Assassin's creed : Black flag - Bowden Oliver (онлайн книги бесплатно полные .txt) 📗

“Well . . .” she whispered. I saw her eyes dance in the moonlight. “Are you going to leave me sitting out here all night?”

No. In moments I was in the yard by her side, taking the reins of the horse and walking her away from the property as we spoke.

“Your actions the other day,” she said. “You put yourself in great danger in order to protect that young thief.”

(Yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking. Yes, I did feel a little guilt at that.)

(But not too much guilt.)

“There is nothing I hate so much as a bully, Miss Scott,” I said. Which did at least have the benefit of being true.

“So I thought. This is twice now I have been most impressed by the gallantry of your actions.”

“Then it is on two occasions that I have been pleased you were there to witness it.”

“You interest me, Mr. Kenway, and your own interest in me has not gone unremarked.”

I stayed silent as we walked for a while. Even though no words were spoken there was a meaning in our silence. As though we were acknowledging our feelings for each other. I felt the closeness of her riding boot. Above the heat and scent of the horse, I thought I could smell the powder she wore. Never before had I been so aware of a person, the nearness of her.

“I expect you have been told that I am betrothed to another,” she said.

We stopped along the lane. There were stone walls on either side of us, the green pastures beyond interrupted by clusters of white sheep. The air was warm and dry around us, not even a breeze to disturb the trees that rose to make the horizon. From somewhere came the cry of an animal, lovelorn or hurt, but certainly feral, and a sudden disturbance in the bushes startled us. We felt like interlopers. Uninvited guests to nature’s household.

“Why, I don’t think . . .”

“Mr. Kenway . . .”

“You can call me Edward, Miss Scott.”

“Well you can continue calling me Miss Scott.”

“Really?”

“Oh go on then, you can call me Caroline.”

“Thank you, Miss Scott.”

She gave me a sideways look, as though to check whether or not I was mocking her.

“Well, Edward,” she continued, “I know full well that you have been making enquiries about me, and though I do not pretend to know exactly what you have been told, I think I know the gist. That Caroline Scott’s betrothed to Matthew Hague, that Matthew Hague bombards her with love poems, that the union has the blessing not only of Caroline Scott’s father, which was beyond doubt, but also of Matthew Hague’s father.”

I admitted I had heard as much.

“Perhaps, in the short dealings we have had together, you might understand how I would feel about this particular arrangement?”

“I wouldn’t like to say.”

“Then I shall spell it out for you. The thought of marriage to Matthew Hague turns my stomach. Do you think I want to live my life in the household of the Hagues? Expected to treat my husband like a king, turn a blind eye to his affairs, run the household, shout at the staff, choose flowers and pick out doilies, go visiting, take tea, trade gossip with other wives?

“Do you think I want to hide myself so deeply beneath an obsession with manners and bury myself so completely beneath the petty concerns of etiquette that I can no longer find myself? At the moment I live between two worlds, Edward, able to see them both. And the world I see on my visits to the harbour is the world that is most real to me, Edward. The one that is most alive. As for Matthew Hague himself, I despise him almost as much as his poetry.

“Do not think me a helpless damsel in distress, Edward, because I am not that. But I’m not here for your help. I have come to help myself.”

“You’ve come to help yourself to me?”

“If you wish. The next move is yours to make, but if you make it, do so knowing this: any relationship between you and me would not have the blessing of my father, but it would have mine.”

“Excuse me but it’s not so much your father who concerns me, as his musket.”

“The thought of making an enemy of the Hagues, does that put you off?”

I knew at that moment nothing would put me off. “No, Caroline, it doesn’t.”

“I hoped as much.”

We parted, with arrangements made to meet again, and after that, our relationship began in earnest. We were able to keep it a secret. For some months, in fact. Our meetings were held entirely in secret, snatched moments spent wandering the lanes between Bristol and Hatherton, riding in the pastures.

Until one day she announced that Matthew Hague planned to ask for her hand in marriage the following morning, and my heart stopped.

I was determined not to lose her. Because of my love for her, because I could think of nothing but her, because when we were together I savoured every moment; every word, every gesture that Caroline made was like nectar to me, everything about her, every curve and contour, her scent, her laugh, her refined manners, her intelligence.

All of this ran through my mind as I dropped to one knee and took her hand, because what she was telling me, perhaps it wasn’t an invitation but a farewell, and if it was, well at least my humiliation would not be known far and wide, confined to the birds in the trees and the cows that stood in the fields watching us with sleepy eyes and chewing ruminatively.

“Caroline, will you marry me?” I said.

I held my breath. During our courtship, every meeting we’d had, every stolen kiss we’d shared, I’d been haunted by a feeling of not believing my luck. It was as though a great joke was being played on me—I half expected Tom Cobleigh to come leaping out of the shadows snorting with laughter. And if not that—if not some vengeful, practical joke at my expense—then perhaps I was merely a diversion for Caroline, a final fling, before she applied herself to her true calling, her duty. Surely she would say no.

“Ah, Edward”—she smiled—“I thought you’d never ask.”

NINE

I still couldn’t accept it, though, and I found myself travelling into town the next day, my journey taking me to Hawkins Lane. All I knew was that Matthew Hague planned to pay her a visit in the morning, and as I sidled up the highway and passed the row of houses among which was hers, I wondered if he was in there already, perhaps making his proposal.

One thing I knew of Caroline, she was a brave woman, perhaps the bravest I’d ever known, but even so, she was passing up the opportunity to live the rest of her days in pampered luxury; and, worse, she was going to scandalize her mother and father. I knew only too well the pressures of trying to please a parent, how tempting it was to go down that route. An unfulfilled soul, or a soul troubled with guilt—which was the hardest cross to bear?

With me standing before her—and she loved me, I’m sure of that—perhaps the decision was easier to make. But what about at night, when misgivings made their rounds and doubt came visiting? Perhaps she might simply have changed her mind overnight and she was, at this very moment in time, blushing in her acceptance of Matthew Hague’s proposal and mentally writing a letter to me.

If that happened, well, there was always Dylan Wallace, I supposed.

But then from the corner of my eye I saw the front door open and Wilson appear, quickly followed by the draughtsman and behind them Matthew Hague, who offered his arm for Caroline, Rose taking up the rear as they began their perambulations.

Staying some distance behind, I followed, all the way to the harbour, puzzling over his intentions. Not the harbour, surely? The dirty, smelly, crowded harbour, with its stench of manure and burning pitch and just-caught fish and men who had returned from months away at sea without so much as a bath during that time.