Read Online Surrender to Love by Cordelia Sands - Free Book Online

covered by a faded kerchief.  Her dress, twice turned and mended in a dozen or more places, hung loosely about her thin shoulders.  An older woman of perhaps fifty sat on a bench opposite Sabine, her eyes, hard and hateful, peeked from between long strands of dark hair.  The last, a plump girl of about eighteen years, fussed restlessly with the hem of her gown, her cheeks ashen beneath their once-accustomed rosiness.  These were her companions – women who would never typically never give each other the slightest acknowledgement of existence had they met in the marketplace – but because of a simple turn of Fate’s wheel, were now held together by a common bond:  the bond of not knowing where they headed or what the future had in store.
    The brunette’s captor fumbled with a set of keys, unlocking the iron gate before shoving her unceremoniously inside.
    “My name is Arianna Covington,” she announced loudly to the group as the heavy footsteps retreated into the gloom.  “And I don’t belong here.”
    She struggled to her feet from under a tent of silk skirts and tossed her head back defiantly.  The others looked silently on, the air crackling with tension as her gaze locked with Patsy’s.  Patsy stood over her, a cat poised impatiently before delivering a final death-blow.  The tiny blonde’s eyes, coldly inhuman, bored through Arianna as though she weren’t even there.
    “None of us belong here,” Sabine replied flatly, her voice no more than a whisper.
    “My father is Alexander Covington,” the socialite informed them as she moved freely about the cell, and a slight smile of superiority crossed her features.  “The most important banker in all of New Orleans, I’m sure.  Probably even in the whole South.”
    “Well, la-di-da,” came Patsy’s flip response as she sat down next to Sabine.  “We’re bein’ visited by royalty, girls.”
    The older woman burst out with a chortling laugh, breaking the eerie silence.
    Releasing a weary sigh, Sabine curled her knees up to her chest and rested her forehead against them.  She wanted to be so very far from all this; she wanted to be anywhere…anywhere but here.
    The words came back to haunt her.  She had thought the exact same phrase when she dropped her basket in that narrow alley and took her flight from Troy Markham.  Now she regretted even thinking them; she had received her wish, and no, this was no better than being a slave.  It was worse.
    But she wasn’t going to sit there and dwell on it – all that could have been.  There was no use in it. It would never be.
    “I want this spot.”
    Arianna Covington stood before her, tossing her bedraggled curls over her shoulder.  Gone was the panicked stare of a spoiled, society girl; he dark eyes pieced through Sabine’s with an open disdain.
    “I’m sitting here,” Sabine replied simply and did not move.
    “I want that spot,” she repeated, “ nigra.”
    The slow rage that had burned within her suddenly flared.  Sabine rose from where she sat and stood unmovingly before the dark-haired woman.  Her emerald eyes blaze with a cold hatred as she set her jaw in determination.
    “I’m sitting here.  And don’t you ever,” Sabine said slowly.  Her voice, no more than a whisper, growled with a ferocity that sounded so foreign – frightening – to her ears.  “Don’t you ever call me that again.  If my mama hadn’t brought me up to be a lady, I’d slap you.”
    “I’d have you whipped if we were back in New Orleans,” the other replied unsteadily, her manner no longer filled with self-assurance.
    “Well, we’re not in New Orleans,” Sabine said quietly, “and there are no laws to protect you.”
    “I hate you,” Arianna screeched heatedly , turning to each of the women.  “I hate you all!”
    “It breaks my heart,” Patsy drawled.
    “Feelings are mutual,” the older woman in the corner grunted almost inaudibly.
    With her heart pounding, Sabine resumed her place on