Lisbon (2 page)

“I do not know whether to laugh or cry!” Charlotte exploded in exasperation. “Apparently Rowan got me up only to insult me!”

“He does act strange, sure enough,” agreed Wend with an apprehensive look back over her shoulder as she pulled her mistress inside and shut the front door firmly behind her. And when Charlotte made no comment, “I mean, worse that usual.” She sighed.

In the darkness, Charlotte was biting her lips, her mind swirling with rebellious thoughts.

“Wend, I will not be ruled by him any longer!” she burst out. “He left me alone for months on end, and then suddenly appeared, and the moment he arrived, told me lo pack, that we were off to Portugal!”

“1 well remember.” Wend's rueful voice carried the memory of how, having packed with dizzying speed and leaving behind half the things they would need, they had departed at once for the coast and embarked on the first ship bound for Lisbon.

This was not Charlotte s first visit to Portugal. But it had been a long time since the dark domineering man she had married had deigned to take her with him anywhere. And of late he had left her alone to endure the rigors of winter in the north of England.

“I do not understand why Rowan brought me along at all,” she wailed. “We have been here almost a fortnight, and yesterday was the first time he has let me out of the house!”

Wend gave a commiserating nod that set her cap askew on the other side. She was of the firm opinion that the master was entirely mad. Kind, considerate Mistress Charlotte didn’t deserve such a husband! Wend had always been fiercely loyal to her young mistress.

“And yesterday at dinner!” Charlotte’s voice trailed off. She supposed she should not be discussing her husband with Wend, even though she and Wend were so close. But what had happened at dinner had alarmed her.

When they had first arrived in Lisbon, Rowan had found them accommodations at an inn on the outskirts. Charlotte had been impatient to go down into the town, but Rowan had been adamant and she had not wanted to cross him. And after all, suppose she
did
go into the town alone and someone insulted her? Like as not, Rowan would seek the fellow out and run him through—and if he did, the authorities might remember the last time Rowan Keynes and his young bride had visited Lisbon and what had happened then. . . . No, she could not chance it.

But a week later, when Rowan had moved her to this handsome house in the Portas del Sol, Charlotte had walked through the large high-ceilinged rooms with a springy step. And today, when he had taken her out in style in a hired coach, visiting her favorite places, buying her things, making a point of being charming, she had cherished hopes that Lisbon had worked its magic and things could be all right between them again.

But then in the main square Rowan had run across a friend from London—one of his gaming-hell friends, Charlotte suspected, for she had never met him. At first Rowan had displayed his usual unwarranted jealousy of anyone who noticed her, giving his friend surly looks. Only when Charlotte had shown a distaste for the man had Rowan relaxed. And then at dinner she had said something to displease him and Rowan had jumped up and announced that he was taking her home—like a bad child in disgrace.

They did not speak all the way to the Portas del Sol.

Still smoldering when they reached her bedchamber, Charlotte told Rowan curtly that she had a headache. At which point he whirled her about to face him.

“I still do not have my apology, Charlotte,” he said sternly.

‘Nor will you get one!” she flashed. “For none is due!”

For a moment she thought he was going to strike her, but he did not. He stood there hunched over, glowering at her. Then, with a suddenness that astonished her, he seized her and fell with her to the bed, and while she struggled, he ripped every shred of clothing from her body.

Panting and naked, she lay beneath him, surrounded by the ruins of her pale gold gown and the torn lace and cambric of her undergarments.

“Rowan—” she protested, but his mouth crushed down on hers in a suffocating kiss that made speech impossible. She felt his long body move and shift above her own, felt his strong masculinity penetrate her like a spear—and wanted to weep.

This is not the way it should be between a man and 
woman,
she thought, confused,
this violent lovemaking without tenderness.
As if in contempt, his body seemed to rasp against her own, making her cringe inwardly even as against her will the inexorable thrusting of his strong masculinity roused her to passions deep within. Torn by conflicting emotions, she felt her pliant femininity respond with a shudder to his tumultuous assault. This was lust, she told herself dully, and knew shame at her body’s betrayal even as her senses were lifted and swirled and plunged down into a mindless sea of shivering guilty pleasure. Guilty because she felt shattered by his harsh taking.

Never call it love,
she thought bitterly, trying to choke back the moans that rose unbidden in her throat.
For there is no love between us. Only this animal passion that seems to flare up and devour us in its hot flame.

And then the climax of her own passions overcame her, sending her hurtling over the brink, over the edge of the world, until she fell back exhausted, drained.

Her cheeks were wet with tears when at last Rowan withdrew from her, rising on his arms and staring down into her sad face, cheeks glistening with tears in the candlelight.

“Charlotte, Charlotte, why do you bait me so?” he demanded huskily. “Can you not see that it brings out the devil in me?”

“I do not bait you,” she choked. “You take me as if you hate me!”

“No, never that.” His dark head came down and he nuzzled with his lips the cleft between her breasts, let his mouth trail over their roundness, tested with his teeth the rosy nipples, felt them tremble.
“I
could never hate you, Charlotte.”

Oh, but you do,
she thought, although in her exhaustion she was now too wise to say it.
You hate me for something that happened long ago and that neither of us can ever change. You love me and yet you hate me too, and that hatred washes over you in waves when 1 least expect it. .. .

And yet last night he had been a tender lover, wooing her with his body as if it were a song of love.

Hurt and confused, she turned her head away from him. “I am very tired, Rowan. ” She moved restively as his lips now found her stomach, moved across it.
1 am tired of your incomprehensible moods, your sudden angers. If it is going to be like this between us, I wish you had left me in England.
She did not say any of this, of course—it would only bring on another explosion and recriminations and then perhaps her bruised body must endure another bout of frenzied lovemaking. “Very tired,” she murmured. “I want only to be allowed to go to sleep. ”

He straightened up at her tone, all too aware that he had been rebuffed.

“You are a coldhearted wench,” he said bitterly, flinging away from her.

She heard him cross the room, banging the door to her bedchamber shut behind him. She waited tensely but he did not return. She relaxed as she heard from below a crash as the front door slammed behind him.

Her husband, having had what he wanted from her, had gone out to enjoy the night life of Lisbon without her, Charlotte thought bitterly. She tossed and turned and at last fell into a heavy exhausted sleep—from which Rowan had shaken her awake and told her to dress, that they would be off to Evora within the hour.

Now beside her she felt Wend's slight shiver. “I wish we hadn’t come with him to this foreign place,” Wend muttered. “I wish we had stayed back home at Aldershot Grange.”

“Oh, but how could we stay, Wend? What excuse could I possibly have given, when Rowan came north specifically to take me to Portugal?”

“He didn’t come north to do that,” Wend objected doggedly. “He met Livesay on the road when he was riding in and told him that he planned to stay at Aldershot Grange a month and then go back to London.”

Charlotte’s breath caught. “Did Livesay tell you this, Wend?” Livesay was the butler at Aldershot Grange.

“Yes. I thought he told you too.”

“No, he didn’t.” Charlotte’s mind was racing. What had happened to make Rowan suddenly change his mind?

Abruptly she remembered something that had not seemed odd at all at the time. She had been looking out the window and had seen Rowan riding toward the house in the distance. And then, just as she was about to turn away, intending to change from the housedress she was wearing into something more fashionable in which to greet the husband she had not seen for all of six months, she had seen another man riding hard over the brow of the hill on a lathered horse—she could see the foam even at that distance. She had recognized the rider as old Conway from Carlisle, a man who occasionally transacted business for Rowan. The two of them had talked for some time and then Rowan had spurred his mount toward the house and almost collided with his wife in the doorway, ordering her brusquely to pack for Portugal. And looking at her with inexpressible anger.

What had happened between the time he had spoken to Livesay and the time he had burst into the hallway of Aldershot Grange without even a greeting, demanding that she pack at once?Could old Conway on his lathered 
horse have been racing to tell Rowan something? And if so, what?

What had happened to make him suddenly decide to take her abroad?
All at once it seemed to Charlotte of major importance that she find out. There had been something so threatening in Rowan’s manner toward her at dinner tonight. And at times this week—alternating with periods of, for him, unusual tenderness—he had glowered at her for no reason at all and she had had the eerie feeling that he was about to burst out with some unwarranted accusation. . . .
What could it be?

What did she really mean to Rowan?
she asked herself, troubled. Sometimes, when he was on good behavior, she had even been persuaded that he loved her. Or had he married her only for her lissome body that had caught his fancy, her face that caused men to catch their breath and turn and watch her wherever she went? Rowan collected beautiful things . . . and sometimes, in those uncontrollable rages of his, he smashed them beyond repair.

Her husband was a formidable and ofttimes frightening man.

She turned now to Wend and sighed. “I’ll never be able to go back to sleep now, and I don’t feel hungry. ” This to ward off Wend, who, having been brought up on near starvation, thought food was the answer to everything. “I think I’ll walk down to the fish market. It should be crowded at this hour.”

“What, walk alone?” Wend was scandalized. “You’ll be set upon by cutpurses!”

“No, I won’t. Dawn is breaking now, the city is waking up. And perhaps I’ll find a chair and have myself carried down to the waterfront.”

Wend looked alarmed. “Wait till I dress! I’ll come with you. ”

“No need. Go back to bed, Wend. You need sleep too.”

She left Wend frowning over the guttering candle she had brought downstairs with her and went out again, clutching a light embroidered shawl around her slim shoulders.

Outside she found Vasco, the servant with the torch, still leaning sleepily against the wall beside the front door. Although he spoke fair English, he chose not to understand, and she found she could not wave him away. Stubbornly he insisted on coming with her, lighting her way with the torch, and it occurred to her that perhaps Wend was right, there might be cutpurses abroad in the Lisbon night.

There was no chair to be found.

Coming down from the heights of the Portas del Sol with the high ramparts of the Castelo de São Jorge looming above her, there was a softness in the morning air that reminded Charlotte vividly of her childhood in the Scillies, those fortunate sunny isles off the southern coast of England some twenty-five miles from Land’s End. She was suddenly achingly homesick for her life there and for her mother, frail charming Cymbeline, who had seemed to move in grace and laughter through the open-windowed low granite house she had bought just outside Hugh Town 
on St. Mary’s Isle a year after her husband s accidental death.

Charlotte passed the twelfth-century Romanesque cathedral and realized that she was now traversing the steep twisting streets of the Alfama, where she had strolled with Rowan and Lord Claypool yesterday. And here again were those ever-present sounds of her childhood, the strident voices of the seabirds piercing the morning air, the winged whir of kittiwakes and gannets and cormorants and puffins and gulls swooping above her. Even the steep terrain brought back the memory of clambering over the rocks of the Scillies.

But that life was gone now, gone forever. It had been replaced long since by life with unpredictable Rowan, who rose from his bed by night to pace restlessly. She could hear him walking back and forth in the next room.

Why
? she asked herself bluntly. It was a question she would never dare to ask Rowan. They were married but they had never really been close. It was like a truce between them, this marriage. It always had been. With Rowan watching her with keen burning eyes across the breakfast table as if to penetrate into her mind and discover if she had been unfaithful to him in her dreams.