The Fool's Errand

"What else am I going to do with my life?" she said quietly. "I'm educated, but my education prepared me for a life of ease, managing a household. Anyplace I go I will be forced to make a living upon my back, as a whore or a wife. So why would I want to leave here? You're a decent man, an exciting man, and, father forgive me, you're a good lover."

"You pretend you love me," he accused.

"Don't talk of love, Donovan. You and I both know that love is largely a matter of fairytales and lust. What matter if I love you or you me? You're an ambitious man and you'll need to marry to advantage, not to a whore. So there's no purpose in talking of love. I can be your mistress, Donovan, your personal whore. I've been so on this voyage and I can be so on others."

Donovan sighed, "I wish I could trust you, Lady. I truly do. But I am incapable of the act."

She nodded. "But I am not. I am capable of trusting you. My name is Anna Maria Dalton."

"Dalton?"

She nodded. "Yes, those Dalton's. It was my uncle who advanced a claim to the throne. It was spurious and we all repudiated the claim, but my uncle was a tool of conspirators. When the proscriptions were issued we fled to Burgundy and found they had no use for people who had very publicly disassociated themselves from my uncle. We thought to flee to Williamport where my father knew people.

"My father suffered terribly at sea, so we came overland, through the Empire and the Sultanate and into Punji. We took ship for Williamport and the voyage was rough. Very rough. My father could not eat and weakened rapidly. He died before we caught sight of land again.

"They put me ashore at Williamport and I looked for my father's associates. Most were gone, they had fled Catalonian rule, and the few that remained were unhappy to see me. I dared not enter society under my true name, and could not enter it under another without more money than I had. So I found work as a governess. Then Ngia noticed me. The rest you know. What family I have remaining would be horrified by what I have been reduced to. Albia would have me killed if they suspected I still lived."

She paused in her narrative and looked him in the eye.

"You could buy and sell me with that information, Captain."

He grunted. "You know I won't; that I'll keep to our bargain while still I live."

She nodded. "I do know that. So I feel safe here with you and your crew. And I want to stay here."

He laughed. "Under the terms of our agreement you can stay for as long as you wish. You have no need to ask this of me."

She nodded again. "I want only one thing more, though. Once, even if only once, I want to know that what passes between us is more than a business arrangement. Just once. Please."

She was crying now, Donovan saw. Silent tears fell slowly down her cheeks as she twisted her hands together repeatedly. He knew this was a moment when he could break her, could utter the words that would free him from the complication she was.

"Folly is the old man's constant comfort," he muttered to himself.

She looked at him in puzzlement and he stepped forward and took her gently in his arms.

"You will always have a place in my home and in my heart, Anna," he whispered.

She sobbed once and clutched him tightly to her.

"Thank you, Donovan," she whispered back.

She pulled back from him and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand before reaching forward to begin undoing his coat.