

Her anguished scream cut into the tense air between them, and she wrenched from his grasp.  She had to get away, go somewhere, anywhere but here.  She was not going with him – not now, not ever.  Sabine fled recklessly away, toward the waterfront, frantic to hide, to sort out her troubled thoughts.

“Sabine!”

Troy shouted after her, angrily kicking at her forgotten basket.  How dare she disobey him!  She was his, and dammit, he wasn’t going to let some Negro girl get the best of him.  She’d learn soon enough who was the master here.

But even in the midst of his rage he had to laugh.  Sabine had no idea that his fat
her had intended to give her papers of manumission on her eighteenth birthday; cleverly, craftily, he had hidden that bit of information from her with the simple crease of a page.  And legally she was his, at least for a few months, to do what he pleased.

Troy continued to call after her, but to pursue her through the narrow alleys of the riverfront properties was a futile task.  She was so intent
upon losing him that he was sure she would soon find herself hopelessly lost. The best thing to do was wait; she would not go far before returning home, and then he would collect her tonight.

XXX

Sabine heard nothing but the pounding of her heart and the thud of her heels on the packed dirt of the streets.  She slipped into a nearby alley and leaned against the sooty brick of a crumbling building as rivulets of perspiration trickled down her temples and between her breasts.  She closed her eyes tightly, staving off the tears as she fought to catch her breath in the humidity of the afternoon air.

Lies!  Her whole life had been nothing more than a tangle of lies!  Her small fist pounded at the bricks in anger.  How could her parents
have knowingly deceived her all these years?  They must have known about it.  Why didn’t they tell her?

But the note…she was sure it was genuine.  What should she do now?  There was nowhere for her to go, no money in her pocket.  Pocket!  Her reticule and basket were still in the alley!  Everything was gone.

She couldn’t think of such a trivial matter as that now. Sabine slid down the brick until she lay in a crumpled heap.  So many conflicting thoughts flew through her brain.  She wanted to return home for an answer to all the deceit she had been subjected to.  But at the same time she knew she couldn’t.  Troy would be waiting for her, waiting to tear her away from the only home, the only life, she knew.  A trembling hand brushed away a stray tear that zigzagged down her cheek.

She peered out of the end of the alley to see if he had followed her, and a sigh of relief escaped her when no trace of him was to be found.  She stepped out from her hiding place and surveyed her surroundings.  Where would she go now?  Which way had she come?  So many turns in unfamiliar territory now presented her with the problem she feared most of all…she was lost, and the late afternoon sun was sinking fast behind the buildings.

Sabine headed haphazardly toward a place she thought might give her more bearing as to her location.  If she could find the dock area, she was sure someone there would help her out.  There seemed to be no one here to give her directions or to tell her of a place to stay until she decided what to do.  She wiped her dirt streaked hands on the skirt of her peach frock and continued her trek, stopping only once to straighten the limp, soiled ribbon that held back her hair.

As she grew closer to the sounds of softly lapping water,
the world she found was so alien to all that she had ever known.  The squalid streets were lined with filth, and raucous laughter rang out from the alleys and upper-story windows.  A sailor drunkenly staggered from a tavern and reeled toward her.

“Hey,” he slurred indignantly as Sabine tried to sidestep him.  “Where
ya goin’?”

He made a grab for the sleeve of her dress.  Terrified, she spun away from him and fled.  Loud laughter followed down the alley after her as the beat of her heart pounded in her ears.

The summer light had dwindled to nothing more than a faint glimmer, and Sabine was still unable to find her way out of the waterfront district. What would happen when the light faded for good?  She had heard stories about what happened here after dark.  No one was safe.  Rumors whispered off girls being kidnapped and secreted off to Mexico and Brazil to be sold as prostitutes.  Panic seized her, and all thoughts became once more muddled and confused.

“Hey, honey.”

She dared not look up but the beguiling, feminine voice intrigued her.  Above, leaning out of a second-story window was one of the strangest women she had ever come in contact with.  She had, in the past, seen these bad women in the market, but never before had she witnessed them in their accustomed surroundings.  Though she seemed to be not much older than Sabine, the woman was dressed scantily in a cotton chemise with plenty of bosom showing.  Her hair, a vivid orange-red, was arranged in an abundance of ringlets encircling her round face.  Surely that wasn’t her natural color!  Her cheeks were heavily rouged, her mouth drawn up in a big, red smile.

“Are you talking to me?”  Sabine questioned meekly.

“Of course!  There ain’t no one else down there, is there?”  The woman laughed loudly at her joke.

Sabine looked around her, bewildered, unsure of what to say to this creature of the night.  “No, I guess not,” came her lame reply.

“Honey, are you lost or somethin’?  You don’t look like you belong down here.  Are you in trouble?  Runnin’ away?”

Sabine drew in an excited breath.  Perhaps here was someone who had the resources to help her.  This woman must know all the people and places in the district.  Besides, she seemed to be obliging enough.

“I – I need to find a place to stay,” Sabine blurted out.  “Please – “

“You really should be down here,” the woman repeated, her painted mouth smiling down at her.

“I know,” she admitted, averting her gaze to the cobblestoned alley.  “But I’m desperate.”

The redhead giggled and shook her curls.

“I should say so. This ain’t a place for you.”  She arched a dark eyebrow inquisitively.  “Can you sew?”

Sabine nodded her head eagerly.

“Well, Bernice Matson has a shop not too far from here.  I suppose she’d be willin’ to take you on.  You’re not
runnin’,
are you?”

Running…
The word tore viciously at her insides as Sabine realized the implication of the woman’s suggestion.  She had no papers that proclaimed her freedom.  Mama and Papa – they had never even shown them to her; they just simply claimed they were safely tucked away in the large desk in the store’s back room.  And she had believed them.  For almost eighteen years she had blindly accepted their assurances that she was a free woman.

But she wasn’t going back.  Not to Mama and Papa.  Not to Troy.  Wordlessly, Sabine shook her head quickly.  No one must know of her true position; if they discovered she wasn’t free, they’d be sure to turn her over to the authorities…and after that, she didn’t even want to think about it.

“The pay probably ain’t that great, but Bernice has a small room in the back she’d probably let.  Now to get there…”

The prostitute
pointed down the narrow road, offering directions to Berenice Matson’s seamstress shop.

With a hopeful heart, Sabine turned from the window and began to make her way up the darkened street, repeating the directions over and over in her head so she would not forget them.  Life as she had known it was gone, and any inkling of doubt she harbored evaporated.  The ominous twisting waterfront alleys would be her home now; she would blend in here, hide from the life Troy had planned for her – do what she had to do in order to survive.  And very soon – when it was safe – she would send a message to Mama and Papa; tell them she was well and ask for answers to the questions that gnawed at her insides, turning her stomach into acidy knots.  She had to discover the truth as to whether or not her guardians knew of her heritage.  And if so, why did they never tell her?  Why did they allow her to live a complete lie?

“Hey, honey,” the tawdry woman called after her, “be careful, will you?  Remember, it’s not safe for a pretty, young girl to be out alone at night…especially down here.”

“I’ll be careful.
I promise,” she replied, waved to the painted lady, and darted up the street.

Her stamina was short-lived; Sabine slowed to a walk and massaged the ache in her side as she listened to the eerie sounds of the waterfront district.  Somewhere a baby cried.  In a nearby tavern, glasses clinked and voices rose in conversation.  Up ahead in an alley two men argued in harsh voices.  She stepped up her pace, hoping to be out of the area before the fading twilight subsided completely to night.

Suddenly, a pair of calloused hands grabbed hold of her. A scream let loose from her throat, but was promptly subdued by the rough hand that clamped over Sabine’s mouth.  Oh, dear Lord, it couldn’t be Troy.  She couldn’t bear a lifetime of his degradation, his contempt.  She kicked out blindly as another pair of hands threw a sackcloth over her head and pulled her into a darkened alley.