A Sitting in St. James - Rita Williams-Garcia Page 0,3
foot. He was a man surely the age of the queen. Thirty-eight. Forty? Big. Tall. Sun-brown skin. Dressed well, but not what she expected in a lord. He didn’t try to make himself or the circumstance appealing. Though he had recently bathed, his hair clung to his face. His teeth jutted from his lips.
“May I present Mademoiselle Sylvie Bernardin de Maret Dacier.” The broker turned to her. “Mademoiselle, Monsieur Bayard Guilbert.”
She waited to hear more. Perhaps a title. Where he was born, or some sort of succession. The realization of it, that she would be absorbed into this giant of a man—and the smallness of his circumstance—made her both woozy and then sober.
He bowed.
With the doors closed behind her, she had no choice but to follow the man and the broker to the office of the registry. Once there, she asked the attending clerk to see the registry. It was all she could think of, the most pressing evidence of her existence. Who she was. Granddaughter of the baron of Bernardin de Maret vineyard; her father, Captain Dacier, a military nobleman with the favor of the court.
“The vineyard. It must stay in the Bernardin de Maret Dacier line and pass to my issue. But you, my lord, cannot own it.”
The broker’s eyes shone as he waited for the master to smack her down. This he would enjoy as much as if he had laid the blow himself.
The master said, “Write it in the contract.” He neither smiled nor flinched.
The young clerk, unlike the girl, feared the master. He wrote quickly while the girl peered over the proceedings, making sure her words were represented as she dictated them. “Monsieur clerk,” she said. “The vineyard is to be looked after by and profited to the convent until the heir appears.”
Sylvie, acting on her own behalf, had played her card. Besides a printed contract filed with the registry and a secret token stashed on her person, she was out of luck and options. She was still a girl, and in her girlish heart she nursed a hope that members of the Royal Family would learn who she was attached to and obtain her release.
The ink hadn’t dried on the writ of marriage contract when Bayard took the thick parchment paper and herded the girl to the church. He presented the paper. The priest said the words. She gave her pledge. He grunted his. The broker witnessed the ceremony, received his gold pieces, and was on his way.
In the dark of night, the former Sylvie Bernardin de Maret Dacier followed Bayard Guilbert to the stinking part of town where the ship they would set sail in had been docked.
On the ship, he said, “You have a bag. You were told to bring nothing.”
“I’m to have nothing? Nothing of myself?”
He didn’t reply. He had done his whoring during the day and settled his business and waited for the girl to be delivered to him. With her in his possession he had no reason to linger. Not even for a meal at an inn. When they were aboard the ship and she was queasy from its motion, he said, “There is no need for these old things from that old place. You are coming with me to Saint-Domingue. For you, a new place. A new life.”
At first opportunity for privacy the new bride had stashed the signet ring bearing the seal of the Bernardin de Maret vineyard in the hem of the frock that served as her wedding dress, and now, her only dress. She stole a glance at a locket portrait of her mother and also inserted it in the hem of her frock. She intended to place the signet ring in the hands of her firstborn child when he or she came of age. Her instinct hadn’t failed her: this husband, this Bayard Guilbert, took her bag, didn’t bother to look inside or empty its contents to discover her treasures. He threw the bag overboard into the murk.
She screamed.
“Go,” he said dispassionately. “Go, then. Get your dead old things.”
His dispassion stopped her cold. She didn’t want the guillotine or whatever torture was saved for friends of the royals. She also wasn’t brave enough to jump into the indigo abyss after her mother’s jewelry, a hairpin the queen had given her, lace gloves, and cloths she would need to attend to herself. Sylvie had no choice but to follow the man, her husband, to their cabin, on a ship bound to Saint-Domingue.