Nor was the count’s unnatural silence on the topic of her courier as they returned to the vestibule. There, he sent a servant scurrying for the parasol Lucia had lent her, at his insistence. Not until they were a good hundred yards from the house, strolling along a gravelled avenue of poplars, did he broach the subject.
“For a Greek,” he said, “Prestopoulos speaks excellent English. And for a servant, he appears to be on excellent terms with his mistress. Is he your lover?”
“No! I am not my mother!”
“I beg your pardon, my dear. My relationship with your mother somehow never stopped my regarding you as a daughter, and perhaps foolishly I once again feel myself to some degree in loco parentis.”
“Oh sir,” cried Cordelia, “I shall never cease to look upon you as the best and dearest of uncles.”
He smiled at her gravely. “Then you will understand why I interest myself in this man of mystery to whom you have entrusted yourself.”
“I do understand, and I would not have deceived you but that it seemed safer not to let your household know who he is. I am an insignificant female—and besides, I hoped I might rely upon their old fondness for me—but he is a man and a stranger.”
“He is English?”
“An English gentleman, travelling as my companion, not my servant,” she admitted.
“An Englishman is not safe in Italy with the parvenu Buonaparte’s family and lackeys set over us. Why did you come here from Istanbul? Happy though I am to see you, you should have gone to Malta or Sicily, somewhere occupied by the British.”
Concealing James’s brush with the law, which was not her tale to tell, Cordelia told him of her flight from Mehmed Pasha. “I had no chance to seek out the best ship,” she explained. “Mr. Preston and I had to take what we were offered.”
Her highly edited story of their subsequent misadventures made no mention of James’s attempts upon her virtue. For all his gravity, the Conte di Arventino was a fiery Italian who might take it into his head to avenge the insult to his honorary daughter.
“So we ended up in Ragusa, in French territory,” she finished, “and it seemed unlikely we should find a ship to English territory from there.”
“Most unlikely,” the count agreed, “unless a neutral ship happened to call, American perhaps, though few sail the Mediterranean these days despite the end of their embargo.”
They came to the end of the walk and stopped at the balustrade to gaze out over the gently sloping fields to the blue line of the Adriatic in the distance.
“Did Mama ever tell you anything about my father?” Cordelia asked suddenly.
“Nothing but his name and that he had divorced her. Had she been a widow, I might have defied my family and married her, and you would be my daughter in truth.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “But the church does not recognize divorce.”
Cordelia felt tears rise to her eyes. She blinked them back.
“I wish... No, I am going back to England, to be the respectable daughter of the respectable Sir Hamilton Courtenay, Baronet, of Hill House, Fenny Sedgwick, Norfolk. But as long as I live, I shall never forget Arventino.”
They stood in silence for a moment, then he sighed and dropped his arm, and they turned to return to the house.
“Has Mr....Preston, is it? Has he a plan to get you to England?”
“No, except that he spoke of Malta or Sicily, as you did. We agreed to consult you.”
“I shall be glad to assist,” said the count, clearly pleased.
His expression changed as he looked ahead and saw his wife waiting on the steps at the end of the avenue, her foot tapping impatiently. He was resigned, Cordelia had realized long since, but not happy in his marriage.
Lucia gave her a brittle smile and turned to her husband. “Simone, I wish to go into Bari. With the warm weather coming, I must purchase muslin for new dresses. Besides, it is so dull here, I am sure the signorina must be bored to tears. I shall take her with me.”
Cordelia was reluctant to reject this first offer of friendship, though she knew she must. Fortunately the count did it for her.
“Impossible, Lucia. It would be most unwise for an Englishwoman to venture into town unnecessarily.”
“Thank you, contessa,” said Cordelia, trying to ignore the black eyes full of malice. Whatever Lucia’s reason for the invitation, she did not believe it was to give her pleasure. “I wish I could safely go with you, though I truly do not find Arventino dull.”
“Well, I do,” she said petulantly. “I shall tell Barzetti to order the carriage for me.”
“It is too late today,” the count pointed out. “By the time you reach Bari you will not have the leisure to linger over your choice of muslins, as I know you like to. Tomorrow is Sunday, and Monday is a saint’s day holiday, so you may go on Tuesday.”
Pouting, Lucia began to argue, and Cordelia made her escape into the house.
After being once discovered in James’s room, she did not dare risk going back. She decided to take the children to the English garden in the hope that he would find her there. It was close enough to the house not to overstrain him, she thought.
Meanwhile, James waited impatiently in his little room. He had to talk to Cordelia, to discover what the count was saying to her about him, but he did not want to come face to face with them both together. When he guessed they must surely have finished their stroll, he would go out to look for her, hoping she remembered what he had said about meeting in the gardens.
He was about to leave when once more a rap on the door announced the count.
“A word with you, if you please, Mr. Preston,” he said in excellent English. “Be so good as to come outside with me.”
James grinned at him. “You, too, fear walls have ears, my lord?”
“Walls...? Ah, this is an English saying?” The count nodded sober assent. “My people are loyal, but what is not known cannot be told. Come.”
With the haziest memory of what he had seen on his arrival, James was impressed by the elegant house and the immaculately tended gardens. As, in deference to his recent debility, they sat down on a marble bench on a wide terrace, he said sincerely, “You have a beautiful place, sir.”
“Thank you. It is particularly pleasant at this season, but even in summer Arventino is high enough for the cooling breezes, and far enough from the coast to avoid the malaria. I used to spend more of time here but I regret we are too isolated to please my wife. Cordelia and her mother always enjoyed to stay.”
“Cordelia was very keen to see Arventino again. To see you again. She has not mentioned how you came to be acquainted?” By using the phrasing of a statement with the intonation of a question, he hoped to avoid being damned for impertinent prying. Which would be justified, he admitted to himself.
“It is not secret. Her mother was my dearly loved mistress. We met in Berlin when I accompanied a diplomatic mission to the King of Prussia. Lady Courtenay has left her previous protector when he wished to send the child to an orphanage.”
If Lady Courtenay’s dissolute history shocked James, this long-ago averted threat to her daughter outraged him. “An orphanage!”
“Drusilla did not allow. She was greatly fond of Cordelia, and I became greatly fond also. This is why, like any fond papa, I wish to know what you mean for her.”
“Whether my intentions are honourable?”
“
Sì
. I do not expect that you will marry the daughter of such a one as my unhappy Drusilla. Cordelia tells me you are not yet her lover. It is best this does not happen, that she goes safe to her father.”
Her father? James had assumed Lady Courtenay was a widow. This news put her conduct in a still more scandalous light. “I shall do my best to deliver Miss Courtenay unharmed to her father,” he said stiffly.
“But nature is powerful.” The count shrugged. “And Cordelia has chosen to put herself under your protection. I ask only that you remember this. When we drive the French innkeeper’s son from the throne of Naples, I shall seek her, and if you have seduced and abandoned her, be certain I shall avenge her.”
“Sir, I am a gentleman!” Seduce her he might, but never would he abandon her. Yet he did not announce that his intentions were still more honourable, that he did indeed mean to marry her. What the devil would his uncle say if he arrived home with the daughter of an adulterous courtesan as his affianced bride? “I give you my word Miss Courtenay shall not suffer through me.”
“The word of the English gentleman is not to be doubted,” said di Arventino, “especially as Cordelia has told me of your care for her on your journey from Istanbul.”
“And hers for me, sir,” James said soberly, thinking of the uncomplaining way she had soothed his agonies and cleaned up his messes in the cramped cabin of the
Donna Maddalena
. Come to that, if it weren’t for her his body might now be rotting on a Turkish impaling hook. At least the French guillotine was quick—not that he had any desire to try it. “In a few days I shall be strong enough to continue our journey, thanks to your hospitality. Will you be so kind as to give us your advice on how to proceed?”
“By sea, I fear.”
James groaned. “As I feared.”
“Though the Straits of Messina are scarce a league wide, I cannot advise you to travel thither by land. In Calabria are many French troops, in the mountains to fight the peasants’ uprising, and on the coast to guard against invasion from Sicily.”
“Will it not be difficult to find a ship to take us to Sicily?”
“My yacht is at Taranto, on the south coast of Apulia, not much farther from here than Bari to the north. It will carry you to Siracusa, where there is an English garrison. You will be glad to hear,” the count added dryly, “that it is a swift vessel.”
“Very glad. Thank you, sir.”
“All I ask is that you take with you some papers and give them to the English commander to be conveyed to King Ferdinand in Palermo. He is a Spaniard, but at least he is a prince.”
James assented. They settled on the following Wednesday for the departure, since di Arventino had promised his wife the use of the carriage on Tuesday. “I shall have to consult Cordelia,” James said, “but I doubt she will object. Do you know where I may find her?”
“Try the English garden. It is her favourite, as of her mother.” With a sigh, the count pointed out the way.
He returned into the house and James set off. He was glad to find his limbs more than equal to the short walk. For the next few days he would eat like a horse in preparation for the coming voyage.
Turning the end of a row of cypresses, he saw Cordelia seated in the shade of a thoroughly English honeysuckle bower. Glorious roses, crimson and white, pink and yellow, added their perfume to the scented air, which rang with the happy chatter of two little bonneted girls playing at her feet. She had a baby on her lap, and a small boy with black curls, scarce out of short coats, stood beside her, earnestly showing her something.
She glanced up and saw James. A smile lit her face.
James’s breath caught in his throat. A vision rose before him of Cordelia in a real English garden surrounded by her own fair-haired children. Hers and his. He was going to marry her, come hell or high water. Not because it was his duty, not just because he wanted to make love to her; but because he wanted her for his wife, and because he loved her.
To the devil with her mother and his uncle!
Then he recalled her reaction when he had asked her to marry him. “I cannot possibly marry you,” she had said, and how that stress on you had rankled! “I don’t want to marry you and I shan’t,” she had gone on. “I don’t have to, I have not lost my virtue.”
There was no help for it, he’d have to seduce her to convince her she had no choice but to become his wife.
But not here in the house of her protective honorary uncle, he decided. He had no more desire to experience Italian vengeance than a French guillotine. Joining her, he acquainted her with the plans for their departure.
After three restful, well-fed days, he felt himself almost ready to face the horrors of a sea voyage again. Sitting with Cordelia and the count on a shady terrace after a hearty luncheon, he was about to tell them so when Barzetti, the old majordomo, scuttled out of the house.
“Eccellenza,” he cried, “the outrider of Signora la Contessa is come. He says she has reported your English guests to the French and they are close on his heels!”
Chapter 24
The open carriage, intended for leisurely jaunts about the countryside, bounced along the stony track. Cordelia clung to the side. Clouds of white dust rose from the horses’ hooves and the wheels, to coat the occupants and hang in the air behind them.
“Like the pillar of cloud leading Moses through the wilderness,” James said grimly, “except this is leading the French after us. Tell me what happened. I did not understand the half of it.”
“The outrider said Lucia’s maid told one of the footmen this morning that Lucia had muttered something about informing on us to the French. The footman told him but he did nothing as he did not really believe it. Also he had been sent to escort the countess and he did not dare desert his duty. But then Lucia ordered the coachman to take her to the French
comandante
. The outrider decided he was as likely to land in the suds through not warning his master as through deserting his mistress.”
“So he raced back to Arventino at once? That would explain why the troops did not arrive before we left. It’s even possible the contessa thought better of betraying us when he departed in such a hurry.”
“I hope so,” Cordelia exclaimed, “but pray don’t suggest to our driver that he need not go so fast!”
“I shan’t.” James grinned wryly. “Loath as I am to set sail, I shall be most insistent on the count’s captain putting out to sea the moment we arrive, ready or not.”
Captain Rutigliano needed no persuading. Their driver knew his habits and quickly ran him and two of his sailors to earth at a trattoria near the old harbour. He scanned the count’s brief note and promptly hustled Cordelia and James aboard.
The other two crew members were there, guarding the yacht, a graceful vessel gleaming with white paint, polished teak, and brass fittings. The count had sent word days ago of their coming on the morrow, so all was in readiness. As the last red sliver of sun slid into the Gulf of Taranto, the
Bella Drusilla
slid away from the quay.