Chapter Seven
Laura saw Kit and Sophia disappear around the corner of the path. She raised her skirts a little to hasten after them, feeling for a moment like she was an eight-year-old girl hurrying after Sophia and her brother, Samuel, fearful if she did not catch up, she would be left behind.
“Oh, Kit!” Sophia rushed forward through the stone archway into the walled garden. In the center planting was a small fountain. “So much has changed! Look!”
Laura did look. The small, single-story villa had two wings leading from the central courtyard. The stone seemed to be ancient, but the doors and shutters appeared to be brand new and painted the same color shade of blue as the sky. The gravel path was free of weeds and, like in the cottages below, tubs were filled to overflowing with herbs.
“Just wait until you see what Alfonso and Lyda have done out the back.” Kit took Sophia’s hand and urged her through and into the house. Laura hesitated.
“It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?”
Laura turned. Elias held her small trunk in his arms.
“I suppose I never really thought about it… Kit having an actual home, I mean. I thought sailors always lived onboard the ship.”
Elias laughed as if she had told an amusing joke and shifted the weight of the case in his arms.
“Oh, how thoughtless, that must be heavy.”
Elias shrugged as though it were nothing. Laura followed him into the main building. It was simply designed – a main corridor and rooms leading off either side. It was airy and clean. The stucco walls looked freshly washed.
The first door on the right was open and a rather large lady and another woman, by contrast quite skinny, bustled about preparing the room. The wall opposite had a window but no glass. The aperture opened out onto the courtyard.
The larger woman with frizzy, grey hair noticed them first. Elias barely had time to lower the trunk to the floor before she threw herself into his arms, and kissed him on each cheek. The other woman caught Laura’s astonished expression and smiled in shared amusement.
A rapid conversation in Italian ensued. Laura’s grasp of the language was not strong and she didn’t understand a word of it.
Elias nodded as the woman spoke. She paused for breath and Elias jumped in, saying a few words that had both older women nodding sagely.
“Lyda is profusely apologetic for not having your room ready, but they only knew we were coming about an hour ago when the watch alerted her to our sighting. She wants to meet you, but I’ve told her you’re happy to look about first.”
Elias extended his hand. “Shall we?”
Back in the hallway, Laura paused at a narrow table of waxed timber along one of the walls. There was little to the table. It was plain with straight, square legs – the type of thing the gardener on the Capplemans’ country estate might construct, but sitting on it was the most remarkable piece of porcelain she had ever seen.
She was drawn to the blue and white painted vase, rounded in shape, and filled with wildflowers of yellow, white and pink.
She had only ever seen such pieces in the very finest of houses. It seemed out of place in this humble, little location. Laura touched the cool porcelain with her finger, running it over the stylized painted chrysanthemums. There, in the center of the object, was a strange-looking bird with its wings outspread and tail feather plumage spread out behind it like those of a pheasant.
“The bird is a Chinese phoenix, a…,” Elias frowned, remembering the word, “Fenghuang. According to the merchant who gave it to Kit, the bird is a symbol of high virtue and grace. The wings represent duty, the back prosperity, the abdomen integrity, and the chest mercy. He said if any embodied those qualities, it was the crew of the Calliope.”
“That’s an extraordinarily generous gift,” Laura observed.
“We saved his ship from attack. His wife and daughters were aboard as well. That’s why European ships travel to China and India via the Cape of Good Hope, you know. The risk of having your caravans raided on the land route is too high a risk.”
He led the way further down the hall, pointing out a sitting room which doubled as a study, the shutters opened to fill it with sunlight. A bookcase and cupboards occupied the length of one wall. Two mismatched high back leather chairs – one green, the other brown –sat squat on either side of a low table. Against a wall was an antique settle with cushions of red, brown and green.
They passed another room, its door closed, before the passage opened out into a large, airy kitchen, a dining table in its center with enough room for ten.
She followed Elias through the kitchen door to another courtyard. In the center, a lemon tree flourished and, beyond it, appearing to emerge from a rock in the cliff, was a large, concrete cistern.
“Alfonso and Lyda live in there,” he said, pointing to a building on the right side of the rear courtyard. Warm eyes turned to her. “How are you feeling? Do you need to rest?”
She shook her head. It was almost the truth. She felt more overwhelmed than tired.
“There’s one more thing I want to show you first.” Elias aided her up stone steps embedded into the villa wall that led to a rooftop garden that overlooked the lagoon and the sea beyond.
Four men were already there. Without thinking, Laura took a step closer to Elias. The men greeted him effusively in a foreign language.
“The men of Catallus send their warmest welcome,” Elias translated for her. “They’re delighted to see Kit’s extended family safe, and they’ve organized a feast on the headland for us tomorrow, but they want to show us what else they’ve been doing.”
Elias spoke back to the men, who grinned and bowed theatrically – something they adopted, no doubt, from Captain Hardacre himself.
“They have made this place for you to paint – look.”
There, already, was her easel from the ship along with a small folding table and stool. A length of canvas and sturdy beams lay on the ground. To be erected as a shade of some sort, Laura guessed. The men returned to their work.
“I’ve never met these men before. How did they I know I painted?”
Elias reached a hand to the back of his head, scratched and shrugged, offering a half-smile of apology. There was a boyish appeal making him look younger than she knew him to be. “Ah… that might be because I might have mentioned it a time or two.”
“Really?” The flirtatious rejoinder – an unexpected recollection of her former self – was out of her mouth before she knew it was there, or could censor it. Before she looked down, she saw a little heightened color come to his face.
She’d caused that. A pleasant hum went through her at his reaction, a warmth inside her, as though she had emerged from shadows into the sunlight.
“I’ve embarrassed you,” he said.
Laura raised her head and smiled the first full and genuine smile she had given in two years. “Quite the contrary, it would appear I have embarrassed you.”
“There is nothing you could do that would change the high regard I hold you in.”
At that moment, the air stood still, the sound of workmen around them disappeared. “What about the things that were done to me?”
She hadn’t been aware she had spoken the question aloud until he stepped forward and took her hands. His golden-brown eyes held hers captive as though they alone had some power over her.
“None of that can change who you are.”
“What if it already has?”
His expression shifted, the faint sun lines around his eyes deepened a little. “Then you have to decide if that change is for the better.”
No.
They were not the words she wanted to hear. She snatched back her hands, cheeks reddening with anger and the heat of the noon sun overhead.
“‘There ariseth in his soul many fears, and doubts, and discouraging apprehensions, which all of them get together, and settle in this place; and this is the reason of the badness of this ground’,” Elias said. Laura knew he quoted from something, but couldn’t recall it.
“You have to make a choice, Laura. Move forward or sink into the Slough of Despond,” he continued, his words jogging her memory. A quote from Bunyan. Elias hesitated a moment, then brought his hands together, looking so much like an awkward suitor. “If you permit me to be so bold, you don’t have do it on your own.”
She stared at him, allowing effervescent bubbles of fury to fizz and boil.
“A choice?” she spat. “You think I have a choice? First Hardacre, and now you? The utter reprehensible gall of you men talking about choice when all of mine have been taken from me. Do you think I want to be pregnant?”
She hated that Elias bore her anger without reaction – just as he had done a few days earlier on board the ship. The visceral contempt that showed itself in her on that grey, foggy morning raised its head like a leviathan on this bright, summer’s day.
“Do you no longer want to be?” he asked.
The softly spoken words might as well as have been a slap. By her reckoning, she was four or five months along. Although she wasn’t sure, she thought she might have started to feel the first quickening. Regardless of her feelings, it was already too late.
Choice, indeed.
“The baby will be his,” she said, her voice a harsh whisper.
“The baby will be yours.”
Laura shook her head, refusing to allow herself to look into his eyes. They revealed too much, both of her and of him. The breath she took was shaky.
“This has been an entirely inappropriate conversation to have with any man – particularly one I hardly know.”
Laura stepped past him for the stairs, half-expecting him to stop her, but he didn’t. She looked back, squaring her shoulders. “I want to thank you for rescuing me from Al-Min. But if you think that gives you any proprietorial claim over me, you’re sadly mistaken, Mr. Nash. Consider that to be the first of my choices.”
*
Elias watched Laura march down the stairs and out of view around the corner of the villa. He let out a deep sigh and ran a hand through his hair.
Well, that didn’t go exactly as planned.
The sound of timber scraping against stone reminded him he was not alone on the roof. The four men studiously went about their business, paying no attention whatsoever and all showing surprising thoroughness in the simple task of erecting a bit of temporary shade.
The only thing that prevented his humiliation from being total was the fact these men didn’t speak English. One of the men, the eldest of the group caught his eye.
“Donne, eh?”
Elias gave the man a rueful look.
Aye, women…
He descended the stairs and looked up at the exposed rock forming part of the hill that sheltered the inhabitants of Catallus from the weather. He had to move, he had to do something to give vent to the turmoil that threatened to boil over in him.
He looked about. Kit’s villa had become a place of comfort – repaired and made habitable as an act of faith that Sophia would return. Lyda especially would not hear of anything different. Below, almost of all the cottages had been restored and were now weatherproof, so there was little for him to do there either.
This was supposed to be a period of rest for body and spirit after two years of being as close to hell as he had ever known.
His eye followed the traces of fissures in the rock, weathered over eons. Elias reached up and gripped a small outcrop and used his feet to lever himself up enough so that, with his free hand, he could grab hold of a shelf in the rock. He started to climb, picking his way across and up the face, ignoring the scrapes and small cuts on his hands, and the fact he was now over sea and rocks rather than land. Out of the lee, the afternoon wind buffeted him, but he ignored that, too, and continued to ascend.
Seagulls wheeled overhead, their wings extended, letting the wind keep them aloft as they called to one another. Elias ignored them as well as the heat on his face, the strain of the muscles along his back, the faint ache in the knees as they bore him upwards. He breathed in deep, swallowing the salt from the roiling sea below.
He enjoyed this – even more than that, he needed it. The climb required concentration and physical exertion. One misstep and he could fall to his death on the blackened rocks below that churned with white spume from the heavy surf. But that was the point of it all, wasn’t it?
Certainly, he didn’t share Kit Hardacre’s careless pursuit of danger – and Elias thanked God for that – but he had come to know himself well enough to appreciate there was a fine balance between courage and foolhardiness, and the skill was to chart a steady course between them.
If only he could plot a navigable course when it came to Laura Cappleman.
Elias reached up for a small arête with his right hand, his back and arms straining to take his weight.
Laura liked him – or at least he was pretty sure she did – but, right now, she was too blinded by her awful experience to actually see him. Laura needed time, and he had pushed too far too soon. She had every right to be angry at him.
The rock pulled out, hitting Elias on the shoulder. He grunted in pain and knew brief panic as he dangled, supported only by his left hand, rapidly losing his grip on the small ledge. With a mighty heave, Elias swung up and found the hole left by the dislodged rock with his right. He continued the climb.
There were so many obstacles to overcome if he was to make Laura his wife. Sophia had tried to warn him off when it was merely class and wealth that separated them. But now…
Elias resisted the temptation to mop the sweat from his brow. He looked up to see how far he was away from the top. The early afternoon sun highlighted the creases and folds leading all the way up to the headland. That would be his destination.
Sure, he could have taken the well-trod path up to the top – every sensible person did. But what would be the worth in that?
Elias Winston Nash had never been known to take the easy way in his life.