But of two things Roger was positive: Georgina could not conceivably be concerned in any plot to murder Isabella, and would give him all the help she possibly could to elope with her. He then began to wonder if there was any real foundation for the plot at all. Had Don Diego’s English siren proved to be the hard, fortune-hunting adventuress he had expected, his belief in the plot would not have been shaken, but Georgina being the lady in question made it far less probable; and he now recalled that the only evidence for its existence lay in the word of little Quetzal.
That led to another thought. Would Isabella insist on taking Maria and Quetzal with her? If so it was going to prove next to impossible to bring off a successful elopement. On leaving London Roger’s plans for running away with Isabella had been of the vaguest, but he had had reasonable confidence in his ability to arrange matters on the lines such affairs usually took in England and France. In either, or most other countries, there would have been nothing to prevent their getting away in a coach with well-paid servants and relays of fast horses arranged for in advance. But he had counted without the special difficulties which confronted travellers in Spain.
The coaches were drawn by mules and the state of the roads was so appalling that it was impossible to travel anywhere with a woman and baggage at any speed. Moreover Madrid was in the very centre of the country, four hundred miles from the nearest port. So if they went by coach and Don Diego decided to pursue them they would have little hope of reaching the coast without being overtaken. On his journey to Madrid Roger had had ample opportunity to revise his ideas, and decided that he must persuade Isabella to come with him on horseback; but he had overlooked the fact that a boy of Quetzal’s age would never be able to stay the pace required to keep a lead on such a long journey.
He was still wrestling unsuccessfully with this problem when he decided that the time had come at which he might make his call; and having already located the long tree-lined avenue where he had been told that the Sidonia y Ulloa mansion lay, he turned down it. When he came to two tall pillars with stone eagles mounted on them, which had been described to him, he found that the iron gates which supported were on the latch. There was no lodge; bushes and cactus fringed the drive, and obliquely through them he could see lights, showing that the house lay some distance away. Slipping inside he walked cautiously along the drive until, on the left, about a hundred yards from the entrance, the bushes gave way to a group of palms, in the centre of which stood the pavilion.
It was a small, single-storied Moorish building with a miniature tiled court and fountain to one side of it, and in the faint moonlight it looked just the sort of romantic setting to appeal to the impressionable Georgina. Stepping up to the low door Roger knocked, and it was opened almost instantly by his old friend Tom, Colonel Thursby’s valet, who said he had been warned to expect him. After they had greeted one another warmly Tom showed him into a pleasant room with windows of arabesque lattice-work that looked out on the fountain court. There was no European furniture in it, only chests, stools, vases and brasses of Eastern design; and Georgina, now clad in a becoming négligé, was reclining gracefully against a pile of cushions on a low divan.
“Roger, how truly marvellous this is!” she exclaimed, as he hurried smiling towards her. Then, as he made to kiss her hand she flung a bare arm round his neck and, pulling his head down, kissed him on both cheeks.
Releasing him after a moment, she hurried on: “ ’Tis now over a year since we met, and I declare you are grown more monstrous handsome than ever. For two pins I would throw away my Spanish Count for you, and seduce you anew, even if in the meantime you have gotten yourself a wife. But you must tell me all—everything.”
Sitting down beside her, he shook his head. “Nay. I am not married yet. Whether it will be even possible for me ever to be so to the lady of my choice seems doubtful. But we are fully committed to one another, and ’tis about the matter that I have come here tonight to see you.”
Georgina pulled a rueful face. “Fie, sir! And shame upon you! When Papa told me of your projected visit he winked an eye and said he knew us far too well to think that in any attempt to play gooseberry he could outsit you. Do you tell me now that the poor man has sought his bed thus early for no good reason?”
Knowing she was not speaking seriously, Roger grinned at her. “Could I but die tomorrow I would glory in my last act having been to make love to you; for you have grown to a beauty that positively takes the breath away. But since I cannot, and have now developed a conscience in such matters, I beg you spare me the terrible temptation that your words suggest.”
“So you have developed a conscience?” She gave him a mocking smile. “Poor fellow! But you’ll recover from it, I have no doubt. To be honest, though, I understand that better than I would have done a year ago; for I, too, have one now. Or shall we say that for a time it pleases me to be chaste? In Vienna, in Budapest, on the Rhine! Ah me! Even my zest for that type of entertainment became a trifle jaded; so for this winter at least I decided to become a prude. I am discovering a new pleasure in turning over in my bed in the morning and not having to argue with myself whom I will or will not allow to tumble me in it during the coming night. But perhaps that is a sign that I am growing old.”
Roger threw his head back and laughed aloud again. “Old! Why, you are not yet twenty-four, and with a face and figure unrivalled since Helen of Troy. What you really mean, my sweet, is that you are growing up. But seriously; it must be this new phase upon which you have entered that accounts for your steadfastly refusing your favours to Don Diego.”
She frowned. “ ’Tis true enough. But how comes it, sir, that you should be so well versed in my most intimate affairs?”
“Ah! I have my spies. Yet I am come here to beg you tell me if you have any interest in this Spanish Grandee, other than to amuse yourself by leading him on a string?”
Georgina’s face took on a thoughtful look, then she sighed: “From you, my dearest Roger, I would never seek to conceal the truth. I am mightily smitten with him. He is a very serious person, and though there must be many such, no other of the type has ever held my interest long enough for me to get to know him well. But I will admit that ’tis unlikely I would ever have come to do so had I not first been attracted by his physical attributes. I could gaze upon that profile of his for hours. ‘Tis a more lovely, perfect thing than any cameo ever carved by an ancient master.”
“Do you mean,” Roger asked a shade uneasily, “that if he were free to offer you his hand you would accept it?”
“I might. I have a great respect for him; and that at least would be a pleasant change from the contempt with which I was forced to regard poor Humphrey. The castle to which Papa and I accompanied him for a few days for the birth of the Condesa’s child, and the celebrations in honour of its arrival, is quite impossible. ’Tis cold as an ice-box and draughty as a barn; but ’twould be amusing to make it habitable as a new background for myself. I doubt, though, if we should visit it more than once every few years, as I would never give up Stillwaters; and whoever I married would first have to agree to allowing me to live where I would as the spirit moved me.”
Roger quickly looked away from her, as he said: “Do you sometimes share these daydreams with the Count?”
“Sometimes,” she murmured; then she laughed. “ ’Tis a most efficient panacea to divert him from becoming troublesome whenever he is more pressing than usual that I should let him lie with me.”
“Have you no thought at all for his unfortunate wife?”
Georgina’s big eyes opened to their maximum extent. “His wife! And why, pray, should I have? My faults are many, but at least you should know that I would never be guilty of breaking up a romantic marriage. This was as frigid an example as ever you will meet of an alliance between two great houses. The pulses of neither of them have quickened by a beat since the day they first set eyes on one another.”
“I am aware of that. Yet your encouragement of Don Diego may have ter
rible results for her.”
“Nonsense, my dear! Do you think that she still has idealistic yearnings for him, and that I have come between her and their realisation? If you do, pray disabuse yourself of the notion. Quiet she may be; and sanctimonious, with her long thin face. But, all the same, the sly little cat has consoled herself with at least one lover.”
Roger swiftly suppressed the impulse categorically to deny this imputation against Isabella; but, controlling his voice as well as he could, he said: “What reason have you for assuming that?”
“My poor Don Diego does not know it,” Georgina burbled, with sudden merriment in her eyes, “but this winter he was still the laughing-stock of Naples. It seems that in the autumn an English visitor there became enamoured of the Condesa’s charms, and at that time Diego had cast his eye upon a notorious gambler’s moll, named Sara Goudar; but she demanded an excessive price. The rich English milor’ paid up for Diego to enjoy the harlot, so that he might have a clear field to enjoy Diego’s wife.”
Roger’s eyes met Georgina’s with no less wicked mirth, as he murmured: “So the pretty Sara told the story to her gossips afterwards, eh! Well, I can show you the reverse of that medal. I was in Naples last November. The story is true enough in essence, though I won Madame Goudar to the project without paying her anything for her trouble; but I was the Englishman concerned.”
All the laughter left Georgina’s face. “Roger!” she exclaimed. “You do not mean … you cannot mean that you are in love with the Condesa! ’Tis impossible to believe that morose, black-browed sack of bones to be the Spanish beauty of whom you wrote to me last summer. I pray you assure me swiftly that it is not of her that you have come to speak to me tonight.”
“It is of her; and I consider your description of her most ungenerous,” Roger said stiffly. “If we are to criticise one another’s taste I will frankly express my amazement that you should have set your heart upon a wooden-headed barber’s block. Aye, and far worse, a potential murderer.”
“Roger! What are you saying? I was indeed at fault in disparaging your lady’s looks; but you must be out of your senses to make such an accusation against an honourable gentleman.”
Fishing the letter from Isabella, that had reached him in London, out of his inner pocket, Roger handed it to Georgina. “I pray you read that. ’Tis the prime reason for my coming to Spain.”
Georgina read the letter through carefully, then she said: “From this I gather that you asked her to run away with you when you were in Naples, and she refused to do so because she was carrying Diego’s child. That does her credit; but ’tis my opinion that she repented of it afterwards and …”
“Go on,” he prompted.
“You will not take offence at what I am about to say?”
“Nay. You know well that no honest opinion of yours could ever offend me seriously.”
“Then ’tis my belief that, having repented her decision, she feared that after four months your ardour might have cooled; so invented this preposterous story of the poison, as a certain means of bringing you back to her side through its appeal to your chivalry.”
He nodded. “You may be right; or it may be that young Quetzal misunderstood something said to him by his friend the witch. It may even be that the boy is lying, for I know that he greatly dislikes Don Diego; but I doubt that from all I know of him. I admit that discovering you to be the Englishwoman referred to instantly shook my own belief. But tell me this. Have you at any time given Don Diego reason to suppose that you would marry him if he were free?”
“Never. Though ’tis possible that he may have put a wrong construction on remarks that I have made as to thoughts about my own future. You know of old how ambitious I have always been; and how I vowed as a girl that I’d be a Duchess before my hair turned grey. ’Tis now two years since Humphrey’s death, and I have recently felt that I would like to marry again. If I do it shall be nothing less than an Earl this time, and one with prospects sufficient for me to have good hopes of raising him to higher rank through my powerful political connections. Diego naturally takes it ill that, being a widow, I will not grant him his desires. So I have fobbed him off by telling him of my ambitions, and vowing that I will lie with no man again until I once more enter a marriage bed. That would give a possible basis for this story; but, even so, I cannot bring myself to believe it.”
“I now doubt it, too. Yet for Isabella’s sake I must act as though I thought her right, and take steps to prevent any possibility of so ghastly an outcome to her fears.”
“You feel, then, definitely committed to elope with her?”
“In view of all that lies between us, I am resolved upon it.”
“Oh, Roger! I know well the mad acts that love at times impels us to. But is there no other way for you in this? Think, dearest! In these Catholic countries there is no divorce; and I greatly doubt her ever getting an annulment of her marriage. She might have had she eloped with you in Naples and later concealed the birth of her child. But since she has had her infant here it can no longer be pleaded that the marriage was never consummated. Think of your future. A man of your parts might rise to any height; but what future can there be for you if you are tied for life to a woman who is not your wife?”
“I know it, and am resigned to that. We shall have to live quietly—under an assumed name perhaps. But we love one another, so we shall be happy.”
Georgina sighed. “I wish that I could think it. But passion is not enough; not even if the bond of intellect goes with it. She has a kind of bookish cleverness, but not a spark of humour. And, Roger dear, I know you so well. After a twelvemonth you would be desperate miserable with any woman who could not laugh with you over the silly stupid sort of things that cause so much merriment to happy baggage, like myself.”
The thought of Amanda Godfrey suddenly came into his mind. She, too, was a “happy baggage” who would never lack things in life at which to laugh. Then he realised that the thought of her had come to him owing to Georgina’s use of the phrase “a bookish cleverness”. Amanda had used it in describing to him the mentality of the cousin whom she had no cause to love. After a second, he replied:
“Making every allowance for my predilection where Isabella is concerned, I think you unjust in your estimate of her. The fact that she is exceptionally well educated for a woman is no demerit. That she is serious-minded by nature, I grant you; but she has great integrity and a most sweet and charming disposition.”
“Mayhap you are right.” The splendid rings on Georgina’s hands glittered as she fluttered them in a little, helpless gesture. “I hardly know her, so am not properly qualified to judge.”
Roger looked puzzled. “But did I not understand that you accompanied the Sidonia y Ulloas from Naples? If so you must have been in their intimate company during a journey occupying the best part of a month.”
“Nay; you are wrong in that. Papa and I met them in Naples and Don Diego began to pay his court to me at once. Naturally I met his Condesa in society, but saw no more of her than I would have of any other wife in similar circumstances. When Diego asked us to visit them in Spain she joined her formal invitation to his pressing one; but we journeyed by different routes. Papa wished to visit Gibraltar, so we arrived here from the South, whereas they came the shorter way via Valencia, and reached Madrid a fortnight before us. On our arrival the Condesa had already left for the country and Don Diego installed us in this charming pavilion, so we did not see her again until we accompanied him to his castle for the birth and celebrations. But tell me, Roger, about the origin of your affaire with her.”
“It was just a year ago at Fontainebleau …” he began; and when he had told the tale their talk led from one thing to another ranging over their experiences in the past year, so it was three o’clock in the morning before they parted.
When they did so Roger was convinced that although Georgina had no thought at all of devoting her future to Don Diego her feeling for him was deeper than most that she experien
ced; since, much as she wanted to get back to Stillwaters, she had already lingered in Spain on his account longer than she had at first intended, and was still putting off the date of her return from reluctance to break with him. And it was very unlike the strong-minded Georgina to allow her plans to be upset by her love affairs.
Georgina was equally convinced that Roger was caught up in a grande passion for Isabella, and that nothing would now deter him from going through with their elopement. Much as she deplored it as ruinous to his future prospects, she had, out of loyalty, agreed to do everything she could to help him, and she was admirably situated to do so. Roger’s first fence was the difficulty of securing a meeting with Isabella alone, so that they could concert a plan, and Georgina had agreed to bring her to the pavilion at the siesta hour the following day, which would enable the two lovers to spend the whole afternoon together.
In consequence, in the broiling midday sunshine Roger once more arrived at the little Moorish building and, to his delight, he found Isabella already there, alone in the tiled lounge.
They embraced with all their old fervour, and it was several minutes before they were in any state to talk coherently. When, at length, they had regained their breath a little and settled themselves on the divan that Georgina had graced the previous night, Isabella said:
“Let me at once confess myself wrong about Lady Etheredge. I feel convinced now that she has all along been completely innocent of any evil design; and this morning she could not have been sweeter to me. She frankly confesses a great fondness for Diego, and says that in view of my love for you she does not see why she should give him up until she has a mind to return to England. But she will aid us all she can, and assures me that for the whole of this afternoon she will guarantee our remaining undisturbed here.”
“I knew we could count upon her,” Roger smiled, “and I am more glad than I can say that you now recognise her for the dear, sweet creature that she is.”
The Rising Storm Page 54