The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy (11 page)

“Ah, how very delightful, we shall be quite a little crowd of English visitors. You must allow me to introduce you to society there, so many delightful people. Lord Byron is presently in Italy, and he draws quite a throng about him.”

Signora Lessini spoke for the first time. “Such society can hardly be considered suitable for a young man, Lord Lucius.”

“Poetical society is surely the very thing for a young man to experience before embarking on a course of study at the university,” Warren said.

“Not that particular poet's society,” said Titus. “Byron's a good friend of mine as it happens, but I wouldn't recommend his company to those of formative years. Leave the boy alone, Warren.”

“May we ask what is the purpose of your journey, then, Mr. Manningtree?” asked Mrs. Vineham with a flutter of her eyelashes. “You are given to travelling, I know. Perhaps you seek to escape a romantic entanglement; they say that is a common reason to leave the country.”

Signora Lessini's eyes flashed with a quick anger, while Titus returned an adroit enough reply. “Questions are such an unsatisfactory method of making conversation, do not you agree? Mr. Hawkins, may I pass you this dish of goose, done in the Swiss style? Your plate is empty, I notice.”

Savouring the goose, which was cooked in a rich, sweet sauce, Alethea let the conversation flow about her. It was edgy, with undertones that she didn't entirely comprehend, and she preferred to remain, as it were, on the sidelines.

Her time abroad, brief as it was, had wrought a change in Alethea. A considerable change, and one that she was aware of as she contemplated those seated around the table. She was by a long way the youngest person present. The Lessinis were middle-aged, it seemed to her, in their late thirties or so. Lord Lucius must be even older; he looked to be of an age with her father, but might be younger and simply carrying his years less well. Mr. Warren and Mr. Manningtree were the closest to her in age, but they must be at least thirty, and very likely more.

Previously, she would have had no part in such a gathering. As a married woman, she might have expected to take her place in society and to mingle with a greater mix of company than was allowed to a young, unmarried girl. Given the peculiar circumstances of her marriage, however, she had gone from one form of protectiveness to another. Her sorties while still in the schoolroom had been brief and hadn't brought her face-to-face with the kind of sophistication and subtlety that she was now encountering.

The words these people spoke, and what they meant by them, were two different things. And they presented a very different aspect of the wedded state to any she was used to. Because she came from a large and affectionate family, was the youngest of five sisters, her experience of more complex arrangements was limited. The Fitzwilliams were another couple with a family and a regular way of life. So were her other cousins, the Gardiners, despite their great wealth.

But here was Signora Lessini, married for a second time at such an age, and to a man of quite a different rank in society. Having enjoyed a liaison, if Figgins's reports were true, of many years standing with Mr. Manningtree. He had, it seemed, never married, his attachment to a married woman being a satisfactory enough arrangement, Alethea supposed. Mrs. Vineham was a widow, had been a widow for two years, she had told Alethea. Now, according to what Figgins had gleaned from Mrs. Vineham's discontented maid, on the look-out for a second husband. The first one had been drunk most of the time, and had defenestrated himself while on a drinking binge in a low part of town. Much to Mrs. Vineham's relief, apparently.

So where did that leave the state of marriage and the chance of wedded bliss? Was her own matrimonial misery perhaps closer to the norm than the quiet happiness of her cousins, or the more lively but devoted relationship enjoyed by her parents?

Alethea had grown up supposing that in due course she would marry, as most girls of her rank and fortune might expect to. Married women had domestic duties and obligations, compensated for by the greater freedom allowed to a wealthy wife as to going about in company, attending the opera and musical performances, and spending as much time on music as she wanted.

This, she now realised, was a naive and ill-informed view of the world. No wonder the mamas and chaperons kept such a close eye on their ewe lambs, lest their charges become too aware of what made the world wag. Only those girls brought up in one of the great aristocratic houses were likely to learn early on the reality of adult life; for the rest of her sex, innocence was indeed bliss, if a bliss destined to be shattered with marriage and entry into the polite world.

One thing she was now sure of: she would never go back to her husband. With some men it might be possible to work out a modus vivendi, but not with Norris Napier. With her travels had come competence, independence, and a quickening of maturity. With every league covered, every change of coach, every new arrangement made, Alethea felt more confident. She liked paying her way, she liked coping with strange people and strange situations. She liked using her schoolroom languages and she envied other travellers their greater fluency. She was eagerly looking forward to Italy, something she would not have believed possible only a little while before. Then she had only imagined a difficult, unsettling journey that would end in the relief and security of joining her sister and Wytton.

 

Titus had been observing Alethea as she ate her way steadily through the meal. Why was she abstracted, what was she thinking about? She certainly had the appetite of a young man rather than of a young woman. Could he be mistaken? No. Had any of the others noticed what was so obvious to him? Apparently not. It was such a preposterous notion that a young woman should be travelling disguised as a man that the idea wouldn't enter any of their heads. The too-smooth cheek would be taken as evidence of his youthfulness, while her voice, unusually deep for a girl, gave nothing away, and the slim, athletic frame and her height were well suited to her pretence.

His attention was caught by a new subject; Lessini had turned the conversation, showing himself to be possessed of better manners than Warren or that scrub Lucius Moreby, who were supporting Mrs. Vineham in her focus on the impertinent and personal.

“While you are in Venice,” Lessini was saying to Warren, “you should visit Delancourt, interested as you are in works of art. He is a dealer of some renown, and I have heard that he has some very fine paintings in his hands just now.”

Warren's face gave nothing away; he had a card player's ability to remain expressionless. Only for a second, by the flicker of an eye, did he betray himself to Titus.

Delancourt. It was not a name he knew, and Warren had recovered and was now holding forth to Lessini about coins from the ancient world. Coins, forsooth; George Warren hadn't the least interest in coins.

What could Emily have seen in Lessini? He supposed the man to be a pleasant enough fellow, not one to set the world alight, yet there must be some hidden virtue in him for Emily to turn him, Titus, down in the Italian's favour. Titus winced inwardly as the thought crossed his mind that perhaps Lessini embodied the traditional view of the Latin lover. Only he and Emily had been well suited between the sheets; he could not be mistaken in a matter such as that, setting aside normal masculine pride and disinclination to consider oneself in any way lacking in the amorous arts.

It was not as though the late Mr. Thruxton had been a tyrannical or overbearing husband. He had been an amiable, good-tempered man, with no particular interest in the female part of humanity; a scholar and a man concerned about his estates and his horses. He had known of his wife's particular friendship with Titus, had never played the cuckold, had been grateful to Emily for preferring to spend most of the year apart from him. She favoured town over the country life, and this suited Thruxton, who had been perfectly happy to pass a twelvemonth without visiting London. He had found solace, so Emily said, in the arms of a local woman; there was nothing in that marriage to make Emily fall into the arms of a man on account of his being kinder or more easygoing.

Whatever it was, Titus wished from the bottom of his heart that he was not fixed in this inn with the pair of them. It still wrenched his heart to be in Emily's company, and she was avoiding him, deliberately avoiding him. Not that he would force his attentions on her, but surely he deserved an explanation?

He wasn't going to get one. The sooner he was out of here and out of her company, and on his way to Italy, the better. Women, he told himself, were simply too much trouble. He had learned his lesson. He had loved Emily, and look at the suffering that had brought him. Better to set up an expensive mistress who would go on her way without a backward glance when the novelty wore off. No ties, no strings, no eyes eating into one's heart and making life a misery.

They were talking about music now, and this appeared to be a subject that made the disguised girl come to life. So she was a musician, was she? That wasn't surprising if she had had the kind of upbringing he was coming to believe she had. Only, the question remained: If she were a gentleman's daughter, what on earth was she doing togged out in a pair of pantaloons and boots, travelling virtually alone across the continent of Europe?

The landlord, beaming, was pleased to inform his guests that the instrument in the parlour was in good condition, and that they were more than welcome to use it if they chose. He had few other people staying at the inn at this season of the year, and there could be no objection to the English party, as he thought of them, amusing themselves with some music.

“There is a good fire in that room, and you may drink your coffee in there and the waiter shall bring wine or brandy for the gentlemen, as you wish.”

They made their way to the parlour, led by the rustling skirts of Mrs. Vineham. Lord Lucius was muttering about cards, but she quelled him, saying there was time enough for that later, with an entire wearisome evening to be got through before it was time to retire. She paused for a moment at the threshold of the room, said that it would do well enough, and asked the landlord whether there were any news on the state of the passes.

He shrugged. “There is more rain to come, and that will melt the snow. However, if the rain is too fierce and the thaw too sudden there is the problem of floods, of streams overflowing, of mud—all hazardous to the traveller. I believe you will be at my inn for some little while longer.”

“Lord, what a bore,” said Mrs. Vineham, glancing around the room before appropriating what she considered the best place to sit. “We shall be forced to all kinds of stratagems to entertain ourselves; it will come to charades and recitations, Lucius.”

“Not if I have anything to do with it, it won't,” he said, sitting down discontentedly before the fire and stretching out a hand to the blaze. He wore a huge solitaire ruby and tilted his head to admire the deep colour of it in the firelight.

Signore Lessini, with no more than a brief look which showed what he thought of Lord Lucius's underbred ways, ushered his wife to a comfortable seat. She touched his sleeve, giving him a look of great affection that made Titus feel as though he'd been kicked in the chest.

“You had best play for us, my dear,” she said. “Perhaps Mrs. Vineham will honour us with a song?”

“Not I,” said that lady. “I gave up all pretence at accomplishments years ago. I have better things to occupy my time. Mr. Hawkins, you are a young man recently out of school; did they teach you to sing there?”

Her voice had a touch of contempt in it, but Mr. Hawkins appeared not to notice.

“I can sing a little, ma'am.”

“If you studied with Silvestrini, then it must be more than a little,” said Lessini as he turned over the music that lay on the pianoforte. “I never knew him to take on an indifferent pupil.”

Alethea bowed, said that she would be happy to oblige, begged Signore Lessini to favour them with a performance on his own to begin with. Then she settled herself down—in the darkest part of the room, Titus noticed.

Signore Lessini played a sonata by Clementi, a delight to those present who took any pleasure in good music. That did not include Lord Lucius, who yawned and fidgeted his way through the piece and only came to life when Lessini was joined by Alethea.

His lordship's rather protuberant eyes swivelled to focus on the slim figure standing very upright, one hand on the pianoforte.

“A high tenor voice,” Mrs. Vineham whispered to Warren. “Almost an alto.”

“What did you expect, from a eunuch?” was Warren's reply. Mrs. Vineham laughed, curled her lip at Signora Lessini's sshing sound, and sent Titus a provocative look over her shoulder.

He ignored her. He was held by the song, by the voice, by the singer. So that was who she was. That was why he had all along had a sense of recognition. She was Wytton's sister-in-law, Fitzwilliam Darcy's daughter, no less. He couldn't believe the evidence of his ears at first, but no, he couldn't doubt it. His memory carried him back to Shillingford Abbey, to those days when the happy company gathering there for its owner's nuptials had taken him out of himself and dispersed some of the bitterness left by his stalled political career.

He had admired the music and the musician then. It had crossed his mind that when she came out, in a year or so, she would stand out among the usual insipid crowd of young ladies being paraded on the marriage mart.