Free Gallant Match by Jennifer Blake Page A

swim by paddling like a wild thing after being thrown into the river, but learn she had, that and much more.
    Of course, her every antic had been watched over by old Fonz, her father’s majordomo Alphonse, until he’d died three winters ago of the ague. She’d thought he was perhaps eighty years of age, but couldn’t say for sure. He’d been sold into slavery as a boy by an uncle who had killed his father and older brother in order to assume the position of chief in their African village. He’d not repined, or so he said. Being a slave was no easy life but better than being dead, and it had brought her to him in his old age, his chick, his kitten, his girl-child in pigtails who had idolized him because he adored her in his grandfatherly way.
    Alphonse would not have approved of this alliance with Jean Pierre. He would have stopped it, if only byshaming her father into abandoning the idea. White-haired, bent Fonz had been a quiet power in the house, creating a ring of protection around Sonia. Her childhood would have been much harsher without him.
    Such thoughts took no more than a second to slip through her mind. They were banished by a quiet grating of metal on metal, followed by a distinct click.
    Sonia whirled, her eyes wide as she stared at the door. She reached it in a single stride, caught the handle and tried to turn it. She jerked once, twice.
    Nothing, no movement whatever. It was locked.
    She slammed the door panel with the flat of her hand, hitting it so hard it burned all the way to her shoulder, then spun and put her back to it.
    For an instant, tears burned the back of her nose. She would not cry, she told herself with fierce resolve. No, she would not. Her impulse instead was to pound on the door at her back, to scream and shout curses after the Kaintuck.
    That would be a waste of time as well as exhausting her strength and her passions to no purpose. She would need both if she was to find a way out of this dilemma. And if there was nothing to be done, then she would use them to make Kerr Wallace wish he had never been born.

Six
    I t was perhaps two hours later, when the morning light through the small porthole illuminated the dreary confines of Sonia’s prison and danced in watery reflections on the ceiling, that reprieve arrived. It came in the clear tones of her aunt as she scolded someone for the handling of her trunk. Moments later, the sharp clicking of heels marked her progress down the passageway outside. The lock in the door turned and it swung open. Tante Lily swept inside in a froth of petticoats and lace and the wafting of fresh air.
    â€œ Ma petite, what is this? I cannot believe you are here. Are you all right? Please tell me everything is as it should be with you!”
    Sonia scrambled from the bunk where she had been sitting and stepped into her aunt’s rose-scented embrace. “Yes, yes, of course I’m all right, just so very glad to see you.”
    â€œLikewise, chère, believe me.” Her aunt patted her shoulder, sniffing a little. “You cannot conceive of theuproar this morning when it was discovered you were gone. Your papa was about to send for the gendarmes when Monsieur Wallace arrived with news of your whereabouts. I’ve been throwing things into boxes and trunks like a madwoman ever since, for he insisted I must come with him at once.”
    â€œHow very thoughtful,” she said with irony as the huge Kaintuck, carrying a small trunk on his shoulder in a manner too reminiscent of her own transport a short time ago, loomed behind her aunt. His smile was brief, a mere movement of the lips, as he stopped in the doorway, fingering the key to it in his free hand.
    â€œWell, I consider it so myself, for he need not have troubled. I mean, a message would have sufficed for most. Such courage he displayed, to come at the earliest moment to admit what he had done. I quite expected to see him clapped up in the calabozo. But, no,