Desperate Fortune

by Susanna Kearsley

  “It is while I’m on board your ship.”

  “Fair enough. And your wife, this is truly your wife? She is lovely. And look, she has brought me some dinner.” He grinned both at Frisque and at Mary’s expression. “I’m not being serious. See how she looks at me now? You and your dog are both safe, Mrs. Symonds, I promise.” Returning the papers to Mr. MacPherson, he swept off his hat. “I am Marcos María del Rio Cuerda,” he said, “at your service.”

  He bowed, Mary thought, with the grace of a gentleman. But in his eyes shone the devil’s own mischief.

  “Now,” he said, clapping a hand on MacPherson’s back as though they’d long been friends, “let’s get your wife and your servants below, and we’ll go have a drink.”

  * * *

  Mary wasn’t convinced that the captain, del Rio, was someone to trust.

  He had kept his word, taking them safely below where he’d shown Mr. Thomson and Effie to two little cabins tucked into the prow of the ship, which while cramped were at least clean and private; and as he had promised, he’d called a young woman to come sit with Effie and make her more comfortable. Then he had given MacPherson and Mary a much larger cabin beneath his own, set in the stern down a half flight of steps.

  She’d barely had time to adjust to the fact that she would now be sharing this room with MacPherson, alone, without Effie, when Captain del Rio had ordered MacPherson again to come drink with him. Mary had not been sure which prospect she’d dreaded most—being left with MacPherson, or left on her own. But before he had left her, the Scotsman had taken one silver-edged pistol and folded her hand round it, telling her low, “Keep that aimed at the door and if anyone enters but me, shoot them.”

  Not the most comforting manner, thought Mary, in which to be left.

  But she’d known from his tone and his words he was doing the best that he could to protect her, and so she had nodded and made no complaint when he’d gone with the captain.

  That had seemed like a lifetime ago.

  She’d been left with three candles, all cheerily burning; a narrow berth set in the wall, with a curtain to close out the rest of the room, and a table with two chairs nailed fast to the floor. For a while she had sat in one chair holding Frisque, till he’d fallen asleep and she’d shifted him onto the berth where he would be more comfortable. Then she’d been free to move restlessly round the confining space, hearing the tramping of feet and the voices of men while she listened as hard as she could for MacPherson’s. It struck her she might not be able to pick his voice out from the others so easily if he were speaking in Spanish. Or French.

  He spoke French.

  That discovery rushed back on her with its full weight of embarrassments and implications, and Mary could feel her cheeks flushing although there was nobody else in the cabin. She cast her mind miserably back to the times she had spoken when she had been sure he would not understand her. She thought of the things she had said. And she tried to feel angry with him for deceiving her, only he hadn’t—he’d never once actually told her he didn’t speak French. She’d assumed it, and if he had then played along with it she could not fault him for that, since had she been a man sent to guard a collection of strangers, she might have, like him, sought to keep that advantage. It was in many ways like her own choice to not reveal it when she’d had carte blanche while playing cards at Fontainebleau—because it would have laid her own hand bare to her opponent. Mary, too, had kept her secrets. But she wished she had not told the frilly sisters, in her teasing way, that he was sentimental and wrote poetry. And that, like Madame d’Aulnoy’s Russian prince, he’d suffered through a tragic romance.

  It was at least a credit to her storytelling that she had made anyone believe such things about him, for to take a man as hard and stern-faced as MacPherson and convincingly portray him as the hero of a love story was something that took more than an inspired imagination.

  Or at least, she thought as much until she heard the steps of two men coming down the stairs, and then the cabin door swung open and MacPherson ducked beneath the lintel while Captain del Rio leaned a shoulder on the door frame for support and said, “I still do not believe you.”

  And MacPherson laughed. A sound she’d never heard before. A deep and rich and rolling sound that woke the sleeping dog and made Frisque answer with a happy woof.

  For Mary’s part, she could do little more than stand and gape, because the Scotsman looked so different in this mood that she could scarce believe it was the same man she had so long traveled with. Had she looked closely at his eyes she might have seen the quiet warning in them, but she only noticed that his smile had carved creases at their outer corners in a way that really was attractive, so she wasn’t in the least prepared when he advanced without a hint of hesitation and embraced her with the sureness of a man who need not fear rejection. Low, and for her ears alone, he murmured, “Do not strike me.”

  And he kissed her.

  At the first touch of his mouth on hers she inhaled quickly in surprise and then stopped breathing altogether, having for some idiotic reason lost all knowledge of the way that it was done.

  She had read books. In Madame d’Aulnoy’s stories, lovers met in secret, shared languishing looks and sighs, and then the hero kissed his lady’s hands, always with tenderness and passion.

  There was tenderness and passion in MacPherson’s kiss as well, but it was nothing like the books. No room for languishing. His hold was firm and solid, and she felt as though she’d suddenly been wrapped within a blanket of sensations. She felt his hand warm on the curve of her jaw, felt the hard calloused strength of his fingers at rest on the side of her neck where her pulse beat. She felt when those fingers slid into her hair, and continued to slide till his whole hand was cupping the back of her head and supporting her, while her own hand, having lifted in reflex, encountered the sleeve of his coat and could do nothing more than to cling to it or be caught tightly between them as his other arm settled possessively into the curve of her back, a secure weight she felt through the bones of her stays. And she felt…oh, she felt—only that, and the other words all fell away from her.

  Mary heard Captain del Rio say something she didn’t quite catch and the cabin door creaked and MacPherson released her, a movement she felt but did not see because she discovered her eyes had closed. It took a great deal of focus to open them. And a great effort and one more deep breath to look up.

  He stood close, and the gaze angled down to her own was as difficult to fathom as the reason he had kissed her. Yet she knew there must have been a reason. He would never have done such a thing at random.

  Mary guessed the answer lay in what del Rio had remarked when he came in, and as the Spaniard’s steps retreated to the upper deck she asked, “Was that designed to help convince the captain we are married?” It heartened her to find she had a voice, although it seemed to lack the force or will to rise above a whisper.

  “Aye.”

  As someone accustomed to playing a part, Mary had to admit he’d been very convincing. The taste of the wine he had drunk lingered still on her lips, and she had to resist the irrational impulse to touch them, as if to revisit the feel of his kiss. Since that would only embarrass them both, Mary tried instead to show him she had taken it in stride, and lightly asked, “And does he plan to sell me in the marketplace at Tunis, or to keep me for himself?”

  MacPherson promised, “He’ll do neither.”

  “But he only gave his word he would protect your servants and your wife,” she added, with a nod of understanding. “So if I am not your wife, he’ll not be bound to give me his protection, nor to keep me safe.”

  He stood a moment longer, silently assessing her with eyes that shielded all his thoughts. And then he said, “I’ll keep ye safe.” He sounded very sure.

  And she believed him.

  Mary was not sure when she’d stopped fearing him. She thought it might h
ave started when he’d shot the wolf to save her, though she owned it might have started even earlier. In Valence, when he’d cared to intercede to save the honor of a woman other men would not have valued. Or in Lyon, when she’d watched him reading Madame d’Aulnoy’s books. Or perhaps earlier than that, in Mâcon, when he’d fixed the broken watch.

  She pondered this in silence later, while they shared the supper that was brought to them, and after, while MacPherson stood outside the cabin door to give her privacy to undress to her white chemise and shake the dust and wrinkles from her gown and slip into the berth and draw the curtains closed. She went on thinking, after he’d stepped back into the cabin and she’d heard him getting ready for his own “bed” on the floor against the far wall, and the candles had been snuffed to leave the cabin in a darkness so complete she could see nothing but the images that rose within her mind.

  Frisque sighed, and stirred, and snuggled deeper in the blankets next to Mary as the ship rolled to the rhythm of the midnight tides.

  She kept her voice low as she said, “I do not know your name.”

  The Scotsman stirred as well against the far wall, and she knew he was listening.

  “If I am meant to be your wife, I ought to know your Christian name. What is it?”

  “Hugh.”

  It fit him well, she thought. A simple name, and solid: Hugh MacPherson.

  “And how many languages do you speak?”

  There was a pause, and his tone held a thread of indulgence that seemed to acknowledge the reason she’d asked. “Counting English? Four.”

  “So, French, English, Spanish, and…what do you call your own language?”

  “The Gaelic.”

  “The Gaelic,” she echoed. “And nothing else?”

  “Not really. No.”

  Mary let that one pass. “And how did you learn to fix timepieces?”

  Once more the pause, and then, “It was my trade.”

  Surprised by that, she turned her head towards him even though she could not see him in the dark. “You were a clock maker?”

  “A watchmaker’s apprentice.”

  “Truly?”

  “Aye.”

  Her first thought was to ask him what had happened, why he hadn’t carried on to become master of that trade, but she was checked by her remembrance that the late rebellion more than sixteen years ago had happened when MacPherson would have been about the age of an apprentice. She’d been sheltered, first at Saint-Germain-en-Laye and then at Chanteloup-les-Vignes, as were many of the second generation exiles who lived insulated from the brutal fighting in their homeland, but MacPherson, with the war in Scotland, clearly had been made too soon a man, as Effie had observed, and Mary wondered what things had been lost to him because of it.

  Instead she asked, after a pause of her own, “Why did you not take the letter away from me?”

  “What letter?”

  “You know what letter. The one I intended to post from Lyon.”

  If a silence could shrug, Mary thought, this one did. He told her simply, “Who was I to come between yourself and the Chevalier de Vilbray?”

  She wasn’t fooled. With his sharpness of mind, he would easily have figured out, from what she’d said while he was present, what she had been planning. And from his dry voice, she knew he had not been fooled by all her stories about the chevalier. So what she said next was a matter of fact to them both: “You knew I meant to leave.”

  When no reply came, Mary asked, “Would you have stopped me, for fear I’d expose Mr. Thomson? Or would you have let me go?”

  “Which is the answer that makes ye stop talking?”

  “I believe you would have kept me from leaving. I think you’d have killed me,” she said, “if you’d needed to. Wouldn’t you?”

  The silence lasted so long this time Mary thought for certain he had gone to sleep. But then she heard him move, his voice less clear as though he’d rolled to face away from her. “The letter’s burnt, and I’ve not killed ye. Let the past be past.”

  An easy thing to say, thought Mary. Far less easy to accomplish.

  But she tried, and she was drifting with the peaceful, lulling rocking of the ship when one last question struck her.

  “Hugh?” she asked him, softly. “What’s a broken man?”

  No answer came except his steady breathing; but she had the sense that he, like her, was not yet sleeping, only lying silently and staring at the dark.

  Chapter 35

  “Come thou,” I said, “from the roar of ocean, thou rider of the storm. Partake the feast within my hall. It is the house of strangers.”

  —Macpherson, “Fingal,” Book Three

  The Mediterranean

  April 1, 1732

  She counted twelve knives at the table. Eight pistols. A sword at the hip of each seated man; two on MacPherson, which made five in all. And the wickedly pointed gilt handle of the heavy walking stick held by the ship’s first mate could have quite easily cracked a man’s skull, so the whole party gathered for dinner looked dangerous.

  Mary smiled faintly as she raised her cup of wine, thinking of her brother Nicolas telling her back in Chatou there was no danger in her assignment, and that he would never consent to a scheme that would place her in harm’s way. And yet, here she was, having traveled these past weeks from Paris with danger her constant companion, and sitting down now to a meal with a pirate.

  “Pirate hunter,” was Captain del Rio’s correction of Thomson’s remark as they started their first course, a rich fish stew served with brown bread. “It is true, in my younger days I was more reckless, maybe less discriminating in the ships I took for prizes, but my government like yours has learned there’s nothing better than a thief to trap another thief, and so now I protect the flota—all our ships that cross together every year from the Americas—and in the other seasons I hunt the corsairs of the Barbary Coast. They are pirates,” he added, and pointed with his knife at Thomson to emphasize. “It’s a good thing you are with me, they do not dare to attack the Princesa Maria.”

  He’d been very gracious, inviting a man who he thought was a servant to join them at table, but Mary had already noticed that Captain del Rio did not keep to social conventions. When she’d asked him earlier if Emiliana—the pretty young woman who’d been so attentive to Effie—was his wife, he’d grinned and said, “Yes, all right. Why not? My wife.” And the young woman sat near the top of the table now, at his left hand, although she wore no ring on her own.

  Mary, realizing she herself had no ring either, tried keeping her hand out of sight, finding frequent occasion to feed scraps to Frisque, who lay under her chair, but the captain had sharp eyes. “Your husband does not like to part with his money, I see, Mrs. Symonds. He gave you no wedding ring.”

  “Actually,” Mary said, “I had a lovely ring, but it was lost in our journey through France.”

  “Ah. I see. A shame.” He seemed amused. “My wife’s was also lost.” Looking to Hugh he advised, “You must buy her a new one in Rome, Mr. Symonds. They have many goldsmiths. This is your first visit to Rome? Then I envy you. It is a beautiful city—the river, the bits of antiquity, and the pope’s palace—to see it all for the first time is a thing to remember.”

  His first mate, the man in the brown coat who yesterday had come to fetch them and then drawn his pistol upon them, said, “All things considered, I find Rome too crowded. I much prefer Genoa.”

  Del Rio agreed it was also a beautiful place. “But at this time we Spanish are not so well liked in Genoa, since our great Admiral Don Blas de Lezo threatened to bombard that republic with our fleet if they did not return the money they had taken from us. Two million pesos, they held in their bank, that was rightfully ours, so he was justified in making threats, but it is not my way, the bombardment. So messy.” He dipped his fingers in the bowl of water set beside his plate,
and wiped them.

  Thomson took an interest in the talk of things financial. “How would you have got the money back, then?”

  “There are always ways to take back what belongs to you.” The Spaniard shrugged. “Take this affair now of the London corporation that is causing all the panic, all the bankruptcies—this, what do you call it? The Charity…the Charitall…”

  “The Charitable Corporation.” Thomson supplied the name casually, but he shifted slightly in his chair and Mary saw the movement draw del Rio’s eyes although the captain did not pause before continuing,

  “Yes, that’s the one. The men who are behind that, it is said they are Jacobites.” He looked at Hugh. “That they stole all this money to give to the king who’s in exile at Rome. But the money they stole, if you look at it one way, it’s not really stolen, I think.”

  Thomson asked him, “And why do you think that?”

  “I’m not good with stocks,” said del Rio, “and things like that. Those are for bankers. But my understanding, this money they stole, they first raised it on shares in the York Buildings Company, yes?”

  Mary could see the bold gleam of intelligence lying behind the apparently guileless dark gaze of del Rio, and guessed he knew more than he cared to reveal, but he waited for Thomson to verify what he’d just said before carrying on,

  “And the York Buildings Company holds all the lands that were seized from the Jacobites, after the last war. This is how it makes its profits, selling off estates that have been stolen from their owners. So I think it is not such an evil thing these men have done in London.” Leaning back, he took his wine cup in his hand and held it lightly. “All they did was steal back what the English stole from them. It isn’t theft, when you steal something that belongs to you already.”