The Seer's Choice: A Novella of the Golden City (8 page)

Genoveva walked back across the street from the hospital to the police station. She didn’t have any blood on her uniform—not any that she could see—but Mrs. Anjos had blood on the hem of her skirt. Neither of them spoke as they walked. It hadn’t been a good day.

When they reached the station, they headed up toward Captain Pinheiro’s office since it was nearly four, time for them to practice shooting again. Genoveva was less than pleased to see Officer Medeiros standing at the captain’s desk, but the man didn’t even glance her way.

“I want
you
to take the list of Duarte’s regular haunts. Divide it up with Forsythe and check where you can this evening. I’ll make a formal request with the regular police in the morning,” the captain said, “and we’ll go from there.”

“Yes, sir.” Medeiros grabbed up his cap and headed out of the office, merely nodding to Genoveva and Mrs. Anjos as he passed.

“I am going back to my rooms to bathe,” Mrs. Anjos said to the captain once Medeiros was out of earshot. “I have no stomach for shooting today.” The woman didn’t wait for an answer, but simply walked away. Normally that would be considered a breach of proper conduct, but Genoveva didn’t blame her. It
had
been a terrible day.

The captain gestured for Genoveva to take the chair in front of his desk. When she’d settled, he said, “You don’t look in the mood for it, either, Miss Jardim. Did your pursuer appear while I was out?”

Genoveva shook her head. “There was a patient at the hospital. The doctors couldn’t stop her bleeding, so they let us try, but she died.”

The captain’s brows drew together. “After childbirth?”

How should she explain it? “No. She drank an herbal tea which started her bleeding, but then it wouldn’t stop.”

“An abortifacient?”

Genoveva looked up at him, startled that a
man
would even know such a thing existed. And he didn’t even seem offended that the woman had tried to abort her unborn child. The Church condemned what the woman had done, and Genoveva was unsure of how she felt about it herself. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “She must have just discovered she was pregnant, and didn’t know she had a propensity for bleeding. By the time we got to her, she’d lost so much blood . . .”

He sighed. “Was she poor?”

“A factory worker,” Genoveva said. “Not destitute, but she had two children already, and her husband abandoned her.”

“Did they say what would become of the children?”

“Her sister was there. She plans to take them in.”

The captain shook his head. “I’d wager she can’t afford them, either.”

Recalling the state of the woman’s worn attire, Genoveva suspected he was correct.

“If you’ll wait a few minutes,” the captain said, “I’ll escort you back home.”

“There’s no need, Captain,” she said wearily. “I didn’t see him at all today. And you must have better ways to spend your time than worrying about me.”

Despite the way their day of work at the hospital had ended, the true low point of her day had come when talking with Mrs. Anjos while waiting for Elpidia to live or die. Genoveva had mentioned how kind the captain had been to her, no more than a passing comment. Mrs. Anjos had responded by saying that the captain was
bound
to her. The woman explained that in that terrible moment where Genoveva thought she’d nearly killed him, when she’d held too much of his life force inside her, she’d left her imprint on his psyche. As a result, he felt tied to her. It made sense of all his subsequent actions, no matter how much she wished that wasn’t true.

“I’m off work in a few minutes, and then I can spend my time on whatever I choose. Would you like to join me for supper?” he asked as he locked his desk.

“You don’t have to do that, Captain.”

He glanced up. “Have to do what, Miss Jardim?”

She sighed. “I don’t know how to say this.”

“Try,” he suggested. “I’ll not be critical.”

No, he wouldn’t be. “You’re being nice to me,” she said, “when you need not.”

He set his chin on his fist and waited.

“Mrs. Anjos told me,” she said softly, keeping her eyes averted, “that what I did to you on Sunday—when you nearly passed out and I put everything back—that kind of action creates a bond. I’ve tied us together. With my gift, I mean, and I don’t know how to undo that, Captain.”

He regarded her with a furrow between his thick brows. “Is
that
why you think I asked you to join me for dinner?”

She shrugged. “She says it’s the bond. You’re being tricked by your mind. You don’t need to be nice to me, Captain.”

He sat back in his chair, silent for a moment. “You do know that I have a seer’s gift, don’t you?”

She nodded. She’d never seen much evidence of him
using
his gift, but he seemed to keep most things to himself.

“One of the problems with being a seer is that you sometimes do things simply because you know you’re going to do them.” He paused for a moment, giving her time to consider that, then added, “It’s usually wiser to know
why
you’re doing things. For example, I might walk past a house and think,
I’m going to purchase that house
. I could go ahead and purchase it right away, but would it not be wiser to view the house first and make an informed decision instead?”

That complication of his gift had never occurred to her. There wasn’t an equivalent in her gift, she thought, but the logic had a parallel in terms of society’s expectations. Girls were told that achieving a marriage was more important than why it was being pursued or with whom. “I understand.”

“That day, in your mother’s library when I was introduced to you,” he said, “I knew that you would someday be my wife.”

What?

Genoveva swallowed. She didn’t even remember meeting him that day. And he’d. . . ?

“I couldn’t imagine then,” he continued, “any reason you would accept a man like me, a man from the seminary with only a captain’s pay.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but he held up one finger.

“To be honest, I couldn’t imagine why I would court you either, Miss Jardim. I assumed you were a spoiled aristocrat who’d done nothing more in your life than hunt a husband.”

She caught her lower lip between her teeth. Given society’s past gossip about her, that claim wasn’t a surprise. She did have a reputation as a husband hunter, mostly her own fault.

“In the last few months, you’ve proven me wrong,” Captain Pinheiro added. “I admit I’ve been keeping an eye on you, but I’ve also kept my distance, trying to determine the
why
of the situation. In this last week, I believe I’ve figured it out.”

“Figured it out?” she repeated breathlessly.

“Well, it’s rather like I’ve toured the house and discovered it was exactly to my taste.”

Genoveva licked her lips, uncertain whether she should tell him that she felt the same. Did he expect her to confess that?

“So again, Miss Jardim,” he said, “would you like to have dinner with me?”

“Yes, Captain,” she said, feeling a strange warmth in her heart. “I would like that.”



She didn’t seem to mind returning to Botelho’s restaurant, although she did give the tripe and bean soup a doubtful look. Rafael doubted she’d often eaten tripe growing up. “If you want to pick out the bits of tripe,” he said, “Botelho won’t be angry.”

“I don’t want him to think I don’t like his offering,” she whispered.

It was amusing to hear the society girl worried about insulting a former police officer turned restaurateur. “Put it on my plate, then. It’s one of my favorites. No one will know.”

She blushed, perhaps aghast at the implied familiarity. He was sure ladies didn’t pass food off their plates. But she took her fork, gingerly picked out a square of tripe, and set it on the edge of his plate. She dug through the rest of her soup, picking out a few more pieces of tripe. Botelho always added plenty of other meats, so she wouldn’t starve.

He didn’t know exactly where to start the conversation, but something had been bothering him. “Will you tell me about Alessio Ferreira?”

Her eyes lifted slowly to meet his. “You’ve heard about . . . him?”

“I heard rumors. But I would rather hear what actually happened from you.”

“I wasn’t his lover,” she insisted.
“Never.”

Rafael shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. There were rumors that you pursued him, and I can’t imagine you doing so.”

Her straight brows drew together. “Did you know him?”

“We met a couple of times,” he admitted. Alessio hadn’t known they were cousins, but he’d been genial enough to a common police captain.

Genoveva sighed. “I was eighteen when I first came out, and he was kind to me. He talked to me. He made a point of dancing with me. That’s all it was. But Lord Carvalho . . .”

He’d noted that she never referred to Carvalho as her father. Rafael didn’t blame her.

“. . . he went to Alessio Ferreira,” she continued after a moment, “and
offered
me to him, rather like selling him a horse. He promised Alessio that I would turn a blind eye to his affairs, that I would be a dutiful wife and produce an heir for him, and that he could pack me off to the countryside afterward.”

Rafael’s disgust for Carvalho increased. “Did he tell
you
that?”

“Yes. Carvalho explained my duties as a potential wife to me clearly.” She took a sip of vinho verde, perhaps hoping it would calm her nerves. “Alessio told me about it later, as well.”

How painful that conversation must have been. “Were you in love with him?”

She shook her head. “I was infatuated with him at first, but . . . could you imagine? It would be like yoking a racehorse together with a rabbit. He was far too dangerous for me and I knew it. The only thing Alessio Ferreira and I had in common was a fondness for dancing. He always made a point of dancing with me, and others assumed there was more than that.”

And as he’d heard that Genoveva Jardim was an excellent dancer, Rafael couldn’t blame Alessio Ferreira for asking, even knowing that the association would hurt her reputation. Alessio hadn’t feared scandal. “Have I offended you by inquiring into your business?”

“No.” She licked her lips. “Most people just believe what others say of me. No one ever
bothers
to ask.”

While her reputation wasn’t precisely tarnished, gossips
had
proclaimed her desperate for a husband, and many would assume that was born of promiscuity. “I’m not always a proper gentleman,” he admitted, “and I was curious.”

That statement actually made her smile. “I’ve been through three years of balls and soirees, and
proper
is not a title merited by many gentleman of the Golden City. You’ve been far more proper than Alessio Ferreira ever was.”

He could believe that. Alessio Ferreira had lived a shockingly loose life, taking lovers indiscriminately. “It’s good then, that he didn’t accept Carvalho’s offer.”

“He had no intention to marry,” she said, “so there was no chance of that. He told me that he couldn’t be faithful to any woman, but . . .”

Rafael regarded her with raised brows.

“Well, he was kind, even if a terrible rake.” Genoveva sighed dramatically. “I might as well confess that I was pressured to pursue his brother after his death. Carvalho wanted their family’s money to bolster his own coffers. At first I found that a ridiculous idea. Duilio Ferreira seemed a bit of a simpleton and he never dances, but then Carvalho started pushing me harder and threatening me with the convent. Ferreira was actually quite clever and kind, but he was in love with someone else, so my pallid effort was for naught in the end.”

He’d always known that the business with Duilio was more Carvalho’s will than her own. “Expectations of others often push us to do things we wouldn’t do on our own.”

She smiled sadly. “I wish I had gathered my nerve to leave his home before making a fool of myself.”

“It had to have been a frightening choice for you to make.” He’d had occasional twinges of guilt over that during the last few months. He could have sought her out immediately after she’d left that house and asked her to marry him. It would have meant
safety
for her. But he hadn’t wanted to tie himself to someone he didn’t know, no matter how lovely she was.