And now that the matter of William’s death was settled—or would be… Sabrina’s thoughts paused, and she considered William’s death. Her mind no longer shied away. Perce had pulled the sting out of that horror. Sabrina was sorry William was dead, because she felt he had been cheated of a life he enjoyed, but it was also true she felt a personal relief. That might not be good or moral, but she couldn’t help it, and it would be stupid to lie to herself about it. Setting her private feelings aside, how was she to behave in public? She didn’t think it would be possible to act the part of a grief-stricken wife. And Perce might misunderstand.
Perce would know best. Sabrina finished combing her hair in a hurry, coiled it unstylishly, which made her look as pure and perfect as a painted madonna, and went down. She had no time to ask Perce anything, however. The regador, with a gentleman who spoke fluent English, was already questioning Perce. Sabrina paused in the doorway, and all three men jumped to their feet.
For one moment Sabrina felt an unreasoning terror, but in the next she realized there was no threat to her in any of the men’s expressions. Senhor de Sousa looked sympathetic. The translator, a young man, seemed rather embarrassed. Perce was even more expressionless than usual, but one lid closed slowly and deliberately over his round, glazed eyes as he came forward to lead her to a chair the regador had set for her.
All in all, giving her evidence was easier than Sabrina expected. She described hearing the shot that had killed Charlot and all the following events. However, it did take a long time—not because anyone asked difficult questions but because she was so frequently interrupted by expressions of sympathy and apologies for Dom José’s behavior toward her. Clearly, Senhor de Sousa thought she had behaved just as she should by concealing her husband’s affair to the best of her ability and not attempting to remonstrate with him.
In fact, the whole sticky question of why she and Perce had run away was treated by the regador as being entirely his fault. Sabrina spent more time assuring Senhor de Sousa that she did not blame him than explaining why she had not attempted to report and accuse the triple murderer.
When apologies on both sides had faltered into silence, Perce said flatly, “When will it be possible for Lady Elvan to claim her husband’s body? It will be necessary to make arrangements to ship it back to England for interment. With Lady Elvan’s permission, I will attend to any business on that score unless my lack of Portuguese will create difficulties.”
“Oh, thank you, Perce.” Sabrina’s voice trembled.
She had not thought of that necessity until Perce mentioned it. When he did, she had shuddered. It was very silly, but she could not help it. It was not so much that the body was dead, but because every time she had to deal with its physical presence she knew she would see William with his head all shattered. The worst of the horror of that vision was gone, but she was glad indeed that she would not need to think of it. Perce would take care of everything and would never mention it to her at all.
The regador had courteously assured Perce that Senhor Mousinho would translate for him whenever necessary. The three men rose and consulted together quietly on what had been done and must still be done. Sabrina moved to a chair near Katy.
A few minutes later the regador and his translator made their farewells and left. As soon as the door closed behind them, Sabrina announced that since the question of William’s death was settled, she had decided to remain in the dower house until Katy was ready to travel. Instantly the battle broke over her head. Every argument that could be used was used. All were equally in vain. Sabrina emerged quite unbowed. Finally, Perce pointed out that it was urgently necessary to inform Lord Strangford of what had happened.
“Good heavens, so it is,” Sabrina cried, springing to her feet. ”I will go and write to him at once.”
Whereupon she fled from the room, leaving Perce and Katy to bewail her heedlessness and stubbornness. This relieved their feelings somewhat but was otherwise of little use, since neither could think of a practical way of forcing her to go.
“How dangerous is it for her to stay?’ Katy asked.
Perce considered the question. When he had been in England, he had felt quite frantic over Sabrina’s peril. When he rode up from Lisbon, he had barely been able to control his fear for her. Yet he had not heard anything in Prussia, England, or Lisbon that indicated the situation was acute. No doubt Bonaparte intended to take over Spain and Portugal, using the offer of partitioning the latter to engineer the peaceful invasion of the former. However, there was no indication that either faction of the Spanish court had yet agreed to the march-through of French troops. Furthermore, to be perfectly honest, the sensation of looming disaster was gone.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “Honestly, I don’t believe the invasion is a matter of days, possibly not even a matter of weeks.”
“Are ye sayin’ that to ease me, Lord Kevern? Please dinna. If I know for true, I’ll manage better.”
“No, I wouldn’t lie to you, Katy.”
That was the truth, but Perce realized he might have been lying to himself. Was all that anxiety simply a cover for his jealousy? Had he been too ashamed to admit that he did not believe Sabrina could resist her husband’s efforts to woo her back into loving him? It was appallingly possible that was the truth, and the reason he no longer felt the French threat to be imminent was that Elvan was dead and he was with Sabrina. If so, obviously it was impossible to trust his feelings about the situation.
“In any case,” Perce went on, “I can get the facts from Lord Strangford. I didn’t bother asking questions when I was in Lisbon because it didn’t seem to matter. I expected to have Brina out of the country within a week. Let’s not argue with her any more until I have more information.”
“It wouldna do any good anyway,” Katy agreed. “She’s set now, and more talk will only make her more stubborn.”
“Will you tell Brina I’ll be back for dinner?” Perce said next. “I must ride down to Lousa to see about a suitable coffin. Elvan’ll have to be pickled in this heat. They used brandy for Lord Nelson. I have no idea what we’ll use. I can’t imagine there’s enough brandy in a town like Lousa. And don’t say anything to Brina about it, will you? She seems to blame herself for his death, so the less said about him, the better.”
“You needna worrit. I’ll not lie to ye, either, Lord Kevern. If I hadna broke my leg, I would’ve jumped for joy when I heard Himself was dead. Good riddance! And thank God it happened here. There’ll be talk, but half what there would’ve been if it happened in England. It was bound to happen too. He was gettin’ that careless. No, I’ll say nothin’ to her about him and I’ll keep her busy, never you fret.”
So Perce rode off to see about a watertight coffin and a cart and team of horses strong enough to move it. After he left, Sabrina came down with her letter in hand. She was surprised to find him gone, but Katy engaged her attention with the problem of Perce’s clothes. Sergei could give them a rough cleaning, but he was obviously no valet. Sabrina was dismayed. She had forgotten, not that Charlot was dead, but that his death meant all his duties would remain undone. In England his place would have been filled smoothly, if temporarily, from the large available staff until a satisfactory replacement was found.
“And if ye want to have dinner tonight, ye’d better go see what that fool is doin’ in kitchen,” Katy added. “The only thing he seems to know how to do is empty a crock of that foul olive oil into everything. I swear he’d put it in the trifle if I didna stand over him.”
“Heavens! I don’t know how you managed. There seems to be so much to do,” Sabrina said. “I’ll go take a look in the kitchen first. Perce can wear William’s shirt and neckcloths. You don’t think he’ll be sensitive about that, do you?”
“He’ll not care if ye dinna,” Katy said, watching her nursling.
But Sabrina was at the moment totally preoccupied with practical problems. She would have to oversee the cooking. There was no w
ay a French or English trained cook could be found out here, and it was true that left to themselves, the Portuguese cooks tended to swim everything in oil. However, she would need a maid to take Katy’s place and a man to answer the door. There would be many notes and visits of sympathy, or perhaps curiosity, but some response would have to be made. It was unfortunate that Sergei did not speak a word of Portuguese. Otherwise he could have served as butler. As the thought came into her head Sabrina burst out laughing.
Katy smiled in sympathy but was puzzled. “What is it, luv?”
“I was just thinking of Sergei acting as butler. Could you just see the look on the faces of the ladies who visit when he opened the door and said, “What do you want?” in his own inimitable fashion?”
“Ach, the big ox,” Katy said, shaking her head but smiling, too. I’ll teach him better.”
“Don’t you dare!” Sabrina cried. “And don’t you dress him up in any English monkey suit, either. Those Russian tunics are just right for him.”
“I doubt I could get a proper suit to fit,” Katy said, but her expression had softened, and there was more pink than usual in her cheeks.
“Really, it’s best if he nurses you,” Sabrina said thoughtfully. “You can teach him more English, and then I won’t worry about you at all. Now, to whom can I write who could find a maid and butler for us for a few weeks?”
They had a brief discussion, after which Sabrina wrote a note explaining the situation and her needs and sent it off with a groom to the appropriate Lousa matron. She then went to the kitchen, where she had a protracted struggle with the cook, partly owing to the proclivity for olive oil, but largely because of Sabrina’s limited Portuguese. Although she was able to carry on a moderately fluent conversation about politics, dress, the weather and other such social subjects, cooking was not a sufficiently ladylike topic. Thus, her vocabulary was totally unsuited for dealing with the cook.
By the time she emerged from the kitchen with some hope that the meal would be edible, Perce had returned. In fact, it was Sabrina who opened the door for him. He had accomplished his purposes without any difficulty, but while making sure the measurements for the coffin were correct, he had occasion to see Elvan’s corpse. Perce had seen many soldiers with shattered heads, and he was particularly indifferent to Lord Elvan; however, during the short ride back to the dower house, he thought how that sight must have affected Sabrina, and he cursed himself for what must have seemed to her a cruel lack of sympathy.
This caused him to take Sabrina into his arms the moment he saw her. Sabrina’s head, however, was full of the best way to explain the poaching of fish for the next day’s luncheon to someone whose only method of preparation seemed to be boiling in oil. She returned what Perce had meant to be a tender and lingering embrace with a brisk hug and said, “I know William’s pantaloons are too short, but you can wear his smallclothes, can’t you?”
Perce’s tender, fragile image of suffering womanhood came hard against reality and shattered with a crash. It was a particularly difficult transition to make because no physical being could better fit the false image. Sabrina’s angelic face was made more pure and delicate by the simple low knot into which she had twisted her hair. The few pale tendrils that had escaped curled gently over cheeks and forehead, increasing the impression of sweet innocence. Her lips were soft, unsmiling and parted a trifle. It was her eyes that ruined everything. At the moment they were fixed with hard, calculating intensity on Perce’s hips as she mentally measured him against her late husband.
“I am wearing his smallclothes,” Perce said somewhat stiffly. The brusque way Sabrina had returned his gesture of tenderness and the flat practicality of her statement and thoughts at this time jarred him. “I am also wearing his shirt and neckcloth. I had no time to look for my belongings, provided Sergei packed any, and neither Katy nor Sergei is capable of restoring what I was wearing.”
“Good,” Sabrina responded, not really listening and detaching herself briskly from her lover’s embrace. “That solves one problem. Now I’ve got to oversee that idiot girl while she sets the table for dinner. I swear, I don’t know how Katy managed.”
“Do we need a formal dinner?” Perce asked.
“No, of course not, but I want to talk to you about Sergei and Katy, and I can’t very well do that in front of their faces. And also, I wanted… Oh, good gracious! Mourning! I wonder if that groom has come back from Lousa yet. If he has, he must go again and fetch me a dressmaker and some black material. Oh, and Perce, do you know—no, how could you! How ridiculous I am.”
“What is it you want to know?”
Perce felt chilled. To him, the busyness seemed false and combined with the brusque response his embrace had received, seemed designed to create a distance between himself and Sabrina. Was she implying, now that she was free and safe, that she wished to be free of him also? She was unaware, relaxed, and content in his presence and thus able to focus on the details of living.
“I need to know the customs used for mourning here. Do I have a hatchment put on the knocker the way I would in England? Should I receive visits of sympathy, or am I supposed to go into seclusion? I haven’t the faintest idea of how to act.”
“Must you act?” Perce asked, the chill increasing.
Sabrina blinked at the sound of his voice, startled out of her absorption, realizing that he was…angry? “I wouldn’t at home,” she said placatingly, “but here, I don’t want to offend these people anymore. The incident cannot have made them think well of William. For all I know, I may be the only Englishwoman they’ve met, and I must try to ameliorate any bad impression.”
“The perfect diplomatic wife.”
Sabrina stepped back a pace. “If I am, it’s nothing of which to be ashamed. It’s what I was trained to be.”
“Of course. I’m sorry, Brina. I don’t know what’s got into me.”
He put out his hand, and she laid hers in it, but only for a moment. Almost immediately she repeated that she must oversee the maid and disappeared through the dining room door. Perce stood staring after her, appalled at what he had said. He started after her, but through the partially open door heard her speaking to the maid. It would be impossible to explain himself while the maid was there, and he didn’t know what to say beyond what he had said already. He wasn’t even sure Sabrina was hurt or angry. She had seemed more surprised and—could it be possible—relieved, almost eager to run away from him to her duties.
“Stunned” was a better word to apply to Sabrina’s reaction than “surprised”. She knew Perce had a temper, although it was usually masterfully controlled. And this was not the first time she had broken Perce’s control. Various acts of mischief in which she had engaged had brought a hot blast of rage or a cold one of sarcasm, but this time she had done nothing. She told the maid where to set places and which wineglasses to put out, stepped into the drawing room to tell Sergei which wines to bring up, then returned to the kitchen to give a last check to dinner.
By then the shock had worn off, and Sabrina had very nearly convinced herself that Perce’s nasty remarks had little to do with her. Everyone had irritable moments in which the nearest and dearest person was the one who caught a battering. What Perce had been doing had not been pleasant. He must have been more affected than he would admit, so, naturally, he had snapped at her. That was good, not bad. That bespoke a true intimacy, a reliance on her understanding.
Perce had said he was glad William was dead, Sabrina thought. Still, after arranging for encoffining him, Perce might have felt she was callous to urge her lover to take the corpse’s clothing, so to speak, before he was properly cold. Katy could have been wrong about that. Her people were poor and could not afford delicate feelings. Sabrina blamed herself for not taking Perce’s finer sensibility into account. In order to speak to the regador and prepare the way for her, he had to use any clothing on which he could lay his hands, but he must have shrunk from the need. Now Sabrina remembered his
reluctance to wear William’s clothing in Prussia.
Sabrina realized she had overlooked a most important aspect of the male character about which Leonie had repeatedly warned her. Well-bred men, Leonie had explained, were basically much more romantic than their womenfolk. They tended to see women, and situations, too, in an idealistic light. It was necessary, Leonie had pointed out, not to shock the poor dears by allowing them to see the essential practicality of their “fragile” wives and daughters.
I did shock Perce, Sabrina thought. He doesn’t want me to grieve for William, but all the same he is shocked because I’m concerned with food and clothing and running the house. And then he thought I was being hypocritical when I spoke about mourning in accordance with Portuguese custom. On top of his feeling that he was, too literally, stepping into William’s shoes, it was just too much. Well, I can explain that.
Having worked out everything to her own satisfaction—barring a tiny, frightened uncertainty that she did not choose to deal with—Sabrina met Perce at the dinner table with a pleasant smile. Since his thoughts in the interval had been far from pleasant or satisfactory, this hurt him more than an icy hauteur or hot rage or even absence. She doesn’t care, his shocked mind told him. She’s relieved to be rid of me.
“I hope this can be eaten,” Sabrina said, smiling encouragingly at the frightened maid who was awkwardly placing serving dishes on the table.
“It will be more edible than cheese and ants,” Perce said, snatching at a chance to remind Sabrina of their nights in the forest.
Sabrina flashed a smile at him, but her eyes were on the maid. Perce’s remark had set her more at ease. Everything was all right. He wasn’t angry any longer. Her mind slid to the awkward girl and how to phrase corrections and advice in Portuguese, and that reminded her of her struggles in the kitchen.
The Kent Heiress Page 42
