When the serving wench brought their food, Nick walked a coin across the back of his fingers and flashed a smile at her, the same smile that had melted female hearts around the globe. “Um pouco de informação, por favor, senhorita.”
She promptly sat on his lap and wound one arm around his neck. “What information you seek, senhor?” she replied in heavily accented English, trailing her fingers down his jaw to his chest.
Nick ignored Jonesy’s grin and Harry valiantly trying not to roll her eyes. “We are seeking a priest,” he said. “Father Miguel would have arrived in 1811 riding a horse.”
Her fingers stilled. “A priest with a horse?”
Nick nodded. “Where might he have gone? Which church would have room for him and his horse?”
Her gaze became distant as she pondered the question. Nick set the coin on the table, reached into his coat pocket with the arm not wrapped around the woman’s waist, retrieved a piece of paper and a stub of a pencil, and slid them across the table to Jonesy.
Jonesy smoothed the paper and held the pencil, ready to record whatever insight befell. Nick resumed walking the coin on his fingers, noting the wench’s warm brown eyes following it closely.
“Igreja de Nossa da Senhora da Lapa has fields. Their parishioners grow wheat and other crops to feed themselves and to sell,” she said, tapping her bottom lip, then Nick’s. “They might have welcomed a horse to pull the plow.”
Jonesy wrote it down as well as the directions to the church.
Nick gripped the coin between his first two fingers and dropped it between her breasts, which were in danger of falling out of her low-cut gown. She smiled and quickly rattled off the names of other churches and monasteries on the outskirts of town and nearby villages, which had farms or wineries.
“Obrigado, senhorita,” he said, patting her hip.
She took the hint and stood up. “My pleasure, senhor. Tell me if you desire anything else.” With a wink and a coy glance over her shoulder, she went back to the kitchen to pick up the next customer’s order.
Nick dug into his rapidly cooling caldo verde, refusing to think about what Harry thought about his information-gathering technique. With her head bowed to eat, the hat brim hid most of her face so he couldn’t read her expression. Jonesy had a big grin and shook his head in wonder, and ate a big spoonful of the flavorful potato, chorizo, and kale soup.
“We’ll need to hire horses,” Nick said several minutes later, using a hunk of bread to sop up the last of the soup in his bowl. One of the delights of sailing was sampling the cuisine of far-flung lands. “Got a lot of ground to cover.” He glanced at Harry. “Or should it be a carriage? Can you ride? I’m guessing you’d part my hair with a chair if I suggest that you wait on the ship.”
“I can,” she said, glancing at the top of his head as though deciding where to place the blow, “and I would.”
Jonesy laughed and held up his empty mug to a passing servant for a refill of ale.
It had been close to mid-day when they docked. By the time they finished eating and paid their shot, Nick estimated they only had four or five hours of daylight. He and Jonesy were fine on foot after dark in a strange town, but he wouldn’t risk Harriet’s safety. If Father Miguel wasn’t at the first igreja, they’d head out early the next day, prepared to look for days.
At the stables up the street, Nick negotiated the hire of three horses, quietly asking for an especially gentle mount for young Harry. The proprietor gave Harry an appraising glance, and soon led out an older grey gelding, much bigger than Nick would have chosen. At Nick’s look of apprehension, the hostler assured Nick he was a sweet goer, perfect for a lad still learning to ride.
Harriet watched the horse approach her, awed by the gelding’s beautiful, showy tack compared to English horses, and gasped when she realized just how big the horse was. She could barely see over his shoulder. And the saddle! She’d blithely told Sheffield that of course she could ride, and she could … sidesaddle.
Two other grooms led out geldings for Sheffield and Jonesy. They checked the stirrup length, and Harriet noted the hostler doing the same for her. He gave her another look, then shortened hers even farther.
In a flood of Portuguese, the hostler offered to help her mount, making himself clear by bending down and cupping his hands.
“Obrigado,” she said, confusing the hostler by shaking her head, until she pointed to the mounting block over by the stable.
“Sim, sim,” the hostler said, and led the horse to the block.
She climbed the steps. Gave the horse a stroke down his forehead and a pat on his shoulder, looking him in his big brown eyes. He snorted and nodded his head, jingling his bridle, indicating what she interpreted as an eagerness to get going. Trusting the horse was agreeable to keeping her on his back, Harriet swung her leg up and over in a decidedly unladylike maneuver, and settled in the saddle. Astride.
Memories flooded back, of riding the vicar’s pony through the fields when she was a child, her long hair blowing free in the wind, laughing and urging her mount to go faster, faster. They’d never had sufficient funds to keep their own horse, not even to pull a carriage, so she’d poured her affections on that pony, until she grew old enough to be sent off to school and have it drilled into her that proper ladies do not ride astride, and certainly not bareback.
A mere few weeks ago, she couldn’t bring herself to pull on breeches and have fabric between her legs. And now she sat astride a snorting beast who could stomp her flat, her shins and calves bare below her dungarees.
Madame Zavrina would have an apoplectic fit if she could see Harriet now. The academy made sure their students knew how to ride, of course … sidesaddle and at a sedate pace, so they could go for a quiet turn about the park or through the village while being courted.
Harriet was about to ride cross-country with two men who were most definitely not courting her. She put her feet in the stirrups, adjusted her grip on the reins, and gave the beast a gentle nudge with her heels. He obediently walked over to where Sheffield and Jonesy sat atop their mounts near the gate.
“Ready?” Sheffield said.
Harriet looked at the street and nodded, not trusting her voice.
