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  He turned unwillingly and obeyed her, stalking from the room, prickly with anger.

  “I do apologize,” Frances said. She could hardly breathe at all. “So silly of me.”

  Miss Cole regarded her with suppressed irritation. “Shall I pour the tea, sister?”

  “Oh, please do! And, Sir Charles, do make your punch and tell us all about London. And the Scott ball in the winter! Did Miss Honoria enjoy herself?”

  The girl Ruth came in to clear up Frances’s workbox. As she entered the room and saw Sir Charles, she recoiled, and her face went a gray, sick color. Frances knew that she was taking tea with a rapist and that she was commanding the people who had witnessed his crime to serve him.

  “Hurry up, Ruth,” she ordered. “Is the punch to your liking, Sir Charles?”

  It took all her carefully learned social skills to chatter through Ruth’s slow, resentful tidying. It took all her charm to divert Sir Charles and to distract Sarah from Mary’s sullenly reluctant service at tea. She heard her voice, a little breathless, but still light and frivolous, and she despised herself for the facade she presented. She longed to tell Sir Charles that she knew him for what he was, that she loathed him, and that she would never forgive him for the abuse of a woman who had been in her charge. But her social self, which always had the upper hand, stirred the tea, passed cakes, and laughed at his jokes, as she had been trained to do. Just like a little pet dog, she thought miserably, which sits to order, and begs when told, and barks a little, and perhaps has forgotten altogether that it was ever a real dog.

  The visit was mercifully short. Sir Charles wanted to be on his way to Lord Bartlet’s country seat at Kings Weston.

  “My brother will be sorry to have missed you,” Sarah observed.

  “I shall have the pleasure of his company another time,” Sir Charles said gallantly. “This was a business visit, merely.”

  Sarah nodded, a little surprised. “I am glad that Frances can transact your business. I had thought you would want to go over the figures with my brother.”

  Sir Charles smiled. “Mrs. Cole is an excellent agent for my little fund. I need no other!”

  “As long as you are satisfied,” Sarah said doubtfully.

  “I am indeed. My only regret is that I cannot stay to dine, but I hope to be at Lord Bartlet’s in time for supper.”

  Frances rang the bell, and Sir Charles’s own slave came with his cloak, hat, and cane.

  “Will you have a hot brick for your feet in the carriage, Sir Charles?” Sarah asked. “Despite the season it can get cool at night.”

  “I hope my boy has placed one there already,” Sir Charles said. “Done hot brickee? Sammy?”

  The man glanced at him with one weary look. “Yassuh,” he said.

  Frances closed her eyes for a moment to shut out the man’s bowed head and empty eyes.

  “Here, Sammy has a collar,” Sir Charles said. “Sammy! Show chain! Show chain!”

  The man’s hand went to his neck to open the collar of his jacket. Tight around his throat was a silver chain and a plaque. In elegant, flowing script, it was engraved with the name “Sammy.” “Charming, ain’t it?” Sir Charles demanded. “You jot down the names of your slaves, and I will send you a set.”

  Frances held on to her smile as if it were a mask in a carnival ball. She took a page of paper from her writing desk and wrote down carefully the eleven names, from Cicero to little five-year-old John.

  “Charming,” Sir Charles said. “Eleven now, eh? You have eleven?”

  “From an original consignment of twenty,” Sarah said. “We have had only nine deaths. Seven in transit, but only two here. We are pleased.”

  Frances’s hand trembled, and the pen made a blot on the page. She wanted to tell him that the woman he had raped had died. She wanted to accuse him. Instead she handed him the page of names and looked at his slave, Sammy. The man would not meet her gaze. She did not know that at home in Jamaica he would be beaten for looking at a white woman. It was considered to be impertinent. Under her stare he ducked his head and gazed at his boots. On the delicate skin at the back of his neck and curving up behind his ear, Frances could see the puckering of a deep scar from an old misplaced lash.

  “I’ll bid you good-bye,” Sir Charles said, throwing his cloak around him and bowing over Sarah’s hand and then lingering his kiss on Frances’s hand with moist lips.

  “Safe journey,” Frances said quietly.

  They escorted him to the front door and stood on the doorstep in the late-afternoon sunshine, waving him farewell as the carriage pulled away.

  “Isn’t he a charming man?” Sarah sighed with pleasure as the carriage rolled out of the square and disappeared.

  “Delightful,” Frances replied. Her lips were very stiff on the lie. “Quite delightful.”

  CHAPTER

  29

  NEXT MORNING SARAH WOKE early and was dressed and out of the house even before Josiah. She called Mehuru to the hall and told him to put on his green livery coat and attend her for a walk. Mehuru bowed, hiding the curiosity in his face, and followed her at a polite distance as she walked from the square toward the river.

  He called the ferry for her and held her parasol as she stepped from the greasy steps into the little boat. The dock was stinking in the heat of midsummer, but Sarah did not seem to notice it. Mehuru was first out of the boat on the other side and handed Sarah up the steps to the Redclift quay.

  The warehouse door was shut; Josiah’s clerk had not yet arrived. Sarah stood with calm patience on the doorstep of her old home. Mehuru waited beside her. She did not speak to him; she never spoke to any of the slaves except to give them orders.

  Just as the bells of St. Mary Redclift struck eight o’clock, Mehuru saw the clerk hurrying down the quayside. At once he sensed Sarah’s attention sharpen.

  “Good morning,” she said. “I am Miss Cole. I wish to see the ships’ logs and the company accounts. Please let me into the office.”

  The man hesitated, glancing at Mehuru. Mehuru’s face was impassive.

  “I don’t know . . .” the clerk began.

  “Thank you,” Sarah said magisterially. She took the key from his hand, let herself into the warehouse, and walked upstairs to Josiah’s office. As she had hoped, the books were in their usual place, on his desk. She nodded over her shoulder at Mehuru. “You can wait outside,” she told him.

  Mehuru and the clerk retreated over the threshold. Sarah shut the door on them, and then they heard the key turn firmly in the lock. The clerk looked at Mehuru as if for advice. Mehuru shrugged and waited, as Sarah had ordered him to do.

  Inside the room Sarah seated herself at Josiah’s desk and drew the company books toward her. She did not like the clerk’s handwriting, but his work was adequate. She turned to the other page, the debits, and frowned. There was a massive £5,400 outstanding to Hibbard and Sons, a small banking house, including £2,000 for the lease of the Hot Well and £1,000 for the Queens Square house. Josiah had given them a note of hand of £500 to pay for the furniture and fittings. Sarah thought of the red Chinese dragons and put her hand to her mouth. Josiah had borrowed the first year’s rent for the Hot Well of £900 in addition. He had borrowed £1,000 to equip Rose and £500 to buy cargo. Sarah’s face trembled. There had never been such amounts in the debit column of Cole and Sons in all their years of trading. She did not curse Josiah, did not feel anger. She felt icy cold and nauseous with fear. It would take a miracle voyage to clear such a debt, and profits were falling, not increasing.

  She knew that the debt was a long-term loan, negotiated and managed by Josiah. The first payment was not even due until November, when the Rose was to arrive, with Daisy close behind her; but the books had always been Sarah’s work, and she resented any entry into the debit column. To see them in a state of permanent debt made her as uncomfortable as other women would be with a dress done up wrongly at the back. And this was no small debt. Greater merchants than Cole and Sons had been ruin