The road levelled again, with the blue-green of sprouting wheat on either side. “We’re nearly there,” Cordelia said, sitting up straight and hanging on to the strap as she peered out of the open window in her excitement. Nothing had ever been quite the same since she and Mama left Arventino.
James opened his eyes and feebly hauled himself up to a sitting position, waving away Cordelia’s anxious offer of assistance.
“Arventino?” he asked with the ghost of a smile. “I thought we had agreed not to trouble your friend.”
“You said we should not. I never agreed. Indeed, I cannot imagine anywhere safer while you are so ill.”
“I confess I’ve never felt so deuced invalidish in my life. Weak as a newborn kitten! But I shall soon come about with a few good meals.”
“This is the best place to get them without strangers asking awkward questions,” Cordelia said firmly. “Oh look! You see that row of poplars? That’s the beginning of Zio Simone’s gardens.”
“Zio means uncle?”
“Yes. Don’t worry, he was once a diplomat and he speaks both English and French.”
“That’s not what is worrying me. Your uncle—”
“He’s not really—”
“Your honorary uncle, then, but having known you as a child he will never believe I am your brother. And I doubt whether in these circumstances we can convincingly play husband and wife, unless—”
“No!” Cordelia felt herself blushing at his amused look. “I mean no, it’s no good pretending you are my brother or...or my husband. I could claim you as cousin, except that I don’t know whether I have any and I don’t know how much my mother ever told him about our family. I think it will be best to say you are a hired courier.”
“A superior kind of servant.”
“I think it will be best,” she repeated. As a servant, however superior, he’d not have intimate chats with the count, and not speaking Italian, he could not gossip with the servants. No one would explain to him the nature of Lady Courtenay’s relationship with the Conte di Arventino. “If you don’t mind.”
He burst out laughing. “I suppose at least a hired courier is a step or two up from a eunuch slave!”
His laughter exhausted him. He slumped back, eyes closed. Watching him, disquieted, Cordelia missed the gardens she had once loved and was taken by surprise when the carriage stopped.
“You stay there,” she commanded, tying the ribbons of her new bonnet. “I shall fetch help.”
As she descended from the carriage, James forced himself to rouse from the limp stupor that engulfed him. By no means so certain of their welcome as she appeared to be, he strove to compel his weary limbs to follow her, to be there to comfort her if she was rejected. The effort was beyond him.
Her voice, gabbling in fluent Italian to the driver, seemed to come from a vast distance. James watched her disappear under a classical portico with slender, fluted, Corinthian columns of pink-veined marble.
Cordelia had taken charge. With a faint smile, he abandoned himself to his mortifying weakness.
A very few minutes later, she returned with two menservants.
“Your name is Prestopoulos. I’ve told them you are a Greek gentleman-courier,” she warned him as they supported his shambling steps into the villa, followed by the coachman with their baggage. “Barzetti, the dear old majordomo, was so glad to see me. He has gone to tell the count we are here.”
In the ornate but airy vestibule, the lackeys assisted James to a marble bench inlaid with an elaborate mosaic. As he sank onto it, a slim, handsome gentleman, his black hair barely frosted with grey at the temples, strode into the hall.
“Cordelia?
Cara mia!”
“Zio Simone!” Cordelia ran into his welcoming arms.
The Conte di Arventino was a good deal younger than James had imagined. Suppressing a quite unexpected and utterly nonsensical—but nonetheless painful—pang of jealousy, he turned away his gaze.
A plump, dark young lady in mulberry silk had paused on her way down the elegant staircase to stare at Cordelia and the count. After his own rush of irrational feeling, James had no need to understand the torrent of Italian which poured from her rosy lips to interpret the jealous fury in her face.
Chapter 23
“I’m sorry.” Cordelia stared miserably round at the familiar library, where Zio Simone had taught her to love books as much as he did. Everything was the same, the shelves of leather-bound volumes, the elegant French writing table, even the three chairs by the window. How often she had read aloud to the count there, while Mama’s golden head bent over her embroidery, uncomprehending but happy in the amity of her loved ones. Yet everything was different. This was no longer her home. “I should have realized the contessa...”
“Lucia will do as she is told, my dear.” He was just the same, too. The touch of grey in his hair simply made him look distinguished rather than dashing. Before, she had never thought about his age, but he could not be past his early forties. “She is nearer your age than mine,” he continued, “so I hope you and she will become friends.”
“I hope so,” she murmured doubtfully as Barzetti, beaming, ushered in a young maid with a tea-tray.
“Lemon, sugar, just as you always liked it, signorina,” the old man said, bowing an apology to his master for venturing to speak. “Excuse me,
Eccellenza
.”
Cordelia smiled at him. “Thank you, Barzetti. It’s a long time since I had a proper cup of tea.”
The servants left and she poured, for herself and for Zio Simone, who used to insist on his cup though he seldom drank it.
“You look as if it’s a long time since you had a proper meal,” he said, frowning.
“Oh no, I have eaten very well this past week. It’s poor Ja...Signore Prestopoulos who is half-starved. He was so dreadfully seasick, I was afraid for him.”
“A seasick courier is not of much use to anyone!” said the count astringently.
“He could not help it. The servants do understand that he needs frequent small meals at first, do they not?”
“They will follow your orders, my dear. Most were here in your time and they remember you with fondness, and your mother also. I cannot believe my poor Drusilla is dead. Tell me what happened.”
Cordelia shuddered as the memories she had so carefully banished to the hidden corners of her mind came rushing back. “It was an accident,” she said reluctantly, “a street accident. It was horrible!”
“You witnessed it?”
“Yes.” She had always confided in him, and now almost against her will the whole sorry story came out, the fish, the cats, the heedless camel.
Unlike the hateful Mehmed Pasha, the count was not in the least amused. As he expressed his horror and sympathy, Cordelia remembered how rarely he had laughed. Passages they read together which she thought funny, he had treated with utmost seriousness. Believing her youthful lack of understanding at fault, she had always deferred to his judgment. Yet now, grateful as she was for his gravity, his inability to see the least humour in her mother’s accident perversely brought an inane giggle bubbling to her lips. She swallowed it—and burst into tears.
“Poor child.” He moved to the chair beside her, gave her his silk handkerchief, and patted her back. “Drusilla loved you dearly. Never would she have willingly abandoned her ‘darling Dee.’“
“I know.” Cordelia dried her eyes, the brief storm over.
“Yet there you were stranded in Istanbul with no parent to advise you. Naturally you decided to return to England.”
“To my father.”
“England, and your father, are a long way off. How came you to hire that useless fellow Prestopoulos as your courier?”
“He was recommended to me.” In a way, by Aaron the Jew. But the last thing she wanted to discuss was her travels with James. “You are a father now, are you not? I believe I heard the contessa mention
bambini
?”
“One son and three daughters,” the count said proudly.
“I should so like to meet them!”
He took her to the nurseries, where she was delighted to discover that the children’s nurse was the old woman who had looked after her for six years. The children were another delight: the roly-poly baby gurgling in her cradle; the toddler staring with great black eyes from the safety of his father’s arms; the two little girls fascinated by Cordelia’s blond hair.
Yet another joy awaited her in the gardens. Amidst the rigid formality of balustraded terraces and parterres, classical statuary and fountains, symmetrical avenues and walks, her mama’s English garden had survived. Behind a row of sternly clipped cypresses, colour and scent exploded. Here roses ran riot, clematis spilled over trellises and bowers, butterflies mobbed the buddleia, and fat, furry bees bumbled through the honeysuckle.
Here Cordelia spent much of her time for the next few days. As often as Nurse could be persuaded to bring them out, she had the children with her. She rocked the baby in her arms, admired shiny pebbles solemnly presented by the little boy, helped the girls make garlands of rose-petals, and wished she were their sister.
Or at least really their cousin. After that first exclamation she no longer called the count zio. She was grown-up now, not a little girl in need of an uncle because her mother had torn her away from her father.
She still regarded him as an uncle, though. They walked often in the formal gardens, talking of old times. She knew the young countess resented their closeness. Lucia di Arventino seemed to have little in common with her husband, the marriage having been arranged in the usual Italian fashion, for the benefit of the two families. She was coldly polite to Cordelia when the count was present, ignored her otherwise. Since she spent a good deal of time in her boudoir, lounging on a sofa with a stack of French fashion magazines, they rarely met except at meals.
James was less willingly confined to his chamber. Cordelia made frequent enquiries about the health of her “courier” and the servants assured her he was slowly regaining his strength. However, by the morning of the fourth day, she simply had to see for herself.
It was not that she missed him, she told herself. Their having lived in each other’s pockets for so long was no reason for a mere three days separation to seem like forever. She had to see him because she was concerned about his well-being and because they must plan the next segment of their journey. Though she was enjoying the peace of Arventino, the good food and the cossetting, they could not stay here forever.
As he had not yet left his room in the upper servants’ quarters, she had no choice but to visit him there. Though such an attention to a sick hireling—however superior—might be considered remarkably condescending, there surely could not be anything improper in it.
Nonetheless, Cordelia did not wish to give the count even the slightest cause to suspect her of impropriety. He must not have the slightest excuse to mention to James that Lady Courtenay had been his mistress, so she must not be seen.
Picking a time in the middle of the morning when everyone was busy, she peeked round the corner, crept down the deserted corridor, and listened at his door. No sound of voices. He was alone. She tapped softly.
“Come in,” he called in Greek.
“James, how are you? Are they taking proper care of you? Oh, you are up. Good!”
“I’m very well.” Fully dressed, he stood on the far side of the small, bare room, at a window overlooking a courtyard. Though shockingly thin, he had some colour in his cheeks and his stride as he moved towards her was steady if without his usual vigour. “All the better for seeing you.”
“I would have come sooner, only...”
“Only you are an honoured guest and I am a mere minion. Are they taking proper care of you?” He took her hand and stood back, surveying her. “Yes, you are blooming.”
“Pray don’t talk fustian, James.” Blushing, she disengaged her hand. “The count is very good to me, just like in the old days, and Arventino is so beautiful in the spring. But should you not sit down?”
“What, leaving a lady and my employer standing?”
“You must be better. You have not teased me this age.” Cordelia took a seat on a low stool, and James perched on his narrow bed. She thought guiltily of her own luxurious apartment.
“Actually, I was just thinking it’s time I took a turn outside. I need more exercise to regain my strength than I can easily take in here. I’m not quite strong enough yet to face our next adventure.”
“No more adventures!”
“I trust not. Have you asked the count’s advice about how we should proceed?”
“Not yet. I wanted to talk to you first. I must tell you that he considers you a shocking failure as a courier!”
James laughed, but he said wryly, “So I am. I have a lowering feeling I’d not have survived that voyage without my kind and indomitable nurse.”
“All I did was pour mint tea and mineral water into you,” she disclaimed, trying to forget the dreadful moments when she had feared he was about to expire in her arms. “But that is past. What shall we do next?”
“I believe we should discuss that out in the gardens. Walls have ears, and besides, you ought not—”
A sharp rap on the door interrupted him. As it swung open without waiting for an invitation, Cordelia jumped up from the stool. The Conte di Arventino stood on the threshold, dark eyebrows raised.
“I was just leaving,” Cordelia declared. “I must thank your servants, sir. They have taken excellent care of...of Signore Prestopoulos.”
“I am glad to hear it,” the count said suavely. “I was just coming to assure myself of that fact, when I heard voices.” He turned to James and said in English, “I congratulate you on your recovery.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Is it not convenient that Mr. Prestopoulos speaks a little English?” Cordelia babbled. “Of course that is one reason why I hired him.”
“Of course. Well, now that I have satisfied myself that my people have done their duty, will you join me for a stroll, my dear?”
He offered his arm. Having announced her imminent departure, Cordelia took it perforce. She cast an apprehensive glance backwards. The sight of James biting his lip with a frown was not calculated to lessen her dismay.