HerOutlandishStranger

by Summer Devon

  The trickle of his spending slipped down her leg and she longed to touch it.

  “Are you, um, hurt, Liza?” He’d come back to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Was I too rough?”

  She leaned against him. “No, I’m not used to the sensation. But I am not chafed. Oh, it was good, wasn’t it?”

  His smile was worried. “Yes. But we can’t—it won’t.”

  “What?”

  He shook his head, gently steadied her and picked up the packs again.

  They walked.

  “We’re beyond the Portuguese border,” Jas said as they slogged along a hilly road. “We’ve changed course even farther south.”

  She rolled her eyes. Her Jas was a coward and wouldn’t talk about their lovemaking again. “Why is that?”

  “Badajoz will bring real bad news. Huh. Too far south and we hit Cadiz which’ll be a problem.”

  Eliza laughed. “Once again you have calmly stated information you have no way of knowing. How do you know? You have heard or seen no more than I have.”

  “The CR isn’t entirely useless, thank goodness,” he answered absently.

  “And who or what is this Seer—or is it Seyare? Perhaps some woman’s name?”

  He looked up then and stared at her as he rubbed the back of his neck. She was reminded of the first time she’d seen him, and other moments she wondered if he was perhaps touched or a fool. Whatever else he was, she no longer believed that theory.

  The corner of this mouth twitched into what she thought of as his reassuring smile. “The seer that, ah, can see things. It’s just a useful bit of wood. From my country.” He tapped the piece of wood he carried. “No big secret, just a seer.”

  She stared at him for a long moment. And silently reached out her hand.

  After a moment, he put the cool and heavy oval shape of wood into her palm. “Please don’t drop it,” he said in a casual voice that didn’t deceive her for a second.

  She looked at him rather than the plain, highly-polished object in her hand. He folded his arms as if to keep himself from grabbing it back.

  She studied it then and touched it with a fingertip. Someone must have spent hours sanding the object for it felt smoother than any wood she’d felt before. It seemed so glossy it appeared to glow. “Is it of a-a religious nature?”

  He shrugged. “Sort of, I suppose. Aren’t all seers?”

  “But your predictions have the uncomfortable habit of being right,” she murmured.

  He grinned at her and the tension in her eased. “I am lucky, eh?”

  She pressed and prodded the wood. A solid block of a tree. Something like cherry wood, perhaps, though heavier. Nothing more.

  A part of her continued to protest. But what about when the Latin poured from his mouth? What about the magical cure? She pressed her lips tight and decided she would ignore the pestilential voice.

  She answered lightly, “Ah. We shall do as your seer suggests now, shall we?”

  “Of course. ‘Why ever not’, as you’d put it.” He took the wood she handed back to him and dropped it casually into a pocket. Not the way to treat a sacred object.

  She felt obscure relief. Surely he was sharing some sort of joke with her. His humor was often outlandish, after all.

  They climbed a hill and watched a small convoy of Portuguese soldiers and their followers, slowly wending its way through the valley below. Jas watched the battered wagons at the rear of the group.

  “They’re Cacadores returning to their country. Should be safe,” he said at last. “Do you speak any Portuguese?”

  She shook her head. “Not more than a few phrases.”

  He swung their bags onto his back and started down the hill. “They look so exhausted I doubt they’d care if we spoke French,” he said over his shoulder. “We’ve got more than seventy miles left to go, but we’ll go much faster now. And it should discourage my friend.”

  The attacker. She’d almost forgotten his countryman who’d tried to kill him.

  The crowd in the back, mostly composed of women, plodded after several farm carts that served as supply wagons. Liza doubted if such a weary crew would let strangers get a chance at boarding any of the wagons, but she didn’t count on Jas’ persistence. He produced some money and a dead hare that he offered to the man driving one of the carts.

  Eliza found herself surrounded by sacks of what might have been flour and barrels that reeked of near-spoiled meat. Several other women and a handful of children sat on a straw-covered, creaking wagon. The women with matted hair mostly covered by once brightly colored kerchiefs, their expressionless faces weathered and tanned, looked at her without curiosity. One nodded, but no one spoke or returned her tentative smile.

  She wedged herself between two sacks. When she tried to engage one of the toddlers, her efforts at peek-a-boo were met with a blank dark-eyed stare.

  After a time, she looked away, over the dark heads. She easily picked out Jas’ broad shoulders and gilded head and she wished she could walk with him.

  In the evening, Jas steered the two of them away from the convoy. Despite Eliza’s expectation, that night she found that Jas lay planted at the edge of the blanket, his back to her again. She put her face against his shoulder. Could he possibly pretend they had not kissed and held each other? She ran a finger along the shell of his ear. He made a muted strangled noise. An unhappy one.

  Well, hang it then, she thought furiously. She was not about to throw herself at him. Not again. So she pushed her own back against his, and tucked her hands between her curled knees, just to make sure they didn’t somehow betray her lust. She ignored the silent wail of frustration of her body, her fast breath and the heartbeat that pounded in her ears, her skin too aware of his warmth along her spine. The cacophony of her body kept her lying awake longer than usual.

  Jazz knew Eliza was hurt by his rejection. But he did not know what else he could do. Somehow the fact that he loved her wove into his reasoning. He couldn’t allow the bond to grow stronger. She had to find the next man in her life.

  His family often called Jazz stubborn, and he’d never felt more miserably stubborn in his life.

  He felt Eliza’s heat as well as her angry twitches and shudders against his back as she settled for the night. He fought the urge to roll over and get it over with.

  “Over with” was the phrase too. He could imagine saying the words. Something along the lines of, “Oh by the by, Eliza, I’m the father of that baby. I’m the guy who took advantage of you when you couldn’t say no. In case you don’t remember, and I bet you don’t since you were drugged at the time—I took you twice. Still wanna make love again?”

  He’d have to tie her to him to keep her from running away after that.

  He cursed himself and his nagging desire and ridiculous scruples. And for good measure, he cursed the DHU.

  *

  The next day, Eliza decided she’d had enough of the cart.

  They’d stopped to rest and she carefully skirted her way through the seated groups to find him. When the cry came down the line to start moving again she told him no.

  “There are too many people suffering more than I am, Jas. If you must bribe the man, do it for the sake of the poor woman over there carrying the baby.” She pointed to a pale, listless woman with a restless child on her hip.

  Without a word, Jas walked over to the woman and with gestures, offered to take the girl, who was about two years old. The frail woman, who appeared exhausted even after the rest period, gave him a long stare, then handed over the child. The little girl promptly started yelling and squirming, trying to get back to her mother.

  “Go on, then,” he said, nodding to Eliza, as he made sure the energetic girl didn’t tip up and out of his arms. “Get up.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “The old woman over there, then. Or the soldier with the injured leg. Not me. I am far too hale.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Right, fine. Your call.”

  After a glanc
e at the sallow, too-thin mother, he shifted the protesting little girl and easily hefted her onto his shoulder. She immediately stopped her wails and grabbed two fistfuls of Jas’ hair to steady herself. She started shouting to her mother.

  Eliza laughed. “I think she is crowing that she has a seat as high as a mountain.”

  They walked together, mile after mile, with Jas toting the little girl, whose name was Vidonia, most of the way. Vidonia insisted on clambering down once or twice, but in a few minutes decided she could not walk fast enough. After a quick wave to her mother, Vidonia ran back to Jas and tugged imperiously at his trouser leg.

  Jas had said the whole aim of joining the convoy was to allow Eliza to rest. She strongly suspected he arranged it so they would not be alone together and tempted to make love. One hundred bedraggled soldiers and their followers acting as chaperone.

  Yet after they met Vidonia, even Eliza didn’t talk about striking out on their own. Neither of them mentioned the little girl, though after the next break, and then in the morning, Jas and Eliza went to gather up Vidonia from her mother. Now when Vidonia saw them coming, she skipped over and held her arms up to Jas. His teeth flashed in a smile as his strong hands easily swung the tiny girl up. Eliza’s breath hitched as she watched. Another portrait of Mr. White.

  He walked with the girl perched on his shoulders or on his side and every now and then, the two of them talked nonsense, laughing at each other’s silly languages. Occasionally they all three sang together, though rarely the same song.

  “Hickory Dickory Dog,” Vidonia crowed.

  Jas grinned over at Eliza. “She’s a smart thing, eh? And funny. Never knew kids…” But the words died. He looked away and pressed his mouth into a thin line.

  She resisted the urge to point out that she knew him too well and he hadn’t managed to hide his train of thought. He remembered another child, still unborn, that he could care for and play with some day, if he agreed to marry Eliza.

  They continued to sleep near, though not in, the crowded campsites of the convoy, but they sat with the girl and her mother for rests and meals, and Jas even offered Vidonia’s pale mother one of his strange brown squares. During a particularly fierce rainstorm, Jas wrapped his cloak over the little girl and himself. He walked along, looking as if he had a strange growth on his side.

  When Jas and Eliza left the convoy, Vidonia cried as her mother peeled her from Jas’ arms.

  He said nothing, but sighed and rubbed the back of his neck.

  They stood and waved until the convoy was out of sight.

  Chapter Twelve

  They trudged over the hills into Lisbon with no trouble, attracting only the attention of a few British and Portuguese riflemen standing on the hillside defending the city, although it looked very much like most of their attention was directed toward some sort of game playing with dice. When Eliza called out a cheery, “Good morning” to the group, the men stared at her, but waved them on. A dark-haired one came strolling over to greet them. She examined him. No of course he wasn’t the man from the cave. But she pressed close to Jas and shuddered. He looked down at her with a curious frown.

  As they made their way through the city, Eliza watched Jas’ face as he gaped at the elaborate houses with their wrought-iron balconies perched on narrow streets.

  “Never seen anything like this before,” he muttered.

  “Hmm,” she said and wondered what cities he had visited. She thought of asking, but she was not in the mood for his evasive answers.

  Jazz managed to book passage for them less than an hour after they made their way down to the Doca de Alcântara.

  “I shudder to imagine how much you paid to get such a quick response,” Eliza whispered.

  “Not as much as I’d expected. Bribes and fares are low these days.”

  At the dock, an official snapped out a demand to see documentation.

  “A sec,” Jazz said to Eliza. She looked at him, bewildered.

  “Please wait here for one moment,” he explained and guided her to a low stone wall. “You can admire the view for a few minutes.”

  He started to walk off when a pair of ragged sailors strolling by stopped and ogled Eliza. She ignored their suggestions and, sighing, wrapped her shawl around herself. During her travels with her father she had run into men such as these.

  Jazz growled and narrowed his eyes at the ragged men. Eliza hid her smile when she saw him put a menacing hand on the pommel of his sword.

  His stance reminded her again of the portrait of the French musketeer. Really, how had she managed to lead life without her own guard?

  The two men swept her a tipsy bow then lurched on.

  “You good?” Jazz asked.

  “Fine. I shan’t budge from this spot,” she reassured him, and twisted away to grin and look out over the water.

  Jazz trotted around the corner of the shed, giving a pile of rotting fish guts a wide berth. The smells of the fish and a bucket of nearby tar mixed with the dirty harbor’s stench. How could the natives stand it? He pulled a few sheets of folded grimy, blank paper from his bag.

  He’d frequently used this system at home, so it really would only take seconds. He pulled the CR out of his pocket and for a moment looked down at it with chagrin, remembering how he’d told Liza he got his information from the CR.

  What a dim-bonk he’d been with her lately. He’d spent so much time with her and had opened too far. He’d forgotten there were any closed subjects left. There were plenty of facts he could not touch, he reminded himself. The old refrains sang through his head. Do your mission and nothing more. For the sake of civilization. Wouldn’t do to have civilization fall apart just because some idiot agent fell in love, would it now?

  He quickly found the copies he needed in the archives and made a few changes. With a reasonably steady hand, he pulled the CR across the blank paper, its beam made a duplication from the archive. The handheld copy method was a bit wobbly—not as good as the ones made with better equipment, which would be impossible to distinguish from the original. But these would do the job. He made one set of papers for himself and another for Eliza. Mr. and Mrs. Peasnettle, he decided, had an absurd ring that would amuse Liza.

  “How did you come by these?” she asked, folding her new papers as they moved past the waving guard to the dock. “I know you are resourceful, yet sometimes I feel you must be a wizard.”

  He grinned. “Strictly white magic, Liza.”

  She seemed ready to ask more questions so he pointed to the man with a smoking bowl on the end of a stick, which was thrust in his mouth.

  Jazz’d seen a few of these weird things in Spain. “What is that man doing?” he asked her in a low voice.

  He immediately knew that he’d once again shown the side of the ignorant stranger.

  Yeah, he was stupid to display his vast ignorance, but all the same, he enjoyed watching her delicate eyebrows fly up in amazement. Her training as a polite and tactful young lady and her avid curiosity clashed when he said or did something odd. He could see the whole enchanting battle on her face now.

  “He is smoking a pipe, Mr. White.” Her mouth twitched and she began to laugh. The tactful lady lost the battle for she blurted, “I cannot believe you do not know what a pipe is.”

  “You call me strange,” he retorted. “Why would anyone want to breathe noxious fumes?”

  “I do not understand either. Pipes and cheroots are a male habit. My father enjoyed snuff.” Her smile disappeared; he supposed because she thought of her father. “He swore it gave him a sense of calm. When he allowed me to sample some, I sneezed so often and violently I thought my poor nose would fall off.”

  She shook her head again. “But truly, Jas, I don’t know how you could not know that.”

  “I’ve led a sheltered life.” He firmly led her toward the docks. That proved to be a distraction. She uneasily eyed the creaking ship.

  “Ah. Did I tell you that I was very seasick on the journey to Spain?”
>
  He fought the urge to curse. “And you weren’t carrying a babe then. Thank you for the warning.”

  “My goodness.” She gave an uncertain laugh. “I believe you have seen me be sick even more than my old nurse did. Oh, I am sorry I shall once again be a burden to you. If only there was some way—”

  “We will both be fine, Eliza. I’ll make sure of that. Don’t worry.” No point in fretting if he was the type to be seasick too. If she needed help, he’d give it even if he was on the edge of death.

  *

  The sail to Coruna was a pleasant surprise. Eliza stood on the deck and breathed in the thick salt air. Despite the steady breeze, the boat plowed though a gentle ocean.

  She beamed at Jas. “Wonderful.”

  He leaned against the deck rail. The color of the sea looked dull in contrast to the blue of his eyes. The breeze stirred his impossibly fair hair.

  “Yes, it is,” he said solemnly. “Your cheeks are pink, your eyes are sparkling. You look like a-a mer-whatsit. Mermaid.”

  “Are you flirting with me, Mr. White?”

  The corners of his mouth turned up in a slow grin. “A bit, I suppose.”

  She laughed. “You are not certain? We are both sadly out of practice.”

  “Huh. So flirting is something you have to practice? Like music?”

  A lock of her hair had gotten loose from the braid she had pinned to the back of her head. She twisted it around her fingers coyly. “Of course, sir.”

  “And you learned during your Season in London?”

  She tensed at that falsely casual tone. He wanted to know more of that dreadful time.

  He must have sensed her discomfort, for his own smile vanished. He pushed away from the railing and walked to her side. His fingers reached out and he tucked the lock of hair behind her ear.

  “Tell me the rest of it,” he coaxed.

  “The rest of what?” She stalled.

  “Tell me why you look haunted when I mention your country. Did you agree to marry the Brian jerk?”

  “No, I didn’t. I could not bring myself to say yes to him once I knew I was not going to have a baby.”