Love and Lucia

  Love and Lucia

  Even amid the genteel grandeur of Venice, the Marquis of Wynchcombe’s ennui is undiminished. His fiery mistress Francesca, a beautiful and flamboyant Venetian actress, bores him almost as much as the company of the Beau Monde and royal acolyte with whom he associates.

  So when an impoverished but delicately alluring young Englishwoman – Lucia – accosts him at a café and beseeches him to peruse the painting of her dying father, he is intrigued – more so when he realises that Lucia’s father is a genius... But then he dies.

  Lucia is distraught and destitute but the Marquis saves her from penury by buying her father’s every painting, promising to take her home to England. Enraged by her beau’s apparent infatuation with the young ingénue, Francesca stabs him with a stiletto... But it’s Lucia who has truly pierced his heart and stolen his soul – and just as the Marquis thinks she will be his forever, she delivers the heartbreaking words: ‘Although I love you with all my heart I cannot be your wife...’

  Author’s Note

  When I was in Venice for Easter 1982, I was vividly aware of the light, which differs from any other place I have visited except Greece. It is a particularly clear light with an intensity that is mysterious and enchanting.

  Venice is a dream city and every time one goes there it is more beautiful than one remembered it to be.

  This time I was entranced by the soft mist over the water first thing in the morning, the sun glittering on the mosaics outside San Marco, the candles flickering inside. Candles, too, in the magnificent banqueting hall of the Palazzo Contarini Polignac, when the Duc Decazes gave a dinner party for me.

  Will Venice survive? Forever and always in the hearts of those who love her.

  Chapter One 1824

  The Marquis of Wynchcombe awoke slowly and thought the heat was oppressive.

  Then he realised that what he was noticing was the stuffiness of the room, because the shutters were closed and the curtains drawn.

  Almost as if he asked himself the reason for it, he turned sideways on his pillow and saw the answer beside him. When he slept alone he invariably opened the windows last thing at night, and instead of enjoying the darkness of the shutters, he liked to see the first glimmer of dawn creeping up the sky.

  But his amusement of the night before was lying beside him, and hearing her soft breathing he knew that she was fast asleep.

  He turned away from her thinking with a faint smile on his rather hard lips that last night had been fiery and unrestrained, which was what he had expected from a Venetian, but, although he had no wish to admit it, somewhat exhausting.

  He had known as soon as he heard Francesca Rosso sing that she had a voice like a nightingale, and her top notes soared like larks into the sun.

  At the same time she was young, beautiful and apparently only too eager to be swept into his arms, and under his protection.

  The Marquis was very fastidious and exceedingly particular in bestowing his favours, but he had learnt almost as soon as he arrived in Venice who the most attractive women were, and in the theatrical world Francesca had no equal.

  When she sang in the Opera there was not an empty seat in the house, and her praises were extolled with an eloquence that only the Italians can express with their words, their hands and their eyes for something they admire.

  After a long voyage from England the Marquis was looking for amusement.

  It was therefore only a matter of days before he met Francesca, and the moment she saw him she knew that if she was what he was looking for, she could return the compliment.

  Since the occupation of Venice by Napoleon as King of Italy, the Venetians had grown year by year increasingly poor.

  The ancient families were struggling to remain alive and had little money to expend on the delights and extravagances which were part of their history. So to the Courtesans of Venice a rich English nobleman was a gift from the gods.

  When, by the ‘Congress of Vienna and the Treaty of Paris, Venice was ceded to Austria, things from the Venetian point of view were little changed.

  The difference was simply that there was another Emperor in control, now in Vienna, and a Viceroy of a different nationality.

  However they behaved the Venetians loathed them, and the Marquis had yet to meet any Venetian who did not immediately start to abuse the Austrians and become boringly verbose on the subject of the insults and humiliations they received.

  As far as he was concerned, he had come to Venice for pleasure.

  After being unable to leave England for so many years, except to fight against Napoleon, English men and women were pouring out of the country in their tens of thousands to discover Europe.

  The ‘Grand Tour’ had almost totally changed its character. The means of travel now being easier and more comfortable, not only the aristocrats and the moneyed people of the middle-class were the travellers, but there were also poets, writers, musicians and painters, the latter gravitating towards Venice as if to a magnet.

  The Marquis had met William Turner, who had spent a fortnight in Venice in 1819, and had listened to his paean of praise for what to him had been a revelation of light.

  But while the Marquis was a notable collector of pictures to add to those which filled the large picture galleries both of his house in the country, and of that in London, he was actually looking for something warmer and more human in Venice than a picture.

  He certainly found it in Francesca.

  From the moment she had moved into the exquisite Palazzo he occupied on the Grand Canal, he found himself amused and entertained in a way which made him applaud his decision to visit Venice.

  The Beau Monde, he found, had altered in character now that the King, recently crowned, was older.

  The parties His Majesty gave at Buckingham Palace and at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton were not the same as those which had enlivened, entertained, and scandalised a lot of people when he was the Prince Regent.

  “Either they have become boring,” the Marquis said to some of his friends, “or else I am more easily bored.”

  They had laughed, and only Lord Duncan, his constant companion, had been brave enough to say,

  “Both those assertions are correct, Giles. In fact no one would dispute that you are growing more particular, more blasé, and certainly more cynical than you were five years ago.”

  Because people seldom spoke like that to the Marquis, he looked at his friend in surprise before he said,

  “Perhaps you are right, but it is certainly a dismal portent for the future.”

  Alastair Duncan had laughed.

  “With your money, Giles, there are always ‘pastures new’.”

  It was perhaps this remark which had made the Marquis start thinking that what he was doing, and had been doing during the years since the war ended, had become monotonous.

  It was not only the parties which were ‘much of a muchness’, but also the race-meetings, the Mills, the Steeple-Chases in which he took part, and in particular the women, who, when he thought about it, lacked variety.

  He was not yet so cynical as to say even to himself that all women like cats, were grey in the dark!

  But when he thought about it, his affaires de coeur, which followed one after another, seemed to tread the same path of exploration and satisfaction.

  But after they reached a certain height they always fell precipitately into an oblivion for no reason which the Marquis could ascertain, except that he was bored.

  It was Alastair Duncan who spelled it out for him on the last evening before he left London.

  “Have you ever asked yourself, Giles,” he enquired, “what you are looking for, or rather aiming for, in life?”

  The Marquis, who had enjoyed a superlativ
e dinner supplied by his French chef, was sitting back with a glass of brandy in his hand, and replied,

  “Why should I be looking for anything?”

  “Because you cannot help it,” Alastair replied.

  “I have no conception of what you are talking about.”

  “Then listen to me. You are one of the wealthiest men in the country, you are certainly the most handsome, the most athletic, and although you seldom consider it, one of the most intelligent. In those circumstances it must be impossible for you to be content as you are now.”

  “Nonsense!” the Marquis said positively. “I am of course flattered by your description of me, but I assure you I am extremely content with my possessions, my position in life, and certainly my horses.”

  “And you really think they are enough to occupy you and engage your mind for the next forty or fifty years?”

  The Marquis laughed.

  “Why not?”

  “You are being obtuse,” Alastair said, “or else dishonest with yourself, which is something I have never known you to be before.”

  “What the devil are you driving at?” the Marquis enquired.

  “I think the answer to that is that it makes me sad to see anything so exceptional as you being wasted.”

  “In what way?”

  Now there was a slight edge on the Marquis’s voice.

  “I think perhaps it is because you are, as you say, content. But I find it impossible to believe that anybody with brains could be content with the people with whom you spend your time at the moment.”

  “What is wrong with them?” the Marquis asked sharply. “Take the King, for instance,” Alastair replied. “We all like ‘Prinny’, we always have, but he has grown increasingly fat, slow and, if we are honest with ourselves, tedious.”

  The Marquis’s eyes twinkled, but he did not interrupt as Alastair went on,

  “Ever since he has been besotted by one fat, elderly, avaricious woman after another, I find it hard to concentrate on what he is saying. I only feel increasingly anxious to escape from the Royal Presence as quickly as possible.”

  As he finished speaking Lord Duncan waited as if expecting the Marquis to contradict what he had said, but he merely took a sip of brandy and remarked,

  “Go on, I am interested.”

  “Do you want me to go through the whole collection of ‘hangers-on’ and spongers, male and female, who fawn upon you because you are rich, and because there is nobody else at the moment who can provide them so ably with what they desire?”

  “What is that?” the Marquis asked.

  “Hospitality, amusement and the feeling that if you are there, they are in the right place.”

  The Marquis threw back his head and laughed.

  “I have never known you so eloquent, Alastair, or so perceptive. I thought when we did things together that you enjoyed yourself.”

  “I do, you know I do!” Alastair replied. “At the same time, I am very much aware that you do not enjoy life as much as you used to when we were suffering the discomforts and hardships of being in the Army, and yet were young and enthusiastic enough to enjoy it.”

  “We all have to grow older,” the Marquis said philosophically.

  Alastair Duncan laughed.

  “You talk as if you were Methuselah. You will be thirty-four next birthday, and there is still, or there should be, a little ‘life in the old dog yet’!”

  The Marquis rose to his feet.

  “Come now, Alastair, I do not know what you are getting at, but it is making me uncomfortably introspective.”

  “That is what I hoped, and I am also telling you why I am glad you are going away.”

  “All right, I am going away because I am bored,” the Marquis conceded. “I am quite certain, however, that by the time I reach Venice I shall be only too glad to turn round and come straight back again.”

  “I shall be waiting to welcome you with open arms,” Alastair said. “I only wish to God I could come with you!” “Chuck the Army and do so,” the Marquis suggested.

  His friend shook his head.

  “No, I thought about leaving the Army when peace was declared, but I decided that until my father dies, as I have no estates like you to care for, I should have some occupation to fill my days rather than going from Club to Club, party to party, and bed to bed!”

  The Marquis laughed again.

  “I commend you, Alastair, for your decision, your way of life, and your criticism of mine. At the same time, damn you for your impertinence!”

  Only when he had set off the following day, with a large entourage to see to his comfort, did the Marquis remember what his friend had said, and admit that there was some truth in it.

  But what was the alternative, he asked, except to win more races than he had won already, to ensure that his estates were in perfect running order, and to dance attendance on the Monarch because the King demanded it of him?

  “What do you want to go abroad for?” he had growled disagreeably when the Marquis had said goodbye to him.

  Having, as Alastair might have said, played nursemaid to the impulsive, emotional Prince of Wales and the frustrated and often hysterical Prince Regent, the Marquis knew how to handle the new King.

  “I know, Sire, it is something Your Majesty would do, if it was possible for you,” he said. “I see it as my duty to find out what is happening in different parts of Europe after the way its people have suffered under the heel of Napoleon.”

  “I imagine they can help themselves,” the King replied.

  “Not without our understanding, our help and our inspiration,” the Marquis answered.

  He saw the King was impressed, and added,

  “Having won the war, Sire, it is our duty, as you yourself have often averred, to build and sustain the peace.”

  After this the King had bade him God Speed in a different tone of voice, but at the same time he had said - and it was an order,

  “Do not stay away for too long. I shall miss you, and I want you with me.”

  When the Marquis left the Palace he felt that he was escaping to a new freedom he had not enjoyed for some years.

  At the same time, he had not been optimistic that new interests abroad would engage his mind very much more fully than it was engaged in England.

  Various of his friends had talked so much about Venice that he decided he would go there first, and make it his main objective.

  He therefore travelled through France to inspect the ravages of war, sending his yacht ahead so that it could be waiting for him when he arrived in Marseilles.

  The journey did not interest him particularly, except for an amusing week in Paris.

  In fact, he found the sunshine of the Mediterranean and the enjoyment of trying out his new ‘plaything’ in the shape of his yacht the Sea Horse more to his liking.

  Although he regretted to some extent that he was not accompanied by Alastair or some of his other friends, he had learnt in the past that a party was constraining and that even the most congenial people began to pall if one saw too much of them.

  “I am better off on my own,” the Marquis said.

  He found that assumption was particularly true when he reached Venice.

  He had sent his secretary ahead of him with a very experienced Courier to rent a Palazzo where he would be at least housed in comfort.

  People who had returned from visiting Venice had said there was a large number of Palazzos belonging to Venetian aristocrats available, whose owners were only too glad to receive a large rent for Palaces which they themselves found increasingly expensive to maintain.

  The Palazzo which the Marquis found waiting for him on arrival was certainly impressive.

  It had belonged to the same family for five generations, but the present owners were willing to move into very much smaller and cheaper premises while the Marquis was their tenant.

  Although parts of the building were undoubtedly shabby and in need of repair, he was impressed by the excel
lent taste of the ancient furnishings.

  Also, the large number of servants whom his secretary had engaged on his behalf soon gave the place the perfection the Marquis expected wherever he stayed.

  In the dimness of the huge room where he now was, he could see under the beamed and painted ceiling the heavy brocade curtains which covered the long windows and which reached from ceiling to floor.

  The same brocade draped the large bed in which he was lying, which was surmounted by a carved and gilded canopy like that which stood above the Doge’s chair, and made anybody lying beneath it feel important.

  Then, as if the lack of air and the somewhat pungent perfume which came from Francesca’s hair was too much for him, the Marquis very quietly slipped out of bed.

  He walked across the room and into an adjacent one in which his valet had hung his clothes.

  As he closed the door behind him he drew in a deep breath, as if searching for fresh air.

  Then after stretching himself and flexing his muscles in a manner which betrayed his strength, he washed in cold water before he began to dress.

  At the moment he had no wish to summon his valet or any other servant. He just wished to be alone.

  Perhaps the saturation of a long night of love-making, or perhaps the pale sun creeping up the sky and dispersing the haze which hung over the canal outside, made him want silence.

  Ever since he had come to Venice he had been fêted, entertained and, as he thought now, encroached upon by people.

  Now all he wanted was to escape and be by himself.

  Because he was used to being self-sufficient, the Marquis dressed himself and tied his cravat as skilfully and as quickly as if he was being helped by a valet.

  He had long ago made up his mind that anything a servant could do he would do better.

  Although he seldom put it to the test, he knew a feeling of satisfaction that no amount of help could have ensured his being dressed more quickly than he was at this moment.

  It was still very early in the morning, and although perhaps the servants were stirring in the kitchen, there was no one in sight as he walked from his dressing-room.

  He descended the wide staircase which led to the lower part of the Palazzo and finally to the entrance on to the canal, which in the winter was often flooded.