Page 34 of Scandalous

Clara had seen her surprise. “You want excitement, amusement, and all the other furbelows you read about in the books you sneak from the missionary barrel.” She nodded knowingly at Sarah’s flushed face. “Those are the temptations of the flesh, Sarah. You must fight them. You must continue our good work here. Your father will need you now more than ever. We have not done as well as we’d hoped spreading God’s Grace, but the English School must go on.”

The name was a rather grand appellation for the one-room shack where both her parents spent their days and where they had undoubtedly picked up their sickness from one of their students. Her mother had become sick first. Her father had caught the jungle fever from his wife while he, Abena, and Sarah nursed her. Sarah couldn’t understand why she’d been spared the sickness when so many in their village had succumbed. Her father had struggled on for over two weeks after his wife. By the end, his skin was almost translucent, his narrow face wasted. The powder Abena had given him had bought him some peace, but his body still raged like a furnace in the humid heat.

Sarah must have fallen asleep because she woke to a gentle tugging sensation on her hand.

“Sarah?” her father croaked, his claw-like hand around hers.

“I’m here, Father.”

“The village, you must—”

“Shh,” she soothed, passing the clean, cool cloth over the boiling skin on his forehead. “I will continue with the school, Father. I gave Mother my word, remember?” Her father had been ill the night Clara died, but he’d been at her bedside and would have heard Sarah’s pledge.

He shook his head back and forth, wincing at the jerky movement as if it caused him more pain. “I want you to know—”

“What, Father? You want me to know what? What—”

Sarah’s own voice woke her at this point, just as it always did. She lay in the narrow bunk, shaking and sweating with frustration and shame as she listened to the now-familiar sound of the waves on the hull of the Golden Scythe as the ship flew through the night.

What had her father wanted to tell her? Was he on the brink of asking for some new, even weightier commitment or would his words have been a reprieve—an absolution—from the deathbed promise she’d given her mother? Guilt joined frustration, and she groaned and turned toward the small porthole window. The light from a partial moon silvered the room and somehow soothed her churning emotions.

She calmly made a mental list of what her father might have said if he’d lived. Should she approach the missionary society and see why they’d stopped sending supplies? Try to find another benefactor altogether? Should she build a school in a neighboring village? Find a male missionary in need of a wife and cleave unto him?

This last thought gave her pause. She’d thought of it almost every day since her father had died. She needed a helpmate.

The people of her village had been kind and had helped her just as they had any other villager. Even so, Sarah had gradually realized she was not one of them. When her parents were alive—particularly her mother—Sarah had assumed the young men had given her a wide berth to avoid her parents’ disapproval. But in the almost two years since her father’s death not a single young man in the village had shown any interest in her.

At first she’d believed it a residual worry, but, as more and more time passed, she had to face the truth: she simply did not fit in. But she’d also not fit in with her own family. Oh, her parents had loved her, of course, but she’d seen the looks they’d exchanged when she’d said or done something the way a villager would.

Of course that begged the question—where would she fit in?

She turned onto her back and closed her eyes against the disturbing vision her question summoned. Her wicked mind moved stealthily to her most private thoughts via a very, very circuitous path. As usual, Martín Bouchard awaited her. He was clothed in the same silk tunic and trousers he’d worn that night. He was also aroused. However, his face wore a welcoming smile rather than a sneer of contempt. When he opened his arms, she did not hesitate to step into his warm embrace.

It was not cold, but she shivered.

Martín Bouchard was not the answer to her problem. Martín Bouchard was an entirely new set of problems.

Chapter Twelve

When Sarah showed up at Bouchard’s cabin the following morning, he wasn’t there. She toyed with the idea of tracking him down. How hard could it be to find him on a ship? But she decided to let him be. After all, his message was clear: he was finished with her.

Without those daily lessons, the days crawled. She spent far too much time with Graaf learning to play piquet and cribbage, arguing with him about a variety of subjects, or reading to him, which he claimed to enjoy.

“I prefer to listen to you read rather than do so myself. I cannot seem to stay awake for long when I read anything other than math books.”

Sarah did not point out that he slept more often than not when she read to him.

“I’m afraid I was a poor student of anything other than numbers,” he told her one day, when she’d paused during her reading so that she might take some tea and soothe her throat. “If it wasn’t mathematics, I paid little attention.” He took a sip of tea and then grimaced. “Bouchard’s man does not care for tea, I’m afraid.” He pushed his cup away. “I am spoiled, I know, but the Dutch are accustomed to the finest tea in the world.” He sighed, shifting restlessly. “Tell me, what do you think will happen when we reach England?” It was a question he’d asked her more than once.

“You are related to royalty, Mies, in line for the crown itself. You should know of such things better than I, a mere savage from Africa.”

He appeared not to hear the sarcasm in her voice. “While it is true I am related to King William and the House of Orange, we have little contact with him or any others on my father’s side of the family. I was not raised with any expectation of ever having the connection acknowledged, and none of us ever thought he would end up where he is now, not after his grandfather was driven out at sword point. From stadtholder to exile to king in the course of only a few years.” Graaf sighed. “All I ever wanted was to be left to my studies. I am only suited to understanding calculus.” He turned a speculative look on her. “You are learned, Sarah. Have you made a study of mathematics?”

“Only the most rudimentary. My father was exposed to the work of Newton at university, but I believe he’d forgotten much of what he knew by the time I was old enough to learn.”

Graaf’s face had become flushed, and he didn’t appear to be listening. “Will you open that trunk?” He gestured to the lovely brass-bound trunk that sat in one corner of his small room.

Sarah tugged the trunk away from the wall and unfastened the three straps. She swung open the lid. It contained a few items of clothing and some other personal items, but was mostly full of books.