Black Eagle Read Online Free Page B

acquired a debt to John Rathburn and had perished in a fire shortly thereafter, it had been Sarah’s fate to live to pay off her parent’s debt.
    Six years more was all that remained of that obligation now. Six years and Sarah would be free of this house. But free to do what, she wondered?
    She was twenty and eight now, too old to marry. By the time she earned her freedom from the Rathburn estate, she would be thirty and four, well past the age where a respectable man might seek her hand . . . unless that man were a widower who had been forced to seek an older woman in marriage, that she might care for his children.
    Sarah sighed. How different her life would have been had her parents never acquired their liability to John Rathburn. But now was not the time to bemoan her lot in life. She would endure this for the sake of her parents. In the meanwhile, the young woman whom Sarah regarded as fondly as if she and Miss Marisa were sisters, was upset.
    Sarah fixed a smile upon her countenance before saying, “There, there, it cannot be all that bad, can it? ” Sarah arose from the stool where she had been sitting, to pace toward the bed where Marisa sat. Seating herself alongside Marisa, Sarah laid her hand atop her friend’s. “I am certain that it cannot be as terrible as it might seem to you now.”
    â€œI hope you’re right, dear Sarah. For ’tis bad. Very bad.”
    Sarah nodded in understanding. “Then tell me about it. I will listen.”
    Marisa exhaled and swallowed hard, before she began, “It happened in the middle of the night last evening. I was awakened by what I know not, but I heard footsteps outside my door, and I decided to investigate . . .”
    â€œYes? ” Sarah encouraged. “And what did you find? ”
    Marisa fidgeted. “T’was my step-uncle and a bully,” she began, and though she stumbled often in the telling of it, eventually Marisa related the entire incident to Sarah.
    At the tale’s conclusion, Sarah hardly knew what to say. Words failed her at the moment, and all she found herself able to do was frown.
    â€œWhat should I do? ” Marisa asked.
    Sarah’s frown deepened. “You say your uncle—”
    â€œHe is my step-uncle, Sarah dear, and you know as well as I that he cares nothing for me. He is obligated to raise me only because of my step-mother. But beyond that, there is nothing to tie us. As you know my own mother gave her life giving birth to me, and the woman that I called ‘mother’ for many years was not my own blood relative. She was kind, I believe, though I was too young to remember it well now. But by blood, I am not tied to John Rathburn.”
    â€œYes, of course,” said Sarah. “Sometimes I forget.”
    Marisa nodded, then stared at Sarah. “Dear Sarah,” she said, “tell me, what is your impression of these goings-on? ”
    Sarah hesitated. “What was it that your uncle said to this unidentified man? ”
    â€œMy uncle gave the man leave to hire others, who were to be instructed to burn the fields and all the concerns of a Dutch town, which name I do not know. Nor do I have knowledge of where that town is located. Not exactly.”
    â€œAnd you say that these Dutch people are in debt to your step-uncle, and he means to lay title to their fields as well as to their livelihood? ”
    â€œYes.”
    Sarah gulped. Despite herself, a sickness was already invading her soul, and she wondered if her breakfast would long remain where it was. She said, “And your step-uncle means to bring the people in that town into servitude to him? ”
    â€œYes.”
    It was too much. Sarah lay her free hand across her stomach, her fingers clutching at Marisa’s hand. The feeling of nausea could barely be ignored. At first, she bent over at the waist, trying to stave off the nausea, and removing her hand from Marisa’s, she placed it over her