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“Oh, but I shall,” she said, and smirked.
“Bitch! What have you done?”
“What cannot by now be undone,” she said.
For a moment, Godwin thought he was looking at a devil. “I shall see you in hell!” he said, and turned. He knew, all at once he knew Heather was in serious trouble.
He made for the stairs and stood there at the landing as she chased him and grabbed his arm. “Godwin, you can’t do anything to help her. It is over. Your horrid little affair is over.”
“Is it, by god!” he shouted. “We’ll just see about that. I will trace her movements. I will find her, and I will expose you for the demon that you are.”
“But…what of Roderick? You can’t do this to him,” she pleaded. “He is your son!”
The words were out before he could stop them. “My son? Your bastard…not mine!” The words tasted ugly on his tongue, but they were out, and in that moment, his fear for Heather prevented him from seeing himself.
He was on the first step, Sara was on him, holding his shirt sleeve, yelling for him to stay. “No, Godwin, you can’t do anything. She is gone…”
Her words frenzied him and he yanked out of her hold, shouting, “Get thee gone from my sight!”
It all happened so fast, too fast.
He heard her screaming hysterically as he stood in mute shock and watched her bump and roll down the entire length of stairs to the marble floor below.
He took frantic steps after her, bent over her. “Sara?” he called her name, and knew he had sunk to her level. He wasn’t relieved when he saw her lashes flutter, and realized he wished her dead.
“Mama?” a young boy’s frightened voice came from the top of the stairs.
Godwin stared with disbelief to find Roderick glancing accusingly down at him. How much had the dear lad heard? He looked into his son’s eyes and had the answer, and he felt a storm of self-hatred engulf him. What had he done? His boy? Had Roderick heard him disclaim him?
He knew that his son, his heir, was too young to understand all of what he had heard, but he had a notion of what it all meant. He would understand in later years and for that, Godwin felt wicked and low.
Roderick had heard his father disclaim him. Godwin knew Roderick adored him. Godwin knew that Roderick, who depended on him for attention, attention he rarely got from his mother, had heard him shun him. What had he done?
The servants appeared and he shouted, “Fetch the doctor…at once!”
Sara had attempted, perhaps successfully, of robbing him of the lady of his heart and now…now his son.
Sara opened her eyes. “What…what happened?”
“You fell, Sara,” he said kindly.
“I…I want to get up,” she said suddenly. “Help me, Godwin, help me get up.”
He attempted to do so when she screamed, “Godwin…my legs. I can’t move my legs!”
~ Nine ~
THE LIBERTÉ CHISELED ITS PATH through a choppy bay. Its sails were full with the wind. Its captain, Maurice de Brabant, stood bent over the bulwarks staring at the receding shoreline, now barely visible in the night.
The moon lit up his face and he saw that his men exchanged glances with one another. His sadness was all over his countenance. It was difficult for all of them, he knew. This was his, and because of their loyalty, their last break with France. He had been given no choice in the matter. Robespierre, who he had once called friend, had given his captain no alternative.
Thus, the Comte de Brabant and his men would never return to their homeland. His ancestral home had been savaged and absorbed into another way of life in France. The government had taken the small estate he had as a second son, and thus, he and the people who had always served his family had become homeless as the ‘new regime’ took over.
No matter, he told himself. His home now was in Barbados, well out of the Reign of Terror’s reach. He sighed into the wind. Indeed, he had jumped at the opportunity when his older brother had gifted him with his schooner, Liberté, eight years ago. He had, in fact, relished the idea of creating a life on the tropic isle.
Barbados! His brother had made certain he was granted a charter from the English King to begin a sugar plantation, and he had luckily been successful and his plantation thrived.
When the letters from home, from his beloved brother began slowing down, he had become concerned. He knew what the political climate was in France and he was filled with fear for his brother, his family, and all their close friends.
