The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy (20 page)

Titus woke with a sense of immense well-being, only marred by a slight nagging feeling that he couldn't at once identify.

Something to do with Warren, no doubt, a worry that he had let an evening slip away in pleasure and dancing when he could have been out on the hunt for Warren.

If that was the case, then the nag should have taken itself off with the arrival of Bootle, accompanied by servants, in morning livery now, bearing the inevitable water and towels, a barber, and the major-domo, who came to assure himself that Signore Manningtree had passed his hours of sleep in supreme comfort, with nothing to mar his slumbers.

He managed to get rid of them all, noticed that Bootle had a great air of self-satisfaction, and asked him what he was looking so pleased about.

“It happens that one of Mr. Hellifield's servants is fluent in English as well as in Italian, a knowing and likely man, so I persuaded him to make some enquiries on your behalf as to the whereabouts of Mr. Warren.”

“You've found Warren? Good. Where does he lodge?”

Bootle consulted a slip of paper that he held in his hand. “In the Via Orsini, which I understand is not far from here.”

“I'll ask Mr. Hellifield if one or other of his subtle servants will keep an eye on the fellow for me. He may think it odd, but I'm sure he'll oblige me in this matter if he can.”

It was swiftly arranged, Harry being more than happy to send one—“or several, if you wish it”—of his servants on this mission. “It'll give them something to do, I have so many that most of them are kept very idle. Being Italian, they love an intrigue, so I'm sure you'll get all the information about Warren's movements that you can wish. Quite like old times, when I used to send out intelligencers into enemy territory, do you remember?”

“And a set of ruffians they mostly were. I hope your servants here are a more respectable lot of men.”

“One does not reside in Venice to be respectable, Titus. We can leave that to the Shires and the dowds in Bath. By the bye, are you still at all interested in paintings? I remember that at one time you seemed likely to follow in your father's footsteps as a patron of the arts and a collector of pictures.”

There it was again, that home thrust. Not done with any vicious intent, but disconcerting the way Harry seemed almost to be aware of what was uppermost in his friend's mind.

“Why do you ask?”

“My dear, this is Venice, the very birthplace of so many great paintings, and since the war finished, Italy has been a sea of flotsam and jetsam of paintings, sculptures, fine old books, masterpieces of all kinds. Napoleon and his
banditi
were great removers of whatever took their fancy, as you well know. Officially, to take it back to Paris, centre of the new regime. Unofficially, to benefit by whatever could be stolen or hoaxed out of someone else's possession. Even, I'm told, some fair dealing with a price offered and paid. There is lately come to Venice a fat rogue by the name of Delancourt. He has found himself a Venetian wife and set up shop in a crumbling palazzo where the most dazzling works of art as well as the most obscure may be seen and purchased.”

Delancourt! That was the name that Lessini had mentioned. “You interest me, Harry. Go on.”

“They say that what is on show is but a fraction of the goods he has to sell, and that he has remarkable sources of supply, can obtain for you a classical urn or a Tintoretto at the drop of a hat, should you so wish it, and should your pockets be deep enough. He is an engaging fellow, not to be trusted an inch, but I hardly need to tell you that.”

“Do you buy from him?”

“I am no collector, and I was fortunate—this house and its contents were never ransacked, neither by the French nor by the Austrians. My uncle, my mother's brother, has many useful connections, and so, although I was unable to live here at that time, for obvious reasons, he saw to it that my property emerged intact.”

“You always were lucky.”

They were sitting in yet another exquisite room, and Titus watched the play of light and shade as rippling flashes from the water outside were reflected back into the high room by artfully placed mirrors. “Your palazzo is itself a work of art. Quite perfect. The coolness of the marble, the red silk on the walls, the light and air from the balcony, it is all charming.”

“Soon the smell from the canal will become unendurable, and then the windows will be closed, and the room not used again until the autumn. For the moment, we can enjoy it. So do you wish to call upon Delancourt? I shall send round to make an appointment; he allows only one client at a time. He will be delighted to see me, I can promise you; he resents the fact that I do not buy, and is always hoping to persuade me to acquire a nymph or a drawing by da Vinci.”

“I should very much like to see the man.”

“It will be a day or so before he can fit us in; he likes to keep his clients waiting. Meanwhile, there are all the delights of Venice to savour; it is some years since you have been here. My gondola is at your disposal; go on a tour, remind yourself of its beauties.”

Titus looked across at Harry. “What are you doing today, if you want to be rid of me?”

“No such thing. I have my lawyer calling round this morning, and I must attend to some matters of that sort. After that, I'm entirely at your disposal.”

“Are you? What became of the fair Cecilia? You can't have grown bored with such a glorious creature.”

“No, indeed. She prefers to spend much of her time out at Moli, where I have a house. We shall visit her there. I know she will be pleased to see you again.”

“You'll have to marry one of these days, Harry. Otherwise, what will become of your inheritance?”

Harry sighed. “I know, I know. My uncles, of whom I have far too many, are always harping on that theme. I swear that I shall come to London next year for the season and find myself a bride.”

“Next year? Why not this year?”

“What with one thing and another, I have left it too late.”

“Why not an Italian bride? Will an English miss take to living in Venice?”

“The English miss, who will rapidly become an English matron, will produce a son or two, and then she may live in England, at Milverley, and I shall return to my life in Venice.”

Titus frowned. “That's mighty cold-blooded of you.”

“Marriage is a matter of business. And you're in no position to cast stones. I don't see you filling the nursery at Beaumont.”

“I have a brother who has four sons.”

“Yes, and that sister-in-law of yours, what's her name? Christabel, that's it. An appalling woman, who longs to lord it at Beaumont.”

“I know it.”

“Don't you mind?”

“The only way she can lord it there is if I'm no longer on this earth, in which case I do not suppose I will mind very much who is there. The boys are well enough, and I find the idea of marrying merely to produce an heir very distasteful. I would not choose to marry without affection, and as I told you, the time for that is past. If one does not marry young, I'm of the opinion that it becomes harder and harder to take the plunge, and when you reach my age, it is almost an impossibility.”

Harry was amused. “You speak as though you are in your dotage. Since we are almost exactly of an age, I take exception to that. My case is different. I adore Cecilia, and have no room in my heart for another woman.”

“Marry Cecilia.”

“Cecilia is already married.”

Titus sat up at that. “I had no idea. Where is the complaisant husband, or do you live in daily danger of being run through by an exasperated cuckold?”

“I do not. Her husband is not quite right in his wits, and is cared for by his loving family. He had a fall from a horse or some such thing, and never fully recovered. Cecilia is a Catholic, and a bourgeoise to her soul. Even if her husband were to die, she would not marry me. She considers my world far too wicked and immoral for her to wish to become part of it.”

How strangely people's lives turned out, Titus thought as Harry went out, leaving him to enjoy another pot of coffee and read the English newspapers, which Harry had brought from England every week. When one was young and romantic, things were so clear. One consorted with women of the town or had a mistress or kept an opera dancer. Then came marriage, setting up house, becoming a family man. With adventures on the side if so inclined, although for many men, a new sense of morality crept up on them, and they settled down to enjoy a more domestic kind of existence.

Only if you kept your eyes open, you soon noticed how many exceptions there were. Those such as Lord Lucius went one way, a widowed Mrs. Vineham another. Somehow there he was, back to thinking about Emily. Harry had no idea how fortunate he was to have his voluptuous Cecilia, no chance of her upping and marrying some stranger and proceeding to set up a new life, jollying about abroad, never a backward glance to her years with her lover.

The coffee tasted bitter, and some grains caught in his teeth. He put his cup down with a sharp bang; at once a servant leapt forward to replenish the cup or remove it, whatever the signore wanted.

He didn't know how Harry could bear having this soft-footed tribe of immaculate servants hovering about the place. And no, he didn't want the gondolier to be summoned, he'd go about on his own two feet, thank you very much.

Alethea was in the nursery at Pemberley. There was a storm outside, which would account for the thud of thunder in her head and the flashing light wavering across her consciousness. She was ill, that was why she was lying down. Here was her nurse, bending over her, coaxing her to swallow the bitter mixture she was holding to her lips. What was her nurse saying, why did she speak in so odd a way?

That must be her governess, Griffy, lurking there in the shadows, now speaking to her in a firm voice, telling her to take the medicine. It wasn't Griffy's voice, though. It was Figgins who was speaking to her.

And she wasn't in Pemberley, no, she was a thousand miles away, in Venice, and not lying in bed in any nursery, but propped against the stone corner of a bridge. The nurse wasn't a nurse, but a short man with a face like a walnut. Only the foul taste of the medicine was the same, Alethea thought as she swallowed some with an involuntary gulp, and felt her stomach heave. Smelling salts were waved under nose; she loathed the smell of smelling salts. The ammonia caught in her nose, made her eyes water, but it served to clear her head.

“Figgins?” she said, struggling to sit in a more upright position. She put a hand up to her aching skull and looked with dismay at the red patch on her fingers. “Did I fall?”

“You did not,” said Figgins, cutting across the torrent of Italian from walnut-face. “You was attacked, and robbed, and so was I; at least I escaped with my head unbroken, but they slit and took my coat, the same as they did with you.”

That was why she was in her shirt-sleeves and waistcoat. “Oh Lord,” she said, putting up a grubby hand to shade her eyes. “All our money?”

“All of it. This kind gentleman happened to come round the corner, otherwise I think you'd have been tipped into the canal and never lived to tell the tale. Drowned, in that black water; these canals ought never to be allowed.”

Alethea managed the shadow of a smile as she thanked the little man. He waved her thanks away. He was an apothecary, he said, which is why he had the restorative draught and the salts about him. Where were their lodgings?

Through the haze of pain in her head, Alethea grappled with the fact that they were now penniless, in a foreign country, with no acquaintance to call upon for help, even had they not been passing themselves off as men. Imagine arriving at the door of some acquaintance of Papa and saying, I am Alethea, Mr. Darcy's daughter.

One thing was clear: she and Figgins couldn't return to their lodgings. They owed for a night's stay already, and the landlady was not the sort of woman to take kindly to excuses for nonpayment. The mere sight of them in their shirts would tell her what had befallen them, and Good Samaritan was unlikely to be her middle name. She'd seize their luggage, demand payment, make a scene, call a constable; no, it was not to be thought of.

It was growing dark. She and Figgins had to find somewhere to stay. “I can't remember,” she said to the man, gingerly feeling the back of her head. And to Figgins, a quick instruction to look dumb and say nothing.

“Your servant, he must know the address,” the apothecary said with a frown that made his eyebrows meet.

“He is not very quick-witted, speaks not a word of Italian, stays with me but has no notion of his way about Venice.”

The little man shrugged. “Then you had best come with me. I can only offer you a poor room, but it is a roof over your head, and a clean bed. With a night's sleep, your head will clear, and in the morning you will remember where you are staying. Do you know your name?”

Alethea thought it wise to shake her head, immediately regretted the impulse, and so made a negative gesture with her hand.

“Ask your servant.”

“He wants to know my name,” Alethea said to Figgins.

Figgins pursed her lips; Miss Alethea wasn't as gone in her wits as all that.

“Say it,” Alethea hissed at her.

“Mr. Aloysius Hawkins.”

“Very well, Mr. Orkins, if you will lean on me, it is but a step to my shop. We live above it, myself and my wife.”

 

Figgins wondered what was in the evil-smelling liquid the apothecary had brought up for Alethea to drink. This being Italy, where poisonings were as common as sneezes, she hadn't wanted Alethea to touch a drop of it.

Nor had Miss Alethea seemed very keen, only she said that her head hurt abominably, and the apothecary was certain that it would ease the pain and help her sleep.

“It is nonsense, Figgins, that all Italians carry vials of poison about with them. We are not living in the Middle Ages.”

Yes, Figgins said inwardly, you and I know that, but do they?

However, it seemed to have worked; there Miss Alethea was, sleeping peacefully enough, and that was the best thing for her. If she had stayed awake, she'd be fretting over her predicament, and what was the use of that?

It was a practical matter, Figgins decided, and one that she would have to resolve. She knew what it was like to have no money, while Miss Alethea had not the least notion of it. And the lack of so much as a penny in their pockets would like as not make her mistress fret and worry, and that wasn't going to help her head mend.

Could she safely leave her for an hour or so? She looked around the small attic. It had a narrow bed, on which Alethea lay, a chest, a small table, and a single chair. A pallet had been brought up and laid down by Mrs. Apothecary; Figgins had slept on worse. The only window was a tiny one, that barely opened. If the apothecary knew that Figgins had gone out, would he come creeping up the stairs to his victim?

She spied a key, attached to a short piece of string, that lay on the narrow shelf beneath the window. She tried it in the door, and it worked. What if Miss Alethea woke up, called out, and no one could get in to her? She glanced again at the sleeping form on the bed. Didn't look like she was going to wake up, not for hours. She'd have to risk it. She went out of the room and locked the door behind her. Then down the steep stairs and down a second flight, slightly less steep. The apothecary and his wife slept in a chamber behind the shop; she paused, listened, not a sound to be heard. She eased open the door that led into the shop, and tiptoed to the entrance.

The door was locked, but not barred, and there were few locks that could defeat Figgins. Not all her brothers were as upright as Joe, and her next brother, Will, had had a successful career of crime in his youth before he had come to see the error of his ways and settled down to serve his apprenticeship as a locksmith. He had taught her the tricks of the trade, and in such a shop as this, there was bound to be what she needed to pick the lock.

Two minutes later, she was out in the deserted street. English she might be, but she was city born and bred, and to her mind, one city was very like another when the lights were out and the rats were abroad. Tonight, she was going to play rat.

 

Alethea woke coughing. The room was hot and airless; Figgins had carefully closed the window before settling down on her pallet. With all that water about, there would be a terrible miasma wafting in, if allowed.

Alethea blinked, and looked at the sleeping hump that was Figgins. Sliding out of the bed she stood up carefully. No dizziness, and only a dull ache where there had been that shattering pain. Good. She stepped over Figgins and pushed at the window until it creaked reluctantly open. She stood there, breathing in the morning air. How long had she slept? Below, she could hear the sounds of the household stirring, and outside voices rose in cheerful greeting; a man was calling out that he had most excellent fish, fresh fish for sale. A dog barked, a brief quarrel broke out on the water.

Normally, all this would have raised her spirits, but after a moment of pure pleasure, the events of the evening before flooded back to her. They were in a real scrape this time. Destitute, in fact.

Her eyes fell on the table, where Figgins had laid her trousers. There, beside them, was a leather purse. Alethea snatched it up and opened it. It wasn't bulging with coins, but there were enough to draw a clear line above destitution. What had Figgins been up to?

She was about to shake her maid awake, but stopped. Figgins was usually an early riser; if she was sleeping soundly at this hour of the morning, she must have come to bed late. Alethea could remember little of the night before; she had taken some drug given to her by the apothecary, that was all that she could recall. Then she had fallen asleep, she supposed. Had Figgins gone out? Alone, in this strange city? And how had she acquired the purse, or did it belong to the apothecary, left on the table while he attended to her head?

She dressed, wrinkling her nose at putting on such a dirty shirt, and sat down in the chair to wait for Figgins to wake.

 

“Oh, that,” said Figgins, looking sideways at her mistress. “We have to have money, we cannot survive without we have coins in our pockets.”

“I'm not one to preach morality,” said Alethea. “Whose money? Not the apothecary's, I trust. He has been very kind to us, as has his wife.”

The apothecary's wife was a plump woman, as smooth-skinned as her husband was wrinkled, but otherwise rather like him. She had fed Figgins, food that Figgins didn't much care for, but food was food, and had tucked Alethea up with the greatest care.

Figgins was shocked. “I'd never steal from anyone I knew. Not that I make a habit of stealing anyhow,” she added quickly. “I got in the way of knowing how it's done, though, when I was a nipper. My ma didn't half wallop me when she found out what I was up to, it's not what she holds with. My brother Will used to do it for larks, and I went along with him sometimes.”

“So you stole the purse?”

“Forked it, sweet as butter,” said Figgins.

“And fled?”

“Not I. Went on my way innocent as can be. No need to draw attention to yourself, that's what Will used to say. Mind you, he could slip away like an eel if he had to. It wasn't necessary last night, the gentleman as I came up against being rather the worse for wear.”

“I hope he could afford to lose the coins.”

“He had the price of several purses on his back.”

“Well, as long as you didn't steal from widows and orphans, then I must say I'm glad for the use of the money.”

“I don't do widows and orphans,” Figgins said virtuously.

Alethea wasn't to know, and Figgins had no intention of enlightening her, that the reason for this restraint was that stealing from widows and orphans had its point, in that such people were easy victims, but with the downside that the pickings were generally meagre.

Alethea stood up. “This will keep us for several days, if we're careful.”

“It won't take us to Rome, then?”

Alethea shook her head. “It would cost more than we have, even travelling in the cheapest way possible. Rome is not just around the corner.”

“I can try again.”

Alethea felt alarmed. “No, by no means. I hope that in a day or so I may have come up with some other means of our getting by, but no more pickpocketing for you. Why, if you were caught, the Lord knows what would happen to you. Something very unpleasant, I am sure, it is not to be thought of.”

She was very grateful to Figgins for what she had done, but realisation of how big a risk her servant had taken was beginning to steal over her. It was wrong, she had dragged Figgins out of England, and it was up to her to make sure that Figgins came out of all this safe and sound.

“Shall we go back to our lodgings now?”

Alethea considered this. “No, for the rooms are expensive, and to pay for last night and another night would take much of what we have. No, we'll have to leave that woman to cry for her money for the time being. Wytton can settle with her in due course.”

“What of your things?”

“We can manage without them meanwhile. It is so warm, you can wash our shirts at night and they will be dry by the morning. Mrs. Apothecary will bring us water, I feel sure.”

“Shall we stay here, then?”

“I mean to ask if we may. They can hardly charge much for the room, and I shall say it is only until my memory returns.”

The apothecary was agreeable and his wife was happy to provide an evening meal for a modest sum.

Figgins and Alethea went out into the sunlight. Another dose from the apothecary had soothed Alethea's head still further, and this one would not make her sleepy, the apothecary had assured her. “Although I advise you not to attempt to walk far, especially in the heat of the day. One should rest after such a blow.”

Their first need, Alethea decided, was for coats. “We are conspicuous without them, only we need to buy them as cheaply as possible.”

“Dead clothes are cheapest,” Figgins said helpfully.

“Dead clothes?”

“Taken from the dead, and sold off at very low prices, 'specially if they died of some disease.”

Alethea knew that her revulsion showed in her face. Figgins took it in good part. “It's how most people get by, Miss Alethea.”

“Mr. Hawkins, for heaven's sake; God knows who may be passing by who understands English.”