“That’s certainly one way of looking at it,” Thomson said. He lifted his own cup and took a drink.
“No,” del Rio countered with a smile, “it is the right way. I am always right about such things.”
His first mate drily said, “And always very modest.”
“Naturally.” The captain looked across at Mary. “But what were we speaking of before? Ah yes, Rome. You will enjoy it, Mrs. Symonds. It is an enchanting place for lovers—it perhaps will be an inspiration to your husband to show you more affection, yes?”
Mary had briefly considered what role she should play with this man. She had wondered if she should be lively and just a bit foolish, like the younger sister who’d been in the diligence with them, or maybe more confident like Mistress Jamieson, but having just watched him closely now dealing with Thomson, she judged that her best defense would be to play no role, for he would surely be able to spot that she wore a disguise, and it would do no more than increase his suspicions. So when she replied to him now she was none but herself. Only Mary.
“Affection,” she said, “need not be on display to be deeply and honestly felt, and sometimes it is all the more honest for being held privately.”
He raised one shoulder slightly in a gallantly amused shrug that permitted her to score the point. “This may be true. It’s certain Emiliana and myself hold many things in private.” Reaching out, he stroked the Spanish woman’s forearm where it rested on the table, let his fingers linger on her skin beneath the lacy ruffle at her elbow, and his touch seemed genuinely loving. “She knows all my secrets, yes?” He shared the smile Emiliana turned to him, and then looked back at Mary. “As I am sure you know your husband’s.”
Sitting back, he waited while one of his servants took their plates away and served the main course of what looked like chicken pieces drowning in a dark-red sauce with vegetables and rice. And as the servant made the rounds to fill their cups with wine, del Rio said, “For instance, you would know this scar your husband has just here.” He touched his own neck briefly at the back, above his collar. “You would know where he acquired it.”
Mary felt the warning pressure of Hugh’s leg against her own beneath the table, and she knew del Rio was now testing her and this would be the first of who knew how many attempts to trap her into saying something that would show they could not possibly be married. She’d seen the scar, of course she had, but she had never asked about it, and although she could have very probably devised a story on the spot explaining it, she could not know for certain whether Hugh himself had told del Rio yesterday, while they were drinking, how he had received the wound. She felt Hugh’s deep frustration at not being able to advise her, guide her, keep her safe, and Mary knew a sudden rise of anger, not on her behalf, but his.
She set her cup down on the table. Met del Rio’s eyes. “My husband carries many scars,” she said, “as all men who have lived a life like his must do. There are some scars that show, and there are many, many more that he keeps hidden, and when you’ve discovered all of those, then you may try to test me on how well I know my husband. But until that day comes, Captain, I have little time for games.” Her tone was calm, but even she could hear the tremor of her righteous anger running underneath the words. “My husband is a private man, as is his right, and I’ll not take his secrets and expose them for the sake of proving something that his word alone should be the proof of. I’ll not do it. He’s a better man than any I have met in all my life, and if you choose to doubt the truth of our attachment you will have to doubt it, Captain, and be done with it, as I am done with answering your questions. He has told you what we are.”
The captain’s dark eyes slowly warmed with admiration. Gently he said, “And now you have told me also. Thank you, Mrs. Symonds.”
* * *
There were no more questions. No more tests.
They did not meet the dreaded Barbary corsairs, but on the second night the winds had changed and so the ship was held there wind-bound for above a week, with little they could do but find new ways to pass the hours and days, though Mary did not mind.
She found she liked this woman she had chosen now to be—this Mary Dundas, who had traveled and seen trouble and been changed by it; who had no longer any need to feign or borrow confidence but only sprinkle water on her own and pull the weeds that had been choking it and watch it grow each day a little more towards the sun. One evening at the captain’s table Mr. Thomson prompted Mary to retell one of her tales of the Chevalier de Vilbray, which she obliged him with, and then she offered, “Shall I tell a new tale? One entirely imaginary?”
And del Rio had thought this a splendid entertainment. “But the hero,” he had said, “must be a pirate hunter.”
“Quite the best of pirate hunters,” Mary had agreed.
“And you must name him…” He’d paused a moment in pretended thought, his dark eyes smiling in his very handsome face.
Mary had played along. “Marcos María del Rio Cuerda?”
“An excellent name,” he had told her, and settled back into his chair with his wine cup in hand while she’d started her story.
So that had been woven then into the pattern of all of their days on the ship, and each evening she’d told a new part of the tale of brave Captain del Rio outwitting corsairs and a Genoese bank and the whole British navy. The captain had greatly enjoyed this, except on the one night she’d tried to end one of his many romantic adventures in tragedy.
“No,” said the captain, “he never would leave the condesa like that. You must make a new ending.”
Mary had found that amusing. “What, just like that?”
“Why not? You are the one who is telling the story, the ending is yours to choose.”
“I choose the sad ending.”
“No one,” the captain had told her, with certainty, “would choose to leave the condesa. She’s very appealing. Now, tell that part over again, but this time let the captain find someone to cure her incurable fever. It will be much better this way.”
She had done as he’d asked.
“But,” she’d said to Hugh later that evening, while she’d played with Frisque in the cabin, “it really was better the first time I told it.”
He hadn’t replied. He’d been sitting at one of the chairs of their small table, with all three candles together before him, head bent above some little nautical instrument he’d found the day before that was not working. She’d looked at the gleam of the brass pieces held in his hands, and the small parts scattered over the top of the table, and she’d asked for interest’s sake, “Would you have chosen to stay with the countess?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“She fainted too much.”
“So you like a strong woman, then?”
He had glanced up very briefly, then down again. “Aye.”
And that glance had made Mary feel warm inside.
They had not touched since the night he had kissed her. He’d kept to his side of the cabin, and stepped out when needed to give her the privacy that she required, and behaved in all ways like an honorable man. But there were times she wished…well, she wished…
He’d distracted her thoughts by beginning to fit the brass pieces together again, turning screws with the point of his small knife and assembling the instrument till it was all as it ought to be, tidy and whole in his capable fingers. He’d set it down neatly upon the scarred wood of the table.
She’d said, “I would ask you a question.”
“Now, there’s a surprise.”
“How do you go from that,” she had said, nodding towards the small instrument, “fixing things, making things work, to—”
He’d finished the thought for her. “Killing them?”
“Yes.”
In the light of the candles she’d watched his mouth twist in the ghost of a smile, deep wit
h bitterness. She had expected his words to be bitter as well, but instead she had heard resignation in his level voice as he’d answered her, low, “Step by step.”
She had thought about that. “But surely, if you marked the steps as you made them, you could then turn round and retrace them and find your way back to the place you began,” she had reasoned. “Like taking the road that you left by, and letting it lead you back home.”
He had looked at her quietly. “Home is not always,” he’d said, “where ye left it.”
And that had been all he had said on the subject.
* * *
“A broken man,” Effie had said, “is a man who has left his clan, or been cast out of it. An outlaw.”
She had looked comfortable early the next morning, bundled in her hammock in the tiny cabin fitted in the ship’s prow. There was color in her cheeks again, and she’d had energy enough to make a thorough explanation of the system of the clans within the Scottish Highlands, each belonging to its lands and bound by ties of loyalty and blood, with a chief who looked after the whole of the clan and could claim all its members’ allegiance, the chieftains of various branches below him, and all of the other clan members arranged below that. “But a broken man,” she had concluded, “is shunned by his kin and no longer belongs to the land he was bred upon, and has no shelter or comfort but that he can scrape for himself.”
Mary had tried to absorb this. “But Hugh…that is, Mr. MacPherson says he’s not a broken man.”
“Then he is not. And it’s Hugh is it, now?” Effie’s eyes had been knowing. “What else has your Mr. MacPherson been telling ye, there in your cabin at night?”
“That I talk too much.” Mary had smiled and refused to be shamed. “He has made no improper advances, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It is, and I’m glad of it. But I’ll be gladder still,” Effie had told her, “to finally be back on dry land.”
She had found her wish granted three days after that, when at last having caught a fair wind, the Princesa Maria came safely to Civitavecchia.
Captain del Rio insisted on coming ashore with them. “I know the coachmen here who can be trusted to bring you to Rome. Also those who are not worth your trust, and in harbors like this there are many of those. You will have to be careful,” he said, “for I hear that the man at the root of this scandal in London, a man named John Thomson, is even now heading to Rome with a borrowed name.”
Mary could see, as before, the intelligence lighting the depths of his playful dark eyes.
“There will be many people, both here and at Rome, who are watching for this man,” del Rio remarked. “The reward is a large one, a great deal of money, for one who can capture him. Here, I have this from Marseilles.” Reaching into his pocket, he took out a cutting of newspaper, tidily folded. “It is his description, in case you might see him yourself.” The quick flash of his grin let them know beyond doubt he had known Thomson’s name all along. Maybe theirs too, thought Mary.
But when he bent gallantly over her hand, having found them a suitable coach that would carry them down from the harbor to Rome, he still said, “Mrs. Symonds. It has been a very great pleasure to know you. If ever you’re captured by corsairs, it would be my honor to rescue you.”
“Thank you.” Mary had carried her fur-lined cloak over her arm, while Hugh carried the dog and the bulk of their other things, but now she folded the softness and passed it to Captain del Rio. “For Emiliana,” she told him. She no longer needed it. No longer needed to borrow the plumage of some other bird when she’d learned how to fly on her own. “It’s a present, for taking such kind care of Effie. Please tell her I’m grateful.”
Kissing her hand with a warmth that would have done great credit to one of Madame d’Aulnoy’s heroes, del Rio straightened to face Hugh. “I’m thinking, Mr. Symonds, you must buy your wife the finest wedding ring in all of Rome, for how you won the love of such a woman I will never know. How did he do it?” he asked Mary.
Mary thought a moment, then she raised her chin and told the truth. “He watched me from afar when he believed I could not see him. He followed me when he believed that I was not aware of it. One day my gloves were stolen in the street, and he returned them to me. And,” she told the captain, simply, “that was our beginning.”
Feeling she could do no better for an ending to this chapter of their voyage, Mary turned towards the coach. Hugh stood beside its open door, his hand outstretched to help her. And he waited. For the first time, Mary laid her hand on top of his, and felt his hand turn so her fingers were enclosed within his own, a masculine protective touch that left her feeling cared for. Safe.
And Mary needed all of that to give her strength this morning. For by day’s end she would be in Rome, preparing for a meeting with her father. And the king.
Chapter 36
I didn’t like interviews. Didn’t do well at them.
Luc had assured me, “It’s only my brother.”
Which hadn’t been helpful. The fact that the man I’d be meeting at lunch was Luc’s brother made it imperative I do my best to impress him, since he wouldn’t only be judging me as a prospective employee but as someone worthy of Luc. When I’d tried to explain this last night, Luc had hugged me. “He’ll like you, don’t worry. Just be yourself.”
“I don’t have the right clothes for an interview.”
“Fabien’s very informal, he’ll be wearing jeans. So should you, if we’re taking the bike. He’ll care more about what’s in your head than what outfit you’re wearing.”
That still hadn’t stopped me getting up early this morning and trying on all of the clothes in my wardrobe before I had settled on one combination I liked, and then taking a full sixteen minutes to tie and retie the blue scarf Luc had bought me in Paris, until its folds lay in a perfect arrangement. The clock on the chest of drawers had been my lifeline, and when I had later gone downstairs to wait, I’d relied on the stately and competent pendulum swings of the old longcase clock in the dining room, and at 10:50 precisely I’d stepped out to wait on the terrace, deferring in turn to the time display that I refreshed on my mobile with rhythmic, predictable clicks.
I could see the top part of Luc’s house from here, over the wall at the back of the garden. I’d hear the Ducati start; hear when he rode up the lane and around to come fetch me.
He’d said he would fetch me. He’d said, “If we leave at eleven, we’ll get there in plenty of time.”
I had managed to stay fairly calm till the moment the time on my mobile read: 10:58.
Because if he were going to start the Ducati and ride it around to collect me, two minutes was really the minimum time he would need.
I refreshed the display again: 10:59.
I had started to pace. He was coming, I told myself. Ordinary people weren’t hung up on time in the same way I was. I should try to stay calm.
I should go there. It was now exactly 11:00, and Luc’s house was so close I could cross the garden and go through the door in the wall and be there at his door in the time it would take me to text him or call him. Yes, that’s what I’d do. I had already paced to the end of the terrace, so walking the final short distance across the back garden and through the door into the lane seemed a logical step.
The Ducati was parked in its place at the side of Luc’s house so I knew he’d be home when I knocked at the door, and before I could start with my pacing again he had answered it.
He had his hand to his ear and it took me a second to realize that he was midway through a phone call. “Hang on a minute, Geoff,” he told the caller, and muted the mobile to kiss me hello.
“It’s 11:02,” I said. “We need to go.”
“Yes, I know. Sorry. My boss,” he explained, as he held up the mobile. “Come have a seat. We’re just finishing up now, it won’t take a minute.” He turned as he said that and crossed to the di
ning room table to study the screen of the laptop computer on top of it while he unmuted his phone and continued, “Thanks. Now, read me the numbers he gave you?”
He didn’t understand, I thought. Unless we left now, we’d be late. It wouldn’t matter what his brother thought of me, of how my mind worked—no one hired a person who turned up late to an interview.
I tried to breathe more normally, feeling in my pocket for my pen and my Sudoku puzzles, only to discover I’d forgotten them.
The last time I’d worried this much about being late, when I’d first come to Claudine’s and my cousin had taken her time getting ready for breakfast, at least I’d been able to take matters into my own hands and go down alone, but that wasn’t an option here. I wasn’t in control of how I got into Paris. I had to rely on Luc.
“We need to go.”
I wasn’t sure if I’d said those words audibly, my mouth had gone so dry, and Luc seemed not to have heard me.
The hall was too narrow. I took a step into the sitting room but that was worse. There was music here playing from some source I couldn’t see, not loud but vaguely discordant, like jazz. And the trees outside made moving shadows across the wall next to the window, so that to my eyes the light seemed to be flickering. Squeezing my eyes shut, I fought back the impulse to cover my ears.
No, I told myself silently. No, no, no, no…
I couldn’t have a meltdown. Not in front of Luc. Not here.
I rarely had them anymore. I’d learned to recognize the warning signs and knew the ways to calm myself before things overwhelmed me, but already I was losing my ability to concentrate. I knew Luc was still talking on his mobile but I couldn’t hear the words. The sounds around me blended into one confusing jumble, and I started trembling as the feeling of compression settled over me, as though the air around me had grown thick and heavy, closing in. In panic I clenched and unclenched my hands, making tight fists and releasing them, trying to keep control.
Forcing my eyes open, I braved the stabbing bright pain of the light as I focused on Luc and said urgently, “We need to go.”