All Chapters of Married to the devil of valtieri: Chapter 141 - Chapter 150

The heat hit her like a wet blanket.It rose off the tarmac at Salvador in shimmering waves, thick and sweet and heavy with the smell of the sea. Palm trees nodded along the airfield fence. A brass band was playing, somewhere. Isla stepped down from the little white jet into a morning so bright that she shut her eyes, and when she opened them, a small brown woman in a police uniform was holding out a hand."Inspector Lúcia Ferraz," she said, in careful English. "Serafina's friend. You are late.""We came as fast as we could.""Not you. The ship." Her lips thinned. "The Santa Clara docked at dawn. Twelve hours ago. Everyone on board went ashore in three trucks. Nobody came back."They drove north along the coast road in a battered green jeep, with the windows down and the whole Atlantic blazing blue on their right. Dante sat in the back, silent, with his sleeves rolled to the elbow and his eyes fixed on the horizon. Serafina had unfolded a map on her knee. Tomas muttered a rosary. And

Isla had not meant to be seen.It was the wrong thing to say, and the child had said it with such grave innocence that for a moment even she could not breathe. She had crept in at the back, in a borrowed habit, with Tomas's rosary round her wrist and Serafina's second pistol tucked into her belt. She had slid along the garden wall. She had crouched in a bed of pink oleanders, three yards from the dormitory door, with her heart hammering, hoping for one look at the lines of little faces.And a little girl had stepped round the corner and found her."You are not a real nun," Greta had said, in a conversational voice. "Your shoes are wrong."That was all. A simple, wondering observation. And then the girl had skipped away, humming, to tell Zio Ettore.It had taken thirty seconds. Isla had known at once what to do. She knew the plan was lost. She had stood up, in the middle of the oleanders, and shaken out her habit, and raised her hands above her head."Don't shoot!" she cried. "I'm unar

They took a fisherman's boat.It was an old tarred wooden thing, with a coughing outboard and a patched blue sail, and it belonged to the man in the yellow turban's husband. He did not speak a word of English. He looked at the six wild strangers who tumbled over his gunwale, black with soot and sweat, and he shrugged, and spat, and yanked the engine cord."Tell him he'll be paid," said Dante."He says he does not want paying." Ferraz was grinning ferociously. "He says that for the ship, he would do it for nothing."The boat bucked out across the bay in the scarlet dusk. The Santa Clara lay a mile ahead, vast and rust-streaked, with a single yellow light burning on her bridge and a column of dark smoke rising from her funnel. Her anchor chain was clanking up. A white wake churned at her stern."She's moving," said Serafina."Not fast.""Fast enough.""We'll catch her." Isla had her hand pressed flat against her ribs. She had not stopped shaking since the beach. "We have to."It was nea

The chart table went up like a torch.It was a soft, hungry, yellow bloom, rolling across the polished wood, swallowing the maps, the compass, the pencils. The heat struck Isla's face like a slap. She flung up an arm. The second Book lay in the middle of it, black and fat and glinting, its silver ribbon already curling."No!"She did not think. She plunged her hands into the flames. The leather seared her palms. She screamed, and grabbed, and tore it out, and flung it behind her across the deck, where Serafina caught it in a wet coat."Isla!" roared Dante."I've got it! I've got it!""Out! Everyone out!"The bridge was an inferno. The curtains had caught. The leather chair was a pyre. Smoke rolled across the ceiling in a black ceiling-high wave, and Ettore stood in the middle of it, upright, untouched, in his cream silk, looking about with an expression of serene curiosity."Uncle!" shouted Dante. "Come on!""I think not.""You'll burn!""It is a great deal better than the alternative

She had never been so glad to see a convent in her life.It stood on its cliff, white and serene, in the gold light of an Italian morning, with its iron gate and its pots of geraniums and its tiny gray bell. It had been nine days. It felt like nine years. She stood at the gate in a crumpled linen dress, with bandages on both hands, and did not trust herself to ring.Dante took her wrist, gently. He pressed the bell.A small bent figure came across the gravel. It was the abbess, in her white wimple, with her wrinkled walnut face and her eyes of surprising sharpness. She did not say a word. She simply unlocked the gate, and opened it, and stood aside.The baby was sitting on the grass.She was in a pink sunhat, in the shade of a lemon tree, with a ring of nuns round her and a wooden rabbit clutched in one fist. She was chewing one long ear. She looked up. Her eyes, dark and solemn and astonishingly wide, found her mother's face.She dropped the rabbit.It was a scream of pure joy. It wa