Unknown to Clive, Phoebe was already on her way. And although sailing arrivals were always unpredictable, the captain of the Storm Castle was at that very moment standing on the swaying deck in bright sunshine telling a group of passengers, including Phoebe, that they should make port in Lisbon in about a week, weather permitting.
Nor was Phoebe the only person of interest to be upon the high seas at that moment.
Back at Aldershot Grange, Drew Marsden had come riding up, and Livesay, who had discussed it all at length with Wend, had told him bluntly the real reason Cassandra had embarked for Portugal.
“She’s afraid of me?” Drew had been puzzled.
“No, the lass is afraid for you,” Livesay had corrected him. “Mistress Cassandra believes she’s a Death Bringer. And she doesn’t want to add you to her list.”
“But that’s ridiculous!” Drew exploded.
“Nonetheless, tis what she believes.” Livesay shook his head as if he would never understand women. “She believes she’s brought four men to their deaths—and all because of love for her. And she told Wend she loves you too much to watch you die. So that’s the real reason she ran away to Portugal.”
Drew did not look as upset as Livesay had expected. The words “she loves you too much” were the ones that had caught his heart on fire. Lord, he had feared Cassandra did not love him at all, once he found she had run away.
He mounted his horse and favored Livesay with a confident smile.
“Well, I’ll just off to Lisbon and bring my lady back!” he told Livesay blithely, and went looking for a ship to carry him there.
As it happened, although Drew had started long before Phoebe, he had been unable to find a ship—they all seemed to be going everywhere else, but not to Portugal. And when he did at last find one, storms blew his wallowing tub off course.
Although Phoebe had embarked much later, her ship was faster and missed the storms that delayed Drew. So actually Drew and Phoebe would arrive in Lisbon only two days apart—and Drew would arrive first.
So matters stood with All Hallows’ Day fast approaching. Then . . .
Into Lisbon rolled a black-and-gold coach.
34
The black-and-gold coach, handsome though it was, and bearing the arms of one of Spain’s proud families, was dusty and bore scars, for it had traveled overland all the way from Castile. Its two occupants, a man and a woman, were elegant in the extreme.
The man wore black velvet—and a melancholy expression on his pale features. His long fingers, one of them sporting a signet ring bearing the family crest, were curled about a cane of ebony and gold. Whenever the woman spoke, which was seldom, for she spent more time silently staring out the coach windows, he gave her his full attention, and there was a flaring joy in his dark eyes when he looked at her.
The woman—in contrast to the man who lounged at ease beside her—sat stiffly erect. Her magnificent figure was encased in rich black silks which rustled softly when she moved. She wore no jewelry—although the small Moroccan leather case at her feet was filled with necklaces, earrings, and rings of gold and diamonds and several ropes of pearls—unless you could count the delicate gold chain that disappeared into a gold locket somewhere beneath her bodice, or the simple black onyx mourning ring that never left her finger. That ring was a mystery to her maidservant, who traveled behind in the cart which carried this elegant couple's luggage, for to the maid's knowledge, no one had died.
The woman said something in soft slurred Spanish to the man and he laughed. For a moment she gave him a look of deep affection. Then she went back to her gazing. She was, thought a passerby viewing her from the cobbles, the very epitome of Spanish beauty. Her complexion, pale and creamy and tinted ever so slightly with olive, was flawless. Dark winglike brows swept over lightly kohl-accented eyes that looked remarkably light to the passerby— but he assigned that to a trick of the Lisbon sunlight shining down into the coach. A black lace mantilla flowed over her high-backed tortoiseshell comb and down over her dark gleaming curls, as became a Spanish lady.
They alighted at Lisbon's finest inn, the Royal Cockerel. They were expected, and the inn's best rooms had been reserved for Don Carlos and his party. Painfully, with the aid of his cane, Don Carlos made his way up the stairs to his bedchamber, which adjoined that of the lady. He staggered slightly as he reached a chair, and the lady sprang forward to help him, but he waved her away.
‘Don't fuss, Carlotta," he said wearily. "Just send Jose to tell the doctor that I have arrived in Lisbon and will see him now. '' He bent over in a sudden spasm of pain.
Doña Carlotta bit her lip to see him suffer so, but she went quickly to the door and instructed the footman who waited there silently to find the doctor—who was, after all, the reason for their long difficult journey—at once and bring him here.
The doctor came and there was a low-voiced conversation which Doña Carlotta, waiting tensely in her bedchamber next door, could not hear. She had never been permitted to attend, although Don Carlos had had many sessions with his doctors back in Spain—nor had he allowed her to be present at this one. Don Carlos believed a man must take life's blows alone. His lady, already flying to the door as she heard the doctor's heavy step going down the hall, paused as her maid—a beautiful Englishwoman she had found stranded in Barcelona when Carlos had sought medical help there last year—asked her in English where her jewel case should be put.
“Oh, put it anywhere, Peggy,” Doña Carlotta answered her in flawless English—she spoke three languages, did Doña Carlotta.
Peggy’s throat tightened with sympathy as she watched her mistress leave. She had a fierce loyalty to the Spanish lady, who had most likely saved her from debtors’ prison and who had promised that after this trip to Portugal she would help Peggy return to England. After a moment’s hesitation Peggy pushed back her tarnished red-gold hair and put the jewel box in the bottom of a curved-top trunk.
In the next room the doctor was already being shown out. They could hear the door close behind him.
Doña Carlotta, entering, found Don Carlos staring rather fixedly at a golden crucifix that his manservant, Esteban, had hung upon the wall. “What did the doctor say?” she asked.
Don Carlos swung about and smiled at her. “He says there is hope,” he told her cheerfully. “He will come every day for treatments.”
“They will be painful?” she asked quietly.
Don Carlos shrugged indifferently. “There will be some pain, yes, but he has every hope of improvement. ”
He was so brave. Her heart bled for him. They had sought the aid of so many doctors, and none of them had helped him. He was a mere shadow of the man she had married in Castile all those years ago.
The treatments were indeed painful. From the next room Doña Carlotta could hear her husband groan—and wept to hear it. This unhappy situation continued day after day, with the doctor coming and Doña Carlotta taking her meals in her room and leaving it only to go next door to cheer her husband. She accepted none of the invitations that—in deference to Don Carlos’ position as a man of power and influence in Castile—were brought by messenger to the Royal Cockerel.
And then of a sudden, on the day before All Hallows’ Eve, Don Carlo heaved himself unsteadily to his feet and announced cheerfully to his wife that the treatments of this new doctor, who had been credited with working miracles, were working.
Doña Carlotta gave him a worried look. There had been false hopes before.
“No, it is true,” he insisted gaily. “I am much better. I will prove it! I will take you to the opera tonight, and tomorrow night there is some reception, is there not?” “Yes,” she said mechanically. “At the Varvaez home. For Lord Derwent—whoever that may be.” She gave Don Carlos a questioning look. “Jorge Varvaez sent word that you might remember him from the old days.”
“As indeed I do! Jorge and I have enjoyed many a gallop across the parched plains of the Alentejo, where the fighting bulls are bred. That was be
fore I met you, querida mia. You will like Jorge. I do not know about his wife—she is his second.”
Doña Carlotta winced inwardly. She too was a second wife—and in her own opinion not worthy of such a man as Don Carlos.
“Very well,” she said doubtfully. “I have already sent our regrets, but I will send word to the Varvaezes that we will be able to attend Lord Derwent's reception after all. ”
“Good.” He smiled at her. For a moment he seemed very like his old self.
There were others who planned to attend the opera that night too:
Clive had quickly become bored with Estoril and Cascais. He told himself that Cassandra might well have moved on to some other town in Portugal by now—and if she had not, they could easily avoid her. So he announced that the plague scare had been a false alarm and brought Lady Farrington and her daughter back to Lisbon—but not to the same inn. This time he chose an inconvenient location higher up, a place called the Sete Cidades, the Seven Cities. His ladies were not too pleased, but they were somewhat mollified when he announced that tonight they would attend the opera.
The opera would have another unexpected patron as well, one who had arrived by ship this morning. Drew Marsden, chafing that the slow tub he had at last managed to board had been beset by storms and thus arrived so late in Lisbon, had hastily put up at the first inn available and gone looking for Cassandra. He had not found her. In his eagerness to find her at once, he had announced to one and all that she was his betrothed and he had come to take her back to England. The Portuguese are a tolerant but compassionate people—he had not found a single one who would tell him that Cassandra Dunlawton was now notorious as Prince Damião’s mistress. But at the Green Island, where he had called last, the English-speaking proprietor had taken pity on the tall young fellow with the steady gray eyes. “You should look for her at the opera tonight,” he had suggested. “Most of the English hereabouts are fond of it. ”
Drew, after a long and unsuccessful day’s searching, had decided to follow his advice.
Cassandra would indeed be in attendance at the opera that night. Leeds Birmingham himself had made the trek to the pink palace on the square to ensure that.
He found Cassandra walking about a little disconsolately through the enormous, almost square marble-floored area of the first floor that constituted the front “hall” and at the far side of which wound a handsome staircase. At first it had been fun riding about Lisbon in a golden coach with the royal arms emblazoned upon it, spending her days as Leeds had instructed her a royal mistress should, with dressmakers and the like, buying ivory fans and other fripperies—for the prince, especially now that the royal family claimed a monopoly on the diamonds of Brazil, had an almost bottomless purse. But Cassandra had been discouraged from making friends (“Too dangerous,” Leeds had warned), and the household servants spoke no English. For that matter, since the prince himself spoke only Portuguese, unless Leeds went along, Cassandra found their evenings—they were few enough!—dull in the extreme. Besides, on closer acquaintance she found it very difficult to like the prince; there was something about him, a shiftiness of the eyes perhaps, a contemptuous set of his slack lips. She had wondered how Ines could have fallen in love with him—indeed she might have asked her, but Ines seemed to fade away at her approach. And anyway, it would have done no good—Ines too spoke only Portuguese.
Cassandra could not know how sharply her life paralleled that of her lovely young mother: both of them brought up on the shores of the glassy Derwent Water, both destined for unhappiness; far from home, each had found herself trapped in a golden cage—Cassandra trapped in a pink palace, just as Charlotte had once been trapped in a flat-fronted mansion in the Portas del Sol.
Actually Cassandra was preoccupied by thinking about those secret meetings that took place in the house by night—and the prince s part in them. How could there possibly be so much to arrange? Or was he trying to move the contents of the national treasury out of Portugal? So that barefoot Ines would actually be “walking on diamonds,” as Leeds liked to put it? The thought made her smile.
Leeds Birmingham, greeting her in the great lower hall, was struck forcefully again by Cassandra’s startling beauty, but he understood the rebellious expression in her green eyes. Cassandra had a soft heart, she meant to help, but she was growing tired of the monotony and a prince that Leeds himself found difficult to like.
“Greetings!” he said. “Did you know they are writing songs about you and singing them in the taverns?”
“I don’t doubt it!” Cassandra grimaced. “And nothing complimentary, either!”
He chuckled. “They call you the fairest of the fair—and indeed they are right!”
Cassandra shrugged. Her beauty was not a subject she cared to waste time discussing. Her future would be of more interest.
“I have not gone out all day,” she said. “Yesterday a woman hurled a stone at my coach. It went right through the coach window and out the other side. And she screamed something at me and shook her fist. I remember the words.” She repeated them to Leeds. “What do they mean?”
Leeds decided to be truthful—after all, Cassandra might very well ask somebody else and find out their real meaning and after that not trust him. “They mean ‘You will never be our queen!’ ”he told her reluctantly.
“But I don’t want to be their queen!” cried Cassandra. “Obviously the woman didn’t know that.’’
“But it’s ridiculous. Damião isn’t even the crown prince. He is far down the line—the youngest son! He isn’t even likely to inherit the throne.”
“I know that.” Leeds frowned. The rumor that the beautiful English girl Prince Damião had chosen as his mistress would be contented with nothing less than marriage—indeed that she was clawing for the throne itself—was all over town. Leeds couldn’t imagine how it had gotten started. When he had tackled Prince Damião on the subject, he had gotten an evasive answer.
“I am trying to put that rumor down by paying more attention to Constanca,” the prince had responded vaguely.
When Leeds had frowned at that answer, the prince had been quick to add, “Give the English girl this”—he thrust a box at Leeds—“and tell her to wear it when I take her to the opera tonight.”
Leeds had had the strange feeling that the gift had been proffered more to mollify him than to delight Cassandra.
Now, as he stood upon the marble floor of the pink palace with Cassandra before him, his voice softened. “I bring you an invitation and a little token from the prince that you may wear tonight when he takes you to the opera. ” From a crimson velvet case he took out a necklace that sparkled like water and clasped it around her slender neck. “He wishes to show you off, Cassandra. And satisfy the royal curiosity, I may add, for none of the royal family has yet seen you. Tonight they will.” He stood back, surveying her. “And they will at least be forced to admit that Prince Damião has good taste in women!”
Cassandra studied the heavy necklace in the mirror with amazement. Its huge stones seemed to cover her entire bosom. “But I should not be wearing this,” she gasped. “Ines should be wearing it!”
“Ines will be walking on diamonds where she is going,” Leeds told her indifferently, using his favorite phrase.
“Wear it, Cassandra. But take good care of it,” he cautioned, “for it is worth a king’s ransom.”
He did not have to tell her that.
The corners of his mouth quirked. “Oh, and be sure to look at the prince adoringly. He says that you do not.” Cassandra’s brows lifted and she gave Leeds a quizzical look. Somehow, on closer acquaintance, she found the prince difficult to adore. For all his dark good looks, there was something about him she did not trust, something that made her keep her guard up. . . .
Leeds chuckled. “I do not find Damião adorable either, but remember, he is a prince and princelings are brought up as spoiled darlings. Wear the necklace, Cassandra, light up the opera—and remember that I told you you would enjoy
this!”
Tonight she would be sitting in a box at the opera beside a royal prince—even if she did not much care for him—and wearing this wonderful necklace. She was living a dream! Cassandra smiled at Leeds and admitted to herself that at the moment she was indeed enjoying this charade. Especially now that she knew it would be ending soon. For tomorrow was All Hallows’ Eve, which they would be celebrating in England with bonfires, and the day after that was All Hallows’ Day, when Ines would escape with her prince and Cassandra would forget this escapade of being a prince’s mistress and go back to being what she had always been.
But for tonight she would play it to the hilt!
Cassandra dressed for the opera with care. Wend helped, albeit disapprovingly. For this occasion Cassandra had chosen to wear her most dramatic gown—this public appearance beside the prince was no time to be shy! The gown was low-cut, of crimson velvet, very lustrous, and clinging subtly to her figure, and the bodice fit her firm young breasts as if she had been poured into it. Her three-quarter sleeves ended at the elbows with a froth of lace encrusted with brilliants. A wide crimson velvet riband cascaded down, along with a waving blonde lock, from her tall headdress, to move lazily across one almost bare shoulder. When she put on the diamond necklace, she could not believe the effect. Wide-skirted, elegant—she had never owned such a dress in England!
She came downstairs beaming, to join the prince and Leeds at the bottom.
Her smile would not have been so bright if she could have heard the conversation that had just taken place between them.
“It would be well if you were to pay more attention to Ana,” Leeds Birmingham had been advising the prince. “How much Cassandra observes from her room”—he nodded toward the upstairs—“I do not know, but it must occur to her that you are not here very often. And it would help if you could remember to call Ana ‘Ines.’ ”
“Why the devil did you have to rename the wench? Surely ‘Ana’ was sufficient!”
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