Lisbon

by Valerie Sherwood

  Rowan favored his former love with a mocking bow, which was not returned. "It would seem we have the same taste, Katherine,'' he gibed. "Up early with the pots!''

  Katherine's lips quivered but she chose not to answer.

  "Come, Eustace, we are leaving!'' Katherine turned about so quickly that her elbow caught one of the big earthenware jars and in its fall it knocked off two slender pottery water pitchers that joined it in crashing to the floor. "Oh!” she cried in a fury, and kicked at the fallen sharp-edged debris that now surrounded her thin-soled slippers.

  "You really should be more careful, Kate,” drawled Rowan. "And hold in check that temper of yours. Eustace will have to pay for those pots, you know. ”

  Katherine whirled, and for a moment Charlotte thought she was going to snatch a piece of pottery and throw it at him. But when Eustace, who had watched sullenly, took a determined step in their direction, she clutched his arm and began to talk to him very fast in a low voice. Charlotte had the feeling Katherine was desperately trying to hold her husband back.

  On that note Charlotte and Rowan departed, just as the shopkeeper came bustling up to the infuriated Talybonts to collect for the broken pots.

  “You did not wish to buy anything?” Charlotte cocked her head at Rowan when they reached the street outside. “Indeed, you never intended to, did you?”

  “My interest in pottery was never very strong,” he admitted, “and now it is entirely exhausted. But”—he turned to give her a wicked look, for the incident had delighted him—“I have been told that Talybont s mother collects pottery and he must needs visit the shops to further her collection.”

  “I would be curious to learn how you know that. Charlotte stepped aside to allow two women carrying water jugs from the nearby fountain to go by. “I was under the impression that you did not know Eustace Talybont.”

  “Nor did I,” he admitted. “But it is common knowledge. ” Charlotte had to be content with that, although it sounded unlikely.

  They were now some distance away, circling the fountain so that Charlotte could study the scenes of mythical characters depicted on the worn azulejos. Charlotte looked up and saw the Talybonts burst from the shop, obviously arguing. Katherine came to a halt and stamped her foot, and when her husband—much too far away for them to hear what he was saying—appeared to remonstrate with her, she struck him in the face with her fan, at which point a carriage drove up and received them and they rode away in high dudgeon.

  Rowan leaned against the fountain and laughed. Charlotte was not so certain it was funny. She would have preferred to forget the Talybonts and get on with their lives.

  “Would you like a bite of lunch?” Rowan asked, adding expansively, “I will take you to an inn where the cook specializes in shellfish—and surely Portugal has the best shellfish in all the world!”

  Charlotte said she would like that very much. Indeed, after this morning s encounter, she felt it would be good to go anywhere the Talybonts were not.

  Rowan took her to a small rose-painted inn festooned with iron-lace balconies. Its huge dining room faced the sea and was decorated with old glazed tiles in mermaid designs. As usual, Rowan did not ask her what she wanted—he always ordered for her, assuming that whatever he chose would be the right thing. They sipped vinho verde, that delicate fruity “green wine” for which Charlotte was acquiring a taste. The food was brought by a supple barefoot waitress wearing a full skirt held out by multiple petticoats with a hint of lace showing about her strong muscular legs. Her posture was superb and Rowan told Charlotte that the girl’s pale Celtic eyes and amber skin probably meant that she was from Nazare, to the north.

  Charlotte found herself eating santolas, which she readily recognized as stuffed crabs, although she could not identify the tiny shellfish Rowan called ameijoas. She took her first bite of the delicious steamed Portuguese crayfish known as lagosta suada and looked up to tell Rowan it was delicious—and there were the Talybonts, both of them looking rather fierce, as if they had just had a quarrel, coming through the door.

  “It would seem we have company,” remarked Rowan.

  “You knew they were coming here,” Charlotte accused.

  “An informed guess.” He chuckled. “Katherine is very fond of shellfish.”

  At that moment Katherine discovered them. She hesitated, glaring at Rowan. Then abruptly she turned on her heel, colliding with her husband, who staggered back a step and then turned to stare angrily in their direction. He leaned down as if admonishing his wife, who charged on past him, and he followed her helplessly out of the restaurant.

  “Too bad,” mused Rowan. “I had hoped they would stay long enough that Talybont could admire your beauty and compare your sweet smile and charming ways with Katherine’s arrogance and bad manners.”

  “Rowan,” said Charlotte bluntly, putting down her fork, “what it is you want of me?”

  He turned and his dark eyes were no longer playful. There were devilish lights in them.

  “I want you to make Eustace Talybont fall in love with you,” he said in a cold voice. “I want him to want you, and I want Katherine to see that he wants you and to be humiliated by it.”

  Charlotte recoiled. “But surely enough has already happened to—”

  “I want her to suffer,” he cut in silkily. “As she made me suffer.”

  Privately Charlotte doubted the possibility of a man who always seemed to be on his way elsewhere ever falling in love with her, but she did not voice it. Somehow the crayfish had lost a little of its flavor. . . .

  That afternoon they wandered the stores, looking at beautiful wool embroideries, the designs of which, Rowan told her, were based on rugs from the Orient, which reminded her once again that Lisbon was a trading city and that great Portuguese carracks had opened up the spice trade with the Far East. Happily, the Talybonts did not make an appearance, although Charlotte strongly suspected that this was to have been their destination, aborted because they had retired to their inn quarreling.

  Charlotte and Rowan arrived back at the Royal Cockerel fairly late, and Rowan told her she would have to hurry and dress if they were to secure a table.

  As they went upstairs, Charlotte saw a tall thin woman hovering at the head of the stairs. Why, it was the same woman who had crashed into Rowan with her boxes yesterday. Now she was running down the stairs past them at just the moment that several youngsters were running up. They charged against her skirts and she would have fallen but that Rowan reached out and caught her. She smiled up into his eyes, the smile momentarily lighting her harsh pointed features, and began to thank him in a veritable outburst of low-voiced French.

  Charlotte didn’t speak French, but it did seem to her that the woman was protesting overmuch. Her black eyes too had a soft gleam when she looked at Rowan—but then, women often looked at Rowan like that, even those who had never met him. Charlotte was becoming impatient.

  “Come, you said we must hurry,” she interrupted.

  Rowan shrugged and paused yet a moment longer, listening to another long flurry of words. Then he hurried alongside Charlotte up the stairs.

  They were late to dinner, but the Talybonts were later. Charlotte watched them make their appearance, a pale Katherine in vivid emerald-green silk sarcenet being almost dragged into the room by her irate young husband, very red in the face and looking petulant. They looked neither to right nor left but took the first table offered and kept their eyes on their plates as they ate.

  “Her hand is shaking with fury,” murmured Rowan. “I am surprised it will carry food to her mouth without spilling it.” He was lounging gracefully in his chair, drinking ruby-red port wine, as he said that, for he and Charlotte had already finished their dinner and were dawdling over their wine. “Too bad Talybont has his back to you,” he added regretfully.

  Charlotte was glad. She had been a little ashamed of her performance yesterday and she was again wearing the blue dress that made her young breasts appear miraculously to be in mot
ion even though she was sitting still. The slightest breath made those dangling beads sway and glitter.

  “Ah, well,” Rowan sighed. “We will have to provide our own entertainment, I suppose.”

  He beckoned to the pair of guitarists who were discreetly serenading the patrons with their music for what coins they could garner, and the musicians came quickly to their table. Rowan promptly gestured them to the other side.

  He is placing them so that they will make a backdrop for us in case the Talybonts should look this way, Charlotte thought resignedly. She took a quick sip of her malmsey wine, which was heavy and sweet.

  “What strange guitars,” she murmured, noting the shape of the instruments.

  Rowan gave them a casual glance. “Yes, they are Portuguese guitars. You have probably seen only the Spanish guitars, which have six strings. These have eight or”—he looked more closely—‘twelve by my count, and the shape is somewhat different.”

  Charlotte was surprised by the breadth of his knowledge— she always would be. Rowan seemed to have the knowledge of the world at his fingertips.

  She was about to ask him rather wistfully about his childhood and where he had gained all his lore, but he was speaking in Portuguese to the two guitarists, who looked pleased and struck up a lovely tune that stirred the senses.

  “It is a love song,” Rowan told her, reaching across the table to take her hand caressingly. “It is about a man who searches the world over until he finds the perfect woman. The song is very old and is usually sung by a woman, but I will do my best.”

  To Charlotte s surprise, he began to sing in a low voice that nevertheless penetrated to the farthest reaches of the room. He had a beautifully melodic voice, timbred, rich. Gradually conversation in the dining room ceased while the patrons turned about in their chairs to watch the singer. In the candlelight the scene made a charming tableau, Charlotte in her glittering blue gown with her golden hair bathed in lamplight, her breasts rising and falling with her breathing, causing her beaded bodice to sparkle, her lips softly parted, Rowan with his dark head bent eloquently toward her. They looked young and handsome and lost in love.

  Across the room where the Talybonts were sitting there was a sudden clatter, as if a glass might have been turned over and some cutlery dropped.

  When Rowan finished the song there were smiling nods of approval and light applause from the dinner guests. Somewhat flushed from all this attention, Charlotte looked about her.

  The Talybonts’ table was empty, their dinners left half-eaten on their plates.

  Rowan seemed vastly pleased.

  But pleased or not, he was out again that night prowling the taverns alone, searching for the man he was to meet in

  Lisbon. Charlotte knew nothing of this meeting—she only knew that her husband went out every night, often waking her when he came home and making love to her. Rowan could get along with very little sleep, she had learned.

  All that week he kept up his relentless pursuit of the Talybonts. And although by now the Talybonts promptly turned their backs or made their escape whenever Charlotte and Rowan appeared, it was clear that Katherine was hard put to keep Eustace in check.

  One afternoon they met face-to-face at the bullfights, where for a dreadful moment Charlotte thought that Eustace, his face contorted with rage, was going to charge at Rowan head-on. Katherine obviously thought so too, for her face went white and she pitched forward in a faint, sagging against her husband so that he must perforce catch her and so lost sight of Rowan and Charlotte in the crowd.

  Something would have to be done about this situation, and soon, Charlotte decided, for Katherine could not always pretend to faint and Eustace now seemed in a perpetually ugly mood, ready to challenge Rowan even if he died of it. She intended to speak to Rowan about it when they returned to their room at the Royal Cockerel. Rowan must have seen something in her face, because before she could speak he said, "I had best go down and pay our landlord something on account—wouldn’t want him to start worrying about us/’

  Deciding she could speak to him later about it, Charlotte watched him go. Then suddenly she remembered that the seam of Rowan s cuff had been ripped in the crowd at the bullfight. She opened the door to call to him to ask for a needle and thread to be sent up, for she meant to stitch up the seam herself when he returned, when she saw him standing near the head of the stairs deep in conversation with the thin woman in black.

  Charlotte stopped, puzzled. There was something very friendly in the way they stood there together, as if they knew each other well.

  She forgot the torn cuff.

  When Rowan came back, Charlotte asked carefully, "Who was that woman and what were you saying to her just now?”

  Rowan’s dark brows lifted, but he answered her frankly. "Her name is Annette Flambord. She is French. And I stopped to ask her if she had found a husband yet. ” Charlotte was not to be distracted. "She is Katherine Talybont s personal maid, isn’t she? And that is how we know so much about the Talybonts’ movements. You were asking her about where they will be tomorrow and the next day and the next.’’

  "Oh, I had no need to ask her that,’’ he said carelessly. "Annette volunteers such information very readily.

  Charlotte caught her breath. Sometimes her husband’s coolness astonished her.

  "Are you not afraid you will cause her to lose her job?’’ she shot at him.

  He laughed. "There is probably no better hairdresser in all of Europe. Do you think Katherine would let her go for a mere indiscretion? Indeed, I am amazed that Katherine has been able to keep her so long!’’

  Charlotte studied Rowan. Handsome, dashing, an arresting face, and a manner that swept all before him. A dangerous, dominating man. "Maybe you had something to do with it,” she suggested.

  "And what do you mean by that?” he asked, amused. "Perhaps this hairdresser is in love with you,” she offered doubtfully.

  Rowan came a step closer and there was real mirth on his face now. "Annette,” he stated, "is in love with gold. She has never been able to get enough of it to please her. It is a standing joke between us that whenever she does get enough gold for her dot—that’s a dowry, Charlotte— she will go back to France and marry the man who seduced her and abandoned her in Marseilles and make his life miserable forever. I think she should do it.”

  Charlotte was a little daunted by this worldly view shared by Rowan and the Frenchwoman. "Is Marseilles where she learned her trade?” she inquired.

  "Yes, she was a wigmaker’s assistant there and became expert at curling and dressing wigs. I have told her that her skill would bring her fame if she would find herself some great patroness.”

  “But she already has Katherine Talybont,” protested Charlotte.

  Rowan chose to ignore the irony in his wife’s tone. “Someone far beyond Katherine,” he said airily. “At least a marchioness—possibly a duchess. But you have doubtless noticed Annette’s skill by the elegance of Katherine’s coiffures.” He gave Charlotte’s golden hair a fleeting glance. “Perhaps I can persuade Annette to dress hair someday when Katherine is out.”

  Smarting under the implied suggestion that her own coiffure was not as elegant as Katherine’s, Charlotte stiffened slightly. “Perhaps you should find Mademoiselle Annette this great patroness she needs,” she said in a hard voice. “Or do you find your other uses for Mademoiselle Annette too absorbing?”

  Rowan was looking angry now. “Be careful, Charlotte, or you will say something you regret. Annette has nothing to do with you.”

  “Oh, I know she has not.” Charlotte sighed. “It is just this . . . this endless pursuit of the Talybonts that has set me on edge. And Annette is part of that. I wish she would go away—I wish they would all three of them go away!” “Come to dinner,” he suggested sympathetically. “And rest easy. I have just been told that the Talybonts are not coming down. Katherine is sulking and Eustace is stomping about the floor railing at her.”

  Charlotte enjoyed that dinner
more than any she had ever eaten at the Royal Cockerel.

  But after dinner, as was his wont, Rowan again went out on the town. Charlotte wondered audibly why he did not take her with him. Lisbon by night, he told her, was a city of men. There were few women abroad. If Rowan’s behavior was typical, she could well believe it.

  Hardly had he left before there was a soft knock on the door and a French-accented voice murmured in English, “Madame, are you there?”

  Charlotte opened the door to admit Annette, who slipped by her like a shadow and closed the door behind her.

  “I do not know what to do,” Annette said quickly in very good English, and Charlotte had a chance to study her face by candlelight. The golden light on those sharp sallow features made Annette’s mouth seem sly, her black eyes too watchful. And “thin” was not quite the word for her—“lithe” seemed more appropriate; her step was light, she moved with the easy grace of a Toledo blade. “From the window I saw Rowan leaving,” Annette explained. “But he disappeared into an alley, and in the darkness I knew I would have difficulty catching up with him.”

  “That is undoubtedly true,” agreed Charlotte. “But why would you need to catch up with him?”

  Annette’s voice was hurried. “The Talybonts have been quarreling all day. They wrangled over dinner and he ended up by oversetting the table and all the food was thrown on the floor.”

  “Spare me,” said Charlotte with irony. “My husband is far more interested in the Talybonts’ activities than I. But I note that you call my husband by his given name. Are you then such old friends?”

  The other woman considered her thoughtfully. “Yes— old friends,” she said. “He saved my life once in Marseilles. ” As he did mine in Scotland and again on shipboard, Charlotte thought suddenly. We have something in common, Annette and I.

  There was a little flicker, perhaps of amusement, in the shrewd black eyes facing her. Annette’s voice had an impish quality.

  “And I saved his life in Paris.”