“Is this true?” the magistrate asked her. “Madam? Would you reply to this charge?” He looked up from overseeing Johnnie’s notes and saw that Livia had strolled away. He repeated more irritably: “Madam! We are waiting for you! These are most serious charges.”
Confidently, she turned and walked towards the desk, her heels tapping on the floor as they had tapped down the church aisle just two hours before, her dark blue gown brushing the dusty floor. She smiled at the magistrate, conscious of her own beauty.
“It’s mostly true,” she said judiciously. She turned to Rob. “One thing I should say, and you should know. I did not denounce you, my dear. That was Felipe. I loved you then, as a wife can love a husband who has brought her more happiness than she ever knew. I would never have hurt you or betrayed you. I would have died first.”
She bent her head to the posy of primroses as if to see if Felipe would argue, and when he remained silent she looked up, like a beautiful actress timing her lines. She smiled tenderly at Rob as if they were alone together in the room. “All our sorrows came from Felipe,” she said softly. “He ruined our lives. He controlled me completely for years, he trapped me into working for him when I was married to the Conte—yes—he ruined my happiness there too. I was bound to him by a hundred secrets, and I should have known he would never let me go. When you found out about his business, he wanted to be rid of you. It was not I.” Meltingly she looked at him. “Never would it have been me. You know that I loved you. I would never, never have denounced you. But when he arrested you, I did see my chance to escape him. I did leave Venice, I did run away. I was afraid…” She lowered her voice. “You know how much I was afraid of him. This was a man who murdered my first husband and had my second imprisoned! I was terrified of him, and I was all alone without protection. Of course I ran away.”
“Murdered your first husband!” the magistrate exclaimed, looking from her serene face to Felipe.
Livia did not trouble herself to answer, she turned to Alys. “And of course I came to you. You know how unhappy I was when I first came here,” she said softly. “You know how deep was my grief at the loss of Roberto, your brother. You know how much I loved him. You will remember me crying in the night, crying till our pillow was wet with my tears. You know how you comforted me.”
Alys’s face was flinty. “Aye,” was all she said.
“You know how you comforted me,” Livia repeated. “You held me, you dried my tears, you took me in your arms.”
Alys nodded, still saying nothing.
“No one will ever know how good you were to me,” Livia said. “That tenderness will always be just between us, our secret.”
Alys’s mouth was shut in a hard line.
“And now I am pledged in all honor to Sir James and married to him.” Livia turned back to Rob. “My dear, I thought you were dead. Felipe assured me you were dead and there was no possibility of my ever seeing you again. Of course I told your family that you were drowned! I could not have borne to tell them that you were arrested and executed for the murder of my husband! I would never have shamed your name like that. I was trying to make a new life, and to love those that you loved. I was comforting them and supporting them.” She glanced back at Alys. “My dearest Alys will witness for me that I have been a good daughter to this house and a most loving sister to her. No one has ever loved you more—have they, my dear?”
Alys said nothing.
“But this was not a valid marriage,” the minister interrupted quietly. “Whatever your reasons for leaving Venice, you cannot be married to Sir James as you have a previous husband still alive. Since you have a living husband, the service of marriage which I have just undertaken was invalid and will be annulled.”
“Annulled?” Sir James inquired.
“As if it never happened,” the minister confirmed.
Livia made a little gesture with her hand, as if she were waving away something unimportant, as if she alone had the power to decide. She looked around the circle of rapt faces and saw no one who could oppose her.
“No,” she said simply. “It is not going to be annulled.”
Johnnie’s pen paused and he looked up to watch her. She exchanged one long pointed glance with him as if to remind him that he too was indebted to her, that he too had secrets with her. She held the attention of the room, as she ignored the minister and spoke directly to the magistrate. “Not so.”
She stepped a little closer to the desk so that she was standing halfway between the two parties, center stage, the complete focus of their attention. Johnnie could smell her perfume of roses. She gave him a warm confiding smile.
“It was my marriage in Venice that was not valid,” she explained slowly to the magistrate, speaking in her clear low voice. “I understood this, when this good man Mr. Rogers”—she gestured to the minister, who blinked and swallowed convulsively—“undertook my spiritual instruction, and admitted me into the Protestant Church. Then, only then, did I realize all that had to be done to make a valid marriage.
“My marriage in Venice to Rob was recited in English, which I did not then understand, a language that was foreign to me. So it was not valid on those grounds alone. It was in the Protestant Church in Venice where I was not a communicant. I had never been there before. I had no pew, I had no fellow parishioners. I was then a Roman Catholic, a communicant and confirmed member of the Roman Catholic Church. So it was not valid for that reason too.
“Of course, my church does not recognize your services, it does not recognize your ministers. In the eyes of my church it was never a marriage. And since I did not speak the language, and was not a communicant, it was not a valid marriage service in your church either. My marriage to Roberto Reekie”—she paused to smile tenderly at him—“my beloved Roberto—was invalid from start to finish.”
Johnnie had ceased to write anything, his pen suspended over the page, a blot of ink forming slowly on the nib. The minister looked blank, the magistrate was silent.
Livia turned to Rob. “I am so sorry, Roberto. But we did not know. We were young and so much in love! How should we know? The minister of your church should have told us, and baptized me, so that we might truly marry. He should have prepared me and confirmed me into his congregation in your church, as this good man has so carefully done. I would have done that for you! You know that I would have done anything for you. But he failed us, and since I was not a member of your church, since I did not understand my vows, the service was invalid. We were never married.”
The magistrate turned to Rob. “Is this true, Dr. Reekie?”
“Yes,” Rob replied hesitantly. “It’s true that we married in my church… I didn’t know…”
“If the couple are of different faiths the marriage is invalid,” the minister confirmed. “If she was not prepared for communion in our church and did not understand the vows then it is true: you were not married. All this time you were living in sin, God forgive you both. And the child…”
“Good Lord,” Lady Eliot said, truly shocked. “What has she said? Will she make her own child a bastard?”
Everyone turned to look at Matteo, who had woken and was struggling to get down from Carlotta’s arms to crawl on the floor.
“Oh, the child is mine,” Felipe spoke up.
Rob turned on him.
Sarah watched him give a little shrug as if he did not care what the admission might cost him. “The boy is mine.”
“Heavens save us!” Lady Eliot said, and gave a little stagger.
Livia shot one fierce glance at Felipe. “The child has been baptized and is the son and heir of Sir James Avery,” she stated. “Nobody else can claim him.” She stepped towards James and slid her hand into his arm. “He is our son,” she said. “Matthew Avery.”
“I doubt that Sir James wants him now,” Felipe remarked. “An Italian bastard as the heir of an English lord?”
Sir James made no answer and did not respond at all to Livia’s clutch on his arm, neither taking h
er hand nor shaking her off. He stood, completely still as if frozen, his eyes on the magistrate like a man awaiting sentence.
“Who witnessed your Venice wedding to Dr. Reekie, madam?” the magistrate asked her.
“I did,” Felipe volunteered conversationally. “I and a colleague of mine, a member of the stone mason’s guild.”
“Although the woman was your mistress?”
Lady Eliot closed her eyes as if she were about to faint, and then opened them again to see Felipe’s face as he answered.
“Yes,” Felipe agreed. “Would that make it invalid in your church?”
“It makes it scandalous,” the magistrate told him with distaste. “It makes it a disgrace. But not invalid. It was invalid because she was not of our religion, and she now declares that she did not understand her vows. So she was never married to Dr. Reekie, whatever you witnessed, it was not the sacrament of marriage in the Church of England. She was indeed a widow when she came to London, as she declared herself, but she was the widow of her first husband: the Signor Fiori.”
“Wearing the mourning clothes she bought for his funeral,” Felipe confirmed cheerfully. “That was a valid marriage. I witnessed that too.”
“So she was, in fact, able to marry me?” Sir James asked coldly. “Our marriage is valid in law and in the eyes of the church?”
“She was able,” the magistrate ruled, and the minister nodded.
“And she did marry me?” Sir James confirmed, his eyes like ice.
“She did,” the magistrate agreed.
“So the case of bigamy is dismissed?”
“No case to answer,” the magistrate declared.
Sir George let out a quiet oath, and Lady Eliot exhaled a trembling sigh, but no one else responded at all. Mr. Lucas tapped Johnnie’s arm to remind him to record the judgment. “This lady’s second marriage in Venice to Dr. Robert Reekie was invalid, her marriage here was properly undertaken.” He glanced down at Johnnie’s notes. “You’re a married man, Sir James, like it or not.”
White-faced, his arm gripped possessively by Livia, James Avery bowed slightly. “Thank you,” he said without any hint of gratitude.
“This is an outrage!” Lady Eliot stepped towards the desk, bristling with fury. “After what has been said about her? She is little more than a Venice whore! A criminal. A counterfeiter and fraudster! She cannot be married into the Avery family!”
The magistrate was gathering up Johnnie’s notes.
“Better say nothing more,” he advised her quietly. “Since she is married into the Avery family. She is Lady Avery.”
“But the alleged crimes?” Sir George asked. “The… er… fraud? The false denunciation? The stolen and forged antiquities? This whole caper?”
The magistrate shook his head. “Out of my jurisdiction.” His dry tone indicated that he did not regret it. “You’d have to take it up with the Venetian authorities, if you want to do that.” He turned to Alinor and Alys, who stood, very still and quiet, with Sarah and Rob on either side of them as a family might watch a tide rise to their doorstep and lap at their livelihood.
“Good day,” he said. “I shall send this in as my report. If there is any duty unpaid on the lady’s cargo, you should pay it at once. Any false reporting of the goods will be noticed.” He turned to James. “Any claim against her for goods that are forged or fraudulent will fall on you as her husband. You might wish to speak to her customers. You might wish to compensate them, to protect her name, which is now yours.”
Lady Eliot visibly shuddered.
Captain Shore glanced at Alys. “The tax will be paid tomorrow before the noon gun.” He turned to the magistrate. “I’m obliged to you, sir. I’m just remarking that the good name of the warehouse is unchanged. This was none of their doing. They had a good business before this… fell on them. They’ll have a good business after. There will be no gossip about the Reekie warehouse. They are innocent of any misdoing.”
“I’m aware of it,” the magistrate said, glancing towards Livia, who stood, slightly smiling, her arm entwined with James. “You would almost call it an act of God.”
“Not God!” the minister exclaimed indignantly.
“Nothing godly about the widow,” Captain Shore agreed. “But she is no fault of the warehouse.”
“I’ll bid you good day,” the magistrate said shortly, glancing around the silent storeroom. Johnnie led the way and showed him and the minister out of the front door and came back to the warehouse, leaving the door to the quay open, as if to hint that the others might leave also.
“We’d better go,” Lady Eliot said to Sir James, her frozen lips barely moving. “I hardly know where we should go. I suppose she will have to come too? Perhaps she will accept an allowance, and a house somewhere in the country? Unless we can send her back to wherever she came from?”
Livia laughed shortly; but James seemed deaf. He stood unmoving, looking across the room at Alinor, with Livia’s hand still tucked firmly in his arm as if she would nail them together.
“James!” Lady Eliot prompted him.
Finally he turned to her. “I have ruined myself,” he said quietly. “I have shamed my good name and ruined myself.” Gently he detached himself from Livia, unfastening her hand and pushing her gently away from him. He crossed the room to Alinor, who still stood, pale and unmoving, her family around her. He stood before her as if she had far more authority than any magistrate, as if she were judge and jury to him.
“When I was a young man, a foolish young man, I broke my word to you,” he confessed, his voice very low. “I did not speak up for you. I loved you and I let them half drown you though I knew you were carrying my child. All I thought of then was my good name and that I could not bear to be shamed. So all the shame fell on you.”
Her dark gray eyes were steady on his pale face; but she did not speak and he went on: “And now—in a sort of justice—my word is given, when it should not have been given, and this woman will hold me to it. I have ruined myself to a far worse degree than I risked with you. I did not claim you, and marry you when I should have done, so that I might claim and keep my position in the world; and now I have pushed myself into the gutter and my name is as mud.”
She was silent for so long that he thought she would refuse to speak to him; but then she took a breath: “I am sorry for you.” Her voice was filled with pity. “I wish you nothing but well, James.”
“May I…?”
Livia came up to him and slid her hand in his arm. “No,” she said simply, speaking without doubt that she would be obeyed. “You will not visit here, nor write. She has told you more than once, and she is a better judge than you will ever be. And I am your wife, and I forbid it. We will go now to Avery House.” She managed a laugh, a pretty light laugh. “I doubt the dinner will be edible, but your aunt ordered it to be ready for our return. It is I who will have to speak to the cook!” She turned to the hall and gestured with the posy of primroses that Carlotta should follow them.
“So you’re going through with your marriage to this man?” Felipe asked her, casually, as if he were only slightly interested. “And you intend to take Matteo—my son?”
“He is my son,” she said. “Perhaps Rob fathered him, or perhaps it was you, but I have decided that he shall be Matthew Avery, and that is final. In time he will be Sir Matthew Avery of Northside Manor, which is more than you or Rob could do for him.”
“Never,” Sir James said quietly without heat.
Livia glanced up at him. “I don’t think you can refuse me.”
“He can stay here,” Alys spoke for the first time. “He can stay here, with us.”
Livia checked. “Why would you want him?” she asked coldly, as if it was another ruse to overcome; and then she suddenly realized that Alys was speaking from love. “You want him?” she asked in a quite different tone. “You want to raise my son? You want to care for him?”
“Not because he’s yours,” Alys told her. “But he’s happy here.
He doesn’t know that we’re lowly and poor. He doesn’t despise us. He likes it here, and he’s settled with us. I love him for himself, whoever his father is; and so does Ma. You’ve got no time for him, you never have any time for him, and Sir James once again loses a child through his own pride.” Her eyes flicked over him with contempt. “You neither of you know how to love him, nor how to love anyone. Give him a chance and leave him in our keeping.”
Livia did not even glance at James to know his opinion. “You will love him for me,” she whispered to Alys.
“I love him for himself,” she replied steadily. “And this is the only place where he will be loved.”
“Leave him here,” Rob advised her.
“I agree,” Felipe said.
“Very well,” Livia decided, her voice carefree. “What a good idea! He shall stay here for now. I shall send for him when I want him, and he will go to school where I decide. But he shall stay here for now.”
Sir James and Alinor exchanged one long look. “Another son and I don’t see him?” he asked bitterly.
“He’s best left here,” she told him. “Neither of you will be loving parents in that great house. You’re not going to be happy.”
He bowed his head, as if under a penance. “I know it.”
“And I?” Felipe asked Livia. “Your fiancé? And the father of the child?”
For a moment she hesitated, quickly thinking what she might pull from this disaster of her business. “Of course, you are still my business partner…” she began. “Nobody here is going to speak of this outside these walls. If you are prepared to overlook all that has been, we still have a fortune stored in your warehouse, and since you are here, and you have brought the antiquities, you can sell them and we can share the profit…”
“Good God! No!” Sir James started, but it was Sarah who stepped between Felipe and challenged her aunt.
“No, Livia. He’s not in business with you anymore. And this load is in our storehouse, shipped by us, owed to us.”
Dark Tides Page 47