Lisbon (21 page)

It was simply put, and the sincerity of it reached her. For a long time she stared at him, her tearstained face 
pale. Then, “I cannot let them do you harm because of me,” she said in an altered voice.

“So you will marry me?” His tone was rich.

She did not answer. Heartbeats throbbed by—so many of them that he began to feel a deep unease. Could Russ have been right? Was the wench so stubborn that she would marry no one, but believe herself tied to a dead man forever?

“I know it is asking a great deal,” he said tentatively. “But—”

As if ashamed of her hesitation to aid the man who had aided her at such peril, she cut in, her voice hurried, “I will ... go through the ceremony with you.” And then, lest he misinterpret her meaning, she added in a low voice, “But I cannot truly be your wife, that is asking too much.”

Myriad emotions passed over Rowan’s face for a moment, were quickly controlled. His jawline was set.

“I will accept whatever crumbs fall from your table,” was his sardonic answer. “And now, my lady, if you will lean against me and try to sleep, we’ll soon be in Scotland. ”

But Charlotte could not sleep. The memory of Tom, of all that she had lost, pressed in about her. She sat bolt upright, with the rising wind blowing her hair back against Rowan’s shoulder. Every time a strand of it blew against his face, it seemed to burn him like a brand, but he kept hold of himself and even managed not to tighten the slack though watchful grip he kept on his precious burden.

All the rest of the way to Gretna Green they never spoke. The wind was drying the tears on Charlotte’s pale cheeks even as she wept. Silent tears for all that might have been.

The wind kept rising; it moaned across the valley, rising in tempo until all the banshees of hell seemed to be wailing in the glen. Charlotte would never forget that wailing of the wind, nor the teardrops of rain that fell upon them in the gray of early morning as they rode into Gretna Green. She felt that even the heavens wept for Tom.

In Gretna Green the smithy had been fired and flames rose against the cherry-red glow of a horseshoe the heavy-
muscled smith was pounding into shape. He looked up at their approach, guessing these tired riders to be exactly what they appeared to be—runaway lovers.

Limp with fatigue, Charlotte felt herself lifted down from the horse and leaned against Rowan as the smith s beaming wife came out of the house wiping floury hands on a cotton apron. She was a big buxom woman and came to a halt before Charlotte, looking anxious at the sight of the girl’s set face and tragic eyes and torn clothing.

“Is the lass all right?” she asked, casting a worried look at Charlotte’s husband-to-be.

As usual, Rowan rose to the occasion.

“My lass’s guardian swore she would be wed to no man who is half-Scottish,” he told the smith and his wife in a surprising Scots brogue. “He caught us when we were leaving”—here indicating Charlotte’s torn dress, which she was holding together with both hands—“and did attack her. For which I laid him low,” he added darkly. “So I’ve brought my lass home to my mother’s land—my mother was a MacAldie from Edinburgh—and that’s where we re going, to her people. But my lass’s guardian will be pounding over the border in hot pursuit, so we hope you can get us wed, and speedily.”

“Oh, of course we will!” cried the smith’s wife, bristling with anger that a good Scot should be turned down by an English guardian. She almost applauded when Rowan added with a swagger, “Faith, if you’ve a pen and parchment, I’ll pen her guardian a note saying as much. If you’ll be good enough to hand it to him, for he’s sure to come by this way seeking her. ”

“Aye, that’s the way to do it,” she said with approval, and led them inside to a sturdy table, where Rowan dipped the sharpened goose quill she gave him into a dark concoction he hoped was ink and swiftly wrote his note of hand for Aldershot Grange—payable at the time he was delivered the deed on same. He sealed it with candle wax, pressed into it the imprint of his signet ring, and handed it to the smith’s wife, who laid it carefully away. “But what about the poor young lass’s clothes?” she asked anxiously.

Rowan’s gaze swept over Charlotte, who was leaning 
exhausted against the wall, holding her bodice together with one hand and her skirt together with the other.

"I've no time to shop for any, but if you have a spare dress and a cloak, "I'll pay well."

"I've naught will fit her," sighed the smith’s wife.

Feeling light-headed, Charlotte listened without interest to this exchange. The goose quill scratching over the parchment had not interested her, nor did this. What did it matter what insults Rowan penned to Uncle Russ? Her life was over—what did it matter what she wore?

But she submitted to the ministrations of the smith’s kindly wife, who took a couple of quick stitches in the bodice and pinned up Charlotte’s skirt and chemise to her bodice as best she could, partly covering her handiwork with a clean homespun apron dyed with hazel.

Charlotte looked strangely attired in her torn finery and homespun as she walked out into the darkening weather to take her vows. With eyes cast down, staring dully at the damp trodden grass around the smithy, she took her place beside Rowan, standing before the anvil-as-altar, and listened to the words being sonorously read. To her credit, she went through the ceremony dry-eyed—except once, when she was momentarily overwhelmed by the realization that she was in Scotland at last, Scotland, where Tom had promised to take her, where she was being married just as they’d planned, except that the wrong man stood beside her taking his vows. Tom was dead, his battered body borne upon the crashing white waters of the cascade far away. Her violet eyes filled with tears that spilled over, but she managed to keep her voice almost steady as she murmured low that she would take this man to be her wedded husband.

“My lass was fond of her guardian, " Rowan muttered to the smith’s wife by way of explaining Charlotte’s tears.

And at that moment the heavens opened and the rain that had been threatening all day began to beat down in earnest. Rowan seized Charlotte’s hand, waved to the smith and his wife and helper who had been their witnesses, and hurried Charlotte to the horse.

In a steady downpour they made their way to Dumfries, 
and on that ride she said, “I did not know your mother was a Scot."

“Nor was she," was his cheerful reply. “But announcing that she was a Scot served me well."

It was the first suggestion she had that Rowan really was a consummate liar.

“Then we are not going to Edinburgh?" she asked tentatively, pushing her soaked hair back from her face.

He laughed. “No, we’re for Portugal," he said carelessly.

Startled, with rivulets of rain pouring down her smooth cheeks, Charlotte swung round to face him.
“Portugal?” 
she exclaimed incredulously.

There was exultation in the look he gave her, for had not everything worked out exactly as he had planned? “Portugal," he affirmed. “Where none of them will ever find us."

Charlotte turned her wet head away without comment. After that first surprised outburst, she seemed to have lost interest in the subject, he noted with regret. He would have been filled with alarm had he known the depths of her despondency, guessed what she was thinking:

Lost at sea ... a dark night . . . over the ships rail to oblivion. Oh, Tom, Tom, wherever you are, wait for me. . . .

The High Seas

Doing away with herself had proved less easy than Charlotte had assumed it would be.

In Dumfries Rowan had arranged passage on a ship that plied up and down the coast.

He had arranged for something else too:

In Dumfries Rowan had managed somewhere to find a dress for Charlotte. He left her waiting for him in “Sweetheart Abbey,” and when he came back, walking purposefully, with his arrangements for passage already made, he had the dress bundled up under one arm.

“ Tis the best I could find on short notice,” he told her. “Here, we ll find an alcove for you to put this on. You cannot go about in torn clothes concealed by an apron!” He frowned at her present garments.

Charlotte was too tired and despondent to care what people thought. But she was submissive enough to let Rowan find her an alcove and stand guard while she removed her bedraggled gown and donned the simple green and yellow calico trimmed modestly in bands of moss-green grosgrain riband that he had found for her. It did not fit very well. The girl for whom it had been made was much shorter and far plumper, so the dress rode up un-fashionably high on Charlotte’s trim ankles and hung depressingly loose in the bodice.

Rowan winced at sight of her when she came out of the alcove and turned about listlessly for his inspection.

“Well, there’s no time to do anything about alterations now, for we must hurry aboard,” he muttered, sounding harassed. “We were lucky as the devil to find a ship that was just leaving.” He frowned down at her. “We'll see what can be done about the fit aboard ship. At least we’ll rid you of this!” He snatched the torn white gown from Charlotte’s fingers and tossed it atop the apron into a corner.

Charlotte, uncaring about her appearance, turned to take one last wistful look at the little heap of white voile lying there forlorn. She swallowed. That dress had been to her a wedding gown.

She closed her eyes and let Rowan take her arm and lead her away to the ship.

Out of the Nith River they sailed, into the Solway Firth—and terrible weather. The light coastal vessel they were on had bobbed like a cork on the churning seas and made almost everyone on board seasick. The few accommodations the ship afforded had all been taken up by a single family removing from Dumfries to Liverpool with all their goods, and Charlotte had found herself sandwiched into a tiny cabin with three of the daughters— every one of them at least as sick from the ocean’s buffeting as herself. When they reached Liverpool she was pale and tottered ashore only to discover with a groan that Rowan, who was never seasick and who had spent most of the voyage on deck enjoying the gale, had once again had “rare luck”—a ship bound for Lisbon was leaving on the evening tide.

And so an exhausted Charlotte found herself almost no sooner landed than bundled on board another vessel, this one a fat wallowing merchantman called the
Ellen K
.—and this time with a cabin of her own. Rowan had managed 
that
by explaining to the captain how seasick his young wife became and by conveniently having the money on hand to pay for the extra accommodation.

Charlotte was looking wan as they went aboard.

“How did you happen to have passage money with you for such a long journey?” she wondered as they went aboard.

Rowan gave his bride a sardonic look.

“I am usually prepared,” he told her in an amused voice.

She was to learn that Rowan always carried gold with him, sometimes quite a lot of it, and that he
did
seem always prepared for anything. At the time, dull and exhausted and brokenhearted over Tom, she did not really think it so strange.

They stood on deck as the ship drove out of the Mersey into the Irish Sea, sped onward by a brisk wind that billowed her sails. Charlotte would have liked to go immediately to her cabin but she did not protest Rowan’s desire to be out in the fresh open air after the long gale they had endured on the way here. She no longer felt ill, merely weak and tired.

“Dinner will give you strength.” Rowan assessed her condition with a smile. “It will be served as soon as we stand well out to sea, and we are to be the guests of the captain in his cabin.”

“Oh, no, I don’t think I—”

“It would be very rude of us not to accept his hospitality,” Rowan said firmly. “After all, he went to considerable trouble moving people about in our behalf so that you might have a cabin to yourself. ”

Charlotte nodded wanly. She would dine with the captain.

Captain Scaleby proved to be a bluff, good-natured Cornishman, full of entertaining stories about the sea. He was delighted to learn that Charlotte was from the Scilly Isles and told her warmly that he was glad to have a pretty woman on board for the voyage.

Sitting in the captain’s roomy though unpretentious cabin, listening to Rowan conversing easily with Captain Scaleby for all the world as if he might have been an old “sea dog” himself, Charlotte felt her strength coming back to her. She found herself savoring the excellent dinner, complete with fresh fruit and vegetables, which their host assured them had been “newly brought on board this very day.”

It was still early when they rose to leave, and Captain Scaleby, having drunk one last toast to the “beautiful bride,” came up with a sudden bit of information that brought Rowan to attention.

“There’s a gentleman named Flint on board,” he volunteered, “who’s just back from Portugal. He could tell you how matters stand there.”

“Thank you. I’ll have a talk with him tomorrow. ”

“Best do it tonight. We re letting him off at Anglesey tomorrow. He won’t be accompanying us on the voyage. But you’ll be able to find him dining with the rest.” Rowan nodded. “I’ll do that.”

They thanked Captain Scaleby for a fine dinner and Rowan had already escorted Charlotte onto the deck when the captain called him back. Although their conversation was low-voiced, it was a quiet evening, the passengers had not yet left their supper to come out onto the deck in the dusk, and Charlotte could hear the captain’s nasal voice clearly.