He sighed and turned his eyes to the bedding hanging from hooks on the wall. I have chores to do.
CHAPTER 4
The library of the Monteiro beach house was on the second floor. The décor was simple; centuries of living with the sea had taught the sereia to choose furniture and bedding that was easy to move to higher ground or abandon. A much larger collection of books waited at her grandmother’s mountain house, a location safer from the whims of the sea gods.
Gold draperies hung on those walls not covered by book-laden shelves. The fabric shimmered in the lamplight, making the room look rich and reminding Oriana of the opulent libraries she’d seen back in Portugal. A braided rug in mixed blues warmed her bare feet. There was a large rosewood table for opening out the folio-sized texts and a high-backed bench under a pendant lamp meant for more casual reading.
Her grandmother gestured toward the leather-bound books on one of the shelves at eye level. “If you’ll pull out those, please, child.”
Oriana pulled down the volumes on that shelf and stacked them neatly on the table. When the shelf was empty, she could see a small hole cut in the paneling behind it. Her grandmother handed her a dowel and, following her instructions, Oriana inserted the dowel in the hole and used it to push the paneling aside. It slid back to reveal a shelf in the stone wall behind the paneling. On that shelf was a strongbox made of cast iron with heavy rivets along the seams.
Oriana shot a glance at her grandmother. “When did you put that in here?”
“The shelf was here long before you were born, child,” Grandmother said, laughter in her tone. “The strongbox came from America about ten years ago. There’s a good trade in them here. Many fear that the bank in Porto Novo would have no choice but to hand over our belongings should the government on Quitos demand it. I trust them with my money, but not this.”
Oriana peered at the strongbox. “Is it waterproof?”
“No, although it is supposed to be fireproof, should they ever try to burn this house down.”
What a horrible thought.
Her grandmother selected a key from her ring and used it to unlock the box. The door swung open to reveal a pile of papers and, atop that, a single book bound in leather, the spine sewn with red thread. Her grandmother plucked out the book and handed it over. Gooseflesh prickled along Oriana’s arms when it touched her hands.
“I haven’t read the thing,” her grandmother said. “Your father advised me not to. That way I can deny any knowledge of its contents.”
That was probably wise. As her grandmother locked the safe again, Oriana ran her fingers over the journal’s aged cover gingerly, not wanting to snag the delicate leather with her pointed nails. It smelled musty, like any other book one might find in a library. Given all the trouble this thing had caused, it should smell of blood and pain.
Her grandmother began replacing the books Oriana had removed. “I have the original letter that your father sent with it in there also. When I go back up to the mountains, I take the contents of that box with me, so the journal’s never been out of my possession all this time.”
Oriana swallowed, her throat tight. “I see.”
Her grandmother turned back to her, one book in her hand. “In case there’s a need to testify about whether it’s your mother’s or a fake,” she clarified. “Now it’s in your hands, child. I’ll leave you to decide what’s best to do with it.”
Her father had read part of this journal and reached the conclusion that his mate hadn’t died of food poisoning as he’d been told, but had been murdered. Lygia Paredes had worked for the Ministry of Intelligence, vetting new applicants, yet when Oriana’s father went to that body to beg them to investigate her death, he’d been arrested, falsely charged with sedition, and exiled from the islands—ample reason for her to believe the book held a secret worth killing for. “Has the Ministry of Intelligence searched your house for this?”
“No,” her grandmother said. “The ministry may suspect I have it, but if they had found it, it would be gone.”
A good point. Oriana stepped closer to the lamp on the wall and opened the journal, picking a spot randomly. She peered at the handwriting and smiled fondly; her mother’s hand had never been particularly neat. But what she read there seemed odd. She cast a quick glance back at her grandmother, who was setting the last volumes back onto their shelf, completely masking the sliding panel. “Father noticed there was something wrong with this?”
“Yes,” her grandmother said. “He never told me what, though.”
Her father hadn’t found this journal until four years after her mother’s unexpected death. All that time it had lain under the floorboards in the Paredes house on Quitos, waiting for him. Clearly, Lygia Paredes hadn’t trusted any of her sisters with the journal. She’d hidden it well, in a place where only her mate knew to look. Even so, Oriana doubted that her mother had foreseen the consequences of his discovery—his exile and her daughters being left without a parent.
Two of their Paredes aunts, Valeria and Vitoria, had taken Oriana and Marina in, saving them a state upbringing, at least. But they’d never been happy there. Their aunts were unfriendly, their two cousins spoiled, and Oriana had been pushed relentlessly to join the Ministry of Intelligence. Her aunts told her that it was her destiny to serve, not to take a mate and bear children. When Marina ran away years later, their aunts spun out a tale that convinced Oriana her younger sister was dead, murdered by sailors on a human ship. They’d even produced a body, although it had been in the sea long enough that it was unidentifiable. The dead girl, however, had been of the same petite build as Marina, so Oriana believed their fabrication. Heartbroken and craving revenge, she’d relented and joined the ministry, only to be given one insignificant assignment after another. None of her three aunts—neither Valerian or Vitoria, nor the eldest Paredes sister, Jovita—had done anything to advance Oriana’s career, despite holding high positions in the ministry themselves.
Oriana peered down at her mother’s scrawl and blinked back tears. The pages of this book must contain a terrible secret for it to be worth all that pain. She closed the journal, not sure she was ready to address that pain tonight.
“I loved your mother too,” her grandmother said softly. “She was very good to my son, and I would have been happy for them to live here forever.”
Oriana smiled, recalling better days in this house.
“Now, there’s another thing I need to discuss with you, child,” her grandmother added, settling on the high-backed bench. “And I’d prefer not to put it off.”
“Of course, Grandmother.” Oriana dutifully tucked the journal under one arm and went to join her.
* * *
Duilio had everything unpacked by the time Oriana returned with a slender book clutched in her hand. The bedding was laid out as Oriana liked, their clothing neatly organized on shelves in the dressing area, and the shutters closed to keep the chilly night air outside where it belonged. For the month that they planned to stay, it would be comfortable enough.
“Oh, thank you,” Oriana said absently as she took in the fruit of his labors.
He gestured toward the book, suspecting it had caused her melancholy tone. “Is that it?”
She licked her upper lip. “Yes.”
“Have you started reading it?”
She sank down on the carved bench near the door. “I read just a bit and . . . there’s something wrong.”
What does that mean? Duilio sat next to her. “Your father said there’s no name in that journal to reveal who killed your mother. Nothing specific.”
“That’s not what I meant.” She opened the journal to a page near the center and pointed to the words. Untidy printing in black ink filled the page, some letters capitalized, others not. “Look at this sentence,” she said. “Doesn’t it strike you as odd?”
Duilio stared down at words telling of Lygia Pa
redes’ fondness for food with mushrooms, fish and prawns, and cheese. Had Oriana’s mother pursued a secondary career as a food critic? “I thought this was about her suspicions regarding the spy within the ministry.”
Back in the Golden City, Oriana had been hounded by a woman from the Ministry of Intelligence who used the name Iria Serpa. The woman had ordered Oriana to leave the city, but the ship that should have taken her back to the islands instead left her chained out on a rocky island to die. Only later had they learned that Iria Serpa was not who she claimed. She was a Canary, from that branch of distant cousins of the sereia who served the Spanish crown—a foreign spy hidden within the ministry itself. They’d assumed the journal would show that Oriana’s mother had discovered that fact . . . not an interest in fine cuisine.
“That’s what I meant.” Oriana shook her head. “She rambles in places, talking about the most inane things. She didn’t even care for mushrooms. Too bland.”
He’d been known to ramble about inane things himself, but when he did, it was usually as a diversion. Duilio stared down at the words on the page, waiting for his brain to sort out what was out of place.
“I’m sure that’s what convinced my father something was wrong,” Oriana said, “but I can’t figure out why she did it.”
It was a good sign, to his mind. Oriana’s mother had been hiding information.
Duilio went to his traveling desk near the windows and sat down, the journal in his hand. Oriana came to gaze over his shoulder while he pulled a fountain pen out of one of the drawers. “Do you mind if I make some small marks in this?”
She shook her head, even though it bothered her to write in books. She set one curved nail against her lip, a gesture of anxiety.
Duilio placed a small dot underneath each capitalized letter in the awkward sentence about food. Most were the initial letters in the words, but in the middle of the word peixe, the letter I was capitalized. He took a blank sheet of stationery paper and transcribed the capitalized letters onto it. “Did your mother ever work with codes?”
Oriana leaned over him, setting her chin atop his head. The lily-of-the-valley scent of her perfume surrounded him. “I don’t know,” she said. “I was only twelve when she died.”
“Did she like puzzles?” he asked instead.
Oriana took a breath to speak, thought better of it, and after a moment said, “Mother used to make up puzzles for Marina to solve when she was a girl. I was never good at them, but Marina was. I wasn’t patient enough.”
He wasn’t going to dispute that claim, but Oriana did have patience when needed. “I’m having trouble imagining Marina besting you,” he said instead.
Oriana laughed ruefully. “Don’t let her guise of helplessness fool you. She lets people think she’s compliant because that’s often the easier path to getting her way, but she’s very clever, and tenacious as a crab when she wants something.”
He had to bow to her familiarity with her sister. “Well, I think this is a cipher, an encrypted message where one substitutes one letter for another. Figuring it out is primarily logic. If Cristiano were here he could break it in five minutes. It will take me considerably longer.” His young foster brother, Cristiano Tavares, had recently received his degree in mathematics from the university in Coimbra. He loved this type of challenge. “Given some time, you and I can work it out.”
“So it’s not just . . . rambling?”
“Absolutely not,” he reassured her. “I think she meant for someone to pull out all the capitalized letters and decipher the message.” He flipped through several pages each direction and saw that the odd pattern of capitalization continued throughout. “There’s quite a bit here. I’d need to figure out on which page she started this and work through to the end.”
Oriana went and sat down on the bench again, her shoulders slumping. “Thank the gods.”
He turned in his chair to face her. “Were you doubting your father’s claims?”
“Father didn’t believe there was anything specific in the journal,” she said, “but if Mother went to all this trouble, there must be. If we have her guidance, it will be easier to find out who feared being exposed and had her killed.”
Even better, the embedded cipher meant that the journal was more than a toothless threat. It could be used to blackmail the culprit or culprits in return for Oriana’s continued safety. Duilio hoped it didn’t come to that, but was relieved to know that possibility existed.
They’d discussed what to do with the journal once they had it in their hands. If it named a specific member of the ministry as Iria Serpa’s protector, they could advise the ministry that they had a collaborator in their midst. Unfortunately, they still weren’t sure whom to trust. Even Oriana’s aunts were suspect, since Lygia Paredes had hidden the journal from them.
Duilio closed the journal, slid the book inside his traveling desk, and locked it. Then he joined her on the bench. “Why don’t we start off in the morning?” he suggested. “We’ll go through it from the beginning and figure it out together.”
Oriana sighed and pressed her hands over her face.
Duilio slid one hand under her vest onto her bare back, her skin warm under his fingers. She didn’t want to dive into this puzzle right away. She’d wanted a few days without the worries that had plagued her for the last few months, days without decisions to be made. “We can put if off for a while.”
She dropped her hands to her lap, but didn’t reply.
He leaned forward, gazing at her downturned face. If this wasn’t about the journal, her grandmother must have said something in the library that she hadn’t wanted to hear. “What else is bothering you?”
Oriana turned partway toward him. “She wants to adopt me.”
Why would that upset her? “What does that mean?”
“She wants me to have this house, all her property. She wants me to live here.”
Despite being her granddaughter, Oriana couldn’t inherit anything. She was legally dead. In the eyes of the sereia government, the Oriana Paredes who’d come to Quitos to serve as Portugal’s ambassador was a completely different Oriana Paredes than the one who’d been left chained on an island to die for unstated crimes the previous fall.
“What of our term as ambassadors?” he asked.
Oriana shook her head. “I explained that we have the rest of our term to serve,” she said. “It’s after that time that she wants me to live here. Given her age, though, she wants to start the paperwork on the adoption right away.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” she asked, a line between her brows. “She wants us to live here, Duilio. I don’t know what to say to her.”
He suddenly grasped what was bothering her. He would have to live under the expectations of sereia society. So far he’d followed their rules assiduously. He’d been silent and dutiful, and that rankled. When a new ambassador replaced Oriana, he would have more freedom to do as he wished, although he’d still need to be cautious so as not to damage Oriana’s reputation. Living on Amado would, at least, be an improvement over living on the main island.
But it also meant being far from his family. “What is the chance of going back and forth between here and the Golden City?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Would you hate me for that? Being trapped here?”
He ran his fingers through the burgundy-tinged curls that tumbled down her back. “I’m not trapped. I’m with you.”
“Don’t pretend it’s that easy, Duilio,” she said softly.
“It is that simple for me,” he said. “I will go where you go; I will live where you live.”
She sighed and then sniffed. “And what if I don’t want to be trapped here?”
Ah, she’s not sure how she feels about this. Oriana always needed more time to decide about anything. They had talked about traveling after her term ended, and po
ssibly returning to the Golden City to live. Now all those plans were endangered. “Let’s take a few days and talk it over. Surely she can wait that long.”
“I think so.” Oriana leaned her head against his shoulder.
He slid one hand under the open front of her vest. “Forget about the journal and your grandmother for now.”
She let him push the vest off her shoulders. In a pareu and nothing more, her dorsal stripe showed above the edge of the black fabric. He traced one finger along the rippled line of brilliant blue that separated the glittering black of her stripe from the human-colored portion of her back. Below the waist of her pareu, that human coloration gave way to a perfect imitation of silver scales, a source of endless fascination for him. She shivered at his touch. “You’re not supposed to be demanding.”
The core truth of these islands: the woman should always have the upper hand. “No one’s here to see me,” he reminded her.
Oriana smiled. “Please me, then.”
CHAPTER 5
FRIDAY, 17 APRIL 1903
Oriana awoke feeling uncharacteristically muzzy. The room dipped and dove as she breathed the chilly sea air streaming in through the shutters. She’d thought she was past the worst of the morning sickness. She remained still, hoping her stomach would settle into its proper place. The heady scent of lilies filled the room, odd this early in the year.
Duilio’s head lay on her breast, and she raised one hand to touch his hair. When she first told him how he would be expected to behave on the islands, she hadn’t believed his quick acceptance. Yet so far he’d done everything expected of a mate, including growing out his hair, which made it long enough that she could run the tips of her fingers through it, the webbing between her fingers snagging occasionally on his curls. He hadn’t even balked at being tattooed. She ran a finger along one line of his tattoo, only then noting an orange stain on her fingertips and webbing.
The Shores of Spain Page 4
