Page 2 of Scandalous

Calmed by his comfortable vision of the future, Martín stretched out on his luxurious bed, closed his eyes, and imagined amusing ways in which to spend the money he would get from capturing this ship.

Meanwhile, on the Blue Bird . . .

Sarah was finishing setting a little boy’s broken arm using a filthy strip of skirt and a stiff piece of leather from her battered medical bag when the hatch to the slave hold opened and a ladder was lowered into the gloom.

“Woman!” The guttural voice came from the narrow opening high above.

Sarah squinted up, but the light was too bright to see the speaker’s face.

“Captain want, now,” the man ordered in English so guttural she could barely understand him.

“There is a woman in need of burying,” Sarah called back in French, glancing at the new mother she had been unable to save, who now lay packed between two of the ship’s ribs in the bilge and waste.

“Come now!”

Sarah shut her mouth, said a silent prayer, and crawled across the splintered wood and over the tightly packed bodies toward the ladder. What was left of her wet skirts dragged behind her, snagging and tearing, making the short journey twice as long. Just before she made it to the swaying ladder a hand caught her arm; it was Femi, a captive she had met on the hellish three-week journey from the inland to the coastal settlement of Ouidah.

Sarah paused, and Femi leaned close and whispered in Yoruba, “If there is some way for you to get the doors open, even for only a few moments, we will be waiting.” He looked up at the opening—squinting against the light. “Maybe at night you will be able to sneak away—after.” He gave her a grim, humorless smile and shrugged his massive shoulders. They both knew what he meant. Why else would these monsters take a woman from the hold?

He gave her arm a brief squeeze. “But if not . . .”

They stared at each other in the gloom, more words unnecessary.

Two other women had disappeared in the days they’d spent in this hell; neither woman had returned.

She gave him an abrupt nod and commenced the torturous climb. The muscles in her shoulders and wrists burned hotter with each rung. She’d begun to think she wouldn’t make it to the top when rough hands closed around her arms. The men cursed her smell and grunted under the weight of her soaking clothing as they lifted her into the blazing sunshine.

A scarred, unshaven face was pushed up against hers. “You fix captain.”

Sarah reeled back from the alcohol fumes and stench of rotting teeth, noticeable even after the horrid smell of the hold. She would have fallen had he not given her arm a vicious yank and dragged her down a short flight of steps into a dim, narrow corridor.

They led her to the last door, and the leader rapped. “Kapiten!”

A much softer answer came from behind the handsome mahogany and brass door, and her captor wrenched it open. He muttered something in Dutch before thrusting Sarah inside and slamming the door behind her.

Sarah’s first glimpse of the captain was both a shock and a relief. He was young, perhaps five-and-twenty. His build was slight—almost delicate—and he was very fair, bearing more than a passing resemblance to the angels in her father’s religious books.

But the thing that left her weak with relief was the fact he was ill—far too ill to have even the slightest amorous glint in his watery blue eyes.

He stood and gestured to a chair across from him. “Please have a seat,” he said in almost unaccented English.

Sarah moved past him, and he covered his mouth, his nostrils quivering as the smell hit him. She dropped into the chair and crossed her arms.

“Thank you so much for joining me.”

Sarah snorted.

His smile wavered at the rude noise. “I am Mies Graaf; my family owns the Blue Bird. My men tell me you are a medical person and—” A ferocious bout of coughing doubled him over.

Grim satisfaction trickled through Sarah as she watched his suffering; it was only fair that this architect of human misery should receive his own share of pain.

An image of her father’s kind, worn face appeared in Sarah’s mind and froze her smile. Reverend Michael Fisher would have argued that a man depraved enough to deal in human flesh deserved her pity rather than scorn.

Always remember we are not on Earth to judge, Sarah.

The memory of her father’s words drove the vengeful thoughts from her head and left shame in their wake. She was behaving like a fool. Instead of letting rage consume her, she needed to harness her anger and use it to figure out a way to get the doors to the hold open.

She eyed the sick man. He was all she had to work with, and there was no point antagonizing him.