To my relief Paul said that all the servants in the house spoke serviceable English. “It is a requirement for all my above-stairs staff,” he told us. “I began it when Lizzie came, but my mother prefers it too.” His English mother spoke excellent Portuguese, but I thought it a pleasant courtesy. I would like to have my wishes known without struggling for the words. I had no doubt that I would survive in Portuguese before we left, but so far I was finding the language difficult. In my experience, hearing it and using it would become easier in time.
I glanced at Nichols, who had travelled with the luggage coach and so preceded me, and her tiny sigh didn’t escape my notice. She wasn’t happy here, and I didn’t know why. If I asked her, I might be inviting a familiarity both of us would find uncomfortable in the future, but her very unhappiness put me on edge.
My sister rested her hand on Paul’s arm in the accepted, more formal mode. It was typical of her to prefer that to a less formal contact, even though she adored her husband with all her heart. Not, I thought, as much as I adored Richard, but I wouldn’t contest her claim. I had never cared who saw my true feelings, but I behaved with restraint for Richard’s sake. It was hard for a man brought up in extremely rigid circumstances to unbend. I thought I’d lost the inner man forever, but now I had hope that added warmth to the sunny but slightly chilly day.
I saw the cause of the gleam I’d noticed earlier. The moderate-sized hall was covered with the most beautiful ceramic tiles I had ever seen. The predominant colour was ultramarine blue, with rows and patterns reflecting and enhancing the effect. I stood, staring, until Lizzie spoke. “I hoped you’d have that reaction. It is lovely, isn’t it? Strictly this is our summer residence, and the tiles help to keep it cool. The Moors began the custom for tiles. There are some most beautiful examples in the south of Spain, at the Alhambra Palace, but Paul’s ancestors continued the tradition.”
“I’ve seen nothing like it before.”
I glanced at Richard, who shook his head. “Nor I. I really must ensure we see the Alhambra before we leave. Or on another visit. Especially if it’s anything like this.” It wouldn’t do for England, where the weather was more temperate and damper, but for a hot country it was ideal. Beautiful.
Lizzie let us look our fill then took us through the hall to the stairs. We climbed them, getting a better view of the patterns nearest to us.
“How old is this house?” I enquired. The lightness of design didn’t indicate age to me.
“Not very,” Paul replied. “Possibly thirty years. My father had the tiles laid. I’m glad you like them. My country has some wonderful examples, but of course I consider this the best.”
He would. So would I, were it mine.
Up another flight of stairs and along a wide corridor lay our rooms. I presumed that the larger passage immediately at the top of the stairs led to the staterooms. They would do so in an English country house, and this smaller example contained the guestrooms. It gave us privacy enough but lay close to the main part of the house. Upstairs would be the servants’ quarters, since this house only held two main floors, and a floor at ground level, which would, if the house were mine, have the offices and some family rooms.
I realised I was thinking in the way Richard customarily did. We were truly becoming one. I had gone into the house’s plan so naturally that next I would be working out where everyone would exist. It was one of the ways Richard kept one step ahead of everyone else. Only one of the ways. His mind worked so swiftly that he could discover a multiplicity of facts before another person had worked out one. And it came naturally to him.
Lizzie led us into a large bedroom. The bed was equally large, heavy draperies at the head and foot, obviously intended to close, not merely for decoration. The predominant colour was an apple green, charming, and as Lizzie must have realised, one of the colours that went well with my hair and complexion. “Will this suit you?”
“Oh yes!” I dropped Richard’s hand and took a slow stroll around the room. So pretty. The large windows opened on to a balcony that overlooked the gardens at the back of the house. Here, after a series of formal topiary gardens rare in England, I saw a massive fountain, dolphins disporting in a bowl of marble. The water was switched off. The draperies at the windows were also surprisingly thick, I noticed, when I turned my attention back into the room.
“Why do you keep the fountain turned off?” It must make a marvellous sight.
“We are approaching November, and it can get chilly at night. Sometimes we have frosts and occasionally ice. Ice would destroy the fountain, so we have it drained well before the frost comes.” That sounded sensible from Paul, though I was sorry I wouldn’t get to see the fountain working. Paul showed his supreme hospitality with his next statement. “Would you like me to order it filled? I should have thought to ask them to put it back for a week or two, but I didn’t.”
“There’s no need,” I told him. “It’s beautiful as it is, and it has a lovely tranquil quality.” And I couldn’t bear if I were responsible for ruining such a lovely object.
“You’ve even provided Rose with a large chaise for her afternoon rests.” Richard must have discerned that the large daybed set to one side of the windows was a new addition. I turned to study it, sure I could tell. I couldn’t. Richard smiled and shrugged. “The moulding on the walls doesn’t quite fit, and there’s a small scuff on the floor. A smaller sofa or chaise sat here not long ago.”
I saw it then, the slight difference in shading to one side of the daybed. Although it was upholstered in the same fabric as the window drapes, so I wouldn’t have noticed. A matching chair stood to the other side of the windows, where someone could sit and read, or just rest. The polished floorboards bore two Oriental carpets in shades of green and pink. I would have liked this room at home, but the style wasn’t one I customarily favoured, the baroque formality and the darker, polished wood not something I usually enjoyed. But it fitted well in this setting; it worked.
“You have separate dressing rooms, but knowing your…preferences, I had the bedroom on the other side turned into a sitting room and impromptu nursery,” Lizzie announced casually.
So that was her surprise. To force us into the same bed but provide an alternative—the daybed—in case it didn’t work out.
Chapter Seven
I felt Richard’s stillness like a living thing. I didn’t need to see it, but I turned to him anyway. He’d frozen, his hand on the high side of the chaise, his attention fixed on Lizzie. His easy smile firmed, stilled, and the animation I had been so glad to witness return to him leached out, leaving the great lord, the aristocrat I had rarely seen in private until recently.
“Thank you so much. It’s a delight, having people who can anticipate our every need.”
Lizzie swallowed. She hadn’t missed his cool but polite response. She forced a smile. “I thought that if one of the children fell ill, God forbid that they do, but all children have little illnesses from time to time, you could let them sleep in the sitting room with the nurse so you can keep a closer eye on them. You did tell me in your letters that the third boy…” She groped for a name.
“William,” I reminded her. I’d seen people behave like this before with Richard, turn into babbling brooks, but I wanted my sister to stop now. She didn’t.
“Yes, yes of course. He is a delicate child, you said, and I thought you might prefer to keep him close. The nurseries are on the next floor. My father-in-law was a light sleeper, and he preferred not to be in earshot of his children at nighttime. Consequently, the main nurseries are on the floor above this. So I had the other room converted.”
I was wrong about the servants’ quarters then. Those steep roofs in the wing probably held more rooms.
I listened numbly to Lizzie’s faltering explanation. Richard’s reaction had shocked me, and pain held me in its thrall. I should be used to it by now, but I feared I’d never accustom myself to his reaction when forced close to me. In the old days he might have laugh
ed and agreed with Lizzie. Not stiffened into the great lord, as he was doing now. His eyes, so full of life and love, had turned icy and dead, and he lifted his chin slightly so he could look down his nose at us, a pose based on defence.
As I watched, appalled, he took a deep breath. The bees and vines embroidered on his waistcoat changed shape, seemed to move as he inhaled, then returned to their original pattern when he breathed out. He smiled, and a little of the warmth returned. His hand clenched on the side of the chaise. “Of course. What a kind thought.” He glanced down at the chaise. He would sleep there. My heart sank.
The servants would know, and since we weren’t at home, where access to our private chambers was restricted, we could be fairly sure the household would discover it. While servants were always enjoined not to gossip, it was almost impossible to prevent them. Even the best of servants could let information drop, information that could be very useful in the right hands. We should know, we had maintained a company on it.
We had Thompson’s men with us, as many as we could carry, but we had no network here as we had at home and in some other countries in Europe. I wondered if Richard had taken that into account.
Of course he had. With our principal enemies either dead or given up, or on the other side of the world, we could relax at last. The Drurys and John Kneller, Richard’s estranged son, the one he hadn’t known the existence of until a couple of years ago, weren’t our only enemies, but they had been the most persistent. Gone now, or put out of action. I should feel safer, but somehow I didn’t. My instincts were returning with my health, and I still felt on guard, wary.
We announced our intention of visiting the children in an hour, but Richard said he wanted to ensure that I rested. “After that,” he told Lizzie, with his most charming smile, “we would love to see all of this delightful house. I can understand your enchantment with this country, Lizzie.”
He set himself to please her so that she left the room with her husband more content. For an instant she had sensed the sizzling tension between Richard and myself, but he had dissipated it with a few words and the simulation of his normal self. He could do that so well, but I knew the difference.
Richard closed the door with extreme gentleness and turned to face me, but didn’t come any nearer. “Did you tell her?”
Tears filled my eyes, and appalled at my weakness, I blinked them away. I wouldn’t allow any more to fall. “Not all of it. She guessed some.” I couldn’t lie to him. I wouldn’t give him the lack of respect that implied. “I’m sorry. But I hadn’t seen her in so long, and she was always my best friend. Writing letters isn’t the same thing.”
He strode forwards and took my hands in his. “I’ve put you under so much strain. It only occurred to me lately that my reticence may have retarded your recovery. Has it, do you think?”
“You’ve taken the greatest care of me. I’ve never wanted for anything.”
“You were right.” His mouth twisted in a wry smile of acknowledgement. “I have swaddled you. We didn’t allow it for our children. Too restrictive, we said. And yet I did it with you, didn’t I?”
I nodded and kept my head down, staring at the pattern on his waistcoat, tracing the twining vines with my gaze. I would not cry. “I was more ill than I allowed. I would try to do something perfectly ordinary and fail miserably. I had to concentrate on recovering for some time, much more than I’d imagined I would. I’ve always been well, you see. Apart from an attack of cowpox when I was a child, and winter colds, I’ve been disgustingly robust. The smallpox that took my father and stepmother affected me but mildly. Being an invalid is new to me.” I lifted my gaze to his face. I saw nothing but tenderness and concern.
I loved that he knew when to listen, and I had so much to tell him. I had stopped sharing my feelings with him when I became aware that he wasn’t really listening, that he had decided what he would do and set about doing it. Now he listened. “At first I welcomed your concern. I hurt, Richard, hurt all over. Every time Nichols bathed me, she was so gentle, but I wanted it to be you. It wouldn’t have hurt as much. I couldn’t manage my new weakness, and it terrified me. What if I never recovered, what if I stayed that way?”
He paled. “That worried me too. I lay awake at night, my arms empty, and decided that I wanted you alive, even if it meant I could never share your bed again. After a while it became easier. I could block out the memories if I reminded myself of your appearance in your bed, so pale, so thin, so helpless.” He closed his eyes. “Crying my name in your fever, pleading with me to make you better, and I couldn’t.” He opened his eyes again. “But I still wanted you. It shamed me.”
I frowned. “Shamed you?”
“How could I want you under me when you were so frail? How could I even think it?” He released one of my hands and clenched his fist. “I was some kind of beast, I told myself. I deserved to be shot.”
I shook my head and tightened my grip on his hand. If that was all he would give me, I would keep it. “I thought of it too. Even at my weakest. I thought that if I died, I’d ask you to hold me as I went, then I realised that was too much. I couldn’t ask that of you. But I’d have liked that. I shouldn’t have been so maudlin—”
I didn’t finish my sentence. He dragged me closer and folded me in his arms. “Like this?” His head descended, but instead of the hard, punishing kiss like he’d given me on the yacht when I’d provoked him so, he kissed me gently, as if I were made of spun sugar.
While that approach had irritated and infuriated me before, now I welcomed it because he wasn’t kissing me like a friend, but like a lover. I tasted his longing for me before he pulled away. “I still can’t promise everything. I need to take it gently. But I’ll share the bed tonight. I won’t use the daybed. It was good of your sister to think of it, to give me the option, even if it meant I had to stay in the same room as you, listening to you breathing. I didn’t like the thought of someone else knowing, other than our body servants, but I should have known you couldn’t hide anything from her.”
I rested my head on his chest and revelled in his warmth.
“I could have said that you needed the space, that you were a restless sleeper these days. Nobody would have thought anything of it. I guard my privacy—our privacy—closely. Carier will interview the servants who have access here. Did you think my careful guarding of our private quarters was all because of our enemies?” The Drurys had tried to strike at us in our home, at the heart of our intimacy, by employing servants to spy on us. I knew that had alarmed Richard as much as it had angered him. “It’s not just that,” he told me now. “It’s the thought of anyone sharing what we have. Carier knows, Nichols knows, and other people know a little of it. Your sister has seen more than she should.”
I remembered Lizzie’s shock. I hoped she wouldn’t be as startled now that she had a man of her own to love. The thought of her reaction made me smile, although I knew it should not.
Richard smiled too. “She knows better now, I’ll be bound. Her husband looks after her well, I’m thinking.”
“He’s very handsome.”
He gave a growl and tugged me close. “No looking in his direction, sweetheart. No looking in anyone else’s direction. Just me.”
He wouldn’t have teased me in that way a month ago. We were both recovering.
Chapter Eight
A day later, I was sure this was one of the most charming houses I’d ever visited, and I knew I’d be happy staying here. While I remained to be convinced that I needed this treatment, I was content, or as content as I could be.
I chose one of my most frivolous gowns for dinner that night but took care not to make it too extravagant with lace and jewellery. I never felt comfortable dressed inappropriately, although Richard often did. He had the arrogance to carry it off, to make everyone else appear underdressed rather than appearing overdressed himself. So I chose the palest pink, with triple lace ruffles at my elbows and a lace overskirt to the petticoat. My favourite pearls, Ri
chard’s first gift to me of jewellery outside my betrothal ring, looked perfect. I put a set of pearl drops in my ears, and I was ready.
Richard rewarded me by pausing in the door to our room and looking at me slowly, up and down and back again. “When we first met, I told you that you’d learn to play the great lady in time. I indulgently thought that I’d teach you. But what I actually did was show you the way. You did the rest yourself.”
I swallowed down my tears. My weakness overcame me sometimes. That had to stop. I couldn’t spend the rest of my life with salt water coursing down my cheeks at every emotional moment. So I dipped a curtsey and blinked hard. “Thank you.”
“And just as I told you, you have an innate elegance. It only needed someone to believe in you.” He glanced at Nichols, and I nodded, dismissing her.
That was it, what I’d felt the lack of all these months. He hadn’t believed in me. I told him I wouldn’t leave him—I promised before I birthed the babies, and I always kept my promises. I smiled up at his dear face. “You believe me now?”
His lip twitched. “Nearly. Give me time, sweetheart.”
I remembered that tone. I’d missed it. Warm, intimate, with a hint of desire. Desire held firmly in check, I guessed. Carier showed us the way to the dining room and dismissed the footman Lizzie had sent. I supposed he had something to tell us. One way of retaining privacy in an unfamiliar, large house full of servants was to keep moving, so we did so while Carier addressed us in a low voice. “The boy who was hurt on board the yacht, Crantock, is dead.”
I blinked but took care not to tighten my grip on Richard’s sleeve or give him any indication of my reaction. I wanted to hear this, and I wouldn’t let them keep me out because of my weakness. “The fever?” I asked, taking care to keep my voice steady.
Lisbon: Richard and Rose, Book 8 Page 8
