Chapter One
Southern Portuguese Coast
July 23, 1808
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The wind whipped around her, as angry as the country as if the weather understood the simmering hatred lurking barely beneath the surface. Despite the late night and the driving rain, the air remained warm. Adi stepped off the last step and raised her face to the sky, letting the rain wash over her.
Another gust of wind plastered wet strands of loose hair against her cheek. Adi ignored them as she had ignored the constant frown of her mother-in-law, the worried look from her own mother, and the suspicious side-eyes of the French troops currently occupying her home.
She looked behind her, but no one followed her in this storm. No one was crazy enough.
For the first time in months, Adi breathed freely. Then she screamed.
Wading deeper into the ocean, her fingers clenched so tightly around her skirts she wondered if she could ever release the material. Adi vented her anger and sorrow and helplessness into the storm until she gasped for breath.
Head thrown back, eyes closed, rain running down her face and beating on her eyelids, she took in another breath. She released it in the same venting sounds, letting the wind catch her anguish and take it far out to sea.
Finally, spent, gasping for breath, knees weak, she opened her eyes. Nothing had changed. The rain continued pounding onto the coast like a vindictive maelstrom bent on annihilation. The sky remained black, heavy with clouds as if it wept for Adi and Portugal as she did. Her toes had gone numb in the cool, wet sand, and she slowly uncurled them as the waves continued their inexorable rush against the shoreline.
She could retrace her steps, walk back up the slick stone steps and back into the oppressive suspicion of the French colonel who thought her childhood home was now his.
Or she could not. Not yet.
Adi stepped toward the distant rocky outcropping that bordered the land. All her delay did was postpone the inevitable, but for now, that was good enough.
Suddenly, as if trying to impart a message, the wind completely stopped. Suspicion rose on her skin in a cold shiver, and she looked around the beach. It lay deserted. Wet, battered by the storm, and empty.
That sound came again. She’d thought it was the rain against the rocks, but no. Now that the wind eased, it sounded like something else.
A person.
Unease skittered down her spine. For one frozen moment, Adi didn’t know whether to race for the villa or investigate. The French occupation had taught her a caution she’d never before possessed, not here in her idyllic childhood sanctuary. However, no matter how brutally they treated the coastline, she refused to cower.
Picking her way over the rocks, she searched for the source of the noise. A villager, hiding from the French? There were many of them now. Perhaps the noise was merely an animal, a dog who wandered too far in the storm and became trapped.
She blinked as a gust of wind smacked her in the face. A man. As battered from the storm as the coastline, he half sat, half leaned against the rocks clutching a satchel of some sort.
“I hope it’s waterproof,” she muttered. Shaking her head at herself, Adi grimaced as she searched for a way over the rocks that wouldn’t tear up her bare feet. “Are you breathing?”
She carefully placed her hands on the rocks and peered over the barrier. Studying him for a moment, she took in his clothes, soaked through obviously, plain but in the darkness looked well-tailored. No hat, no uniform insignia, just a shirt and trousers, and shiny boots that would no doubt be as ruined as her gown.
He seemed alive. Sitting on one of the flatter rocks, she swung her legs over and scooted to the other side. Adi ignored the rending sound of fabric.
“Who are you and where did you come from? Fisherman? Probably not. Smuggler? Perhaps. Pirate?” Her lips twitched. Now she was being fanciful. Pushing off the rocks, she landed on the wet sand with a painful thud.
Ouch. She gingerly turned her ankle, but other than a faint twinge, it seemed unharmed. Adi sighed, but there was no help for it now. Crouching before the man, she brushed his wet hair from his forehead.
He startled awake, clutching the satchel as if it were a lifeline.
“Olá?” She asked, leaning back.
“Ah.” He coughed, one hand clutching the satchel, the other holding his chest as if his lungs ached. Otherwise, he seemed unharmed. “Olá.”
“Can you stand?” She asked in Portuguese, suspicious. But he seemed to understand well enough. Adi straightened and quickly looked up and down the still-deserted beach. Still, with the break in the storm, best to get moving. Just in case one of the French soldiers tried finding her. “We need to move off the beach.”
“Sim,” he agreed but didn’t move. “That would be for the best.”
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