The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy (21 page)

The task of acquiring a coat to wear taxed Alethea's energy to its limits. Figgins had come up with the idea of visiting a tailor's shop. “Not one that the nobs use, but a respectable establishment,” she said.

“A new coat? From a tailor's? Are you mad? We can't afford any such thing.”

“Listen, will you? There are always coats made, and waistcoats and trousers and breeches, too, if it comes to that, that are never collected. The customer finds he has no money or is ill or finds a tailor who makes a coat that suits him better. So the tailor is left with his work done and no one to pay for it. If it's a common size, then he can unpick it, with luck, and remake it for a new order. If not, he hangs it up and hopes that someone may come in to buy it off the peg.”

“Am I not a common size?”

“'Course not. You're tall and thin; how many tall, thin types have you seen around? These Italians are no higher than I am.”

Alethea was doubtful, but anything was better than having to resort to more theft. Her shirt-sleeves were attracting some attention, too, she noticed.

“What about you?”

“I can't go buying a gentleman's coat, that'd be daft. I can pick one up, cheap, later. No one's stopping to wonder why I'm in my waistcoat. It isn't seemly for a gentleman's gentleman, I'll admit, but who's to know that's what I am?”

By the time they went down two dark steps into a third tailor's workshop, Alethea's head was beginning to thud again in a most alarming fashion. But Figgins's instinct proved correct. The tailor positively fell over himself in his hurry to whisk a coat from a dark corner. It had been ordered by a Frenchman, who had never returned, never paid him for it, he would be delighted to sell it to an Englishman instead, and he was sure it would be a perfect fit.

Perfect it wasn't, but it was good enough. Not good enough for Figgins, though, who made the tailor sit down then and there and turn up the sleeves and take in the seams at the back, before insisting that Alethea haggle over the price.

The coat was dark green and fortunately plain, sporting no outlandish collar or trimmings on sleeve or vents. Alethea was relieved to be able to put on her disguise again. She was uncomfortable going about in her shirt and waistcoat; she felt sure she looked less masculine than when wearing a coat.

They emerged into the sunlight, and she faltered slightly as the glare struck her eyes. It was no good trying to hide this fact from Figgins, who took one look at her and declared that they were to go back to the apothecary's. “You'll not go out again today,” she said roundly.

Alethea resented her physical weakness, and her sense of uselessness. Figgins deserved better of her than this. If only her head was clearer, she could no doubt think up a way out of their present fix, but for the moment the thoughts just chased one another round and round inside her head.

“It's so hot and stuffy there.”

“That's as may be, but you can lie down out of the sun and rest. I'm not taking no for an answer, for you're no use to yourself nor me without you getting back on your feet again. I don't want to have to go round knocking on doors to find some English people to save us, now do I?”

“Perish the thought!”

“There you are, then. It's what I'll have to do, if you don't watch it.”

Alethea lay down on the narrow bed, hot and uncomfortable, but grateful to be in the shadows and able to close her eyes. The apothecary had come tripping up the stairs with a new dose, although he declared that he took a sanguine view of her case. His patient was so young and strong, he had done too much too soon, that was all. Sleep was the answer. Another twenty-four hours, and it would be a different story.

Alethea didn't sleep, but lay brooding, an unusual condition with her. Figgins sat perched by the little window, which afforded her a narrow view of the canal and the streets beyond. She was perfectly happy to sit and watch barges and gondolas and rowing boats come and go, gulls fighting over scraps from the morning market, children playing and skipping in the street, two elderly women going past, their tongues moving a great deal faster than their legs—an endless procession of humanity to amuse and interest a mind at rest.

Alethea was not perfectly happy, nor was her mind at rest. She had brought Figgins into danger and discomfort—for what? So that she could escape from her husband. Women escaped from their husbands all the time, no doubt, but they didn't go haring off to Venice dressed up as men, not that she'd ever heard of. They escaped into adultery or their family's care; why had she had to end up here, with no money and a cracked head and a nervous inclination to start every time she heard footsteps approaching from behind?

Because she had no one to turn to in England. So, whom had she to turn to here in Venice? She had chosen what seemed the easiest path, there, in her state of virtual imprisonment in England. There was no alternative she could think of. It made sense to seek out Camilla, the sister who best understood her, and rely on her and her capable and understanding husband to sort out the situation with Papa, and rely on Papa to deal with Napier. Even if Camilla happened to be residing in Italy.

What if Papa wouldn't, or couldn't, deal with Napier? What if Napier threatened legal action? Could a wife be dragged back to her husband's care? It seemed gothic, but then the law was gothic, everyone said so. And Napier was certainly gothic, if not deranged. Was the fact that your husband was mad sufficient to justify a separation? Would Napier appear mad to anyone who hadn't been in his power when the doors were shut and he had drunk too much wine and brandy? Maybe most men were like that.

Not Papa, though. Nor Wytton. Mr. Barcombe? Surely not; Letty was far too smug for that to be the case.

The hot, pungent air from outside floated in, making her wrinkle her nose in distaste. She yawned, and moved her head carefully on the pillow. The heat was oppressive, and she was overcome with longing for greenness. For the cool green lawns of Pemberley, where the oaks would be rustling with their fresh May foliage, the rose garden alive with new leaves and buds, scents on the morning air.

More sights and memories from earlier, happier times came chasing into her head. The long shadows of a summer evening, the sound of voices, of happiness, her sisters' laughter, one of her little brothers racing over the gravel on sturdy legs, shouting and calling to his mother.

Herself in a girl's muslin dress, playing the pianoforte in the music room, its long windows open on to the terrace, a warm breeze stirring the summer curtains. The sound of bat and ball as the twins played their own private version of cricket. Horses grazing in the paddocks, flicking tails and shaking their manes to ward off flies; a dog asleep in the shade cast by the stable clock; the clock itself, ticking away the peaceful hours.

Tears trickled out beneath her closed eyelids. That was childhood. That was gone for ever. Pemberley—did Pemberley actually exist?—was no longer her home. Did she have a home at all? She turned again, pulling at the bolster tucked beneath her head.

Figgins was beside her. “Does your head hurt?”

Alethea quickly brushed away the traces of tears with the back of a hand. “No, not at all.”

“Has the medicine not worked, has it not taken away the pain?”

“I told you, my head doesn't hurt.” Alethea knew her voice sounded fretful. She made an effort. “This bolster is very firm, that is all. Go back to the window, I shall be asleep in a moment.”

Figgins went back to her stool, watching Alethea with sidelong glances.

“Stop looking at me as though I were about to expire,” Alethea said crossly, and closed her eyes again.

Money. They needed money. She must owe the apothecary for his draughts. The coat had cost several of their precious coins. They had to eat, to keep a roof over their heads. How could she get some money? Suddenly, Figgins's threat of knocking on doors to enquire if anyone English lived there didn't seem so far-fetched. She winced at the prospect, the discovery, the scandal, the disgrace. She could hear Letty's appalled tones in her ears: “You should have thought of that before you did such a wicked thing; that was always your way, heedless and careless and never a thought for other people, or your family.”

Damn Letty, she muttered. Damn her self-righteousness. Damn Georgina for being under her husband's thumb; perhaps he was a brutal husband, for all his apparent dotingness. Damn Belle for being so blissfully happy in her marriage and getting pregnant just when she might have been of use for once in her life. She almost damned Camilla for going off to Rome, but stopped herself in time. Camilla was the only person in the world who might help to get her out of this mess; she wasn't going to damn Camilla's eyes, however inconvenient her trip out of Venice was.

“I could find work as a musician,” she said, speaking aloud without being aware of it. “Like I did in London.”

“I doubt it,” said Figgins, without turning her head from the window. “It seems to me as how this city's crawling with musicians. I expect it's the same as London, where you have to know people to get your toe in the door, no matter what your lay is. You don't know a soul here, musicians or anyone else. Not that your playing isn't a deal better than some of the dreadful sounds I've heard here, but that isn't what counts, is it?”

Figgins was right, of course. You needed a friend, an introduction, to be on the circuit. She could arrange it in London, with the friends she had made during her visits to Silvestrini for lessons. His house in Bloomsbury was always full of musicians, who took her as they found her.

That was another door that had closed with a slam on the day she ascended the altar steps with Norris Napier.

She thrust the memories of music and camaraderie out of reach, down into the deepest layers of her mind to join the green swards of Pemberley and the evenings of ecstatic happiness with Penrose. She despised self-pity. It did one no good to dwell on the past; the only place to live was the present, with the expectation that, against all odds, there would be a future where things were not so very bad.

Courage, her better self urged. These weeks of pretending to be a man might have been folly, but they had brought her a degree of freedom and independence she had never dreamt of. There was the feeling of competence earned by difficulties surmounted; they had achieved a great deal, she and Figgins. Were they to falter now, lose heart when with a little determination and luck, they would accomplish what they had set out to do?

No, they were not.

The palazzo must once have been a most magnificent building, but it had been sadly neglected.

“French, and then Austrian troops were quartered here,” said Harry. The gondolier made the boat fast and Titus sprang on to the steps of the palazzo.

“Savages,” he said, looking up at the facade.

“Venice was crumbling from within, before ever Napoleon arrived.” Harry gave instructions to his gondolier and then joined Titus on the steps. “We do not enter here, we need to walk round into the piazza.”

As they turned the corner, Titus stiffened. He stopped, and drew back into the doorway of a building.

“What is it?” said Harry. “What's amiss?”

“Just someone I know and whom I don't wish to be seen by.”

“That man in the blue coat. Why, it's George Warren. He's been in to see Delancourt. Wait, here comes one of my men.”

A suave servant, out of livery, came up to Harry and bowed before making his report. This was the English gentleman's first visit to the art dealer. Yesterday he had taken coffee at Florian's, visited a house in the Grand Canal where an Englishman and his wife presently lived, friends of the poet Lord Byron. He had spent the evening at the gaming tables.

“Let's see if we can worm out of this Delancourt what Warren is interested in.”

“Fat chance,” said Harry as they knocked at the dilapidated wooden door. “You couldn't worm the time of day out of Delancourt.”

The dinginess and decrepitude of the palazzo from outside gave no hint of the glories within. Titus caught his breath as he spun round on his heels to scan the wide, marbled room they were led into.

Women's faces gazed out on him from every side. There, the beautiful, serene face of a Madonna, here, the lascivious eyes of a peachy beauty painted by Giorgione. He noticed the knowing look of a crone, peering from the corner of a vast canvas by a Venetian painter he couldn't at once identify, the languid gaze of a Canova—surely that was a very modern work to be among these other pieces? A Roman matron drooping over an urn had, he thought, a pleased look to her grief. Happiness is widowhood, as a friend of his had once remarked.

An altar-piece was propped up in glowing splendour on a worm-eaten chest, with two Marys kneeling before the cross, one in blue, one in red, one looking stricken, the other with an air of anger about her. Which was mere fancy, Titus knew. Paintings of that time did not depict emotion of that sort.

Worse than all these varied aspects of the feminine, he had an uneasy feeling that Emily's eyes were looking out at him from canvas after canvas, through the sightless stare of a classical bust, from the blue orbs of Diana clad in no more than a wisp of clothing and her virtue among a pack of hounds, from the satisfied expression of a middle-aged noblewoman in a green gown.

Titus shut his eyes for a moment. How dare Emily wind through his mind like this? Everything between them was over, and after her appraisal of his character, he had few happy memories left behind to soothe the sense of pain her defection had caused him. Think of the scores of women, he urged himself inwardly, all more agreeable, more honest, more worthy of his attentions than Emily, that were to be found within a stone's throw of this palace. Even before he began to think of Paris, of London—

He pulled himself together, and began to wish he hadn't come. It was improbable that this man would have any knowledge of the whereabouts of his painting. If so dazzling a work had appeared on the market, it would have been snapped up at once. The woman in the Titian was neither Emily nor a harlot nor a saint; any man would long to possess her; she would never belong on the walls of this damp, decaying place.

His attention was caught by a painting he had missed at first. It was small, fifteenth-century, he supposed. Men before a castle, about to set out on a hunting expedition. They wore the parti-coloured hose of the time, and some women looking down from the tower had the pointed headdresses that belonged to the world of fairy tales. One young man stood slightly apart. He had a falcon perched on his wrist, and they were looking at each other, man and bird, with the same hawkish expression.

It was Alethea Darcy to the life; her dark brows and challenging look were caught to perfection, and the sight of the figure, standing there with such grace and courage, made his heart stop.

“Seen a ghost?” Harry said in his ear.

Titus stood back, took a deep breath. “A remarkable painting,” he said.

“If your taste runs in that direction,” Harry said indifferently.

Delancourt came mincing out to meet them. Difficult, thought Titus, to mince when you had a dozen chins and a preposterous belly, but mince he did. Sharp eyes looked out from a roll of fat about his eyes; a hand, as neat as his small feet and covered in rings, was extended to the visitors. A thoroughly untrustworthy individual, and obviously so; how could he survive in a business that depended so much upon trust and an assumption of expertise?

“Welcome, Mr. Hellifield,” Delancourt said in strongly accented English. “And you have brought a companion.”

Titus would rather have remained anonymous, but Harry said, “Allow me to name Mr. Manningtree, a good friend of mine, lately arrived from England.”

Delancourt bowed, or at least tilted slightly forward. Perfectly judged, thought Titus; an inch more, and he would surely have toppled over.

“The son of the late Mr. Severus Manningtree?” the dealer asked.

His words took Titus by surprise.

“I knew your father, in Rome, oh, many, many years ago. I was desolated to learn of his demise, so fine a scholar, so keen a connoisseur of art. I recall that he bought a Titian, what a coup! I feel sure you have inherited his eye for a fine piece.”

“Perhaps.” Titus found he didn't care to discuss his father. “That is a Giorgione you have over there, heavily restored, I believe.”

“Ah, yes. Clumsy work, done by one of my fellow countrymen, I regret to say. However, the true glory of the original is still there in places, would you not agree? The hand of a master is always apparent to those who have the eyes to see.”

“The Canova is not quite in keeping with the rest of what you have on show.”

“You are right,” Delancourt cried, clapping his hands together in a grotesque display of boyish enthusiasm. “A part payment. I reverence the work of Canova, he is an artist one cannot admire too highly. Also, on a more practical note, I foresee his reputation remaining high and outlasting the vagaries of fashion. There is always a market for marble depicting the human form in such a manner.”

“I dare say. It is not what I would choose to buy.”

“But do you wish to buy something? That is charming. How often have I trailed tempting morsels before the feet of Monsieur Hellifield, and always in vain. Now he makes recompense, by bringing his English friend, and no less a man than Monsieur Manningtree's son. What a delight!”

Not so at all, Titus said to himself. If he was not much mistaken, there had been a sudden flash of alarm on the Frenchman's face when Harry had said his name. Moreover, that immediate association of his father with Titian was suspicious. His father had bought only that single Titian in his life—well, how many men could say even that?—but he had not gone out of his way to search out and acquire a painting by that master. His father's famed collector's taste lay in a different direction; the Titian had been an aberration. Which was why, perhaps, Severus Manningtree had made no great effort to trace the painting during the troubled years of the war. He had left it in safekeeping, he had told Titus shortly before his final illness. If it were still there, then it would be restored to him in due course. If not…He had shrugged. War had brought greater tragedies than that to so many families.

Unfortunately, his father had died taking the name of the guardian of the painting with him to the grave. Which was a pity, for to have that piece of information might have saved him the devil of a lot of trouble, Titus reflected. Yet here was this Frenchman, raising the subject of Titian, associating his father's name at once with the painter. His father might have come across Delancourt in Rome; Titus doubted if he had ever had any dealings with him, he was far too canny a man for that.

What would he say, if he could see his son standing here now, a man grown into maturity, no boy full of wild ideas and schemes, yet so obsessed with denying his king possession of the painting that he was talking to Delancourt like a keen customer, prepared to do business with him, if there were the least chance that the man knew where the Titian was? Or had even managed to lay his greasy hands on it?

“I saw another old acquaintance of mine just now,” Harry was saying. “One Mr. Warren, another compatriot. I did not know he was an aficionado of art.”

A blank look spread over the jowly face. “Mr. Warren? I don't think I—”

“Come, come, man, we saw him leave. Dark as to complexion, wearing a cherry-coloured coat.”

“Ah, Mr. Warren,” Delancourt said, strangling the name so that it sounded like Mr. Venom. “He called on behalf of another client, that is all. I know nothing about him.”

The man was a good liar, but not good enough. Why deny that Warren had been there, and then make up a feeble tale about his representing someone else? Of course, that was exactly what Warren was doing, but Titus doubted if he would have revealed to Delancourt that he was acting on behalf of King George. Warren was not the man to show the cards in his hand; although the mention of such an eminent patron might tempt Delancourt to bring forth the jewels in his collection.

Titus felt it was time to play a bolder hand. “You spoke of Titian,” he said. “I see no works here of his.”

Delancourt's mouth shaped an unpleasantly moist moue of sorrow. “Alas, alas, a humble man such as myself would consider himself the most favoured of beings were he to come into possession of anything by that master.” He kissed his plump fingers in an extravagant gesture. “Wonderful pictures, all of them so prized, so many collectors panting, yes, panting, I say, to obtain even the least of his canvases. I cannot help you there, greatly to my sorrow.”

“Oh, I don't want a Titian,” Titus said. “I have my father's one, after all, which should be sufficient for the heart of any man, don't you agree?”

“You have his Titian?” cried Delancourt. “How can this be?” He recollected himself, and Titus noticed with interest that beads of sweat were forming on his forehead. “I had understood that in the confusion of the times—that the painting had been lost.”

“Not at all. It hangs at Beaumont, which is my country house. In the library,” he added untruthfully. That was where he had a place earmarked for the painting; at the moment a lugubrious ancestor looked down from the wall from there.

“I am amazed. Overcome. I had understood—” Delancourt produced a large red silk square and mopped his brow, leaving unpleasant streaks behind on the flamboyant handkerchief. He stuffed it back into his pocket. “I take a great personal interest in the works of this artist, and I had thought I knew where all his paintings are in England. But I stand corrected.”

“You do, indeed. Few people have ever seen it. I live in a remote part of the country and entertain little there. Perhaps that is why it has never come to your notice. Although my late father's purchase of the work in question is a matter of record.”

“Records! If we were to rely on records—”

“Quite.”

“What was all that about?” Harry asked as they watched his gondola approach the steps and come to a standstill with an elegant twist of the gondolier's oar. “You had the old rascal looking quite pasty. Makes a change; I think it's usually his customers who end up poorer and paler.”

Titus was following his own train of thought. “He is up to something with Warren.”

“Oh, that's clear enough. What's it to do with you? Do you really own a Titian, by the way? I don't recall it, but then I only ever paid you one visit at Beaumont; time spent at my own house is time ill spent enough, without going visiting anyone else's draughty residences in the damp countryside.”

“I do own a Titian, yes.”

Harry was a dear friend, but he was a gossip. Able to keep his mouth shut when it came to matters military, or even political, he would regard Titus's quest for the Titian as of no great moment, and therefore a good story to pass around. He was big with curiosity as to exactly why Titus had chosen to visit Venice now; he knew Titus well enough to be aware that he did nothing without a reason or a purpose. Idling his time away amid the fleshpots of Venice was not Titus's style, yet it would have to suffice as an explanation for the present. Once the Titian was recovered, Harry could regale the whole of Venice with the tale if he wished.

Once it was recovered. What was Warren up to? Why had he gone straight to Delancourt? Why was Delancourt so twitchy on the subject of Titians, and of the Manningtree Titian in particular? Ha, he'd given him something to think about, saying it hung at Beaumont. It was the last thing Delancourt would want, to sell a painting to a man like Warren, especially if he had, after all, named his illustrious patron, and for the ultimate purchaser to find the painting had a twin.