Bride of a Distant Isle (45 page)

“You are the rightful owner.” Marco stood and looked at Father Giovanni, who was wavering a little on the small sofa.
Not yet used to the steady land
, I thought.
Time for him to return to rest.

I offered my uncle rooms at Highcliffe, but he said he preferred the simple comfort of the ship. We walked to the hall, and after I kissed my uncle good-bye and promised to visit with him soon, the driver helped him to the carriage.

Marco remained in the hall with me for just a moment. “About Highcliffe. I had thought, if I were to work with Somerford, I might make an offer to its rightful owner.”

“I may be persuaded to entertain an offer, Captain Dell'Acqua,” I teased. “Perhaps a deal might be struck.”

“What offer would you entertain?” He leaned toward me and held my gaze. I thought he was going to kiss me there in the foyer, but after a moment he asked, “Could your uncle and I collect you tomorrow, in the carriage, after he's rested? There is something I'd like you to see.”

I nodded. “Of course.”

“Until then, Bella.” He took my ungloved hand in his own and brushed his lips and beard against it before leaving. My hand tingled to life.

I watched him until he reached the carriage, and then he turned and waved to me. This time, I waved back. In the distance, Emmeline corralled her sheep, chasing after one that had wandered away, bringing it back to the fold.

I should see Oliver reinstated as hall boy, promptly, and promote him from there.

I turned and began to walk toward the stairs, not caring who saw the wide grin on my face.

“Annabel,” Clementine sang out. “If you have a moment.”

She was not exactly pleasant, but she wasn't throwing icicles any longer, either.

“Of course.”

This time, I took the lead. I walked to the study, which would soon become
my
study, and closed the door behind us.

She seemed flustered and did not know where to sit. I indicated the chair in front of a sturdy writing table and then I sat behind it.

“With regard to Highcliffe.”

“I don't intend to sell it,” I said. “I'm sure you heard that the priest Captain Dell'Acqua brought with him is my uncle. He officiated at my parents' wedding and retained the necessary documentation.”

She nodded. “It's not as though one can eavesdrop in one's own home.”

One certainly can. “This is no longer your home,” I said.

“Annabel. Everything I did, I did for Albert's sake. Not for my sake, not for Edward's sake, but for Albert's sake. Edward did everything that was immoral, unethical, or harmful. You saw how unkind he was to me. You lived how unkind he was to you. I only went along with it. What else could I do?”

“That is the very thing I expect Judith Everedge told herself with regards to my mother.” My hands were balled into fists behind the table where she could not see them. I kept my face placid and self-controlled. “But you used tainted honey to try to have me admitted, forever, to an insane asylum. And Edward was next. He died knowing it.”

She had the decency to flinch.

“There is no evidence I did anything wrong,” she said. “Edward ordered the honey and made every other arrangement. I was not involved.”

She was right that I lacked evidence. But we both knew she had been the hand in the glove. “You will depart before Christmas. I will file an enquiry with the constable, and though they may not find proof, this time it will be on the record should any harm come to anyone in your acquaintance henceforth.”

She stood up and fairly shrieked, decorum and false grief and remorse having fled. “Where am I to go? Albert! You said you would have taken care of Albert and me, and now you reverse your word?”

I said nothing for a long minute. She gathered herself, perhaps realizing that her tantrum would not bring her favor.

“I have not thought this through, of course, completely,” I said. How could I have? “Perhaps you could return to Dorsetshire. 'Tis not far away. I would be able to visit you . . . and keep up with Albert, his health and well-being.”

She nodded. “My mother won't have me forever. She shamed me for . . . the situation that led to my marriage with Edward and wants little to do with me or with Albert.” I pitied her. She had a living mother who rejected her in favor of her sons, and though mine was dead, my mother had loved me without boundary.

“Perhaps you can marry again,” I said. “Someone who loves you this time, thereby doing away with the reliance on licorice spirits. I am prepared to fund Albert's nanny and eventually schooling and a number of his other expenses. The nanny and headmaster shall report to me and me alone each and every month, regarding his well-being and the environment provided in your home. I cannot, however, in good conscience, support you. Any investments, after debts are paid, which were Edward's alone and did not derive from family funds shall, of course, be yours.”

We both knew there would be little to eat from that particular pot.

“Choose wisely next time,” I said, not caring if I lectured after all she had put upon me. “One cannot quarantine oneself from a husband. What he is often is what one becomes.”

She nodded. It was an easier pill to swallow, I think, to believe she was good at heart and tainted by a bad man rather than that she had enjoyed the fruits of his dealings all along.

She departed, and I asked Mrs. Watts to bring a tray to my room for supper, which she gladly did, along with a return letter from Elizabeth rejoicing in my health and looking forward to a Christmas together.

I went to bed early.

I wanted to be well rested on the morrow.

M
y uncle chaperoned us the following day, a day that was filled with, fittingly, sweetness and light. It was cold outside, but the fur-lined cloak I wore kept me warm, as did my muff. Albert hugged my leg as I left the house and I promised him I'd soon return, and we'd draw pictures together by the fire in the library. If he was especially good, perhaps we might even take the covering off the billiard table and I would show him how to play.

We drove down the lane and soon arrived in Lymington, at the harbor. My uncle stayed in the carriage but could see us. We alighted from the carriage and stepped onto the quay.

“She's . . . different!” I looked at his ship. As we stood in front of the prow the men aboard scrambled out of the way, giving us privacy. The ship was well cared for as always, but what had changed was . . . “The mast!” I said.

He laughed. “Can't help but notice, can you.”

Where Poseidon alone had blazoned the way across the seas on the bowsprit before, now there was a woman by his side. She was not a mermaid but a proper lady. Except for her hair. Her black hair was wild and free and flew out behind her in waves as though it were being blown by the oncoming wind.

“She has black hair,” I said, looking up at Marco with a smile.

“And blue eyes.” He winked and took my hand in his own.

“I thought you said a woman would distract you and your men as you sailed.”

“I had thought that to be true. But I've had a change of heart. I still sail,” he said, looking at me firmly, “and must always. But the men and I now can look forward to returning home to someone, someone who is guiding us there in the heart and on the ship.”

“Who is she?” I asked. My voice was a husky whisper in the cold air.

“She's the Bride of Poseidon,” he said. “
Jien inħobbok
, Bella,” he said in Maltese.
I love you.

“Jien inħobbok għal dejjem,”
I whispered.
I will love you forever.

“I had asked you to be mine before I left and you did not answer.”

“You had not asked me to marry you,” I pointed out.

“What? Oh. Ay!” He hit his forehead with his one free hand.

“I thought perhaps your mother wouldn't allow it,” I teased. “Foreign woman.”

He turned to face me and caressed my face with his hand. “I told her you could speak Maltese. That you
are
Maltese. Neither convinced her. Then I told her that if I did not marry you then you would most probably take sacred vows. Now, once she understood that to you, the only sensible choice was between me and no man, she saw immediately that you were wise and gave her blessing. It does help,” he said with a grin, “that she knows Mama Bellini. But no matter what she thought, I'd marry you as soon as you'd allow.”

He pulled me toward him until I was warm and kissed me again and again, as a man would when suddenly given leave to do that which he had long dreamt of.

“Please marry me, Annabel Ashton Bellini.”

I remembered what his friend had said early in our acquaintance.
A loving father only chooses a man who will love and cherish his daughter.
Was this the man my father had chosen? “Will you leave me?” I asked, thinking of how the sea had swallowed my father and with him, my life.

“If you mean the sea, I must sail away from time to time, but I will always return home to you, and only you, wherever those homes may be. If you mean, will I ever leave you for another? No. Absolutely not. I promise this. There has never been another woman who has captured my heart. There is no other; there could not be. There will never be another.”

A lifetime had unraveled and then been re-knit since I'd left Winchester seven months earlier, hoping for a quiet life as a teacher. I had learnt who I was, and that I was beloved, and that I could chance risk and prevail. I did not know if the sea would take him from me. But I knew that nothing else, and no one else, would. I once thought I fitted everywhere because I belonged nowhere. I now knew where I belonged. With Marco.

“Yes,” I said. “I will marry you, Marc Antonio Dell'Acqua.” He pulled me to him and as he did, he kissed each cheek and kissed my eyelids and caressed my face once more before he took my face in both his hands and kissed my lips.

“There is one thing I have been longing to do,” he said. “Something I promised myself I would do as soon as you agreed to become my wife.”

I arched an eyebrow, and he laughed. “I assured you I am not a rogue, Bella. For that, I will wait for the priest's blessing. No, what I want to do is to free you.”

I nodded my approval, and he unpinned my long black hair and then ran both hands through it, which tumbled in the wind. His hands sent a shiver through me, and I grinned as I heard the roar of approval and applause that came from the ship.

I was to be the bride of a distant isle, too.

He kissed me tenderly once more and then my uncle alighted from the carriage, aware, one thought, of his chaperoning duties as uncle and priest.

“Do you remember what once you told me?” I asked Marco.

“Of what do you speak, Bella? Please, remind me, my love.”

I drew near to him, and he tucked me securely and with love underneath his arm.

“Alla fine andrà tutto bene se non andrà bene, non e le fine,”
I said.

All will be well in the end; if it's not well, then it's not the end.

VALLETTA, MALTA

1854

H
omer called Malta the center of the sea, and though England was and always would be my home, on this day, Malta was the center of my world.

We'd left our palazzo in a horse-drawn carriage, netting covering all round so the breezes might cool us while we remained protected from tiny flying pests or wheel-thrown rocks. I sat on one side of the carriage holding our child and twisting the long strand of pearls—Marco's wedding gift—with the other. Marco sat across from us, arms extended in case the carriage should jostle the baby.

“How will he be a courageous sailor if you're overattentive during a carriage ride?” I teased.

“Can't be too cautious,” he grumbled. A rooster strutted in the center of our driveway, unafraid. I grinned. A worthy mascot, indeed. I glanced down at the sleeping bundle in my arms.