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Coming Soon! 2nd novella in the Miss Beale Writes series: The Bride in Ghostly White. A touch of gothic, a touch of mystery.
In the Sketching Stage ~ Miss Beale Writes 3: The Captive in Green. A touch of gothic, a touch of mystery
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Saturday, January 26, 2019

Meet the second protagonist in Key for Spies

Meet Miriella Teba, hiding her identity as Donabella, leader of the guerrillas, in my recent release, The Key for Spies.

This is from the drafted version ~ with a few minor changes, it's the final copy published.


The red draperies belled out as the night breeze strengthened.  The candles guttered, spilling wax down the heavy silver candelabra.  The chill breeze stirred the red velvet curtaining the canopied bed.  Shivering at that touch, cold as ice, cold as the grave, Miri rose from the straight-backed chair beside the bed and crossed to the windows.  The wool carpet covering the tiles muffled her heels, but the carpet didn’t reach the windows.  Her heels tapped on the patterned titles for only a few steps.  Then she slipped through the billowing curtains.
The day’s warmth, palpable as the soft curtains, had dissipated in the hours she watched her aitona sleep.  Hand on the latch, she took one step more, onto the balcony, and looked up at the moonless sky.  Countless stars twinkled, white and cold, distant and uncaring.


Another chilly wind swept past her, into the chamber.  Miri stepped backward, back into the chamber.  She gave one last look at the stars then scanned the night-black vineyards that rolled with the hills behind the house.  Here, from the second story, she could view the estate.  On a moonlit night, she could see the olive groves that began beyond the last vines.  Without the moon, she could see stars and starlight reflecting on white paving stones and gravel.  Over to the right flickered yellow flame, earthbound but still distant.
Miri closed the iron-braced balcony door then closed the inner door with its iron-graced glass.  The latches chilled her fingers, but both doors swung easily and closed with gentle snicks of the locks.  She slipped back through the velvet draperies and tiptoed across the patterned tiles to the carpet and returned to her chair beside Grandfather’s canopied bed.
The candle flames had steadied, but she would need to replace them soon.  Javier had set new tapers beside the ornate holder.  He had waited for her to look up from her reading of Cervantes.  Then he lightly touched them, a wordless signal, before he retired to his own room beyond her grandfather’s dressing room.  Miri eyed the height of the remaining candles and judged that she would wait another hour before replacing them.  Rubbing her silk-clad arms to warm them, she glanced at her grandfather and encountered his glittering black eyes.
“You should be asleep,” he chided, his voice barely more than a whisper.
“I can sleep tomorrow.”
“Where is Javier?”
“Asleep.”
“A conspiracy.”
“If you like.”  She smiled, for she and the old manservant had planned their hours to watch over her grandfather.  Even the housekeeper Arrosa would be enlisted for a few hours tomorrow, just as young Sebastien sat watch today.  For all his restlessness yesterday and the day before, her grandfather had sleep through the boy’s watch.
“Nothing is wrong with me.”
“If you like,” she repeated.
“Indigestion.”
“The doctor thought the problem centered a little higher than your stomach, Aitona.”
“Old fool.”
Since the doctor was decades younger than her grandfather, Miri pressed her lips together while her eyes danced.  Her grandfather knew that he was the old fool, although he would never admit it.  She wished to believe the diagnosis of indigestion, but she would not fall into that self-deluded trap.  Grandmother had died last spring.  She did not want to lose her grandfather this spring.  So she, Javier, Arrosa, and the rest of the servants prayed, and conspired to watch him, and followed the doctor’s order for rest and a bland diet, and then prayed more.
Grandfather shifted, lifting his shoulders before settling back on the pillows protecting his silver-gilt head from the deep and sharp carvings of the age-darkened headboard.
Mutely, she crossed to the chest with its candelabra, the book she’d read to him earlier, and a tray with a decanter of imported Amontillado, diluted with water by Javier.  The fox-flecked mirror reflected the bed and her chair, carved as deeply as the headboard.  She saw him struggle to sit up.  He had waited until her back was turned.  Miri bit her tongue.  He was proud.  He would not accept her help, only Javier’s or Jesus’ when he came to visit the only don he respected.
Wisely, she added an equal amount to a second goblet.  When she handed the wine to her grandfather, he eyed her glass then dutifully drank.  She wet her lips then propped the glass on her knee.
He coughed, then tried to give the goblet back.  “It’s watered down.”
She raised the goblet.  This time she sipped and swallowed.  He scowled but drank more.
He handed the wine to her a second time.  She set their glasses on the square table beside the bed.  When she turned back, he patted the mattress.  She perched on the edge.  Will he share what is troubling him?  His stress and his distraction started ten days ago, when a mud-splattered messenger came.
The man arrived without herald and demanded an interview with Don Teba ye Olivita without giving his own name or the reason for the meeting.  He’d closeted with her grandfather only a few minutes then left.  Arrosa tempted him with fragrant coffee, but he wasn’t snared.  Not even Jesus, walking the man’s weary horse before the wide arches of the front portico, could draw enough conversation to identify his dialect.
And Miri had rejoined her grandfather to discover him burning a letter.
After his collapse three days before, once the doctor left and Javier had taken charge, she dug through her grandfather’s papers, looking for any sign for his recent stress.  Then she carefully replaced everything.  If he asked, she would tell him what she had done, but she would not worry him needlessly.
As her grandfather hesitated, she tapped her lips.  “You wished to speak when the doctor orders rest.  Do you think you must tell me something that I am unable to handle?”
His smile was a ghost of its former strength.  “Since your sixth year, Miriella, you handle everything, much like my Elizabeth,” he added, using the English pronunciation of his late wife’s name.  When his Elizabeth insisted that Miri learn English as well as Spanish and Basque and Latin, he acquiesced.  When she ensured that Miri develop an English girl’s perspective of the world, he agreed and deflected her parents’ complaints, sent from their apartamento in the king’s coastal palacio.  And when Elizabeth decided Miri must meet her English relatives and attend English parties in London, he’d backed her in the arguments with his son and daughter-in-law.
Elizabeth’s death had reduced them both.  He had not recovered.
Miri studied her grandfather’s downcast eyes, the papery-thin flesh, his shaky fingers plucking at the bedlinens.  She covered his hand.  “And?  Tell me.”
His eyes lifted.  They had lost none of their brightness, dimmed only in the months after his wife’s death.  “And I should have told you when the messenger came.  You have taken my place with the guerrillas.  I am proud of what you have accomplished.”
“Flying Spanish and English flags at the French garrison in Britessca?  Loosing the cavalry’s horses in the streets?  Those are only pranks.  We have not struck a real blow against the French since fall.  We failed to set fire to the barrack gates.”
“You give hope to the supporters of our deposed king.  You keep your rebels together.  Soon, soon, we can strike a strong blow against the French.”
“Soon?  How soon?  What is happening?”
“When he arrives, we will help him.  I gave my word;  you will keep it.  You and your guerrillas.”
“Who is he?”
“Your amona was an oracle.  You have her courage and determination.  And her eyes.”  His smile strengthened with those words.  “I trust you, Miriella.”
“Who is he?”
“A British officer” confirmed her guest and sank her heart.  With a traitor in their band, how was she to keep a British officer safe?  And in the last six weeks, her guerrillas were reduced by half, many going south to join the army forming to fight for Spain against the usurper who had taken the throne.  Her grandfather continued, unaware of her worry.  “On the 18th of this month, at noon, you are to meet him on the ridge between Brittesca and the river.”
“This British officer’s name?  And his mission?”
“Simon Pargeter.  I do not know his mission, but I gave my word.”
She remembered the mud-spattered messenger.  For her aitona, the words “British officer” would have gained his immediate commitment.  He could work miracles with only that.  For her, even as DoƱabella with only ten guerrillas remaining in her command—and a traitor hiding among the nine—Miri needed more information.  What was this Simon Pargeter’s mission?  Liaison or reconnaissance?  Or had Wellesley sent him to command her men so they would accomplish some blow, any blow, against the French?
“Do you know his rank?  Do you have a password or a signal so he accepts us as allies?  Or that we will recognize this stranger as our ally?  Or where specifically on the ridge we are to meet?”
“At the blasted pine.”
Grandfather evaded her scrutiny by pleating the bedlinens.  Had he expected to meet the man on his own?  Or would he have told her only a few hours before the meeting?  His illness had forced his hand.  Miri chilled at the realization that her aitona knew the doctor’s diagnosis.  Since his collapse, the doctor or Javier or the housekeeper or Sebastian or someone else had been in the room with them.  Tonight was their first opportunity to speak without anyone overhearing, and he had shared this information at last.
Aitona—.”
“You must keep my word, Miri.  Swear to me.”
His word.  Only his honor would be remembered after his death.  His lands and title would go to his feckless son and then to an even more feckless grandson with questionable legitimacy to his birth.  Diego Teba ye Esperanza, conde of the northern Teba district and Brittesca, proud of his family, prouder of his reputation, and determined to preserve both until his death.  His careful management of the vineyards and winery, of the olive groves presses, created unrivaled wines and oils throughout Spain.  His work might endure the first decade after his entombment beside his English wife but not longer.  Only his reputation would endure.
“Swear, Miri.”
Those glittering black eyes pinned her and demanded an answer.  She hid her crossed fingers in the black skirt of her gown, for she didn’t know if the traitor among her men would set all their plans afire.  “I swear, Aitona.

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