Felicita laughed and added,
“I wish – that was – true!”
“Why?”
“Because if one was a Goddess, one would have no more humdrum and banal worries, like what one should eat or where one should sleep.”
“I suppose that is true,” the Marques agreed. “You would be supplied with ambrosia and nectar and I am certain that the fields on Olympus are very soft, although not, I would claim, more comfortable than my beds in The Palace.”
Felicita smiled.
“You are very fortunate to have such an unusual and exciting Palace. Do you live here all the year round; senhor?”
“A great deal of the time,” the Marques answered, “as I have my horses in training here and a large estate which needs looking after. But I also travel.”
He saw Felicita’s eyes light up and he said,
“Is that what you enjoy doing?”
“It is what I would like to do if I had the chance.”
“Then you must most certainly go to Greece,” the Marques suggested, “and I can think of many other places in the world that it would be a delight to show you because they would be as beautiful as you.”
He was speaking in a very deep voice and because the expression in his eyes made her feel shy, Felicita blushed and looked away from him.
“You are very young,” he observed, as if he spoke to himself, “and a great many men must have told you far more eloquently than I can that your eyes are incredible.”
Now Felicita was aware that she should not be listening to him.
Looking at the Duchesse, who had moved even further down the salon, she said hastily,
“I think I – must join – my aunt.”
She would have risen to her feet if the Marques had not laid his hand on her arm.
He just touched her lightly and yet she had a strange feeling as if a streak of lightning came from his fingers.
“I want to talk to you,” he said, “I want to know a great deal about you. When can I see you again?”
“I have no – idea, senhor,” Felicita replied. “You – must ask – my aunt.”
“But you would like to see me?” the Marques persisted.
She turned her face towards him and her blue eyes met his grey ones.
Then she looked away.
She did not speak and after a moment the Marques said with a little sigh,
“I have no wish to frighten you so, as you say, I will talk to your aunt.”
He rose to his feet and, as he did so, the Duchesse walked back down the salon towards them.
“Your pictures are delightful,” she commented. “And I only wish my dear husband could have seen them. He, as you know, had a magnificent collection, but he was never satisfied, he always wanted more.”
“That might be the story of all our lives,” the Marques smiled, “and because, madame, I wish to see more of you and your charming niece, I hope that you will dine with me tonight.”
“Tonight?” the Duchesse repeated as if in surprise.
“I have some friends staying with me who I know will be very thrilled to meet you,” the Marques said, almost as if he was bribing her to accept his invitation.
“In which case,” the Duchesse replied, “as Felicity and I have no other engagements for today, we should be delighted to accept yours.”
“There is no need for me to tell you how glad I am,” the Marques remarked.
He spoke to the Duchesse and she was aware as he did so that his eyes were on Felicita.
*
When they were driving down the hill towards the sea and along the palm tree-lined road towards Estoril, the Duchesse asked,
“Tell me, my dear, what did you think of The Palace and, of course, the Marques?”
“None of it was real,” Felicita answered.
‘That is what I thought when I first saw it,” the Duchesse replied.
How could she ever forget the day that Juan had taken her for the first time to his Palace?
She had been awed by the magnificence of it, but cultured enough to know that all the treasures it contained were spectacular and unique.
Yet it had been extremely difficult to think of anything but the handsome Juan himself.
As he drew her along from picture to picture, explaining who the artist was and where and when it had been acquired, she was conscious only that he was touching her.
All the afternoon she listened to the tone of his voice rather than to what he had to say.
Although they had met only twice, she was already wildly and gloriously in love with him.
After they had explored The Palace, he had asked her to come and stay there.
She had known exactly what he meant.
But she had, however, lied to her mother and had told her that the Marques had a party of friends staying with him and wanted her to join them.
“The Marques has asked you to stay?” her mother exclaimed in astonishment. “I have never heard of anyone among our friends who has been a visitor to The Palace being offered such an invitation.”
“I would like to go, Mama.”
“I am sure you would,” her mother had replied, “but I think we should ask your father.”
Her father had, however, been extremely excited by a conversation he had just had with the Marques and so he was unconcerned with whether or not Inès stayed at The Palace.
The Marques had asked him to design some new stables for his Racehorses and he also wanted his opinion on how a house he had just bought in the Alentejo could be modernised.
“It is the most fortunate thing that could happen to me at this moment,” he boasted, “and from the way the Marques spoke, there would be no question of pruning everything down to bedrock for economy’s sake.”
His voice had vibrated with delight as he went on,
“I can definitely develop my ideas on sanitation, which have so far never been accepted by any of my clients.”
Inès had known at the back of her mind that her father was being bribed by the Marques, but she had refused to acknowledge it.
All she knew was that she wanted to be with him.
How ecstatically happy she had been those first days at The Palace when Juan made love to her all night.
In the daytime they talked of themselves in the great rooms that all had panoramic vistas from their windows.
Juan had kissed her in the spray of the fountains as well as in the hothouses amongst the orchids. And they had wandered hand-in-hand through the formal gardens.
It has been so wonderful and so rapturous.
If everybody in the world had gone down on their knees and begged her to leave him, she would not have listened.
Her mother’s tears did not move her when she told her parents that she was moving into The Palace.
The Marques could no longer bear to have her leave him by day or night.
“I love him, Mama!” she had asserted.
“You realise that he will never marry you?” her mother had sobbed.
“It is not important.”
“It is always important to a woman,” her mother protested.
But she would not listen. How could she when she was aware that Juan was waiting for her impatiently. His smart carriage and his superb horses were waiting outside to carry her back to him.
It might have been a chariot sent down from Heaven!
She thought, as she drove away from her parent’s house, that the horses’ hoofs moving quicker and quicker, repeated his name over and over again,
“Juan! Juan! Juan!”
Five years of perfect blissful happiness, but it had all been an illusion, a mirage that had vanished completely when she had heard him say just five words,
“I am to be married!”
Five simple words to destroy her utterly and completely.
Although she still breathed, she was dead before he left her.
Suddenly the Duchesse was aware that Felicita was looking at her strangely.
“
Are you all right, Aunt Inès?” she enquired with a worried expression on her beautiful face.
With an effort the Duchesse came back to the present.
“Yes, I am quite all right. I was just wondering which gown you should wear tonight.”
“Will it be a big party?”
“Not big, but I should anticipate that the Marques would not be alone.”
“Why?” Felicita asked.
“Because men like the Marques want always to be amused and most people are bored with themselves and their own thoughts.”
The Duchesse spoke bitterly.
She remembered after the Duc had taken her away, she had shrunk from being alone.
At first she had been afraid of the nights because then she thought of Juan and could not sleep.
She would tell herself that, when he heard of her death, he had been sorry and longed to have her back.
Then she would play with the idea of returning to show him that she was still alive.
He would sweep her into his arms and proclaim that he could not live without her.
There was no question of his marrying another woman when he needed her.
It was a story that repeated and repeated itself until she could stand it no longer.
So she took a sleeping draught every night so that she would lapse into unconsciousness and no longer think of Juan.
It was only when it had begun to affect her looks that the Duc had prevented her from continuing such a harmful habit.
“I have told you that the past is to be forgotten,” he said severely, “but I cannot force you to forget unless you really try to do so yourself.”
Terrified she knew that if she disobeyed him, he would have no further use for her.
If he abandoned her, she would be totally and completely lost.
Suddenly she felt ashamed of herself not because she still loved Juan, but because she was being ungrateful when the Duc had given her so much.
She had knelt penitently at his feet and begged for his forgiveness.
“I cannot allow you to damage your beauty,” he insisted, “and perhaps because you have suffered, you have a new loveliness you did not possess before. It is not your thoughts that will damage you, but drugs and drink are a different story altogether.”
“I know what you are saying – and I am sorry,” Inès had murmured.
She had forced herself after that to do what the Duc wanted.
She became the woman who had captivated Paris, not only with her looks, but with her mind.
Her parties became famous.
They were attended by all of the Duc’s friends, who were brilliant Statesmen, Politicians, men of letters and Ambassadors of State from almost every country in Europe.
With the Duc’s help she arranged that in their house they met the most attractive and the most intelligent women in France.
But the Duc always made it clear that there was no one more beautiful than their hostess.
‘I have had so much, I should be very grateful,’ the Duchesse thought.
Yet, when she had seen the Marques standing in the salon in the same position that his father had stood, she had known that everything she had attained was worthless.
It had been an agony beyond words to go round The Palace, to hear the Marques Alvaro saying very much the same things that his father had told her about its contents.
His voice was almost identical as well.
Once again she had been listening to the Marques’s voice rather than to what he said.
But she had been well aware that, as she had expected, the Marques had been astonished and intrigued by Felicita’s beauty.
He had wished to see her again, even quicker than the Duchesse had dared to hope he would.
It was almost as if she was writing a play and seeing the actors behave as she told them to do. They no longer had any thoughts or feelings of their own.
They were puppets that she pulled the strings for.
“And what gown shall I wear, Aunt Inès?” Felicita was asking.
“The most beautiful one you have,” the Duchesse replied. “First impressions are always important and every woman looks her best by candlelight.”
When they arrived back at the house, she sent Felicita to lie down.
In Portugal everybody dines late and the Marques was no exception and there was plenty of time for both the Duchesse and Felicita to rest before taking their baths.
Felicita was unused to doing nothing.
In the past years, while they had been so poor, she had sewed at every available moment.
Now she found it difficult to lie peacefully in bed, but she knew that, if she was to obey the Duchesse’s orders, she must relax and not even read.
So it was inevitable that she should start thinking about The Palace and the Marques.
She had thought that the Duchesse, despite the charming way that she talked and moved, had seemed both tense and perturbed.
Felicita knew that she was not mistaken.
She had felt a kind of agony vibrating from the Duchesse, but she was surprised that the Marques was not aware of it too.
When she thought of him, she felt that he could not be real in any sense of the word.
No man could be so handsome or in a way so frightening just because he was a man.
She had actually, although it seemed incredible, known very few men in her life.
Certainly not one like the Marques.
Her father’s friends had mostly been poets and very much older than he was himself.
They had sat, talking about their work and they were so absorbed that, although Felicita and her mother cooked them delicious meals, half the time they had no idea what they were eating.
There had been artists too, who had come to the small house that they lived in. They had talked of themselves endlessly and their work as well.
While it had been very interesting to listen to them, Felicita had never thought of them as men and later, when she had been all alone after her mother’s death, there had been men in the streets.
Instinctively she was nervous of them and she had, however, known how to avoid them.
She would wear something concealing on her head and hurry along swiftly to wherever she was going.
When she went to the hotels to attempt to sell her needlework, the young porters would sometimes suggest that she should go out with them.
Yet because she looked so young and childlike, older men were usually very kind to her, but she was intelligent enough to remain as unobtrusive as possible when outside the house.
The Marques was a complete revelation.
She had listened to him as she had listened to her father, at the same time being vividly aware that he was a man.
She had felt that he was interested in her, she saw it in his eyes and heard it in his voice.
She knew, if she was truthful, that she wanted to see him again tonight.
Then, as she thought it all over, she came to a conclusion.
It was that the Duchesse’s interest in her and all her kindness were somehow connected with the Marques.
What was more the fact that she was supposed to be the Duchesse’s niece was connected with him.
‘Why?’ she asked herself. ‘Why? What can be the reason?’
It was frustrating not to know the answer and yet at the same time intriguing.
When she was dressed, wearing the gown that the Duchesse had chosen for her, Felicita looked at herself in the mirror.
It was impossible to recognise the shabby, half-starved, frightened creature she had seen in the small cracked mirror of the house where she had lodged.
She was still very thin despite all the eating she had enjoyed with the Duchesse.
Yet with her hair done in a fashionable manner, in a gown whose décolletage revealed the whiteness of her skin, she looked like a Princess in a Fairytale.
Her gown, which was white, was embroidered with tiny diamanté among its chiffon and lac
e flounces.
Her waist was so tiny that it might have been spanned by a man’s two hands.
Her eyes seemed very blue in contrast to her skin.
When she was dressed, the Duchesse’s lady’s maid knocked on her door and brought her a necklace of perfect pearls.
“Madame says you’re to wear these tonight,” she said, “but to be ever so careful not to lose them.”
“Are they really for me?” Felicita exclaimed in delight.
“They are just what you need, Donna,” the Portuguese maid who had been attending to her replied.
“I agree with you, Theresa,” Felicita replied, “but I never would have imagined I would wear anything as beautiful as these.”
She looked again in the mirror and found herself wishing that her mother could see her as she was now dressed.
Then she went downstairs to find the Duchesse looking so magnificent that she could only gasp in astonishment.
The Duchesse was wearing a gown that was obviously straight from the best couturier in Paris and as well she was wearing some of the superb jewels that the Duc had embellished her beauty with.
There was a tiara of sapphires and diamonds and, to match it, a necklace, bracelets and earrings. On her finger was a huge cachalong sapphire, which was the size of a pigeon’s egg.
“You look wonderful! Wonderful!” Felicita enthused.
The Duchesse smiled at the spontaneous compliment before she responded,
“So do you, my dear. And now we set out to conquer and who can withstand us?”
They drove back the way they had gone during the afternoon.
Now the stars were coming out overhead and the first moonbeams were glittering silver on the sea.
It was even lovelier, if it was possible, than it had been before.
As they climbed slowly up the hill to The Palace, Felicita was half-afraid that it would have vanished in a puff of smoke.
What she had seen in the afternoon must have been a dream. But then the minarets and cupolas were still there in all their glory.
As they entered the Great Hall, there were lights and in the salon the chatter of voices.
Felicita felt a little pang of disappointment.
If the Marques was no longer alone, perhaps she would not have the chance of talking to him again.
Then, as they were announced, he walked towards them.
Resplendent in his evening clothes, he looked, she thought, even more attractive than he had before.
Lovers in Lisbon Page 7