Fortune's Bride Read Online Free PDF Page A

shore, she gave
herself up for dead and her memory held no more. When she finally regained
consciousness, she found herself in a hut in the Portuguese fishing village
where she now lived. How she had come there and what had happened to the
sailors who had been in the boat with her father and herself she had never
discovered.
    Perhaps Esmeralda could have obtained more information had
she asked at once, but at first she was too exhausted and too busy caring for
her father. Surprisingly, Henry had survived the actual shipwreck, but he did
not survive for long. The strain had been too much. Another seizure and the
hard, primitive life killed him, in spite of all the villagers could do. By the
time, several weeks later, Esmeralda had asked what had happened to the
sailors, the headman of the village shrugged and shook his head. They had gone
south, he said, toward Oporto, but the French were there.
    Still, the villagers were kind. Although they knew that all
British citizens were supposed to be given up to the French, they buried Henry
with all the dignity so small a place could muster, and they hid Esmeralda when
the troops came to forage. They did their best to make her indistinguishable
from their own girls, but they were afraid. If it was discovered that they had
been concealing an enemy, they would be harshly punished.
    Esmeralda was aware of this fear, although no one spoke of
it openly. It was an important consideration in the dangerous decision she must
soon make. If the French returned, someone from the village might become
frightened enough to betray her. Or Pedro, headman’s son, whose advances she
had rejected several times, might do it for spite. Or, even more likely, one of
the village girls to whom Pedro had previously paid attention might wish to be
rid of her. Esmeralda’s lips tightened as she thought of Pedro. The first time
he had approached her, before her Portuguese had become as fluent as it now
was, she had gone out of the village with him, not quite understanding what he
wanted and thinking that perhaps one of the sailors had returned or that the
French were coming and she was to be hidden.
    She had soon discovered her mistake. Fortunately, because
Pedro had thought she was willing and had not been prepared for her violent
reaction, she had been able to fight her way free. But Pedro was not
discouraged. He took her resistance for coyness and explained that his
intentions were strictly honorable. Esmeralda did not believe this. Courtship
was a very formal matter among the Portuguese. She guessed that he had heard
tales of the immoral behavior of the British heretics and had expected her to
welcome any man who offered. His profession of honorable intentions was no
surprise. It saved face for both of them, and her unwillingness gave him an
easy excuse to withdraw.
    However, rather surprisingly, Pedro did not withdraw but
pursued her in a more formal fashion. Esmeralda was considerably puzzled by his
persistence. Surely, she thought, he could not really wish to marry her. It was
ridiculous. Setting aside her own unwillingness, she would be utterly useless
to him as a wife. She had none of the skills necessary to village life. She
could not spin or weave, she had no idea how to wash clothes, cooking, beyond
the boiling of eggs, was a mystery to her. In fact, she was learning a bit of
all these skills, for she did not want to be a greater burden than necessary to
her hosts, but it must be plain to everyone that it would be many, many years
before she could become proficient. A man with so inept a wife would be very
uncomfortable.
    If she had been very beautiful, Pedro’s interest might have
been more reasonable. Some men did think beauty made up for other deficiencies.
But Esmeralda knew she was not an especially attractive girl. Even in Bombay,
where there were so many more Englishmen than Englishwomen that no girl ever
lacked a partner at a dance, she had always been the last to be asked.