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  Author’s Note

  ‘The Virgin of the Rocks’ in the Louvre in Paris was painted about 1485 and is the earliest of the pictures which Leonardo da Vinci is known to have completed.

  It was the centre panel of an altar piece commissioned by the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception in Milan.

  ‘The Madonna in the Church’ by Jan Van Eyck, 1380-1441, is in the Dahlem Museum, Berlin. ‘St. George and the Dragon’ by Raphael is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

  ‘Portrait of a Young Girl’ by Petrus Christus, 1400-1473, is in the Stault Museum, Berlin. He was a contemporary and perhaps a pupil of Jan Van Eyck but in comparison he seems to have been almost deaf to the voices of the spirit. Only in this really noble and suggestive work can we see the spiritual sensitivity which is so moving in all Jan Van Eyck’s pictures.

  Chapter One 1904

  “ Tem – pera! Tem – pera!”

  The excited voice rang out in the small house and Tempera hastily put down the gown she was sewing to run to the top of the stairs.

  In the hall below she could see her stepmother looking like an exotic bird of Paradise in a feather-trimmed hat and green gown beneath a short fur coat.

  Her face was upturned to the top of the staircase as she cried breathlessly,

  “Oh, Tempera, I have done it! I have done it! Come down – I must tell you about it.”

  Without replying Tempera ran down the stairs and followed her stepmother into the small front room.

  Lady Rothley pulled off her coat and flung it on a chair, then clasping her hands together she said,

  “He has asked me! He has actually asked me to go to the South of France and stay in his Chateau!”

  Tempera gave a little cry of delight.

  “Oh, Belle-mère, how thrilling! The Duke has finally succumbed to your charms! I thought he would!”

  “I was doubtful,” Lady Rothley said frankly.

  She took off her velvet hat as she spoke and stared at herself in the mirror over the mantelpiece, seeing her red-gold hair above a very beautiful face.

  “Tell me what the Duke said,” Tempera asked from behind her, “and when do you go?”

  “On Friday,” Lady Rothley replied.

  “Friday?”

  The exclamation was startled.

  “But, Belle-mère, that gives us only three days to get everything ready.”

  “I do not care if it is three minutes,” Lady Rothley replied. “He has asked me. I am to stay in his Chateau near Nice and nothing else is of any consequence.”

  “No – of course not,” Tempera agreed doubtfully, “but you will want clothes.”

  Lady Rothley turned from the contemplation of her reflection in the mirror to say,

  “Of course I shall want clothes and I shall also need the money with which to buy them.”

  She saw the expression on her stepdaughter’s face and went on,

  “You know the things I wore last summer are in rags, and it will be quite warm in the South of France at this time of the year. After all, it is March and it can even be quite hot.”

  “I know, Belle-mère,” Tempera agreed. “But as you well know, it is going to be difficult to find very much money!”

  “Yes, I know,” Lady Rothley agreed. “Is there nothing left to sell?”

  “Only the one drawing which we were keeping against a ‘rainy day.’”

  “Then sell it! Sell it!” Lady Rothley cried. “This is a ‘rainy day’, and I am sure – yes, I am absolutely sure – that the Duke is enamoured of me.”

  Her stepdaughter did not speak and after a moment she went on,

  “He said today that I was pure Titian.”

  “Who was Titian?” Tempera laughed and the worried look went from her face.

  “Belle-mère, you must know who Titian was! And the Duke is right. You are exactly like his picture of Venus with the lute player and perhaps, too, the Venus of the Mirror.”

  “Is that a compliment?” Lady Rothley asked doubtfully.

  “A great compliment!” Tempera replied and liked the smile which lit up her stepmother’s face.

  It was true, she thought, and the Duke was right. Her stepmother did look exactly like Titian’s models of the two pictures she had mentioned.

  Lady Rothley had the same fair-gold hair, the same round face, warm lips and large enquiring eyes, and the same voluptuous figure.

  The exception was that Lady Rothley pulled in her waist until it was tiny to accentuate the full curves of her bosom and her hips.

  The ‘S’ bend was due to the influence of an American, Charles Dana Gibson. It was attained by a corset boned so as to make the torso appear hardly to belong to a woman’s lower anatomy.

  Lady Rothley managed this to perfection and as she was in fact a very beautiful woman, Tempera was not surprised that the Duke of Chevingham found her attractive.

  When he first invited her Stepmother to his parties they had not attached any particular significance to it, since the parties at Chevingham House were famous for all the beautiful women who congregated there.

  But after one or two invitations to Balls and Receptions Lady Rothley had been included in intimate dinner parties which were the envy of every Society socialite.

  That was where both Tempera and her stepmother thought with satisfaction, she was most likely to meet a suitable second husband.

  Even so, they had not aspired as high as the Duke. But now with this invitation to the South of France it appeared that he might be personally interested.

  “I must have clothes – beautiful clothes!” Lady Rothley said firmly.

  Tempera replied without hesitation “Of course, Belle-mère, I will go now and take the Durer drawing to Papa’s friend at the National Gallery. He has always admired it, and if he does not buy it himself he will put me in touch with someone who will.”

  “While you are doing that,” Lady Rothley reflected, “perhaps I would be wise to go at once to Lucille and see what she can have ready in the time.”

  There was only a slight hesitation before Tempera agreed. She knew Madame Lucille’s flowing tea gowns and her beautifully moulded evening gowns became her stepmother better than anything another dressmaker could provide.

  At the same time Lucille was very expensive.

  They were, however, both aware of a sense of urgency, and without saying any more Tempera ran upstairs to her room to put on her hat and coat.

  Then she entered her father’s Study and took down from the wall the sole remaining picture.

  There were marks on the wallpaper which showed only too clearly that everything else had been sold.

  She might have anticipated, Tempera often thought, that when her father died they would be left with no money. She at least had the common sense to realise how little he actually possessed while her stepmother had always lived in a world of fantasy where nothing as mundane as money ever encroached.

  Because Sir Francis Rothley always associated with the most important people, was always in demand in the great houses that held world-famous treasures, their own lack of money did not seem to matter.

  Not until he died, when the small income he made as a Trustee and Advisor to various Galleries died with him.

  It was Tempera who made a list of their assets and forced her stepmother to face the fact that it was going to be very difficult to live on what they possessed.

  “How can we manage?” Lady Rothley had asked helplessly.

  She had never, her stepdaughter thought, faced reality in the whole of her sheltered life.

  Alaine had been brought up in the country, the daughter of a well-bred but undistinguished Country Squire. She had become engaged when she was twenty to a man who after nearly a y
ear’s engagement had been killed in India.

  Made miserable by this tragedy, there was no-one else in her life until when she was over twenty-four she came to London to stay with an aunt and quite by chance encountered Sir Francis Rothley at a dinner party.

  He was bowled over by her beauty and having been widowed for only a year threw all precautions to the wind and asked Alaine to marry him.

  She accepted him with alacrity, not only because he was a way of escape from the dull existence she had been leading, but also because, Tempera thought, she loved him in her own way.

  Alaine was quite incapable of very deep feelings, nor, despite her looks, was she a passionate woman.

  She was good-tempered, charming and in many ways extremely stupid.

  She wanted everyone to love her and so she was never prepared to voice a positive opinion or contradict anyone else’s.

  She just wanted to sail serenely through life, and the fact that men should think her beautiful was all she asked of the present and the future.

  It would have been impossible for anyone, least of all Tempera, not to like her stepmother, and although she was so much younger she realised that Alaine was like a child she must look after, a débutante who could not fend for herself.

  But it was Alaine who actually thought of a solution to their problems.

  She had stared blindly at the figures as Tempera tried to explain what they would have between them after her father’s funeral was paid for and his debts met.

  “We shall have to get married!”

  Her stepdaughter stared at her in surprise.

  “Married?” she ejaculated.

  It seemed somehow wrong to speak of such a thing when her father had just died.

  “There is no other solution,” Lady Rothley said spreading out her hands. “We both need husbands to provide for us. Besides, why should either of us wish to live alone?”

  It was, Tempera thought afterwards, the only sensible thing her stepmother had ever suggested, but it was she, of course, who saw the difficulties.

  “If it is a question of clothes,” she said tentatively, “there will not be enough money to dress us both.”

  The two women’s eyes met across the table and it was Tempera who spoke first.

  “You must get married first, Belle-mère, then perhaps you will be able to help me a little.”

  “Of course I will help you, dearest,” Alaine Rothley replied, “and you are right. As I am the elder I must find myself another husband – and quickly!”

  She gave a complacent little smile as she added,

  “It should not be difficult.”

  “No, of course not,” Tempera answered.

  At the same time she was wise enough to know that a beautiful widow without money would attract all sorts of men, but only a very few of them, like her father, would be prepared to offer marriage.

  She had not taken any part in social life. In fact it would have been unheard of for any young girl who had not made her debut to do so.

  But she had met some of the important and distinguished men who asked her father’s advice on Art and who sometimes visited him at home instead of his going to their houses.

  During her mother’s illness and after her death her father had talked to her about them, explaining who they were, usually of course concentrating on their valuable pictures.

  But sometimes, in his inimitable, witty way he gave her a thumbnail sketch of their lives and their interests. Tempera was very intelligent and had a retentive mind. She remembered what her father told her about these personages of distinction, just as she remembered his stories of the personal lives of the great master painters of the past.

  Her stepmother’s interests lay entirely in the Social world of the present.

  She knew of each new beauty who was pursued by the King, which man had laid his heart at the feet of the beautiful Duchess of Rutland, and who was currently in love with the pink, white and gold loveliness of Lady Curzon.

  It was a fascinating world of glamour and luxury, but to Tempera it was as unreal as the glass bubbles one could buy which contained a snow scene.

  Yet because there was a streak of practical common sense in her, it was she who directed and produced, as if on a stage, her beautiful stepmother.

  It was Tempera who saw that Alaine Rothley was in the right place at the right moment, so that she could be the recipient of the invitations that were so important to her.

  At Ranalagh, Ascot, the opening of the Royal Academy, Henley, and even at the 4th of June at Eton, Lady Rothley was to be seen looking amazingly alluring, her full mouth smiling and her blue eyes shining in a manner which most men found irresistible.

  And far more strict than any ambitious Mama, Tempera sorted out the men who pursued such a vision persistently but with very different intentions from that which she and Lady Rothley required.

  “I met the most charming man last night,” Lady Rothley had said two days ago when Tempera brought her breakfast in bed. “He never left my side. When he kissed my hand goodnight my heart fluttered – it did really, Tempera!

  “What was his name?” Tempera enquired.

  “Lord Lemsford. Have you heard of him?”

  “I am not sure,” Tempera answered. “I will look him up in Debrett.”

  She put the breakfast tray down beside her stepmother and Lady Rothley sat up eagerly to pour out the coffee and lift the covered dish to see what lay beneath it.

  “Oh, Tempera, only one egg?” she exclaimed reproachfully.

  “You know, Belle-mère, that I have had to let out your gowns by at least an inch,” Tempera replied.

  “But I am hungry,” Lady Rothley said plaintively. “I am always hungry.”

  “You eat far too much of those rich meals when you are out,” Tempera said firmly. “You must diet a little when you are at home – besides, it is more economical.”

  Lady Rothley did not answer.

  She was gobbling up her egg and thinking that she would spread the two pieces of toast that Tempera allowed her thickly with butter and add several spoonfuls of marmalade.

  She liked eating, at the same time she wanted to keep her small waist as she knew it was one of her most distinctive attractions.

  But it was difficult – very difficult – when everything tasted so delicious and the food at the parties where she was entertained was so superlative.

  No Edwardian hostess could lag behind another when it came to hospitality.

  A few minutes elapsed before Tempera came back from her father’s Study where the books of reference were kept. Most of them referred to Art, but he had a copy of Debrett because it had been important that when Tempera addressed letters to the distinguished noblemen who sought his advice she did it correctly.

  As she entered her stepmother’s bedroom Lady Rothley looked up expectantly.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “He is thirty-nine,” Tempera replied, “has a house in London and one in Somerset, belongs to all the best clubs, and – ”

  She paused for effect.

  “ – a wife and five children!”

  Lady Rothley gave a scream of annoyance.

  “Every married man should have a brand on his forehead, or a chain around his wrist,” she said peevishly. Tempera laughed.

  “Never mind, Belle-mère, perhaps he will get his wife to invite you to a smart party where you will meet some eligible bachelors.”

  “But he was so charming,” Lady Rothley pouted. “I might have guessed, might I not, that there would be something wrong?”

  “Like the man you met last week whom we learnt was practically bankrupt,” Tempera replied. “I had my suspicions about him when I saw that he belonged to only one not very important club.”

  As Tempera set out towards the National Gallery, taking a horse-drawn omnibus to Trafalgar Square, she tried not to mind that the last memento of her father must be sacrificed on the altar of fashion.

  She had kept back the Durer drawi
ng because she loved it and also because as she had said when they sold his other picture,

  “We must have something in reserve for a ‘rainy day.’”

  She had been thinking as she spoke that either her stepmother or herself might become ill, that the roof might need repair, or, which would be a worse disaster, that Agnes would wish to retire.

  They would never be able to acquire another servant so cheaply, Tempera was well aware of that.

  Besides, because Agnes had been with her mother until she died, she was extremely fond of the old woman and could not imagine the small house in Curzon Street without her.

  But Agnes was seventy-seven and the day was undoubtedly dawning when she would no longer be able to carry on keeping the majority of the rooms clean and cooking their frugal meals.

  Tempera cooked when anything special was required but she had so much to do for her stepmother that she had little time for anything else.

  Although a basic number of Lady Rothley’s gowns since she came out of mourning were bought from dressmakers, it was Tempera who trimmed her delightfully glamorous hats far more cheaply than a Milliner could.

  It was Tempera who pressed, darned and cleaned, and Tempera who by the judicious use of new ribbons and added flowers or frills could make an old gown look like new.

  When she returned home it was after six o’clock and she knew that the shops would be shut. She was therefore not surprised to find her stepmother lying on the sofa in the Drawing Room on the first floor.

  She looked like a recumbent Venus and her eyes were closed. But when Tempera opened the door she raised her head and asked quickly,

  “How much did you get?”

  “Seventy-five pounds!” Tempera replied.

  Lady Rothley gave a little cry of delight and sat up.

  “Seventy-five pounds! That is wonderful!”

  “We must not spend it all – we really must not, Belle-mère,” Tempera ventured.

  She saw the expression on her stepmother’s face and said, “I was thinking on the way back that if we put twenty-five pounds aside for any emergency you could have the rest.”

  “Well, I suppose fifty pounds is better than nothing!” Lady Rothley said grudgingly.

  “I can trim the hats you had last summer so that no-one would ever recognise them,” Tempera said, “and I was thinking that if we put some new white lace on that gown you wore at Ascot it would look quite different, and the colour suits you so well.”