Read Online Revenant Eve by Sherwood Smith - Free Book Online

the way of it. The child must go while she still retains the manners my mother scolded into her. She will have a chance at a better life, but I am too old to leave off my privateer habits. Devil fly away with these clothes. If I do not get out of these stays I shall burst!”
    “Is the passage arranged, then?”
    “That much is done. I’ve a letter of credit for the child, and the wife of a warrant officer will look out for her. I paid her a thumping high fee, so I’d better hear a good report when Aurélie writes to us.”
    Mimba shook her head slowly. “I know that Nanny said it must be, but she also taught us that we shape our futures, our future does not shape us.”
    Aurélie looked from one to the other, her black eyes so wide that the candle flames reflected in them, points of gold.
    Anne said, “I brought comfits for all you children,
ma petite
. In my reticule, there. You and Fiba divide them up.”
    Aurélie snatched the little bag from the side table, and she and Fiba began dividing the sugar-candies as a cluster of small kids formed a circle on the floor. Everyone was busy clamoring for the one they liked best, and the kids paid no heed to the adults.
    Mimba said to Anne, “Your father was sent out of England for no good reason. Do you truly wish to send the child there?”
    “The family misliked having a Quaker among them. Aurélie is not a Quaker,” Anne said with a wry grin that faded. “I cannot bear to see another of my children die. And Nanny did tell us that Aurélie’s future lies overseas. If I balk, will I have another dead child to bury?”
    “But
England
. Why not send her back to your mother on Saint-Domingue?”
    “Would you?” Anne retorted. “You know my mother and her prejudices. Surely these English will not scold all the time the way she does.” Another flash of the wry grin. “My father once told me that the English worship God, honor rank, but worship
and
honor wealth. God put the child here. I can amend His work by seeing to it that the second and third conditions are met.”
    “By a falsehood? Do you think it will answer?” Mimba lowered her voice. “You think they will not see she’s a mulatto?”
    Anne grimaced. “Though I’ve turned my hand to violence, I’m still Quaker enough to hate these terms for their inferences.”
    “I hate them, too,” Mimba retorted. “But they are
legal
terms. If Beauveau catches up with us, he can claim the child.”
    Beauveau? Who’s that?
I thought.
    “By what law? Has not French law been overthrown at least twice?” Then Anne went on in an even lower voice, and I guessed that Beauveau had to be a French-born landowner on Saint-Domingue. “Aurélie is lighter in skin than Mascarenhas was, and he claimed the pure blood of a hidalgo.” Her jaw jutted. “’Twas one motive for my taking his name. But I’ll admit my greatest pleasure is thinking of him looking up from Hell as I spend his treasure and claim his noble name, for what he did to Baptiste.”
    “I, too, hope he burns in eternity for his many murders, my brother among them,” Mimba said.
    Now I’ve got it
, I thought. Beka had heard wrong: the mysterious runaway slave in Aurélie’s background wasn’t female; it was her father, a man named Baptiste. He and Anne had been a couple, but after his death Anne co-opted the name of his murderer, a highly born Spanish or Portuguese pirate named Mascarenhas.
    Uh oh
, I thought, at the very same time Mimba crossed herself and added, “But I fear no good can come of this ruse of yours.”
    “No one has said aught so far, what with the troubles.” Anne patted the ribbon-tied paper. “And with so many churches burnt, more marriage lines than my presumptive ones are gone. How would anyone prove I am not a marquise? With noble rank, I can keep the Kittredge ships, and I can hold this plantation. I will sew this bank draft into oilcloth myself. It is probably the best gift I can give the child, a claim to exalted birth and