Bride of a Distant Isle Read Online Free Page B

see Mr. Morgan in the distance, staring at the extended exchange between Captain Dell’Acqua and myself.
    While we waited for Edward to collect us, Clementine studied a marble urn; I edged my way a bit farther into the booth. Dell’Acqua had left, but some of his sailors remained. The stand was not large, and two of them spoke in low voices, guttural, in a language difficult for many to penetrate and untangle.
    â€œHe is not taken with her. I do not care what you think you see,” the bald one, who wore the rank of lieutenant, answered the other. “Marco is here for two reasons alone: to try to meet his father and to gain investment for Malta. That’s all. If he breaks an English girl’s heart to avenge his poor mother along the way, why, so much the better. He’d say so himself.”
    The second man nodded his agreement. “But did you see how he looked at her? Kept her hand? That is not like him.”
    â€œOf course it is,” the lieutenant answered. “He’s the consummate flirt. Eh? You’ve seen him. And Everedge can help him achieve both of his objectives. In the end, that is what Marco cares about most. Passing time with a pretty girl will help him attain what he wants.”
    â€œWon’t Everedge be enraged when he finds out his cousin’s heart was wooed and discarded?”
    â€œEveredge only cares that she may be of assistance to him. Then?” He made a motion like tossing a handkerchief behind him. “The English, they are not like us. And Marco?” The lieutenant switched from Maltese to Italian. “ Chi vuol pigliare uccelli non deve trar loro dietro randelli. ” Deal gently with the bird you mean to catch.
    â€œShe’s educated, and likely to speak Italian,” the other said softly, looking at me. He smiled, and I smiled back, and then turned away, ears still tuned toward them.
    He shrugged. “She understood nothing. She does not speak Maltese.”
    I moved away, slowly, pretending to look at the paintings on the wall, meeting no gaze, nor indicating that I had overhead.
    Oh, but I do speak Maltese, Lieutenant. Yes, I understood you. Completely.

CHAPTER FOUR

    T he next morning Clementine told me to be ready to visit some shops just after breakfast. Normally the seamstress came to visit, but on this occasion Clementine wanted to visit the dressmaker herself. “They have ready-made items in shops run by milliners and other tradeswomen of quality,” she added, comfortingly. “Edward says you need some new attire.”
    I set my teacup down near my plated egg. “Edward wants me to buy dresses? I had thought we were to economize.”
    She nodded. “We are. But you must be appropriately attired for our station. He looks at the improvements as an investment.” She glanced at my fish necklace, her face scrunching, but said nothing about it, for which I was glad. What should I answer if she asked me how I’d come to own such an unusual object? I willed her gaze away, and saints be praised, it worked. Clementine dregged her tea and stood up. “Be ready on the hour.”
    She excused herself whilst I finished, and as I did, I took in the richness of the room. It had been expensively papered and the floors furnished with plush carpets that our family had imported from Turkey, one component of the family investments that yet flourished. We’d been importing and exporting for a century or more, I knew. Around the room were many fine examples of Grandfather’s sterling collection: table bells and candlesticks, even silver ostrich egg cups, some fashioned to look like coconut shells. I recalled our confectioner serving coconut ices in them at Highcliffe when Edward and I had been children. Edward’s pilfered all the best bits from Highcliffe, scavenging the fleet as it were before he abandoned it.
    I met Clementine by the front door; as the weather was mild we decided to walk, which I