The first thing Nathaniel Beaumont noticed was not the ropes. It was the dress. Beneath the grime and tears, Elise Laurent wore what had once been expensive pale silk, cut in an old European court style that had no business appearing beside a crumbling wall in a Louisiana sugar plantation outside St. Francisville. The fabric was torn at the shoulder and hem, exposing more than propriety allowed, and dust clung to her bare calves.
Her wrists were bound behind her. Her ankles were tied. Blonde hair hung across a face gone frighteningly still. Nathaniel Beaumont had been riding home when he saw her through the heat haze. He reined in so sharply his horse tossed its head. A few yards away, Silas Crowe stood beneath an awning with two armed men, pretending the bound woman was merely another problem of property.
Nathaniel Beaumont dismounted and asked one question: “What is her price?” “She is not for sale,” Silas Crowe said. Nathaniel Beaumont looked again at the woman, then at a small detail half hidden beneath her torn collar: a blue enamel medallion stamped with the crest of a minor French royal house. His expression changed. He crossed the distance, seized Silas Crowe by the front of his coat, and pulled him close enough that the guards froze.
“If you knew who she really was,” Nathaniel Beaumont said quietly, “you would already be praying for heaven.” He released him only enough to add, “Name anything you want. But she leaves in my carriage.” The woman finally lifted her eyes, and the terror in them told him the bargain was already too late. Outside, cicadas screamed from the live oaks while dust settled over the road like a warning nobody wanted to name.
Every doorway seemed to hold a witness, yet most.