Stronger Than Passion by Sharron Gayle Beach Page B

situation with the English girl. Whether due to pride or embarrassment, she couldn’t say, even to herself.
    The day after their arrival in Havana, Michael gave Penny money and sent her out to buy clothes. She returned with shining eyes, displaying her purchases as if she had created them herself. Christina hid her dismay well. Penny, ignorant as she was about fashion for a lady of quality, had bought only the richest fabrics and brightest colors for her new mistress. One dress was red silk, another blue merino wool, and a third striped green tarlatan. A traveling suit of burgundy velvet was the only subdued costume in the new wardrobe. At least the clothes were all European cut and must have been expensive, even if they were ready made. The matching bonnets were intricate and a trifle too fancy. Christina saw herself arrayed in the red silk in her looking glass and winced.
    Penny had also purchased toiletries, shoes, undergarments, and a sewing kit. She knew the rudiments of sewing, and went to work altering the clothes to fit Christina’s slender form, chattering about her experiences in the dress shops. The day had obviously been one of the most pleasurable that Penny had ever spent. Christina controlled her distaste for the flashy garments with a restraint she would never have shown to Maria Juana, or any other servant. Loneliness had improved her sensitivity to others!
    *
    It was almost with equanimity that Christina found herself with Penny and an amazingly respectable-looking Michael Brett, boarding a large steamer the next day. She and Penny were ensconced in a first-class cabin, Christina under the usual orders not to leave it. Brett had, he informed her with evil amusement, told the ship’s staff that she was suffering from a brain fever and must never be disturbed.
    During the six days it took the steamer to reach America and continue along its under populated coast to the Port of Charleston, Christina scarcely saw Brett - for which she was thankful. If only that state of affairs could continue until he gave up his ridiculous ideas of using her to further the American cause, and sent her home!
    She found that she missed her land and her people. She was as devoted to her estate, and its residents to her, as she had become to the convent in which she had been brought up and to its nuns, which became her family. The nuns had raised her in loyalty to the church and to their order, and in a sense of family pride; which had nothing to do with the fact that her father had lost his and become involved in treasonous activities against the legal Spanish monarchy in favor of an usurper. Christina felt her duty to her hacienda deeply, and hated Michael Brett, and America as well, for ripping her from it.
    In the provincial town of Charleston, they left the steamer and boarded an American Clipper, a fast, sleek vessel that sped them up the coast, hugging the land as it sailed. Christina thanked God for Penny, whose continued chatter over the strange sights out the porthole kept her from much thought of their eventual destination. Yet, when the ship entered the Chesapeake Bay and, finally, the busy Potomac River, which would take them to Alexandria, the port nearest Washington, uncertainty made her temper sharp.
    Michael Brett entered their small cabin as the ship docked, late in the evening. He sent Penny away, leaving Christina to feel an awful sense of dread.
    She waited for him to speak while he studied her. This was another Michael Brett - grimmer than before, all pretenses thrown away, no kindness or humor in his again unshaven face.
    “Christina. We’re about to take a skiff over to Washington. I have a town home there, in a neighborhood called Georgetown. You’ll stay there until I can think of a safer place to put you. Safer for you, I mean, there’s a lot of anti-Mexican feeling in this town. If your connections were to spread, I might not be able to protect you from something unpleasant.”
    “You’re trying