Lisbon (24 page)

The landlord was not loath to give it.

“Most of the talk is still about the horse thief who ran off with Lord Pimmerston’s intended,” he said, and drained half of his own tankard at a swallow.

“And did they catch him?” wondered Tom blandly.

“Aye, but not before he’d raped the girl.” The landlord wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Oh, they did for him, all right. Some of the search party came through here on their way back home, and they told me all about it. They said he showed fight, did the horse thief, but he was hit with a stone and fell over the cliff at the edge of Kenlock Crag, and what was left of him was carried off in the torrent below.”

Tom considered that, lifting his ale to his lips and taking a long thirsty swallow.
So they thought him dead, did they?
He set the tankard down.

“And did they recover Lord Pimmerston’s intended?” he asked in a casual voice.

“Not that I heard.” The landlord finished his own tankard at a gulp. “She ran off with someone, headed for Scotland.”

Tom headed there too, and reached Gretna Green in daylight. Gretna Green, where he’d meant to marry Charlotte. He looked bitterly about him, inquiring at the first smithy he found. The smith’s buxom wife told him eagerly about the marriage.

“Fine gentleman, he were, and tall,” she recalled. “But the bride looked sad, I thought, and her clothes were all torn.”

Tom’s fair head lifted alertly. “He was
forcing
her to marry him?”

“No, she was pale but willing. She spoke her vows clear enough, and they went away together.”

Those words went right through Tom, to gnaw at his very soul.

“And that was the end of it?” he asked dully.

“Well, not quite,” ruminated the smith’s wife. “Her guardian did come looking for her after, and he told us the 
English lord—her betrothed—had a stroke after he learned she ran away the second time, and with one of his guests. He said the English lord wasn’t expected to live. He followed her to Dumfries—”

“Who followed her?” cut in Tom hoarsely.

“Her guardian. He came back this way and told us she’d disappeared, and her bridegroom with her, nobody knew where.”

Tom thanked her and turned away, heartsick.

Fine gentleman, handsome and tall
. . .
Lord Pimmerstons guest.
. . . That would no doubt be the tall man he’d seen bending over Charlotte so solicitously in the garden that night at Castle Stroud—and again with Charlotte’s guardian on Kenlock Crag just before the stone felled him. At least the fellow had had the sense to wrest Charlotte away from Lord Pimmerston’s clutches.

Charlotte, he told himself dully, had taken the only sensible way out. She had found herself a protector and married him. None could blame her for that. But his heart ached for her, and if he had known her whereabouts at that moment he would have been off to join her like an arrow shot from a bow.

Despite God and constables.

But—it was too late. Charlotte had made her choice, and even though that choice had been forced on her at the time, by now she was doubtless glad of it. She didn’t need a dead man to rise up and try to claim her. Above all, she didn’t need Tom Westing to come prowling back into her life.

Bearing a wound deeper than he had ever sustained in battle, Tom, knowing England was dangerous for him just now, forged farther north into Scotland. In the seafaring town of Glasgow he took the first berth offered. On the 
Heron,
bound for Curaçao and—ostensibly—a bit of trading with the Dutch. Tom doubted that that was indeed her purpose, for the
Heron
was slim and sleek, built for swift strikes and fast getaways. Tom told himself he did not care. He had thought to become a fine upright fellow, one worthy of such a girl as Charlotte. Now that she was gone, 
what did it matter what happened to him? He would let fate, which had so battered him, waft him where it would.

Charlotte would have been dumbfounded to know that Tom had survived and that his ship had even for a while followed her track down the Irish Sea before their ways split and Tom’s ship shot westward toward the Azores while her sturdy merchantman beneath a full head of sail moved serenely south toward the Iberian Peninsula—and Lisbon.

Lying like a many-faceted jewel at the mouth of the Tagus River, Lisbon—that westernmost capital of mainland Europe—glittered in the morning sun. Although it was early, the old city, its Moorish influence still visible, was already a hubbub of activity. On the Mar de Palha, the “Sea of Straw,” the lateen sails of rakish    flashed

red and brown and orange as they took advantage of the brisk breeze that came up the tidal estuary from the Atlantic, which here seemed only a breath away. Colorful crowds jostled each other along the waterfront. Black-skirted barefoot
varinas
hawking trays of fish carried on their heads darted in and out among passengers from incoming vessels. University students from Coimbra, sweltering in black capes over their black frock coats, shouldered by gaudily painted harlots intent on snaring foreign sailors. Dominican “Black Friars” wound through the crowd in their hooded black habits over white woolen garments, dodging donkey carts piled high with vegetables and fruit, while veiled women from the south—a living reminder that the Moors had left their stamp on the city—rubbed shoulders with elderly flower vendors shuffling along with mountainous baskets ablaze with enormous red and pink and yellow blooms.

Looming over the city from the heights, the storied battlements of the Castelo de São Jorge looked down ove 
the myriad churches of the Alfama, or Old Quarter. Here steep twisting alleys, some so narrow that only two donkeys could squeeze by at a time, were decorated with flapping laundry and graced by iron balconies that hung out over the street, trailing vines and flowers from large earthenware pots. Everywhere were tiny hidden gardens and gracious courtyards filled with fragrant fruit trees and palms and scampering laughing children and dogs and cats.

This was the great port city of Lisbon where the
Ellen K.
had made landfall last night.

Lost in gloom over Tom’s loss and still crushed by her “betrayal” of him, Charlotte had given Portugal scarcely a thought during the voyage. All the way up the Tagus estuary she had moped in her cabin, although she could hear excited cries from the passengers on deck. Even on disembarking, she had kept her violet eyes downcast, ignoring the lights of Lisbon—as if she felt she was unworthy to share in the joy others felt at making port safely after a fair voyage.

Charlotte had not cut a very good figure as they landed, for her gown, which had been hastily mended on the voyage, was both unfashionable and ill fitting. That, combined with her determinedly downcast manner, had caused brows to lift as they disembarked, and Rowan had scowled fiercely back, as if to challenge the opinion of his fellow passengers.

Unwilling to parade Charlotte through the common room of one of Lisbon’s more elegant hostelries until she had better clothing, and unhampered by luggage—for unlike most of the passengers on the
Ellen K,
he and Charlotte had traveled almost embarrassingly light and had no need to wait for drays or heavy carts to transport their baggage— Rowan had hoisted his saddlebags himself and led Charlotte to a nearby low-roofed whitewashed inn where he took rooms for them both.

But when Charlotte had promptly sunk down on the bed and announced in a bleak voice that she was not hungry and would go straight to bed, Rowan had lost his patience.

“You will eat something if I have to force every bite down that white throat!’’ he snapped.

“But I don’t wish to go downstairs,” Charlotte protested. “You can see that I am too tired,” she added defensively.

“Very well, you will eat here—but eat you will!”

Charlotte had sighed and viewed without enthusiasm the bowl of
caldeirada,
a kind of Portuguese
bouillabaisse, 
redolent of onions and paprika, which was brought up to her. “Aren’t you going to join me?” she asked.

“No, I shall seek more lively company,” was his cold rejoinder. But he stood ruthlessly by while she consumed the very last spoonful of the
caldeirada.
He even insisted that she finish the glass of wine he poured for her.

That he had slipped a mild sleeping potion into the wine he gave her, Charlotte had no way of knowing, for she was unused to wine and did not notice its slightly altered taste. Rowan watched her drink it, knowing she would assume it was the wine and not the potion that would keep her asleep through the night and well into the next morning. Then he had locked the door and left her. And gone to prowl the town looking for word from the man he was to meet in Lisbon. He found none.

Annoyed by that failure, he had come back after being out all night to find Charlotte sleepily rousing. Abruptly he had decided that, presentable or not, he would take her out now to view the town. Perhaps that would breathe some life into this listless creature!

When Charlotte had stepped outside the whitewashed walls of the inn and been handed into an open carriage, she had been amazed.

She had come in darkness into a city of light.

The streets were clean, the skies a vivid blue, the air off the Atlantic clean-washed and tangy. Buildings of soft-hued stucco were all around her, pastel pinks and watery greens and hazy blues. And scattered proudly among them— some still under construction—were marble palaces built in a splendidly rococo style with windows that flashed in the sun. Indeed, as they continued around the great cen
tral plaza, the very buildings seemed to blaze about her, each more magnificent than the last.

And they seemed to her enchanted gaze to rise forever, terrace upon terrace of them, sweeping up over the low hills above her. It was a dizzying vista and Charlotte was sharply aware of how different it all was from anything she had ever known. All the splendor of a great city was opening up about her and she found herself caught up in it, swept away from her dismal thoughts.

Now they were turning into a broad avenue whose traffic consisted predominantly of coaches and carriages with occasional handsomely caparisoned riders, some in glittering wide-brimmed sombreros, who passed by on dancing mounts with jingling spurs and silver-studded saddles. But it was the coaches on which she chose to feast her eyes—so astonishingly many of them! There was a blue one, its door emblazoned with a coat of arms of snarling leopards, there a giddy-looking coach encrusted with delicate garlands of painted ivory and gold and with more glass than she had ever imagined a coach could have, and just passing was one with a sleek maroon leather body and bright yellow-green wheels, and just ahead—oh, just ahead was a truly magnificent coach adorned with gilded mermaids that gleamed gold in the sun.

“Why, it is a city of coaches!" she exclaimed breathlessly.

“And other wonders," agreed Rowan in a slightly sarcastic voice, for the determinedly downcast demeanor of this bride-who-did-not-want-him had brought a look of amusement to the narrowed eyes of a harlot he had scorned as he went into the inn. He was still smarting from her worldly assessment of him.

Charlotte, immersed in the wonders within her view, did not notice his tone.

“And it is a city of palaces, " she added, impressed. “And so many of them look
new.
Look at that one—and the one over there. They are just now being constructed!"

“All built by the gold that flows from the mines of Brazil," he told her carelessly.

“It s glorious," she sighed, sinking back in contentment.

Rowan turned an amused look upon his bride, and that 
swing of the head brought into view another carriage just then passing. It bore an opulent couple, the gentleman in gold-embroidered lavender-blue silks, the lady in a striking gown of crimson taffeta ornamented in black grosgrain and wearing a spectacular hat that set off to perfection her cloud of raven-black hair. Their heads were both turned away, for the gentleman seemed to be pointing out something in the street beyond, but in the brief moment as they flashed by, the lady s handsome profile came into full view and Rowan drew in his breath sharply.

Katherine.
A pang went through him. Katherine, the woman who had cast him aside the moment a better offer came her way. Bitterly he remembered the fancied smirks of his London friends and acquaintances, all of whom, he had no doubt, had laughed when they heard about it. Ah, she had made a mockery of him in London, had Katherine, and now here she was riding gaily by in Lisbon all decked out in a carriage, her dark loveliness attracting attention—just as she meant it to.

And lounging beside her, that graceful fop of a young husband of hers, Eustace Talybont. Well he might lounge about, secure in the knowledge of the inherited acres that would one day be his! Rowan had not been one of those fortunate ones blessed with an ancestral seat and no need to make a living. He recalled that Talybont was supposed to have made a jest about Katherine s rejected suitor. The “money-grubber" Talybont had called him, referring to Rowan s onetime stint as manager of an elderly lord s estate—a position from which he had been hurriedly ousted when the old lord died and his sons had shouldered Rowan out. Rowan s hands clenched at the sting of that remark. Indeed, had Talybont been in London when Rowan heard what the man had called him, he would have sought him out on the spot and sampled with his blade the color of that arrogant blue blood! He toyed with the idea of doing so now, of ordering the driver to draw up alongside the carriage that had just passed them and then rising in his seat and leaning over and slapping his glove across Eustace Talybont’s self-satisfied face.