A Simple Deception

XXXI

"It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight." Vladimir Nabokov

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XXXI.

"Susanna is here?" Alex gasped in utter disbelief as the impossibility of this realisation rushed over him.

She came for me.

For how long had he believed, known, that Susanna would never forgive him? That did not mean that he had not intended to return and try, but it was a truth he had acknowledged. Women like Susanna did not come along every day, and they deserved men of quality. What chance, whatever miniscule chance he might have had with Susanna was lost.

Or so he had thought.

But Alex could not lose himself in his thoughts, his hopes, his fears, for long. Adam had claimed that Susanna needed Alex's help, and a panic began to settle into his chest. Susanna was nowhere to be seen, and something serious must have happened to separate her from her brother's side.

"Where is she?" he demanded to know. "What happened to her?"

How had they made it onto the island? Captain Whitfield had made Alex swim to shore with a wounded Belle as he would not dock in Port-au-Prince. It was not safe for white men to roam Haiti. What could have possibly made the captain set foot on this island?

But for white women ...

"She used herself as a distraction in town so that we might secure the horses to find you," Adam explained, the panic that he shared with Alex evident in his voice. Alex could also see that this had not been Adam's idea.

Alex's blood ran cold as the very image of Susanna walking through the city by herself filled his mind. She had made herself vulnerable, had put herself in danger, in mortal peril to give her brother and Captain Whitfield the chance to find him. What would possess her to do something so foolish?

She would not have been allowed to walk free. As soon as Susanna was noticed in town, she would have been corralled and captured by men who believed that all whites were the same. Susanna would be tarred by the same brush that belonged to the grand blancs.

Alex's mind was racing so quickly that he could not find the words in English.

"Où est-elle?" he cried.

"De forgeron," replied Captain Whitfield in a calm voice, holding out his hand, almost hesitantly, before he touched it on Alex's shoulder.

Alex did not have a moment to even wonder at the captain's odd behaviour as he shook off the hand and seized the reins of one of the horses. The blacksmith. That was where he was going, and by God he would burn the forge to the ground if one single hair on her head was out of place.

"Hide," was all he managed to say to the two men before he launched himself onto the stallion's back and kicked in his heels to take off.

***

It was mid-afternoon by the time Alex rode into Port-au-Prince, and the sun was high in the sky and beating down with an assault of heat and humidity. Alex felt that the shirt he was wearing might have been transparent for all his perspiration, though he knew he could not blame the sun for all of it.

There were a handful of competing forges in the city, and Alex instantly regretted not waiting for more information from Adam and Captain Whitfield before racing off. But logically, he knew that Susanna would not have been able to walk far through the city before being intercepted. She had to be at the forge closest to the port.