“But I shall be here alone!” Inès cried.
“Only for two or three days.”
“Days will seem like centuries!”
“So you will miss me?”
“You know I shall be miserable and unhappy without you.”
“As I shall be without you.”
She had walked to the window and out onto the terrace.
She had felt that to move would relieve the pain that Juan was inflicting on her.
It was one of the many penalties she paid for giving herself so whole-heartedly into his keeping.
When he was away, she made no effort to get in touch with her family or her previous friends.
She did not want them to ask her questions or to pry into what was entirely her secret and very intimate life.
When he was not there, she was alone, alone in the vastness of The Palace that seemed very empty without him.
The garden became a surreal wilderness and there was nothing she could do but wait and go on waiting until he returned.
Then Juan had joined her on the terrace and they had leaned on the balustrade, gazing at the lights below them.
As if he followed her thoughts, as he was always able to do, he had said, looking down,
“I brought you away from all that. Do you regret living in the clouds or would you like to go back?”
“How can you ask me such an absurd question? I am so happy, utterly and completely happy, but afraid.”
“Afraid?” he queried.
“That when you go away I may lose you.”
He had laughed and it was a very tender sound.
“That is impossible! I shall be back just as quickly as it is possible for me to do so and it is only two or perhaps three days out of a lifetime.”
The Duchesse thought bitterly how a ‘lifetime’ had been whittled down to five years.
Five years and then he had found her not good enough for him.
He had thrust her away from him because her blood did not equal that of the high and mighty Marques Juan de Oliveira Vasconles.
Even to think of it made her feel again that he had thrust a dagger into her heart and she had died from the agony of it.
Then she was aware that the Marques had joined Felicita at the window.
She was looking up at him and she was thinking that perhaps he would take her outside.
Then at last they could speak to each other without the Duchesse overhearing what they were saying to each other.
Instead he looked down at her for a long moment.
She felt a little quiver run through her because his eyes were again on her lips.
Then with a faint smile he put out his hand and, taking hers, said,
“What are we waiting for?”
She did not understand.
But she held onto him as he drew her slowly back to where the Duchesse was sitting on the sofa watching them.
They came to a standstill in front of her.
“Madame,” the Marques began, “we have something to tell you, something that I feel actually will not surprise you.”
The Duchesse looked at him enquiringly and the Marques carried on,
“We are in love. It may seem to you too soon, but we fell in love the moment that we saw each other.”
He looked at Felicita and continued,
“It was pre-ordained since the beginning of time that we should meet and I should find what I have been seeking for years and years only to be enlessly disappointed.”
As he spoke, Felicita drew a little nearer to him.
Now he put his arm around her waist and impulsively she pressed her cheek against his shoulder.
“You don’t surprise me,” the Duchesse commented after what seemed a long silence. “At the same time what do you intend to do about it?”
“The answer to that question is quite simple,” he replied. “We wish to be married as soon as you give us permission to do so in a week or ten days time. I cannot wait any longer!”
Felicita gave a little gasp.
Then, realising what he had said, she looked at the Duchesse pleadingly.
Thoughts were flashing through her mind as she wondered whether the Duchesse would tell him the truth or would leave him in ignorance for the moment.
Because she was so bemused and equally thrilled because the Marques wanted her, she could not formulate her own opinion.
“Did I hear you correctly?” the Duchesse asked him quietly.
She spoke clearly, but in a voice that seemed totally different from the way she spoke ordinarily.
“You wish to marry my niece and heir?”
“I want her to be my wife,” the Marques confirmed.
“You are quite certain of that?”
“As I have already said,” the Marques replied, “it may seem to be far too soon when we have only just met each other. But there is no time where love is concerned and so, please, Madame la Duchesse, be generous and let us be married as quickly as possible.”
He made a gesture with his hand before he went on,
“And where could be more appropriate than here in The Palace in my own Chapel?”
The Duchesse put out her hand.
“Come here, Felicita!”
Obediently Felicita moved towards her.
The Duchesse then drew her down beside her onto the sofa while the Marques remained standing.
“You have now asked me,” she said, “to sanction a marriage between you, the Marques Alvaro de Oliveira Vasconles and a girl you know as ‘Felicity’, whom you tell me you love.”
“I love her!” the Marques said in his deep voice. “And she loves me.”
“That she loves you I can well believe,” the Duchesse remarked, “but I doubt if you love her enough – ”
The Marques made a gesture that was very eloquent and he insisted,
“I am thirty-two and have, as you know, been married once and it was a disaster. I was determined never again to have an arranged marriage, but to find someone myself who I love and who loves me.”
He smiled and it made him look very attractive as he continued,
“That is what I have done and so I consider myself the most fortunate man in the whole world.”
“Words! Words!” the Duchesse said. “Words that I have heard before – and in this very room!”
The Marques looked at her with a puzzled expression on his face.
She paused to take a deep breath and went on,
“I thought when you met Felicita that this was how you would feel about her and it was what many years ago your father felt for me.”
Now the Marques was obviously surprised, but he did not speak.
“I was exactly Felicita’s age,” the Duchesse said, “when we met on the seashore and he took me from my family and brought me here to The Palace and I became his mistress.”
Her voice sharpened as she repeated,
“His mistress!”
Now the Marques was staring at her in complete astonishment.
His eyes were on the Duchesse’s face.
And he was listening to her intently as he sat down automatically in a chair opposite her.
“I had no idea of this!”
“Why should you?” she asked. “And, when after five years together your father informed me that he was to marry someone whose blood and breeding he considered good enough for him, I died!”
There was a look of bewilderment on the Marques’s face and she continued,
“I am telling the truth, although it is difficult to explain. Your father had gone to England and when he returned he informed me he had become engaged to the woman who was your mother solely because she was the daughter of a Duke.”
Felicita made a little murmur.
She was quick-witted enough to realise where the Duchesse’s story was leading.
She wanted to cry out in horror.
But she could not move and could not speak.
She could only stay where she was and listen
as the Duchesse carried on,
“He gave me money and told me to go to Paris, where doubtless I would find another man to be my Protector, as he had been.”
There was a sudden agony in her voice as she added,
“I loved him, I had given him my heart! I never thought for one moment that our love was something that was low and degrading and that I was in reality nothing more to him than a kept woman who could be bought off!”
She almost spat the last words before she went on,
“I said I died and you did not believe me, but that is exactly what I did. I went down to the seashore to throw myself onto the rocks, but was saved by the Duc de Monrueil, who later married me.”
Her voice sharpened,
“Although he married my body and my mind, he could not have my heart. Your father had taken that and destroyed it!”
Felicita could feel the pain of what the Duchesse was saying.
She put out her hand and laid it on the Duchesse’s arm as if to comfort her.
The Duchesse shook it off.
“All these years,” she said, “I have loved only your father and, although I lived a new life in Paris, he always haunted me. I have never forgotten him, not for one minute of the day or night. He has always been with me.”
For a moment there was a suspicion of tears in her eyes.
Then, as if she had to force herself to challenge the Marques, she declared,
“That is why I planned my revenge on you – your father’s son!”
The Marques would have spoken, but she went on rapidly,
“I came back to Portugal to lay the ghost and when I saw Felicity, I knew that Fate had given me a weapon that I could hurt you with as I have been so badly hurt.”
“I don’t understand – ” the Marques began.
“You will understand,” the Duchesse interrupted, “when I tell you that Felicita, for that is her real name, is nothing but a Portuguese street pedlar! A girl who came in from the streets starving and trying to sell her wares in the hall of The Grand Hotel.”
The Duchesse laughed and now the sound seemed to ring round the great room.
“A Portuguese pedlar! Are you sure, my noble Marques, that you wish to mix your blue blood of which you are so proud with the scrapings of the gutter?”
Felicita gave an anguished cry of protest.
“They say you have never found anybody good enough to marry,” the Duchesse raged on, “but I hardly think that your father, who considered me beneath him, would be pleased at your choice, or that your son, who will inherit your title, would be proud of his mother!”
The Marques seemed as if he was turned to stone.
The Duchesse, rising to her feet, then pulled Felicita to hers.
“Remember what I have told you,” she warned, “and, if your pride is damaged by what I have said, remember what I have suffered and I am still suffering!”
As she said the last word, she walked towards the door almost dragging Felicita with her.
There was a determination in the way she moved and she held Felicita’s hand so firmly that there was nothing she could do but go with her.
She was aware as she did so that the Marques was still sitting where they had left him.
Even if she could have looked back, she would not have seen him.
Her eyes were filled with tears.
The servants in the hall were waiting with their cloaks and the carriage was outside and, the moment they stepped into it, the horses moved off.
Now tears were running down Felicita’s face and she made no attempt to prevent them.
They were both silent until, as they reached the road which ran along the shore, Felicita quavered in a broken little voice,
“H-how could you – have told him – l-like that?”
“It was the truth,” the Duchesse then insisted, “and now you can forget him as I intend to forget his father!”
“I can – never forget – him,” Felicita asserted brokenly.
“Nonsense,” the Duchesse replied sharply. “My love lasted for five years, yours has not lasted for even five days!”
Felicita did not answer, she covered her face with her hands.
She was trying to prevent herself from breaking down and sobbing uncontrollably.
She had thought as the Duchesse spoke how sordid and unpleasant it all sounded.
The Marques would believe that she had conspired with the Duchesse to deceive him.
He would never forgive her.
‘How could I have – known – how could I have – guessed,’ she asked herself, ‘that was why I had to – pretend to be the Duchesse’s – niece and her heiress?’
She could not prevent herself from giving a sob, which the Duchesse heard.
“Pull yourself together,” she ordered crossly, “and, as you will never see the man again, the sooner you do so the better.”
“He will – not want to – see me,” Felicita murmured miserably.
“Of course not! He will feel humiliated that he had not the sense to recognise you for what you are. He will decide to forget the whole episode as quickly as possible.”
There was a twist to the Duchesse’s lips as she added,
“And doubtless there will be plenty of women like the Comtesse to help him!”
Every word she spoke was a wound that drew blood. Felicita did not protest, she could only cry.
They drove on in silence until the Duchesse exclaimed,
“Here we are – and the sooner we leave Portugal and all its miseries behind, the better I shall be pleased.”
Felicita suddenly realised that they had been driving for far longer than it usually took from The Palace to their house.
She took her hands from her face and to her astonishment they were outside the Railway Station in Lisbon.
Before she could ask any questions, the carriage door was opened.
And the Duchesse stepped out.
A man whom Felicita had not seen before escorted them onto the platform.
There, to her great surprise, was the Duchesse’s lady’s maid waiting at the carriage door of a train.
It seemed different from the trains that she had seen in the past.
It took her a second or two to realise that they were on a side platform and the train was so short that it could only be a private one.
Pedro was also there and two other men from the Villa.
The Duchesse thanked Pedro and the man who had escorted them, who Felicita guessed was a Courier.
She gave him a sum of money to be distributed amongst the staff.
Then the Duchesse moved into the train and because she realised that it was what was expected of her, Felicita followed her.
She was so bewildered that she could hardly understand what was happening.
Yet she was aware that the Duchesse must have had everything arranged before they had left for The Palace that evening.
She supposed vaguely that their luggage would have been already taken onto the train.
Now, as the Duchesse had planned, she was leaving Portugal and the Marques for ever.
‘I just – cannot – do it! I must – stay here – I must – stay behind,’ Felicita was thinking frantically.
Then she remembered that she had no money and no clothes but what she stood up in.
If the Duchesse had indeed finished with the house where they had been staying, she had nowhere to go either.
She stood undecided in the drawing room of the small train and looking helpless.
“Sit down!” the Duchesse commanded.
As Felicita did so, the train moved off.
“Everything has been arranged as you requested, madame,” the Courier said in French. “Would you care for a glass of champagne and perhaps something to eat?”
“Nothing to eat, thank you, Henri,” the Duchesse replied, “but a nice glass of champagne would be very pleasant and also one for Mademoiselle.”
Henri then left the drawing room and a
few minutes later a Steward wearing a white coat brought in the champagne.
He offered a glass to Felicita, who took it.
She had no wish to drink, she only wanted to understand what was happening to her.
When the Duchesse had drunk a little and they were alone, she began,
“I imagine you are eager to know what is going to happen to you?”
“I-I am – frightened,” Felicita admitted.
“Well, I suppose, as you played your part exactly as I wanted you to, I really do owe you something,” the Duchesse said in a hard voice.
“Y-you have been – very kind, madame,” Felicita said hesitatingly, “b-but – I love him.”
The Duchesse’s lips twisted scornfully.
“As I loved his father. And a lot of good it did me!”
“I thought he – loved me for – m-myself.”
“Then you are a fool, just as I was,” the Duchesse retorted. “Men are all the same and for men like the Marques, love does not count besides breeding.”
Tears blinded Felicita and in a pathetic little voice she answered,
“D-do you mean he – cared for me only because he – thought that I was – your niece – and you would – leave me money when you – d-died?”
“He certainly would not have noticed you if he had known who you really were.”
Felicita closed her eyes.
She felt that the Duchesse had struck her a mortal blow.
Of course that was the truth.
How could the Marques, of all people, care for a woman such as she really was?
A pedlar, like those who congregated in the squares following the tourists and thrusting their goods upon them.
Her agony was so intense that she wished she could die.
Just as the Duchesse had said she had died.
But the girl who had loved the Marques’s father had lived to become a Duchesse –
“I suppose I had better tell you,” the Duchesse now said, interrupting her thoughts, “what I have planned. It may surprise you but I am sending you to England.”
‘To England?” Felicita exclaimed in astonishment. “But I have – never been – there.”
“I feel in a way responsible for you, although there is no reason why I should be,” the Duchesse said. “And there is just a chance, a very remote one, that the Marques, just like his father, might wish to make you his mistress.”
Lovers in Lisbon Page 11