Chapter Sixteen
Unlike the bright summer’s day that marked Laura’s first arrival in Palermo, late November brought cold, drizzling rain to mar today’s entrance. She huddled in a corner of the quarterdeck to keep herself out of the way of the sailors bringing the Calliope into dock.
Through the greyness, she saw the hawse lines tighten and felt the groan of the ship as it was finally secured. The slam of the rain-sodden gangway reached her.
“Are you sure you want to stay up here? You could have remained in the master quarters until we were ready to disembark,” said Elias.
Laura watched him shrug on an oilskin coat while she tightened his thick, navy blue woolen coat around herself, burying her nose into the collar that smelled of lemon, cedar, and a little of Elias himself.
She nodded and, with another reassuring glance in her direction, he went out into the rain, striding across the deck to meet another man. He was dressed exactly as Elias was, even down to the hat dripping with water.
She didn’t recognize him at first, but as they approached the quarterdeck once more, the man raised his head and she saw Jonathan Afua beneath the sodden brim. He greeted her with a warm smile and spoke loudly to be heard above the insistent rain.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t turn out better weather for your arrival, Miss Laura. I have a carriage waiting for you at the dock. If we leave now, we can reach Villagrazia before the noon meal.”
Laura returned the smile but cast her eyes across to Elias who was running through the ship’s manifest with the harbor master.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Elias?”
At hearing his name, Elias looked up from the log.
“I’ll be another few hours here. Tell Serafina to save some arancini for me.”
Jonathan unfurled a large, black umbrella he carried and held it to cover Laura. She felt butterflies in her stomach and chided herself for feeling nervous. She was heading into the unknown, she realized, but why should she feel this way when she was among people she knew and trusted?
Silly and ungrateful, a voice reproached her, one that sounded very much like Sophia’s. Inwardly, Laura grimaced but, to Jonathan, she gave a smile and even felt comfortable enough to move close to him as they crossed the rain-swept deck and down the gangway to where a small carriage waited for them. No sooner had they approached, the door was flung open and a feminine hand stretched out to aid her aboard.
“At last we meet, dear Laura, although I feel I know you already! I am Morwena, Jonathan’s wife. You don’t need to do a thing here except relax and have your baby. I’ve taken care of it all. You should see the beautiful cot and—”
Laura blinked rapidly, unable to draw breath to return the greetings.
Jonathan slammed the door behind him. “Slow down, Morwena, Miss Laura has only just arrived.” He rapped on the carriage roof to signal the driver to move off. He smiled again at Laura. “You’ll have to forgive my wife. She gets so far ahead of herself it takes the rest of us some time to catch up.”
Laura stretched out a gloved hand and Morwena squeezed it, returning her smile.
“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. And I also want to thank you both once again for being so kind to me, a virtual stranger—”
Morwena dismissed her with a wave of a hand. “Stranger? I see no strangers. You are Sophia’s cousin and as she is married to Kit, and as Jonathan is one of Kit’s closest friends, so that makes you family and, besides, Elias is very fond of you. So perhaps there will be a wedding—”
“Morwena!”
Even Laura heard the tone of affectionate exasperation in Jonathan’s voice. She lowered her face to hide a smile but Morwena didn’t seem the least bit chastened.
“I talk a lot, so what?” she declared with a shrug of her shoulders. “Women, we like to talk a lot so it does not matter that Laura is English and I am Sicilian, we are going to be fast friends.”
The dark-haired woman’s vivacity touched something in Laura and she realized what it was. She had been treated liked a porcelain doll since their rescue from Al-Min. Even Sophia regarded her as a frail creature.
Enough! Enough of feeling sorry for herself. Enough of feeling bruised. Laura raised her head and smiled, allowing herself to be drawn along in Morwena’s wake.
“Yes. Absolutely, we are going to be fast friends.”
“Oh, I have letters from England for you,” Morwena continued. She opened a supple, brown leather satchel and pulled out a bundle of mail. “I have a gift also, but it will wait until we get to Villagrazia.”
“Is that the name of Elias’ estate?”
“No! That’s the name of the village. Elias calls his estate something, but I can’t remember it.”
They left the city, crossed the Oreta River, and ascended into the hills. The rain eased, leaving only swirling bands of mist in its wake.
Laura glanced at her escorts and saw Morwena had removed her right glove and had entwined her fingers through her husband’s, pale skin against darker. The love that flowed between them was palpable, even to her, a relative stranger.
How did they meet? Morwena and Sophia were not the only ones with insatiable curiosity if the subject demanded it. She would be sure to ask – and was certain Morwena would delight in telling her.
She turned her attention back through the glass, feeling a little like an intruder, still out of place. She idly rubbed her belly. Laura had not felt the kicks of the babe for a little while, perhaps the babe slept. She sincerely hoped so.
She caught the reflection of her traveling companions in the glass. Jonathan stretched out his legs, nearly filling the space, content to watch their progress from the other window, while Morwena examined some documents.
“Is it far?” Laura asked.
“It’s only six miles away from the city,” Jonathan answered.
“You can even see the sea from the villa and, in the summer months, we shut up the shop for a couple of weeks and bring my father up to enjoy the cool of the hills,” Morwena added softly. “He’s not been well.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Laura offered. “I hope he makes a good recovery.”
“Unfortunately, that will not be the case. It is not that he is sick, but always forgetful. It has gotten worse over the years, but the shop is the one place he seems like himself. Until this year, he was still able to work by himself for a little while, but now…”
It was Laura’s turn to take Morwena’s hand and squeeze it with sympathy.
“I remember the name,” the Sicilian woman added quietly. “The name Elias calls his estate – Arcadia.”
“A menagerie would be closer to the truth,” Jonathan suggested and he grinned at Laura’s look of surprise. “He has a one-eyed goat and a three-legged dog.”
“Oh, and the litter of kittens the housekeeper was going to have drowned!” Morwena interjected. “Elias couldn’t bear for that to be done either. I had to talk him into letting me take some of them when they were older to keep the rats at bay in my warehouses.”
“Warehouses? You have more than one?”
Jonathan laughed out loud. “There are two. And my darling wife is not content with merely those. She has her eyes on a third.”
“The shop Sophia and I went to when we first arrived, that’s yours?” Laura couldn’t help asking. A woman owning a business. It was almost unheard of, certainly not common enough to pass unremarked.
“The business was originally my father’s,” Morwena explained. “As the daughter, my father’s care was left to me. But as his memory started to fade, I took on the business more and more until it became obvious to both my suppliers and customers that it was I, and not my father, who ran it.”
“That can’t have been easy, I mean, not everyone is accepting of a woman doing such things,” said Laura.
“You’re right, it was not easy. Sicily is very traditional. Men have their places and women have theirs and family ties are strong. I could not have done it at all without Jonathan, Kit and Elias. At one time, they were the only ones who would trade with me, but that was years ago now. The war with Napoleon brought more English here, which is good. They are more… pragmatic –” she looked to Jonathan who nodded at the choice of word, “– about such things.”
Then Morwena sat back and regarded her. “Perhaps we have more in common than you know. You’re a businesswoman, too.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Laura raised her eyebrow and saw Jonathan understood the question in it, even if Morwena did not. He sat up and nudged his wife.
“The painting you did of Jonathan. It is wonderful!” she continued, blissfully unaware. “Such artworks could be turned into engravings and printed by the hundreds. You could be famous all over the world!”
“Unfortunately, that’s not going happen. I don’t paint anymore.” Her statement was issued with such firm finality that even Morwena knew better than to argue.
The journey continued in uncomfortable silence. They traveled through the village of Villagrazia, which appeared to be a little more than crossroads with a church and a couple of nondescript buildings. A few hundred yards beyond, they turned to the left and followed a laneway that led them down through a low-hanging cloud.
The carriage passed between two stone pillars painted black. On one of them, Laura could make out the word Arcadia in white. Around another bend, the cloud and view opened up onto what looked like a park.
A long, low building in whitewashed stone sat in the middle of lush green. Dotted here and there were goats, ducks and chickens, apparently allowed full access to the gardens. All that was missing was the three-legged dog.
Samuel would hate this place, she thought. To him, everything had to be neat and orderly. Animals were to be confined to the unseen parts of the estate.
No, Samuel wouldn’t like it here at all.
Behind the house was an olive grove that disappeared up and into the remaining mist but it was the view to the west which took her breath away. She barely noticed Jonathan help her from the carriage as she took a few paces along a gravel path to the view down the valley and to the sea beyond.
Caught in a shaft of sunlight was another small building, little more than a cottage really, sitting down from the house about twenty yards away. Little, square windows glinted in welcome. The outbuilding was surrounded by lavender, its grey-green stems waving at her, beckoning her over. Laura walked to a fork in the path, one side led to the cottage, the other went around the end of the villa in front of a wide open terrace now exposed to the emerging midday sun.
She took in the textures beyond the cottage – the flat, even blue of the clearing sky, the rich shadows of black and emerald falling on the valley below, and the shades of green across the grass and shrubs, relieved by sharp spots of color from native orchids clinging to trees at the edge of the ridge.
“This would be a lovely place to paint,” said Morwena, approaching behind her.
Laura hated the idea that Morwena’s words echoed her own thoughts. No! She no longer painted. Every time she picked up a brush it reminded her of the stifling cloister of the harem, the unending fear of being abused. Laura had tried – of course she had – but unfinished paintings, left behind on Catallus chastised her. Three months to paint and yet nothing to show for it. No matter how hard she tried, her pathetic efforts mocked her from the canvas.
“How long will Elias be?”
“Not long,” Morwena answered. Perhaps, she was ignorant of the fact that her insistence on talking about painting was becoming more and more irritating or, perhaps, she didn’t care. In any event, Laura was tired of the subject so she walked on without caring whether Morwena joined her or not.
She followed the path down to the little cottage. It had windows on two sides and, at the front, two glass-paneled French doors could open out completely to take in that spectacular view of the valley and the sea.
There’s plenty of light, a little voice told her. Laura squashed it. She peered through the dusty windows and saw the interior was one room with a couple of mismatched chairs and a table, and nothing more.
This would be perfect; she could live here quite happily in a little space of her own which she did not have to share with anyone else. A bed and a washstand would be the only things she needed. Laura would ask to have it cleaned.
“This will do nicely.”
“Here? In a shed? I don’t think Elias had that in mind at all.” So, Morwena had followed her after all.
“And what exactly did Elias have in mind?”
Morwena’s expression altered briefly but, apparently, the woman decided to ignore the inflection that layered the question with meaning.
“There is a large room for you in the house and a little adjoining room for the bambino when he comes. Out here, you would be away from everyone. When the baby comes, you will need help to look after him.”
Laura mentally shook herself. What on earth was the matter with her? All of these people had gone out of their way to be kind to her, and she was being selfish and rude. She smiled an apology at the Sicilian woman.
“You’re right. I’m just tired and not thinking right.”
Morwena seemed to take the apology on face value. “Would you like to see the house? I shall introduce you to Serafina, the housekeeper; she is a marvelous cook.”
“I am famished,” Laura conceded, “and so is the baby.”
Morwena’s face lit up. “Maravigghiusu! Wonderful! You will not be disappointed.”
Laura allowed herself to be taken arm-in-arm up the path toward the villa.
I may not be disappointed, Laura mused, but what of everyone else when I give away the baby?