Chapter 27
Caroline’s grip on Richard’s arm tightened in shock as she studied the two fugitives. He was also frozen in surprise.
She rapidly considered and discarded possible reasons they could be here on their own.
Mr. Belvedere, usually equal to every situation, opened and shut his mouth quite damningly.
There was no reason they should be unaccompanied out in the city, and all four of them knew it.
He had also gotten a haircut, and if she and Richard had not happened to walk smash up to them, Caroline didn’t think she’d have recognized him from afar.
Caroline held a few scarlet pimpernels bought from a flower seller and a new reticule of figured Portuguese silk.
She’d purchased two others for Jane and Louisa.
Anne and Wentworth had gone back to the ship already, for Anne—although she attempted to enjoy the sights—pled a headache over an hour ago.
Sophia’s cheeks were a blotchy pink, and she bit her lips. “Could you possibly pretend you have not seen us?”
“Not seen you?” Richard echoed. “Where is Captain Smythe? What are you doing here? I don’t like the look of this.”
“Did he not—tell you?” Mr. Belvedere asked.
“What? No, we’ve not seen him since this morning when he went off with both of you. We took another carriage and have been touring Belém Tower and the markets… What have you been doing?”
Mr. Belvedere looked to Sophia. “Hang it all. I think we must throw ourselves on their mercy.”
She inclined her head.
Mr. Belvedere handed them an official looking document, and Caroline squinted at it with Richard. It was in Portuguese, but the names of Theodore Belvedere and Sophia Scott were clear to her—
“Heavens, is this a marriage license?” Caroline asked.
“Er—a marriage contract,” Mr. Belvedere corrected, “but unless you wish to get into the ecclesiastical minutia which we have just been subjected to, I suggest you leave it at that.”
Caroline gasped. “But this is so hasty—”
“Many a marriage has been built on less,” he said with some feeling.
“I hope you will be happy,” Caroline said automatically. “But oh, Anne will be so glad to hear this!”
“Happy?” repeated Richard. “Caroline—we can’t allow this. They’ve somehow given Smythe the slip, but Sophia is needed as a witness, and this man—for all we know he did forge those bonds! We cannot condone this.”
“I’m not precisely asking you to condone it,” Mr. Belvedere said. “Merely to—er—refrain from a grand ruckus as we make ourselves scarce. I’ve heard Sintra is a beautiful day trip even in these troubled times. We could make ourselves scarce quickly.”
Caroline put her hand on Richard’s arm. “Do they really need Sophia for the case against Lady Marston? And we don’t know that Mr. Belvedere has done anything at all! Please, Richard—I rarely ask you for anything, but I’m asking you for this. Let them go.”
“I wish you would ask me for more,” said Richard, exasperated, “but this is ridiculous! Now, listen, none of us want a scene for Mrs. Scott’s sake. You must both come quietly, and I will do what I can to smooth it over at the consulate.”
“Richard,” Caroline protested, “they’ll be eaten alive!
I know you are a representative of the Foreign Office now, but no one has to know we saw them.
We wouldn’t have seen them, in fact, if I had stopped at that sweet shop with the beautiful pastel de nata.
Do let us go back there.” She tugged on his arm.
“Please don’t make this harder than it needs to be,” he said. “I mean—you so look up to Anne. Consider what she would do! It’s painful, Caroline, but we have our duties.”
As often as Caroline contemplated Anne’s character, and as much as Caroline compared her own motives and behavior to hers, she had never once heard Richard do so. And in hearing it, she snapped.
“I don’t know what Anne would do, and I don’t care.
I am not Anne, and I am sick of trying to be.
” Caroline knew she was responding more harshly than Richard deserved, but it had been building for some time.
“It was not Anne who figured out that Sir Mark was an imposter—that was me. It was not she who noticed Lady Marston’s slip-ups, or Sir Mark’s eccentricities, or Sophia’s guilty glances.
That was me—because I am far more judgmental than Anne, and I don’t overlook people’s eccentricities.
I daresay that makes me a worse person, but it seems to be the only person I can be.
And since I am critical and snobbish and selfish, I believe even flawed people like Mr. Belvedere and Sophia deserve a chance at happiness. ”
Richard’s brow furrowed as he listened to her rant. “Do you think I believe those things of you? I don’t.”
He was a good kind husband who didn’t deserve this raking down, but in his concern he had turned toward her and away from Mr. Belvedere and Sophia.
Caroline allowed the tears that had been near the surface for several days—or was it several months?
—to fill her eyes. She took another step back from him.
“I want to be everything Anne is—I know that you value modesty, humility, goodness and self-control. All the dreadful bourgeois virtues! And I honor them, too—but it is not who I am, and I feel I am losing both myself and you in the attempt to be her.”
He instinctively followed her as she stepped back again.
“Don’t cry, Caroline, please. I didn’t know you felt that way at all.
I married you, not Anne Elliot or any other woman of my acquaintance.
I love how intelligent and quick you are, and nothing makes me laugh more than your incisive observations.
I don’t want you to be different; I just want you to let me in. ”
The tears were really falling now, but Caroline saw through blurry eyes that Sophia and Mr. Belvedere were making a hasty retreat. He waved his cane in farewell, and Sophia blew a kiss over her shoulder.
“It’s not your fault.” Caroline took Richard’s hand.
“I decided for myself to become Anne—but I was so bad at it! I have been so cross with myself, and with you, when I fail. Yet I am also cross with you when I succeeded!” She laughed wetly.
“There was no way for you to escape; I see that now. Perhaps we can start again. I will not try so hard, and if I do anything truly heinous, you must tell me.”
“I will.” He wiped the tears from her face and there was such a tender smile on his face that her tears overflowed all over again. “Even if,” he continued, “half of this is to distract me from our friends’ escape.”
Caroline huffed in surprise and sniffed inelegantly. She wiped her cheeks. “Did it work?”
“Yes, apparently.” He didn’t look over his shoulder. “Are they quite gone?”
“I think so. You are really too good, Richard. Thank you.”
He sighed heavily. “You are welcome. And I agree—let’s start again. You never wanted to come on this trip, did you?”
“No! But I could not bear to give in. And then I could not bear to let Lady Marston show more courage than I.”
“I suspected as much. I tried to let you cry off.”
“I know you did. And I probably should’ve admitted the journey horrified me, but I am glad now that I came. I hate to think where you would all be without me.”
“I’ve no idea, but I’m sure it wouldn’t have ended as satisfactorily as this.
You probably saved Mr. Knapp’s life, and possibly Sophia’s as well.
When we examined Lady Marston’s medicine trunk, she had enough laudanum to kill far more than a parrot.
And Wentworth believes that her camphor smells all wrong—he suspects it is arsenic or some other poison. ”
Caroline composed herself, although her eyes must be red.
“She is a very dangerous woman. No one who uses inferior dye on their feathers and dissects asparagus the way she does is to be trusted. Shall we go back for those sweets? I would like to. We shall be trapped on the Lady Mary soon enough, so we must eat copious amounts of sugar now.”
“Oh, must we?”
“Yes, decidedly. We should buy some for Anne and Wentworth as well. Anne will be so relieved to hear that Sophia is safe.”
“Safe!” Richard scoffed. “With that childish bounder! Her prospects were already bleak, and I’m not sure he is an improvement.”
“I don’t think he is so childish after all; he only played that part. I suspect he is more canny and less boisterous than he chose to appear. I only hope he has funds to help them find safe harbor on the continent. I’d hate for him to get pressed, or some such thing.”
“They don’t press gentlemen, and whatever else he is, he certainly presents himself as a gentleman.”
“Oh, and now I shall never know! How terrible. My curiosity will be forever unanswered. I shall imagine a splendid future for them—perhaps he shall open a gaming house at one of the seaside resorts, or even here in Lisbon. Both of them are excellent at cards. I don’t know if they were cheating, but they were very good. ”
He laughed but shook his head. “Listen to yourself! Card sharps and gambling dens—you are far more dissolute than I ever knew.”
“I’m afraid it’s true. Now, let us buy dessert and watch the people go by.”
“And try not to wonder what our fugitives are up to?”
“Exactly.”