Read Online Stormchild by Bernard Cornwell - Free Book Online Page A

explained very calmly, “is to find Nicole and tell her about her mother’s death. Nothing else.” That was not entirely true. I also wanted, I needed, Nicole’s assurance that she no longer believed I was responsible for her brother’s death. That belief of Nicole’s might be irrational, but it had snagged in my heart and still hurt. “And to find Nicole,” I went on, “I’m willing to waste quite a lot of my own money. Is that so very bad?”
    David sniffed rather than answer my question, then, for a few silent miles, he brooded on my obstinancy. “They have pink taxis there, did you know that?” he finally asked as we turned into the airport.
    “Pink taxis?”
    “In Key West,” he said ominously, as though the existence of pink taxis was the final argument that would prevent my leaving. He braked outside the British Airways terminal. “Pink taxis,” he said again, even more ominously.
    “It sounds like fun,” I said, then climbed from the car and went to find my child.
     
    David was right. There were bright pink taxis in Key West.
    And I was suddenly glad to be there because it was a preposterous, outrageous, and utterly unnecessary town; a fairy-tale place of Victorian timber houses built on a sun-drenched coral reef at the end of a one-hundred-mile highway that skipped between a chain of palm-clad islands across an impossibly blue sea.
    I felt I had been transported out of grayness to a sudden, vivid world that contrasted cruelly with the damp drabness that had been my life since Joanna had died. My hangdog spirits lifted as the pink taxi drove me from Key West’s tiny airport into the old town’s tangle of narrow streets. I was headed for a private guest house that my travel agent had somehow discovered, which proved to be a pretty house on a tree-shaded street close to the town center. The guest house was owned and run by a man named Charles de Charlus, who, when I arrived, was flat on his back beneath a jacked-up Austin-Healey 3000. He wriggled backward, stood to greet me, and I saw that he was a handsome, tall, and deeply tanned man whose face was smeared with engine oil. “Our visitor from England, how very nice,” de Charlus greeted me as he wiped his hands on a rag. “You look exhausted, Mr. Blackburn. Come inside.” He ushered me into a hallway lavish with beautiful Victorian furniture, where he plucked a room key from the drawer of a bureau. “I’m giving you a room that overlooks the Jacuzzi in the courtyard. Do feel free to use it. We have a weight room if you need some exercise, and an electric beach.”
    “An electric beach?”
    “An electric tanning salon. For cloudy days.”
    “I doubt I’ll have much time for relaxation,” I said, trying not to show the awkwardness that suddenly flared through me. “I’m here for the Zavatoni Conference.”
    “Oh, you’re a green! Well, of course, aren’t we all these days?” Charles led me upstairs and ushered me into a wonderfully comfortable room. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t come in and show you where everything is.” In explanation he held up his hands which were still greasy from his car, then tossed the room key onto the bed. “Your bathroom is through the blue door, and the air conditioner controls are under the window. Enjoy!” He left me in the cool of the airconditioning. The curtains were closed, presumably to fend off the fierce sun, but I pulled them aside to let in some light and found myself staring down into the palm-shaded courtyard where the bright blue-tiled Jacuzzi shimmered and foamed in the heat. Two men were sprawled in the water. Both were stark naked. One of them, seeing me, raised a languid hand in greeting.
    I let the curtain drop. I could feel myself blushing. Joanna, I thought, would have been mightily amused, and I could almost hear her accusing me of a most ridiculous embarrassment. I took her framed photograph from my seabag, put it on the bedside table, and thought how very much I missed