Lisbon (40 page)

“Well, the children can stay here, but
I
would certainly prefer to spend my days shopping or sightseeing. ”

“Charlotte, spare me.” He held up his hand. “I will find us a house, and speedily. In the meantime, please remem
ber that Wend is a green girl in a foreign land where she does not speak the language. You must stay with her, of course. Suppose one of the children is hurt or gets sick? Wend would not know how to find a doctor. ”

“You are right, of course,” Charlotte murmured, biting her lip. But she looked out the window longingly as she watched Rowan ride away toward the city.

The children were delighted, playing among the eucalyptus trees, sending Wend scurrying after them as they broke into the open and raced toward one of the squat round-towered windmills that dotted the countryside.

On the third day of this rustic life in an inn where they seemed to be the only guests, Rowan reported that he was still looking for a house.

How she would enjoy helping him do that!

“Wend and the children are well-settled-in now,” she told him. “I could go with you, Rowan. Indeed I would like to.”

“No.” He was very firm on that.

Charlotte gave him a mutinous look. “I do not know why you brought me along at all,” she mumbled.

“Walpole s power is tottering,” he told her gloomily. “He has made a treaty with Spain to indemnify our English sailors who have been harassed on the high seas, but his opposition—Bolingbroke and the rest—mocks it. If war comes—and it may come sooner than we think—he may well be forced out of office. If he goes, I go with him, of course.”

“Go . . . where?” she asked, wondering if he was planning to follow Walpole into some other endeavor.

“To perdition, I suppose, for I will not work for Bolingbroke and his cohorts. ” A shadow of a smile crossed his face. “Not that they would have me, of course. ”

“So what will happen to us?”

“Nothing, I hope. I have some money put away, and this present mission should gain me more.”

Mission? That put a different light on things.

“But you never take me along on your missions!” She peered at him. “You were afraid to leave me in England,” she said in an altered voice.

He frowned. “If the wrong men came to power and I were away at the time . . . They
could
come north seeking me, and finding me not in Cumberland, they might take you away for questioning.” He spoke reluctantly.

Taken away for questioning!
Charlotte could almost hear chains clanking. “But . . . but I know nothing. Rowan,” she protested.

“They do not know that,” he said dryly. “And Lord Kentridge, who once tried to force his attention upon you, is one of them. Not to mention young Lord Stamford’s grandfather, a man of power. ”

“But I have never harmed either of them!” she cried, bewildered. “It was not my fault that foolish boy fell in love with me!”

“We know that, but that ‘foolish boy’s’ widowed mother chooses not to believe it. She tells everyone who will listen that you led her son astray. Being a woman, I cannot call her out—and young Stamford has been banished to Oxford, so he can’t refute it.”

“Are you saying”—Charlotte moistened her lips—“that we cannot return home, Rowan?”

“No,” he said equably. “I am saying that I did not wish to leave you in England alone.” She looked so upset that he spoke more gently. “I have heard of a house in the Portas del Sol that may be to let. Tomorrow I intend to look into it.”

Four days later they moved in.

It was an impressive house, quite new—and the Portas del Sol was a fashionable district looking down upon the terraced labyrinth of the Alfama. Charlotte drew in her breath as they drove up before the flat-fronted stone mansion, and felt a little shiver of delight go through her as the massive oak door was swung open by a wiry dark fellow.

“This is Vasco,” Rowan fold her. “Our other footman is named João. You will meet him presently; he is bringing our luggage.”

Besides which there were a cook, a scullery maid, and two chambermaids. Rowan had indeed been busy, she thought—he had already hired a staff. Wend was upset 
that they spoke only Portuguese, but Charlotte knew enough Portuguese to give simple orders.

Relations between herself and Rowan had been strained these days, for on arrival in Lisbon he seemed to have turned into a different man. He had been ever the gentle lover aboard ship, but his lovemaking now often had a ferocity that frightened her. There seemed to be a caged tiger inside him, fighting to get out. Charlotte had tried to tell herself his nerves were jangled from worrying about matters back in England, about Walpole’s probable loss of power, about his mission—doubtless an important one— and it must be irritating to him to have to ride back and forth such long distances every day. Now, as she roamed through the airy high-ceilinged rooms, eager to see everything and pleased by what she saw, she was filled with hope. This was a beautiful house; the furnishings—for Rowan had taken it furnished—were handsome enough even for Rowan’s impeccable taste. From its spaciousness she gathered that he wanted to entertain—and she would do that too, graciously, happily, for the staff was more than adequate. If Rowan wanted, for his own purposes, to fill their house with the elite of Lisbon and perchance travelers from foreign lands, she was ready to do it with a flourish!

Bubbling over with enthusiasm, she turned to tell Rowan, “We should go out to dinner tonight and celebrate finding this wonderful house!”—and found him gone.

He did not return until after the dinner dishes were long cleared away. And he returned filled with some inner anger that lashed out at her through his body after they had gone to bed. His body crushed hers with a fever of desire—but it was a rough taking, bruising but swiftly over, and one from which Charlotte knew no fulfillment.

She lay in the dark, her body pulsing and unsatisfied, and her hopes, which had been so high, wavered within her.

Now that they had a house of their own, Charlotte had confidently expected to find herself driving out next day to see the sights of Lisbon, while Wend supervised the servants in setting things to rights.

Rowan, it seemed, had other plans for her. He insisted that the house needed her personal touch, and Charlotte, feeling it was his right to demand that, spent the next few days supervising her small staff in bringing the pleasant sunny rooms to the peak of perfection. Rowan remained unpredictable, going restlessly in and out—indeed, if the idea had not been so ridiculous, Charlotte would almost have been persuaded that he was checking up on her.

With the house at last in perfect order, they sat down to dinner across a gleaming board and Charlotte spoke eagerly of all the places she wanted to visit—then stopped, puzzled, for across from her Rowan’s brows had drawn into a straight line and he had fidgeted, eventually oversetting his wineglass.

“Time enough for all that when we are settled,” he muttered.

“Settled?”
Charlotte stared at him. “Rowan, I should think we were
settled
enough already. ”

“We will see,” he said restlessly, his gaze roaming the heavy-framed oil paintings that the owners had left behind, looking somehow stark against the soft chrome-yellow walls. “Meantime, Charlotte, I have ordered the drapers for tomorrow, and I am not sure what time they will arrive.”

“Drapers?”
Charlotte was amazed. “Rowan, these draperies are well enough. After all, we do not expect to live here for years and years. We are only
visiting
Lisbon!” “Nevertheless, the drapers are coming, and I expect you to be at home to receive them and to select something more attractive than this faded buff brocade. ” He shrugged toward the tall dining-room windows with an expression of contempt, and Charlotte was reminded sharply of Rowan’s love of beauty, of fine things, of perfection.

She sighed. “Very well, Rowan, I will do as you ask.” But the drapers had not come. Rowan had suggested indifferently that they would come the following day, and then the day after that he said that he had forgotten to tell her that he had told the tardy drapers not to come at all, that he had sent for other drapers. Those did not come 
either. And after that it was the erection of new shutters for her bedchamber—these present ones were a disgrace, and Charlotte must see to them, for it was well known that workmen never did anything right without supervision. Every day some new excuse to keep her there.

Finally, she had exploded.

“I am tired of sitting in this house looking out at the world,” she had told him despairingly. “Indeed I do not care if the drapers never come or if we have new shutters or old. If you will not take me, I am going out alone. Now!”

In a surprisingly pliant mood, Rowan had quickly agreed. And together, in a hired coach—Rowan was ever extravagant —they toured the city, revisiting the parts she liked best, clip-clopping past palaces trimmed with gold leaf and magnificent homes that owed their existence to the spice trade and the great caravelles manned by Portuguese sailors who had made the long treacherous voyage to India. Past buildings washed in pale colors, muted pastel shades of pink and apricot and gold, they rode, past overhanging ironwork balconies filled with flowers, past stone fountains where fishwives scrubbed the fish baskets they carried about on their heads.

At her insistence Rowan took her to view the wide lagoon the natives called the Mar de Palha, or Sea of Straw, that lay northeast of the city. Sparkling blue in the sun, it was alive with the beautiful lateen-sailed barges know as
fragatas.

And when finally at a street corner Charlotte, enchanted anew by Lisbon’s beauty, threw open the door of the coach and leapt down to the cobbles, she was reminded poignantly of the good times in the early days of their marriage, when he had seemed a different man, lighthearted, almost boyish, in love.

“I want to see it all again!” she cried, with a rapturous gesture that encompassed even the hills above the city. “Oh, Rowan, I had forgotten how much I liked it here!”

Rowan’s smile deepened at her delight. He dismissed the coach and together they strolled through arcaded streets and squares where fountains tinkled in the warm sunlight.

From one of the many jewelers along the Rua do Ouro, or Street of Gold, he bought her a ring set with an alexandrite “to match your violet eyes.” Laughing, he bought her a pair of strange-shaped silver goblets, “lovers’ goblets” the silversmith called them, from one of the shops displaying plate along the Rua da Prata, or Street of Silver. And on the Rua dos Douradores, or Gilders’ Street, she admired a pair of fine gold-leaf frames, which Rowan promptly ordered sent to the house to replace the heavy ones in the dining room that so displeased him.

And then, in the main square, at the stall of an elderly black-garbed flower vendor, he had just heaped into her arms a fragrant bunch of white and yellow roses to match the pale Chinese gold silk of her gown, with its frosting of heavy white point lace, when they heard a hail from across the square and a voice called, “Ho, there, Rowan!”

Charlotte, whose face had been pressed ecstatically into the fragrant rose petals, looked up to see a florid, heavyset man in bottle-green satins and a ginger wig bearing down on them. He clapped Rowan on the shoulder and wrung his hand. Charlotte smiled at him over her flowers and made a light curtsy when Rowan introduced his old friend Lord Claypool, whom he called Ned.

“What, you’ve been in Lisbon a fortnight and not let me know?” Claypool demanded in a jocular tone.

“I did not know you were here, Ned,” protested Rowan. “I assumed you to be still in Sussex.”

“We have been so busy getting settled,” Charlotte supplied in defense of her husband. “But now we have quite settled in and are ready to entertain.”

Lord Claypool’s gaze rested on her with approval. He promptly affixed himself to Charlotte’s other side and insisted on accompanying them on their stroll. He’d show her the sights!

When Charlotte said demurely that she had been here before on her wedding journey, Lord Claypool gouged Rowan in the ribs and winked. “Then she’ll have seen naught but the bedchamber ceiling of her inn, eh, Rowan? Now you shall see Lisbon, my lady!” He waved energeti
cally at the Tagus River flowing by on Lisbon’s southern shore. Had Rowan told her that the great Spanish Armada had sailed out of the mouth of the Tagus River to attack England 150 years ago, only to be defeated by Drake and Queen Elizabeth’s other “sea dogs”? No? How remiss of Rowan!

Lord Claypool guided them into the narrow twisting streets of the Alfama, alive with children and stray dogs, the overhanging balconies above hung with laundry, and some of those streets so narrow and steep that they were more like winding staircases than streets.

And then into more fashionable districts, where Charlotte admired the black-and-white mosaic patterns of the pavements, and, on the house fronts everywhere, on the public fountains, the elaborate hand-painted glazed blue-and-white tiles called
azulejos,
for which Lisbon was famous.

Lord Claypool walked them about everywhere, talking volubly the while. And nothing would do but they must dine with him at his inn, which served marvelous food—oh, they would find nothing like it in the city, did Rowan not remember? Protesting, Rowan agreed, and Charlotte ate her first meal out since she had come to Lisbon.