CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The first time Kitty had ever ventured out of Rosneath Manor alone, she was five years old. Nearly a year in full had passed since she had lost her sight to fever, and she had long-since grown restless at her veritable imprisonment in the house. Her bedroom had been moved to the first floor, as John had not wanted her trying to go up and down the stairs, handicapped as she was. Thus, it had not taken much for Kitty to plot and execute her escape. She had waited until she was left alone, away from the prying eyes of the manor staff under the pretense of taking a nap, and then she had simply opened the window and climbed outside.
It had not taken her long to realize the grievous error in her judgment. She had tried counting her footsteps; that much by means of navigation, she had already learned, but she had stumbled and fallen, and in the process, had lost her sense of direction. She had been as helpless as a ship with a maimed rudder, her hands outstretched, her breath hiccuping in frightened dismay as no matter which direction she tried to follow, or how many steps she took, she could not find the outer walls of Rosneath again. Her fear had only increased as she had remembered that the house had been built near the cliffs to award a striking view of the Solent. Every clumsy step she offered brought her potentially closer to these cliffs―and a very steep plummet to a very rough-hewn and rock-lined beach below.
It felt as though she blundered about for hours, even though she knew in retrospect it had likely been less than fifteen full minutes. She had struggled not to cry out or weep; the fear of John Ransom’s scolding had been stronger than any of her predicament. At last, her outstretched, groping hands had settled against the stone exterior of the house, and she had been safe. She had patted about the perimeter until finding her opened window, and she had ducked back inside, none the worse for the adventure, and not missed in the slightest during her absence.
The experience had taught her a number of lessons. First, she had never ventured off on her own again without taking one of her father’s walking sticks with her, that she might tap it against the ground and guide herself around potential obstacles. Second, and most importantly, Kitty had learned that she was not nearly as helpless as her father and so many others had come to believe.
She had come to believe that, to have faith in herself despite her handicap for a long time. But now, as she sat against the floor of her cell in the hold aboard La Venganza, drawing the thin, wool blanket from her bunk about her shoulders, she found herself utterly without confidence or hope. She huddled there, rocking back and forth, in a state of terror-stricken shock.
I am in terrible trouble now, she thought. God help me, I do not know how I am going to get out of this one.
She felt as helpless as when she had first stumbled on the grounds of Rosneath and realized she was lost; as much on the brink of raw panic now as she had been on that afternoon in her youth. She struggled not to weep, to collect her thoughts and calm herself somehow, but the effort was futile.
Her mind drew her back to a comforting time, the afternoon in which Rafe had examined her eyes, when she had harbored the idiotic and fleeting hope that perhaps his Spanish methods of medicine would be able to conclude something more than English physicians had ever prescribed. When he had been unable to, she had felt foolish for her own childish expectations, and disappointed to yet again realize that the world of darkness that encompassed her would never be broken.
She wept and he held her; Kitty remembered the gentle strength in his arms, the press of his fingers against her, the warmth and fragrance of his skin, the soft tangle of his hair against her cheek. He felt wonderful to her, and she felt sheltered against him as he held her near and stroked his hand against her hair, murmuring softly to her in comfort.
“I am sorry,” she said at last, trying to control herself. She leaned back from him, swatting at her tear-stained cheeks with her hands. She sniffled loudly and forced a smile. “It…it was foolish for me to have hoped.”
“Do not say that,” Rafe said, touching her face, pressing his palm against her cheek. “It is never foolish―only a coward never knows hope, Kitty, and you are likely the most courageous person I have ever met.”
She laughed again. “Oh, yes,” she said, pleased and embarrassed all at the same time by his words. “I am quite the brave one indeed as I sit here sniveling all over your shirt on account of a diagnosis I have had fourteen years to grow accustomed to…”
His other palm had cradled her opposite cheek and she had heard the soft jangling of the chains binding them―a sound she missed now, because it had meant he was always near to her, just within her reach.
“You are braver for it than I could ever be,” he said, his quiet, earnest tone drawing her silent. “Some people grow bitter and angry for their handicaps, like my brother Cristobal. But rather than try to punish the world for what happened to you, as he has done, Kitty, you found a new place for yourself in it―you did not let your blindness prevent you. You opened the window and crawled outside, and even though you were lost for a time, and frightened, it did not keep you from doing it again.”
“And again,” Kitty remarked, thinking of the countless childhood misadventures spent floundering around the grounds of Rosneath. “And again, and again…” She shook her head, laughing quietly. “I did not have the sense to quit.”
“You did not have the heart to quit,” Rafe told her.
She felt him draw near to her, his breath against her lips, and thought he meant to kiss her. At the time, she had dismissed this idea as readily as she had entertained it; she thought Rafe was in love with Isabel. But his sudden proximity, the soft hush of his voice, the delicate friction as he drew his thumb against her cheek in a glancing caress, it had all stirred a fluttering, pleasant sensation within Kitty, and for that moment, she had wanted him.
“I would never have climbed outside in the first place,” he said at last, instead of kissing her. He leaned back from her; she felt his breath against her no longer. “I would have been too afraid because I had been told not to.”
“You have your own kind of courage, Rafe,” she said, disappointed, but trying to disguise it with a forced note of light cheer. “For a man who claims to know little or nothing about the sea, you captained this ship from Mallorca to England.”
She touched his face. She had memories of how people had looked to her as a child, the physical appearance of facial features and structures, and how each and all complemented the others. Although she could never glean a mental impression of what someone’s appearance might be simply by touch, she had grown to appreciate beauty as she had redefined it from her tactile perspective.
Rafe had a perfectly symmetrical face, with arching cheeks, a strong jawline and tapered chin, a high brow and long, narrow nose. His lips were thin, and he smiled as she touched them, his mouth unfurling beneath her fingertips.
He was the most handsome man she had ever met.
“No, I let Claudio sail this ship from Mallorca to England,” he countered with a laugh. He ducked away from her caress, as if it disconcerted him. “At least I possessed that modicum of wits about me―and if I had a touch more, I would simply give my father’s ships and estate to him. He could drop me off in Lisbon so that I could make my way north to Fatima and spend the remainder of my days there as a el mago bendito, a miracle-worker like Lucio.”
Rafe was gone now. Cristobal had told her he was dead, and she had heard enough of his choked cries of inarticulate anguish in La Coruna to believe it was true. He was gone, and Kitty’s father was somewhere out in the big, wide, open expanse of the sea, possibly days from rescuing her―or maybe even weeks.
Or maybe he will never come, she thought, hiccuping on her tears, feeling them slide down her face one by one, in rapid succession. Rafe was wrong. It is foolish to hope. I have been a fool all along―not courageous but a fool, and now Rafe is dead for it. Daddy may be next, and as for me…
“I am all alone,” she whispered. God have mercy, and I am so very frightened. She press
ed her hand over her mouth the muffle the sounds as she began to weep. She drew her legs up and tucked her forehead against her knees, shuddering beneath her blanket as sobs wracked her narrow form.