“Tanya, you lazy slut, where’s my breakfast!”

In the narrow hall, the girl with the heavy tray of food stopped short, cringing at that bellow. Wilbert Dobbs had the kind of voice that carried, and his did with regularity, right out his open window to their neighbors up and down the street. It was embarrass­ing, or used to be, to go out and hear the snickers, and worse, the mimics, but then her neighbors weren’t the kind who might feel sympathy or pity over the verbal abuse that came her way each day. And after so many years of the same, one became less embarrassed, almost immune.

But it wasn’t as bad as it used to be, not since Dobbs’ illness had made him dependent on her. That thought made Tanya smile suddenly, which lit up her face and brought a rare sparkle to her pale green eyes. She still wasn’t used to her change in circumstances. Verbal abuse was all Dobbs could give her, now that he was bedridden and could no longer beat her. She’d seen to that the very day he took to his bed, when she’d burned the stick that had been his constant companion for more years than she could remember.

She cringed again, recalling that stick. Her cir­cumstances might have improved beyond her wildest dreams, but some twenty years of misery was not easy to forget.

She took the tray in to him now, dropping it on the table next to his bed, unmindful of the noise it made.

“What the hell took you so long, missy?”

“The beer delivery arrived early.”

He grunted, which meant he accepted that excuse, when the truth was she’d decided to eat her own breakfast first for a change, before she brought up his.

“And what was the take last night?” he wanted to know.

“I haven’t tallied it yet.”

“I’ll want an accounting—”

“After I’m done cleaning up last night’s mess.”

He flushed red at her answer. She flushed some herself at her audacity. She would never have spoken to him like that six months ago, and they both knew it. She would have rushed to do his bidding, forsaking any other chore, and she certainly wouldn’t have interrupted him.

“I’m sorry,” she offered out of habit. “But I’m doing two jobs now, both yours and mine, and there never seems to be enough time in the day to do it all. We really need to hire—”

“Now, now, you’re doing just fine on your own. We already have three others to pay. Any more will cut into the profits.”

She wanted to argue, she really did, but knew it wouldn’t do her a bit of good. He made a good profit, he always had, but he never let her spend any of it, not on the tavern that was their livelihood, nor on herself. What the devil did he think he was saving it for? He was sixty years old if he was a day, and he was dying, a fact that elicited not the least bit of sadness from her or anyone else who knew him.

For the first ten years of her life, Tanya had thought this man and his wife were her parents. Finding out differently had brought her joy, not pain. But who her real parents were she didn’t know. Iris Dobbs had been able to tell her only that the woman who had given her to them when she was a baby had claimed to be her mother one minute, then no relation to her the next. But the fever had made the woman say all kinds of crazy things.

Iris had died eight years ago. She had been Tanya’s only buffer, taking many of the beatings meant for her. In fact, it was one of those beatings that had killed Iris, though Dobbs had got away with calling it an accident simply because she was his wife.

The things a husband was allowed to do didn’t bear thinking of. And not for the first time Tanya swore that a husband would never make a chattel out of her, because she’d never have one. If she’d learned anything living with Dobbs all her life, she’d learned how precious her few rights were, and she wasn’t about to give them up for anything. She just wished she’d known she had some sooner, wished she’d known that she could leave if she wanted, without being hunted down like a runaway slave. It had taken one of the barmaids to point this out, when she had witnessed Dobbs taking the stick to her, by asking why Tanya stayed.

In fact, Tanya had threatened to leave then. She’d been all of eighteen, or thereabouts, and could easily get a job in another tavern, since she knew everything there was to know about running such a place. That was when Dobbs had first tempted her with ownership of The Seraglio. But the promise of his leaving the tavern to her was all she’d had, until his illness. Then she’d insisted on having it written down on paper, that precious paper hidden under a floorboard in her room.

The Seraglio was all but hers now to do with as she would. It might exhaust her and cause one head­ache after another, but it represented independence, peace, and total control, or soon would—things she’d never had before, and which she craved now with a passion. To have them, she only had to take care of Dobbs for his remaining days, no more than she’d done all her life anyway.

Tanya left him as soon as she could, for she hadn’t exaggerated. There was never enough time in each day to do all that was required of her. The three helpers were no help where cleanup was concerned. Dobbs had never wanted to pay them extra when he had Tanya at no cost, and so they left at the close of business even if the common room looked like a storm had come through it.

It usually was a filthy mess, with mugs left on tables, ale spilled, chairs toppled, some broken, cigar butts mixed with spittle on the hardwood floor. Tanya usually attended to it all before she retired for the night, but last night there had been a fight over the current barmaid, Aggie, between one of the local planters’ sons and a sailor from The Lorilie, just docked that morning. Dobbs used to handle all the fights, with a cudgel in one hand and a pistol in the other. Now Tanya had to depend on Jeremiah, who tended the bar; and while Jeremiah might have the bulk necessary to intimidate two drunken customers, he did not have the gumption.

It wasn’t the first time Tanya had had to step in between two brawlers since she’d taken over the run­ning of The Seraglio. Getting a couple of bruises before the fighters realized she was interfering was pretty common, too, but last night had been an ex­ception, since she had been tired and out of sorts, and in no mood to reason first.

Normally she drew no notice, for she’d learned at an early age how to mask delicacy and fine features with severity, drabness, and a gauntness that could be achieved by using theatrical makeup, if not by actual exhaustion. She was a fixture of the place, sometimes serving customers when Aggie was har­ried because April was performing, sometimes work­ing behind the bar when Jeremiah didn’t show up for work. She was always there, ready to attend to what­ever was necessary—even breaking up fights, she, not even five and a half feet tall, with her hair severely pulled back and bundled at her nape, wearing a ser­viceable black skirt, unadorned and unbustled, and one of Dobbs’ old gray shirts that reached her knees. The shirts were belted to accommodate the wicked-­looking knife she’d been wearing at her hip ever since Dobbs had taken ill, a longer‑bladed weapon than the knife she’d carried in her right boot for as long as she could remember.

She’d brought both into play last night, slashing in a wide circle that effectively separated the two antagonists. She hadn’t had to say a single word after that. The planter’s son, who was a regular and well aware that she didn’t palm her weapons unless she was prepared to use them, apologized for the distur­bance and resumed his seat. The sailor, there for the first time, was too surprised to offer any more trouble, and Jeremiah, late into the fray but handy just the same, escorted him to the door.

But despite the ease with which she’d ended the fracas, Tanya’s nerves had still been on edge for the remainder of the night, and such extreme tension was debilitating. That was why she’d gone straight to bed as soon as she’d locked up. She could accept violence against herself more easily than she could accept having to dole it out, because receiving it had been a matter of course her whole life. Inflicting some of her own went against her grain. Yet she didn’t hes­itate to do so when it was necessary, and it had been necessary a number of times over the years, and more often in just the past six months.

In spite of everything she did to appear unappealing to The Seraglio’s customers, a drunk sometimes didn’t see too well, and all it took was the sight of a skirt to make one think he’d found an available female. She’d had her share of pinches and pawing, for the most part ended with a sharp word or a well-­placed cuff to the side of the head. If a man was drunk enough to have blurred vision, he was drunk enough for her to handle. It was those times when she was caught alone outside the common room by men not so drunk, in either the storeroom or the kitchen, or on her way to the stable out back, or even followed into her room once, that she’d had to get serious about protecting herself. But those attempts were made by men who’d known her for a long time, weren’t fooled by her normal appearance, and now thought to take advantage of Dobbs’ incapacity.

The only good thing she could say about Dobbs was that when he’d been hale and hearty, he’d been a potent discouragement to anyone who wanted to lay his hands on her. Once, he’d nearly beaten to death one of his own friends who had tried to kiss her, and that kind of news spread fast. Not that he had been protecting her virtue then or in other in­stances. He simply hated fornication with a passion and wouldn’t stand for it under his roof. If Aggie and April wanted to accommodate customers in that way, and both of them often did, they made private arrangements. More recently they sneaked off to the stables whenever things slowed down. Dobbs’ re­action wasn’t normal, certainly, but it was amusing, since Iris had once confessed that it was because he couldn’t do it anymore himself. Typical of Dobbs, then, not to want anyone else to do what he couldn’t.

Tanya spared only one sigh as she looked over the common room before she got busy. There was also the beer shipment to see to, lunch and dinner to prepare, new candles to order, which required a three-block walk past gambling dens, brothels, and seedier taverns that were open day and night, since The Seraglio was located in one of the worst sections of Natchez. And then, just before it was time to open the doors, April’s little brother stopped by to tell Tanya that The Seraglio’s main attraction had sprained her ankle and wouldn’t be able to perform tonight or any time soon. Just what she needed to hear minutes before opening. A headache began immediately.