The Lord and his Lady (Forbidden #2)

Chapter One

If mastah found her, she would be lost forever. She couldn't help but admire and marvel at the sight of London. The neighing horses clopped down the street and dragged along carriages. Women wore extravagant dresses and hats. She spotted some darker skinned men and women, people like her, in plain suits or working in the salon. She did not think life outside of slavery especially in the land of whites existed for people like her.

Drawing her attention away, she made eye contact with some men walking on the opposite road. They eyed her up and down, brows furrowed. She lifted her shoulders up to her ears and hurried down the rocky street with her bare feet, attempting not to shiver. The cold whisked away the dark coily tendrils that now stuck to her face.

Was she bringing attention to herself with her muddied and bloodied cotton nightgown?

Perhaps.

She rubbed the freshly added red scars down her dark chocolate skin. He either was not over her dropping the soup on his mother or he was mad that she went to clean her clothes than Sir Pablo's; it was illegal to hold slaves in England, but that didn't stop her mastah from bringing her here. It did not stop him from mistreating her and the other servants in the household.

"You filthy negro," her owner sneered, shoving her out the back door. She sprawled into the dirt vegetable bed that she had helped the other slaves create. The dirt felt as coarse as sand, the brown grains burning under her skin. "I asked for a well-behaving slave, not a slacking whore."

"I—I am sorry, sir. I was tasked in cleaning the kitchen for the lady," she said, keeping her gaze averted to her torn sandals.

"You were bought by me. That means you listen to me. Not to my petulant mother."

"I will not repeat such behaviour again."

"You better not. You can stay out here until you learn your lesson, girlie."

"Please, sir, I will not—"

"Speaking back to me?" His hand came up and bore down with thundering force. The sound of a smack emitted in the humid air. Her breathing rattled in her chest as she tried to stifle a whimper. She was used to the whips and the slaps.

It did not, however, hurt any less in the moment.

The weather was sweltering, breaking beads of sweat across her forehead in a few seconds of standing out.

"You will stay out here until I say you are allowed to come back in. You do not want to end up like your mama, do you, child?"

Mama. Tears threatened to choke her, but it did not compare to the anger boiling deep beneath her blood. His people, his kind, had killed her mother right in front of her eyes and forced her to assimilate into their culture. She did not.

Belinha wanted to claw this man's eyes out. Teach him a lesson for what he had done, for ripping her family apart. But like Luciana, the head-cook, always told her, she needed to keep her head down and out of trouble if she wanted to accompany Sir Pablo to England, to where his children and wife lived.

Because even through the slaps and the insults and the starvation, everyone knew that Belinha was Sir Pablo's favourite. Young, obedient and decent in the English language. In that sense, she was always taken advantage of. She only knew education because of the white master's kids that would secretly teach her how to read out the back when Sir Pablo took a nap. He had attempted to teach her once upon a time to make it easier for them to communicate when serving his mother who had special needs.

But their kindness only lasted there. Even the kids. One time they had been caught and she faced the whip, but they did nothing. From then on, she learned that no one could be trusted but herself.