haven’t had the kind of sweet consolation you’ve provided me with for the past weeks, my sweet. It’s time I relieved Mr. Benson and took my turn at watch.” Pulling a heavy coat over his shoulders he turned to look at her with unreadable, slaty eyes. “Go back to sleep. You ought to rest well tonight.”
She raised herself on one elbow, puzzled by his sudden change of mood, and half-afraid too.
“And—and tomorrow?” she faltered, to be answered by his sarcastic, cutting laugh.
“Why, tomorrow I’ll smuggle you ashore, and you’ll be free of me, as you long to be. It won’t take you much time to find another protector—perhaps a kinder and more patient one. Good night, little gypsy!”
8
The next day was all bustle and confusion, and Marisa felt like a sleepwalker moving in a kind of daze.
She had hardly slept—her mind a welter of jumbled, unpleasant thoughts. She missed the usual motion of the ship riding through the ocean swells, and the bed seemed suddenly cold and far too large.
When Donald came for her, she felt as if she had barely fallen asleep, and he clucked impatiently, keeping his back turned while she bathed her swollen eyes with cold water and slipped, shivering, into the only garments she possessed. The captain had tired of his mistress, and she was the cabin boy again. In fact he had not even troubled himself enough to wish her a good-bye, and she could catch no glimpse of him when she followed Donald on deck, blinking in the sudden rush of sunlight.
Donald kept hurrying her, warning her to keep the woolen cap he had handed her pulled well down over her head. Too weary and confused to ask him any questions, she went with him unquestioningly, hardly caring where he was taking her. It could not matter; she was in France at last, safe and well, if a trifle shopworn. A slight, bitter smile that she was not aware of touched her soft mouth for an instant, causing Donald to give her a sharp look and then shake his head. ‘Poor child, poor wronged creature! What will become of her now?’ he wondered. It was not right that the captain should have treated her so harshly, unless it was to teach them all a lesson for deceiving him. ‘I should not have brought her aboard the Challenger,’ Donald reflected gloomily now. ‘The lass would have been better off in a Spanish orphanage, or even one of them papist convents.’
He blamed himself, the poor man, but he blamed his captain more and had spoken his mind frankly, risking both the black rage and the punishment that might follow.
“You should not have brought her aboard my ship, old man, if you meant to save her from me!” Dominic Challenger had said harshly. And then shrugging, as if to temper his previous outburst of anger, he said, “Besides, the chit is not important; and if it had not been me the first time it would have been someone else. Do you think she was in such a passion to get to France merely so that she could keep her virtue?”
Even Mr. Benson, after he had received his dressing down, had gone back to reading his Bible and quoting it to all. “If she was not lost before, she is now. Fallen by the wayside…”
Marisa was unaware of the thoughts in Donald’s head. Gradually she had begun to feel as if she were waking up from a dream to realize where she was and what had brought her here. France—her mother’s country. No longer living in terror and torn apart by bloody revolution, but gay and vital and bursting with all the energy of change and progress. She had been a little girl when she had fled, her mind clouded by memories of horror, but she still remembered some of the towns where the gypsies had stopped to give exhibitions of juggling and dancing—and to pick the pockets of unwary citizens. But that had been long ago, and she was back. Oh, surely there would still be some of her mother’s friends alive and still living in Paris who would remember her! Perhaps, by some lucky chance she would be able to find her Aunt Edmée. In France, where all the fashionable ladies took lovers, the little matter of her lost virginity would not brand her disgraced and unfit for marriage.
Yes, what a long way she had come, the young girl who had wanted to stay hidden behind the walls of a convent for the rest of her life! She had learned that to be raped by a man did not necessarily mean being ripped to pieces inside, and that to submit passively made it easier, if no less unpleasant. If that was all that marriage entailed, then she would much rather be a wife than a mistress, who could be too easily discarded.
With a curiously defiant gesture of pride, Marisa lifted her head, staring about her. They had left the noise and bustle of the harbor front and were now walking down a narrow street in the older part of town. Unused to walking on dry land, Marisa’s legs had already begun to ache, and the rough cobblestones stung her bare feet.
Where was Donald taking her? He turned his head to give her a worried look.
“I’m sorry to have made ye walk such a distance, lassie, but folks would think it strange to see the likes of what you look like now to be riding in a carriage. It’s no’ far now.”
He led her through a narrow, dirty alleyway where the sun seemed cut off by the buildings on either side of it, and then through a small gate into the back courtyard of what appeared to be a small inn, or posting house. There was no one about, although a few scrawny-looking chickens ran squawking out of their way. Up a rickety wooden stairway that seemed to lean against a wall for support and then from a tiny balcony into a small but clean and pleasant-looking room.
To cover his own embarrassment, Donald’s manner had become gruffly businesslike. “There’s a change of clothes for ye laid out on the bed and water in the pitcher there if you’d care for a wash. It’s a good thing they were all so busy out in front with a party of damned English stopping to change horses. They’re all over France now, I hear, since the peace was signed these few months ago. But ye’ll not be concerned with that. I’ll be going down now to find you something to eat, for you must be starved. Best lock the door behind me—you never know in these foreign places.”
Clothes, female clothes at last! How had Donald procured them for her? But before she could ask, he had disappeared, tactfully closing the door behind him, and Marisa could not bear to wait another instant before she stripped off her scratchy, disgusting boy’s garments, to try on her new attire.
How the fashions had changed! She remembered that the queen of Spain and the duquesa de Alba had worn such high-waisted, flimsy gowns, although theirs had been of expensive, transparent material covered with embroidery in silver and gold. This gown was of cloth, a dark brown color that reminded her for an instant of the Carmelite habit. But there the resemblance ended for it was bound just under the breasts with yellow-gold ribbons that fell fluttering almost to the hem, following the straight lines of the narrow skirt. The high neck and long sleeves, puffed in tiers, were also trimmed with the same color ribbon, and so was the straw bonnet which was lined with brown.
A plain dress, obviously made by a provincial dressmaker and meant for traveling, but it was still the prettiest that Marisa had owned since her childhood. She decided critically that although a trifle loose it fit her passably well, as did the kid half boots that laced with ribbon.
Peering into the small mirror, Marisa pulled at her short curls trying to make them lie in place around her face. There. That was better! And now she almost looked like a woman, or would have if her figure had been a trifle fuller.
A knock at the door made her whirl about, and when she heard Donald’s voice she ran to open it, almost throwing her arms about him in gratitude for his thoughtfulness.
While she wolfed down a slice of cold mutton pie she listened as he explained that the captain had given him orders to see that she got safely to Paris. If she had no objections, they would tell anyone that asked she was his French niece whom he had not seen since she was a baby, and that they were on their way to Paris from the province of Toulouse.
Marisa gave him a suspicious look.
“How do you know so much about France?”
“I don’t, lassie! Only some of the ports. But the captain told me what I was to say.”
She sniffed. “How considerate of