The captain’s cabin was filled with the scent of precious essences and the distant rhythm of waves against the hull. Joffrey sat at his heavy ebony table, maps spread out before him, the candlelight dancing across his scarred face. He was politeness personified — a politeness that hurt Angélique more than any open hatred.
“You should retire, Angélique,” he said without looking up. His voice was controlled, distant. “The night air is cool and I still have calculations to make. Rest. You should make a perfect impression in Salem.”
Angélique remained standing. “A perfect impression? Like a new figurehead for your ship, Joffrey? Or like a rare alchemical ingredient you’ve finally acquired?”
He raised his head. An amused, almost mocking smile played around his lips. “You are dramatic, Madame. I am merely ensuring that you regain the status you deserve. I paid dearly for you, and I will take good care of you.”
Angélique’s blood began to boil. She was not his possession. She was not the small duchess he had loved in Toulouse. He did not see the calluses on her hands, the scars on her back, or the coldness in her gaze that she had painstakingly acquired in the gutters of Paris and in the harem.
Driven by rage and instinct, she stepped quickly to the table. Her hand shot down and struck his cheek with a whip-like crack.
Joffrey’s head jerked to the side, and his eyes instantly became two slits of liquid ice. He did not move. He remained seated as if nothing had happened — and precisely this superior reaction was his way of manipulation.
“Was that part of your amusement?” he asked quietly, his voice dangerously controlled.
“It was the answer to your arrogance!” she burst out. “You sit here planning my life as if you had brought back a doll from Toulouse. You play the benevolent lord, but you don’t respect me! You don’t respect the woman who crawled through the mud of Paris, who has blood on her hands so that your sons could survive! You only see the gold with which you bought me back, but you don’t see the price that I paid while you were expanding your power!”
Joffrey stood up slowly. He towered over her, his presence overwhelming. He stepped around the table until he stood so close before her that she could feel him physically.
“You think I don’t know you?” he asked with an arrogance that almost made her despair. “I have observed you, Angélique. I know exactly who you have become.”
“No, you don’t!” she hissed. “You wallowed in your gold and your power while I fought for survival as the leader of the beggars in Paris! I raised children while the gallows of Montfaucon swung above me. I was sold, hunted, and spat upon. I did not go through hell so that you could now treat me like a doll that you manipulate as you please!”
She pointed to the luxury in the cabin. “This here is nothing. A cage of gold. You don’t respect who I have become. You don’t respect the blood and sweat I have shed. You play your games, you withhold information, you control my paths — and you expect me to worship you for it?”
Her voice became quieter, but even more cutting. “If you cannot see me as the woman I am today — a woman who is stronger than you ever were because she had nothing but her will — then this ship is not a path to freedom for me, but a golden cage.”
Joffrey stared at her for a long time. His face was an unreadable mask, as so often during these days at sea.
He slowly raised his hand and stroked the red mark on his cheek. A thin, dark smile appeared on his face — the smile of the Rescator.
“You are right, Madame,” he said quietly, and his tone was now cuttingly sharp. “The Marquise of Toulouse would never have dared to strike me. You have truly changed. But don’t expect me to have pity for your ‘path of suffering.’ In my world, only what one makes of this suffering counts. If you want to be recognized, then stop screaming like a wounded creature — and behave like a duchess.”
He turned away and went back to his maps, as if the conversation were over.
Angélique stared at his back, at the proud shoulders in the precious coat, and suddenly she felt a strange, icy clarity. The rage that had just raged in her like a wildfire died out and left nothing but the cold ashes of recognition.
“Stop screaming?” she repeated quietly. Her voice was now completely calm, and precisely that made Joffrey pause in his movement. He did not turn around, but she saw how his neck muscles tensed.
“You are right, Joffrey. I should not scream.”
She took a step back, away from him, away from the circle of light from the candles on his table.
“I loved you,” she said, and the word loved sounded like a farewell. “The Marquise of Toulouse loved the Count de Peyrac. She worshipped the alchemist who made gold from lead. This love was pure, was absolute — and it belonged to a woman who believed in miracles.”
Joffrey hesitated. He sensed that the atmosphere in the cabin had changed. This was no longer an argument. It was a judgment.
“The woman who stands before you today,” Angélique continued, “has no use for miracles anymore. She has seen how miracles are trampled in the dirt. She needs no lord to rule her, and she needs no god to worship. She needs a companion. A man who is strong enough to stand by her side without wanting to diminish and keep her small.”
She looked directly at him, her gaze empty and emotionless.
“I thought you were that man. I thought your scars had taught you the same as they taught me. But you are not a man who acknowledges my strength. You hide behind the mask of the Rescator, plan my life and expect gratitude for it. You are powerful, Joffrey. You are rich. You are brilliant. But you are not a man at whose side I can stand.”
A shadow flitted across Joffrey’s face. He wanted to answer, but she shook her head.
“The love of the duchess belongs to you, you can keep it. But the woman I am today… she belongs to herself. And she will find her way in the New World. Without you.”
She left the room without waiting for an answer. The heavy wood of the door fell into the lock and left Joffrey de Peyrac in the silence of his cabin.
In the following days, the Gouldsboro became a stage for silent war. Joffrey de Peyrac behaved as he always did: as the absolute ruler over wind, waves, and people. He sat at the head of the table, had exquisite dishes served, and treated Angélique with an almost provocative, exaggerated courtesy.
He did not believe her. For him, her outburst was nothing more than one of those feminine storms he had seen a hundred times in his life — a discharge of temperament that would settle in the light of reason and under the pressure of reality.
At every dinner, his gaze sought hers, filled with condescending patience. In his eyes shimmered the certainty: You will come. Tomorrow, or the day after. You will realize that the world out there is cold and that only I have the power to protect you.
He sent her small tokens of attention to her cabin — a rare fruit, a book, a piece of jewelry. He waited for her to bow her head, to smile and admit that without his protective hand she would be lost. He was so convinced that she was the woman he wanted to see in her that he mistook the coldness in her face for defiance.
But Angélique did not return.
She avoided the shared meals. She spent the hours on deck. She spoke with the sailors, observed the work on the ropes, and learned the rhythm of the ship.
One night she stood again at the railing when she felt him step behind her. He did not touch her, but his presence was overwhelming.
“The New World is a cruel place for a woman alone, Angélique,” he spoke into her ear. “There are no palaces there. Only wilderness, cold, and death. Why don’t you end this game? We both know how it will turn out.”
Angélique did not even turn around. She watched as the foam of the waves lit up white in the darkness.
“You are waiting for me to give up. To submit to you, Joffrey,” she replied, and her voice was as firm as the wood of the mast. “You have calculated everything — the supplies, the route, the dangers. But you forgot one thing: I have already walked through a wilderness that was much worse than anything that awaits me over there. I was alone in Paris. I was alone in the desert. I learned to make bread from nothing and servants from enemies.”
She now turned around after all and looked directly into his cold eyes.
“You are waiting for the woman who needs you. Who longs for luxury. Who returns to you to survive. But that woman no longer exists.”
She left him standing there. He watched her go and for the first time a tiny doubt mixed into his certainty of victory.
The cry “Land in sight!” rang out from the masts and tore the crew from their monotony. On the horizon appeared a dark strip from the dawn — the coast of America, wild, untamed, and forbidding.
The Gouldsboro anchored in a small bay. The water was a deep, cold blue, and the scent of pine needles and earth wafted toward them.
On deck there was hectic activity. Joffrey stood on the quarterdeck, his hand on his sword, his gaze coolly fixed on the land. He had put on his most magnificent clothing, as if he wanted to show the wilderness who its new master was. He was certain that Angélique would step to his side — a silent plea for protection in the face of this overwhelming emptiness.
He saw her coming. She wore a simple dress of sturdy fabric, her hair tied back. In her hands she held a bundle with her belongings.
Joffrey climbed into the boat first and extended his hand to her when it was her turn. A slight, confident smile lay on his features. He was ready to forgive her if she took his hand and submitted to his leadership again.
Angélique looked at his hand. Then she raised her gaze and looked into his eyes one last time. There was no more anger in her, only emptiness.
She ignored his outstretched hand. Instead, she held onto the ropes and swung herself into the boat alone with the skill of a woman who had learned to take care of herself. She sat down on the back bench, far away from him, and stared at the approaching shore.
When the boat touched down in shallow water, she did not wait for a sailor to carry her ashore to spare her shoes. Before Joffrey could even stand up, she climbed over the side of the boat. The cold water lapped at her ankles, and she took the first step onto the soil of the New World.
Behind her there was silence. Joffrey stood in the boat, his hand still outstretched, and stared after her. He saw how she walked up the beach, her back straight, her steps firm. She did not look back. She did not seek his gaze, she did not wait for his commands.
Angélique felt the wind on her face. Before her lay the forest, dark and endless. She did not know where she would sleep or what the next day might bring. But as she took the first deep breath in this new land, she knew: No matter what challenges fate held in store for her — she would overcome them.
Joffrey erected his camp near the coast. Tents of heavy cloth, servants who followed his commands, and guards who secured the edge of the forest.
He was convinced that Angélique would soon return to him. That the cold of the nights or hunger would drive her into his protection. Every morning he looked toward the edge of the forest, expecting to see her exhausted figure begging for forgiveness and bread.
Weeks passed, but Angélique did not come.
She had settled near a spring, a bit away from the main group, and allied herself with the simple settlers and a few woodsmen.
Joffrey observed her from a distance through his spyglass, and what he saw made his certainty dwindle more and more.
He did not see her despair, as he had expected. Instead, he saw a woman who knew how to find roots for fever, how to set traps, and how to keep a fire alive in pouring rain. And he saw how she began to build a new life for herself.
She was not Angélique, the duchess. She was not Angélique, the “wife of the Rescator.” She was a settler who was more than equal to the challenges of the new world.
One evening Joffrey observed her from the hill. Angélique stood knee-deep in an ice-cold stream and helped to wedge a heavy log for a log cabin. Her face was dirty, her hands rough, but her movements were sure and without hesitation. When the log was in place, she laughed with the men — an honest, hearty laugh that Joffrey had not heard since Toulouse.
In that moment fear crept up in Joffrey. And he began to understand: His gold meant nothing to her, because she could feed herself. His protection meant nothing to her, because she had won her own respect in this new world. His name meant nothing to her, because she had already created her own.
Without thinking, he stepped out of the shadow of the trees and walked toward her. The men paused when they saw the magnificently dressed count, but Angélique only wiped the sweat from her forehead and looked at him coolly.
Joffrey found it hard to meet her gaze. “Angélique,” he began, and his usual tone of superiority suddenly sounded hollow and ridiculous in this environment. “This state is unworthy. I have received supplies from Europe. Wine, fine flour, silk. My house is almost finished. Come to me. Enough of this game.”
Angélique looked at him, and in her gaze lay a pity that hit him harder than any blow.
“You still don’t understand, Joffrey,” she said coolly as she rolled up a heavy rope. “You call my survival a game. You think I would trade my freedom for a bottle of wine and a silk dress?”
“I want to protect you!” he burst out, and his voice trembled for the first time with real panic.
“You want to possess me,” she corrected him. She took a step closer, and Joffrey saw that she had no more fear of him — not even respect for his power. “Look at me, Joffrey. I don’t need your flour. I don’t need your gold. I don’t need you.”
She turned back to her work. “Go back to your tent, Joffrey. The night will be cold, and you should warm yourself.”
Joffrey remained frozen in the mud. He watched as she sat down by the settlers’ fire and accepted a bowl of simple stew. She was part of a community based on action, while he remained trapped in his lonely splendor.
And for the first time the great Rescator felt small. He understood that he had lost her. Not because the world was cruel — he had lost her because he had understood too late that she was a woman who would never again bow to the rule of a man.
In the following days, Joffrey could not stop observing Angélique.
He saw her standing at the shore at dawn, knocking ice off the nets. He saw how she tended the bloody wounds of an injured man without flinching. And slowly he began to recognize the parallels to his own life.
He looked at his scarred hands, at the traces of fire and torture. And he realized that she had drunk the same bitter cup as he had. They had taken her name, her wealth, her children, even her honor.
And while he had spent years accumulating gold, building ships, and establishing an empire, while he had amassed wealth so as never to be helpless again, she had lost everything again and again.
And each time she had stood up again. And when he observed how she traded a piece of jewelry he had given her in the settlement for tools, the realization hit him like a blow: Worldly goods meant nothing to her.
She knew that ships sink, palaces burn, and kings can fall. She knew that gold is fleeting. For her, only true strength counted — the ability to start anew in the deepest mud and create a world again.
Joffrey stood in the shadow of a mighty maple and looked over at her. She sat by the fire sharpening a knife. Her movements were calm, almost meditative.
“She no longer fears loss,” he thought with a sudden, burning clarity. “Because she has understood that everything can be taken from her. I have accumulated power to protect myself. She has become so strong that she can survive without protection.”
In Joffrey’s chest stirred a feeling he had not known since his youth: genuine humility. He understood that she did not need him to survive. She was not only his equal; in the art of new beginnings, she was his teacher. His heart, which had been hidden for so long under the hard crust of the Rescator, cramped together.
For the first time he understood that he could not win her back by giving her something. He could only win her back by learning to be like her: ready to lose everything, and brave enough to create a new world.
That night Joffrey was awake for a long time. The fire in his tent had almost burned down, and the flickering of the embers cast dancing shadows on his scarred face.
Before him on the table lay maps, contracts, and bags full of gold — the symbols of his power. A guarantee that he would never be helpless again.
But precisely this helplessness he had demanded of Angélique. He had demanded that she trust him blindly. He had expected that she would give up her hard-won autonomy. He had thought that his love and his wealth were reason enough to justify this obedience.
“I demanded that she surrender herself,” he thought bitterly. “I demanded that she accept exactly the fear from which I myself have fled all my life.”
Joffrey felt how the cold of the night crept into his bones. He had always considered himself strong and fearless. But now he understood: He was afraid. He, the Rescator, the man who had challenged death a hundred times, feared being powerless. He feared the moment when his gold would be worthless, his ships sunk, and his mind no longer enough to direct fate. He built empires so that he would never again have to be the child who was laughed at, or the prisoner handed over to the fire.
And now he saw Angélique out there by the settlers’ fire. She had the strength to give up everything because she knew that her strength lay not in possessing but in being.
Joffrey struggled with himself. He loved her with a longing that almost tore him apart. He would have been ready to throw away his power in that moment, to sacrifice every title and every stone of his possessions — if only he had had the guarantee that she and his sons would be well because of it. If he had known that they would be safe.
But the New World gave no guarantees. Here there was only hunger, cold, and death.
“Can I do it?” he asked himself. “Can I stand naked and defenseless beside her? Can I give up control without knowing if we will still be alive tomorrow?”
He closed his eyes and saw his empty hands before him. He noticed how everything in him cramped up. The thought of no longer being in control, no longer being the protector who watches over everything, made panic rise in him. He realized with a painful stab in his heart: He could not do it.
His fear of helplessness was too great. He was trapped in his need for security, while she chose freedom and rebuilt her life.
He sat for a long time by the dying fire. The love for her burned in him like an eternal light, but he now knew he could not give up his power — not even to win back Angélique.
The first light of morning was pale and cold when Joffrey left his tent. He wore no silk, no gold, no sword. His clothing was simple cloth, sturdy leather, like that of a simple man facing the wilderness. On foot, without retinue and without horse, he sought the path to Angélique’s hut.
When he knocked on her door, there was silence. Then she opened it. Angélique remained standing on the threshold, her gaze glided over his unusually simple appearance, and her eyes widened. She saw the weariness in his face, the traces of a sleepless night, and she recognized: The mask of the Rescator had fallen.
“May I enter?” he asked quietly.
Wordlessly she stepped aside and let him into the small, sparse hut. Inside it smelled of fresh wood, dried herbs, and the smoke of the small hearth. It was not a palace — it was a home that she had created for herself.
Joffrey seemed almost too large in this modest room, but his proud bearing had given way to a deep sincerity.
“I understand it now, Angélique,” he said quietly. “I have seen who you truly are. I have recognized your struggle — the long, bitter path you had to walk. I have seen your strength. Seen how you built a new life for yourself. I now understand that you don’t need me. That you can survive alone in this world.”
He lowered his head. “I ask you for forgiveness. Forgive me for being so blind. Forgive my pride. Forgive my arrogance.”
Angélique looked at him coolly and nodded. She did not hold his manner against him; she knew that his own history had shaped him. He was the Rescator, the Count of Toulouse — a man who was created to rule.
Joffrey swallowed hard.
“Whether Rescator or Count… one thing has always remained the same,” he said, and his voice became a plea. “I love you. I love you with all my heart and with all my soul.”
He took half a step toward her, his eyes seeking hers.
“And I know what you are looking for. You are looking for a man who stands as an equal by your side. A man who can leave everything behind to rebuild a world from nothing.” He paused briefly, and pain entered his gaze. “But I cannot be that man, Angélique.”
It was the first time he admitted his own weakness.
“Just as your path has changed you, so mine has changed me. Power, wealth… I cannot give it up. It is the only way I know to protect those I love. It is my only armor in a world that wants to destroy us. Without this power I feel naked and vulnerable. I do not have the strength to be as defenseless as you.”
He looked at her, and his gaze was pure pleading.
“You asked me to see the woman you are today. To acknowledge and love the woman who survived the mud and the fire. Now I beg you for the same: See me. Not the magnificent count, not the Rescator. See the man I am today. The man who is too weak to give up his protective wall of wealth and power, even to win you back.”
Slowly he sank to his knees before her. He took her rough hand in his and pressed it to his forehead.
“I beg you,” he said, and his voice broke, “to love this man anyway. With all his fear and his pride. All his flaws. To love him as he is.”
In the small hut it was so quiet that one could hear the distant rustling of the trees. Angélique looked down at the man the world considered invincible. She saw the bowed head, the simple clothing, and the hand that held hers.
In that moment she felt the pain in her heart for the first time again. It was the same pain she had suppressed the entire time — during the crossing, during the hard work on the beach, and during the lonely nights in the wilderness.
No matter how cool she had been toward him, no matter how much she had banished him from her life, from her heart: Just as in him, there was also in her a deep truth that she could no longer deny. No matter who he was, no matter whether he respected her or not — he was the man her heart had chosen 20 years ago. And her heart still chose this man today.
Angélique slowly sank down to the floor until she knelt facing him at the same height. The tears she had held back for so long ran freely down her face.
Joffrey looked up. When he noticed her tears, he flinched, and a deep shock was reflected in his eyes.
Slowly Angélique extended her free hand. She placed her fingers on his cheek — the cheek she had struck in anger before. But now she stroked the skin there with infinite tenderness. She sought his gaze until their eyes were firmly anchored in each other.
In the silence of the hut, while her hand still touched his face, she said quietly:
“I love you. I loved you then… and I love you today.”
She paused, her gaze remained fixed on him as she continued:
“If you can take me as I am, I give you the same promise.”
Joffrey pulled her into his arms. He clutched her with an intensity as if he feared he would lose her again in the next moment. Angélique held onto him just as tightly, and both wept. It was a deep, shattering weeping in which the pain of the years, the loneliness, and the burden of their struggles broke through. It took a long time until they calmed down, until only the steady breathing of the other could be heard, while they simply held on to each other, unable to let go.
Finally Joffrey pulled back a little and asked quietly, his voice still hoarse from tears: “What happens next?”
Angélique looked at him silently. In his eyes she recognized: If she demanded that he give up his splendor and live with her in this sparse hut, he would do it. If she demanded that he work by her side, he would do it. He would tear himself apart internally to fulfill his responsibility as Rescator on the one hand and be the man she demanded at her side on the other.
She looked at him and understood in that moment that she did not want to impose this burden on him. She did not want him to break trying to unite two worlds.
Slowly she leaned forward. It was a deliberate, calm movement. She kissed him gently on the lips — a kiss that was not desire, but a promise.
Then she looked at him and asked quietly: “Does the Rescator have a place for me at his side?”
Epilogue
A few months later, the Gouldsboro lay at anchor in the harbor of Salem, and her masts rose proudly into the winter sky. In the large captain’s cabin it was warm; the fire crackled in the fireplace, and on the table lay not only the Rescator’s maps but also the correspondence of the trading company that Angélique now managed with her own hand.
Joffrey sat by the window examining a document, but his gaze kept wandering to Angélique. She wore a dress of dark velvet — precious and appropriate for her status, but simple enough to work in.
When a young officer entered to receive instructions for the next cargo, he instinctively turned first to the Rescator. But Joffrey raised his hand and pointed to Angélique.
“The Marquise has completed the inventory of the furs and grain,” Joffrey said calmly. “Her decision in this matter is final.”
The officer bowed deeply before Angélique, and she gave her orders with the clarity and authority she had learned in the gutters of Paris. She was not a trophy he displayed beside him. She was the partner at his side. The co-creator of their shared success.
When they were alone again, Joffrey stepped up to her. In his gaze lay no longer condescending pride, but genuine admiration for a partner who steered the same course as he.
Angélique looked at him and smiled freely and openly.
She had found her place at his side. And Joffrey had learned to be strong enough to share his wealth, his power, and his life with her.