The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy (12 page)

She had married, of course, very soon into her first season; he had heard of it from Wytton, when he ran across him in Constantinople; his friend and neighbour had mentioned that Napier was a musical connoisseur, which would, he hoped, create a bond between the couple.

Not such a bond that she hadn't swiftly got up to mischief. An intrigue, an adulterous intrigue, must be the reason for this escapade. But, good God, what a risk she was running. Was Napier aware of where she was? Could he possibly have any inkling what she was up to? His own position was damnable, too. A total stranger cutting up such a lark might merely be amusing, but when it turned out to be someone very much from his own world, it was different.

He frowned. He was no kind of a hypocrite, he could not pretend to be a keen protector of the married state, but were he in Napier's shoes, he would feel great indignation if a fellow countryman didn't step in to send the errant wife scurrying back to England before anyone else found out who she was and what she was up to, resulting in an almighty scandal.

“Bravo,” Lord Lucius cried as the song wound to its end. “Give us the pleasure of another tune, Mr. Hawkins, you have a fine voice, indeed.”

Signore Lessini was nodding in agreement. Warren and Mrs. Vineham had their heads together; Titus heard the word “castrato,” and another peal of laughter broke from Mrs. Vineham. She waved a hand in a languid gesture. “Let us have no more music, enough is enough, and the card table calls to us, does it not, Lucius?” Then, in a lower voice, “For heaven's sake, stop gazing at the young prodigy as though you would gobble him up. That is not the way to coax him to your will, I assure you, you will merely embarrass him.” Louder, “Mr. Manningtree, do you make up our four?”

Titus declined, quite brusquely. Signore Lessini stepped forward, with the proviso that he would not play for high stakes, but otherwise was happy to oblige so that the others might have a game.

Warren raised an eyebrow, Lord Lucius looked huffy, Emily Lessini appeared relieved, and Mrs. Vineham lifted an elegant shoulder in acquiescence. “It will be but dull sport; however, anything is better than more music. I protest, I find such an unsexed voice quite devoid of charm. I dare say,” she added, noticing that Mr. Hawkins had heard her words, “that your voice will deepen as you grow older and can boast some hairs on your chin. You need not despair of such an outcome; I believe it does happen, even to young men in their twenties.”

Lord Lucius was calling for cards. Titus hesitated. He longed to go and sit beside Emily, perhaps to snatch a few private words with her, but she had brought out a piece of embroidery and stretched herself out on the little sofa where she sat so there was no room for another person. A dull evening indeed. He could retire with a book, or go out for a damp walk in the dim moonlight, only he fancied neither course of action. Very well, he would sit beside Alethea Darcy, Alethea Napier as she now was, and see if he could glean something of the truth from her, ascertain if there were any reason why he should not send word to Napier of where his wife was.

He caught himself up at this thought. Not a hypocrite, indeed. He had never cared for Napier, considered that the surface man and the essential Napier were two very different creatures. What the devil business was it of his whether Napier and his wife fell out or not, and why should he play the moralising parson by putting an end to whatever game this Darcy girl was playing?

He owed it to Fitzwilliam Darcy and Mrs. Darcy? He did not. He knew them, but did not move in the same circle, could in no way describe himself as intimate with the family. With Wytton's family, yes, he was on very close terms with them, and therefore with Camilla Wytton, who was, of course, this hermaphrodite's elder sister. Even so, to betray her whereabouts to her husband or her father might be to cause the very scandal he preferred to spare his old friend and neighbour. Besides, he couldn't be so very sure that Wytton would regard this jaunt of Mrs. Napier's in the same disapproving light as the rest of the world assuredly would. You could never tell with Wytton.

 

There had been a look of intelligence in Titus Manningtree's eye that made Alethea's heart give a lurch of alarm. Had he smoked her out? Had he recognised her? Their acquaintance had been brief, and in the two years since then, she had changed. She had grown, she had become thinner, she had had a love affair and become a married woman. In so many ways, she was a different person, and with short hair and these clothes and the admitted relationship to the Darcy family to account for the likeness to her father, why should he doubt her? It was her experience that people generally took you at face value and accepted that you were what you claimed to be.

Like Napier. No, she wasn't going to think about Napier. She was going to lounge in this chair, stretch her long limbs out, be at her ease, and think herself into her part. I am Aloysius Hawkins, she told herself. A young man of promise, on his first adventure out in the world.

Titus offered wine; she was about to refuse, then thanked him as he called to the servant hovering at the door to the room.

“You may bring us a bottle of wine, and don't leave that door so wide open, it makes the fire smoke.”

The man scurried off, and Titus, too, stretched out his still longer legs, crossing them at the ankle and looking from under his eyelids at Alethea.

“You are not previously acquainted with any of this group of stranded travellers from England?” Titus enquired.

“No, sir. I have led a somewhat secluded life.”

“Your father's estate is where?”

“In the north.”

“Derbyshire?”

“I have spent much time in that county, with my cousins.”

“Ah, yes, of course.”

They fell silent. Alethea wondered whether to venture a remark of her own, but thought that a callow youth would let the older man determine the subject of any conversation.

“You have made a study of music,” Titus went on. “Your performance is beyond that of the amateur.”

“I was fortunate in my teachers.”

He was finding this hard work, Alethea could see. She was boring him. Very well, let him be bored. She hadn't asked him to come and sit near her and ask awkward questions. The weather, that excellent conversational standby of anyone with a drop of English veins in his or her blood. Let them discuss the weather.

“The landlord is vague as to how long our stay here is likely to be.”

“The landlord,” said Titus, “is very happy to have a party of travellers holed up in his wretched inn, running up long bills and filling his rooms at a time of year when he must have little trade.”

“Wretched inn? I find it very comfortable.”

“Do you? I spoke figuratively. The beds and the public rooms are well enough, but I count any place wretched where I am forced to stay against my will. However, do not believe all the landlord said. Snow, at this season, is destined to thaw and floods subside. The way he speaks, we are likely to be here for at least a se'ennight; I do not think so. Another day or so, and the pass will be open, provided one has a good guide and takes care how one goes.”

“Have you often crossed the Alps?”

“Several times, although not usually so early in the year.”

“The business that takes you to Italy is urgent, then.”

“I wish to be away from here, because I find it tedious. I am quite sure, though, that the business I am upon will wait until we are released from imprisonment by snow and water. I have a rival in what I have come to acquire, but he is not yet in Italy.”

There was a grim note to his voice, an uncompromising look to his jaw; Alethea felt rather sorry for the rival, whoever he was.

“And you are going to stay with my good friend Wytton and his wife, who is, of course, your cousin.”

There it was once more, that edge to his voice. Sharpness? Mockery? She glanced at him again and found his expression to be one of bland politeness.

Scenery, then. “The mountains have a grandeur beyond anything I expected,” she ventured. “From the descriptions of them that I have read, and people's accounts of them, and engravings and so forth. I was still not prepared for such majesty.”

“They are very big, are they not?”

Mockery, there was unquestionably a mocking tone there. “You are used to them, sir, they inspire no awe in you as they must in one who has never seen them before.”

“You are mistaken. Mountains inspire awe in any human person who has a soul. They remind us of our frailty, our unimportance, of the briefness of our span upon this earth. They touch the heavens, and sail serenely at an altitude beyond even the imaginings of a mere mortal. I assure you, even those like Herr Geissler, who has seen the mountains every day of his life, never lose their respect for the mountains. They are cruel, dangerous, and possessed of a beauty one can never grow weary of.”

Titus had raised his voice slightly as he spoke, and Mrs. Vineham's keen ears had caught his words. “Of whom are you speaking, Mr. Manningtree?” she cried across the room. “Who is the cruel and dangerous beauty? I am sure I must know her.”

“We are speaking of the mountains, ma'am,” said Titus.

“The mountains! The world would be a better place without mountains. They are much admired but the picturesque is not as fashionable as it was used to be, and for my part I can do without mountains.”

Lord Lucius impatiently called her attention back to the cards and Alethea gave way to the laughter that was welling up inside her.

Titus watched her trying to control herself. “A sip of wine?” he suggested.

Gasping in her efforts not to laugh out loud, Alethea took a large gulp of her wine and nearly choked on it. She coughed and spluttered, aware that Titus was watching her with a sardonic expression on his face.

“Are you quite recovered?” he asked.

“Yes. It was so absurd, you see, about the mountains—”

“Do not think of it, or you will succumb to your laughter, and bring Mrs. Vineham's contempt down upon you.”

The thought of Mrs. Vineham's tongue quite took away any desire Alethea had to laugh, and she composed her face.

“We have spoken of the mountains, and of the weather,” said Titus. “Have you any very striking observations to make upon the subject of your travels? Did you enjoy Paris?”

Alethea started. Did he connect her with the boy who had bumped into him that night in Paris? Had she mentioned the city? She racked her brains in vain. She thought not. “I did travel by way of Paris, but that is a city I have visited before.”

“You have another cousin there, no doubt.”

She stared at him, nonplussed for a moment. Cousin? Of course, Georgina.

“Lady Mordaunt is a cousin of mine.”

“Did you see her while you were there?”

What business was it of his if she had? “I did myself the honour of calling upon her,” she said stiffly.

“You sampled the many delights Paris has to offer a young man, I dare say.”

Now he was teasing her, she was sure of it. “If you mean the more salacious pleasures the city is famous for, my inclinations do not run in that direction.”

“No?
Un homme sérieux,
I perceive. Very well. Did you visit the site where so many unfortunates lost their heads, and trace the last footsteps of the late king Louis the Sixteenth?”

“I am not a ghoul, and history does not interest me,” Alethea said. She was growing hot under her starched collar. He was playing with her as he might a puppy. That was the kind of man he was, one to use his superior years and experience to make a green young man feel ill at ease and inadequate. She had thought him a man of uncertain temper, with the habit of command, one used to having his own way, a man well able to deal with the unexpected, whether in the form of an attack from bandits or a Mrs. Vineham. He was all that, but he stood convicted, in her mind, of a cold callousness that she didn't care for.

Then he smiled, and his face was transformed. “You rebuke me, Mr. Hawkins, and with reason. I am out of sorts this evening, fretful for the delay to my journey. I am not a patient man.”

 

A better man would feel contrite, Titus told himself, for goading her like that. He didn't. He had to admire her coolness under fire, however. A keen observer could notice nothing malapropos about her behaviour or responses; they were just those that might be expected of a callow young man such as she was pretending to be.

Had he ever been such an one? He judged her to be eighteen or so. Yes, for Camilla Wytton had said that she was sixteen when they were at Shillingford Abbey for the wedding. “So, Mr. Hawkins, you will proceed to the university. Do you have plans beyond that? The law, perhaps, or the church. Perhaps you are fortunate enough to be an elder son, and will inherit an estate and have no need of a profession.”

“It is still some while in the future.” She made a visible effort to continue the conversation. “I might enlist in the army.”

His eyes flickered over to her, his eyebrows lifted. His mouth twitched. “I am not sure that such a life would suit you.”