Page 39 of Pride of a Warrior

Her aunt shrugged. “Why not? I’ve been facing him alone all my life.”

Rachel strode straight across the clearing and tapped outside the door. When a servant came to see what she wanted, Rachel simply said, “Tell him his granddaughter is here.”

While she waited, she thought over all the people she’d spoken to since she came to the compound. She had understood all the languages, just as she had as a child.

A tall, silver-haired man came to the open doorway and motioned for her to join him inside. He offered her a seat on a soft rug spread on the floor and then sat down across from her. The minutes wore on until Rachel was afraid perhaps he’s had an attack of apoplexy.

Finally, he spoke. “Rachel, now the white preacher’s daughter. Why are you here?”

“I want to know why. Why did you give my mother to the slave trader and then allow her to be sold into slavery?

He stared some more, and then looked away for a very long time. When he returned his gaze, he said, “Your mother was part of a pact which made sense for the tribe at the time, but then things changed.”

“Things changed?” Rachel hated the shrill tone in her voice.

“Yes,” he repeated. “Things changed, and I had to break the pact. Selling you and your mother was Austin’s decision. I had nothing to do with that.”

Rachel’s mind whirled and her gut churned. “This was all she and her mother had meant to these people? They were family by blood only. She formulated an argument to throw back at her grandfather, but she never got to that point, because her aunt returned abruptly. “We have to leave - now.”

“Why?”

“Because Captain Halloren is coming up the river, and you do not want him to engage in battle with the Ibi.”

The terror that filled Rachel at the thought of something happening to Christopher because of her foolhardiness told her all she needed to know. These people were not her family.

She followed her aunt out of the hut without saying goodbye or even sparing her grandfather a backward glance.

Chrisand his men pulled the shore boat to the side of the river bank at the sound of footsteps coming through the underbrush. They had their sidearms ready and trained at the direction of the thrashing sounds.

When Rachel appeared with another woman and a child, they put away their guns. He wanted to turn her over his knee for a spanking, he wanted to yell at her for making him think she was in danger. And, strangely, what he wanted to do more than anything else was to kiss her senseless.

Once he’d settled the passengers in the boat and they were floating back down the river with the flood, he put his hand beneath her chin and forced her to look into his eyes. “Rachel Berry, I’m right here in front of you. Let me be your family. For God’s sakes, let me be all you need. We can be our own family.”

Rachel clasped his hand hard and said, “Captain Christopher Halloren, I accept.”

“You do?” He was confused. “You accept what?”

“I accept your offer of marriage. I think we should have my father marry us as soon as possible so that I can to go back to England as your wife.”

THE END

Epilogue

December 1828

The Royal Institution

No matter how many times Rachel spoke on the tribal languages of West Africa, she had to ignore the butterflies flapping wildly in the vicinity of her throat. She looked out over the crowd that night at the Royal Institution, and her stomach flipped. There were few, if any, empty seats, but she did what she always did to calm herself. She let her gaze sweep the upper level gallery seats until she spied Christopher and Leah. Leah caught her eye and began to squirm.

Christopher leaned over their four-year-old daughter and slowly turned his head so that only Leah could see his face. Rachel knew what would happen next. Her daughter straightened and her face took on her “good girl” look.

A smile quirked at the corner of Rachel’s lips. Christopher’s method of fatherly control never failed to make her giggle. She knew the secret of what had changed Leah from fidgety to placid. Although his “faces” sometimes were frankly terrifying, the children seemed to love them. He could even make baby Jamie cease crying.

While teaching at her late father’s mission school in Freetown, she’d often taken her language skills for granted, sometimes forgetting what a wide swath of Africa’s tribal languages she understood. She’d set up a language curriculum for the Mission Society’s School for Missionaries in Clapham, and still taught there one day a week.

While she was being introduced, she reached down to smooth the skirts of her blue silk dress and felt Christopher’s eyes on her. She wore his favorite shade of blue, the one he insisted matched her eyes. Captain Sir Christopher Halloren had been knighted on their return to England, for having “contrived, without collateral assistance of any sort, to capture forty sail of vessels, and rescue four-thousand persons from bondage.”

The month before they’d returned to England, the members of Council and foreign Judges of Sierra Leone had addressed a letter of thanks to him along with a commemorative plate. The mercantile community in Freetown had presented him with a jewel-encrusted sword.

The few butterflies left flapping fled in fear the moment the image she always expected to see appeared in a far corner of the gallery. This time her aunt wore a gauzy green gown with a crown of braided palm leaves in her hair.

When Rachel caught the gaze of the apparition, they exchanged regal nods. The night before, Rachel had experienced an odd conversation with her daughter after she’d read her a bedtime story. “Mama,” Leah had asked, “who is the lady in the green dress?” Now, her daughter’s question made sense. Rachel’s great aunt was watching over Leah as well.

And then it was time. “I propose, in return for the honor you do the Mission Society by coming to hear me speak, to bring before you, in the course of this lecture, the Etymology of the Tribal Languages of West Africa…”