Lisbon (61 page)

And Cassandra, sobbing in his arms, let herself be comforted and finally fell asleep, exhausted, like a child.

The next morning he brought her home to Aldershot Grange and his cold expression dared any of the servants there to so much as blink an eye.

“I will see you tonight, Cassandra.” He bent down to kiss her hand, and when he lifted his head the look he gave her was so caressing that she was shaken by it.

Oh, Drew,
she thought in panic.
Don t fall in love with me. I can't let you. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.
There was an odd little ache in her heart and her 
throat was dry as she whispered, “Not tonight, Drew, it's too soon. Tomorrow . .

“Tomorrow, then.” His warm smile flashed and she watched him stride away and mount the Bishop.

He is riding out of my life
, she thought, desolate.
Only he doesn't know it
. . .
not yet.
A veil of tears obscured her vision.

She turned blindly to seek out Wend.

“Wend,” she asked in a brooding voice, “I want you to tell me the truth. What happened to my mother? How did she really die?”

Now that Rowan Keynes was dead, Wend was not afraid to answer that question.

“She didn’t,” Wend said slowly. “At least, I don’t think she did. I know there was a hearse and a coffin, but
I 
never thought she was dead.”

“But I ... I heard her scream that night, Wend. On the stairs.
You
told me it was just a nightmare.”

“And so it may have been.” Wend nodded. “But days before that, I saw her ride away in a coach. With
him
.” “With . . . who did she ride away with Wend?”

“With Tom Westing.”

Cassandra drew in her breath sharply.

As if expecting Cassandra to attack that statement, Wend said defensively, “She loved Tom before she even knew Rowan Keynes. He was the man she’d have married if she could. I know Tom was
supposed
to be dead, but the morning Rowan Keynes said he was leaving for Evora, she walked down into the town. She came back riding in a coach and she says to me, ‘Wend, I’ve met some old friends, the Milroyds, and they’ve asked me to stay with them for a while.’ And she packed a bag. And when I looked out the window, I could see Tom Westing in the coach that took her away. I’d know him anywhere. I couldn’t be mistaken. And when that coach clattered away, I knew Rowan Keynes had lost her. She’d run away with Tom Westing, that’s what. Oh, I know there was a funeral procession and all that, but that was because he was too proud to admit his wife had run away with another man and wasn’t coming back!”

“Couldn’t you have been mistaken? Perhaps it wasn’t Tom Westing.’’ Cassandra’s voice was strained.

Wend shook her head vigorously. “I knew I’d made no mistake when we came back from Portugal and Livesay told me Tom Westing wasn’t dead, as we’d all thought, that he’d come to Aldershot Grange right after we left, asking to see Mistress Charlotte, and when Livesay told him she’d gone to Lisbon, Tom was off like a shot. ”

“Why didn’t Livesay tell me Tom Westing had come back?” Cassandra was bewildered.

Wend hesitated. Livesay had undoubtedly looked at Cassandra’s almost-white-blonde hair and vivid green eyes—so exactly Tom’s coloring—and been afraid that she’d worm out of him what both he and Wend had already guessed, that Cassandra was Tom’s daughter. But what good to tell her that now? “Livesay was probably afraid for his job,” she muttered. “Afraid you’d say something to Rowan Keynes.”

“So you think she’s still alive?” said Cassandra slowly.

Wend nodded her head vigorously. “I think she’s over there somewhere—with him.”

It was a marvelously romantic tale and it explained a lot. But somehow Cassandra couldn’t quite credit it.

She puzzled over it, but as the day wore on, something more pressing occupied her thoughts.

Drew Marsden had said he would be back tomorrow— and she knew he would keep that promise. Her face grew wistful, thinking of him, wanting him even though she tried to force her thoughts away.

Wend had asked her if she would go back to London now. Perhaps that was the answer, perhaps she
should
go back to London now, today, make a clean break with everything she so ardently desired.

For if she stayed here, she knew that before tomorrow night’s moon had waned she would be in Drew’s arms, she would forget her fears and know only her dreams. . . . She would be too deeply involved ever to draw back.

She would bring him to disaster!

Her blonde head dropped in defeat and she pressed her 
hands against her cheeks, her burning eyes, trying desperately to think.

Wait! There
was
a way, an honorable way, to leave him, to give him time. Time to forget her. . . 

She betook herself downstairs.

“Wend,” she said decisively, “come upstairs, we must pack. Tm going to Portugal.”

Wend opened her mouth to protest.

“And before you say what you’re about to,” Cassandra added dryly, quenching the expected outburst from Wend that it was unseemly for a lady to travel alone, “"I'll be taking you with me.”

She would go to Lisbon. She would find out for herself what had happened to her wayward young mother.

And so the girl whose beauty had caused the London
Gazette
to dub her “the Fair Maid of Cumberland, ” twenty-two and still a virgin, sailed for Portugal and the city that had been her mother’s downfall.

A brisk wind was blowing up the Tagus, billowing the sails of the merchantman
Pride of Glasgow,
which had carried Cassandra from Carlisle down the Irish Sea, over the great undersea West European Basin, and at last into the mouth of the Tagus. She stood with Wend among the excited chattering passengers on deck, eager to disembark, and her heart quickened at the sight before her.

From here Lisbon was a white city sprawled in a great valley between two hills—crowned on the one side by the mighty fortress of the Castelo de São Jorge and on the other by the Bairro Alto. Other hills rose all about.

Tense now with the thought of what she might find here, Cassandra paid scant heed to the darting lateen-sailed
fragatas,
the tall ships of many countries anchored at the great port. The clamor of the busy waterfront passed by her almost in a dream as she and Wend took a carriage to the Ilho Verde, the Green Island, an inn which one of her fellow passengers had recommended as being both good and reasonable—and one where the landlord spoke English.

All during the voyage she had been nagged by thoughts of Drew Marsden and what
he
must have thought when he found her gone. Had he gone home soberly to stare into the fire and yearn for her? Or had he merely shrugged and turned away? Or ridden off to Carlisle and found himself 
another girl? That last thought caused her such pain that she was tempted to turn around and take the first ship home, but she held herself in check. And after she got Wend settled at the inn—for Wend had not stood the voyage well, she had come down with some stomach ailment just before they docked, and Cassandra had decreed for her several days of rest in bed—she inquired of the landlord the way to the Portas del Sol, and set out on foot. That was the way to get her mind off Drew Marsden— begin her search!

It was harder to find than she had thought, but she kept bearing upward as the landlord had instructed, making her way through what seemed a dizzying maze of twisting streets and alleys until at last, after she had almost given up, she blundered onto the house her family had so briefly occupied.

It seemed to be closed up and vacant, its windows shuttered.

A pair of interested—and exceedingly cold—eyes had been observing Cassandra’s progress almost since her arrival in Lisbon. Their lounging owner had followed her at a discreet distance as she made her determined way to the Portas del Sol and stared up thoughtfully for such a long time at the big flat-fronted mansion, as if somehow its smooth painted face would give her some clue to what she wanted so desperately to learn. He had watched Cassandra bang the heavy iron door knocker and wait, bang again, and eventually give up and turn away.

He had wondered about it, for the house had obviously been vacant for a long time.

Cassandra had been preoccupied and frowning as she made her way back through the labyrinthine ways of the Alfama—getting lost twice and finding her way, bewildered, past slumbering dogs and cats that leapt down from garden walls, past laden donkeys and barefoot
varinas
calling out their wares, and raucous playing children. She wound her way through streets so narrow it seemed to her the walls on either side almost touched, like Holy Spirit Alley. The man who followed her—and he was a remarkably handsome fellow, a tawny figure hardly inconspicuous in apri
cot silks with a short dress sword chased in silver hanging by his side—made no move to assist her. Instead he paused and lounged in the shadows of various doorways and let her blink into the sunlight, peering past the laundry strung overhead between the buildings, trying to figure out where her directions had gone wrong.

He was assessing her.

He continued to follow her as she made inquiries— difficult since she spoke no Portuguese—of a hackney driver in the main square. He was close enough to hear what she said, and her inquiry astonished him—the lady was off to view a
cemetery
? His own hired carriage ambled along behind at some distance as she searched through several, looking for the one where her mother lay buried, for Wend might have gotten her facts straight enough but not been in possession of all of them. Suppose her mother really had died? She might have run away and suffered an accident, Rowan Keynes might have had nothing to do with it. Or, as Wend believed, Rowan might have ordered a funeral procession to save face, might even have buried an empty coffin. But if he had raised a stone to her, then assuredly her mother was dead, for Cassandra could not believe her father would go
that
far.

She had begun to hope that she would search all of Lisbon’s cemeteries and never find it when she was attracted by a grave that seemed backward to the others in its row, with a footstone taller than its headstone. The Watcher gazed upon her from afar, pretending to visit another grave as he did so, and one fine hand, which sported a heavy gold ring set with a ruby, stroked his strong jawline thoughtfully as he saw her bend down to read the inscription. He saw her tense suddenly, then sink to her knees beside the grave and bury her face in her hands, for Cassandra had just read those touching words:

‘Here lies Charlotte, beloved of Thomas,
ate o fim do mundo.”

Wend had been wrong then. . . . Charlotte was dead, she had not run away after all. But her Thomas had found her and raised this stone. Cassandra felt hot tears sting her eyes at the thought that these long-lost lovers could not 
have found each other again. She knelt there for long moments wishing she could bring her mother back again. . . .

After Cassandra rose and moved away, the Watcher sauntered over, curious, and read that inscription himself. Making nothing of it, he climbed back into his carriage and followed her again, this time back to her green-painted inn, the Uha Verde—the Green Island.

There he sank back into the crowd, and his hard crystal eyes narrowed when he saw the effect this lady was having on a dark-haired gentleman, just then descending the stairs, who stopped dead at sight of her, peered forward thunderstruck, then turned and bolted back the way he had come.

The lady, thought the Watcher, had proved extremely interesting. He pulled out his handsome gold pocket watch and frowned. Best not be late for his appointment—the prince would not like it. He could resume his surveillance of the English beauty tomorrow.

He moved with the ease and assurance of his kind through the crowd at the Green Island and stood outside, frowning impatiently. A few moments later an ornate vehicle pulled by matched white horses rolled up. New arrivals at the Green Island craned their necks to see who was leaving in a royal coach.

They would have been astonished to learn that the tall gentleman who climbed into the coach with such an air had no visible means of support and no royal blood whatsoever—unless one could count a bit of it that came down through the dalliance of that long-gone and illegitimate wielder of power in England, John of Gaunt. This young man was a swashbuckling adventurer who had been ousted—for gaming with marked cards or the wrong dice, for challenging to duels those who must go unscathed, for sleeping with ladies already committed to men of wealth and power—from half the capitals of Europe. Sent down from Oxford, cashiered from the army, cast out by his family and warned not to return to London, he had traveled under many names. The most recent—and the one he used here—was Leeds Birmingham. Neither name was his own. He had chosen them, with wry humor, from 
among the names of the many towns he had left on a fast horse with hot pursuit following after.