Deanna Raybourn - City of Jasmine

His expressive brows inched upwards. “A six-shooter?”

“Goodness, I don’t know what it is. Something that makes a bang and persuades people to stop doing things you don’t want them to do. It looks like a child’s toy actually, small enough to fit in my palm and inlaid with mother-of-pearl. I feel quite like a gangster’s moll.”

“Did she mind the change in plans?”

“Not at all. In fact, she’s rather happy to get Arthur Wellesley out of Rome. She said he’s picking up Popish habits. She heard him reciting the Paternoster in Latin this morning. In any event, it might not be a bad idea for you to keep the ambassador’s details handy. We might need a little diplomatic assistance if Aunt Dove decides to misbehave.”

He rolled his eyes to heaven. “Saints preserve us.”

I patted the Jolly Roger lightly. “Mind you tighten everything up. I have a little surprise.”

The surprise was a series of barrel rolls I pulled off over the Piazza San Marco. As I heard it later, the Italian authorities were not amused and the pigeons in the square flapped about irritably, but Aunt Dove thought it was all great fun and the reporters lapped it up like kittens with cream. The only one who protested seriously was Arthur, who kicked up a tremendous racket and then played dead for the better part of an hour while Aunt Dove fussed over him with warm brandy. He feebly opened his beak when she spooned the brandy into it, and when she cracked some pistachios for him and drizzled them with honey he hopped around, fluffing out his feathers and making a queer chortling noise that meant he was very happy indeed.

We rested in Venice a day before boarding the Orient Express, and I blessed the instinct that had caused our friend in Los Angeles to book two compartments. Aunt Dove was delightful company, but she snored like a fiend, and Arthur tried my patience at the best of times. I spent most of the journey reading up on the political situation in the region—as pretty and fickle as a spring thunderstorm—and the rest of the time staring out the window at the passing Balkans. It was hard to imagine that this peaceful, beautiful countryside had been the start of such a bloodbath, I mused as I watched hill town and pasture roll past. There were stunning mountain gorges and pastoral and village scenes like something the Brothers Grimm might have conjured out of a storybook. And with every passing mile, I found something new that I would have liked to have shown Gabriel.

Damn. There he was again, hovering at the edge of my life like a ghost that just won’t quit. When he’d first been reported missing and presumed dead at the sinking of the Lusitania, I had spent months catching glimpses of him out of the tail of my eye. Psychosomatic, Aunt Dove had pronounced firmly. She’d prescribed demanding war work and long country walks to clear my head. She’d even found me a job working at a convalescent hospital run by Wally’s mother at their estate at Mistledown. Because his mother was a viscountess and an unrepentant snob, she insisted on taking only pilots as her patients and she wanted a very select group of nurses to attend them. She gave us splendid uniforms of crushed strawberry-pink with clever little caps designed to show off our hair. Most of the girls worked there only to catch a husband, but I had other ideas. I made friends with the lads, and within a few months, I understood the rudiments of flying. And that was what saved me when I thought I would drown in regret after Gabriel. For the first time since he’d been lost, I slept whole nights through, and I didn’t see him around corners and in shadows. I learned to say goodbye, to get on with the business of living.

But now, the nearer I got to Damascus, the closer he felt. I slept badly and dreamed of him when I did. And when I had time alone, I found myself remembering.

I was staring out the window of the Orient Express, a book open on my lap, thinking of the last time I’d seen him, when the door to my compartment opened and Aunt Dove slipped in, a dozen necklaces of polished glass beads clacking as she moved.

“That’s Baroness Orczy’s newest effort, isn’t it?” she asked with a nod to the book in my lap. “I heard it’s quite amusing. Pity you’re not enjoying it.”

I perked up. “What makes you say that?”

“You’ve been stuck on the first page for the last two days. You’re brooding. And from the way you’re toying with your wedding ring on that chain, I’d say it has to do with Gabriel.”

I dropped the chain as if I’d been burned. Since I had been waiting to divorce Gabriel when he was lost, I didn’t have the right to call myself his widow, I reasoned, no matter what society and the law said. But I hadn’t the heart to chuck the ring away, either. I had worn it on a chain since the day of his funeral, tucking it securely into my décolletage even though it brought back the most painful memories of all. I hadn’t expected a wedding ring. We had eloped, and it had seemed like a particularly romantic bit of conjuring that he had managed to get me a ring. He pulled it off my finger on our wedding night to show me the inscription.

“When did you have time?” I had demanded.

He smiled. “It’s mine.” He held up his hand and I saw that the slender gold band he’d worn on his smallest finger, tucked under his Starke signet ring, was missing. “I found a jeweller to inscribe it this afternoon while you were looking for a frock to wear to the wedding. Have a look inside.”

I peered into the ring, puzzling out the script in the dim light. “Hora e sempre,” I read aloud.

He gave me a mock-serious look. “It’s Latin.”

“Yes, I may not have gone to university, but I’m not entirely uneducated,” I said, giving him a little push. “Now and forever.”

He dropped the ring back onto my finger. “I mean it, you know,” he said, his tone light, but his eyes desperately serious. “I suspect I’ll be a rotten husband, really frightful, in fact. I’m not very good at living up to anyone’s expectations but my own, and I’m abominably selfish.”

I looped my arms about his neck. “Yes, you’re a monster. I still married you.”

In spite of my teasing tone, he didn’t smile. Some melancholy had come over him and he put his hands to my wrists, pinning them gently.

“Damned if I know why. What I’m trying to say, Evie, is that my best is a bloody poor thing. But I’ll give you that best of mine, now and forever. Just don’t expect too much, will you?”

I had thrown my arms completely around him then, as much because I couldn’t bear the look of hunted sadness in his eyes as from passion. Some hours later, when he slept heavily, one leg thrown over mine, his face buried in my hair, I closed my hand tightly so I could feel the ring bite into my hand. Now and forever. We had lasted four months....

I let my gaze slide back to the passing Balkan countryside. “Those are particularly nice cows.”

Aunt Dove gave a sigh and took a seat, her beads still clacking. “If that’s meant as an encouragement to me to mind my own business, it’s feeble. Try again.”

“Mind your own business,” I said, smiling.

She shook her head. “It isn’t good for a woman to brood, you know. I think you need a man.”

“Of one thing I am certain, I do not need a man.”

Her expression was sympathetic. “Darling, I know you love Wally dearly, but I think there’s something you ought to know.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, heavens, Dove! I know that already.”

She gave a sigh of relief. “Thank God for that. I thought I was going to have to explain to you about boys who go with other boys. Did you figure it out for yourself or did he tell you?”

“A little of both,” I admitted. “One night we had rather too much gin and not enough to eat. I told him the whole story of Gabriel and sobbed a bit in his arms, and then he was holding me. Everything went sort of soft and blurry, and we fell into a kiss. I realised after about two minutes that neither of us had moved. It was what I imagine it would be like to kiss a brother. Or Arthur Wellesley. Just nothing there at all.”