“Light?” I repeated, confused and disoriented.
“It’s that condition that isn’t shadows, secrets, and darkness. And we could live there.” He looked down at my injured hand, biting his lip.
“It’s OK to touch me. I won’t shatter into pieces,” I said.
He took my hand into his and studied it, then turned it upward to press a kiss into my palm. A warm tear fell onto my upturned wrist.
I felt as if something cold and hard were breaking inside me and I started crying. Quinton pulled me gently toward him and I threw myself back into his arms, flooding tears and sobbing. I wished I could blame my display on exhaustion, injury, and low blood sugar, but none of those was the cause. I was still sorting out if what I felt was relief, joy, or terror. Or all three.
So, of course, the door opened and Nelia bustled in with an armload of boxes.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Nelia was more flustered than either of us. She put the pile of boxes on the nearest table and started back out.
“No, no,” Quinton called out. “It’s OK.” He swiped at his eyes and cast me a questioning glance as I sniffled and wiped my face with the back of my right hand. “It is all right, isn’t it?”
“Yes. We’ll finish this later. I can’t think—”
He shook his head and gave me a small smile. “It’s OK. I’m not going very far away.”
I nodded and moved aside so he could stand up. He paused to give me another kiss—a soft, slow brush of his lips over mine—and helped me to my feet as he got up. “I love you more than Roger loved Jessica,” he whispered.
I snorted a laugh as he left the room. Nelia watched me with a sideways glance of curiosity. “Are you all right, Mrs. Smith?”
I laughed again, thinking that I wasn’t even sure which last name I’d have if I were to accept Quinton’s proposal. I had no desire to adopt “Purlis” or any of his various working aliases. “Smith” might work just as well. Maybe I should get used to it. “Yes. Well, mostly.” I moved to lean against the sofa on which I’d been sitting with Quinton, and my injured hand brushed over the upholstery, sending a sharp pang up my arm. “Ow,” I gasped.
“Oh, your injury. Cousin Carlos said you needed a bandage. Let me see.” I held out my hand and she peered at it. “Nasty. What happened to your finger?”
“Accident.”
She gave me a sideways look but didn’t ask again. “It needs washing.”
She led me out of the room and down a corridor to a small powder room near the back door. It was obviously more of a family space than one for guests, situated as it was near the kitchen and work areas, but it had a large cabinet filled with useful supplies such as bandage tape, gauze, and medicines. “There’s always an injury this time of year,” Nelia said. “Someone is always cutting their hand instead of a vine, falling off a ladder, or out of a tree. . . . It makes me glad I only work here.”
“I thought you were one of the family.”
“I am,” she said, pulling me up to the sink where she started water running to warm and fussed with various packages of gauze, tape, and disinfectant. “But . . . I have a gypsy heart. I married an Englishman once and thought I could settle down if I were just rich enough. But I couldn’t. I prefer the caravan to a house. I come to visit and help out when the harvest is on because this is my blood family. But I always think my real family is the wind and the sun and the campfire at night. It’s hard to be indoors so much when the weather is so fine, but even a gypsy has a duty to family. Up to a point.”
I scrubbed my hands carefully—the hot water stung the skin of my injured hand and I had to go around the finger with care, not sure if I was supposed to keep the stitches dry or not. I did my best not to wet the sutures, but they looked a little damp anyhow when I was done. Nelia handed me a towel and waited while I dried my hands; then she made me hold out the cut hand again and began bandaging my finger very neatly.
“Is Carlos actually a cousin of yours?” I asked.
“Probably not. He knew all the family history up to Carlos and Amélia, but he doesn’t fit. I know everyone living who’s part of our family and there are very few Ataídes left in our direct line. The first of Amélia’s children was a girl, but the second was a boy and so the only direct descendants of Carlos and Amélia who bear the family name are the male children and grandchildren of Damiao-Maria Ataíde.” Nelia looked up at my face. “Why are you frowning?”
“Two children? I . . . thought there was only one.”
“Carlos said the same. The rumor was always that Amélia’s daughter, Beatriz, was the child of her lover, but I was never sure.”
“Why not?”
Nelia shrugged. “I can’t say—I just think so. When did she have time to become pregnant by anyone but her husband? She was too young to conceive when he left for college and too proud to present him with a bastard before she’d given birth to a legitimate heir. She may have had lovers, but she wasn’t fool enough to let one of them compromise her position. Damiao’s birth killed her—her maid said it was ‘childbed fever.’ They thought the child was dead, too, at first, and didn’t tell Carlos about it—he had a famous temper. He went into mourning and somehow no one ever told him about the boy, who had already been brought here to be raised by one of Beatriz’s nurses. That was how they did it then—children raised in the countryside far from their parents. Carlos became a recluse for years—they said he was a sorcerer and he was even interrogated by the Inquisition once, but he was released. The stories say that the lights from his room cast doleful shadows on the night and let demons out to roam the streets of Lisbon. And some of them say he consorted with the Devil and that his enemies dropped dead in the street when he passed—which I never believed. Then he disappeared in the earthquake and no one ever knew what had become of him. His body was never discovered, as many weren’t, and he never knew he had a son. Or that’s the family legend.”
“That is a lot of legend.”
Nelia shrugged. “You know how stories go. I think he just didn’t care that he had children.”
“What about the sorcerer part?”
She cocked her head in thought. “Hmm . . . That I might believe”—she held up her thumb and index fingers less than an inch apart—“a little. All of the diaries say he was a very strange man.”
“Whose diaries are these?”
“Oh, Amélia and her maid left some. They aren’t very complete. The maid hated Carlos, so I don’t take anything she wrote about him seriously. When she wasn’t complaining about Carlos, Amélia was mostly whining about household things, social gatherings she couldn’t attend without her husband, and being bored, or being ill. She was a dissatisfied woman who became obsessed with providing an heir. I think she may have been a little crazy. She was of two minds about her daughter, too—some days she loved her with all her heart and others she was angry that Beatriz wasn’t a boy.”
“How much older was Beatriz than Damiao?”
“Twelve years. She was more like a mother than a sister to him, I suspect.”
“And which child are you descended from?”
“Beatriz.” She finished off the bandage and patted my hand with a smile. “Good enough, don’t you think?”
I nodded, still trying to work it out. . . .
“How do you know Carlos?” she asked as I started to turn away.
“We work together.”
“He seems very . . . fond of you.” She said it as if unsure she’d used the right word.
I laughed. “In an odd sort of way, I suppose he is.”
“Why would he say he was my cousin when it just isn’t possible?”
“I don’t know. Are you sure he’s not related?”
Her eyes narrowed. “He can’t be, but he is an Ataíde—he looks just like the first Carlos.”
That drew me up short. “How does anyone know what he looked like?”