Free For Her Love by Paula Reed

altogether. Not for the first time, he regretted having silenced her. “Fetch me something to drink. Something strong. I care not what.”
    “Oh yes, Edmund, do have a drink,” Iolanthe scoffed. “Have four or five and tell me that I am delusional. Have you asked this sailor if he wants to inherit your farm? Do you really believe that Grace will deny her slave blood and become mistress here? Why not leave Welbourne Plantation to one of your many other black children?”
    Edmund ran a hand through his blond hair, and his face was flushed pink. “Keep quiet, Iolanthe.”
    “‘Keep quiet, Iolanthe,’“ she mimicked, her voice falsely low. “Whenever I speak the truth, it is ‘keep quiet, Iolanthe.’ One bastard elevated to daughter of the house, the rest left to work the fields. Oh, if your precious Grace only knew!”
    “It matters not whether Grace comes back. She’ll bear children. White children. One of them will want Welbourne. How could they not?”
    “African children,” Iolanthe taunted. “Black children who have been taught by their mother that slavery is evil, who will not have anything to do with your great legacy .”
    “Damn-near-white children who will desire wealth as all men do,” Edmund countered.
    Matu returned with a glass and a bottle of rum. She appeared to be absorbed in the task of filling his glass and finding just the right place to set the bottle, but when she looked at him, it was with keen interest and uncanny intelligence. She was far smarter than any house servant should be, but by the time he’d realized that, it was too late. Grace would never have forgiven him if he had sent her back to the fields or sold her.
    So he looked to use Matu to his advantage. “Matu, I am relying upon you,” he said. “Do not leave my wife and our prospective bridegroom alone together, and separate them if ever it seems the mistress may be feeling a bit free with her tongue. You and I, we want the same thing, do we not? We want Grace to be happy?”
    Matu nodded solemnly, but he could see something whirring busily behind her dark eyes. Why had he made it impossible ever to know exactly what she was thinking?
    “Good then. Why do you not check with Keyah and make sure that dinner is worthy of our guest, perhaps lay out something suitable for Grace to change into.” He clenched his jaw a moment and added, “Iolanthe, is it not your custom take a rest in the afternoon?”
    Iolanthe’s black teeth peeped through her lovely lips. “Aye, Matu, let us leave the master alone with his drink and his dreams, shall we?” She glided serenely toward the stairs and drifted upwards while Matu exited through the back door.
    Alone at last, Edmund tossed back his glass of rum and refilled it. Were it not the middle of the afternoon and did he not have a guest to impress, he’d have headed to the slaves’ quarters to see if one of the younger wenches might be about, but Giles and Grace had gone off that way. He drained the second glass, as well. It was bloody near the happiest day of his life. He was but a hair’s breadth from marrying off his daughter, and he was not going to let his malicious wife spoil it.
    So Grace was tainted. So she wasn’t lily white. She was smart and had a quick wit, attributes that he had given to her. Surely they hadn’t come from her mulatto mother. His daughter was exotically beautiful and far more refined than his pure, French wife. The bitch was jealous, that was all. She knew damned well that a savage, ignorant African had done better by him than she could ever have done. He poured more rum and smiled malignantly. It only made sense that she was bitter, but she had made her bed.
    Oh, aye, she had made her bed—entirely separate from his. She spent inordinate amounts of money on clothes that were completely impractical, not that she would have stooped to do one practical thing on the plantation. Well, except for overseeing discipline, a task that she was disconcertingly