The Book of True Desires

by Betina Krahn

  “What was the bet?” The ache of curiosity was suddenly much more acute than the pain in her lips.

  “Mix this with a cup of lukewarm water and drink it quickly. It will taste vile, but it will relieve the pain you are in or soon will be experiencing.”

  “Tell me.” She stood up as he handed her the packet and repacked his bag of medicines. “I’ll get it out of you sooner or later.”

  “Later is better for me,” he said, turning to go.

  She stepped into his path and when he tried to move around her, she grabbed his sleeve to slow him down. He froze. Her hand closed around the strong, sinewy arm beneath that khaki, and she was broadsided by the memory of it clamped around her last night.

  Her gaze slid up his chest. Hard, cleanly muscled. His shirt had pulled partway from his belt during the fight. Khaki shirt. Khaki trousers. This was the first time she had seen him without his butler’s tailcoat. Wait—last night in the restaurant, in the streets as they ran, in that doorway— he hadn’t been wearing it then either. Somewhere along the way he’d removed it.

  There was a bruise forming on his cheekbone and around the outer edge of his reddened left eye. That blur she had seen when he first entered the bedroom now replayed in her head, growing clearer. It was Goodnight.

  He had fought? Goodnight the surly, superior, irritating, Oxford-educated butler had fought a street tough to a standstill? It seemed incredible, but there he was, sporting a manly souvenir as proof. She took the gauze from her face and placed it on his. He flinched as she touched his injury but made no move to avoid the contact.

  Student, doctor, chemist, butler—he had more facets than a chandelier. And she was seized by a fervent need to know about every one of them. She stepped closer and looked up into his eyes.

  It was all there for her to see—all the aspects and experiences of him, his heartfelt hopes, lousy luck, and unhealed wounds… wit, pride, and desperation—the entire depth and breadth of his interior landscape was visible in those expressive quicksilver eyes. Gone were the usual layers of finely honed sarcasm and superiority. For that brief, remarkable moment he was just Hartford Goodnight, ungodly complicated, chagrined by his circumstances, and clearly more than he seemed. It was a potent and compelling combination.

  Stunned, she pulled her gaze from his. The last thing she needed was to be enthralled by a man who was likely to wind up a crocodile’s dinner before the month was out. But, in spite of herself, she reached up to touch his bruised face and let her fingertips drift over his cheeks to his lips.

  His head began to lower.

  Twelve

  “Merciful Heavens!” Hedda’s gasp sent them reeling apart.

  “What is happen here?” the professor said, standing by Hedda just inside the doorway. Their eyes widened on Cordelia’s face and feather-littered dress, then went to Goodnight’s swelling eye and the overturned chairs and settee.

  “Cordie? What’s happened to you?” Hedda rushed forward to insert herself between Cordelia and the glowering Goodnight. “How dare you?”

  “It wasn’t him.” Cordelia came to her senses and intercepted her aunt. “It was that Castille wretch you met last night. At least that’s who he said he was.”

  “Alejandro Castille?” the professor said in shock. “He comes here?”

  “He demanded to see our scrolls and when I wouldn’t let him, he said they were stolen from a monastery in Spain. When I refused to give them to him, he and his men started to search. I tried to stop them, but he”—she put her hand to her injured face—“he hit me.”

  “Madre de Dios,” the professor gasped, looking to Hedda in horror, then back at Cordelia. “Castille does such a thing?”

  She glanced at Goodnight, who had begun righting the furniture, once again the sardonic servant/watchdog. If it hadn’t been for him—

  “He must be the one who visits my offices.” The professor hurried to help him tip the settee back onto its bottom and then ushered Cordelia and Hedda to seats on it. “When I arrive this morning, my workroom is destructed. It happens early this morning, I know… because I go to my workroom last night to get the sketches, and everything is fine. Oh.” He remembered the portfolio under his arm and handed it to Cordelia. “He does not find these, so he comes here.”

  “Why would he do such a thing?” Hedda asked.

  “Last night, after we take you to the hotel, he asks many questions about the scrolls. I am thinking he is curious. He says he is a collector of antiquities. When I tell him we are just beginning to study, he says he has interest in our work and makes me promise to tell him of the progress.” He looked around with wide eyes. “I–I never think that he wants the rubbings for himself.”

  “Why would he want them so badly?” Cordelia asked, touching her aching face. “He can’t read them. He said they were stolen and he wanted to return them to the church. But, if that were true, why didn’t he just report us to the Spanish authorities?”

  “He didn’t want them involved,” Hedda concluded, paling. “Perhaps his actions aren’t as noble as he wants it to seem.”

  “Now that his ‘private’ efforts have failed”—Cordelia looked to the professor—“will he go to the government?”

  Mention of officialdom caused the professor fresh alarm.

  “Aiieee—his friend the governor.” He shot Hedda a worried look. “The Castille family is well known and has much power. If he goes to the palace—” He drew himself up straight, his eyes darting quickly over images that only he could see. He pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed his face. “We must leave for Mexico right away. Today. We must not be in Havana after the sun goes down.”

  The minute the professor left, Goodnight turned on Cordelia in disbelief.

  “You cannot be serious about letting that bounder find us passage on a ship. Have you completely forgotten the debacle of last night? The man turned a simple bit of dinner into an international incident and damn near got us arrested!”

  “That wasn’t his fault.” She headed for the bedroom, intent on salvaging and repacking her personal belongings.

  “No?” He followed and paused just inside the door. “It was his shady connections that brought the law down on us.”

  “And it may be those same connections that save our hides. He said he knows a captain that may be willing to take us on, no questions asked.”

  “Exactly my point. You should be asking plenty of questions. What ship? Is it seaworthy? Is the captain experienced and trustworthy?”

  She stared at him for a moment in disbelief.

  “What do you expect me to do? Waltz down to the docks and politely ask to see each captain’s credentials? We can’t book passage aboard a regular ship. If Castille goes to the governor, the docks are the first place they’ll look for us.” She braced to combat her own uneasiness as much as the skepticism in his face.

  “Go pack, Goodnight. We’re leaving in two hours.”

  Determination—his and hers—crackled like static electricity between them. When he turned on his heel and strode out, she nearly staggered with relief.

  On the way to returning drawers to her trunk, she was stopped in her tracks by Hedda’s searching look.

  “What?” she said, hating the heat blooming in her face.

  “Something happened between you two, didn’t it?” Hedda said.

  “Between me and Goodnight?” She forced a laugh. “Really, Hedda. The man’s annoying as the devil’s toothache. And he’s a butler.”

  Just after sunset, a force of government soldiers burst into the Hotel San Miguel, emptying the rooms and herding the guests into the lobby for questioning. The manager’s protest netted him a crack on the head from a rifle butt and some individual attention from a tall, sallow-faced Spaniard whose elegant dress and refined air belied a ready appetite for gritty techniques of persuasion.

  “Where are the Americanos?” Alejandro Castille demanded, backing the rotund manager against the wall of the lobby in full view of the man’s two
wide-eyed daughters, who worked in the hotel. “You were to send word immediately if they tried to leave.”

  “I would have, D–Don Castille, I swear. I did not know they were gone until you came and did not find them.”

  “Did I not tell you what would happen if you failed me?”

  “B-but—j-just this morning they paid for another two days.” His voice rose. “And—and they did not ask for the key to the storeroom for their crates!”

  “Crates?” Castille drew back with a silent snarl to assess this new information. A motion from his tobacco-stained fingers and his henchmen, Yago and Blanc, peeled the manager from the wall. “Show me.”

  Moments later, they stood in the alley behind the hotel, staring at a broken padlock on a pair of heavy wooden doors that led down steps into the hotel’s cellar. Castille shot a murderous glare from the lock to the manager, then hauled open one of the doors with his own hands and led the others down the steps into the cave-like chamber beneath the hotel.

  It smelled dank and sour and was black as pitch. The manager begged to be allowed to light a lantern. As soon as yellow kerosene light bloomed around them, Castille’s thugs seized him again to enforce their master’s demand to know where the crates were kept. The doughy little manager pointed with a shaking finger to a bare space at the far end.

  Castille turned away from the sight of the empty floor in a fury.

  “Why didn’t you tell me they had other baggage?” He slammed a fist into the manager’s nose. “How many? How many crates did you hide for them?”

  “F–four large,” the manager gasped out, his eyes swimming, unable to focus. “T–two smaller.”

  Castille ground his bruised knuckles into the palm of his other hand, chewing on the intensity of the discomfort. He took a deep breath and narrowed his basilisk-black eyes as he thought of his quarry’s options.

  “A Spanish man escorting two American beauties… with much baggage… headed for Mexico…they should prove fairly memorable. And they have to find a ship on short notice.” He looked back over his shoulder at Yago and Blanc. “Go to the harbor. Ask around for any ship leaving sooner than usual for Mexico. Check the private ships as well as the line steamers.”

  As his men charged up the steps, Castille gripped the back of the manager’s neck, digging his fingers in and smiling at the way the hotel man flinched. Increasing the pressure, he forced the manager up the steps.

  “You have disappointed me, senor. And I do not like to be disappointed.” As they headed for the side entrance of the hotel, Castille thought of the man’s doe-eyed daughters, huddled in the lobby with the rest of the staff and guests. “But I am a generous man.” He gave a humorless laugh. “I believe I will allow your pretty little daughters to make it up to me.”

  Silhouetted against the setting sun, a mule-drawn hay wagon and a donkey cart loaded with crates of produce wended their way along Cuba’s rocky northern shore, west of Havana. They were ordinary farm vehicles, two among many that headed daily for the coastal town of Puerto Esperanza, the small port that served as the primary market for the province’s produce. At the reins of the wagon was a sleepy fellow in a wide-brimmed hat, and driving the crude cart was an old woman bent by time and covered with a coarsely woven shawl. At a casual glance, no one would suspect that their humble appearance hid a wealth of contraband and their lethargic pace concealed a daring escape.

  Cordelia sat with her shoulders hunched on the wooden plank that passed for a driver’s seat on the cart. Her head and shoulders were itching from the shawl—hopefully it wasn’t anything worse than fleas—and her rear was going numb from fourteen hours of bone-jarring travel and jostling. She was covered with a haze of dust from the road, and whenever the breeze changed, she was overwhelmed by the smell of musty hay and flats of onions, plantains, and overripe tomatoes stacked on the cart to cover their baggage. She had insisted on driving one of the vehicles, even offered to wear men’s clothes. The professor looked her up and down and declared that no man with a single good eye would mistake her for male. She was forced to don a sad wool skirt and the enormous, itchy shawl, and was told to look aged and tired. The tired part came all too easily, now. Uncomfortable as it was, her fate was better than poor Hedda’s; her aunt had been consigned to the bed of the cart, tucked between trunks and beneath the vegetables, rattled tooth from bone and subjected to choking dust and a constant smell of fading produce.

  The most worrisome part was the fact that Goodnight— clearly too tall and British-looking to pass for a Cuban farmer—was trailing along behind them. Somewhere. Trying not to look connected to them in any way. He’d balked at hiding in the wagon, only to be assigned a donkey laden with cages of squawking chickens, stuffed into clothes too small and a hat too large, smeared with dirt, and ordered to walk stooped. If stopped, he was to keep his head down, say “si, si,” and offer his inquisitor a chicken—all of which, Cordelia had observed irritably, would tax his personal capabilities to the limit.

  Stuck on that wobbling, jolting seat for an entire day, she found her mind circling endlessly around questions of where they were headed and how she was going to keep Goodnight and the expedition under her control. Their first task, once they were safely underway at sea, was to study the rubbings for clues about where to begin their search. There had to be something in the message of the rubbings that pointed to where the stones were. If they didn’t find a clue right away, she feared Goodnight would make her life miserable.

  Some distance ahead, she spotted a line of horses and what appeared to be men on foot. It took a minute to register that the thin, dark lines jutting into the air above them were rifles. Soldiers.

  The wagon ahead of her, driven by the professor, slowed, turned sharply, and headed down a slope that gave Cordelia heart palpitations. Breaking her own rule of silence, she shouted at him. He turned and beckoned while bracing to stay on the wagon. Soldiers. He had seen them and was taking evasive action.

  With her heart in her throat, she slapped the reins against the donkey’s rump and called “¡Anda!” as the professor had. It took some urging, but the animal finally made the turn she insisted on and the cart bounced and hopped over several rocks, swaying wildly. It was all she could do to hold on as she and the weight of the cart pushed the donkey toward the edge of an even more precipitous slope. Panicked by the force behind him, the donkey took off at a run, scrambling wildly down the steeper part of the slope with the cart careening along behind it.

  She dropped the reins and held on for dear life, feeling the steamer trunks sliding forward on the cart bed and praying Hedda wasn’t being crushed. The wheels banging against rocks jarred the flats of produce behind her loose. The ropes holding the cargo groaned and the next minute she was pummeled from behind by small melons that ricocheted onto the rocks below and smashed.

  The donkey made a frantic twist to the left that carried them around a wicked drop, and the cart rolled over the last obstacle and landed on the shoreline sand with a thump. Hedda’s scream was muffled by the cargo and the thunk of the cart itself.

  Once on level ground, Cordelia sat for a moment trying to get her breath, then called to Hedda to see if she was hurt. Her tousled aunt threw back the tarp and squeezed up between baskets and stacks of wooden boxes to peer over the front of the cart. She stared in horror at the rocky slope they’d just descended.

  “Sweet Mother Mary! That’s the last time I let you drive,” she said hoarsely, crossing herself. “What happened? Where are we?”

  “Soldiers,” Cordelia said quietly, gathering up the reins. “On the road. Stay down a little longer.”

  Hedda slid back down beneath the tarp and Cordelia looked over the donkey, who seemed to be taking his brush with disaster in stride. She was able to coax him several hundred yards down the beach, to where the professor was stopping his wagon beside some large rocks.

  “We camp here,” the professor said, approaching the cart and keeping his voice low. “Many farmers camp here on the way to
market.”

  At his suggestion, she pulled the cart behind some rock pillars that sheltered it from the road, leaving only the larger wagon visible. She lifted the tarp and told Hedda it was safe to climb out.

  After climbing down herself and pausing to help her aunt, she planted her hands in the small of her back and arched over them, stretching her spine, feeling relieved to be both standing and still. She closed her eyes for a moment and turned her face into the gentle breeze.

  The air was fresh and salty, and when she opened her eyes, the sea in the pre-moon darkness winked like black satin and the surf frothed like a border of lace. In the distance she could see campfires blooming on the beach, confirming the professor’s claim about the beach being a common campsite. She strolled over to the professor, who stood on the sand near a place where hunks of half-burned wood and old coals were mixed with the sand, evidence of previous campfires.

  “We wait for boat here,” he said, producing a binocular telescope to scan the horizon. “We keep watch. They come tonight.”

  “If they come at all,” Goodnight muttered with a strangely nasal tone from close range. Startled, Cordelia turned around. There he stood in his ragged clothes and peasant sandals, looking tired, irritable, and skeptical that those conditions would improve any time soon. With a defiant expression, he tied his chicken-bearing donkey to the back of the cart and stalked off down the beach.

  At Hedda’s look of alarm, Cordelia went after him.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, catching up with him.

  “Looking for firewood.” He picked up a piece of driftwood and scouted the sand for others. “I’ve got to have a cup of tea.”

  “You’re going to build a campfire to cook?”

  “Fires, it happens, are one of my specialties. Here—” He thrust some wood into her arms. “Carry these back.”