“Excuse me,” said Rowan abruptly. “I see a man I must speak to. I’ll be right back.” He smiled benignly down upon Katherine. “I trust you’ll keep my bride amused while I’m gone?”
Katherine’s little white teeth ground ever so slightly. “We will do our best,” she said in a stiff voice.
Left alone with the Talybonts, Charlotte almost succumbed to panic. But the smoldering fury in Katherine s face stiffened her resolve. She turned her full attention to Eustace.
“You have certainly never come up to Cumberland,” she remarked sweetly. “For I would certainly have remembered you.”
Eustace threw out his chest, “I’ve been told people do remember me,” he admitted.
Beneath the table his wife kicked him with the toe of her slipper and he gave her a confused look. Her warning glance told him nothing—Katherine was always giving him warning glances. Charlotte again moved her delectable shoulders, the tiny glittering beads rippled, her breasts seemed to quiver, and he returned to his fascinated study of them, ogling her over his glass. Ah, what a piece of work she was! How had Keynes found her—and so quickly? He reminded himself that Keynes had found Katherine too—and found her first. He began to respect Keynes.
“But how could you not come to Cumberland?” Charlotte was reproving Eustace with a seductive little pout.
“Because Eustace prefers balls and gaming hells to chilly lakes and sheep,” Katherine answered tartly for him.
Charlotte batted her eyes at Katherine for Eustace s benefit, showing off the full glory of her long lashes. “But we have so much more in Cumberland,” she declared, her voice a purr. “The air is so crisp and clear and the whole countryside is so private that in summer girls sometimes take off all their clothes and dance naked in the sun on the crags.”
Eustace Talybont’s breath was coming a little faster now. “And do you dance naked on the crags?” he asked, fascinated.
Charlotte gave a little deprecating laugh and tweaked her long blue hair riband. It slid obediently down over her bosom and nestled in the cleft between her breasts. Across from her Eustace Talybont licked his lips, imagining her naked, dancing above him on a crag, beckoning him to come up and join her.
“Oh, of course I couldn’t do such a thing,” Charlotte said with a little laugh that gave the lie to her words. “My guardian always warned me that heiresses must be very careful because the world is full of kidnappers who will hold a gun to their bosoms and carry them off!”
“You are an heiress then?” Katherine’s voice was sharp. Charlotte turned her violet gaze upon her. “But of course,” she said gently. “I supposed all the world knew that.” She enlarged upon that theme, mentioning rather vaguely how well her uncle had managed her estates in Cumberland and Westmorland, her shipping interests, some ventures in the wool trade. She had about run out of things to dazzle Katherine with when Rowan returned at last to the table.
“Couldn’t catch the fellow,” he told them in a sunny tone. “Chased him halfway down the street!”
He resumed his seat beside Charlotte and under the table took her hand and she felt a ring slipped upon her finger. She threw him a confused look, which he ignored. He kept her small hand confined in his own big one while he talked.
Presently, “Show them your betrothal ring, Charlotte,” he suggested carelessly. He brought up Charlotte’s hand, smiling into Katherine’s eyes. “I think you will both recognize it. It is nice of you to return it to me, Kate. ”
At sight of the ring, which was a sapphire set in heavy gold, Katherine gave a small scream of dismay and leapt to her feet, while Eustace Talybont grew red and stuttered, “I say, how did you—”
“Thief!” choked Katherine, reaching across to take back the ring.
Charlotte’s hand was swiftly withdrawn.
“Not a thief, Kate, a former suitor,” Rowan corrected her.
“I will have that ring back!” cried Katherine, raising her voice. “Eustace, call the innkeeper and tell him that I have been robbed!”
Rowan half-rose. He leaned across the table, seized Katherine’s arm, and pulled her back into her chair. “Not unless you want the whole world to know of your perfidy, ’’ he told Katherine in a sunny voice. “Discarding a betrothed and then keeping his betrothal ring, forsooth! What will the world think of you, Kate?” He was keeping a tight grip on her as he spoke, and she tried to wrench free.
“I say there, let go of my wife!” bellowed Eustace Talybont, scrambling to his feet. “I’ll call you out! By God, I will!”
Rowan regarded his adversary with contempt.
“You need cooling off,” he said, and dashed his wine into Talybont’s face, glass and all. And then, while Talybont stared at him in openmouthed fury, with the red wine dripping down his face to stain his expensive sky-blue silks, Rowan, with scorn in his voice, gave him a piece of advice. “I am a better shot than you, Talybont, and a better blade. I suggest that you think that over before you challenge me for taking back what is mine. And as for you, Kate”—he gave Katherine’s wrist, which he still held, a cruel twist that made her flinch—“I suggest that you remember that this lad’s fortune is not yet his. He has a younger brother, and if I make you a widow, you will not be a rich widow, you will have to hasten about to find some other wretch to cozen!”
“Be damned to you!” bellowed Talybont, now purple in the face. He would have lunged at Rowan but that several gentlemen who had risen from their seats and were crying out that the dining room was no place for a brawl leapt between them. And Katherine Talybont, who had by now been released from Rowan’s savage grip and whose white face showed that she had got the full import of his words, flung herself upon her young husband in a panic.
“Oh, Eustace, let him go. Please do not become embroiled. What do we care what he says? Eustace, for love of me—”
The innkeeper and several waiters had by now inserted themselves between the combatants. Shouldered aside, Rowan cut in crisply, “Let us take our leave, Charlotte.”
Charlotte rose with alacrity, glad to be gone from this place where everyone was staring at them, and where most of the men were on their feet, aware that this interchange might erupt into swordplay. Even above the hubbub, Katherine Talybont’s penetrating voice carried to her, assuring Eustace in plaintive tones that there should be no warring on her account, that it was true that she was the sweetest, gentlest, most forgiving of women and that even though she had been cruelly used . . . Her words were sometimes obliterated by her husband’s oaths as staff and diners surged forward to hold him back. Charlotte’s face was stained with color but she kept her head high and was escorted from the dining room by a smiling Rowan, who swaggered along beside her, delighted with the havoc he had caused.
Back upstairs in their room—and for the moment Charlotte had forgotten that it was their room—Charlotte sat down on the bed and studied by the light of a candle the ring that Rowan had spirited away from Katherine.
Rowan watched her for a moment. Then he sat down upon the bed beside her and reached around her, holding her hand up to the light.
“It is too large—your fingers are more slender than Kate’s,” he observed critically, and Charlotte half-expected him to say, “I will have it sized for you tomorrow. ” But he did not. Instead he drew it gently from her finger. “You do not want to wear another woman’s betrothal ring, Charlotte.”
“No, I... Of course not. ” But she gazed rather wistfully at the gold ring with its beautiful blue stone.
“I will get you a better one another time. I have a use for this one right now. ”
“A use?” Her high arched brows shot up questioningly.
“Yes,” he told her calmly. “Tomorrow morning I intend to convert it into cash, and I will use the proceeds to pay for everything I bought you today.”
Now she remembered. Rowan had said he would pay cash but he hadn’t actually done it. And Katherine’s betrothal ring was going to pay for her new finery! Charlotte dissolved into la
ughter.
“Oh, Rowan, I have never had such an evening!” she gasped.
“You seemed to be enjoying leading Talybont on,” he observed, eyeing her narrowly.
“Eustace Talybont? That poor stick?” Charlotte collapsed into laughter again. “Why, he’s naught but a male French fashion doll,” she scoffed. “I can’t imagine why Katherine married him.”
“Money,” supplied Rowan crisply. “Eustace is the Talybonts’ oldest son and most of what they have will one day be his. My fortune-hunting Kate has gotten her claws into him and she will never let him go.”
Charlotte controlled her mirth. She thought she had detected a note of pain in his voice.
“Money isn’t enough. ” From the circle of his arm she gave him a very steady look.
He seemed to relax.
“No, for you I don’t think it would be,” he observed, and his voice softened. “Once I thought that of Kate, but I was proved wrong—and now I thank God that I escaped her, that it’s Talybont who must dance to her tune and not I!” His dark head was inclining down toward her as he spoke, and suddenly his other arm was about her as well, holding her lightly.
“Charlotte, Charlotte,” he murmured against her hair. His hot breath rippled strands of it, making little tingles of feeling march down the nape of her neck. “You are all the things I thought Kate was—and learned she was not. Thank God I found you.”
It was very lovely to be held in his arms like this, to hear words like these. His voice was soft, tender, sincere. And Charlotte felt a warm glow of sympathy for him tonight, a kinship, for in a way. Rowan had lost a love too. And she was grateful to Rowan as well—for saving her in England, for bringing her here to Lisbon, for making her want to live again. In the glow of those feelings she brushed her soft lips across his cheek and for a wavering moment yearned toward him.
Rowan needed no second invitation. His arms tightened about her fiercely, and when she stirred in his arms and would have remonstrated with him, he pressed his mouth down firmly upon hers and effectively silenced conversation.
It seemed to silence her resistance too, for her world seemed to tip and she felt the wall she had tried to build up between them crumbling, crumbling. . . .
Rowan kissed her, and for long moments they swayed together atop the big bed. Then all her defenses seemed to come down at once. She clung to him and murmured his name.
She was hardly aware of how the blue dress left her body. It departed quietly, gently, sliding away from her in little silky tugs. Rowan was a master at handling delicate fabrics—and a master at touching delicate skin. This time there was no haste in him. He lifted her with one hand while he whisked the fabric away beneath. He removed the clothing from her slim body as he might have slipped the petals from a rose—and where his hands had been, he followed with his lips, teasing, tasting, tempting. And then fiercely demanding, so that when he eased her back gently upon the light coverlet, her own passion had already risen to fever heat.
But even that was not enough for him. He dawdled with her, teaching her some of the wicked byroads of love, assaulting her senses so that she was trembling and almost crying out beneath his ministrations before he entered her, her entire body a searing swaying reed, pliable in his arms, born for this moment. Rowan seemed suddenly a being larger than life, a tall sturdy spire to which her entire being could cling forever. Almost worn out by desire, she felt herself blown this way and that before the hot winds of the passions that consumed him before he brought them finally to a tense and desperate and wholly satisfying fulfillment.
Charlotte had never known such a night.
Morning came all too soon. There in the big square bed Charlotte had slept blissfully, peacefully. She might come to grips with her demons in the morning, but for tonight she slept like the young bride she was, nestling against the long naked body of her bridegroom.
She came awake gradually, aware that Rowan was not there beside her. When she managed to get her eyes open, she saw his tall figure, already dressed and standing before the window with the sunlight pouring in and gilding his outline. She supposed he had been out disposing of the ring.
“Rowan?” she asked questioningly and rose on an elbow.
He did not turn but his voice reached her.
“Charlotte,” he said, “I have taken you to wife and whatever has gone before for each of us is past all undoing. I choose to forget that there was another man before me, just as you must forget that before you there were other women. We will start fresh. Is it agreed?”
Charlotte studied that long frame silhouetted against the late-morning light.
“It is agreed, Rowan,” she said softly.
She meant every word. She had made her vows to this man, not back in Scotland—those were lying vows, forced on her by the desperation of the moment. They no longer counted. These silent vows were the vows she would live by. She felt no need to say it, but she had made her vows to him last night in the full glory of her ardor. And this morning she knew that she would keep her bargain. Tom was gone, forever lost to her. She would always keep a candle burning for him in her heart, but Rowan was here and he loved her. Of that, she felt that his body had given her no reason to doubt.
Still he did not turn. His voice was almost dispassionate.
“But although I will condone what has happened before, I will tolerate no future slips. Is that understood?”
“Of course.” Charlotte sounded wounded.
He whirled about. “Is that understood?” he demanded with such violence that she shrank back before the naked intensity of his gaze. “We are on even terms now, a man and a woman. You have chosen to be mine and you will remain mine. Is that understood?”
He strode across the room and Charlotte watched him in bewilderment. She felt suddenly hunted. “Of course it is, Rowan,” she said placatingly. She felt she should say something more, for he was bending down, staring into her face as if to read something there—some reservation perhaps. “You have been honest with me and I will be as honest with you,” she said, lifting her chin and giving him back gaze for gaze.
His long body relaxed and he sank down on the side of the bed.
“Beautiful Charlotte,” he murmured, and reached out to caress her soft young breasts, exposed to view as she lay on one elbow. “You are a miracle, you know.” His head bent down to nuzzle those pink-crested nipples, to make her shiver and fall back, letting her arm go around his neck. “A perfect woman—sheer perfection, had I but found you first.”
Charlotte didn’t feel perfect and certainly not “a miracle.” But she had no time to ponder his last words—“had I but found you first”—for Rowan was already tempting and teasing her into desire. His trousers were open now. His strong hands cupped her buttocks, lifted her and brought her hard against his ready manhood. His lips caressed her, his body strained against her own.
Charlotte closed her eyes and let her quivering senses take her where they would. She moaned beneath Rowan, trying to force her slender body upward against him, seeking, finding. Like birds in flight their bodies beat to a wild sweet rhythm that left them spent but somehow refreshed.
She told herself that this was love.
17
The moments of making love were precious, but Charlotte found the afterglow cut short, for Rowan rose almost immediately. “Come, rise to face the day—it’s late. ” But he sounded happy, his voice bantering.
“And what does the day hold in store, pray?” Charlotte stifled a luxurious yawn as she threw her feet over the edge of the bed.
“This morning I am going to take you shopping. ”
Charlotte paused with her feet midway to the floor. “Again?” she demanded incredulously.
Rowan was grinning down at her. “Not for clothes—for pottery. ”
Charlotte began to dress hurriedly in her smart new gold silk. “I didn’t know you were interested in pottery, Rowan.”
He shrugged. “I have been told of an interesting shop. ”
>
Confused, because she could not imagine Rowan having much interest in pottery—silver, yes; gold, yes; jewels or swords of fine workmanship, yes; but pottery, no—Charlotte hardly touched the bewildering array of fruits that had been brought for her breakfast and soon found herself accompanying Rowan to a shop whose low entrance belied its large interior.
They moved about among the tall wooden racks displaying wares from different regions. The finished product differed in color according to the clay from which it was made, a clerk explained to them earnestly in Portuguese, which Rowan translated into English for Charlotte s benefit. Those pearly-gray jugs, for instance, were made in the countryside hereabout, but those red earthenware pots were from Alentejo—note the Roman form of them—while those black clay pitchers were from Nisa and those vivid green and off-white ones were from . . . Charlotte never learned where they were from for Rowan s voice suddenly lowered and his tone became urgent. "Turn about with your best smile.”
Charlotte did as she was bid, parting her lips so that her white teeth flashed, but she did so with a sinking feeling. There, just arriving at the other side of the rack, were the Talybonts, Katherine gloriously got up in cascading plum silks to complement her husband's silver encrusted pale-blue suit.
Eustace Talybont stopped dead at the sight of them, bringing Katherine, whose arm was tucked in his, to a halt beside him. He got the full impact of Charlotte's smile as she turned about, and so dazzling was the effect that in spite of himself he sucked in his breath. Beside him Katherine's face turned a dull angry red.
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