Lisbon

by Valerie Sherwood

  “Oh, no, you’ve been fetching and carrying ever since he got here,” said Charlotte hastily. “I don’t mind doing it, Wend.”

  Indeed she glowed as she swooped down on the table and swept the bedding up in her arms. For this meant she would se^ him once again before she went to bed. She spun about so swiftly that her skirts swirled out, and marched through the moonlight out to the stone stable.

  “You see?” whispered Wend, watching Charlotte’s progress through a crack in the kitchen door. “I did right to tell the stableboy to get lost for a while—just like you did right to ‘forget’ those sheets, Ivy! Did you see how happy she looked when she ran out the door?”

  Ivy, who at Wend's insistence had been hiding in the buttery, now came out.

  “What will Livesay say?” she muttered, rolling her eyes. “He won’t know,” Wend said coolly. “He’s off locking the front door, and Cook’s gone out to keep him occupied by complaining about the meat he’s been buying. ”

  Wend had a talent for intrigue.

  Charlotte, when she opened the stable door into what seemed total darkness, wished she had brought a lantern along.

  “Tom,” she half-whispered, for she was aware that the stableboy slept here—somewhere, she thought, at the far end of the big hayloft above.

  “Yes?” he answered her instantly, almost as if he had been expecting her.

  “I’ve brought your sheets and a pillow. Ivy forgot to bring them.”

  Tom came down the ladder. Now that her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, she could see him vaguely, and when he crossed a shaft of moonlight she walked forward and deposited the bedclothes in his arms.

  “Thank you,” he said gravely, and with them under his arm he went whistling up the ladder.

  Charlotte followed him up.

  “Someone must make your bed,” she declared anxiously. “And since Ivy forgot ...”

  She made his bed in a shaft of moonlight that came in through chinks in the roof, chinks that the stableboy had complained must be repaired. Tom watched her silently.

  She looked so dainty and industrious there, carefully spreading out sheets on the hay, arranging his pillow, plumping it. Every bone in his body ached to claim her.

  “Here, lie down and see if this won't do. ” She threw out an arm, indicating that he should try out the bed.

  Reluctantly Tom took off his shoes and lay down.

  “There,” she said. “That will do nicely.” And suddenly she was kneeling beside him. “Oh, Tom, won't you reconsider the green room? I don't want you to sleep in the stables while I . . .”

  Her voice trailed off, her face was very near, he could smell the slight perfume of her hair, like wildflowers, and her breath was sweet and light upon his face. His arms seemed to move of themselves, to sweep her toward him to lie across his broad chest. His cheek grazed her own as he pressed hot kisses upon her lips. His hands stroked her back, her arms, and were suddenly easing down her tight bodice.

  Charlotte felt a summer madness stealing over her. Tonight she did not care what he did—indeed whatever he did would be right, must be right. They loved each other, they would always feel exactly as they did at this moment, and around them the dark stable, moonlit through the chinks in the roof, with only the sound of a sleepy barn owl moving on its roost, and the restless hooves of the horses disturbing the straw below, seemed of a sudden the most romantic spot in the world.

  Her right shoulder was out of her gown now and the two top hooks of her bodice had burst open from the strain of his probing fingers. Tom s warm hand was cupping her breast through the thin cambric of her chemise, and she moaned as he pulled the riband that held her chemise and the fabric slid away, leaving her breast bare to his lips, which found and toyed with the shell-pink nipple. It hardened tensely at his touch and she felt her breath coming fast and now faster. She was lying across his hips and she could feel the hardness of his manhood against her thigh. She moved restlessly, swept away by new feelings that crowded about, exhilarating, sweet.

  And suddenly she found herself lying on her back on the linen sheet, hearing the soft crunch of hay as Tom s knees on either side of her bored downward with his weight. She was looking up at him with arms spread wide, lips parted, eyes alight, when he jerked himself away from her with a groan and stood breathing hard, looking oown at her.

  "Get up,” he said, and his voice was uneven, husky with desire. "Get up and leave. Now!”

  Charlotte gave him a hurt look and sat up. She tugged her bodice back up over her shoulder—which was agony for Tom, watching the ripple of her young flesh. And she hesitated deliberately, letting her fingers flutter over the hooks that had pulled free, so that the upper part of her firm young breasts was still exposed to his avid gaze.

  "Down the ladder,” he said tersely, and took her by the hand and swung her to her feet.

  She was being dismissed! With her head high, she moved toward the ladder, welcoming his strong grip on her hand as she felt with her foot for the top rung. She did not say another word to him. After all, she had her pride!

  When she got back to the kitchen, still seething with indignation at Tom s sudden rejection of all that she had offered, she had forgotten about those top hooks. She was glad to find that no one but Wend was there.

  “Well,’’ said Wend, eyeing the hooks and the hay in Charlotte s disheveled hair, “I see that you fought—and won, more s the pity.”

  Charlotte flushed and her hand clutched the errant hooks to cover them. “I may never speak to him again,” she warned darkly.

  Wend's chuckle followed her as she flounced out.

  6

  The next morning Charlotte sensed a change in Tom, a sudden reserve, as if during the night a wall had been built up between them. They breakfasted on delicious Cumbrian sausages in the long dining room, and Wend kept finding reasons to bustle into the room, even though Livesay was serving them. And every now and then through a crack in the door Charlotte saw Ivy s curious face peering in.

  It made her feel awkward, all this surveillance, and after breakfast she determined to get Tom away from them.

  “I’ll show you Castle Stroud today—if your blisters are up to it?” she suggested.

  “I’m up to anything,” Tom assured her cheerfully.

  But she noticed as they walked along the lakeshore that he was trying not to get too close, trying not to touch her—and wondered why. Could it be that she had offended him last night?

  That she could even think such a thing only revealed her youth and inexperience with men. In truth Tom was beginning to be afraid of himself, of what he might do when Charlotte came too close. The light wildflower fragrance of her hair made him want to bury his face in its golden shower, and the lightest touch of her hands made his flesh quiver and yearn for her. It was true he had been a long time at sea, but he had never had this overpowering desire for any woman, and the sneaking feeling that he might lose control unnerved him.

  “Are there people living at Castle Stroud?” he asked, having passed by that great stone pile on his journeys back and forth from Carlisle. “I had thought it to be deserted. ”

  “Livesay says it hasn’t really been lived in since 1700,” Charlotte told him. “He says the last Lord Pimmerston meant to move back in, but then he died and the present Lord Pimmerston divides his time between London and a large estate near Sheffield. He never comes here, but there’s a caretaker in residence. He’s very nice, he told me that Wend and I could wander through the place whenever we chose, so long as we didn’t break anything, for then he’d be held responsible.”

  Tom smiled down at her earnestness. “And do you come here often?”

  “Never in winter,” she said. “He closes it up tight. But in summer, yes. Oh, Tom, it’s the most beautiful house in the world!”

  “Just where you’d choose to live if you could?” he murmured, and something in his green eyes clouded, for he knew he could never give her a house like that.

  “Oh
, yes,” she breathed. “The house, yes! But,” she added provokingly, “I’d want it all moved to some nice warm place like the Scillies!”

  Tom threw back his head and laughed. “Charlotte, Charlotte, quite contrary! So not even that great pile of Castle Stroud is good enough for you—unless it’s moved stone by stone?”

  She laughed too, her face reflecting the joy of walking beside him as she had longed to do for so long. “Oh, of course it would be!” She gave his hand a little squeeze. “Let’s stroll through the rooms and pretend it’s ours, Tom!”

  Without meaning to, she had driven a barb into his heart. His lady was ambitious, he could see that now— something he had overlooked before. For all her scorn of money, she wanted what it bought—she wanted more.

  When the medieval towers and battlements and crenellated gray stone walls of Castle Stroud reared up before him, Tom s expression was glum.

  The caretaker of the castle, a stooped old man, greeted Charlotte warmly, eyed Tom with twinkling curiosity, and confided his big news—that a stranger had stopped by to tell him Lord Pimmerston might be coming north for a visit soon, and although some servants would accompany his lordship’s party, of course, he’d better be ready to round up extra help locally on short notice.

  “Isn’t that wonderful, Tom?’’ Charlotte led Tom, almost dancing, through the first of the two courtyards that were divided by the kitchen, banqueting hall, and dining room.

  “Wonderful,’’ he echoed without enthusiasm.

  “And that means the castle will be full of people, for he’ll bring guests from London or at least Sheffield, and we ll have neighbors, Tom, at least for a while! We haven’t had any neighbors on either side of us since I’ve been here, because Blade’s End to the south of us is tied up in some kind of estate that Uncle Russ once said probably never would be settled. Just think, neighbors!’’

  “Neighbours,’’ repeated Tom stonily. All his life he had been beset by neighbors who lived too close and threw their slops into the street, where one must step warily, neighbors who kept the night lively with marital discord and squalling children and sometimes drunken brawls. He sighed and followed her as she entered the big elaborate dining room.

  “I love this room, ’ she breathed. “So much nicer than anything we have at the Grange. Oh, Tom, I wish I could have entertained you here!’’

  Tom’s rueful gaze passed over the dining room’s handsome paneling, the alcove’s carved medallions, and got lost in the maze of heraldic ceiling paintings.

  She gestured. “And above this is the great chamber— it’s exactly the same shape. Oh, come along, I’ll show it to you!

  Silent now, Tom let her lead him along.

  She brought him into the great chamber with a flourish. “Just look, Tom!”

  Tom looked. He saw a splendid room with an Elizabethan frieze and handsome roof timbers. Like Charlotte, he suddenly imagined this large room filled with lords and ladies, elegantly dressed in satin and silk, the men fastidiously taking snuff from gold snuffboxes, the women waving delicate ivory fans—and all of them turning away from plain Tom Westing, who had neither newfound wealth nor background to justify his existence.

  Charlotte, enchanted with her surroundings, did not see the expression on his face.

  “Lord Pimmerston is sure to give a great ball, and the whole countryside will be invited! Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful to dance here, Tom, in this very room?’’ She left his side and pirouetted gaily across the floor, her thin white voile dress billowing out around her flying feet.

  Tom felt a lump form in his throat. He thought she should dance here too—and wave her fan among the elegant company he envisioned occupying this room. And that was something he could not offer her. . . .

  Eager to show him all the wonders of Castle Stroud, she pulled him along the airy long gallery; she stopped before the great bay windows, some of whose panes bulged outward to enchant the eye with distorted vistas, and pointed out the terraced gardens below, which the last Lord Pimmerston had laid out before he had fallen into the lake and drowned. And Tom looked moodily out at those vast gardens and estimated in his head how many gardeners it would take to keep them up.

  Suddenly Charlotte hugged him in her exuberance and he knew an exquisite torture, for with every word she said his world was tumbling down about his ears.

  “Charlotte, the caretaker can see us,” he said huskily.

  “Where? I don’t see him.” Charlotte peered out through one of the straighter panes.

  “He was there,” Tom sighed, and turned away down the long corridor. Livesay had done a fine job mending his shoe, but Tom had lost the springiness of step with which he had accompanied Charlotte when they started out.

  Charlotte noticed that. “Oh, Tom, I’ve kept you walking all day!” she cried penitently. “I forgot all about your blisters.”

  “No matter,” he said. “We can sit outside among those flowers and weeds you love so much, and "I'll rest my foot.”

  Charlotte was delighted to accompany him to any part of the castle, inside or out—she loved it all. And as for Tom, to sit beside her on the low stone wall of the terraced garden looking down across the shimmering expanse of the Derwent Water with the blue hills rising in the distance was a stolen delight he could not resist.

  He sighed when they rose to leave, and Charlotte took that to mean that he had fallen in with her own mood.

  “Oh, Tom, I always do so hate to leave this place,” she told him wistfully. “And I can see you hate to leave it too.” She looked around her, drinking it all in.

  Tom thought she shouldn't be leaving it—she belonged in a place like this, a castle setting. Why hadn't he seen it? Their footsteps turned toward Aldershot Grange and he glanced back at the crenellated gray stone walls and tow-ers^arrrTenormous multipaned stone-mullioned windows— Tom had never in his life even lived near a house with mullioned windows. As all that grandeur faded away behind them, bitterness pierced his soul. Beside him walked a young aristocrat. He had thought of her only as a girl before, but now, having just seen her in her natural habitat, he knew her for what she was—too good for the likes of him. He could see that now.

  He stared down at Charlotte, talking vivaciously. He drank in the sheen of her golden hair and listened to the lilt in her voice, and he asked himself how he could ever have dared to dream that she would be content to share the simple life he could give her.

  And when Lord Pimmerston came north with his London and Sheffield houseguests, there would be more than one gentleman among that party who would discover Charlotte's fresh young beauty, and she would be offered the kind of life she wanted in a house like this, beside some other young aristocrat who would take her to wife. A different world. . . . His gaze was bleak.

  “I can see you would hate to leave it,” was all he said.

  And then she was showing him a bank of golden gors along the way, and admiring the distant view across the lake, laughing as a startled rabbit leapt up and ran by almost beneath their feet, nearly skipping along the path in her excitement to be spending not just an hour or two but a whole day with him. And she never realized that her exuberance, her girlish chatter, which had in reality been brought on by his very presence, had brought him to despair.

  At supper that night Tom was very quiet, listening to the musical sound of Charlotte s voice rather than her words, admiring the way the candlelight seemed to light up her hair, losing himself in the depths of those lustrous violet eyes that smiled so winningly at him across the long board.

  Happy and excited, Charlotte did not really notice his wistfulness—she was already making plans for what they would do tomorrow. Visit Blade's End, she thought, so Tom could see what lay on the other side of Aldershot Grange along the lakeshore.

  But when Tom told her firmly in the kitchen that he would return to the stable alone that night “because it's beginning to rain,'' Charlotte found reason to protest.

  “I'm not a sugar loaf—I won't melt!'' She l
aughed, preparing to accompany him anyway.

  “No, I won't have you getting wet,'' he said, so firmly that Cook and Livesay exchanged glances.

  Rebuffed, Charlotte fell back. “Good night then,'' she said, puzzled.

  “Good night, Charlotte.'' Tom gave her a last lingering look and was gone into the drizzle.

  “Do you think we've seen the last of him?'' Cook asked Livesay when Charlotte had gone up to her bedchamber. “He had a farewell look on his face, if you ask me.”

  Livesay shook his head. “No, the lad's a glutton for punishment. He knows he can't have the likes of Mistress Charlotte, but like a moth he hovers around the flame.’’

  “And gets singed,” said Cook sourly.

  “But I don't think he'll be off with a blistered foot into a rainy night,” said Livesay.

  Charlotte too had seen that “farewell look” on Tom's face, and although she hadn’t really understood it, it had made her uneasy, and made her sleep restlessly. She dreamed that she and Tom were walking toward Castle Stroud and an eerie darkness fell, followed by a moaning black wind that shuddered through the trees, tore off the leaves and branches, and caught them and swept them apart. She dreamed that she was flying through the tree-tops calling his name and hearing his voice calling out to her, ever harder to hear as it receded into the distance. She woke with a beating heart to the sound of a shutter banging, and sat crouched in her bed shivering, still caught up in the terror of her dream.

  It was as if Tom’s spirit was calling out to her, telling her something was amiss.

  She did not go back to sleep that night, but waited only for dawn to break before dressing and running downstairs. In the big kitchen Cook gave her a concerned look and Wend looked mutinous. Tom, it seemed, had already breakfasted and was about to leave for Carlisle.

  “But you can’t!” she wailed. “You’ve barely gotten here. ” Tom looked tired. And no wonder—he had been wrestling with himself all night. At least his better judgment had been wrestling with the rest of him, which considered him a prize fool.