Surrender to Love (17 page)

But she staunchly refu
sed to give in; scrambling low on all fours, she continued her haphazard pace, hoping, praying, to remain undiscovered.

She felt as though as she had been running forever
, and the air that she gasped for stubbornly rejected her lungs.  Tossing back her hair, she looked up through bedraggled, filthy locks and found herself facing a pair of dusty, high-topped boots.

Please, God, she prayed
in earnest as she collapsed in the stubble of field grass.  Let it be somebody to help her.  Let it even be that Michael Pierson.  Let it be someone…anyone who might help her continue to flee.

Her eyes slowly discoursed up the heavily muscled legs, and she knew it was pointless to run
.

“Please,” came her hoarse whisper.  “Help.”

A harsh laugh was the only reply she received, and it cut viciously through her heart.  She had been beaten, yet even the great pain of it would not reduce her to tears.  The man who looked down at her smiled contemptuously as he gripped a rifle musket; a scarred and worn bullwhip hung at his side.  He spat out something she did not understand as he grabbed her upper arm and jerked her roughly to her feet.

“
Puta,”
he snarled as he bound her wrists behind her back with coarse hemp.

Sabine stared straight ahead, past the brute who held her tight, and her gaze settled on the rooftop
that peeked through the trees beyond the clearing. She fought back the tears that threatened to spill over her cheeks.

She would not cry.

Humbly she hobbled in front of her captor, wincing each time she stepped down on her wounded ankle.  He pushed at her harshly each time she faltered, and the others who followed laughed aloud as she cried out in pain.

They treated her as though she were nothing more than a whore, a slave.  More than once Sabine felt a rough hand
snake out and touch her in unseemly places; and they laughed again as she jerked away.

Her fault. It was all her fault because she had stopped to rest.  So close she had come to capturing her own freedom, and foolishly she had squandered her chances.  The house.  She could have made it.

XXX

The minutes had slowly passed to hours
by the time they reached the edge of the slave tenements.  Gripped firmly by both arms, the men marched Sabine purposefully through the
barracones
, ignoring her tiny gasps each time they forced her to step on the tenderness of her ankle.

And she was
obliged to reckon with the defeated stares of the persons who followed her furtively with their downcast eyes.  They knew she had run, and her punishment would be swift and brutal.

Manuel
Colón relaxed comfortably on the veranda, and Sabine’s eyes narrowed in contempt as she examined him.  So pompous and self-righteous he appeared in his finely cut suit as he held a glass of fine red wine.  He lazily traced the rim with his finger.

She hated him with every ounce of strength she possessed.

His lip curled in disdain as he saw the soiled and bedraggled Sabine escorted across the grounds, and he smoothed his moustache with a jeweled forefinger.  They dropped her unceremoniously to the ground in front of him, and a smirk of malicious amusement accented his features.

“See,” he commented offhandedly as he set his glass on the table next to him, “you cannot escape me.”

He rose from his seat languidly and approached her.  Cupping her chin in his hand, he forced her to look at him, but she jerked away and averted her gaze to the grass.  His fingers dug deeper into her flesh, crushing and bruising until she thought her jaw would split beneath his force.

“I should have taken you when I had the chance,” he whispered fiercely as he shoved her away.  “Take her to the shed,” Colón directed harshly as he turned and walked up the steps, resuming his former position on the veranda.

A heavy hand pushed Sabine forward, and she inadvertently stepped down on her throbbing ankle.  Crying out in pain, she dropped to her knees, but her captors gruffly dragged her to a standing position and led her to the dilapidated shed next to the barns.

The narrow door of the small structure creaked open on its hinges as the chain and lock fell noisily to the ground.  Inside it was dark, cramped, and the dampness of the dirt floor sent chills through her bare feet.  Iron fetters fastened her to a ring set in a wooden block in the center of the cubicle.  An animal, that’s all she was; a dangerous, disobedient animal who had to be chained and caged from all the world.

The door shut behind the man as he left, leaving Sabine alone in the darkness with her thoughts.  Leaning back against a roughly hewn wall, she let loose a sigh of resignation.

He had won, hadn’t he?

She stifled the shout of denial that rose to her lips.  Never!  She slammed her fist repeatedly into the packed earth of the floor.  She would never give up.  Just as soon as she was able, she would run again…and again, if she had to.  She would run farther and faster than anyone ever had…and Manuel Colón would never catch up with her.

Wearily, Sabine curled up on the floor and rested her head on her arms as she idly studied the thin line of sunlight that hovered beneath the gap of the door.  It was so perfect, so beautiful, so bright.  It was the promise of a new tomorrow – a tomorrow she would see.  And when she saw that tomorrow and stood in its bright sunlight, she would be free.

Chapter Eleven

“You ungrateful little tramp,” Col
ón ground out as he jerked Sabine roughly to her feet.  “You will pay for the humiliation you have caused me.”

Her eyes, hard with hatred, stared
unmovingly into his as her hands clenched into small, angry fists.  She wanted to lash out at him and claw his eyes with her short, neat nails, but she wouldn’t allow herself to stoop to his baseness.  She knew he wanted her to strike, for it would simply give him another excuse to inflict additional punishment.

She relaxed, and a strange feeling of calm reassurance came to her heart as the rage faded from her.  He could never hurt her, never break her will.

“To think own self…”

Again, the words came to her, more clearly now, their syllables echoing in her brain with growing strength.  She repeated them over and over again until she fully grasped their meaning, felt them settle into every crevice of her being.

Immediately she seized possession of the phrase, held on to it firmly with both hands, and made it hers forever.

“Get your hands off me.”

Colón whirled her around to face him, and his hands buried themselves into her hair, viciously latching on to her tendrils with ruthless force.

“Bitch,” he spat out contemptuously and threw her forcefully to the packed earth. “I should leave you here another two days to subdue this wretched insolence.”

“Go to hell,” she whispered hoarsely. 

With a swift hand, he dragged her out into the sunlight, his crushing fingers bruising the tender flesh of her arm. 

“Leave me alone,” she commanded, her voice cutting through the silence of the morning.  “You can’t treat me like this!”

¨
Cállate,”
he spat as he drew back a hand, striking her sharply across the cheek.  “You will obey me.”

She tossed the tangled locks from her face and stared at him with blazing eyes.  Curling her lip distastefully, she
spat in his neatly groomed face. 

Sabine braced herself for the blow, but she would not flinch; she wouldn’t allow him to believe
he had gained any sort of advantage over her.  He hadn’t.  and he never would.

He did not follow through with his threat.  Instead he nodded to two men who lounged casually against the shed, and their gruff hands forced her toward the main house as she savagely kicked and screamed in resistance.

The mahogany doors to the library opened with a reverberating bang and Sabine landed in an unceremonious heap on the floor, her shouts continuing to echo against the white plastered walls.  She was abruptly silenced as a brutal fist slung her head back against the sturdy leg of a table.

“I’d prefer you didn’t damage the goods,” a masculine voice commented indifferently after a pause.

“She is headstrong,” Colón’s voice sifted through the fog of her brain.  “Discipline is what she needs.”

“I’ll take care of her in the way I see fit.”

“Then do so.  She has been of no use to me.  I never want to see her again.”

“Don’t worry,” came the reply.  “You won’t have to.”

A firm hand raised Sabine to her feet and she leaned unsteadily against the masculine form.  She wanted to run…but she couldn’t.  Her legs refused to obey, and she allowed herself to be lifted into the arms of a stranger, cursing her weakness as she rested her head tiredly against his shoulder.

She was leaving. Was it true?  Or was her wearied brain merely poking fun at her unattainable dreams?

It didn’t matter.  If this was all a hallucination, then she didn’t want to wake up and face reality.

XXX

The familiar sensation of a damp cloth stroking at her temples gently coaxed Sabine to consciousness.

Her eyes.  She tried to open them, but her lids stubbornly refused to comply.  Tired fingers brushed against the nubby texture of the bed’s coverlet.  Soft pillows.  A deep mattress to sink into.  It had to be a dream; all these luxuriant, comforting articles could not possibly be real.

“Just stay and rest,” a man’s voice instructed.

Her dry and cracked lips moved to speak, but no sounds came forth.  An unseen hand slowly, gently lifted her head off the pillow.

“Drink this.”

Childlike, Sabine obeyed and swallowed water out of a china cup.
She clasped her hand protectively around the vessel, guarding her possession lest anyone should try to wrest it away.

“Don’t drink so fast.  You’ll only make yourself sick.”

She reluctantly let loose, and her head eased back into the softness of the pillow.

“I see
Colón roughed you up again since I last saw you.”

She nodded feebly as a tear of relief slid down her cheek; and this time she did not curse it for coming.  Oh, dear Lord, it was him.  She willed her eyes to open, and for the first time they took in every detail: the gentle curl of his hair, his rugged looks, his full mouth.  And his eyes, so hard and icy once, now gazed at her with softness and compassion.

“I – “  Her voice croaked.

She wanted desperately to tell him, to thank him.  So much there was to say, but the words would not come.  Her body was too spent to move, to speak.

“Shh,”
he whispered.  “Save your strength.”

As she snuggled deep
inside the feather mattress, Sabine’s lashes fluttered closed.  Continuously Michael Pierson had invaded her life and her thoughts since stepping foot in this country.  Now she was here…with him…in this house.

He made her feel safe, and that frightened her.

And when she succumbed to slumber, the indelible image of his blue eyes burned into her memory – not with a malicious heat that seared her soul, but with a warm sweetness that disconcerted her.  He owned her, had captured the freedom that she held so dear.  She should despise him with every ounce of her soul.

So why didn’t she?  Why did her heart, instead, flutter at the mere thought of him?  Why did she find herself wanting to reach out and touch the soft curve of his mouth, the rough stubble of his beard?  She should hate him…and everything he stood for.

But she couldn’t.  Somehow, she just couldn’t find herself hating him as much as she thought she would…or should.

XXX

She slept, and Michael continued to absently smooth the dampened curls that framed her temples.  Still such an innocent, and legally she belonged to him; at least that’s what the paper in his trouser pocket stated.

Damn.  He didn’t like the sound of those words.  She wasn’t a piece of property.  She was a breathing, thinking human being. 

But he hadn’t done anything about it, had he?  Hadn’t bothered to tear up that damn paper and send her on her way back to wherever it was she belonged.  Hadn’t bothered to stand firm on the convictions he had held over the years when it came to this woman.

Why?

He knew the answer without even thinking.  She was beautiful, strong-willed.  Her very image had haunted him for weeks, now she was
here
, and for the life of him he couldn’t figure out what to do with her.

He should just send her back where she came from, he told himself.  Find out this very second where she had lived before getting mixed up with insanity and get her on the first ship bound for the States.

With what money? 
His conscience nagged pointedly.