100. A Rose In Jeopardy Read online

“Ah, that wicked boy! I waited – and he did not come. So you know him? He is a friend of yours?”

  “No, but he kindly gave me your card. And – ”

  Rosella felt anxiety rise in chest as she continued,

  “ – he said that you might need a companion, while you are in London, ma’am”

  “No!” The Contessa tossed her head. “Soon I will be going back to my home in Italy and so I have no need of anyone. But – ”

  She pointed at the birdcage.

  The monkey had reached its arm through the bars and was scratching the top of Pickle’s head, as the parrot blinked his eyes in absolute bliss.

  “I will have your papagallo,” she said. “My Pepe loves him. Perhaps the bird will keep him from straying. How much do you want for him.”

  “No!” Rosella cried and her heart turned over with fear. “I could not part with Pickle!”

  The Contessa’s eyes flashed and then she gestured to one of the maids to bring her a gilded wooden box.

  “Don’t you know I am one of the richest women in Italy?” the Contessa snapped. “Whatever your price, I will pay it.”

  Rosella thought for a moment. Never in her wildest dreams had she considered leaving England, but what was there now to stay for?

  She took a deep breath and looked straight into the Contessa’s deep-set eyes.

  “If he goes with you, then I must go too! That is my price, ma’am.”

  The Contessa raised her eyebrows.

  “You don’t want my gold?” she said and ran her fingers through the coins that filled the box. “You strange girl.”

  “I cannot be parted from Pickle,” Rosella said once more. “He is – all I have.”

  The Contessa stared at her for a long moment and then she said,

  “Very well. I agree your price. You and your bird will come to my home. We leave day after tomorrow.”

  *

  Lyndon sighed with relief as the rowing boat pulled out of the Port of Mestre to take him on the last stage of his journey.

  Every inch of him felt gritty with coal dust, even though he had not had to handle any of the sacks, which even now were being unloaded from The Grace Darling into carts that lined the side of the dock.

  He rubbed his tired eyes and thought longingly of the room he would soon be occupying and the bath that he would soon be able to have in one of the boarding houses in a not-too-expensive district of Venice.

  He might find a place in Canareggio perhaps or even in Guidecca. He whispered the names to himself, practising the pronunciation of the unfamiliar sounds.

  The boat was fairly flying through the water as the two boatmen who plied the oars were strong solid men.

  Lyndon looked up and then caught his breath in amazement.

  He had imagined his first sight of Venice so many times, but nothing he had pictured could equal the vision that now opened up before him.

  It was evening and the sun was hanging low in the sky like a huge orb of fire, turning the whole expanse of the sky to glittering gold.

  All around him the waters of the Lagoon rippled, stretching away like a sheet of beaten silver.

  Straight ahead on the horizon, silhouetted against the glowing sky, were the domes and towers and fretted rooftops of a distant City.

  A City that looked just as if it belonged in another world – a more outlandish and extravagant and beautiful world than the one that Lyndon knew.

  At last he had come to Venice.

  ‘This is where my life begins,’ he whispered and he clutched the side of the boat and strained to see more as the sun sank down in the sky.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Dear Thomas, I am writing to let you know that all is well with me – ”

  Rosella dipped the gold nib of her pen into the blue glass inkbottle that stood on the writing desk.

  She wanted to tell Thomas about the extraordinary place where she had now been living for a whole week, but how could she possibly describe the Ca’ degli Angeli – the great sumptuous Palazzo, home to the Contessa Allegrini, without using too many long words?

  She was sitting by the window of her bedroom, one of the smaller rooms in the old building, yet it was almost twice the size of her room at New Hall.

  Below her, through the open shutters, she could see the deep green water of the Grand Canal and the sunlight flashing on the waves that rippled every time a boat drifted past.

  “I am in Venice,” she wrote, “and I have just seen a gondola,” but then she realised that Thomas would have no idea what she meant.

  “There is nothing like it in England, she continued. “It is a sort of long boat with a carved prow and a high stern and the ladies and gentlemen of Venice lie back on velvet cushions while the gondolier stands at the back and steers and rows with just one long oar!

  There are no roads here in Venice, everything and everyone must travel by water on the canals.”

  She was then about to describe the fabulous, gold-painted furniture that filled her bedroom at the Palazzo and the delicious food that was laid out every day on the great table in the dining room – and, most of all, she wanted to tell Thomas about the Contessa.

  But she put down the pen to think.

  What if someone found the letter and, even though she signed it just with the words ‘your friend’, realised who had sent it?

  She could not take the risk of someone from New Hall tracing her to Venice and to the Ca’ degli Angeli.

  “I cannot say more, Thomas, except that I am very happy and I am staying in a beautiful Palazzo – which is Italian, of course, for Palace – with someone who is very kind to me,” she continued.

  “I hope that all is well with you. I think of you often and send you my good wishes. My kindest thoughts too go to your sister, I am so grateful to her for her help.

  Your friend.”

  With a pang in her heart that she could not write her own name below her words of gratitude, she then folded the thick velvety paper.

  She sealed the letter with a blob of red sealing wax and rang the bell for Mimi, the young maid the Contessa had assigned to her and, as she waited for the girl to knock at the tall oak door of her bedroom, she thought how sad it was that the only one she could tell about her adventures was the gardener’s boy.

  Sarah would be pleased to know that all was well with Rosella, but she could not read, so there was no point in sending a letter to her until her husband came home.

  If only Rosella knew where that young man, Mr. Jones, lived, the mysterious black-cloaked person who had given her the Contessa’s card.

  She would have liked so much to tell him that she was here in Venice and to thank him for the introduction.

  Rosella felt her face grow warm as it always did when she thought about him. She could not forget the way that his dark eyes had looked into hers and the way that his voice had made her feel.

  But she did not even know his name.

  “Signorina?”

  Mimi was by her side, her round face glowing like a warm peach.

  Rosella scribbled Thomas’s name on the letter and addressed it to New Hall, Near Winchester, England, care of the Head Gardener, as she was sure that he would not recognise her writing.

  She gave the letter to Mimi.

  “Tua famiglia in Inghilterra?” Mimi then asked, looking curiously at the address.

  “No, not my family,” Rosella replied, for already she was beginning to understand just a little of the Italian language. “Just a friend. Un amico.”

  “A-ah!” Mimi smiled at her. “Un amico.”

  And she hurried off to post the letter, pressing it to her heart.

  Rosella thought about her letter wending its way to England and then tears sprang into her eyes as she pictured Thomas opening it in the Rose Garden, hiding from prying eyes under the masses of scented blooms.

  There was a rap at her door.

  “Ja-ane!” an imperious voice called out. “Is your window closed?”

  Ros
ella jumped up and pulled the heavy window shut, just in time, for the Contessa did not hesitate before entering the room with Pepe sitting on one shoulder and Pickle on the other, nibbling affectionately at her earring.

  “Hello, my dear!” the parrot shouted, when he saw Rosella and then he flew right up and perched on top of the embroidered curtain that surrounded her four-poster bed.

  “Come down, you naughty Pickle,” she told him, hastily wiping her eyes, so that the Contessa should not see that she had been crying.

  “Oh, he is so happy to be flying free,” the Contessa said. “Leave him, but what is the matter? You are upset?”

  “It’s nothing really,” Rosella sniffed.

  She was still a little apprehensive of the Contessa, for the old woman could fall into a tempestuous rage at the least excuse.

  And Rosella could not quite forget the way that the Contessa had attacked her with her walking stick in the lobby of The Palace Hotel and also, how she had not really wanted Rosella to come to Italy with her – since she was only interested in Pickle the talking parrot.

  All through the voyage to Venice on the beautiful ship La Maschera, Rosella had made herself very useful, arranging the flowers in the Contessa’s luxurious cabin and keeping watch over Pepe.

  And when they arrived, it seemed that she had gone up in the Contessa’s esteem, as she had been allocated this beautiful room, overlooking the Grand Canal and she was always invited to dine with the old woman.

  Now the Contessa was staring at her intently.

  “Jane,” she began. “Something is troubling you, I can see. Un segreto? A secret you speak of to no one?”

  Rosella’s limbs grew cold with fear.

  “Please,” she replied, “Really, there is nothing that troubles me. I am so happy to be here and you are so very kind to me, ma’am.”

  “But who are you?” the Contessa frowned. “I think you are not what you seem.”

  “I am Jane – ” Rosella began, but Pickle interrupted her by flying down and landing on her head.

  “Ouch! Do be careful,” she scolded him, lifting her hand for him to step down.

  He promptly flew off again and landed on the table. Pepe then jumped down from the Contessa’s shoulder and bounded over to join him.

  Pickle bowed his head and Pepe sat down next to him and began combing the feathers on the back of the bird’s neck with his tiny fingers.

  The Contessa laughed.

  “Oh, your bird! So clever. But Jane, can you tell me why, when you left the room this morning, he said, ‘Bye bye, Rosella’.”

  Rosella’s cheeks burned at her words.

  She had not heard Pickle say this today, but then she remembered that he had done so sometimes in the past, when Aunt Beatrice was still alive.

  Without meaning to, the parrot had betrayed her.

  The Contessa had seen her blush.

  “I thought so! You are this mysterious Rosella, are you not! I give thanks, for never again will I have to make that horrible English sound – Ja-ane.”

  “No, please, you must not call me Rosella.”

  “Why are you so afraid?”

  “I don’t want anyone to know I am here.”

  “But your family?”

  “I have no family. There was only my aunt and she died.”

  “Oh, povera!” the Contessa reached out and patted Rosella’s hair. “But why did she not leave you her fortune, this aunt? Why did she leave you to go out in the world at mercy of strangers?”

  Rosella then explained that Aunt Beatrice had died suddenly and the estate had gone to her husband’s brother.

  “I have nothing now,” she whispered.

  The Contessa’s black eyes glowed.

  “No one who has a good friend has nothing,” she exclaimed and then she sighed,

  “You poor creature. You have face of angel and the kindness of one too. You are patient with my naughty Pepe. And you love beautiful things – I have watched how tenderly you touch flowers when you put them into vases for me.”

  Tears sprang into Rosella’s eyes, as she thought of the daily ritual she used to perform at New Hall.

  “I-I used to arrange the flowers for my aunt,” she explained.

  “Of course,” the Contessa responded, her own eyes suddenly bright, “but you must not feel sad. A pretty girl like you – you must have handsome young man – a suitor – who waits for you in England?”

  Rosella shook her head.

  She could not bring herself to speak of the horrible Mr. Merriman, who was neither young nor handsome.

  A determined look came over the Contessa’s face.

  “The time of Carnivale is past now for this year, but I am going to hold a ball. Un Ballo in Maschera! And I shall ask all the Nobility of Venice and English visitors to come. And we shall see if we cannot find you a handsome suitor – Rosella!”

  “Oh, surely you don’t mean that, I-I couldn’t.”

  Rosella recoiled in horror at the thought of having to attend a ball.

  The Contessa laughed.

  “Of course you can,” she persisted. “No one will recognise you, as you will be masked. But none the less, you cannot fail to catch the eye of the young men.”

  She clapped her hands imperiously.

  “Come, there will be no argument.”

  The Contessa called out at the top of her voice for Giovanni, the gondolier who ferried her about the City.

  “Go to Signora Taglioni at once,” she told him, when he came to the door.

  She snatched a piece of paper from the desk and scribbled something onto it.

  “Give her this – and tell her the appointment must be as soon as possible. Tomorrow!”

  *

  Next morning, Rosella stood outside one of the side doors of the Palazzo, looking down into the dark water of a narrow waterway that branched off from the Grand Canal.

  “Signorina?”

  Giovanni, a tall, well-built man with thick black hair and a wide smile, held out his strong hand to help her down into the gondola.

  He was the brother of Mimi, her maid, and she was sure that he was a good trustworthy man, but still Rosella felt a little uneasy.

  “Where are we going?” she asked him.

  He laughed and shook his head,

  “Segreto.”

  A little rush of panic surged in Rosella’s chest.

  She had never been in a gondola before and here she was about to step into one all on her own to be carried away to an unknown destination.

  She did not want to go and she turned to run back inside the Palazzo, but then her heart leapt with shock, for there right next to her at the side of the door was a life-size statue of a young man.

  The white stone was worn and dirty, but she could see that his carved face was handsome and he wore a large turban on his head.

  Rosella gasped.

  “Who is that?” she asked.

  Giovanni shrugged.

  “Non lo so. I don’t know. Antico, antico. From a long time ago. Come, Signorina. We must not be late for your appointment.”

  The statue’s curved lips seem to smile at Rosella.

  “Go,” they seemed to say. “Go on – and see what awaits you.”

  Her heart in her mouth, she allowed Giovanni to help her into the swaying gondola and then she lay back on the cushions, as he expertly steered the slender craft over the dark water and out onto the Grand Canal.

  *

  Lyndon knelt up in the prow of the rowing boat, gazing at the domes and roofs of Venice, gleaming under the morning sun.

  He knew that he should sit down to steady the boat, but he was so excited by what he had just found in the Cemetery of San Michele, that he simply could not contain himself.

  And the placid oarsman, pulling steadily at the oars, did not seem to mind that his passenger was acting like an over-excited child.

  Since he had come to Venice, Lyndon had looked across the water many times to the mysterious island of San Mich
ele, where the dark spires of the cypress trees towered over the cemetery walls.

  Since he had arrived in Venice, Lyndon had wasted no time in seeing all the sights. He had marvelled at the glories of St. Mark’s Square with its Basilica and its tall Campanile.

  He had wandered alone through the dark alleyways, crossing tiny bridges over the canals and found glory upon glory of art and architecture to astonish him.

  But the most extraordinary experience of all had been today at the cemetery of Venice.

  As he strolled among all the tombs and monuments, admiring the carved angels and the exquisite inscriptions commemorating the famous families of Venice, he thought he might hunt among some of the smaller gravestones and see if he could find some English names.

  And there he had found, clearly carved on a marble headstone, the words,

  “In memory of Lord Osborne Brockley, 1786.”

  Lyndon’s heart was in his mouth as he read this, for Lord Osborne had been brother to his great-grandfather.

  He had never taken much interest in the history of his family, but he did recall some story of Lord Osborne leaving England to embark on a Grand Tour of Europe – and never returning.

  The rumour was that he had had an unhappy love affair and had then drowned.

  Lyndon knelt down and laid his hand on the warm marble. Perhaps his great-uncle had lost his life here in the silvery waters of the Lagoon.

  ‘Rest in peace,’ he whispered to Lord Osborne’s grave and then closed his eyes for a moment in the warm sunshine.

  As he stepped back into the rowing boat and began the short journey back to the City, his heart pounded with excitement.

  What an extraordinary coincidence it was, that he should be following in the footsteps of his ancestor!

  But there was no way that he, Lyndon, would fall victim to an unhappy love affair.

  He had done his sightseeing now. San Michele was the last place on the list.

  Now he should mingle a little in Society and meet some of the beautiful women of Venice – not to fall in love with, oh no! – but to flirt with and enjoy some liaisons that would not in any way touch his heart.

  A rowing boat had come out from the mouth of one of the canals and was coming towards him.

  Lyndon looked over and almost laughed out loud, as it was as if his wish to meet a lovely woman had just become a reality.