“And they will set him free if we don’t?” Andrew said from beneath the burlap sack.
“Sim .”
Yes . One of a handful of Portuguese words Poppy now understood. “I will cooperate,” she said.
The tavernkeeper’s sad nod was the last thing Poppy saw before a sack was roughly pulled down over her head too.
She froze. She hadn’t expected it to be so instantly dark.
Or hot.
She tried to breathe.
The air around her face turned instantly thick. She exhaled, and the heated air bounced back onto her mouth and nose. She tried to draw breath, but she couldn’t—no, she could, and she thought she did , but nothing was reaching her lungs.
No one was holding her throat. Why wasn’t she getting air?
She could hear herself breathing, could feel the rapid rise and fall of her chest, but it wasn’t working . She was dizzy, disoriented. Unable to see her own feet, she suddenly wasn’t sure how to stand.
She needed to hold on to something.
“Poppy?” she heard Andrew call out. “Poppy, are you with me?”
He sounded very far away.
“Poppy! ”
“I need to hold his hand,” she gasped. And then when no one did anything, she screamed it. “Let me hold his hand!”
There was a rush of movement around her, a crisp cadence of voices, one of them belonging to Senhor Farias. And then, miraculously, she felt her hand being placed between Andrew’s hands.
It was awkward. His hands were bound behind his back. She could barely link her fingers with his.
But it was a lifeline.
“You’re all right, Poppy,” he said. “I promise.”
“I can’t breathe.”
“You can.”
“I’m not.”
“Clearly, you are.” There was gentle humor in his voice, almost enough to pierce her panic. He squeezed her fingers. “I need you to be strong.”
“I’m not strong.”
“You’re the strongest person I know.”
“I’m not. I’m really not.” She didn’t know why she sounded like she was begging.
He squeezed again, and she heard him chuckle. “This isn’t even your first time being abducted.”
“It’s not the same,” she snapped. She twisted her head around to where she thought she might be facing him. “Honestly, Captain. That’s the falsest equivalence imaginable.”
“And you say you’re not strong,” he murmured.
“You—” She stopped. Felt his fingers curl around hers.
“Poppy?”
It took her a moment to realize what he’d done.
“Are you breathing now?”
She nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see her and said, “I am.” And then: “Thank you.”
“We will make it through this,” he said.
“Do you really think so?”
He paused for a moment too long before saying yes.
But at least Poppy was breathing.
Chapter 19
Andrew had no idea where they were.
Back at the tavern, he and Poppy had been loaded unceremoniously into a wagon. They’d traveled well over an hour, but with a hood over his head—and a heavy blanket thrown over both of them—he could hardly have made sense of the journey.
The only thing of which he was certain was that they had gained elevation. But that was hardly a distinguishing fact. They’d started at sea level; they could hardly have gone any direction but up.
They were moved inside a building, then up a steep flight of stairs, and then to a room at the rear. A door shut and a lock turned, and then someone grabbed Andrew’s hood from the back and pulled it over and off his head, the angle ensuring that the burlap scraped roughly across his skin. He’d prepared himself to be blinded by sunlight, but the air was murky and dim. The room contained but one window, and it was covered by exterior wooden shutters—closed tightly and presumably nailed shut.
He turned just in time to see one of the men take hold of Poppy’s hood and pull it off. She took a massive gulp of air the moment it was lifted, but although she looked a bit shaky, she appeared unharmed. It had been hot and sticky under that blanket, and after her reaction to the burlap hood, he’d been terrified that she would have another breathing attack. He’d tried to talk to her in the wagon—that seemed to have helped before—but he was rewarded with a slap to the head from the man who was riding along with them in the back. It hadn’t hurt—the blanket had absorbed a great deal of the impact—but if it was meant as a warning, it had worked. Andrew kept his mouth shut and didn’t try anything.
He’d had no other choice.
Which was galling.
It had brought to mind the time when—it must have been the first or second day after Poppy had come aboard the Infinity —he had asked her why she was being so agreeable. She had replied that she had no good reason not to be agreeable. She couldn’t very well escape while they were at sea.
At the time he’d thought her eminently sensible. He still did, he supposed.
But now he realized how colossally he’d missed the point. How impotent she must have felt, to be forced into meekly accepting her fate. There was nothing satisfying about choosing one’s best option when all of the options were terrible.
He could not have left her in England—not with such strict orders to ferry the diplomatic pouch to Portugal and keep the cave’s location a secret until the prime minister’s emissary got there for the documents he’d brought from Spain. Truly, he’d had no choice but to take Poppy with them on the journey.
But he could have been more understanding. More . . . compassionate?
More something. He could have been more something.
Maybe more honest. She did not even know his true name.
He looked over at her, trying to speak with his eyes since he dared not yet make a sound. She seemed to understand; her own eyes opened wide and her lips pinched up at the corners. The two men who had brought them into the house still stood by the door, speaking to each other in rapid Portuguese.
As the men talked, Andrew took stock of their surroundings. They were in a bedchamber—nothing large or luxurious, but as best as he could tell, tidy and clean. The decor was a step or two above what one might find in a posting inn; whoever lived here had a small measure of wealth.
Andrew caught a few words from the conversation—money, man, woman . He thought one of them might have said seven , although he wasn’t sure what that might be in relation to. And maybe it wasn’t that, at all. It was entirely possible that the only reason he’d recognized man, woman , and money was because he’d been expecting to hear them.
Tomorrow.
Stupid.
Home.
He thought he heard these words too.
Abruptly, the men turned toward them, and one of them flicked his hand in their direction as he barked out an order.
He wanted them to move. Andrew nudged Poppy with his shoulder, and they edged backward until the backs of their legs hit the bed.
Poppy looked at him with wide, apprehensive eyes, and he gave his head a tiny shake. No questions. Not yet.
The men grew animated as they spoke, and then Andrew saw the glint of a knife.
He didn’t think.
He didn’t have time to think. He just leapt, trying to cover her body with his own. Except that with his hands bound, he was clumsy and off-balance. Poppy let out a grunt as she stumbled back onto the bed, and Andrew fell to the floor, feeling the veriest fool.
The man with the knife strode over and actually rolled his eyes as he grabbed Poppy’s wrists and sliced through her bindings.
He looked down at Andrew. “Idiota .”
And then he left, taking his friend with him.
Andrew closed his eyes. He needed a moment. Surely he deserved a moment to pretend he wasn’t lying on a floor with his hands bound behind his back somewhere in the vicinity of Lisbon.
He tasted blood. He must have bitten his tongue.
“Captain?”
He sighed.
“Captain?”
She sounded a little panicked the second time, so he forced himself to open his eyes. Poppy was standing over him, her brow knit with worry.
“I’m fine,” he said flatly.