Beguiled

by Laura Parker

  He moved toward her slowly, half-expecting her to lash out with her mirror when he got within range. But she didn’t and when he slid one arm tentatively about her waist, she sagged against him as though his embrace had come at the last moment of her strength.

  He curled one arm tightly about her, gathering as much of her weight onto himself as he could, and reached for a dining chair with his free hand. When he had brought it within range, he sat down and pulled her onto his lap. All the while she sobbed like her heart was in too many pieces even to count.

  He caught the soft shape of her cheek with his hand and bent to lean his chin against her forehead. “Menina, don’t cry. You break my heart with your tears. My sad little one. Please.” English failing, he resorted to more virtuoso endearments in Portuguese, feeling free to say any number of intimate things to her as he pressed consoling kisses into her afflicted hair.

  Once begun, Philadelphia realized she didn’t know how to stop her tears. She’d been so angry when she realized what had happened. Now she felt deflated by the tempest of her tears. Helplessly, she moved her head back and forth as hiccuping sounds replaced the sobs. When a hand wedged her chin and lifted it, she was grateful for the interruption.

  Eduardo brushed his lips across her brow, savoring the pleasure of touching. “Hush, menina. It is only a temporary problem. I can solve it. Tomorrow.” He lifted her chin higher until he was staring into her fretful gaze. “Another application or two and no one will ever know of this present misfortune.”

  Philadelphia bit her lip several times before she could capture it and bring the trembling under control. “I—I look like an alley cat!”

  Eduardo bit his own lip. She reminded him more of a stoat at its mid-seasonal change but he didn’t think she’d appreciate that comparison either. “I like cats,” he said, gently stroking the striped tresses trailing over his arm.

  “I—wish—you—would—” She didn’t finish what she was about to say and Eduardo thought it was just as well. Ladies of her ilk never expressed themselves in that manner, and he had the distinct impression that whatever she had been about to say would have been a first for her—coined in the mint of extremity.

  “It is a small thing, really,” he murmured, fascinated by the deliciously warm soft woman in his arms. “Now, won’t you have your lunch?”

  She shook her head. She was discovering that while losing one’s self-possession is a terrible thing, regaining it can be an even more humbling experience. “I think I should go and lie down for a while.”

  “But not in the sun, I trust.” It was a calculated risk and, when her head snapped up, he wondered at the thinking that had made him believe it would work.

  She rose from his lap with as much dignity as she could and sent her hair flying back behind her with a toss of her head. “I suppose I am to be fair-haired for our next adventure?”

  He nodded, not trusting his voice.

  “And I suppose you had some method in mind when you began this experiment.”

  Again a safe nod.

  “Then I suggest that you give more specific instructions next time, though I’m at a loss to imagine—no, that’s not true. I could be bald.” She turned and marched from the room.

  Eduardo studied his lap for a long moment. She’d sat there, a full and very real womanly weight pressed against him. Sad to say, he wished now that she’d cried longer. Then he might have moved his kisses from her forehead and hair to her lips, and tasted a measure of that tempestuous spirit he longed to stir to passionate response.

  Mae de Deus! Women!

  Already dressed for bed, Philadelphia stared beyond the remains on her dinner tray to where the sun had set, its fiery splendor still bleeding into the blue-gray clouds at twilight. After the scene she’d made at luncheon, she didn’t have the nerve to face Eduardo Tavares again. By morning she would feel differently. At least she hoped she would. Besides, she didn’t want anyone else to see her hair as it was, not even the three servants he had hired to look after them. If he succeeded in turning disaster into victory, then she would eat in the dining hall. Until then, she preferred twilight and shadow.

  The hours alone in her room had also given her time to think and make plans of her own. Though she had not again broached the subject with Eduardo Tavares, she had decided not to go to Saratoga with him. One adventure with him was enough to convince her that she didn’t have the disposition for fakery. Now that she had money of her own, she was free to set about tracing the authors of the two other letters in her possession. Of course, half of the four thousand dollars she had received from Senhor Tavares was already earmarked. She intended to wire it to her lawyer in Chicago to go against her father’s outstanding debts. Then, too, she would pay Senhor Tavares for her wardrobe. It was the least she could do, since she was leaving him so abruptly. Whatever remained would keep her for a good while if she managed it carefully.

  Yet she had waited until now to act on the most important matter on her mind. She had told herself that she needed the privacy that only the night could provide, but in reality, she dreaded the ordeal before her.

  Before she lost her nerve again, she rose and went to turn the key in her door and then retrieved her portmanteau from the corner. After opening it, she removed the letters from the hole she’d snipped in the lining and then went to turn up the light on the desk.

  Opening each one, she lay the letters out side by side on the desk. She knew the contents of the first by heart but she felt somehow that the three together might turn out to be more than their separate parts.

  She scanned Lancaster’s letter quickly and set it aside. More cautiously she opened the second letter and inspected the contents. It had a bullying tone, ordering the reader to remember an oath of silence. It spoke of “damned Brazilians” and “nervous Nellies.” It closed with the suggestion that the reader ride out the present misfortune without “spading over old graves.” Scrawled in a bold hand was the signature: MacCloud.

  Philadelphia put it down in distaste. The name MacCloud was slightly familiar. She frowned. Why was it familiar? Had MacCloud been one of her father’s business associates? From the tone of his letter, MacCloud didn’t seem the kind of man her father would have done business with. Yet, she thought the same about Lancaster. What was the connection between these letters?

  She looked at the letter’s date, June 7, 1874. It was written more than a year ago. She looked again at the Lancaster letter. It was dated April 14, 1874. Lancaster was alive in April of the previous year. MacCloud’s letter was dated in June of the same year. Henry Wharton said Lancaster died a year ago. That would place his death between mid-April and June of last year. Was Lancaster’s death the “present misfortune” to which MacCloud referred? A chill brushed lightly against her spine.

  If only she had spoken to Henry Wharton before leaving New York she might have learned when and how Lancaster had died. Men died every day of natural causes, disease, accident, fire—a dozen different but ordinary ways. There was no reason to assume that Lancaster had been murdered. Eduardo Tavares had said that he had read of the scandal that surrounded Lancaster’s death. Did she dare ask him about it when MacCloud’s letter mentioned “damned Brazilians”? Was there a connection between MacCloud and Tavares?

  She shook her head to dispel the notion. No, of course not. Fancy was taking over. If she were not careful, she would soon be starting at shadows and dodging phantoms. She mustn’t begin to suspect conspiracy in every person she met. And yet, why the mention of Brazil? She didn’t recall her father ever mentioning the country. In fact, he had once refused a piece of stone that had come to him from Rio de Janeiro.

  Her heart lurched into a quick, painful rhythm that sent blood surging through her veins. That was it! She had been a little girl, no more than five, the one and only time she had ever seen MacCloud. He had come to see her father at Christmas. She remembered his boisterous laughter in a quiet dignified house that had never before hea
rd such raucous tones. She remembered that he had brought her hard candies and peppermint, and a doll dressed in tartan. And, most of all, she suddenly remembered how her father had reacted to the gift MacCloud had brought him. She had scarcely caught sight of it, a deep sky-blue stone large enough to fill a man’s palm. Her father had started away from it as though it were about to explode, and then cursing, which she had never before heard on his lips, he sent her from the room. The next morning, MacCloud was gone, as were his gifts to her. How could she have forgotten that? She had cried for days over the loss of the doll in tartan.

  She looked down again and gingerly picked up the third letter. It had no postmark but it was dated the day of her father’s death. The most cryptic of all, it was little more than an unfamiliar quote.

  “This is the first of punishments, that no guilty man is acquitted if judged by himself.” The rain forest shelters two graves and a desecrated altar. The Judgment is rendered. You will find no rest until you are but ashes and dust.

  Philadelphia crumbled the letter in her fist, stunned and cold as ice. She had forgotten this letter, blocked it from her mind, but now the pain and shock of it were as fresh and bitter as before. Her father had taken his own life, clutching these letters in his hand. Was this unsigned challenge what drove him to suicide? He had meant for the letters to be found, she was certain of it. But who did he expect to find them? Were they for her? Was it his way of offering her clues to the men who had ruined him, or of some great transgression that he could not face? It had been the latter fear that lay behind her decision to take and hide the letter before the police arrived.

  “No!” She rose. To think that way meant considering the possibility that her father had done something wrong, something so terrible that he had taken his own life rather than continue to face it. She couldn’t believe that. There was another explanation. There had to be.

  Perhaps if she went to New Orleans and found MacCloud she would learn the answers. Yet, what could she say to a man who had warned her father not to “turn over old graves”?

  If only she felt she could trust Eduardo Tavares with the truth. But how could she when the word Brazil also appeared in the third letter? Was it a coincidence? It was possible. Nothing he’d done or said indicated anything else. And yet.

  The strains of a guitar came slowly into her consciousness. The notes wafted sweetly through her open window from the terrace below. She moved toward the window as sounds strung themselves together into a melody. Who was playing? Was it one of the servants hired to keep house for them?

  As she reached the window the player launched into full song. The music was quick and lively with sharp rises and falls. The melody swung wide and loud only to fall soft again. It was a song of joy unfettered, an expression of defiance against all that was staid and grim and proper.

  As she leaned out to look down, a voice was added to the melody. The language was foreign but the baritone was full and strong and slightly colored by a vibrato on the sustained notes. Even at dusk there was no mistaking him.

  Eduardo Tavares sat below her window on the balustrade of the terrace, one foot braced against the ground while his guitar rested on his other drawn-up leg. As she watched, his fingers touched the strings with a careless ease that spoke of long-practiced skill.

  Fascinated, Philadelphia crossed her arms and braced them on the window sill to remain and watch. When the song was done she heard him catch his breath in sharply and then expel it in laughter that moved her as much as a caress upon her skin.

  The music began again. This time it was a slow piece with lingering notes that reached out through the halfdark evening to snare her with the most beautiful sound she had ever heard.

  The melody drew the night into itself and she felt drawn toward the source, as if he knew she stood in her window listening and directed his energies at flushing her out. The vibrations of the strings reached inside her, replacing the shock and sorrow of the last moments with their own compelling emotion until she forgot everything else but their sound. The music altered her breathing to make it ebb and flow in time to the melody filling the night with sweet song. The pleading notes were sustained until they seemed to embody all the yearning of his soul. Her body swayed forward on her elbows but her toes curled inside her shoes in resistance until she stood transfixed and taut while his music strummed this new inexplicable tension within her.

  When the piece ended, she held her breath, afraid that she might not be able to breathe again without the direction of his music. For an instant longer she remained immobile, waiting for him to begin another tune while the strange wild aching inside her grew unbearable. Afraid that he had stopped for good, she turned and hurried across her room, headed for her door and the terrace below.

  11

  As Philadelphia reached the first floor, she realized that the strummed chords of the guitar could only be faintly heard in the dark interior of the house, but it was enough. Like a treasure hunter following clues, she followed the drifting music into the lighted library. Beyond the library, she saw the French doors standing open. On river-freshened air came such beautiful sounds that she felt a strange burning in the back of her throat. She didn’t want to disturb him, but she couldn’t keep herself from moving quietly forward until she stood within a foot of the doorway.

  He sat on the balustrade, just beyond the reach of the light, a sharp silhouette in a white shirt that glowed faintly as if it had absorbed the last of the sunset. The shirt was open at the collar revealing the strong dark column of his throat. She remembered how, the first time she saw him, she had thought he possessed an unusual, exotic, and strongly compelling masculine beauty that would have left its impression on her had she never seen him again.

  From the moment he had entered her life, she had cast aside reason and propriety and common sense, yet she hadn’t allowed herself to wonder why. It had nothing to with jewels or her father’s debts, or the masquerade that allowed her to forget for a little while that she was all alone in the world. She’d not come with him out of idle curiosity or because she had nothing better to do. She knew that she had come for the same reason she was here now. She’d come in answer to his serenade, because she wanted to be with him.

  “Is that you, menina? Come out and join me.”

  The sound of his voice surprised her, and then she realized that while she’d not been bold enough to cross the threshold her shadow had. Her silhouette was smudged inside the sharp-angled wedge of candlelight slanted across the terrace bricks. Gathering her courage, she stepped out into the night.

  Without interrupting his playing he said, “I thought you abed, menina. Did I awaken you with my clumsy attempts to make music, and have you come to throw old shoes at me?”

  She smiled in spite of herself. He knew he played wonderfully, but like a small boy he wanted her to say so. “You play remarkably well, senhor.”

  “Do you really think so?” His smile was a brilliant flash in his dark face. “I studied in Lisbon.”

  “Lisbon? You studied music?”

  His fingers paused over the strings. “Why are you so shocked?”

  “I’m not shocked,” she hedged, though in truth she was amazed. “Musical study is usually the prerogative of ladies, that is all.”

  “Ah yes. In America women learn to play the harp or the violin or the piano while men learn to shoot and ride and gamble. In my country a man is expected to learn both things. But then, we are a backward people, yes?”

  “I meant no disrespect.”

  “I accept your comment as ignorance, senhorita.”

  The rebuff hurt but she held her tongue. She had obviously insulted him. Reluctantly, she turned to leave.

  “But where are you going? The night is sweet and your company would be also.”

  She looked back at him. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. I only wanted to say that I enjoyed your music.”

  “Then stay with me and I will play for you. Wou
ld you like that?”

  Like a child offered a sweet after a scolding, she smiled with joy. “I would, very much.”

  He indicated that she sit beside him on the balustrade. She found a place several feet away from him and lifted herself up onto the painted wood.

  The first tune he played he said was a Brazilian folk tune. She enjoyed its toe-tapping rhythm behind the simple line of the melody. After he played through she asked, “Are there words?”

  He nodded and began to sing.

  He was not ashamed of his voice, that much she realized from the moment he began. He sang full and strong. Not one note was chastened or softened because she sat beside him. In fact, as he stared at her with those intense dark eyes which gleamed in the semidarkness, she had the distinct impression that the words he sang in Portuguese would have made her blush had she understood them.

  When the song ended, he slipped down from the balustrade and turned to her. “Come and dance for me, senhorita.”

  Embarrassed, Philadelphia shook her head. “I don’t know how.”

  “But of course you do. Every woman knows how. When I was a child, the women of my village loved to dance. Never were they too young or too old, or too fat or too ugly to dance. Each and every one of them was beautiful when she danced, and she knew it. Come, I will show you.”

  He began another tune, moving his feet in time to the rhythm. “It is easy. Just do as I do.”

  She watched him, shyness holding her back long after the rhythm had caught her. Suddenly the guitar fell silent as he flattened the strings with his palm.

  “Oh no, don’t stop!”

  “If there is music there must be dancing!” he answered, stern as any schoolmaster.