Surrender to Love (20 page)

“All right,” he said, noticing the look of distaste on her face as she sampled the food he had put in front of her.  “I can’t cook at all.  You’re not ready to put your faith in me,” he told her, returning to the subject at hand.  “I can understand that.  So, until you’ve been convinced that I’m not a monster, I’ll keep my contacts to a minimum.  I think that’s fair enough.”

He locked her gaze with his and said no more.  The weighty silence hung over them like a thick cloak, hot and stifling.  Why didn’t she fear him, even though every instinct should be warning her to run at this very second?

“If that’s all, Mr. Pierson,” she told him crisply, “then I shall return to my room.  Breakfast will be ready at seven.”

Sabine turned, wincing inwardly, attempting to hide her discomfort as she mistakenly stepped on her wrenched ankle.  She swallowed painfully, praying he did not see.  His help she didn’t need, didn’t want.  She could rely on her own instincts, her own desire for survival; hadn’t she learned that from Patsy?  It didn’t matter that she knew not a single soul on this island who could aid her in escape or send word that she was alive.  And she most certainly could not return to New Orleans knowing Troy lay in wait.

“Half past five,” Michael said after several moments.

Jerking her head up, she looked at him quizzically.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Half past five,” he repeated with a smirk. “I have to be at the Roderigues plantation by seven.”

Sabine nodded in compliance.

“I’m quite sure you’ll be prompt,” Michael said, “but don’t you think you’d be more comfortable if you took a bath, and maybe some care with that ankle?  Perhaps I’d  better look at it.”

He rose, and she skirted to the opposite end of the table, far from him, far from those probing hands that would most certainly want more than simply to tend her ankle.

“I can take care of it myself,” she stated quickly.  “But I would like a bath,” she said after a pause.  “If you’d just tell me where – “

She did not have to ask twice.  Michael hauled a great tin tub out of a back room and lifted a pot of water off the stove.

“I knew you’d say yes even before I asked,” he said with a boyish grin as he poured the steaming water into the tub.

Through a veil of feigned indignity, she watched as he made a
makeshift screen from a blanket and two kitchen chairs.  Darn it all, why couldn’t she stay angry with him for very long?  Regardless of whatever he said or did, her animosity somehow seemed to be short-lived – too short, as far as she was concerned.

“I give my word,” he said with mock solemnity as he raised his right hand, “that I’ll remain upstairs for the rest of the evening.  I have paperwork to do.  I’ll see you in the morning.

She watched as Michael turned on his heel and exited through the other room.  Sabine forced back a smile, but it surfaced anyway.  Already he was trying to prove himself, but he was right; she didn’t trust him an ounce, even though his boyish charm had managed to crack the walls of her hardened determination.

She needed time to learn how to trust again.  He knew that…and it was a fact he readily accepted.  It was almost too good to be true, and Sabine expected at any moment that reality would rear its ugly head and slap her down. 

After sending one fleeting glance in the direction of the stairway that led to the second floor, Sabine carefully, cautiously, removed her clothing.  Michael Pierson had better not break his oath!

She draped the gown over the back of a chair and regarded it disagreeably.  He was right. The garment was the most unsightly piece of fashion she had ever laid eyes on.  Where, in God’s name, had he ever found such a dress?  It wasn’t even fit for a tart.

Well, it didn’t matter, she thought as she stepping into the warm water and let it envelope her in a protective blanket.  Clothes were clothes, she thought with a sigh, and there was nobody she had to impress anyway.

She closed her eyes, and gently the lilac soap washed away all the troubles and cares that had encompassed her life over the past weeks.  Into the bath water went Manuel
Colón, the slave auction, Troy Markham, the lies she had been led to believe all her life.  Dissolved.  Disappeared.  All of it was gone…and now she would start anew:  a new life, a new country.  Her place was here, and she would make the most of her situation.

Sabine dried herself briskly and wrapped the linen towel tightly around her middle.  The bath water could keep until morning, she decided as she gathered up that monstrosity of a dress.  She could empty the tub before breakfast.  And if she was lucky, she might find a way to dispose of that gown along with it.

She crawled into bed, and the sweet comfort of sleep began to take her, the faint creak of the door’s hinges jerked her to awareness.  Her body tense with apprehension, she opened her eyes cautiously, not daring to move for fear he would discover she was awake.

Please, please don’t let him go back on his word, she prayed fervently, her heart racing wildly as she closed her eyes tightly.  He promised.

In the doorway, illuminated by a single candle, Michael Pierson stood, staring intently at his new charge, and he cursed audibly to himself.  How could anyone even contemplate doing this girl harm?  The haunted look in those emerald eyes alone were enough to wound him. 

She was soft underneath all that hardness; he could see it as plain as day.  She needed time to learn to trust again, and yes, he was willing to give her all the time in the world.  Sooner or later she would put her trust in him; he only hoped it was
more of the former, and less of the latter.

Beautiful she was, even in sleep, and it took all his willpower to resist venturing closer just to see her, to watch the rhythmic rise and fall of her breathing, to smell the fresh cleanness of her hair.  Why did she stir this crazy kind of reaction in him?

Sabine watched him through the lowered fringe of her lashes as Michael lingered in the doorway, his gaze soft and inviting.  She almost trusted him right then and there, but the little voice inside her head warned him against such foolhardy thoughts.  He was a man, and like every other man, he was only looking out for his own interests, only concerned with his own desires.

Sabine’s breathing returned to normal when Michael closed the door to her room and retreated upstairs.  He could not possibly be the monster Manuel Col
ón had been, but why was it that her heart raced wildly whenever he walked into the room? And twice tonight she found herself wanting to reach and touch those locks of blond hair that curled at his shirt collar.

“Stop it,” she muttered to herself and turned over, jerking the blanket up over her shoulder.  “You have the most ridiculous thoughts I’ve ever heard in a woman.”

She would give him a chance, though her congeniality might be slow in coming.  Perhaps his motives were sincere; she wanted to believe they were.  Could she actually bring herself to accept his trust, however?  Once before she had put her trust in someone – too many people, as a matter of fact – and in the end she had only been used and hurt; she was not sure if she was ready for it to happen again.

And if Michael betrayed her trust, she knew she’d crumble into a million unsalvageable pieces.

Chapter Thirteen

How he had ever managed to survive here was an absolute mystery to her.

After twenty minutes, Sabine managed to hunt up only a scant variety of staples, in addition to some cooking utensils.  A smile lifted the corners of her mouth and she shook her head in amusement as she picked up a battered frying pan.  If that had been in reach last night, she thought with a short laugh, she probably would have taken a good, swift swing at his head with it.

How in the world could anyone be so aggravating?

With a swift hand, she mixed a pan of cornbread and popped it into the baking oven.  Then, humming no particular tune under her breath, she set a dollop of lard into the frying pan and set to work on the five remaining sausages she had found hanging in the pantry. And…as an added surprise, there were just enough ingredients leftover to make a modest stack of hot cakes.

He would be so proud of her.

Puffed up with satisfaction, Sabine stood back and observed her handiwork as it lay spread across the table.  It was amazing what she could do what she could do with only a handful of provisions, simply amazing.

Straightening, her face beamed with pleasure as Michael entered the kitchen, and she waited expectantly for the praise that was bound to follow.

“I’m starving,” he announced gruffly, and he sat down at the table, generously helping himself to the food she had placed before him.

The enthusiasm faded quickly from her face, and her teeth clenched indignantly.  This was the gratitude she received for her labors?  “I’m starving”?  during the past hour and a half she
had managed to provide him a burgeoning feast on next to nothing, and he found it unnecessary to offer even a single compliment; a simple “thank you “ would have been more than sufficient.

Tears of disappointment sprang to her eyes, and Sabine angrily slammed a wooden spoon on the table next to him.

“If you need anything else,” she informed him through gritted teeth as she fought back her outrage, “I’ll be straightening my room.”

“Wait,”
Michael said anxiously as he rose, motioning to the seat across from him.  “Why don’t you sit down? The room can wait.”

“I don’t think so,” came her icy reply.

Part of her wanted to turn and walk away, prove to him that she couldn’t be coerced by the charm of his smile and the depths of those blue eyes.  But the other part…

Hesitantly she pulled out a chair and complied with his request.  She sat silently, uncomfortably, as she intently surveyed the kitchen walls and then at the hint of pink sunrise that
peeked through the window, anything to avoid his gaze.  Gnawing her lower lip awkwardly, she waited for him to say something – anything – to her.

Even still, as hard as she tried to ignore him, she was ju
st as inextricably drawn, and she found herself watching him through the lowered fringe of her lashes.  He was interesting to look at – handsome, she decided; so incredibly handsome, in fact, that whenever she glanced at him, her heart leaped into a series of flutters that sent shivery rivulets dancing down her spine.  And when he smiled at her, it was as though no one else in the whole world mattered.

Darn it, why did he have to be this way?  Why couldn’t he be so cruel and vile that she would have no problem despising him?

“I’m sorry,” Michael spoke up after a pause.  “I told you last night I’d keep my contacts to a minimum, so I have.  Have you eaten yet?” his query came as he finished off the remainder of his coffee.

Warily, Sabine shook her head,
and squirmed uncomfortably in her seat.  Why did he keep looking at her like that?  So many times she had caught him watching her, intently studying her every movement.

“Would you care for more coffee, Mr. Pierson?”
she asked quickly as she tore from his gaze. 

She rose from the table to grab the pot of coff
ee, eager to escape the probing scrutiny of his gaze.

“Sabine, please.”

Michael caught her arm, capturing her as she passed, and he obliged her to look at him.  Oh, God, it was all coming to an end here and now, her frantic brain insisted.  He wanted more than she would willingly give, and he would most certainly make her do things Colón had tried to force her into doing.  Already she could feel his hands roaming over her in unseemly places, touching and grabbing and feeling…

With a desperate yelp
, Sabine jerked away, her bare feet skittering to the opposite end of the room, her heart hammering furiously against her ribs as a sour sickness churned in her empty stomach.

Wildly her eyes darted in search of a place to run, a place to hide, but there was nowhere for her to go, no feasible means of escape.  And the room closed in around her, her breath rasping in sporadic gasps as her gaze fixed
unmovingly on him.

“Damn,” he muttered angrily as he buried his head in his hands.  “Sabine, I – “

“Stay away from me,” her shrill, panicked voice warned.

Blindly, her hand snaked out and snatched a weapon from a nearby table.  Holding it high above her head, she braced herself against the wall and prepared to strike.

“Sabine - ”

“I’m warning you, Mr. Pierson.”

“ – you’ve got my hat.”

Her eyes slowly followed her arm to the object in her hand, and she lowered it,
a bright stain of embarrassment coloring her cheeks.  Slowly she replaced the fawn-colored hat to the table as she closely gathered the remaining fragments of her dignity.

“I won’t hurt you, Sabine,” he said quietly, somberly.  “How many times do I have to tell you that?”

A thousand times, she thought as she silently willed the frantic beating of her heart to quiet.  A hundred thousand, if necessary.

“We need provisions for the kitchen,” Sabine spoke up after a spell, her voice sounding strangely strangled.  “You have nothing here.”