Lisbon (36 page)

“No,” she admitted in a muffled voice, “I would not have preferred Pimmerston.”

“Look at me when you speak to me.”

Charlotte opened her eyes. Rowan was regarding her stonily. She realized in panic that she must not be cast out, she must get along with this man—whatever she now thought about him.

“I am sorry, Rowan,” she mumbled, trying to force sincerity into the words. “I did not think. I ... I had forgotten about Pimmerston.”

“No, you did not think.” His voice grew suddenly tender, indulgent. “Perhaps that is what so charms me about you, Charlotte. You throw yourself fiercely into the fray, no matter what the cost. It is a laudable but”—he sighed— “perhaps an unlucky trait, and one which I hope you will not pass on to our son.”

Charlotte felt drained. “How do you know it will be a son?” she asked dully.

“I spoke in jest. Indeed I do not care whether you bear me a son or a daughter—I would welcome either one.” 
And he must keep on thinking that.
. . . With an effort, Charlotte managed a wan smile. “I will at least stay close to the house,” she promised, “and in that way not shame you for my lack of respect for my uncle s passing.

“It would be wise for you to do so anyway in this bitter weather,” he counseled. “Those who venture out invite frostbite.”

So their Christmas was celebrated snugly there in the house in Grosvenor Square that had once sheltered a king s mistress. They ate roast goose stuffed with chestnuts, and a blazing plum pudding, and toasted each other with eggnog and smuggled brandy—for England was still groaning under the heavy excise tax. Nobody came to call, and Charlotte was not surprised, for she had already learned that Rowan s “profession,” if one could call it that, did not fit in with the kind of warm friendships that had people running in and out of the house at all hours. They did go out during the Twelve Days of Christmas—to music halls, to plays, to dine at inns. They shared in the gaiety of public places, laughed with strangers—but Charlotte could not but feel a pang when she saw parties of revelers laughing and calling out to each other as they trudged by on foot or dashed by in sleighs. And once or twice her violet eyes filled with tears when she heard the sound of Christmas carolers and remembered how in the Scillies her hospitable mother had always invited the carolers in for tea or hot chocolate—a practice that Rowan deplored.

“We will not fill up the house with strangers,” he told her firmly, intercepting her as she was about to open the front door.

“But, Rowan, the carolers are outside, and cold. They—”

“No. We do not know who they are.’’ He shot the bolt so hard that it made a noise the carolers must have heard and wondered about.

Charlotte turned away confused and feeling depressed.

“Cheer up,” he said. “We will attend a play for Twelfth Night.”

Charlotte forbore saying she would rather have opened up their doors to the world and invited the carolers in.

Since Rowan never chose to introduce her to anyone (she had decided that the set he had belonged to in London must be made up entirely of gamesters he did not particularly want his wife to meet), she found herself entirely dependent upon him for companionship, and it was a blow when he told her he would be taking a trip right after Twelfth Night.

“Will you be gone long?” she asked forlornly, for she knew these last three months of her pregnancy would find her far less mobile and it would be depressing without him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But you will be all right. Yates will take care of you. If you are asked, say that I have gone north—to Aldershot Grange.”

She looked up quickly. “Will you sell the property now?”

“No,” he said surprisingly. “I intend to keep it.”

But perhaps that too fit into the plans of one who made hurried secret journeys in and out of the country, she decided. Rowan could disappear from London at any time on the pretext of visiting his “north-country estate,” and who would make that long trek to check up and find out if that were true? Indeed he could
go
to Aldershot Grange and have Livesay announce to all and sundry that he was ill and keeping to his room—and actually be off to Europe on some mission for the First Lord.

She wondered suddenly if she would ever see the north country again.

Rowan departed into a cold gray dawn right after Twelfth Night, and Charlotte was left to cope. And that wasn’t easy.

Indeed she was entirely baffled by Rowan s household— both by its lopsided opulence and by all the things it seemed she was not to change. Of the servants, only Yates, the butler, and Clover, the cook, lived in. Clover was a picturesque woman, plump and ruddy-cheeked and taffy-haired and with a warm sunny smile. She was a mute as the result of some childhood accident and could neither read nor write, but she was quick and clever and understood orders well.

The giant Yates, she knew, she would never like. She found him taciturn, answering questions in monosyllables, and she did not like the way he looked at her—with only half-concealed distaste, as if he did not approve his master’s choice of brides. Yates never changed, nor did relations between them ever improve. He was loyal to Rowan only—Charlotte was not included. Yates hired the servants— Rowan had told her she was not to interfere in that. And he kept them in awe. He hovered over the chambermaids and scullery maids, a changing group who came in only by day, until they scurried away. And if he found any of them chatting with the mistress of the house, they were promptly dismissed.

Charlotte found it hard living there on Grosvenor Square, for she had practically no communication whatever with other human beings: Cook couldn’t talk, Yates wouldn’t talk, and the chambermaids were afraid to talk. On the several occasions she tried to strike up conversations with them, they seemed very subdued, and melted away at Yates’ approach.

“Yates frightens people,” she had once complained to Rowan. “He’s so huge and his manner is so menacing.”

Rowan had cocked a sardonic eye at her. “That too has its uses,” he had told her cryptically.

But useful or no, Charlotte found life cooped up in a household that went silent at her approach unbearable, and sometimes—despite the weather and her advanced pregnancy—she ventured out on chilly wind-buffeted walks around the square.

On a late-February day, feeling desperate after being 
housebound by terrible weather for a fortnight, she decided to go still farther.

“Yates.” She caught up with the giant in the lower hall. “Please have the coach brought round. I’m going shopping. You can take me to Cheapside and I’ll take a hackney back when I’ve finished.’’

Yates looked as if he might say no. He eyed her thickening figure warily. “ Tis icy,’’ he demurred. “The master wouldn’t—”

“The master is not here, Yates.
I
am in charge.” And when still he hesitated, “If you do not bring the coach at once, I shall have one of the chambermaids find me a hackney coach.”

Yates shrugged and soon their coach was making good time toward Cheapside, considering the icy roads, the traffic, and the insolent sedan-chair men who were supposed to keep to the center of the road but seldom did. Charlotte could hear one of them swearing at Yates in an angry Irish brogue as they rounded the imposing domed pile of St. Paul’s Cathedral. She was surprised when he let her off without a murmur.

The weather had turned warmer, and despite the hazard of melting ice underfoot, Charlotte was enjoying her walk and the crowds. She had never really intended to go shopping—indeed she had no desire to carry packages, she felt heavy enough already, but she wanted to be out in the bracing air. She strolled along admiring the big ironframed signs that protruded out over the street on long brackets. Even more she enjoyed the carved wooden or molded ironwork that identified the kind of shop: three hats to signify a hatter, three sugar loaves to designate a grocer, three great golden balls to identify a goldsmith. As the afternoon wore on, the wind came up, whipping through the crowded streets, loosening the roof tiles, one of which rattled down upon the icy cobbles nearby, causing pass-ersby to jump nimbly away.

Charlotte was about to signal a hackney coach to take her back to Grosvenor Square when above her there was a cracking noise, then a sharp cry of “Look out!” and she was abruptly seized from behind and jerked backward off 
her feet by a strong arm—just as a huge iron-framed sign commemorating a chocolate shop, and thick as a paving stone, crashed to the street where she had been standing a moment before.

A crowd gathered instantly, some claiming they had been injured by flying debris as the sign broke up on the icy cobbles, and the chocolate shop’s owner rushed out to survey the damage. But Charlotte, gasping over her narrow escape, was suddenly aware that even though the wind was sweeping under her skirts and trying its best to tear her velvet hat from her head, she was resting in a pair of most reassuring arms and a pleasant square-cut masculine face lit by warm intelligent brown eyes was looking down into hers with concern.

“Are you hurt?” he demanded. And when Charlotte shook her head, “You should not be out in this weather in your condition.”

“I think you are right,” Charlotte said shakily, gaining her feet again with his assistance and finding that she was trembling. “You have saved my life, sir, and I do thank you.” “You are very pale,” he observed. “I think a cup of hot chocolate might restore you.”

He led her into the now empty shop, for curiosity had driven the patrons into the street. But the cold wind soon drove them back again, and Charlotte, seated across from her tall savior, was glad to be in a room full of people, buzzing with conversation. As she felt the warmth of the hot chocolate bringing life to her cold limbs, she smiled at him, and it occurred to her that he looked vaguely familiar.

“I am glad you came along when you did, else I might at this moment lie crushed beneath that large sign out there, ” she told him ruefully. She was assessing him as he spoke: strong, masterful, about Rowan’s age, and dressed as a gentleman in olive velvet lightly accented with gold embroidery and gold buttons.

From across the table he was peering at her keenly. “I believe I know you,” he murmured. “You are Rowan Keynes’ wife.”

“Yes.” Charlotte regarded him with interest. “Do you know my husband?”

He nodded. “Indeed I do. What is Keynes thinking of, letting you wander about in this weather unescorted?” “Oh, he didn’t know. Charlotte rose quickly to Rowan’s defense.

“If you were mine,” he said softly, “I would know where you were at all times—for you are such a lady as might be stolen away from a man.”

Charlotte caught her breath. It was the first charming speech she had heard from a gentleman not her husband since her pregnancy had become noticeable. “I thought you looked familiar,” she said. “Tell me, have we met?” She was sure they had not, and he shook his head regretfully. “I have but admired you from a distance, I am afraid. Your husband is known to have a high temper and a jealous nature. Indeed, he holds his ladies as close as if they were in a seraglio,” he added humorously.

“I am sure he did not hold Katherine that closely!” she said in a tart voice, for the idea of Katherine in a harem was ludicrous—she would break out!

“No, not Katherine,” he mused.

So there had been other “ladies” in Rowans life who had been held close.
She wondered briefly who they were. 
Actresses from Drury Lane, dancers from the music halls perhaps?

“I have seen you walking about Grosvenor Square,” he said. “I have rooms not far from there.”

“So that is where I have seen you, walking about the square. You do not sound quite like a Londoner. Does your wife enjoy London?”

He smiled at the question. “I have no wife and you have a keen ear. I thought I had lost my West Country accent after all these years in London. But my time here may be fleeting. I have a sister in Kent who insists that I join her there until her first child is born, and a sister in Cornwall who insists that I return for her wedding, and a sister in Lincoln who insists that I come and make peace between her and her husband. As a man afflicted with too many sisters and afraid to make a choice, I remain skulking in London!”

Charlotte found herself laughing heartily for the first 
time in weeks. By the time they had finished their second cup of chocolate, they were fast friends, she had learned that his name was Francis Tremont, and she had invited him to tea the next day.

He squired her home in a hackney coach, bowed deeply at her front door, and departed. He arrived early for tea the next day, his costume refurbished by a fancier cravat and a gold-headed cane—and he brought her a book to read. Charlotte seized on the book with delight—it was 
The Fortunate Mistress
, by Daniel Defoe, who had died a year ago in his London lodgings with his last days shrouded in mystery. When two days later a dimpling Charlotte told Francis Tremont how much she had enjoyed the romantic entanglements of its heroine, Roxana, her newfound friend promptly returned with another picaresque novel by Mr. Defoe entitled
The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders.

On learning that Rowan was away at their “north-country estate,” Francis Tremont gallantly declared himself at Charlotte s service “to take her anywhere she wished to go.” With the arrival of the baby just over two weeks away, Charlotte was not eager to go anywhere but to childbed to get it over with, but she forbore saying that.