“How diverting!” Heath offered loudly, only to deflate when he saw the faces around him.
Nicholas watched as a cabin boy brought in some sort of pudding for dessert.
“Perhaps it will change,” Wren said as his pudding was placed in front of him, “should the colonies break away, and the landowners in the South seize control of the new government. They will be in the position to create their own Eden. Isn’t it fair to say that slavery has been a boon to Africans? At the very least, it breaks them of their laziness and their barbaric violence—brings them into God’s flock. The work they do is fit for their capacities.”
Ah, yes. Here it was, a hundred years’ worth of justifications for the wrongful enslavement of human beings, gathered into a tidy, single breath of hot air. These sweeping lies about the minds of Africans, the denial of every opportunity to advance themselves by reading and writing and thinking, kept them not only in physical chains, but insidious, invisible ones as well.
It didn’t matter that none of it was true. That Nicholas himself stood as evidence of it. What mattered was that these beliefs had swept through the souls of everyone else like a plague. He couldn’t see the end of it. Even a hundred years in the future, he knew, the roots still had not been fully pulled up from society. Wherever, whenever he went, the color of his skin set the boundaries of what he could achieve, and there was very little—if any—recourse for finding a way around it.
Etta’s palms were pressed flat against the table, and she was breathing hard in an obvious attempt to master her…anger? She was angry? On his behalf?
If Wren had spared her a glance, he might have thought twice before adding, “I suppose you owe your faculties to…your father, perhaps? Forgive me if I’ve made incorrect assumptions about your parentage.”
“You have not, Mr. Wren,” Nicholas said, wondering why he had ever resisted the urge to lodge his fork in the man’s eye. “To your point, though, I suppose we are all born with deficits. In your case, in manners.”
He understood this now for what it really was—punishment, for having made the other man feel like a fool. First with the seizure of the Ardent, and tonight, revealing his lies. This knowledge in itself was enough to settle him somewhat; the pettiness of it stripped some of the pain as these old wounds were sliced open.
Wren swayed in his seat, the full effect of the claret seeming to strike him all at once. His words became slippery at the edges, slurred slightly, as his eyes gleamed, giving his anger a darker edge. “What was it that Voltaire supposedly said? Your race is a species of men, as different from ours as a breed of bulldogs is to terriers?”
“Mr. Wren!” Etta began, scarlet in the face.
“Having actually read the Voltaire in question, I can confirm the quote is, as different from ours as the breed of spaniels is from that of greyhounds,” Nicholas said coldly. “Interesting, though, that in the end we’re all just dogs.”
“Perhaps,” Wren said, leaning forward in his seat. “But not all of us are mutts without pedigree.”
Etta stood at the same moment as Chase, only she was the one close enough to land a slap on the officer’s face. The crack of flesh on flesh stunned Nicholas, who’d leapt up to restrain his friend from lunging across the table.
“And these are the actions of a lady?” Wren sputtered.
“Aye,” Chase said approvingly. “And a damn fine one at that.”
“Can you actually hear the words coming out of your mouth?” she demanded, pieces of her hair falling out of its braid as she threw an arm out toward the door. “You need to leave the table—right now.”
Wren’s eyes narrowed at her tone. Nicholas didn’t like the way the man was looking her over, as if preparing to strike. Strike her.
Nicholas’s fingers pressed against the knife he’d set on his plate.
“I beg your pardon, madam,” Wren said, “if I’ve caused you any offense.”
“You know I’m not the one you offended!” she said, trembling with anger. “I think it’s time for you to leave.”
Wren folded his hands together and rested them on his chest. “I haven’t eaten my pudding yet.”
“Oh my God, you are despicable!” Etta snarled.
“Careful, madam, blasphemy is still a sin—”
Even if Nicholas had been the gambling sort, he never would have wagered a single coin on her next words being “Then I guess I’ll see you in hell!”
The look of outrage on her face would have sent even Nicholas flying to the other end of the ship; he wondered, not for the first time, when she was from. What era had produced such a fearsome, magnificent temper? But Wren stayed precisely where he was, the smug arse, and it was Etta who left the room in a whirl of skirts.
Chase craned his neck around. “That one, I like.”