Caroline put her hand on Richard’s arm. “Do they really need Sophia for the case against Lady Marston? And we don’tknowthat Mr. Belvedere has done anything at all! Please, Richard—Irarely ask you for anything, but I’m asking you for this. Let them go.”
“I wish youwouldask me for more,” said Richard, exasperated, “but this is ridiculous! Now, listen, none of us want a scene for Mrs. Scott’s sake. You must both come quietly, and I will do what I can to smooth it over at the consulate.”
“Richard,” Caroline protested, “they’ll be eaten alive! I know you are a representative of the Foreign Office now, but no one has to know we saw them. Wewouldn’thave seen them, in fact, if I had stopped at that sweet shop with the beautifulpastel de nata.Do let us go back there.” She tugged on his arm.
“Please don’t make this harder than it needs to be,” he said. “I mean—you so look up to Anne. Consider what she would do! It’s painful, Caroline, but we have our duties.”
As often as Caroline contemplated Anne’s character, and as much as Caroline compared her own motives and behavior to hers, she had never once heard Richard do so. And in hearing it, she snapped.
“I don’t know what Anne would do, and I don’t care. I amnotAnne, and I am sick of trying to be.” Caroline knew she was responding more harshly than Richard deserved, but it had been building for some time. “It was not Anne who figured out that Sir Mark was an imposter—that was me. It was not she who noticed Lady Marston’s slip-ups, or Sir Mark’s eccentricities, or Sophia’s guilty glances. That wasme—because I am far more judgmental than Anne, and I don’t overlook people’s eccentricities. I daresay that makes me a worse person, but it seems to be the only person I can be. And since I am critical and snobbish and selfish, I believe even flawed people like Mr. Belvedere and Sophia deserve a chance at happiness.”
Richard’s brow furrowed as he listened to her rant. “Do you thinkIbelieve those things of you? I don’t.”
He was a good kind husband who didn’t deserve this raking down, but in his concern he had turned toward her andawayfrom Mr. Belvedere and Sophia.
Caroline allowed the tears that had been near the surface for several days—or was it several months?—to fill her eyes. She took another step back from him. “I want to be everything Anne is—I know that you value modesty, humility, goodness and self-control. All the dreadful bourgeois virtues! And I honor them, too—but it is not who I am, and I feel I am losing both myself and you in the attempt to be her.”
He instinctively followed her as she stepped back again. “Don’t cry, Caroline, please. I didn’t know you felt that way at all. I marriedyou,not Anne Elliot or any other woman of my acquaintance. I love how intelligent and quick you are, and nothing makes me laugh more than your incisive observations. I don’t want you to be different; I just want you to let me in.”
The tears were really falling now, but Caroline saw through blurry eyes that Sophia and Mr. Belvedere were making a hasty retreat. He waved his cane in farewell, and Sophia blew a kiss over her shoulder.
“It’s not your fault.” Caroline took Richard’s hand. “I decided for myself to become Anne—but I was so bad at it! I have been so cross with myself, and withyou,when I fail. Yet I am also cross with you when I succeeded!” She laughed wetly. “There was no way for you to escape; I see that now. Perhaps we can start again. I will not try so hard, and if I do anything truly heinous, you must tell me.”
“I will.” He wiped the tears from her face and there was such a tender smile on his face that her tears overflowed all over again. “Even if,” he continued, “half of this is to distract me from our friends’ escape.”
Caroline huffed in surprise and sniffed inelegantly. She wiped her cheeks. “Did it work?”
“Yes, apparently.” He didn’t look over his shoulder. “Are they quite gone?”
“I think so. You are really too good, Richard. Thank you.”
He sighed heavily. “You are welcome. And I agree—let’s start again. You never wanted to come on this trip, did you?”
“No! But I could not bear to give in. And then I could not bear to let Lady Marston show more courage than I.”
“I suspected as much. I tried to let you cry off.”
“I know you did. And I probably should’ve admitted the journey horrified me, but I am gladnowthat I came. I hate to think where you would all be without me.”
“I’ve no idea, but I’m sure it wouldn’t have ended as satisfactorily as this. You probably saved Mr. Knapp’s life, and possibly Sophia’s as well. When we examined Lady Marston’s medicine trunk, she had enough laudanum to kill far more than a parrot. And Wentworth believes that her camphor smells all wrong—he suspects it is arsenic or some other poison.”
Caroline composed herself, although her eyes must be red. “She is a very dangerous woman. No one who uses inferior dye on their feathers and dissects asparagus the way she does is to be trusted. Shall we go back for those sweets? I would like to. We shall be trapped on theLady Marysoon enough, so we must eat copious amounts of sugar now.”
“Oh, must we?”
“Yes, decidedly. We should buy some for Anne and Wentworth as well. Anne will be so relieved to hear that Sophia is safe.”
“Safe!” Richard scoffed. “With that childish bounder! Her prospects were already bleak, and I’m not sure he is an improvement.”
“I don’t think he is so childish after all; he only played that part. I suspect he is more canny and less boisterous than he chose to appear. I only hope he has funds to help them find safeharbor on the continent. I’d hate for him to get pressed, or some such thing.”
“They don’t press gentlemen, and whatever else he is, he certainly presents himself as a gentleman.”
“Oh, and now I shall never know! How terrible. My curiosity will be forever unanswered. I shall imagine a splendid future for them—perhaps he shall open a gaming house at one of the seaside resorts, or even here in Lisbon. Both of them are excellent at cards. I don’t know if they were cheating, but they were very good.”
He laughed but shook his head. “Listen to yourself! Card sharps and gambling dens—you are far more dissolute than I ever knew.”
“I’m afraid it’s true. Now, let us buy dessert and watch the people go by.”
