The Abyss (2 page)

Three. In the Corner of a Ballroom

Practically ill with love, the Viscount of Voges pressed Clara to give him the honor of the first dance at the prince's ball.

Her eyes went from his sweaty brow to the door and she smiled, pretending that she could not hear him over the noise of a hundred other people talking. As the players started to tune their instruments and the floor was cleared for dancing, it seemed that she would be forced to give him an answer, but instead she suddenly dipped into a low curtsy.

Turning around, the Viscount found that Prince John was coming their way, and bowed.

The prince stood smiling with his usual bonhomie. He was a rotund man with lazy eyes and a pendulous lower lip that betrayed the Hapsburg blood of the females in his lineage. He liked to stop and take Clara by the hand, as he did now.

"Clarinha," he said, using the diminutive of her name; he had known her from a child. "I think the stars will be hiding in a second, ashamed to be seen next to you!"

Clara's smile and her renewed curtsy were sincere, for she did like the prince. She often felt sorry for him, knowing that he did not have the temperament of a monarch and had not wanted to become regent. However, his older brother had succumbed to the Bragança curse, which stated that no first born son of his house would live long enough to rule, and John had inevitably become heir to the throne. 

Then his mother, Queen Maria, had gone mad, and there had been no other choice but for John to rule.

As if these troubles were not enough, two years before John's eldest son, Dom Francisco Antonio, had also died at six years of age.  The prince wore those sorrows with the best face he could; it was not a handsome face, but it was a gentle one.

His wife approached now, her bulging Bourbon eyes on Clara. Carlota Joaquina was the daughter of the king of Spain, and although she had come to Portugal as a girl of ten, she still took her native land's side on most matters of state. Spain and France had invaded Portugal two years before and taken the city of Olivenza. Napoleon and Carlota's father had not ceased bullying John to join their alliance against Great Britain. Pedro had described with what zeal and even violence the princess had tried to convince her husband to obey them. 

Carlota was an ugly, ill-mannered princess, and she did not bother to hide her contempt for her husband, who had not yet found it in himself to treat her harshly or, as some advised, place her under house arrest.

"We have others to greet," the princess told her husband dryly, after allowing the Viscount to kiss her hand. She turned her back on Clara, a tall plume on her head bobbing, and moved away. The prince smiled at the girl again, and followed his wife.

The music had begun in earnest, and the Viscount straightened his back from his third bow to turn and claim his dance, only to find that Gabriel Almada de Castro had materialized next to Clara.

Clara's eyes lit up and her lips curved in a happy smile as Gabriel took her hand and kissed it, "I believe you promised me this dance!"

The Viscount's mouth hung open.

"I did!" Clara cried, addressing the Viscount. "I was about to tell you so, when His Highness came to greet us!"

Gabriel inclined his head at his rival, "You'll excuse us, Voges?"

The Viscount also inclined his head in mournful defeat.

Gabriel led Clara to the floor and took her hand as they got into position for the cotillion. Before they had to turn toward other partners Clara quickly said, with a teasing sidelong glance, "You're late!"

He smiled, "On time to dance with you!"

They were facing each other now, and Clara returned his smile. There he was in the flesh, more handsome than her drawing of him. She silently gave thanks to whoever had invented dancing, as it allowed a man and a woman in love to touch, and look into each other's eyes.

However, after two dances it would look bad for Clara if her only partner were Gabriel, so she accepted the Viscount, and smiled at his blue smile. She danced with others as well, and saw Gabriel watching her from a corner of the room.

Her smile widened; he did not care to dance with any other woman. And in his eyes, which looked dark now, she could read impatience for her to go to him.

She was as impatient as he was, and begged the pardon of the next young man who asked her for "the honor of turning about the room with him,” as he put it. Pleading tiredness, she managed to make her way to Gabriel. He was leaning against the wall and considered her as she stood before him, his face inscrutable.

Clara knew well that Gabriel's mood could change because of an unexpected thought or something that was said, or done. His sudden seriousness didn't scare her, it never did. She looked at him with mischief in her eyes and began to cool herself with her black feather fan.

"
'How is it that the clouds still hang on you?'
" she quoted in English.

She could see that he was trying not to smile, but then he did. She always made him smile. He looked across the ballroom and quoted back, "
'Methinks I see my father...
'"

And, in fact, there was the Marquis, his head thrown back as he observed people practically through his nostrils, with very little sympathy or real curiosity for any of them. Prince John, standing by his side, seemed a much humbler man. Clara saw Gabriel almost shake his head as he looked at his father.

"He spreads joy wherever he goes..." he mumbled.

"Will you dance with me again?" Clara asked, letting a feather from her fan rest on Gabriel's arm.

"I think we have danced enough for one night."

"According to jealous people!" she exclaimed, also putting her back against the wall so that she was next to him.

"Well, all men are jealous of me."

"Men don't have such long tongues, it would be the women jealous of me who would be talking. All the ones who wish to marry you."

There was a silence, then he said, "But I wish to marry 
you
."

Clara's heart leapt so hard against her chest that she gasped,
 "O quê?"

She turned her head sideways to look at him, and he slowly turned his. His eyes were languid and intense at once, and they told her that he was serious. "One day soon," he said. 

Looking down at the shoes that were peeping below the hem of her dress, Clara felt unable to speak. And because he could not touch her, Gabriel reached out and ran his fingers through the feathers of her fan. She shivered without knowing why.

"Clarinha, the Viscount has been talking of nothing but dancing with you!"

The loud voice that seemed to belong to a young girl came from Clara's mother, who was bearing down on them, showing her canines in a false smile.

Clara was wrenched from her dream and realized that they were being watched from several quarters: by the Viscount and other lovelorn gentlemen waiting to dance with her; by girls who very much wanted to dance with Gabriel; by the princess, who sent a scowl her way; and by the angry eyes of the Marquis.

And there was her mother, standing before them.

"I am only resting,
 mãe
," Clara said, almost ill at the thought that the most beautiful moment of her life had been spoiled.

Juliana's penetrating stare went from one to another. Clara saw that Gabriel's face had remained blank, as if often did when her mother was present. Juliana was smiling and gripping her fan, and she could not help a look at the Marquis, who by now seemed furious.

"I am sure two young people are not meant to engross each other on an evening meant for everyone's amusement," Juliana said to Gabriel. "Don't you agree, sir?"

"I cannot say that I do," Gabriel replied with cold politeness. "If the amusement of some is procured through the despair of others, then I think it better to let some have complete joy and others total distress."

Clara looked elsewhere. It would be a disloyal thing for her to smile at her mother's discomfort, and yet she knew that Juliana needed to be repressed more often, and that almost no one ever managed. Gabriel normally did, which was why Juliana took so ill to the idea of a marriage between them.

She probably did not wish to be repressed by her son-in-law all her life, and preferred the much more accommodating Voges.

"But I would point out that even the Marquis..." Juliana started again, with another glance at Gabriel's father. "Even he does not seem happy to see such favoritism being shown."

Gabriel's eyes were suddenly icy, and so was his voice, "Allow me, madam, to be concerned about my father, if it is at all necessary."

Clara winced. She wished her mother would retreat, because she knew Gabriel would not. Juliana looked almost indignant, though she would never have dared show it to a member of the aristocracy. However, she could not help mumbling, "If a father's opinion is of no concern to a young man..."

The young man in question chose not to hear what she had said, but by the tightening of his jaw Clara saw that his temper was up. So was her mother's, who had been reduced to pursing her lips, narrowing her eyes and making urgent beckoning movements with a hand hidden at her side. "Clara!" she hissed.

The girl was now in a high state of embarrassment at being upbraided and called away like a creature without sense, in front of the man she loved and who had just proposed to her, or so she believed. She was even more embarrassed at her mother's terrible willfulness and the vulgarity that she could not help displaying in public, even before princes.

She threw a quick look at Gabriel, begging his pardon with her beautiful black eyes, and he smiled at her. As she moved away with her mother, she glanced behind her before she joined the throng again, but Gabriel was gone.

In the carriage on the way home, Juliana was furious and apprised her husband of what she thought had happened, "...shamelessly dancing with Gabriel Almada de Castro, did you not see? Twice in a row, and there would have been a third time, if I had not stepped in and put a stop to it. They were skulking in a corner..."

Juliana now gave her full attention to her daughter, leaning forward toward her as a vein bulged in her neck, "Congratulations, 
minha rapariga
, you have made a spectacle of yourself dancing with a man and then refusing the most eligible bachelors in the room to stand in a corner with him like a pair of servants, when you are not even engaged. How do you think it looks?"

Her daughter thought that they might be engaged ─ that they would be, if only her mother would leave them alone.

"I will tell you how it looks," Juliana went on, "it looks like you are a silly, foolish, 
cheap 
girl!"

"Juliana!" Pedro cried, and put his tongue against his teeth several times to make a noise of chagrin and disapproval.

Clara's face had become red and hot at the word 
cheap
. Her mother had no breeding, if she was able to say such a thing. She almost felt like throwing her fan at Juliana, but she did have manners and respect, and refrained from doing it.

Juliana had turned her wrath on her husband, "Then you tell me, how you would like to have an enemy like Vargas? Did you not see his face, looking at his son and our daughter?" She flapped a furious hand at Clara. "If looks could kill she would be dead!"

"É verdade?"
 Pedro asked, suddenly worried. 
Is it true?

"É verdade sim!"
 his wife insisted. "That stuffed old boar hates the thought of his son being anywhere near Clara! Imagine what he can do to your career, if these two keep defying him!"

Looking out the window to hide her frown, Clara tried to remember the look of love and desire in Gabriel’s eyes as he had said, 
"But I wish to marry you!" 
She felt tears rushing to her eyes at the sudden desperate thought that they might never be together, because so many people wished to stop them.

Four. Defiance

A man who chose a woman as fearsome as Juliana for a companion must be a weakling, Gabriel reflected in the carriage.

He had left the ball sooner than his father, brother and Eduarda; once he and Clara had been sought out in their hiding place by her brash mother, it had become pointless to stay.

Juliana would clearly back down before few things, if any, and living with her would mean endless war, even if one were as accommodating as Pedro Tavares Moreira.

Manuel had hinted that Clara might have something of that terrible mother in her, but Gabriel couldn't see it. He saw a girl who was beautiful, and who had the grace to blush when her mother ─ brought up to shout the price of fish at the market, no doubt─ attacked unsuspecting people like a rabid dog.

Clara did have a temper, but Gabriel would scarcely have been able to love a woman without strength of character. He could not bear the indifferent type, the woman who shrugged and said, 
It's all the same to me!