She had not yet learned how to stop being Sarah. That lesson would come soon.
Marcus Thornwood attended the auction that morning searching for a very specific purchase. He had recently disposed of three young domestic women, selling them off to distant Mississippi plantations where no inquiries would follow. He needed a replacement, but not just any hand. He required a particular constitution: young enough to be pliable, intelligent enough to follow complex commands, isolated enough that no one would notice or care what became of her, and hardy enough to endure what lay ahead.
Sarah met every condition. The bidding was brief. Thornwood secured her for eight hundred and fifty dollars—a steep sum that prompted curious glances from fellow buyers. But Thornwood trusted his instinct. There was a faint tension in Sarah’s carriage, a lingering spark in her eyes when she thought herself unobserved, which revealed that her core remained intact. That meant there was still something left to break. The trial would be worthwhile.
He signed the papers, claimed his purchase, and loaded Sarah into his wagon for the twelve-mile trek back to Thornwood Plantation. They rode in silence through the winter landscape, passing fallow ground awaiting spring, distant grand estates set back from the lane, and crews of laborers toiling in the cold to mend timber fences and dig out drainage ditches. Sarah kept her gaze lowered, hands folded in her lap, her expression carefully blank. The posture was second nature now, but beneath it, her thoughts moved swiftly, cataloging the terrain, gauging distances, and searching for the implicit rules of this unfamiliar domain.
