Lola Montez Conquers the Spaniards (5 page)

I imagined this was true. I liked the rich. (I didn't know many of the obnoxious prats at the time.)

He threw a plum into his mouth and chewed its flesh hungrily. “What about this, then, sweetheart? What if I were to match the money offered by this mysterious stranger in France? Your court date will still proceed, even if you're not there to make an appearance. Unless of course you're planning to object to the charge?”

“Oh, no. I am not.” From this I knew he suspected adultery was the incriminating factor. Did he think less of me for it?

“Well then.” Juice was all over his chin, but this seemed no hindrance to his enthusiasm. “You're excited about your Spanish dancing lessons,
and this way you'll be able to drink in the sights and sounds of Spain for yourself, firsthand. I admit I would be extremely interested to hear how the people, and the lovely Cristina, are faring. You could curtsy, eye her as boldly as she eyes you, and give her warm greetings from the 3rd Earl of Malmesbury. It would be fun.” (Is that what he thought? How wrong can one be?) He hunkered further down in the bedclothes, lacing his hands behind his head. “As for you, Liza, my bank draft, carried somewhere securely, will buy you the right, at any time, to quit the country and return home, should anything go amiss. You'll be safe.”

And with those words, a summer jaunt to impertinent Spain—at someone else's expense—suddenly seemed like the most glorious of adventures. The divorce could leak its way through the courts like cod liver oil through one's system, nasty going down but quietly effective: one husband, purged. Neither Thomas nor I would likely be allowed to marry again—as if I would. That didn't worry me in the least. No, I would learn Spanish dances, and then come back lithe as a panther, ready to take London by storm.

A sobering thought hit me. “But what if I—? Should I decide to stay the course—?”

“You may keep the money, in that case, and spend it on something beautiful. Yourself.”

Bliss! I thanked the earl in the ways he liked best, and he even spent the night, he was that exhausted.

The next few days were a flurry of activity as I met with Señor Hernandez, obtained information for my travelling plans, and managed to convince Howard Harris to equip me with a few (crucial) new garments (two large trunks and several hat boxes full). There were day dresses and a gown for the evening, in the latest colours and fabrics: one demure dove grey, one a vibrant summer sky blue, one I wasn't too keen about but that the earl liked in a soft pink with lots of frills and furbelows (which he certainly helped me rumple, the first time I tried it on for him). And my favourite of all, in a gaily patterned tartan above with stripes below, cunningly cut to emphasize my shape. Well, I needed to make a good impression when I met the mysterious “superior” in Paris. According to Hernandez, this man was named Juan de Grimaldi, an influential person
who had the ears of Spanish royalty as well as the French. He was also a former theatrical impresario. The stars were aligning, I whispered to myself. I was moving on, seeing the world again, on my own and with full independence!

And though travel requires an enormous duration of time that many people consider to be lost from one's real, striving life, I knew that, in the space between what is expected of you when leaving at one end and before arriving at the other, there can be enormous change, both within and without. You can emerge an almost completely different person.

Two previous voyages have taught me that, most distinctly. On the way back to my beloved India after marrying Thomas, I was no longer an innocent young girl, grateful to be married at any price to escape the fate my mother had decreed. Aboard the ship, Thomas had grown moody, and then one night he'd struck me. Not hard, but it had shocked us both, and I'd realized things could get ugly. Problems in the bedroom had quickly become chronic, the main one being that he had a very tight foreskin, and whenever he put it up me, it hurt him. The injustice of blaming me for this inconvenience never seemed to occur to him. We spent so much time coaxing his small, inflamed member that I began to lose all interest in the business. I came to understand that runaway matches, like runaway horses, are almost sure to end in a smash-up.

However! My next travel adventure was quite heavenly. That time, my stepfather and now-estranged husband were saving their honours and mine. Looking over the side as Thomas finally descended the gangway and I saw the top of his head for the last time, I'd felt my heart rise and the air grow light around me.

That's when I discovered that time out of time can be glorious. I was free again, I could breathe; a whole voyage stretched ahead between me and my return to the Scottish relatives. The winds were hot, and I loosened my stays, shedding at least two layers of undergarments. As we drew in to Madras, I was idly observing those coming aboard when my pulse quickened at the sight of a long-legged young man with wavy blond hair. That evening at dinner, I learned that his name was George Lennox (bounder!). He was both the aide-de-camp of Lord Elphinstone and the nephew of the Duke of Richmond, and I've always
been a fool for a title. Things had quickly gotten out of hand as far as my shipboard reputation was concerned, but I was in the throes of newly discovered passion and couldn't have cared a fig.

George would sometimes come to my cabin, and I would sometimes go to his. The place didn't matter, it was what began to happen inside that did. I discovered magical sensations vastly superior to those I'd been able to conjure myself during lonely spells. I howled like a banshee the first time I experienced the great sublimation, until George, laughing, put his hand over my mouth and hushed me. George's body was beautifully smooth and his sandy beard very thick, so that even by noon his cheeks had a reddish shadow. And his member, well! I'd never before known one that had been cut, and soon it seemed to me an eminently superior ritual. He would hold himself unabashedly and fondly, looking down along his body, and when I asked, he told me that his family had always done it. I asked if it had hurt, but he said he had no idea, it was done when he was a baby and he was sure he wasn't the worse for it, “so come here, cherub.” It never caused him any discomfort, compared with poor, sore Thomas who moaned and writhed in pain even as he sought pleasure. George allowed me to know a man, truly, for the first time; to know what was pleasing to him and to discover what pleased me when I was with him. He told me I was beautiful beyond belief in the most secretive folds and byways, as he made me warble like a nightingale—and sometimes like a raven. Oh, cad, I'd loved you obscenely!

Blast and damn. How did that blackguard get back into my head? Because, I suppose, at the start of this whole thing—poised for Paris, the earl's bank draft secreted in the hem of my favourite new striped-tartan gown in case of emergencies—I found myself eager to travel again and easily talked into it. I'd asked very few questions! When I think of that now . . . Was I really so trusting? Or gullible, perhaps? The earl did seem awfully keen for me to travel. Well, I could sense my liaison with him was coming to an end. He had rather neglected his duties at the house, and his wife, he reported, had also complained about the size of the bills that he seemed to be running up, now that he was living in London during the week. Fine, I'd thought, no regrets. He'd cheered me up, set me going again, and that was a wonderful gift in itself. The bitterness
of George's betrayal was behind me, my appetite for men had returned, and life and love beckoned once more. So yes, at that heady juncture, I suppose I decided to congratulate myself on my adventurous spirit and my undeniable talent for leaping off cliffs without a boring backwards glance. Nothing, I thought, could hurt me, because this time, I would betray before being betrayed.

Perfect for what they had in mind, had I but known it.

S
EÑOR
H
ERNANDEZ HAD GIVEN
me the name of an hotel not far from the Paris coaching station. Exhausted from the journey (days and days in coaches, jostling through the countryside), I collapsed and slept the sleep of the just, with my hatboxes still perched on the bed. I barely even registered the angelic little room and its amenities, nor the bouquet of fresh flowers that someone had placed on the side table. Outside the window, Paris rolled along in its nighttime delirium, and I didn't hear it. In the morning, waking to the sounds of the street, I discovered a message had been pushed under the door. It said, “Dear Miss Gilbert, I will be waiting for you at eight o'clock, in the dining room. Please come prepared to spend the day away from this establishment. Very sincerely, Juan de Grimaldi.”

Heavens! I was in Paris (Paris!), it was already nine in the morning, and he'd been there an hour! I was thrown into a frenzy, attempting to pull out and straighten my finest day dress, which had become fatally wrinkled in transit. And the matching hat? Where was it? Which box? Oh, why hadn't I spent the evening arranging my new possessions? I'd certainly obsessed over them during those hectic days in London, imagining what the “superior” would think of the gorgeous, sleek creature who met his admiring eyes. Oh, I was a ninny!

A mere fifteen minutes later, dressed in my favourite half-striped, half-tartan day dress and with my cheeks pinched severely for colour, I was scanning the dining room for an impatient-looking man seated alone. The only single male was at the window and never looked up. My
eye caught a flamboyant couple beside him—the woman was leaning towards her companion, and as I watched, she pointed me out with a purple-gloved finger. The man nodded, wiped his lips, and rose. My heart leapt into my throat as I smiled and went towards them. This was not what I had expected: Certainly this imposing woman would see that my hair, under the superficial sheen of a quick brushing, was still tangled and heavy with sleep. Damn and damn again. Had I pinched my cheeks sufficiently? I hoped I looked the part, whatever the “part” was supposed to be.

The man stopped a pace or two from me, bowed his head, and clicked his heels. Then he gestured for me to go past, ushering me towards the woman with his hand at my back. “
Mi querida,
” he murmured to her softly, continuing in English, “I believe this is young Miss Gilbert. Let us make her supremely welcome.” His voice was deep and mellifluous and made me feel a little less apprehensive. The woman did not get up but held out her gloved hand, fingers drooping. Surely she didn't mean for me to kiss it? I gave her purple fingers a little shake. She pulled them back.

“Sit, my dear, here,” he said. “We have been eager to meet you, haven't we, darling?”

The woman said nothing. I sat and he followed, pinning me warmly in place between them. “I trust you had a pleasant night?”

“Oh yes, thank you, sir. I mean, Señor Grimaldi?”

“That is I. Allow me to introduce my wife, the famous Doña Concepción Rodríguez.”

Famous? Oh dear, why hadn't Hernandez told me? Now I'd look an imbecile as well as untidy.

“I am most pleased to make your acquaintance, madam—I mean—”

“You have not heard of me?” She looked me up and down with disdain, her accent thick and evocative. Unlike Señor Hernandez, the sound of this woman's Spanish-flavoured English was exotically sensual, and I determined then and there to study it with fervour.

Physically, Juan de Grimaldi was powerful and intimidating; Corsican by blood, he'd been a lieutenant in the French National Guard under Napoleon, and following the emperor's defeat, when King Louis
XVIII decided to send a massive army of one hundred thousand men across the Pyrenees to help restore Ferdinand VII to his Spanish throne, Grimaldi had volunteered, then stayed in Spain. When I met him, he was about forty-five years of age. He'd been running Madrid's two principal theatres, the Cruz and the Príncipe, for over a decade. His wife, Concepción, had been a young company actress at the Cruz. Married to Grimaldi, she'd held the title of
prima dama
for a dozen years or more. At the end of the recent war, after Grimaldi fled back to France from Spain, she'd had to support herself and their numerous children, then pack them all up in order to join him in Paris.

Hernandez had told me all this. At the time of our meeting, Señora Rodríguez was about forty and beginning to look it; I had the impression that she was terribly tired and terribly jealous. To go to breakfast (and to meet her husband's new female associate, if that's what I was, which I still found hard to believe), she had donned a crimson overskirt with orange taffeta underskirt, a crimson jacket with revealing details, and a cunning purple and orange hat with cascading black mantilla. There were gold jewels on every finger and at her ears. The ensemble took my breath away. I felt outmoded in the extreme in my new (and perfectly splendid) tartan dress, with my peridot earbobs.

They had already eaten—magnificently, if all of the empty plates and cups served as witnesses. “Please, Miss Gilbert, order whatever you wish,” Grimaldi said, placing a sinewy hand upon mine.