Just as her voice thrilled his soul, her beauty inflamed him physically so that he could scarcely sleep. Max, well aware of his lack of savoir faire in such matters, had accepted his preceptor’s advice without demur. She wouldn’t be foolish enough to expect marriage. She was a dashed pretty girl and a lovely songbird. Miss Birkett, he said, would make a splendid mistress, a very suitable petite amie for a young man just starting his amorous career. And more particularly they did not wed opera singers. Young men of good family who’d only just begun to shave, Eldon explained in his jovial fashion, did not wed. Eldon who had chuckled appreciatively when Max had confessed his infatuation. He could scarcely wait for their agreed meeting in the churchyard of São Francisco.īut first he had to face Mr. The carefree movement of the lovers-somehow he knew they were lovers-seemed to express the joy he and Tessa found in each other’s company. The shopkeeper told him it was very ancient, and Moorish, from the time of the caliphs in the Iberian Peninsula.
In a small, dark shop in the old quarter he found it: a rectangular plaque of ivory, exquisitely carved, depicting a couple dancing in a field of flowers and birds. His sweet Tessa would prefer something unusual. Once they were wed a large portion of the Tamworth jewelry collection would be his to adorn his bride. That provincial city offered little in the way of quality gems but though he would happily have showered his Tessa with diamonds, he wasn’t concerned. So Max spent the morning scouring the Oporto shops for a gift for his beloved.
Eldon to protect Max from the pernicious lure of Papists, a breed found in large numbers on the continent of Europe.
Lady Clarissa had never been very interested in religion, though she certainly expected Mr. His mother had selected the clergyman as Max’s bear-leader not because of the man’s status with the church, but for his eligible birth and worldly knowledge. Max’s traveling companion, the Reverend Jasper Eldon, always lay abed late, usually sleeping off the effects of enthusiastic sampling of the local wines.
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