Night Train to Lisbon by Emily Grayson

Author:Emily Grayson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2004-09-02T04:00:00+00:00

On the ship home to the States, this time traveling without the chaperone her parents had hired for the voyage over, Carson spent a good deal of time standing on deck and smoking, looking out at the water. Her mother and father would be shocked to see her with a cigarette in hand, but then again, they’d be shocked by plenty of things that had happened to her over the course of the summer. All they’d wanted was for her to go on a debutante’s tour of Europe; they’d meant for her to see the Tower of London and the Eiffel Tower, which she had done, and then to see some places more obscure and quaint, such as a coastal town in Portugal, which she’d also done. But they’d never meant for her to fall in love, and certainly not with someone like Alec Breve.

She and Alec had said their good-byes. When they stepped off the Lisbon train into the dusty, windowed light of the Gare St. Lazare, Alec walked beside Carson, his arm looped through hers, and she smiled at him periodically, as she knew she ought to do. From the crowded docks of nearby Calais, it was a short boat trip across the Channel to Southampton and the Queen Mary, where Alec accompanied her to the dock to see her ship sail. When Jane and Lawrence tactfully disappeared to give them a few minutes alone, Alec had pulled Carson over behind the shelter of an enormous mountain of trunks and valises that were being loaded onto the ship. There he told her again that he loved her, and she saw the slightest glaze of tears in his eyes.

“I love you, too,” she’d said, and then they’d kissed one final time. He smelled like leather and salt and something sweet: toffee, perhaps. It was his smell, something male and personal and singular, and one, Carson thought as she finally pulled away from him, that she would never smell again.

And that was it. “Mission accomplished,” as her aunt had said about Carson’s visit to the Continent. Minutes later, gripping the railing of the swaying metal gangplank that spanned the space between dock and ship, and receiving the calls of “bon voyage” from all her friends onshore—Jane and Alec, of course, but Freddy and Michael and Tom, too—Carson leaned over as if to give her uncle a kiss good-bye. Instead, she’d whispered into his ear, “I’m done.”

Lawrence had acknowledged this last communiqué. He’d straightened, giving Carson a piercing, questioning look, and then he’d averted his glance, if not out of professional probity, then out of personal guilt. But he’d somehow managed to offer a nod of his head, too, in a manner that would have been imperceptible to anyone in the group of well-wishers who might be observing the moment closely, but meaningful to the one person who mattered most, Carson.

So, Lawrence agreed: she was, indeed, done. “Three more days,” Lawrence had promised during the discussion in his office, and now those three days were up.

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