Free Captain's Bride by Kat Martin Page A

urge.
    “It’s time you married,” she’d say. “Eric is a fine
southern gentleman. His family has lived here for generations. You
two will make a splendid match.”
    It was just like her mother. Her marriage to Julian
Summerfield had been arranged. Love was never a consideration. As
far as Glory knew, her mother had never really been in love. She
shared a home with Julian, but little more. Proud of the plantation
she and Julian had built, Louise valued the land and the family
name. Oh, she loved Glory, in her own detached way, and probably
even Julian. But she revolved in a distant world, where closeness
to others was not allowed.
    Glory was seated in the upstairs withdrawing room
practicing on the pianoforte, the sun streaming through the open
window, when her mother walked in. Glory had never seen so bleak an
expression, such utter despair on her mother’s usually placid
face.
    “Mother! My God, what’s happened?” Glory leaped from
the piano bench and hurried across the room, the layers of her
ruched skirts rustling with the motion. Plenty burst into the room
behind Louise, while April entered sobbing.
    “Get your mama over to da sofa, chile’ ” Plenty
commanded, and Glory meekly did as she was told. “You sit down,
too.”
    “Me! Why do I need to sit down? Plenty, what’s
happened?”
    “It’s Julian,” her mother choked out. “He was riding
Hannibal, taking the hedges. Hannibal went down. Julian hit his
head.” She sat there staring straight ahead, her face as pale as
porcelain, her eyes bleak and vacant. “Glory, your father is
dead.”
     

Chapter Five
     
    Glory was sure she couldn’t have survived the ordeal
if it hadn’t been for her half brother, Nathan.
    The tall light-skinned Negro arrived on a packet from
New York just two days after her father’s death. He’d been on his
way home from school for the summer. A year younger than Glory,
Nathan looked several years older. He was handsome and well built,
tall and broad-shouldered like his father. Since his mother had
also been of mixed blood, his features looked more Caucasian than
Negro. Having spent most of his life in boarding schools, he was
highly educated and well spoken.
    “Oh, Nathan,” Glory cried against his shoulder. “I
miss Papa so much.” They had walked down near the river, below the
formal gardens. A sudden spring storm seemed imminent: clouds
gathered and threatened, and the air hung thick and still.
    “I just can’t quite believe it,” Nathan told her. “I
keep expecting him to crest the rise on his big black stallion or
walk up to my cottage.” Nathan wasn’t allowed inside the main
house—Louise Summerfield wouldn’t tolerate the presence of Julian’s
bastard son. So Nathan had been raised by Sara, one of the Negro
women, in the small cottage Julian had built for Hannah. A place
away from the rest. A place where he and Hannah could be alone.
    Hannah had been a quiet-spoken young woman, the child
of a well-educated quadroon from New Orleans. As a little girl,
Hannah had been taught to read and write, though by law it was
forbidden. When her mother died, she’d been sold to pay their
debts, though she was then only a child of fourteen. At the manor,
she’d blossomed into a beautiful young woman, and Julian had fallen
in love with her.
    Everyone had looked the other way, even Louise. The
affair had lasted a little less than two years, just long enough
for Nathan to be born. Hannah died when a second child came early
and complications set in. Glory’s mother had wept with joy; Julian
had grieved for weeks, and Nathan had been left alone.
    “I never thought it could happen to him,” Glory said
to Nathan. “He was so strong. Like a rock. And always there when
you needed him.” She wept softly against Nathan’s shoulder, his
tall frame looming above her more slender one.
    “I miss him, too,” Nathan said quietly. Living on the
edge of plantation society, belonging neither to the Caucasian race
he was