“Mercy, come on,” Moses said, reaching down to help her into the boat.

I didn’t waste a second; I swam for the wherry, fear turning me into an arrow. In seconds, I reached it and heaved myself aboard, landing with a thud.

Sewel snored away like a beast, his big body slumped into the curve of the wherry’s stern. Trembling with tiredness and fear, I hauled up the anchor and set it inside the well. The shark still circled nearby, and every rumble of thunder shook the air in my lungs. I grabbed the lines to raise the sail, more than ready to get home.

“Did I say it was time to leave?”

My every muscle tensed. I let go of the line and turned. “No, sir.”

Sewel pulled out of his slump. “Sit.”

I found myself sinking onto the thwart and grabbing the wood beneath me to keep steady.

He picked his hat up from the well where it’d fallen, and took his time brushing the water and sand away before setting it back on his head. “It’s past time we discuss how things are gonna be now, with your mama gone.” He rubbed his chin and stared at me, heedless of the lightning bolts slicing across sky. “You are an oddity, Francisca,” he said. “An aberration. You have no fortune, nor any beauty. You have no gentleness in your heart, nor a wisp of feminine softness. What you do have is a terrible temper and an odious lack of refinement. Added to the disgrace of having a fallen woman for a mother, you got no chance of ever luring an upright man to take you for a wife. So I have decided that I will save you. I will make the sacrifice, in your mama’s memory, and take you as mine. En’t nothing wrong with it, as we en’t blood, and I’m nearer in age to you than I was to her, so…” He lifted his shoulders. “En’t nothing wrong nor unnatural with it.”

A warm sickness pushed into my throat and I felt myself falling back. Plunging into a cloud of silence. There was no logic, no sense to his words, but I’d expected this. I’d seen this coming. For months, since Mama had taken to bed, I’d seen hints in his eyes and how they followed me. I’d felt it in his hands, which had found me at any excuse. I’d been dreading this—but I still felt shock. I still couldn’t understand it.

“Well? En’t you got nothing to say?”

“Yes, sir. I do,” I heard myself answer. “I will never be your wife, Sewel. Never.”

“Hmm.” He nodded slowly. Then his gaze slid over to the shark and the air rushed out of my lungs.

Sewel reached into the bait box for his jackknife. He opened it and looked real slowly at one side of the blade, then turned to the other, pondering that one, the branded M shining on his thumb all the while. “You’re going back in, Frannie—that en’t the question,” he said, his voice sweeter sounding than I’d ever heard it. “You brang it upon yourself with your defiance. The only question is whether you want to be bleedin’ when you do or not.”