The Seer's Choice: A Novella of the Golden City (5 page)

“This is why a man who marries a healer must be very careful of her temper,” Mrs. Anjos told him. “There is no argument he can win, not with violence.”

He chuckled under his breath. Yes, that point had been made very clearly. He would not forget it, not for the rest of his life.

But if he felt bad, Miss Jardim must feel worse. She was pasty-pale, her eyes wide in her face as she watched him sitting there. “I wanted you to understand, Miss Jardim,” he managed. “This is why you don’t have to be afraid of any man.”

She regarded him with a furrow between her brows.

“Why don’t you go catch a breath of air,” he suggested. “I’ll escort you back to your flat in a few minutes.”

Her eyes flicked between him and Mrs. Anjos, but she grabbed up her hat and went.

“You
will
be well enough in a day or two,” Mrs. Anjos reassured him once Miss Jardim had fled.

“I expect so.”

“But things will always be different between you now,” she added. “You understand?”

His gut instinct agreed. “How so?”

“She will always carry a part of you inside her, and you will always bear her touch. When a healer has acted on you that way, it is like a brand. Usually this occurs with a healer’s first lover, but . . .” Her head tilted. “But you suspected that before we started, did you not?”

He nodded. “Better me than anyone else.”

“You would not have offered yourself if you thought it dangerous to your own future.”

His own future? He sometimes forgot how old Mrs. Anjos actually was. Her young face was deceptive. She understood people and their motivations far better than most. “She came to me for help. I offered. I didn’t think it out of line.”

“What have you seen?” she asked, eyes narrowed.

He’d
known
the first time he’d laid eyes on Genoveva Jardim, standing in her family’s sitting room on the day her youngest sister had been kidnapped.

He’d thought her a spoiled society girl who’d never had a day’s responsibility in her life. He’d kept his distance, but her path kept crossing closer and closer to his. First she’d joined the Special Police, then she’d come to his office to ask him to intercede with Medeiros . . . and then she’d sought him out at the football field and asked for help in a personal matter. It was as if he couldn’t avoid her, as if Fate was drawing her closer and closer to him like a fish on a line.

The very day he met her, he’d foreseen that Genoveva Jardim would one day become his wife. This was the first time that had made any sense.

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“What were you talking about?” Genoveva asked as soon as Captain Pinheiro emerged into the courtyard.

He settled his hat more firmly on his head. “She reassured me that I would be completely back to normal in a day or so, and suggested that I get something to eat. If you don’t mind, Miss Jardim, she recommended I do that first, so would you care to join me for a friendly supper, and
then
I’ll escort you home?”

She would like to think she didn’t need his escort back to her flat, but it was a welcome offer anyway. And she could hardly turn down his suggestion of a shared meal since she’d nearly killed him. “That sounds fine. I’m actually quite thirsty. I’ve been eyeing the fountain on the wall, wondering if the water’s safe to drink.”

“Shall we go then?” He didn’t hold out his arm for her to take, but gestured for her to walk at his side.

A quarter of an hour later they sat in a tiny café with a good view of the street. It wasn’t a fine establishment, the sort her family would have favored with their business. It was clean, though, and the owner seemed to know the captain. The smell of baked cod made her stomach rumble.

“Do you eat here regularly?” she asked between sips of water.

“I’m a creature of habit, Miss Jardim,” the captain said without a hint of embarrassment. “João Botelho was a senior officer when I first started in the police. When he left the force, he opened this café. I often stop here on my way home.”

She only ate at a restaurant once a week. She simply didn’t have the funds. She was more likely to purchase some fruit at the market and hide it in her room. “I see.”

Captain Pinheiro smiled wearily at her, and for a moment it seemed that time stopped as she studied his face. His features weren’t striking, his eyes weren’t particularly beautiful, his thick hair seemed uncertain whether it wished to be curly or straight, and it wasn’t pomaded into submission. He was comfortable, or rather, she felt comfortable in his company.

Their host brought them bread and olives, drawing her out of her reflections, and Genoveva nodded through the introductions as Captain Pinheiro explained that they worked together for the police.

“They didn’t have women in the police in my day,” Mr. Botelho said. “Not sure I approve of women running down criminals. You don’t meet the best sort of people in the stations, Miss.”

“These are modern times,” she told him. “And one doesn’t meet the best sort working in a factory either. I’m fortunate that the police hired me.”

He nodded his head sagely, mumbled a comment under his breath, and left them there.

“Modern times?” Pinheiro asked as he broke the loaf of bread.

“I didn’t have much choice,” she admitted, uncertain how much Captain Pinheiro knew about her. “I had to leave my family’s home, and had to find work of some sort. So here I am.” Mrs. Gaspar had actually found her and suggested the line of work. The woman had said she needed training, and that Mrs. Anjos could help her. Joining the police would never have occurred to Genoveva otherwise.

“And how are you faring outside your family’s realm, Miss Jardim?”

Genoveva considered that question as she chewed a piece of bread.

“I am curious, but I don’t mean to be impolite,” he added. “You need not answer.”

She swallowed and then took a sip of water. “I miss my mother and my sisters.”

“Ah yes, how is Miss Constancia faring?”

Genoveva set down her glass. “You know her?”

He chuckled. “I was on the boat when we dragged her and young Mr. Coelho out of the river that day.”

Her sister had nearly drowned, one of the family’s footmen, Tiago Coelho, with her. The Special Police had managed to save them, though. A couple of weeks later, Constancia had run off with that same footman to his family’s farm out in the country. While Genoveva couldn’t blame her youngest sister for her actions, their “unsuitable” marriage had precipitated her father’s ultimatum that Genoveva enter a convent or marry to save the family from further scandal.

“Thank you,” she told the captain. “She is well. She writes to me every week, and is expecting her first child.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “I met
you
in the library of your parents’ home that day as well.”

Genoveva caught her lower lip between her teeth. She had no memory of him there. Yes, there had been a handful of officers of the Special Police in the library and she had been introduced to them, but didn’t recall any of them individually.

“You had a great deal on your mind,” the captain said. “I don’t expect you to remember me, but you made a favorable impression on me, telling off my father as you did. Not many young women would have the nerve to do so.”

She gazed at his face. No, she didn’t have any memory of meeting
anyone
named Pinheiro that day. “Your father? I’d heard you were raised at the seminary for orphans.”

He glanced up at her, an olive between his fingers halfway to his mouth. “You don’t know.”

What didn’t she know
? “I suppose not.”

He put the olive back down on his plate and wiped his fingers on his napkin. “Well, that proves the three women on the force gossip less than the men. Because all the men seem to know about my father and regularly comment on his behavior.”

“I apologize. I assumed you
were
an orphan.”

“By the time my mother learned she was with child,” he said, “she had formed such a disgust of my father that she chose the convent over trying to force him to marry her. I was sent to the seminary when I was born.”

How awful to be separated from his mother. “Do you blame her?”

“Not at all,” he said. “She made the best decision for me. If my father had been part of my life I would be a far different person. I don’t believe I would be better for it.”

The same could be said of the man who’d fathered her. “Who is he?”

For the first time she saw hesitation on his face. “He can’t be worse than
my
real father was,” she pointed out. “Mine was a murderous defrocked priest.”

He laughed shortly. “My father’s not
worse
so much as
obnoxious
.”

“He can’t be worse than Lord Carvalho, either.” The man who’d raised her and then turned her out when he’d learned she was a bastard, Lord Carvalho was a bear of a man with a foul temper and a tendency to yell at people. She’d always been his least favorite daughter, the least like him.

Captain Pinheiro took a deep breath. “Paolo Silva.”

Genoveva gaped.

She despised Paolo Silva. Silva, the former prince’s pet seer, had a fondness for seducing young women. The man had once threatened to compromise Constancia’s reputation, and then had the gall to suggest that Genoveva offer herself in Constancia’s place to save her younger sister from ruin. That day in the library, certain he was behind Constancia’s kidnapping, she
had
railed at him.

How was it possible that kindhearted Captain Pinheiro was related to that horrible man?

“He never knew about me until my mother passed, not quite four years ago now,” the captain said when she didn’t speak. “She told him on her deathbed, which wasn’t a favor to me. Silva’s been a thorn in my side ever since, mostly by trying to be fatherly and failing at it utterly.”

His longsuffering tone made her want to laugh.
The poor man
. Her own father had shown up in the city the previous year and abruptly demanded she train as his apprentice, as if he had some right to direct her life. Captain Pinheiro’s father wasn’t the fiend hers had turned out to be, but Silva was awful in his own way. “We truly can’t help who our parents are, can we?”

“Not at all,” he said with a shake of his head. “Fortunately I was well established in the police when he found out about me, and he usually does listen when I put my foot down over his attempts to interfere in my life.”

Mr. Botelho brought the fish then, and for a few moments, Captain Pinheiro was consumed with eating, but eventually the discussion turned to his ideas for meeting during the week to learn how to fire a pistol. “So tomorrow at . . . four, barring any odd occurrences, I’ll take you and Mrs. Anjos out to the field we use for firing practice.”

It seemed like an acceptable plan.

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