Monteiro cast a glance at the metal cuff and then looked Oriana in the eye, his mouth in a firm line. “When you made your choice to spy for them,” he said, “you cut yourself off from me. I regret what happened to you because it was likely aimed at me, but I’m not the one who imprisoned you there. I did not set you on that island.”
Oriana didn’t seem appeased. “When I made my choice? You left us, and I had to make my way alone. What else was I to do?”
“Once you were an adult,” he said, “you could have gone to your grandmother on Amado. You could have come here to me. You chose to follow your aunts’ path instead.”
Oriana’s jaw worked in fury. Duilio nearly stepped in then and there, but before he could, she asked, “Do you even know what happened to Marina?”
The question seemed to baffle Monteiro. “Of course I know.”
“Then how can you question my decision?” she asked. “I couldn’t save her, but at least I had some hope of avenging her.”
Monteiro let out a gusty sigh and closed his eyes. “Ferreira, this would be easier for us all if you waited outside.”
“No.” Duilio stood his ground. He wasn’t going to leave Oriana alone to face what clearly wasn’t turning into a happy reunion.
“Well,” Monteiro said, “it looks like you’re going to have to endure this.” He walked to the door and gestured for someone to join them.
A young woman stepped inside. She was dressed like a working woman, her dark skirts and vest finer than a factory worker’s, her brown hair caught up in a sensible bun. Her delicate features and petite stature were dissimilar, but her dark eyes were so like Oriana’s that Duilio knew they had to be related.
The young woman turned to Oriana, who looked as if she’d seen a ghost, and reached out kid-gloved hands and to grasp Oriana’s. “Ori? Father said you’d been rescued, but I wanted to see for myself.”
Oriana’s eyes began to water, and she seemed to be at a loss for words.
Oh, damnation. Duilio pressed his lips together. The young woman must be Oriana’s sister, Marina, the one who’d been taken aboard a human ship and murdered. Or that was what Oriana had been told. That was the reason Oriana had become a spy—her sister’s murder. He couldn’t imagine what she must be feeling, but betrayal must figure in with the relief.
“I was told you were dead,” Oriana whispered.
Her sister seemed taken aback by that claim, but Duilio noted that Monteiro wasn’t.
“I told you I was coming here to find Father,” the other girl said.
Oriana gazed down at Marina’s gloved hands, still clasped in her own. “You cut yourself,” she said, her voice breaking.
The webbing, Duilio surmised. The girl couldn’t wear gloves otherwise.
“It was necessary.” Marina drew her hands away and rubbed them together, as Duilio had seen Monteiro do, like her hands ached. “It’s not so bad.”
Oriana’s eyes closed, and Duilio guessed she was fighting tears. He turned to the younger girl. “Miss Arenias, I presume? Duilio Ferreira.”
Her gloved hand slid into his, and she clasped her other hand over his in an ardent grip. “I know who you are. Father told me you rescued my sister. I will always be grateful.”
“It was my pleasure,” Duilio managed, which sounded idiotic.
Seen together, the two women bore some resemblance to each other, but Marina’s brown hair lacked the burgundy highlights that made Oriana’s so unusual. Somehow she looked more completely . . . human.
Seeming to have collected herself, Oriana stepped forward to touch her sister’s elbow. “Where are you living?”
“In a boardinghouse,” Marina said, “at 309 Virtudes Street.”
Duilio drew a slim notebook and pencil from the inside pocket of his frock coat and wrote that down for Oriana. Marina seemed terribly innocent, unaffected by the trials Oriana had borne. How old was she? Had Oriana told him?
“May I come visit you?” Oriana asked.
The younger sister glanced at her father, as if asking for approval. Only when he nodded did she give Oriana permission to visit.
Oriana hadn’t missed that exchange. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why not write me a note?” Oriana asked her father. “Why let me think she was dead all this time?”
Monteiro picked the cuff off the wooden floor and laid it on his desk. “Heriberto. You chose to work for him, but she didn’t.”
Oriana’s eyes blazed. “Did you believe I would turn her over to him?”
“You were certainly obedient enough until a few weeks ago.”
“You thought I would expose my own sister?” Oriana pressed her hands to her face. The younger girl wrapped an arm around her waist to reassure her.
“We chose to make our lives here, Oriana,” her father said stiffly, “outside any of the government’s political games, outside the plots and petty arguments. We want to be left alone. That’s all. If Heriberto got wind of her true identity, he could force her into serving him as well. If she’d ever met with you, he would have put two and two together. As it is, he thought she was only another clerk in this office.”
Oriana’s eyes lifted. “And you? Because I know he was blackmailing you.”
“You were the one thing he had to hold against me. So yes, I gave him information when he pressed me.”
“I heard him tell you he knew about your girl,” she said. “He meant Marina, didn’t he?”
Her father’s jaw clenched. “Yes. He found out somehow.”
Oriana took her sister’s hand in her own. “Has he threatened her?”
“No. He’s gone,” Monteiro said. “He disappeared about the same time you did. His boat’s gone, and the woman he’d been seeing is too. The rumor is that he’s fled to Brazil.”
That made Duilio’s brows draw together. His footman Gustavo had told him the man’s boat was gone from its mooring, but it was news that he’d left the city altogether. Duilio found that odd. “You said to me, sir, that you were told not to talk. If not by him, then whom?”
“This is not your concern, Ferreira,” Monteiro snapped.
“It is his concern,” Oriana said quickly. “When I was out on that island, he was the one who came to rescue me, not you.”
Monteiro pointed at Duilio and his hands moved fluidly as he snapped, “The only reason Ferreira went rather than me was that he got to your uncle. If I’d known, I would have gone.”
Duilio puzzled over that gesture. He had a feeling he might know what it meant.
“Oh, no, Father,” Oriana said, making the same gesture back at him, emphatically. “You don’t want to be bothered. You have your fine business here and your lover, and you’d rather ignore what happens to us back on the islands.”
“Leave Alma out of this,” he said, his voice going quiet.
Oriana pulled away from her sister’s grasp. “It was so much easier when you didn’t have any children to worry about, wasn’t it? When you left us alone there?”
“Do you think I would have left you two behind if I’d had a choice?”
Duilio pressed his lips together. Now they were talking about his exile. If they were going to rehash events of a decade ago, this wouldn’t help anyone.
“I wasn’t given a choice,” Monteiro went on. “You were handed over to your aunts’ custody without a word to me.”
“Coffee would be nice right now,” Duilio interrupted.
And for a moment silence ruled. Marina gazed at him as if she’d forgotten he had the ability to speak. Oriana laid one silk-covered hand over her eyes. Her father settled for glaring at Duilio.
“There’s a small café around the corner,” Duilio added. “We could sit down and have a pleasant drink.”
“Stay out of this,” Monteiro said. “I didn’t want you here in the first place and . . .”
Oriana
didn’t wait for him to finish his statement. She turned and strode out of the office.
“Too much at once,” Duilio said softly. He nodded to Marina and fished out a card. “It was a pleasure meeting you. You’re welcome to visit our home anytime. My mother is very fond of your sister, and I’m certain she would love to meet you as well. Your father can provide you with the address.”
Monteiro settled on the edge of his desk, his arms folded over his chest. “You have no right to interfere.”
Duilio hesitated at the office door, but turned back. “My brother and father fought incessantly, so much so that when the opportunity came for me to go abroad, I jumped at the chance.”
Monteiro shot a glance at his younger daughter, who stood in the corner, eyes glistening.
“No matter how bad it got,” Duilio said to her, “it never meant they didn’t love each other.” He nodded once to Monteiro, and let himself out.
* * *
Oriana waited on the cobbles outside the office, barely able to keep the tears from her eyes. She had let all the anger of the last ten years boil over. Until the last few weeks she’d always been able to keep her temper under control. Until then, when her world had come crashing down about her. And now she could see how much of what she’d known, or thought she’d known, was all wrong. She wanted to scream at someone, to make someone pay for all the lies and secrets, only she didn’t know where to start.
Duilio emerged from the office door and came to where she waited. “Do you want to catch a cab back to the house or would you rather try the coffee?”
He wore an innocent look, as if he didn’t know he’d ruined what had been shaping up to be a screaming match. She didn’t know why it went that way with her father, but it always had. It was childish, and she knew better. “I need something stronger than coffee.”
Duilio held out his arm and, once she’d taken it, led her along the street toward a hotel entry where several cabs waited. The afternoon hadn’t warmed up, so the chill air helped cool her temper. He selected a cab, paid the driver, and settled next to her on the tired leather bench.
“They need to change this out,” he said, peering down at the soiled straw under his fine shoes. “I think one of last night’s patrons left part of his dinner behind.”
She felt slightly nauseated, although it was due more to the fight than the scent. She managed a nod as the cab lurched into motion. Fortunately it wouldn’t be a long ride.
Keeping his hands low enough that it wouldn’t be visible to someone outside, Duilio imitated the gesture she’d turned back on her father. “What does this mean?”
“Oh,” she said softly, “that.”
“It seemed to annoy him.”
Making such a gesture should have been unthinkable for a Portuguese gentlewoman. After a moment of silence, she admitted, “I told him to do to himself what he’d suggested you were doing to me.”
He laughed softly. “You truly do have trouble controlling yourself around your father.”
“I warned you,” she reminded him contritely.
He smiled as if her display of bad temper was insignificant. “I thought you were exaggerating.”
She gazed out the window as the cab came around onto the Street of Flowers, heading past the larger mansions down in the direction of the river. She couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound petulant, and she’d already subjected Duilio to enough of that for one day. Fortunately the cab soon jerked to a stop, and Duilio helped her down in front of the Ferreira home. Cardenas appeared at the door, as if he’d been watching for their return.
Oriana made her way wearily up the stone steps and inside the house. She tossed her hat onto the entryway table and went straight to the library, not waiting for Duilio. When she tried to open the liquor cabinet, she discovered her hands were shaking. The mitts didn’t help. Duilio had caught her up, though, and steered her to the sofa while he poured a couple of glasses.
The day’s discoveries were all jumbled in her head, triggering a mass of conflicting feelings. She didn’t know whether to feel happy or sad, angry or relieved. At the moment, she felt worn thin. Oriana swallowed the brandy, a fire in her tight throat and gills. She set the glass down on the table next to the sofa and as a distraction, while Duilio refilled her glass, picked up one of books that lay there. She frowned down at it. Embossed in fine rose gold, the script on the leather spine looked familiar, but it certainly wasn’t Portuguese. “Where did you get this?”
Duilio settled on the other end of the couch. “My father bought a batch of books from a merchant in North Africa. Marrakech, I think. He claimed they came from your people’s islands, although the alphabet is vaguely reminiscent of Greek, not ours.”
She flipped through the first few pages. “These do come from our islands, but they’re written in the language of our scholars, not Portuguese, so I can’t read them.”
He made a speculative humming sound. “I’m surprised they’re actually what Father claimed. I took this one up to the palace to use as a pretext to talk to the ambassador, but didn’t need it after all. I must have left it in my coat pocket. I’ll wager Marcellin put it in here.”
Oriana imagined the snooty valet’s offense at Duilio’s mistreatment of his coat.
“I’ve wondered,” Duilio said, “why your people would speak Portuguese if you already had your own language.”
“Accessibility,” she answered. “Most of my people weren’t allowed to read or write this tongue. Reading was reserved for scholars. When the Portuguese priests came, they were willing to teach us to read their language, and after only a century, it became the tongue of the masses.”
He nodded, his mouth in an “o” as if that made sense of an old mystery. For too long, her people’s government had chosen to control their lives. It often turned out to be shortsighted. “You must be thinking I’m a fool,” she said aloud. “We went there to find out one thing, but I ended up acting like a harpy, and we never got the answer.”
Duilio shifted closer on the sofa. “Don’t worry about that now. You have a right to be upset. Someone has clearly lied to you.”
Her three aunts were surely to blame for this. They had wanted her to join the intelligence ministry, but she’d refused. When Marina had run away, they must have seen that as an opportunity to draw her in by concocting the story of Marina’s supposed death. Once in the ministry, she’d been kept in inferior postings, mostly because she’d dragged her feet about having her webbing cut. From her father’s point of view, it must seem she’d been dangled in front of him all this time, in their grasp and willingly serving the government that had exiled him. It was humiliating to think he’d been right, and she’d been the fool—especially after so long thinking the opposite. She sighed. “I can’t figure out who used me against him, or why. Well, Heriberto obviously. But the note not to talk? That doesn’t sound like him.”
“But you don’t think your father’s lying to you.”
She shook her head. Her father wasn’t a liar.
Duilio regarded her with those earnest eyes. “What was he like when you were a child?”
Oriana took another burning sip of brandy. She had never talked with anyone about her family. Not in the last few years. She hadn’t had any friends save Isabel, and Isabel hadn’t been interested in the truth. Isabel had held some childish notion of the sereia playing in the waves all day. “He and my mother were very happy, I thought. I suppose I was wrong about that, too.”
“I doubt it,” Duilio said, head tilting. “Children can always tell.”
“Yet when he came here he took up with . . . with Lady Pereira de Santos. My mother must not have meant that much to him after all.”
He gazed at her with a troubled brow. “Do you think his current relationship negates what he felt for your mother?”
She tugged off the silk mitts and spread her fingers to st
retch the webbing, briefly sensing the beat of Duilio’s heart. “I don’t know anymore.”
“My mother has spoken of remarrying,” he told her.
Lady Ferreira hadn’t mentioned that to her, but his mother had clearly abandoned her mourning. Duilio’s father had been a philanderer—to use Felis’ word—so she certainly didn’t blame the lady. But did it mean she’d never loved Duilio’s father, either?
Duilio stared down into his untouched glass of brandy. He swirled it around a couple of times and then said, “She told me they were married. I thought it should be their secret to reveal when they chose, but given today’s conversation, I’ve changed my mind. I’d rather you hear it before you talk to him again.”
“You mean Lady Pereira de Santos?” Her voice sounded faint when she said that.
He nodded. “She said it’s been seven years. They’ve kept it secret that long.”
She didn’t know why that seemed even worse than thinking her father had taken a lover, but it did. Her dismay must have shown on her face, because Duilio shifted over on the couch. He wrapped an arm about her shoulders, and she clung to his coat, eyes screwed tightly shut to keep tears at bay. After only a moment, she pushed herself away and drank down the rest of her brandy in one gulp, setting her gills to burning. “I’m just so tired.”
And as if he accepted that weak explanation for her distress, Duilio rose and helped her to her feet. “I think you’ve had enough news for one day,” he said. “You should take a long nap before dinner. Everything will seem clearer after you wake up.”
She was exhausted. But she didn’t want to be by herself, and she hated the idea of begging. “Would you . . . ?” she heard her traitor voice ask anyway.
“I’ll stay with you, if you like,” he said, sparing her from asking it. “Until you sleep.”
So he walked with her up to the bedroom. He left the door open and sat down in the chair next to her bed. She removed her shoes and her borrowed jewelry and curled up on the brown coverlet, facing him. “Do you not have appointments?”
He gingerly touched his split lip where it had scabbed over, a match for her own torn lip. “No. I’m at your disposal for the rest of the day.”
The Seat of Magic Page 15
