Chapter 1 #2
Sara brushed away the tears that came to her eyes, then stroked the etched silver of her mother’s locket, which she always wore.
“You miss her still.” Jordan’s comment broke the silence.
“Not a day passes that I don’t.”
The tapping of his fingers on his knee showed how uncomfortable her depth of emotion made him. “I miss your mother, too, you know. She treated me like a son at a time when I was cynical about being mothered.”
Sara had always sensed there was something peculiar about Jordan’s relationship to his own mother, who’d died only a year before her mother had married his father. But Jordan and his father had always refused to speak of the first Lady Blackmore in any depth, and Sara had never pressed them.
“And I honor her zeal for reform,” Jordan added.
“So did your father.”
“True, but even Father would have been against this. He would have said you should stay here and—”
“Feed the poor? Make occasional visits to the prison while dodging your matchmaking efforts?” She regretted those last words when he flinched. She hadn’t wanted to upset him, not when she was leaving London in a few days.
“Matchmaking? What the devil do you mean?”
“I’m not an idiot, Jordan. I know why you insist I attend those fashionable affairs.” She leaned forward to clasp his gloved hands. “You think if you throw me at enough eligible bachelors, one will take pity on me and marry me.”
“Take pity—” He jerked his hands from hers. “How can you talk like that? You’re beautiful, intelligent, and witty. If you were to meet the right man—”
“He doesn’t exist! Can’t you get that through your thick head?”
“You’re still punishing me for Colonel Taylor. You’re refusing all other men because I wouldn’t let you have that one.”
“Don’t be absurd. That was five years ago.
And it’s not as if I couldn’t have had him if I’d wanted.
” When he cast her a quizzical glance, she hesitated, torn between her pride and her need to make him understand her feelings.
“I-I never told you this before, but do you remember the night you revealed all you knew to your father? The night he threatened to cut off my portion if I married the colonel?”
“How could I forget? You were furious at me.”
“Well, I sneaked out later to meet with Colonel Taylor in secret.”
“The devil you say!”
“I went to him and offered to elope.” She turned away, too mortified to meet his gaze. “He refused. It seems he was exactly the fortune-hunting scoundrel you deemed him. And I was too foolish to see it.”
She waited for him to pounce on her confession as evidence that of her rash decisions in the past. When he patted her knee kindly instead, she had to bite back tears.
“Not foolish, moppet.” His voice was husky with caring. “You were merely young. Women follow their hearts at that age, and as they say, love is blind. You couldn’t see his character as truthfully as the rest of us.”
“Oh, but I should have! Everyone else did—you, Papa, even Mama.”
“Is that why you won’t countenance other suitors? Because you think they’ll deceive you?”
She twisted a ribbon on her morning gown. “While Mama was ill, it was impossible for me to think of suitors. After she died, I … lost my nerve. I chose so badly the first time, and now I don’t know if I can distinguish fortune hunters from reliable men.”
“You can’t accuse any of my friends of wanting you for your fortune. Take St. Clair, for example. His fortune is small, but wealth has never mattered much to him. And he often comments on your beauty.”
“St. Clair would never countenance my work. He wants a mistress of the manor, not a reformer.” She added in a teasing tone, “Besides, he likes salmon, and I simply can’t abide a man who likes salmon.”
“Be serious. Plenty of men would suit you perfectly.”
She twisted the ribbon tighter. “Not as many as you’d think. Men beneath my station are attracted by my fortune, and men above my station need not saddle themselves with a wife who’ll plague their friends about reform.”
“Then find someone in the middle.”
“There’s no such creature. I’m a commoner adopted by an earl, but with no lineage to speak of. I’m neither fish nor fowl. I don’t belong in your world. The only place I’m comfortable is with the Ladies’ Committee, and they have a dearth of potential suitors.”
Besides, she’d never found a man of any station with whom she could imagine spending the rest of her life. Jordan’s friends were all very nice, but they’d rather play at life than do anything useful. And none of them understood her.
“Deuce take it, Sara, if I thought it would keep you from going, I’d marry you. We’re not blood relations. We could marry, I suppose.”
She laughed. “I suppose? Such enthusiasm!” Knowing how he felt about marriage, she was surprised he’d even suggest it.
She tried to imagine marriage to Jordan and recoiled at the thought.
“It’s impossible and you know it. We may not be siblings by blood, but we’re siblings in every other way.
We could certainly never consummate a marriage. ”
“True.” He looked vastly relieved that she’d refused his hastily spoken offer. “Besides, it wouldn’t keep you from going, would it?”
“I’m afraid not. Come now, this convict ship won’t be as awful as you imagine. Most of the women were convicted of non-violent crimes. The surgeon will have his wife aboard, and missionaries have brought their wives with them in the past. I’ll be perfectly safe.”
They’d passed into the Strand, and he glanced out the window as if seeking answers in the glittering shops that catered to the aristocracy. “What if you took a servant along for protection?”
She cast him a shrewd glance. He was weakening. She chose her words carefully. “I can’t. We’re keeping my relationship to you a secret. I’m supposed to be a spinster schoolteacher. I’ll be running a school for the convict women and their children, as the missionaries have previously done.”
“Children?”
Just thinking of all the children who ended up traveling aboard those ships made her see red. “Yes, a transported convict woman is allowed to take with her any male child under six and any female child under ten. If you think I’ll be exposed to terrible sights, think of those poor urchins.”
“Why must you be incognito?”
“I’m keeping a journal chronicling abuses. If the captain and crew know I’m your sister, they’ll hide their activities. We want an honest assessment of conditions on the voyages.”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t send someone—”
“Sara Willis, schoolteacher, wouldn’t travel with a servant, I assure you.” She tried for a lighter tone. “Do you think me so inept I can’t do without a maid for a while?”
“Ineptness has nothing to do with it.” He paused. “So you think to set sail on the Chastity, do you? Devil take it, that’s an inappropriate name for the ship, if I ever heard one.”
When she shot him an irritated glance, he turned to stare out the window. They were already driving up to the Blackmore townhouse on Park Lane, an impressive Palladian villa meant to intimidate any lesser mortals who ventured into its lofty halls.
Sara could remember how its towering pillars and myriad windows had awed her when she and Mama had first come to dinner there. But her stepfather hadn’t let her feel intimidated. He’d offered to show her the new litter of puppies in the kitchen, and that had endeared him to her forever.
Sometimes she missed him as much as she missed her mother.
She’d never known her real father, and the earl had filled that position so admirably that she could never think of him as anything but a father.
He’d loved her mother dearly. Though his death a year after her mother’s had devastated both her and Jordan, it had come as no surprise.
Lord and Lady Blackmore had never liked to be parted.
The carriage shuddered to a halt, and Jordan climbed down onto the frost-crusted driveway, turning to help her out. He didn’t release her hand at once but took it in both of his. “Is there anything I can say to talk you out of this?”
“No. It’s something I must do. Really, you mustn’t worry. Everything will be fine.”
“You’re my only family now, moppet. And I have no wish to lose you, too.”
A lump formed in her throat as she squeezed his hand. “You won’t lose me. You’re just lending me for a while. The year will fly by, and I’ll be back before you know it.”
Jordan flinched. A year sounded like forever. Although he said nothing as she let him lead her into the house, he wanted to shake her senseless. A woman of her station on a convict ship! What insanity!
But there was little he could do to stop her. Even Father had been unable to curb Sara when she was determined upon some course. Her tale of sneaking out to meet Colonel Taylor proved that.
The devil take Taylor! If it weren’t for that deuced colonel, she might even now be settled with a husband and children, instead of gallivanting off to Australia on a fool’s errand.
He watched as Hargraves came out to take her cloak and she cast the man an accusing glance.
Poor Hargraves colored to the roots of his thinning hair. “I’m sorry, miss. Truly I am.”
As usual, Sara softened at the sight of the servant’s remorse. Patting Hargraves’s hand, she murmured, “It’s all right. You were just doing your duty.”
As she left them to climb the stairs, Jordan stood staring after her.
The woman was too kind and generous by half.
How on earth would she survive on a convict ship?
Her work with the Ladies’ Committee had given her a taste of human misery, but she’d never been immersed in it.
Once aboard that ship, she’d be stuck there a year or more. Unprotected. Alone.
He looked at her slender back, at the wisps of auburn hair escaping her chignon, at her unconsciously feminine walk, and a sigh escaped his lips.
Sara was oblivious to her own attractions.
She might feel awkward in society, but that had never kept men from desiring her.
Quite the contrary. He’d spent her first season quelling the untoward advances of her more eager suitors.
It wasn’t that she was especially pretty, though her looks were certainly presentable.
She drew men to her with her intelligent manner and her frank kindness toward everyone, regardless of their station.
A sour, pinch-faced spinster teacher might have nothing to fear from the sailors aboard the Chastity, but not Sara.
How could he let her go off on that ship with no protection?
He couldn’t. And since forbidding her to go was useless, he had only one alternative. He must make other arrangements.