The Sometime Bride Read Online Free PDF Page A

desk, he breathed a deep sigh,. With his country’s secrets he would trust the enigmatic young Englishman without a qualm. With Catarina he was not so sure.
    The gaming rooms of the Casa Audley were just beginning to fill with customers when Blas, dressed in the peasant’s clothes he had worn the day he arrived, and Catarina slipped out a small door set into the massive wooden gates at the rear of the house. The gates through which Blas, a month earlier, had driven his ox-cart with the eerily squeaking wheels. As they entered the dark narrow street, Catarina pulled the shawl up over her head, draping it into a cowl that hid her face from view.
    “ Blast it, girl,” Blas protested, “this isn’t the harim . Or is this the approved ensemble for baby spies? If so, let me assure you it’s a tad obvious!”
    “ You think you know everything!” Cat hissed, quivering with youthful indignation. “Portuguese women are almost as sheltered as the women of the harim . Inside the Casa I am allowed freedom because I am the daughter of a mad inglês and only to be pitied because I was not brought up in the proper manner. But in the streets I must be modest. I must also carry the basket, for it is not expected a man would so lower himself.”
    “ Shouldn’t you walk three paces behind me?” Blas inquired sweetly. Catarina made a rude noise. “So tell me how long you’ve been making these trips,” he inquired. After all, it was his responsibility to maintain some sort of polite conversation with Thomas Audley’s only child, was it not? No matter what the provocation.
    Catarina slowed her pace, glanced around at the nearly deserted street. (For most Lisboans the evening was as yet too young for socializing.) “Since I was ten,” she replied, confident they would not be heard. “After my mother died, father arranged for me to meet other English children once or twice a week, usually at different homes, occasionally at the Embassy. It seemed perfectly natural for him to ask me to deliver letters when my governanta took me there.” Cat broke her train of thought to add: “Of course we did not tell Dona Felipa what I was doing.”
    With a shrug of her delicate shoulders, she continued walking, her musical voice echoing mysteriously out of the depths of her black shawl. “As the war came closer, Papa decided it would be better to vary the trips as much as possible. He arranged dancing classes, picnics, birthday parties, garden parties, any means we could think of. And he gave me more freedom. It was fun to be a peasant girl and make night deliveries of baked goods to the Embassy kitchens. In the past year—since the Somersbys were quartered at the Embassy—we have slipped into the habit of having Gordy—he is their son, you understand—come down to meet me, as if he were interested in me. De fato , I rather think he is,” Cat added lightly.
    Bloody Hell! Blas came to an abrupt halt, propelling Catarina into the shadow of a deep doorway. With heroic effort he confined himself to a hoarse whisper: “You’re telling me you’ve been a courier for your father’s work since you were ten years old!”
    “ But of course. It has been neither arduous nor dangerous. In fact, it is very exciting. I enjoy it.”
    “ Your father is indeed a mad inglês !”
    “ How dare you criticize him? You who must live by your wits as he does. You of all people should understand!”
    The fight went out of him. When Catarina Audley was ten years old, he had been playing cricket and tormenting his tutors at Eton. He had been pampered, privileged, arrogantly indifferent to the world around him.
    Slowly, Blas uncurled the hands clenched at his sides. The chit was right. This was a world not his own; he, the stranger who must adapt. He was Blas, a Spanish peasant, escorting a young Portuguese servant to the British Embassy. Time to play his role in this masquerade. “What are we carrying tonight?”
    Catarina’s breath whooshed out on a sigh of