Well, if that wasn’t just the oddest statement. If it had been said in any other tone of voice, Poppy might have taken it as an insult. “What do you mean by that?”
“You’re always thinking.”
“Isn’t that what it means to be human?”
“You’re different,” he said, and strangely, she rather liked that he felt that way.
“Do you have anything like that?” she asked. “Something you can do with your hands so that your mind can become quiet?”
He looked at her with a curiously intense stare, and she wasn’t sure if he understood what she’d meant.
“The sort of thing you can do and still carry on a conversation if necessary, but it . . . settles you.” She gave a helpless little shrug. “I don’t know how else to explain it.”
“No, I understand,” he said. He hesitated for a moment, or maybe he was simply choosing his words with care. But then he reached out and touched the drawn-thread embroidery she had just been admiring.
“I like to build houses out of playing cards,” he said.
She was momentarily struck speechless. “I beg your pardon?”
“Have you never made a house of cards? You use regular playing cards, and then you set the first two into a T -shape.” He demonstrated with his hands, as if he were holding actual cards. “Then you bring in a third, and make an H . There’s really no other way to start. Well, I suppose you could try building in triangles, but that’s very advanced. I would not recommend it.”
Poppy just stared at him. She wouldn’t have thought he would take such a thing so seriously.
She wouldn’t have thought that anyone would take such a thing so seriously. But she found it rather charming that he did.
“Once you have that stable,” he continued, “you can build to your heart’s content.” He paused. “Or until one of your brothers comes and knocks the whole thing down.”
Poppy chuckled; she could well imagine a similar scene in her own household. “I don’t think I’ve ever done that,” she said. “It never even occurred to me that one could build with playing cards.”
“You need more than one deck,” he said with authority. “If you wish to make things interesting.”
“Alas, my life has been nothing but interesting lately.”
He gave a laugh at that. “Maybe I can find a deck or two here in Lisbon and show you tomorrow.”
“On the ship ?”
“Oh, right.” Sheepishly, he pressed his lips together. “That’s not going to work.”
They wandered out of the shop and back out into the bustling streets of the Baixa. It was truly a lovely area, but then something occurred to Poppy, and she turned to the captain and asked, “Why does this part of the city look so new?”
“Ah.” He stopped walking and turned to her with an almost professorial air. “There was an earthquake here about thirty years ago. It was devastating. Much of the old city was destroyed.”
Poppy immediately glanced this way and that, as if she could possibly see signs of the earthquake thirty years after the fact.
“This area was completely rebuilt,” the captain said.
“How grand these avenues are,” Poppy murmured, gazing down toward the waterfront. “So straight.” She wasn’t sure there was a street so straight and long in all of England.
“The new city was laid out on a grid.” He swept his arm in a wide horizontal arc. “See how much light it allows. The air quality is improved too, because it does not get trapped in stagnant pockets.”
Poppy had not noticed it before, but there was indeed a lovely, fresh breeze tickling at her skin. She tried to remember ever experiencing such a thing in London. She could not.
“It’s remarkable,” she said, craning her neck to peer up and down the street. There was something about the collection of buildings that was very harmonious. Each was almost exactly the same, four or five stories tall, with an arched arcade on the ground floor. The windows were uniform—of the same size on each level of every building, and they all measured the exact same distance apart.
It should have created a dull monotony, but it did not. Not at all. Each building had its own character, with tiny differences that gave the street such joy. Some buildings were painted, some not. One was even covered with tile. Most had balconies on the first story above the shops, but a few had flat façades, and then a few more sported balconies on every window up to the top. And they were not all of the same width. The grander buildings measured six or eight windows across, but many others had just three.
And yet still, for all the differences, they fit . As if they could not possibly have been built anywhere else.
“It’s beautiful. So very modern.” She looked over at Captain James. He was watching her with a curious intensity, as if he truly cared what she thought about the architecture. Which was preposterous. Because why would he? This wasn’t his home; he’d had nothing to do with the designs.
And yet, with his eyes on hers, so brilliantly blue and inquisitive, it seemed almost imperative that she share her thoughts. “What I find most interesting,” she said, looking back down the street for a moment, “is that there is no single element that is unfamiliar. The windows, the arches . . . They are of the neoclassical style, are they not?”
He nodded, and she continued. “But when it is all put together in this way, it makes something entirely new. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.”
“I agree,” he said. “It’s truly original. I try to visit this area every time I’m in Lisbon. It’s not always possible. Sometimes I never make it past the port. And the old city also has its charms. But this . . .” He waved his arm out again, as if putting modernity on display. “This is the future.”
Suddenly Poppy could not imagine why he’d chosen to be a sailor. He’d never been so animated when talking about the sea. He had not seemed un happy, and in fact she suspected there were many aspects of life as a sea captain that he loved. But this—these buildings, this architecture—this was his true passion.
She wondered if he realized this himself.
“But this is not even the most remarkable thing,” he said suddenly. “Here, come.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her along the pavement, and when he glanced back to look at her, she saw that his eyes were even more lit with excitement. She couldn’t imagine what new detail had him so aglow, but then he led her inside one of the elegant new buildings.
“Look,” he said. “Is it not amazing?”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” she said carefully. They were in some sort of governmental building, stylish and new, but not otherwise exceptional.
“No, you can’t see it,” he said, even as he motioned to . . . a wall? A doorway?
“You just told me to look,” she told him.
He grinned. “Sorry. It’s what is within the walls that is revolutionary. Each is built over a Pombaline cage.”
She blinked. “A Pomba-what?”
“A Pombaline cage. It’s—well, it doesn’t matter what it’s called. It’s an entirely new type of construction meant to make buildings safer in earthquakes. You start with a wooden cage—”
“A cage ?”
“Not like in a prison,” he said, chuckling at her reaction. “Think of it more as a framework. A three-dimensional lattice, if you will. It’s built into the walls, and then covered with other material. So if the earth shakes, it helps to distribute the force.”
“Force?”
“Of the earthquake. If you can spread it out”—he made a motion with his hands rather like Moses parting the Red Sea—“it’s less likely to cause major damage.”
“I suppose that makes sense.” She frowned, trying to envision the concept in her head.
But the captain clearly wanted to make sure she understood. “Think of it this way. If I pull your hair—”
She jumped back. “What?”
“No, bear with me, I promise there’s a physics lesson in this, and didn’t you recently bemoan your lack of study in the field?”