Joan Wolf (13 page)

The evening went very well. The American men made a favorable impression on everyone, and Catherine Alnwick made a distinctly strong impression on Juan Montilla. He shared his countrymen’s appreciation for blonde hair, which was seen but rarely in his native land, and Catherine’s type of fair, English beauty attracted him strongly. In a perfectly polite fashion, he devoted himself to her, thus according great,
if unspoken, relief to most of the remaining company. Nicholas, who had not been to see her in weeks, was feeling slightly guilty and uncomfortable. The Hopkinses and the Knights, who knew through the servants’ grapevine about his defection, were afraid the evening might prove to be rather strained and were happy to see her safely occupied. Margarita was as gracious and charming and shyly friendly as ever; no one could detect any difference in her manner to the beautiful Mrs. Alnwick.

The gentlemen did not linger over their wine, and when they joined the ladies, Catherine was at the piano. She played very well: she did most things very well, and Margarita was listening with genuine pleasure when the door opened and the men came in. Nicholas’s eyes sought his wife immediately, a fact noted with satisfaction by the vigilant Lady Hopkins.

Catherine Alnwick was coaxed to play again, and then Lady Anne sang an Italian song in a well-trained soprano. “Do you play, Lady Winslow?” Catherine asked sweetly, and Margarita shook her head.

“My father went to great lengths to get a piano for my mother. She was a very fine musician, but I fear her talent was not passed along to me. I play very badly.”

“You have another instrument,” Nicholas said quietly, and Andrés Bello leaned forward in his chair.

“I took great pains to find you a good guitar, nina, and I expect to hear it” When she flushed and hesitated, he said softly, “Please. It is so long for me.”

She capitulated instantly. “Of course I will play for you, Andrés.”

Nicholas spoke to one of the servants and the guitar was brought. Everyone sat quietly, curious and interested. Margarita looked at Andrés Bello. “I set a poem of Quevedo’s to music. I did it in our home in Caracas, just before the evacuation.” Her eyes moved to her husband’s attentive face. “It is a sad song,” she said. “A lament, you would call it. The singer says that the walls of his country are in ruin. The countryside is dark. His house is falling down. Everything about him reminds him of death.” She bent her head a little and began to play:

Miré los muros de la patria mia,

Si un tiempo fuertes, ya desmoronados,

De la carrera de la edad cansados,

Por quien caduca ya su valentía

Salíme al campo, vi que el Sol bebía

Los arroyoys del yelo desatados,

Y del monte quejosos los ganados

Que con sombras hurtó su lux al día.

Vencida de la edad sentí mi espada,

Y no hallé cosa en que poner los ojos

Que no fuese recuerdo de la muerte.

There was a haunted, brooding note in her low voice that conveyed the meaning of the song even to those who knew no Spanish. The last word died away and Margarita sat still, her downcast eyes on the strings of her guitar. Then she looked up, looked at Andre» Bello, and Nicholas, silently and to himself, cursed. He recognized all too well the expression on her face.

Andrés Bello answered her look. “I know,
niña,”
he said very softly. “But you must have the courage to build again, the courage for the long climb back to happiness. We all must have that, or what is to become of us and of our country?”

Juan Vicente Montilla, who had completely forgotten Catherine Alnwick, now said with rigid lips, “We will do it or we will die trying.”

Sir Henry cleared his throat a little, uncomfortable amid the sudden outburst of Latin emotions in the room. Margarita looked at him and realized what had happened. He was a nice man, she thought to herself a little blankly. They were all nice people. But they were all a little unreal, a little childish, unaware of the terrible shadow of chaos that constantly threatened the frontiers of life in this world. But they were her guests. She must not discompose them. She forced a smile.

“I will play one more song for you, a song that was my father’s favorite. It is about a man who goes out to catch a fish for his dinner and what befell him.” Her fingers moved over the strings. The tune was catchy and sprightly, and after the first two verses, Andrés Bello joined in with her. By the time the song was over they were both laughing a little, and the tense, embarrassed feeling had vanished from the room.

As she was taking her departure, Catherine Alnwick announced to her host and hostess that she was leaving for London in a few days.

“Will you be staying long?” Margarita asked.

“For the Season, I expect. I go every year.” This was true, but Catherine did not usually go in March. Nicholas, however, forbore to comment on the change in her routine.

“We shall miss you,” Margarita said serenely. “My lord speaks of our going to London as well. Perhaps we shall see you there.”

Catherine smiled brilliantly. “Perhaps. Goodbye, Lady Winslow, Lord Winslow. It was a delightful evening.”

“Good evening, Mrs. Alnwick,” Nicholas said gravely. “I wish you a good journey.”

His feeling of guilt over Catherine had only increased by seeing her this evening. He knew very well that he could not break off their relationship without some kind of an explanation.
One did not summarily dismiss a mistress, who had given satisfaction for five years, without so much as a word.
At
least, Nicholas could not.

He forgot about Catherine, however, as soon as he got upstairs. Margarita was standing by the window, her back rigid, and he knew, without seeing her face, that she was crying.

“Andrés Bello was right, little one,” he said to that straight back. “You do have the courage to fight back to happiness.”

“Yes,” she replied and her voice sounded muffled. “Sometimes I do. But sometimes I feel as if I haven’t changed at all, that time is frozen inside of me and it is all happening over and over again, and I shall
never
forget it and never get over it.” She turned then to face him, and he could see the tears pouring ceaselessly down her face.

He came across to her and picked her up. At that moment, her dresser came to the door and he frowned ominously, causing the woman to back away in fright, almost slamming the door behind her. He sat Margarita down on the bed and undressed her with gentle hands. “I can’t stop crying,” she sobbed, and he pulled off his coat and shoes and swung into bed beside her.

“I know,” he said, “but try. You’ll make yourself ill if you keep on like this.”

His shoulder was so familiar, so safe and secure. She pressed her face against it and he held her against him. Slowly her sobbing slowed and ceased, and she slept.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

How the light, light love, he has wings to fly

At suspicion of a bond.

Tennyson

By mid-March, Margarita was deeply involved in plans for redecorating Winslow. The project involved a great deal of self-education on her part, for English architecture and furniture design were completely unfamiliar to her.

“The furniture in my father’s houses was all modeled on the designs of the Spanish Renaissance,” she told Nicholas at the start of her project. “The lines of that style are all rectangular and straightforward. There is nothing even remotely resembling
that.”
She gestured with incredulity toward a chair that was one of Chippendale’s more exotic Chinese efforts.

Nicholas had grinned. “I see what you mean.”

“We have beautiful wrought-iron work in our houses, for another thing. You have nothing like it at all here. It is a completely different kind of architecture and decoration from what I am accustomed to. I shall have to learn about English styles.”

“Would you like to re-do the house in the Spanish style?” Nicholas asked curiously.

She did not hesitate. “No. It would not look right in this house. Spanish furniture is for a southern climate. Although”—and nostalgia glimmered in her eyes—”I would not be at all unhappy to find a few pieces of authentic sixteenth or seventeenth century Spanish furniture. My father had the most beautiful
vargueño .
..” Her voice trailed off.

“What is a
vargueño?”
Nicholas asked after a half-minute of silence.

She smiled. “It is a kind of a desk. My father had one that his grandfather brought from Spain. It had the most beautiful ivory inlay you have ever seen.”

Nicholas mentally determined that he would scour the earth until he found an ivory-inlaid
vargueño
for her. But all he said was: “I am afraid I’m not going to be much help to you. I can tell you the different periods of most of the furniture, but the fine points of decoration and design are not my forte. Perhaps we should get a professional in.”

“Not yet,” she answered. “I want to be more knowledgeable before I do that. Lady Hopkins has promised to help me, and perhaps you and I can start by just looking carefully at what we have.”

Cataloguing the house’s furniture was not very difficult. There were a few pieces of the original Jacobean furnishings, but the majority of things were Queen Anne and early Georgian, with a great preponderance of Chippendale. 1 don’t think my uncle ever touched the house,’’ Nicholas told Margarita. “His father, my grandfather, had Mr. Chippendale re-do all the state rooms and I suppose he thought that that sufficed. However, that was fifty years ago. I don’t even think all the rooms have been painted since then.”

“Good heavens,” Margarita said faintly. “What was the reason for such monumental neglect?”

Nicholas looked sardonic. “Your grandfather couldn’t see the point of putting money into something that would one day only go to a nephew. I think the neglect started when he didn’t have a son of his own.”

Margarita’s lips were unusually severe. “How can that be? He spoke of Winslow to me with great affection. He was proud of its ancient history, of its being named in the
Doomsday Book.”

The sardonic look vanished as Nicholas shouted with laughter. “The
Domesday Book,
sweetheart, not ‘Doomsday.’“

“Domesday,
then,” she repeated. “But he truly sounded as if he loved Winslow, Nicholas. I don’t understand.”

“He loved it so much he hadn’t set foot in it for thirteen yean.”

“Thirteen years!” There was profound surprise on her face.

“He stayed at Winslow for as long as my aunt lived; she did not like the city. But as soon as she died he moved to London and never returned.”

“I don’t understand,” she repeated in bewilderment.

He gave her an odd, slanting look from under his lashes. “Why do you think he forced you to marry me the way he did?”

Her eyes were steady and grave on his face. “He wanted to provide for me, of course.”

“He could simply have left you the collection. Why did he tie your future to me?”

His voice was expressionless. It was impossible to tell what he thought. “He wanted to be sure there would be someone to take care of me,” said Margarita.

He looked at her for a moment in silence. She was speaking what she thought was the truth. And he thought that, given her background, it was the natural conclusion for her to draw. One of the first priorities for all her men had always been to make sure there was someone to take care of Margarita. He was sorry now be had brought the subject up. “Why do
you
think he made his will the way he did?” she was asking him.

“You probably have the answer,” he replied easily. “He wanted to be sure you were looked after.”

“But that doesn’t explain his neglect of Winslow,” she went on. “Or why, after so many years, he decided to return.”

He shrugged. “It hardly matters, now,” he said. His face wore a look of complete indifference.

Her thoughtful brown eyes never left his face, registering every flicker of expression on it. She came to the answer more by intuition than by reason. “You think he wanted me at Winslow, don’t you? I was his grandchild, and you were not. That was why he was coming back here after so many years. And that was why he made
you
many me. Was that it?”

“Yes,” he said.

She felt a deep anger within herself, anger at the man who had been so brutal, who had hurt Nicholas so badly. There was a tight feeling in her chest. No wonder, she thought, he was so guarded against love. She wanted to throw her arms around him and comfort him but his face warned her not to offer sympathy. She drew an uneven breath and turned and walked to the window so he would not see the tears in her eyes. “He must have been a very stupid man,” she said lightly. “However, his stupidity has made me very happy, so I cannot complain too loudly.”

He came across to where she stood and put his hand on her neck, beneath her hair. “Has it made you happy, sweetheart?” he murmured.

She leaned back against him. “Yes,” she said, and his hand moved forward over her throat and
in between the buttons of her dress.

“Good,” he said, and bent over her.

* * * *

They planned to go to London at the beginning of April. Margarita pored faithfully over the copies of Sheraton’s
Cabinet Maker and Upholsterers Drawing Book
and
Cabinet Dictionary
that Lady Hopkins lent her. She looked carefully through Thomas Hope’s
Household
furniture as well and she made some basic derisions about what she wanted to do. She planned to redecorate the family rooms first and see how they came out before she tackled the more formidable state rooms. Lady
Hopkins recommended that she commission George Smith to make the furniture for her, and she decided it would be easier for her to go to London since she would then be able to look at fabrics for drapes and walls as well.

Nicholas was going to take his seat in Parliament. Lord Linton had written to tell him that there was an important bill coming up, and Nicholas promised to be there for the debate and the vote. He also wanted Margarita to look over the large number of remaining paintings. They needed to decide what to keep and what to sell.