And so the girl whose beauty had caused the London Gazette to dub her “the Fair Maid of Cumberland, ” twenty-two and still a virgin, sailed for Portugal and the city that had been her mother’s downfall.
BOOK III
Carlotta
33
Lisbon, Portugal, Autumn, 1755
A brisk wind was blowing up the Tagus, billowing the sails of the merchantman Pride of Glasgow, which had carried Cassandra from Carlisle down the Irish Sea, over the great undersea West European Basin, and at last into the mouth of the Tagus. She stood with Wend among the excited chattering passengers on deck, eager to disembark, and her heart quickened at the sight before her.
From here Lisbon was a white city sprawled in a great valley between two hills—crowned on the one side by the mighty fortress of the Castelo de São Jorge and on the other by the Bairro Alto. Other hills rose all about.
Tense now with the thought of what she might find here, Cassandra paid scant heed to the darting lateen-sailed fragatas, the tall ships of many countries anchored at the great port. The clamor of the busy waterfront passed by her almost in a dream as she and Wend took a carriage to the Ilho Verde, the Green Island, an inn which one of her fellow passengers had recommended as being both good and reasonable—and one where the landlord spoke English.
All during the voyage she had been nagged by thoughts of Drew Marsden and what he must have thought when he found her gone. Had he gone home soberly to stare into the fire and yearn for her? Or had he merely shrugged and turned away? Or ridden off to Carlisle and found himself another girl? That last thought caused her such pain that she was tempted to turn around and take the first ship home, but she held herself in check. And after she got Wend settled at the inn—for Wend had not stood the voyage well, she had come down with some stomach ailment just before they docked, and Cassandra had decreed for her several days of rest in bed—she inquired of the landlord the way to the Portas del Sol, and set out on foot. That was the way to get her mind off Drew Marsden— begin her search!
It was harder to find than she had thought, but she kept bearing upward as the landlord had instructed, making her way through what seemed a dizzying maze of twisting streets and alleys until at last, after she had almost given up, she blundered onto the house her family had so briefly occupied.
It seemed to be closed up and vacant, its windows shuttered.
A pair of interested—and exceedingly cold—eyes had been observing Cassandra’s progress almost since her arrival in Lisbon. Their lounging owner had followed her at a discreet distance as she made her determined way to the Portas del Sol and stared up thoughtfully for such a long time at the big flat-fronted mansion, as if somehow its smooth painted face would give her some clue to what she wanted so desperately to learn. He had watched Cassandra bang the heavy iron door knocker and wait, bang again, and eventually give up and turn away.
He had wondered about it, for the house had obviously been vacant for a long time.
Cassandra had been preoccupied and frowning as she made her way back through the labyrinthine ways of the Alfama—getting lost twice and finding her way, bewildered, past slumbering dogs and cats that leapt down from garden walls, past laden donkeys and barefoot varinas calling out their wares, and raucous playing children. She wound her way through streets so narrow it seemed to her the walls on either side almost touched, like Holy Spirit Alley. The man who followed her—and he was a remarkably handsome fellow, a tawny figure hardly inconspicuous in apricot silks with a short dress sword chased in silver hanging by his side—made no move to assist her. Instead he paused and lounged in the shadows of various doorways and let her blink into the sunlight, peering past the laundry strung overhead between the buildings, trying to figure out where her directions had gone wrong.
He was assessing her.
He continued to follow her as she made inquiries— difficult since she spoke no Portuguese—of a hackney driver in the main square. He was close enough to hear what she said, and her inquiry astonished him—the lady was off to view a cemetery? His own hired carriage ambled along behind at some distance as she searched through several, looking for the one where her mother lay buried, for Wend might have gotten her facts straight enough but not been in possession of all of them. Suppose her mother really had died? She might have run away and suffered an accident, Rowan Keynes might have had nothing to do with it. Or, as Wend believed, Rowan might have ordered a funeral procession to save face, might even have buried an empty coffin. But if he had raised a stone to her, then assuredly her mother was dead, for Cassandra could not believe her father would go that far.
She had begun to hope that she would search all of Lisbon’s cemeteries and never find it when she was attracted by a grave that seemed backward to the others in its row, with a footstone taller than its headstone. The Watcher gazed upon her from afar, pretending to visit another grave as he did so, and one fine hand, which sported a heavy gold ring set with a ruby, stroked his strong jawline thoughtfully as he saw her bend down to read the inscription. He saw her tense suddenly, then sink to her knees beside the grave and bury her face in her hands, for Cassandra had just read those touching words:
‘Here lies Charlotte, beloved of Thomas, ate o fim do mundo.”
Wend had been wrong then. . . . Charlotte was dead, she had not run away after all. But her Thomas had found her and raised this stone. Cassandra felt hot tears sting her eyes at the thought that these long-lost lovers could not have found each other again. She knelt there for long moments wishing she could bring her mother back again. . . .
After Cassandra rose and moved away, the Watcher sauntered over, curious, and read that inscription himself. Making nothing of it, he climbed back into his carriage and followed her again, this time back to her green-painted inn, the Uha Verde—the Green Island.
There he sank back into the crowd, and his hard crystal eyes narrowed when he saw the effect this lady was having on a dark-haired gentleman, just then descending the stairs, who stopped dead at sight of her, peered forward thunderstruck, then turned and bolted back the way he had come.
The lady, thought the Watcher, had proved extremely interesting. He pulled out his handsome gold pocket watch and frowned. Best not be late for his appointment—the prince would not like it. He could resume his surveillance of the English beauty tomorrow.
He moved with the ease and assurance of his kind through the crowd at the Green Island and stood outside, frowning impatiently. A few moments later an ornate vehicle pulled by matched white horses rolled up. New arrivals at the Green Island craned their necks to see who was leaving in a royal coach.
They would have been astonished to learn that the tall gentleman who climbed into the coach with such an air had no visible means of support and no royal blood whatsoever—unless one could count a bit of it that came down through the dalliance of that long-gone and illegitimate wielder of power in England, John of Gaunt. This young man was a swashbuckling adventurer who had been ousted—for gaming with marked cards or the wrong dice, for challenging to duels those who must go unscathed, for sleeping with ladies already committed to men of wealth and power—from half the capitals of Europe. Sent down from Oxford, cashiered from the army, cast out by his family and warned not to return to London, he had traveled under many names. The most recent—and the one he used here—was Leeds Birmingham. Neither name was his own. He had chosen them, with wry humor, from among the names of the many towns he had left on a fast horse with hot pursuit following after.
His face, which might have been too good-looking had it not been for the sinister addition of a couple of dueling scars, was smiling reflectively. He leaned his elbow upon the coach’s open window, grateful for the breeze that blew against his tanned forehead and tawny hair as he was carried through Lisbon to a well-known tavern.
The prince would be pleased, he thought, with this day’s work.
Cassandra, preoccupied with her search for her mother, and dejected at finding her grave, for
she had nourished the hope that her mother was still alive, had not even noticed Leeds Birmingham hovering in the background. Nor had she, on returning to the Green Island, observed the remarkable performance of the dark-haired gentleman who had bolted back up the stairs at sight of her and was at this moment seething with unrest.
He paced the floor. Surely she had not recognized him! No, of course not, that was ridiculous. He had seen her when she was going to school back in Cambridge—and no one could forget that face! Indeed, it was that face that had made him show an interest in her little sister, in hopes of wangling an introduction to the Beauty, as the Cambridge students had dubbed Cassandra. But—he bit his lip and thought back—she had run away from the school before he had had the opportunity to meet her. Phoebe might well have described him to her in detail, but that description would fit a thousand men. Cassandra would have no way of remembering him unless he had, by some unlucky chance, been pointed out to her.
Still, it was a chance he dared not take. He dashed out and knocked on a door down the hall—the door of a much more resplendent room than his own.The lady’s maid answered and showed him in.
A young girl, rather mousy in appearance despite the elegance of her gown, greeted his distraught expression with an anxious, “Clive, what on earth is the matter?”
“I have heard a rumor, Della,” muttered Clive, looking about him as if the walls might have ears, “that there may be a case of plague here at the Green Island. ”
“What?” Della jumped to her feet. “But we must leave Lisbon at once then! I will hurry next door and tell Mama that we must pack for England!”
“No need of that yet, Della. Indeed, it may not even be true.” With a masterful gesture, Clive—Phoebe’s Clive, Lord Houghton—barred her rush to the door. “I have a far better solution. There is a place I am told we must visit, and it is some distance from Lisbon, near the fishing village of Cascais. We could pack our things, leave this inn at once, and journey there. We could travel in leisurely style, and if we hear there is plague spreading in Lisbon, we will not return, we will simply journey on to Oporto and take ship for home from there.”
“Oh, Clive, all your ideas are so splendid!” Young Della’s gaze upon him was adoring. “I will hurry to tell Mama. If there is even a thought of plague here at the inn, I am sure she will be eager to leave at once!” She paused in the doorway. “Where did you say we are going?”
Well, he had got out of that one very nicely! Clive grinned. “It is at Estoril and is called the Boca do Inferno— the Mouth of Hell.
Della gave him a doubtful look. Then her trusting smile flashed again. “We will be ready in an hour, Clive.”
Back in his own room, Clive mopped his brow. He had been living a lie these past weeks and he had no intention of letting it all crash down on his head. The ladies he was traveling with—Lady Farrington, her daughter Della, and their respective maids—considered him a highly eligible, if slightly tarnished, bachelor.
He intended for them to hold that belief.
Clive had made a career of lying. Blessed with social position, family wealth, a doting mother and a certain stripling grace (his friends told him he had the melancholy air of a poet), young Lord Houghton had cut quite a swath back in England. Then had come an assortment of disgraces—scrapes with women, welched gambling debts, being barred from certain London clubs—which even his tolerant mother, the dowager Marchioness of Greensea, had frowned upon. With the intent of “making a man of him, ” she had cut off his funds while he was at Cambridge.
Phoebe had heard about that. And she had put out rumors that she was a great heiress. Clive had not entirely taken the bait. He had seduced Phoebe—or rather he thought he had, actually it was the other way around—and had found her both enterprising and ingenious in bed. Such talent at her age surprised him. With that as a lure, he had consented to take her to London and enter into a Fleet Street marriage. He had reasoned that if Phoebe was not an heiress, he would be no worse off, for Fleet Street marriages were hardly legal, and if her claims turned out to be true and she actually was heiress to large holdings in the colonies, he would parade the fact that he had debauched her and her father would promptly force him into marriage.
In London, after their Fleet Street ceremony, he had heard about Rowan Keynes’ prowess with the sword and that had changed his plans somewhat. He was glad enough to flee with Phoebe into the countryside and await developments. And for a time Phoebe’s inventiveness with landlords and tradespeople, her flair for arranging escapes—she was not Rowan’s daughter for nothing—had held him in thrall. But no money had been forthcoming, and when they returned to London he had had every intention of abandoning her and trying to make his peace with his mother, who had refused to see him ever since he had taken up with the wayward Phoebe.
He had overlooked but one thing—the passage of time. Rowan Keynes had descended upon him and explained matters at the point of a rapier. Forced into marriage with Phoebe—and he went docilely enough, once it was borne in on him that he was already her husband by common law and that if he satisfied her father with a church wedding there would be a large dowry—he had tried to reconcile with his mother.
But the dowager Marchioness considered Phoebe’s behavior scandalous and her son’s only a little less so. She wept but she steadfastly refused to receive them. She tore up his letters unread and so did not learn that her son had married his paramour in a church.
Cast back upon their own, the pair set themselves up for a time in Kent, but soon Clive’s gaming and Phoebe’s extravagance had eaten away her generous dowry and they were again on the run from their creditors.
Their next years were stormy ones. When they were in funds, they had lived high. When they were not, they quarreled. Sometimes Clive threatened to leave her—and once or twice he had. Always she had found him again, and with money—money she had wheedled out of Rowan Keynes, who found her requests hard to refuse—they had been reconciled. Eventually Phoebe had reduced her father to penury and after that lost touch with him.
Clive had brightened at the news of his father-in-law’s death but it seemed Phoebe would receive nothing from the estate. The house on Grosvenor Square had long since been sold for debt. Phoebe had no known prospects; she was estranged from her older sister, who lived at some unlikely place—Cumberland, he thought.
Their situation, when Clive had assessed it, was hopeless.
He had left Phoebe in Liverpool, telling her that he was going to make one more effort—this time alone—to get his mother to accept them. Phoebe had been glad to wait.
But his method of getting in to see the Marchioness would have caused even Phoebe’s stout heart to waver. He sent in word that his “mistress” had run away with a sea captain to America and that he was most heartily sorry for all the trouble he had caused.
He was received as a penitent. And after all, why not, reasoned his mother. Clive’s reputation was a little tarnished, but he might still make a good marriage.
Instantly she set about it. Two of her good friends, Lady Rhoads and the Countess of Scattersby, were on the brink of leaving for Portugal in the hope that the more equable climate of Lisbon might cure the Countess of her painful rheumatism. And they were taking with them Lady Farrington and her daughter Della, who, though a mousy girl who had made little impact during her first London season, would now become heiress to a large estate, for her half-brother Roger had died in the spring and her elderly grandfather, who had intended to bequeath his fortune to Roger, now intended to leave everything to young Della.
Ah, Della would cut a swath in London season, prophesied Lady Rhoads, for word of her newfound fortune would have got around by then!
No, she would not! silently vowed the Marchioness. For by then her son Clive—a thoroughly eligible scapegrace— would have plucked the golden apple from the tree!
“Lady Rhoads has graciously accepted you into her party,” she told her son. “I know that Della is not pretty, but she will in
herit half of Northumberland.” (The Marchioness was given to slight overstatement, but her son got the drift.) “I expect you”—she leaned forward, frowning to emphasize her next words—“to return from Lisbon betrothed to Lady Farrington’s daughter!”
And to further that end, she financed Clive’s trip and sent him off to his former tailor to make him “presentable. ”
It had been so wonderful to be back with his own set, spending money again, with not a care in the world other than the fit of his new clothes! And he had made himself so agreeable and paid such ardent court to the susceptible Della all the way to Portugal that when word reached them in Lisbon that Lady Rhoads’ husband had died and she and the Countess hastily embarked for England, Lady Farrington had decided to stay on in the Portuguese capital “since Clive and Della were getting along so nicely.”
Busy enjoying the delights of Lisbon, Clive had actually forgotten Phoebe for a while, waiting for him back in Liverpool.
But the sight of Cassandra, incredibly strolling into his very inn in Lisbon, had promptly restored Phoebe to his memory. And sent him off with his party to visit the Mouth of Hell. For Cassandra was certain to know that Clive and Phoebe were legally married at last, and she must not meet Lady Farrington or Della. If she did, the truth was sure to come out and his own chances would be ruined.
Cassandra was entirely unaware of the stir she was causing. Back at the inn, after she imparted to Wend the gloomy news that she had found her mother s grave, her thoughts had drifted back to Cumberland—and Drew, and Aldershot Grange. She wondered wistfully if Meg was getting enough exercise, if Clover was getting enough cream. Of course they were, Wend scolded her, for had not Livesay promised to see both himself? And Cassandra sighed and agreed, for like Wend, Livesay was more than a loyal servant—he was an old and trusted friend.
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