Shadow of the Moon Read Online Free Page B

most charming of countries, Spain, and Sabrina Grantham who had, surprisingly enough, not been in love for over a year, and who was so small and slim and blondly beautiful.
    â€˜My niece, Sabrina—’
    â€˜My son, Marcos—’
    They had stood looking at each other in the cool white hall of the Casa de los Pavos Reales where the orange trees grew in tubs as they do in Spain, and where the sunlight, filtering through the lemon trees planted about the house, filled the hall with a green, aqueous light.
    Marcos too had read Milton, and the same lines that Ashby had quoted so many years ago at the cradle of the infant Sabrina rose now in the mind of the young grandee of Spain:
    â€˜
Sabrina
!’ thought Marcos, staring at her entranced. “‘
Sabrina fair - listen where thou art sitting, under the glassy, cool translucent wave
” Yes, she is like a mermaid. A water nymph.’
    â€˜He is like a Knight of the Round Table,’ thought Sabrina. ‘Like the picture of Sir Tristram in that book in Grandpapa’s library.’
    They stood and looked at each other and fell in love.
* Gul (rhymes with ‘pull’)-
arb
Ma-
harl
.

2
    Juanita’s daughter was born, and the old, old lullabies of Spain and France and Hindustan were sung above her cradle.
    â€˜
Hai mai
!’ sighed Aziza Begum to her friend Anne Marie, ‘rememberest thou the day thy daughter was born? So also do I. I am now an old woman, very fat and slothful, but it is as though it were yesterday. The years go swiftly: too swiftly. But there will be many more grandchildren for thee and me, and surely the next will be a son …’
    For Sabrina it was a time of enchantment: a page cut from a fairy-story. But Emily was full of anxiety and foreboding. Emily was staunchly and stubbornly British; possessed of all the ingrained insularity of her race. Her two children had both been born, lived their brief days and died in this hostile foreign land, and had been laid to rest in this alien soil. She did not find India beautiful or exciting. She saw it only as the graveyard of her children; an uncivilized and barbaric country with a medieval standard of morality, sanitation and squalor that it was the divinely appointed but distasteful task of men like Ebenezer to govern and control and lead into the path of enlightened Western living. It was therefore not surprising that she viewed the attachment between her niece Sabrina and Marcos de Ballesteros with disapproval, and persuaded herself that it was no more than a passing infatuation that would fade as others had faded.
    But this time Sabrina was in love: in love for the first time in her life. No one looking at her could doubt it for a moment. She walked as though her small feet barely touched the ground and it was as though an almost visible aura of happiness surrounded her. To Marcos, accustomed to the dark-haired women of Spain and France and his father’s adoptive country, Sabrina’s golden loveliness seemed like something out of this world - rare, fragile and exquisite. When they were together, in whatever company of people, it was as if they saw only each other; heard no other voices speak.
    Emily awoke to the dangers of the situation too late (though had she but known it, even one moment after their meeting would still have been too late), and she prevailed upon Ebenezer to put forward the date of their departure from Lucknow. The Bartons had planned to visit the old Mogul capital of Delhi before proceeding to Calcutta, where they would remain until the spring, when Sabrina was to return to England. But Sabrina, who had once been delighted at the prospect, now viewed their impending departure with blank dismay and pleaded to be allowed to remain in Lucknow.
    Emily had remained firm and Sabrina had wept stormily. And four hours later Marcos had asked for an interview with Sir Ebenezer Barton and had requested his permission to ask his niece for her hand in