“That Delaney? He’s a strange one,” Sally said. “I like him, I think I like him, but he’s not like Ethan. I tell you, if I see Ethan again, I swear I’ll kill the son of a bitch. I don’t care if they hang me, Nate, I’ll kill him. Mrs. Richardson swears that he won’t be allowed to see me if he comes here, but I hope he does. I hope that son of a bitch comes in here and I’ll stick him like a hog on a slab, so I will.” She sucked on the cigar, making its tip glow a brilliant red.

“What happened?” Starbuck asked.

She shrugged, sat in a chair by the window and told how she had come to Richmond to find Ethan Ridley. For three or four days he had seemed friendly, even kind to her, but then he had told her they were going in a carriage to look at some rooms he planned to rent for her. Except there were no rooms, only two men who had carried her off to a cellar in the eastern end of the city and there they had beaten her, raped her and beaten her again until she had learned to be obedient. “I lost the baby,” she said bleakly, “but they wanted that, I reckon. I mean I wasn’t any good to them pregnant, not here.” She waved around the room, hinting at her new trade. “And of course, he arranged it.”

“Ridley?”

Sally nodded. “He had it all arranged. He wanted rid of me, see? So he had two men take me. One was a nigger, I mean a black, and the other used to be a slave trader, see, so they knew how to break people like my pa used to break horses.” She shrugged and turned toward the window. “I guess I needed breaking, too.”

“You can’t say that!” Starbuck was appalled.

“Oh, honey!” Sally smiled at him. “How the hell am I to get what I want in this world? You give me that answer? I ain’t born to money, I ain’t educated for money, all I got is what men want.” She drew on the cigar, then took a glass of wine from Starbuck. “A lot of the girls here started that way. I mean they have to be broken in. It ain’t nice, and I don’t care if I never see those two men again, but I’m here now, and I’m mended.”

“They scarred you?”