Lisbon (50 page)

She could expect no kindness from the implacable man before her. Rowan had not a forgiving nature.

She moistened her dry lips. “Then I have no alternative,” she said hopelessly. “I will not try to return to England. I will stay here. I want my daughters to have a future.”

He nodded. “Very wise.” He sneered. And then, as if he had just this moment thought about it, “How will you 
live?”

Charlotte was caught short. It seemed he did not plan to continue her imprisonment! “You will give me money enough to exist, I suppose—since you want me kept out of the way.”

“You are wrong. I have given you the last coin you will ever receive from me.”

“Then . . . Oh, what is it to you?” she burst out. “Stand aside! I will make my own way. You do not care how I live!”

“True.” He was very composed, but he made no move to let her pass. “Still, I wish
you
to consider it, and ... I have a gift for you.”

He brought it out from his pocket and she saw the sudden flash of gold. For a wild moment she thought he had changed his mind, that he had been merely baiting her.

“You asked about the children,” he said. “I thought you might like to have these portraits of them. ”

She saw then that he was dangling two locket-size miniatures from a black grosgrain riband. With a cry of joy she snatched them from him, stared down at them greedily. Here was little Phoebe with yellow ribands in her dark curls, looking like Rowan and a little sullen. And here was Cassandra, beautiful Cassandra, with features so like Charlotte’s, and Tom’s dazzling coloring.

“Those were painted just before I left England,” he told her.

Charlotte looked up, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “They are both so beautiful,” she said huskily.

Rowan stood looking down at her with a mixture of emotions warring on his intense face.
She
was the beautiful one, he thought. For all her disreputable clothing, she seemed to shimmer before him, a vision of tempting loveliness. He yearned to touch her, to stroke her sweet yielding body, to feel her shiver against him as she once had done. He wanted things to be the way they had been before.
He wanted her back.
For a terrible soul-wrenching moment he struggled with that, fighting the urge to forgive her. He opened his mouth to tell her so, and then his clenched teeth bit back the words, but not before his strangled voice got out her name, "Charlotte .”

Charlotte caught that sound in his voice, that break that signified indecision, and hope flickered within her. Perhaps after all he would relent and let her see the children. . . .

“Charlotte,” he said again more huskily, and he could not believe that he was really saying the words, “can we not find it in our hearts to forgive each other?”

There was a sad mockery in the wan smile that passed over Charlotte’s face. “After all that has happened, could I really forgive you, Rowan?”

He had lost the battle with himself. His every nerve was quivering with desire for her. He felt again that old familiar pain in his groin, and all his senses rose up to take her, enfold her, make her his again.

She looked away from him out into the far distance, past the cramped narrow passages of the Alfama, back to other days, other arms. “I might have forgiven you once. Rowan. ” There was a shiver of grief in her voice. “I might even have forgiven you this long imprisonment. For the sake of the children. But”—her head swung back squarely to face him and her voice rang out hard—
“do you really think I would forgive you Tom’s murder?”

Rowan was breathing hard. His face was white. “So Westing still stands between us?”

“Tell me”—her violet eyes flashed—“that you did not kill him!”

He had humbled himself—he who was not in the wrong! And yet there she stood, this lovely recalcitrant woman 
who was his wife,
admitting
that she still loved another man! It was too much. Pride and vengeance crashed together, blood rushed to his head, the floodgates of his passion broke.

“Damn youY
’ he said thickly, and the words seemed to rise out of hell. His hand clamped down on her arm and he whirled her into a nearby alleyway.

Charlotte would not have gone with him had she had any choice, but his grip was like steel, threatening to crush her arm. And if she made any outcry, she guessed he would snatch back the little miniatures that were now her only tenuous link with her children—and for those she would have fought.

The alleyway was deserted, a tiny dead end terminating in a high-walled courtyard. On either side were blank shuttered whitewashed buildings. To her left were a pile of wooden boxes and a crooked stone stair leading upward. The balcony above was deserted, the wooden door shut. The heat of the day was blazing down, and those inside were trying to keep the sun out.

Rowan kicked aside the boxes, and before she knew what he was doing, he pushed her down into the street under the stair and fell upon her, jerking her worn skirts upward.

Charlotte would have screamed, save that she was trying to recover from being knocked out of breath when she landed on the cobbles with Rowan atop her. And then she had no chance to scream, for Rowan s hard mouth sought hers punishingly. He was sucking the air from her lungs. She fought him in a terrible panting silence, but he was far too strong for her. His cruel hands were bruising her tender flesh, his shoes thoughtlessly bruising her thrashing calves. And then he was entering her and she felt a revulsion such as she had never known, and tore at him with her nails, drawing blood from his swarthy cheek. He did not seem to feel it. Panic rose in her. Rowan was going to kill her—and make love to her while she died!

But such was not his intent. In his murderous rage and disappointment, he told himself he was merely assuaging his passions, using her as he might have used a soothing 
lotion to anoint a wound. He told himself he cared nothing for the woman herself as he drove deep within her. It was her wonderful body he craved, the delights of her flesh that he had yearned for—so he told himself as he stormed her small fortress and tried deliberately to hurt her, as she had, he thought vengefully, hurt him.

But when it was over, stormily over, to his alarm he found that she was lying limp in his arms. For a terrified moment he was afraid that he had killed her. And he began desperately blowing air into her lungs, now that he had had his way.

A shiver of relief went through him when she stirred. But with her revival his anger at the wench washed over him once again.

“Get up,” he commanded.

And when she was so faint that she still could not stand, he jerked her upward and held her dizzily upon her feet and lightly slapped her face.

“There,” he said callously. “That will restore the color to those pale cheeks.”

“How could you?” she whispered. “Your own wife, and here in a dirty alley . . . ?” His unspeakable behavior had left her bereft of words, for she was still trying to gasp in enough air to keep alive while her limbs trembled.

And now she dared to remonstrate with him, she who had driven him to this! Well, he would show her a darker side of the world!

“Oh, I have learned much from you,” he drawled.

“Never! The devil taught you!” Her voice was shaky but her spirit was unbroken.

“You taught me the ways of hell,” he said roughly. And then, looking down at her more calmly as she leaned trembling against the building wall while he fastened up his trousers and brushed himself off, “You seem to have dropped something. Here, I will get it for you. ”

Charlotte’s gaze flashed downward. The miniatures! She must have dropped them from nerveless fingers as she struggled with him upon the cobbles! She tried to reach out for them, but he snatched them away with a nasty smile, held them tantalizingly just out of reach. 
His words were brutal. “I have just shown you how you will earn your living,” he said heavily.

“Never!” she gasped.

His cold laughter jarred her. “Here and in worse places than this—and with worse men,” he mocked, but he let her snatch the miniatures on their grosgrain riband away from him.

Charlotte looked her tormentor full in the face. “There are no worse men,” she said evenly.

His face contorted and he fetched her a light cuffing blow across the face that snapped her head to the side. She almost lost her footing as she reeled to the side, but another cuff brought her upright. Now she stood before him with her back against the whitewashed wall. Her face was very pale and her violet eyes were dark pools of anger and reproach.

He had driven her past the point of no return, but still her rejection of him drove him on. “You will have to grow used to being cuffed,” he advised, baiting her. “Street women are often pummeled and beaten by their customers. You must learn to take rough treatment with a smile.”

He waited but she made no answer, merely stared at him woodenly.

“You will notice that the backs of the miniatures are made of gold?” he pointed out.

The barest flicker of her lashes told him she had indeed noticed.

“I had the china miniatures affixed in such a way that they will almost certainly be broken should the gold backing be removed,” he added conversationally.

“They will remain unbroken,” she told him in a toneless voice.

“Oh, I wonder if they will?” He was smiling a terrible smile now. “You have no money, you have not eaten since breakfast, you will soon be growing terribly hungry—and what of tomorrow? If tonight some footpad does not get you and perhaps drive a knife through your ribs for disdaining him, you will find yourself hungrier still. I wonder how long it will take before you are hungry enough to pry the gold from the back of those miniatures?”

Charlotte took a deep breath and her delicate chin lifted. “You can count upon it, Rowan,” she said unsteadily. “I will
never
be that hungry!”

His brutal laugh rang out, but there was grudging admiration in his eyes for this woman he had tricked and degraded. Another man, a normal man, would have felt his heart melt at her gallantry in the face of such overwhelming odds, and felt sympathy for her plight. But not Rowan—her humiliation of him demanded vengeance.

He studied her for a long smoldering moment, as if memorizing her features. Then he turned without a goodbye and took himself off. First to walk off his rage, then to find a tavern and there drink himself into forgetfulness.

Charlotte waited, her back stiffened with pride, until Rowan was out of sight. Then her aching body seemed to wilt and she sank down to the cobbles as if she had no strength, leaning against the house wall, eyes shut and body quivering.

She drew a long shuddering breath. Her lawful husband had just had his way with her and she felt dishonored.

In that moment she thanked God that she could no longer bear children. To have carried Rowan’s child in memory of these hateful moments in a dirty alley would have been unbearable.

She sat there for a long time while the shadows lengthened. Looking up through her lashes at the sky, she realized that people would soon be coming out of their houses. The evening festivities would be beginning; soon the night would resound with song and the wailing of stringed instruments.

She could not face it, not any of it, not tonight.

There in the shadow of the stairway she pulled the wooden boxes around her in such a way that she was concealed beneath the stairway, and curled up for the night.

Across the city Rowan had found a tavern. He seated himself on a wooden bench and drank steadily into the night until he lay sodden. Realizing him to be a person of quality—such a man as might bring down the law upon a house that let him come to harm—the tavern keeper 
allowed him to remain, slumped over a table well into the next day, when he lifted his aching head with a groan and demanded more wine.

Fortified by that drink, he lurched out of the place and made his way blindly to the waterfront.

There the brisk salt air, the cries of the
varinas
selling fish, the whole normal scene, restored him to himself. His anger melted and he faced at last his true feelings toward Charlotte:

She had deceived him, she had abused his trust, he told himself, and yet . . . and yet . . .
And yet she was a fire in his blood he now knew would never be quenched.

Pale and haggard now, he turned about. Whatever she had done, he was going to forgive her. Not because she deserved forgiveness but because his desire for her consumed his mind when he was away from her.

He walked faster now, looking for a conveyance to take him back to the alley where he had left her. Finding none, he broke almost into a run. He would sweep her up, he would kiss away her tears, he would take her back to England, he would restore her to her children! Oh, God, anything was better than living without her! He had had enough of that, certainly.

But when he returned to the alley where he had left her among the piled-up boxes, Charlotte was not there. He checked the house on Nowhere Street, thinking she might have retreated to that safe haven, but the Bilbaos had not seen her. He combed the narrow alleys of the Alfama, but turned up no trace of her.