Night Train to Lisbon by Emily Grayson Page B

palm fronds rubbing lightly together all around them, a band of mariachis seranading the tables with a mournful rendition of “Manha de Carnaval,” Carson felt she ought to present her desire to meet Alec in Lisbon in as light and casual a way as possible.
    â€œSo,” she said as she selected a morsel of escabeche —local uncooked fish delicately marinated in lime juice—and raised it to her mouth, “I’ve been invited to a Shakespeare play.”
    â€œAh. The bard himself. I knew him well,” said Lawrence, and it took Carson half a moment before she realized he was paraphrasing a line from Shakespeare. He looked at her across the table with its white cloth and glittering glasses half filled with local white sangria and floatingchunks of apple and melon. “I’m glad you’ll be getting some culture this summer,” he continued drily. “I know how important that is to you.” And then he drained his glass.
    Carson pretended not to notice the irony at work here. But clearly Lawrence was slightly uncomfortable with Carson going off to the city with a man she’d just met on the train. What would your mother think? That was the subtext of Lawrence’s concern, though he hadn’t said a word. Aunt Jane didn’t offer an opinion, though Carson secretly hoped—and suspected—that her aunt was rooting her on. After all, Aunt Jane had been just a year beyond Carson’s current age when she’d traveled abroad and fallen in love with an English civil servant. Carson had grown up hearing from her mother how Aunt Jane had shocked the entire family when she’d announced that she loved this young Brit named Lawrence Emmett, and that they were planning to be married. Carson’s own mother, Philippa, had taken the safer course, marrying Arthur Weatherell, whom the entire family knew and approved of, and who was sure to provide well for her. But Lawrence Emmett was an unknown, an X factor from the other side of the ocean, and no one had known what to expect of him. Happily, the marriage had worked out well, and no one ever complained again, but surely Jane could still remember what tensions she’d created in her own family when she’d fallen in love with someone who hadn’t been approved of in advance.
    And surely, too, Jane was looking across the dinner table at her niece with something approaching admiration. “Honestly, Lawrie,” Jane murmured. “Leave the poor girl alone. She’s just trying to have a little fun. You remember fun, don’t you? It’s spelled F-U-N, and it tends to happen to young people, if they’re lucky.”
    â€œDon’t patronize me, Jane,” said her husband. “We promised your sister that we’d protect Carson this summer, not expose her to all kinds of people we know nothing about.”
    â€œOh, but we do know about him,” said Jane. “I found him to be perfectly charming, and I thought you did, too.”
    Lawrence grumbled something that Carson couldn’t hear, because just at that moment, the mariachis reached a climactic moment in their ballad, and the guitars were suddenly strummed very loudly. But the upshot of the discussion was that Carson would apparently be allowed to attend the Shakespeare play with Alec in Lisbon, provided he return her to the villa by midnight.
    â€œOr else my coach will turn into a pumpkin?” Carson teased her aunt and uncle.
    â€œSomething like that,” said Lawrence, and she could see a smile playing on the edges of his lips. “All right, all right,” he conceded. “I suppose I am a worrywart. But we’ve been entrusted with your care this summer, and you’re still quite young.”
    â€œI know that, Lawrence,” Carson said. She had begun to enjoy casting the word uncle aside.She’d decided that it made her feel far more sophisticated than she really was.
    â€œBut what else is being young