Spanish Serenade

by Jennifer Blake

  Pilar followed his arrested gaze. Refugio was awake and watching them with quiet care.

  It was one of his few moments of awareness.

  Refugio did not rouse again, not in the day that followed, or the next, or the next. He wanted nothing, needed nothing, required only to be left alone. He lay with eyes closed for long periods, though it was not possible to tell if he was conscious or unconscious, asleep or awake. Sometimes he stared at the ceiling or gazed at whoever was talking, but seemed neither to see nor hear. It did not appear to matter who came and went, what was said or done. He did not respond to Isabel's pleas for him to drink or to Baltasar's gruff demands to know what he thought he was doing, starving himself. There was no sense that he did not know where he was or who was with him, only that he no longer cared enough to acknowledge these things. He had retreated somewhere inside himself and was entrenched there. Whether it was the result of fever and his injury in combination with years of upheaval, or only of his own inviolable will, they could not tell.

  Doña Luisa, some forty-eight hours after her first visit, brought Refugio a posset. She had made it with her own hands, she said, an art she had learned from her mother. It was made of wine and spices and a few other ingredients that were guaranteed to give him rest. Pilar, who was alone with him at that moment, eyed the cup of dark and steaming liquid with distaste and more than a little suspicion.

  “Rest,” she said, “is something Refugio has had in plenty. What he needs is nourishment.”

  “What do you know of such things?” the other woman said, her eyes flashing in annoyed chagrin that someone would contradict her. “Under your care he fades away before our eyes!”

  The strain of the long days had had its effect on Pilar's temper. “That may be, but I will not allow you to force your witch's brew on him.”

  “Witch's brew! How dare you! You forget yourself, my girl. You are only his woman, not his wife.”

  “And what are you, pray?”

  “His friend!”

  “Oh, yes, so long as his friendship provides you pleasure and the price isn't too high.”

  “Why, you little — I would know what to call you if I were not too much the lady. He can't go on like this, or he will die. He will die and you will be to blame, if you will let no one help him.”

  Pilar was suddenly tired, as if she carried a great weight that none could remove. “Just go away,” she said. “Take your posset and drink it yourself, use it for a mouth refresher or hair restorer or anything you please, only go away.”

  She shut the door in the other woman's face. After a moment there came a most unladylike exclamation from the other side of the door panel, then the clack of heeled slippers in withdrawal. Pilar stood listening a moment. She almost wished that she had taken the posset, if only in order to dispose of it herself. It was always possible for another one to be made, of course, so it was unlikely to make a difference. This constant vigilance was wearing. It would be nice to be certain that it had a purpose.

  She turned from the door, glancing at the berth in what had become a fixed habit. Refugio lay watching her. His face, though flushed with fever and shaded with the stubble of his dark beard, was set in stolid composure. Yet for an instant she thought she saw the sheen of amusement in his eyes.

  She moved to the berth and knelt beside it in a billow of skirts. Reaching for the cloth lying in a pan of water left close to hand, she moistened his dry lips. His regard was focused on her face but was lifeless once more, as though the direction of his gaze was no more than an accident.

  Putting down the cloth, she took up a cup of water and held it to his mouth, tipping it a little so that a small amount ran between his teeth. He swallowed once, twice, his strong brown throat moving with difficulty but plainly, though it was hard to say if the action was from thirst or simple reflex.

  She straightened, considering him. She put the water cup aside, then turned back. Her voice quiet, almost reflective, she said, “What is it? What's wrong. I know you're hurt and weak, but I can't believe a man of your strength can't mend. I refuse to believe that you want to die.”

  There was no answer, no recognition that he had heard. She went on. “You can't die, I won't let you. We all need you. Without you, what hope does Vicente have of being freed? What chance is there that Charro will ever reach his home again, or that he and Baltasar and Isabel and Enrique will not be taken up by the police the minute they reach Havana? And what chance do I have of catching up to Don Esteban or getting back even a portion of what he has taken from me? And if I don't get it back, how will I live? What will become of me?”

  The reply she waited for did not come. After a time she closed her eyes. She was so tired, so very tired. She felt as if she were moving in a fog of fatigue, and her nerves jangled with what seemed like endless eons of being unable to sleep. More than that, she was angry, yes, angry, at Refugio for his continued lack of response to all they had done and were doing for him. But most of all she was angry at his desertion of them.

  He was so strong, so vital. It did not seem possible that he would simply give up, no matter how extensive his injuries. What could his passive behavior mean, then, except a deliberate withdrawal? That he had a reason, she could not doubt, and yet she was not sure that his body could sustain the effort he was requiring of it, the lack of real nourishment or movement. She did not care what he was doing; he must be made to abandon it.

  It seemed as if there must be something she could do to reach him, some words or act she could use to startle him into an awareness of his danger, some way she could seduce him from the course he had set himself. So much depended on it that it seemed, in the confusion of her exhaustion, that whatever she might try would be worth the cost.

  She reached for the cloth again, squeezing some of the water from it but leaving it fairly sodden. Drawing down the blanket that covered Refugio, she began to bathe his face and neck as she had done a thousand times over in the past days in the constant attempt to contain his fever. As she worked she spoke, almost to herself.

  “It's possible, I think, that your lying here like this has a deeper reason than just the attempt to kill you. I sometimes think that it may be because you know who did it, or think you know. Maybe you saw something, heard something, that gave away the identity of whoever paid your assailant. Possibly you are so soul-sick at the knowledge that you have no will to be well.”

  Was that a fleeting shadow of response behind his eyes? Had she, somehow, gained his attention?

  She drew the cooling cloth down his neck and over his shoulders with slow care, her gaze resting on his face. There was nothing there. A thoughtful frown between her eyes, she returned to what she was doing.

  She turned the cloth over, then dipped it into the hollows at his collarbones. Her movements smooth yet lingering, she trailed over the broad, hard-muscled planes of his chest on either side of his breastbone. She brushed down first one arm, then the other, and holding his wrists, wiped his hands, the broad backs and callused palms and each separate, well-formed finger.

  Bending, she swished her cloth in the cooling water and squeezed it out, then returned to her task.

  “What is it you want?” she asked in quiet contemplation as she circled his bandaging with care, then brushed across his abdomen underneath. “Are you making a target of yourself, is that it? Do you think that you can draw whoever tried to kill you here? Do you think your weakness will encourage them to try again?”

  There was an extra wet corner on the cloth. It left a trail of water across his abdomen that trickled to puddle in his navel. It was wetting the waistband of his linen under-breeches. Noticing it, Pilar swiped at the water but could not quite reach his navel, for the waistband covered it. Dropping the cloth back in the pan, she began to unbutton the waist of his underbreeches.

  He drew a soft, hissing breath.

  Pilar's movement stilled as she realized what she was doing and his consciousness of it. For a long moment she gazed at the area of fle
sh she had exposed, an area paler in color than his chest and marked by a line of tightly curling dark hair that disappeared under his last breeches buttons, an area that was board-hard with taut muscles. The slow beat of seconds passing seemed to sound with her heart's throbbing in her ears.

  Quickly, before she lost her courage, she raised her lashes to stare at him. There was sentient warmth in the dark gray of his eyes, and accusation.

  She drew a shaky breath and let it out slowly. “I really think that's it,” she said. “I think that this weakness of yours is feigned, a deliberate pose designed to entice whoever wants you dead to this cabin.”

  The dark centers of his eyes expanded, but still he made no answer.

  She moistened her lips, which had a tendency to tremble at the corners. Her voice no more than a whisper, she said, “I think that's it, but I can't be sure. There must be a way to make certain. All I have to do is find it.”

  9

  SHE WAITED FOR MOST of another week. She delayed until Refugio's followers had had several turns at watching with her through the long night hours, until they had each tried with useless pleas and commands, attempts at humor and even anger to rouse him. She waited until her weariness became so dense that she seemed to be walking in a dream, until she was certain there was nothing else to be done, or else that she would go mad from weighing the decision if she did not act. She waited until she could wait no longer.

  She almost abandoned the idea out of the misguided hope that it would not be necessary. On the morning after her confrontation with Refugio, his fever broke. Perspiration made a wet sheen on his bronze skin. It trickled from his hairline and pooled under his eyes and in the hollows of his collarbones. The dangerous flush faded from his face. His eyes became calmer. He took a little broth as nourishment and permitted himself to be bathed and shaved and changed into a fresh pair of underbreeches, since he had no nightshirt in his wardrobe. Still, his acceptance of these attentions was listless. He was as detached from them as if they had nothing to do with him. And he did not speak.

  It was his silence, the loss of that bantering, caustic, vigorous voice, that troubled Pilar the most. It was as if the most vital part of him had been extinguished, for that voice was the reflection of the complex operation of his mind. That it might be stilled by his own will was infuriating; that it might not was insupportable. The strain of not knowing which was more than she could bear. It was that loss, finally, that compelled her to go forward.

  It was late evening of what had been a perfect day. They had spent the best part of forty-eight hours in port in the Canary Islands, loading fruit and wine and Turkey carpets, plus another passenger or two. Then they had sailed with that morning's tide. The seas had been calm, the air balmy, and the breezes from the right quarter. There had been a red sunset that splashed rose and carmine, lilac and violet-blue and orange-gold across the western sky, and stained the water with opaline reflections. The last lingering flares of color shone through the open porthole of the cabin. They made pink gleams on the walls and dappled Pilar's arms and face with the iridescence of mother-of-pearl as she sat finishing her dinner, which had been brought on a tray. Refugio, who had already been fed the small amount of gruel he would take, lay propped on pillows, watching her. The refracted light, catching in his eyes, gave him a deceptive look of dazzled appreciation.

  The light began to fade with the swift fall of night common to these latitudes. As shadows gathered in the cabin, Pilar rose from the table, picked up her tray and set it outside the door. Shutting the door panel, she locked it. As she turned away she began to take the pins from her hair. It uncoiled in a thick rope that slowly loosened, becoming a dark gold swath across her shoulders and down her back to well past her waist. Loosening it with her fingers, she moved to the corner washbasin.

  She poured water from the can sitting ready into the basin, then washed her bands. Taking up a cloth, she wet it and squeezed it out, then ran it over her face and neck with slow care. Tossing back her hair, she put down the cloth, then began to unlace the bodice of her soft green silk gown with its open-fronted skirt.

  There was a polished-steel looking glass above the basin, small but adequate for the purpose. Pilar kept her gaze on it as she spread the laces of her whaleboned bodice wide, then slipped her arms from the sleeves and lifted the gown off over her head. She tossed the gown onto a chair. Next came her decorative top petticoat of yellow silk embroidered in forest-green. She kicked off her shoes and peeled the stockings from her legs, then untied the tapes of her under petticoats before letting them fall to billow around her ankles. She stepped out of them with swift grace and draped them on the chair also. Clad only in her shift with its low neck, three-quarter length sleeves, and short length which barely covered her knees, she took up her washing cloth again.

  Pilar had grown accustomed to making her toilette in front of Refugio; there had been no help for it since his injury. She had always preserved her modesty by taking care to draw one piece of clothing off only under the protective covering of another. She had also chosen times when she thought her patient slept, though sometimes she thought she heard a change in his breathing, which drew her attention, or else turned to find that he had shifted positions. When she looked, however, his eyes were always closed. Gradually, she had become used to his presence. Almost.

  She didn't know if Refugio was watching now. He had not been asleep when she began, of that much she was certain. She felt exposed, as if her shift was transparent. The breeze from the open porthole blew the thin material against her so it outlined every curve. It dried the moisture left on her skin as the cloth passed over it, causing goose flesh from the coolness and the prickling of her nerves in anticipation of the moment to come.

  Finally it was upon her.

  Her heart swelled inside her, pulsing with a heavy, jarring beat. Her hands shook, and she could feel the slow burning rise of a flush making its way to her hairline. She swallowed hard. Quickly, before she could change her mind, she opened the neckline of her shift, slid it from her shoulders and let it drop to the floor.

  She closed her eyes tightly, as if shutting out her own view would hide her nakedness. Doubt about the wisdom of what she was doing swept over her. If she stopped now, if she picked up her shift and skimmed back into it, she could pretend that letting it fall had been an accident. She could go on just as before; everything would be the same.

  But what would that help, what would it prove? No. She had discovered the one small weakness in Refugio's armor, and she must pursue it. She must, or they might all be lost.

  She bent her head so that the shining curtain of her hair slid forward, offering a degree of concealment. Behind it she reached to squeeze out the cloth once more. She ran it with minute care over her breasts and down her sides to her abdomen and thighs, which under their slender turns shimmered with dampness like palest alabaster. Moving in self-conscious grace, she lifted each leg, smoothing over the calves and ankles, bending to wipe even the soles of her feet. Her ablutions completed, she dropped the cloth and picked up her hairbrush. With lashes lowered, faintly quivering, she began to draw it through her tresses, removing the tangles, polishing the thick strands so they glowed with the sheen of old gold coins there in the gathering dusk.

  When she was done, she put the brush down. She breathed slowly once, twice, then turned with precision and care. Lifting her chin, she walked toward the berth where Refugio lay.

  He was awake, and he was watching.

  Pilar, seeing his gaze upon her, faltered, with the blood draining from her face. There was rage and frustration in his eyes, and something more that had the look of hunger. It was the last that gave her the courage to take the step that brought her to the edge of the berth. She refused to look at him again, however, as she sat down beside him.

  He recoiled from her in haste, retreating until his shoulders were against the bulkhead. His movement left her more room. She took it, because it seemed that if she did not lie down, she might
well slide off the edge of the berth to the floor. Trembling in every fiber, she lowered herself to recline on the mattress. She turned toward him, supporting herself on one elbow, then swung her legs up and stretched out beside him.

  For long moments neither of them moved or spoke. The breeze from the window flowed over them, ruffling the sheet that covered Refugio to the waist, lifting tendrils of Pilar's long hair so that they drifted toward him like delicately searching fingers. The bunk was so narrow that their legs touched from the thigh downward. The movement of the ship rocked them closer still, easing them together with a slow, plunging rhythm.

  His breathing was harsh, the rise and fall of his chest under his bandaging rapid. Concern touched Pilar. With a frown gathering between her eyes, she reached out toward him, placing her cool fingertips on the pulse at the strong hollow of his throat.

  He shot out his hand to catch her wrist in a bone-wrenching grip. His voice hoarse, grating with anger, he demanded, “Why?”

  Triumph moved deep inside her, a counterpoint to the strained terror that gripped her. She had to moisten her lips before she could speak. “Vanity, what else?” she answered with more bravado than she felt. “What woman could resist the possibility of bringing a man back to life?”

  “Try again. Try maudlin self-sacrifice brought on by pity in barrels, topped off with a layer of compassion.”

  “Oh, no, I've discovered the price for pitying you already. As for the rest, I wouldn't dream of trespassing on your territory.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I have my reasons for what I'm doing. They have nothing to do with self-sacrifice or compassion. Or with you.”

  “But they must if I'm required to play handmaiden and nursing drudge, not to mention sleeping on the floor.”