“What did you offer me?” she asked coolly.
“What I could! You know how I am situated!”
“I do not have the luxury of joining your exile. You know how I am situated.”
He was the one trembling, not her. “Do you cherish any affection for me at all?”
Heartless Cat had never stared down an overwrought man with as much detachment as Bee did now. “Feelings cannot protect me or feed me. Although I daresay I envy my dear cousin for inadvertently falling in love with a suitable man. Not that it helped her, did it?”
“Yes, we have all heard quite enough about the maku fire bane. Will your wedding areito be held in Sharagua?” He made no attempt to touch her, yet I felt I was eavesdropping inappropriately on a most intimate conversation because of the way his gaze caressed her.
“No. It will be held at the festival ground at the border.”
His lips quirked up mockingly. “The better for the people of Expedition to be bought off with bread and circuses, as the Romans say. What date have the behiques set for the ceremony?”
“The areito will begin on the thirtieth day of October.”
“In the calendar of my father’s people, that is the month of the goddess of birds and butterflies. The beautiful woman who brings fertility and desire. It must be thus, must it not?”
She blushed prettily, accepting the compliment without words.
He went on. “I know Romans and Hellenes have odd notions about a woman’s knowing no man before she is first wed. But I assure you it will not be what my brother expects.”
Bee had gone quite pale although her voice remained steady. “What are you suggesting?”
A grim smile played on his lips. “You know where I sleep.”
Without saying more, he walked away on a path that led him out of sight around the kitchen wing. I examined the leafy foliage, the nearby windows with blinds drawn down against the late afternoon sun, and the guards at their stations along the high boundary wall. We were unobserved.
I sank onto the sofa. “I begin to have some sympathy for the head of the poet Bran Cof?! ‘She is the axe that has laid waste to the proud forest.’ You seem to be leaving a trail of felled trees.”
She set fists on hips. “Besides Legate Amadou Barry, pray inform me what other man I have admired in that way.”
“Where do I begin? Your youthful infatuations at the academy were legion.” I picked up her glass of pulpy juice and drained it thirstily. Then my face was pulled inside out, for she had not sweetened the lime with pineapple juice or, it seemed, any sugar at all.
“Serves you right! Anyway, that seems a hundred years ago.”
“Do you care for this man?” I flipped through the sketchbook but found not a single sketch of the Taino prince. “I see by the blank expression on your face that you are attempting to think. No wonder Prince Caonabo looked familiar. The resemblance is uncanny.”
“They are twins. He was exiled for the crime of refusing to live as his brother’s catch-fire.”
I whistled. “What is his name?”
“Haübey. He fled to Expedition and joined the general’s army in exile. That’s why he was in Adurnam. Everyone here calls him Juba.”
“Juba? Isn’t that the name of an ancient Numidian king from North Africa? What happened between you?”
She sighed. “I was quite overcome by the heat of the moment. I am afraid I have come to discover I am susceptible. I begin to worry that more than anything it is the attention I desire.”
A year ago I would have teased her. Now, I remained silent.
She sank down next to me and took my hand. “I thought I might as well experience everything life has to offer before my blood soaks the ground and my head is cast into a well.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And the truth is, his was the face I saw in the Fiddler’s Stone. In Adurnam. But now I think it must have been Prince Caonabo’s face I saw, not Juba’s.”
“I recall him now, standing in the entryway of the law offices staring at you. I comprehend he conceived an ill considered and violent infatuation for your beautiful face and blunt speaking.”
“Actually, he was quite levelheaded in dealing with my puking on the sea voyage.”
“That would certainly endear a man to an impressionable young female.” But I thought of how solicitously Vai had taken care of me.
She chuckled. “Why, Cat, you’re blushing.”
I turned the page: batey players keeping the ball in the air, faces creased with concentration; the masts of ships in the harbor; baskets of fish on the jetty, pargo and cachicata by the look of them. “I wasn’t puking, if that’s what you’re asking. But after Drake dumped me on the jetty and Vai found me, I got sick. He saw the bite mark. The landlady brought in a behique that very night. The man proclaimed me clean, so they let me stay. Vai took care of me, for nothing in return.”
