The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy (29 page)

“I don't know what to do,” she said, twisting the fine linen of her bedsheet between her fingers. “How long will it be before Camilla returns? Could you lend me sufficient money to travel to Vienna, perhaps?”

Lady Hermione settled herself on the velvet stool that was placed between the windows. “As to that, I have some news for you about Vienna.” She glanced at Figgins.

“I have no secrets from Figgins,” Alethea said at once. “Indeed, she is my dear friend, and I should not have survived without her.”

“Well, then, I shall tell you what I have heard from London, where a great friend keeps me abreast of all the news in town. It seems likely that your husband, that Mr. Napier, is on his way to Venice.”

Alethea went pale and clasped her hand to her mouth. Napier here in Venice? “With my luck, I shall run smack into him the minute I set foot out of doors. What am I to do, where am I to go?”

“That is what we have to discuss. Wait, though, there is more from London, and it is best that you should hear it. There are strong rumours of an estrangement between yourself and Mr. Napier, and people are saying that you have run away with another man. London loves a scandal, and especially an adulterous one, and people in society have such commonplace minds that they always hit upon a story of this kind.”

Alethea was silent for a moment. It had been bound to happen, sooner or later; her absence even from Napier's country fastness would be noticed and commented upon. She felt it was the least of her worries.

“There is no possibility of a reconciliation between you and Mr. Napier? You could perhaps meet him here, with others present, if need be, myself, or your cousin even.”

“Cousin Collins! I think not. No, ma'am, I shall never, ever go back to Mr. Napier. I don't care if I have to live in disgraced seclusion for the rest of my days. Nothing could be worse than to be back in his company, in his power. I truly think it would end in his killing me.”

Alethea regretted blurting the words out. They sounded melodramatic, and she had no wish to go into the horrors of her marriage with a woman who, however kind and well-meaning, was a stranger.

Lady Hermione had no such inhibitions. She was determined to get to the bottom of this. Titus might put it down to a careless upbringing and a wild and reckless disposition; she knew despair and deep unhappiness when she saw it—and neither state seemed at all natural in one of Alethea's temperament and character.

“You will tell me about it,” she said firmly.

 

What a difference a dress made, Figgins thought as she fastened Alethea into the rather plain gown.

“Oh, how stuffy it is after trousers to wear petticoats again.”

Figgins was thoroughly glad to be back in her own clothes. “It's time all that pretence was over, always looking over one's shoulder and waiting to be found out. I'm not saying it didn't work—and we must be grateful for that, for here we are, with people to help you—but my heart was in my mouth every minute for fear we would be discovered.”

People to help her, yes, that was true. Which was more than her own sisters were prepared to do; at least Miss Camilla would have helped, had she been able, but as for Miss Letty and Miss Georgina—for she still thought of them by the names they had had when she had waited upon the family in Aubrey Square—they hardly deserved the name of sisters.

Easy enough to dismiss others' problems when you had none of your own. If they'd heard half of what Miss Alethea had related to Lady Hermione, they must have cried out in sympathy for their sister, but they hadn't wanted to hear any of it.

Miss Alethea was unusually silent while she finished dressing her and did her hair. Thinking, no doubt, working out some new scheme to plunge them into more trouble. That Lady Hermione had a head on her shoulders, and for all she was a great lady, she had a practical outlook on it all. She'd wasted no time on pitying Miss Alethea, which was as well, for you could see that she was buttoning up and wishing she hadn't spoken out like that. It had to be told, however, for now her ladyship would not dream of suggesting that husband and wife try to make up their differences.

“I think we should go to Rome,” Alethea said. “I can stay there safely with Camilla and Wytton, and I do not suppose that Napier will follow me there. Then, when Papa and Mama are back in Vienna, I am sure they will escort me there, one or other of them.”

Rome! Figgins didn't in the least want to go to Rome. Still, if that was where Miss Alethea had made up her mind to go, then to Rome she had no doubt they would go.

“Lady Hermione is sending me out this morning, with a maid of her own who speaks English and Italian, so that I may buy more clothes for you, and for me, too, her ladyship says.” She would enjoy that; how different to be out and about in her own skin, not on guard every moment of the day, nor having to worry over what her mistress might take it into her head to do next.

The mere thought of the night before, the opera house, the performance, made Figgins feel queasy. Thank God that Mr. Manningtree had chanced to attend the opera, and had behaved with such presence of mind. How different it might have been, if Miss Alethea hadn't given him the slip when they first arrived in Venice.

Still, no good ever came regretting what was done and past; you couldn't undo it, so you might as well put it out of your mind.

A knock on the door, a curtseying maid, and miss was to attend on Lady Hermione if she was ready.

Alethea surveyed herself in the long glass without enthusiasm. “I make a much prettier man than a woman,” she said under her breath as she walked from the room.

 

Titus did not agree. He saw before him a young woman who had fulfilled all the beauty that her sixteen-year-old self had promised. He took her hand and kissed it; a rigid hand. Her regard was cold and reserved, the look of one who neither liked nor trusted him.

However, she remembered her manners and thanked him, a little stiffly, for bringing her and Figgins to safety in Lady Hermione's hands. Then she turned to Lady Hermione, who was sitting on a sofa looking at them both with a keen, interested expression on her face.

Lady Hermione was not a woman to betray a confidence, but she was shrewd enough to know that she was going to need Titus's help in sorting out Alethea's affairs, and that it would be best if he knew, starkly and without embroidery, what Alethea had had to endure during her months with Napier.

It had not come as a great surprise to him, neither the nature of the man's behaviour, nor that Alethea had been driven to escape from him at any cost. “My father sat as a magistrate on several such cases,” he had told Lady Hermione. “It is unpardonable; a man who treats a woman, any woman—or indeed any creature in their power—in such a way puts himself beyond the protection of society.”

“Is Napier deranged?”

“Any reasonable person would call such behaviour the acts of a man outside his wits, but no, I do not think one can say he is insane. There is the sexual pleasure, that goes without saying, but in this case, there is also an exaggerated sense of power, an assertion of patriarchal authority coupled with the demands and ties of domesticity which an immature man may feel reluctant to assume, which is sometimes combined with a fear of effeminacy. There is no excusing such a man, of course, whatever his perverse reasons are for such cruelty.”

“Alethea seems to think the law will support him; he led her to believe that he had total ownership of her body as well as her property, that she owned nothing that he did not choose to grant her.”

“The law would not support him. A separation would be the normal course, and perhaps, in time, divorce. In most such cases, the woman returns to her family.”

“As to that,” said Lady Hermione, “Alethea tried, in the absence of her parents, to enlist her sister Mrs. Barcombe's support, but Napier, weasel that he is, charmed her and persuaded her that Alethea was suffering from no more than an excess of maidenly modesty.”

“Maidenly modesty! I doubt if Miss Darcy—for I refuse to call her Mrs. Napier—has ever had an ounce of maidenly modesty.”

“Do stop pacing up and down and sit beside me, here, and take a cup of coffee, or there is wine if you prefer. Alethea will be down directly, and then we must put our heads together and see what is to be done.”

And here was Alethea, a little wan, dark circles beneath her eyes that it pained him to see, but with no inclination to show a single sign of weakness. Had he not met her, had he not seen what she had done—and understood, now, why she had done it—he would not have believed that any woman alive was capable of taking her life into her own hands in the way this young woman, hardly more than a girl, had done.

Announcing, in the calmest way, that she intended to go to Rome.

She shot him a glance from pale, resolute eyes. “Don't look like that, Mr. Manningtree. It is for me and me alone to decide what I shall do and where I shall go.”

“Not so high, Alethea,” said Lady Hermione. “Wherever you go, you will need an escort, and I have no wish to go jauntering about Europe in all this heat. Titus, however—”

“I need no escort.”

“In Italy, you do, believe me, you do.”

“I have no intention of leaving Venice at present, as it happens,” Titus began, then bit off the words as Lady Hermione gave him an exasperated look. “Perhaps it will be best if Miss Darcy stays here in Venice until arrangements of some kind can be made for her to go wherever she decides.”

“Titus, do not be tiresome. Alethea cannot stay here, not with her cousin on the premises.”

Titus had forgotten the bishop. “The devil with the man, you'll have to send him packing. Surely you can get rid of him somehow.”

“We never could,” said Alethea. “Whatever we did, he always stayed his time out. I remember once we dressed up in sheets and—”

“I can well imagine it, if your sisters are anything like you,” said Titus. “How long a visit does he propose to make, ma'am?”

“Another fortnight at least. I shall go to my house in the mountains. I always do for the heat of the summer months, you know, so I shall bring my departure forward. He may stay on alone, if he wants to.”

“Mountains! Why should not Alethea go with you?”

“My dear Titus, I thought men were supposed to have rational minds. Should Napier come to Venice, he will seek me out as soon as he finds Camilla isn't here. It will hardly be a problem for him to discover my address in the hills, it is barely a half day's journey from here, and there he will be, on my doorstep, and looking over my shoulder at Alethea.”

“The same argument surely applies to Rome. Once he finds Camilla and Wytton are there, he may try his hand in Rome.”

“Rome is a big place, why should he find them?” Alethea said.

“Wytton has a wide circle of acquaintance,” his mother said. “When Wytton can tear himself away from his inscriptions and old monuments, he and Camilla will go out in society. The English community isn't so large, it would take a man like Napier no time at all to track them down.”

“Is there nowhere I am safe from him?” Alethea said.

“I think,” said Lady Hermione, “that the safest place for you at present is England.”

“England! I cannot possibly go back to England. Where should I go?”

“Lady Fanny would welcome you with open arms, I am sure. I am surprised you didn't seek refuge there in the first place.”

“Lady Fanny might welcome me, but Mr. Fitzwilliam wouldn't,” said Alethea roundly. “He cordially dislikes me, and always has done, and he would make me go back to Tyrrwhit House. He is stupid and stuffy and has no idea—”

“When he learns how vilely Napier has treated you,” Lady Hermione said, “I think his attitude will change. You are one of his family, he will support you.”

“No, he won't, no more than my sister Letty did.” She took a deep breath in an effort to control herself. “I do not assert that he would approve of—of how things were between my husband and me, just that he would refuse to listen if I tried to tell him. He never does listen to anything I say.”

There was a rising note of panic in her voice, and Titus, who knew Fitzwilliam only slightly, had a strong suspicion that she was right; he looked like the kind of man who would turn ostrich to avoid anything disagreeable on the domestic front. A brave soldier in his time, but storming a wall at Badajoz would come much easier to him than admitting to such a degree of marital disharmony and wickedness within his circle.

“In that case, you must go to the Abbey,” said Lady Hermione.

“Abbey?”

“Yes, to Shillingford Abbey, Alexander and Camilla's house in Herefordshire.”

“But is there anyone there?”

“The housekeeper. I shall give you a letter for her, and she will make you quite at home.”

“A good solution,” Titus said. “Perhaps the polite world may be led to believe that she has been there all this while.”

“She is known to have been in Paris.”