She almost put a hand to her mouth. She ought never to have said such a thing. It was precisely the kind of sauciness her father would have answered with a slap. But it was said, and there was nothing to do but see what happened now.

Miguel looked at her and something flashed across his face, something Hannah found pleasing. “I did not mean to distract you. I only wished to-to share this with you.”

“You are generous,” she said, astonished by her own boldness before the words had even passed her lips. Could she not control herself now? Had some demon taken her body from her?

“You think me elusive,” he said, looking upon her as though she were some new discovery of natural science, “but I’ll tell you all. You see, that man is a terrible villain. He has a daughter whom he wishes to marry to a very old and mean merchant, a miser of the worst sort. He arranged that her true love should be abducted by pirates, but he learned of the incident and fled. The daughter has fled too, so the miser, knowing that I am friends with the lovers, came to try to force me to give him their location.”

Hannah laughed, loud enough that this time she felt obliged to place a hand over her mouth. “This tragedy of yours would play prettily upon the stage.”

For a moment she wished her father-or anyone else-was there to slap her. How could she have spoken so pertly? Nevertheless, it was true. Miguel’s lie sounded like the stage plays she had seen, with some regularity, back in Lisbon. Some men took their wives to the Jewish theater here in Amsterdam, but Daniel thought it improper for a woman.

Her foot rotated back and forth like a pigeon by a baker’s stall searching for crumbs. This coffee is not a drink of the mind, she realized, it is a drink of the body. And the mouth. And it made her want to say all sorts of things: I find you remarkably attractive. How I wish I could have married you instead of your cold brother.

She said none of them. She still could censor herself.

“You don’t believe me, senhora?”

“I believe you must imagine me to be remarkably foolish to accept your tale.” The words seemed to come out on their own. Her parents had always taught her to be mild. Her husband had indicated with a thousand unsaid words that he would tolerate only mildness from her. Yet she did not feel mild. She had never felt mild, but she had never before forgotten to act mild.

The coffee, she told herself. Miguel has, knowingly or not, bewitched me and perhaps himself. How long until they began to shout insults at each other or fell into an unrestrained embrace?

There was no point putting the blame on coffee. The drink had not bewitched her, no more than a glass of wine could cast a magic spell. It made her eager, in the same way wine rendered her calm. This sauciness, this pertness that grew inside her mouth came not from witchery but from herself. The coffee drink only let her bad behavior out.

In recognizing the truth, in admitting it to herself, much became clear to her, but nothing so much as a resolution: she would be pert and saucy every chance she had.

For the nonce, however, she had her most distressing encounter to contend with, and no amount of coffee or wine or any other tea she could think of would make the true terror she had felt any less real. She found Miguel’s efforts to deceive her both charming and infuriating. “I know that the world does not work the way it does in plays, and that misers do not send their daughters’ lovers into the hands of pirates.” She paused. “Nevertheless, you can depend on me to keep your secret.”

Miguel leaned back and looked at Hannah as though seeing her for the first time. He glanced at her face, her neck; his eyes lingered at the swell of her breasts concealed in her high-necked gown. Men often thought women had no idea of what their eyes studied, but a woman knew, as surely as though a glance left a handprint.

He had looked at her before, of course. She had sensed that he admired her face and her shape, but this glance was something different. Miguel and men like him rarely thought much of the women they admired and bedded. A woman was an object, sometimes to be consumed like food, other times to be admired like a painting. Miguel now saw her as something more, and the idea of it thrilled her.

“I trust and believe your promise of silence,” he told her, “so I’ll tell you the truth. The man you saw has an old grudge against me for a wrong that was none of my doing, and he wishes to ruin me. He understands the ways of our community well enough to know how to ruin with whispers as easily as with deeds, and that is why you must not speak of what happened.”

He had entrusted her with the truth, and she still betrayed him with her silence. “Then I won’t speak of it,” she said, her voice hardly above a whisper.

“Senhora.” Miguel shifted uneasily. “I beg that your silence extends to your husband. I know that such vows of secrecy often include an implicit exception for the special bonds of matrimony, but in this case it is very important that your good husband know nothing.”

Hannah sipped at her coffee. A black mulch had formed at the bottom, and not knowing if she should drink it and thinking it would be rude to ask, she set the bowl back down. “I, of all people, know what my good husband should and should not hear. I’ll not tell him. But you must promise me something.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Of course.”

“That you will let me drink coffee again,” she said. “Soon.”

“I would consider drinking coffee with you a great pleasure,” he said warmly.

She studied his face. Were I a servant or a tavern girl, he would kiss me at this moment. But I am his brother’s wife. He won’t kiss me ever. He has too much honor. Unless, of course, she thought, I kiss him first. But that was unthinkable, and she blushed at her own boldness.

“Well, then,” she said with a sigh, “I’ll call the girl to clear away the dishes, lest my husband come home and find that we’ve been secreted together, drinking forbidden things.”

She enjoyed the look of wonder upon Miguel’s face for a moment before relieving him of his discomfort by ringing for the maid.

17

Miguel believed he had learned a great deal that day, about women and about Hannah. He could never have imagined what spirit lurked beneath her quiet exterior. He had feared the worst of her, that she would repeat all she knew to every wife in the Vlooyenburg. It seemed inevitable that a silly woman would run off with this bit of gossip like a dog who snatched a piece of meat from the kitchen counter. Now he believed he could depend upon her to be quiet. He couldn’t explain why he had given her the coffee, why he had confessed to her what he wanted to hide from Daniel. It had been an impulse to give her something, a new secret, to make her feel the bond of trust between them. Perhaps it had been sound reasoning and perhaps not, but the thrill of trusting her had been impossible to resist. And he knew with absolute certainty that she would not betray him.

Miguel shook his head and cursed himself. Did he not have enough trouble without looking for unspeakable intrigues? If something were to happen to Daniel, he thought, he would happily take a closer look at Hannah. And a man might die in many ways: disease, accident, murder. Miguel took a moment to indulge in thoughts of Daniel’s body being dragged from a canal, his eyes openly staring at death, his skin somewhere between blue and white. He felt remorse at his pleasure in such thoughts, but they left him less agitated than thoughts of removing Hannah from the unhappy bondage of her clothing.

Wasn’t coffee supposed to inhibit such thoughts? But even coffee was no match for the thrill of Hannah’s conversation. He had always thought the girl no more than a simple and pretty thing, charming but empty. Now he knew it had all been for show, an act to placate her husband. Give the woman a bowl of coffee, and her true self blossomed. How many other women, he wondered, merely played the fool to escape the notice of their men?