“Nay, I cannae say that I have.” Nor had he heard of this Master Handel.
“Think of the most beautiful music you’ve heard, and this would be more beautiful still.”
That was not hard for Connor to believe, for, although Dougie could play a fair jig on his fiddle and McHugh could squeeze the old forbidden tunes out of his pipes, Connor would not call the music they played beautiful—at least not without a bellyful of rum.
“Lady Margaret, the widow of a baronet my mother knew from church services, joined us in our box.” Sarah smiled, the memory obviously amusing in some way. “She was dressed head to toe in black, so severe and stern and stiff-backed. I paid her little heed. But the music…”
Sarah’s eyes closed, a look of bliss on her face, and Connor knew she was hearing the music in her head. “Never had I heard its like. I felt as if I were flying…as if the sound itself had raised my soul to heaven. I could not help but weep, my heart so filled with joy I feared it would burst.”
Her eyes opened, bliss fading from her face. “My mother was disgraced by my behavior and complained to Lady Margaret that my love of music was immoderate and that I had resisted her instruction on this point, whereupon Lady Margaret suggested that perhaps additional instruction would help to reform me. At the look of horror upon my face, my mother agreed, and so it was arranged that I should visit Lady Margaret at her home the next afternoon.”
Why did some people seem to believe that one could not be virtuous unless one was also miserable? This Connor could not comprehend. “And did Lady Margaret reform you?”
“Oh, yes.” Sarah smiled, a hint of mischief in her eyes. “But not in the way my mother had hoped. When I arrived at her
home, I found not the stern widow I’d met at the theater, but a warm, smiling woman who welcomed me as a friend. She led me down a hallway to a salon filled with paintings and sculptures. And there sat the most beautiful harpsichord I’d ever seen.
“She asked me to play, and there were tears on her cheeks when I finished. She sat beside me and told me that my parents would never understand. ‘When you go home today, ask your mother’s forgiveness for being willful,’ she said. ‘Appear to be the daughter she wishes you to be. Never show your true self to those who do not truly love you.’
“And I understood
that Lady Margaret had been doing that very thing for years—dressing in black, pretending to be the pious widow. For she was an artist, and although her skill with brush and oils was great, she could not sell or exhibit her work because she was a noblewoman.”
“Did you do as she’d suggested?” Connor was certain he already knew the answer.
“Yes. My mother found me so improved that she encouraged my visits.” Sarah gave a little laugh. “Lady Margaret bought me the latest published music from musicians across Europe. She brought in a tutor, who said he could teach me nothing on harpsichord, but instead taught me to play flute, violin, and cello. I would play, and Margaret would paint. Or else we would read novels and poetry and discuss the news of the day. When Master Handel died, she arranged with my mother that I should visit her so that she could secretly spirit me to his funeral in Westminster Abbey. She opened a door onto the world for me, taught me so much.”
Connor could not resist. “Aye, so she did, fillin’ your head wi’ stories about the horrors of the marriage bed. What were those Latin words? Och, I remember—
membrum virile
. Why did she teach you to say that rather than ‘cock’? ’Tis what everyone calls it.”
And Sarah’s cheeks flushed pink. “Cock?”
So far, Connor had heard nothing terrible enough to explain why she’d been sent away. “So you deceived your mother.”
“Yes, I did.” Sarah’s gaze dropped to the floor, the color draining from her face as quickly as it had appeared. “I do not regret that. Lady Margaret was my friend.”
Connor did not miss the grief in her voice, nor had he forgotten that Lady Margaret was dead. “What happened to Lady Margaret?”
Sarah stood and walked toward the fire, her back to him.
And Connor knew they’d come to the crux of it.
S
arah stared into the flames, suddenly shaking, eels writhing in her stomach. She had never spoken of this to anyone, certainly not the governor or Mrs. Price, not even dear Jane. Oh, why had Sarah begun this story? Now she would have to finish it, and Connor’s affection for her would turn to detestation, his concern to indifference.
In three days’ time, you’ll be at Fort Edward, and you’ll never see him again. What he thinks of you will no longer matter.
Somehow, the thought did not comfort her.
She clasped her hands together, unable to still her trembling. “One afternoon, I sat with my sister Mary, stitching flowers upon a square of silk I hoped to make into a pillow for Mother, when Papa strode angrily into the room carrying the leather strap he used to chastise us. He commanded Mary to leave and close the door behind her. Then he struck me across the face and called me a…a filthy sybarite, an abomination. He said he wished he could end my life.
“I pleaded with him to tell me what I had done to offend him. He shouted that Lady Margaret had led me to the gates of hell. Then he beat me.”
Sarah drew a steadying breath, finding it even more difficult to speak of this than she’d imagined. “When he was finished, I could scarce stand. Servants helped me to my chamber, where I remained alone without food or water, believing my parents had learned the truth of my visits with Lady Margaret. My mother came to me later that evening. I could see she’d been weeping. I begged her forgiveness. She made me lie upon my bed with my skirts and petticoats raised. Then she cursed me and beat me with the leather strap across my bare bottom until my skin blistered.
“For many days, I could neither sit nor walk easily. I lay upon my belly, rising only when servants brought my meals. The servants treated me with scorn, ignoring my entreaties to bring salve for my skin and hot tea rather than water.
“I remained alone in my room for more than a month, eating mostly bread and water. I wrote letters to my parents, begging them to forgive me and asking how long they meant to lock me away like this, but the servants refused to deliver them.”
Sarah had raged at them, isolation and uncertainty driving her to darkest despair. “Then one evening, Papa came. He told me I was being sent away to New York to live with Governor DeLancey until such time as he could secure a husband for me or find a respectable spinster or dowager willing to take me into her household. In either case, he expected it to cost a great deal of coin, for my transgressions were the talk of London and all of the respectable suitors who’d sought to court me had since renounced me.
“I asked him how this could be. How could my visits with Lady Margaret or my music lessons drive suitors to set me aside? How could such small matters be worthy of London gossips? Then he tossed something onto my bed—a journal. He said it had circulated all over London and that he’d spent a small fortune securing it.”
Sarah feared she might become ill, her stomach churning. She wrapped her arms around her middle, tried to quell her nausea.
Behind her, the bed’s ropes squeaked as Connor stood and walked toward her. “What was in the journal, Sarah?”
She shook her head, unable to speak of it.
Big hands slid up her arms, caressed her shoulders. “I said I wouldna forsake you. Tell me, and be done with this.”
“The journal…It was Lady Margaret’s. Someone had stolen it. Inside, Margaret had written of my visits, my tutor, my talent for music. But there were drawings—drawings of me…
unclothed
.” Sarah whispered the last word, barely able to speak it.
“You posed naked for Lady Margaret, and the drawings were shown about London.” It was a statement not a question, Connor’s tone of voice guarded.
Was he coming to hate her now?
“No! I did not! She
had
sketched and painted me, but I was always clothed. I tried to tell Papa that the face in the drawings was mine but the body was not. He refused to listen.” Sarah remembered the cold look on his face as he called her a liar. “There were also poems she’d written about me—love poetry,
lustful
poetry. I was horrified to think that London society had seen
the drawings and read her private musings, but I was also confused. It was a side of Lady Margaret I had not seen, a side she’d kept hidden even from me, and I couldn’t understand…”
She still didn’t understand, not entirely. “My father grabbed the journal from my hands, threw it into the fire. He told me the established matrons in London had pronounced me unmarriageable and that one of the papers had suggested he place me in a brothel where constant use by men might reform me. Then Papa said he could not bear the sight of me, and he…he called me…a whore and a tribade. I don’t even know that means.”
Connor cleared his throat. “A tribade is a woman who lies with women as most women lie with men.”
“What?” Sarah gaped at him, unable to believe or even understand what he’d just revealed to her. “They believe that Margaret and I…? But how can two women—”
But Connor cut across her. “What became of Lady Margaret?”
Tears spilled down Sarah’s cheeks now, her throat tight, grief she had tried so hard not to feel for nine long months welling up, dark and painful inside her.
“My mother came to me the morning b-before I was to leave for port. She told me that Margaret had taken her own life. I was heartbroken to hear this, but I dared not show it. I…I could not help but think my mother and father wished me to do as Margaret had done—to end my own life and spare them further trouble.”
Overwhelmed by the pain in her chest, Sarah wept.
S
truggling to master his rage, Connor drew Sarah into his arms, led her to the bed, and held her. She pressed her face against his chest, her hands fisting in the cloth of his shirt, her body trembling and racked by sobs. He held her tight, kissed her hair, wishing he could tell her that all would be well. But that would be a lie.
Her life would never be the same.
Though a man could sire bastards, break the bonds of marriage, and pay whores to service his lust, the world did not easily forgive such transgressions in women. And yet fornication, adultery, and harlotry were nothing compared to the wrong of which Sarah’s parents and all of London seemed to believe
her guilty. Connor knew little about London society, but men who were found to lie with men were hanged for it. The matrons of London were right. If her father
did
manage to find her a nobleman willing to take her to wife—and there was surely little chance of that—the man would be so desperate for coin that his greed overthrew his desire for a respectable wife.
Rage, dark and venomous, surged through Connor to think of a woman as beautiful, passionate, and gifted as Sarah forced to live out her life either childless and alone or locked in a loveless marriage with some feckless lord who’d wed her only for her father’s wealth. She deserved the love of a good man and the joy of children. The poor lass had been condemned for something she hadn’t done, while Lady Margaret…
Connor felt pity for her. She’d fallen in love with Sarah and kept her longing to herself, knowing that Sarah did not share her desire. But her most private thoughts and yearnings had been stolen and exposed to the world, bringing about Sarah’s utter ruination.
’
Twas no wonder she’d ended her life.
But who had stolen the journal? Whoever it was, man or woman, Connor condemned that person to the darkest reaches of hell.
The only wrong that Sarah had done in all of this was to deceive her parents, but Connor could not fault her for that. Her father was a weak man who didn’t know how to protect his own daughter, her mother a vain, self-righteous bitch. Both of them had believed the worst about their daughter, the accusations against her wounding their overweening pride, blinding them to the truth of her innocence.
Oh, how Connor would like to take a leather strap to their hides!
Sarah was no tribade. Even if she had been, Connor would not have scorned her. But Sarah’s only unusual passion was for music. For that she had already suffered so much—the disdain of her family, beatings, exile. Yet fate had been no kinder to her here. She’d been taken captive by the Shawnee, beaten again, forced to trade her virginity for her freedom.
And Connor found himself wishing he could take it all away.
In his arms, Sarah had begun to quieten, sobs turning to sniffs and hiccups. He pressed his lips to her hair, breathed in the sweet, clean scent of her, ignoring the heat in his blood.
“You…You do not despise me?” She looked up at him, her cheeks wet, her eyes glittering and filled with doubt.
“Nay, Princess.” He wiped the tears from her cheeks with his thumb. “I am sorry for all you have suffered—and for Lady Margaret’s sufferin’, too.”
“And you believe me? I swear I did not pose naked, nor am I…whatever they say I am.”
“Aye, I believe you.” A woman who’d lain with another woman would ken more about her own body than Sarah did, and when she kissed him, Sarah’s passion was real. “You and Margaret were both betrayed—she by the thief who stole her journal, and you by your parents.”
Anger flashed in Sarah’s eyes. “My parents are good, Christian people.”
“They dinnae deserve a daughter such as you, Sarah. Your father is a marquess. He has the power to shape men’s opinions. Had he but had the cods for it, he could have taken your part in this, declaring your innocence before all of London and telling those gabbie matrons that his daughter was so fair and gifted that even women desired her. There’d have been suitors aplenty at your door. And your mother…” Connor gave a snort. “’Tis vanity, not righteousness, that drives her to control her daughters so, your piety merely a way to flaunt her own.”
Sarah stared up at him through wide eyes, clearly shocked by his words. She hopped to her feet, took several quick steps. “You should not presume to judge them, Major.”
“Major” again.
Connor rose, crossed the short distance between them. “Now I’ve gone and made you angry, when I’d hoped to give you comfort. Och, Sarah.”