A Lucky Star Read online

  Linette paused and regarded Anthea closely.

  “Why, I believe you are just a little bit in love with Papa!” she cried. “He often has that effect on ladies.”

  “You are mistaken,” said Anthea, fussing with her umbrella to cover her confusion. “I just think that you are being a trifle impulsive.”

  “But Papa will soon wish to return to England now that his business is almost concluded – ”

  “Not so. He told me this morning we would stay in Naples for a while yet. So you see, there is no rush. Tell him about Roberto and let him become accustomed to the fact that you are together and in love and then he will come round to the idea.”

  Linette seemed placated by Anthea’s suggestion.

  She sank back and contented herself with watching people thronging through the bustling streets of Naples.

  “It’s going to rain today, which is a pity,” remarked Linette, as their carriage neared Roberto’s house. “Still it won’t matter to Roberto as he is not painting the weather!”

  Anthea chuckled.

  “It is an honour to be an artist’s muse and although Roberto is not so well-known at the moment, he will surely become one of the great names in art.”

  “I certainly believe so. Look, here we are. Are you coming inside, Anthea?”

  “I will for a while and then I will ask the driver to take me sightseeing. Your father said that we should stick to the main roads for safety and there is a Church I wish to see that has an interesting archaeological history.”

  Linette appeared delighted that she was going to be left alone with Roberto.

  She skipped lightly down the carriage steps to ring the doorbell, singing as she went.

  Roberto opened the door and threw his arms around her.

  “Cara mia!” he cried and then he spotted Anthea in the carriage.

  “Signorina Preston, how nice to see you. Will you come in and have coffee and cakes?”

  “Thank you. I hear you will be painting Linette.”

  “Si, in the garden. It will be beautiful, as she is!”

  Anthea could not prevent herself from taking one last look over her shoulder as she entered Roberto’s house.

  Even though she was attempting to keep a brave face, she was really quite nervous.

  Roberto was the perfect host, producing coffee and little Neapolitan pastries for them to savour.

  “Although we have not long eaten breakfast, how could I refuse such a delight!” enthused Anthea, helping herself to what Roberto told her was called sfogliatella.

  They chatted for a while and, seeing that Roberto was becoming anxious to start painting, she took her leave.

  “I will return just after luncheon,” she whispered to Linette. “Then we shall have to make our way back to the ship before the end of the afternoon.”

  Anthea climbed into the carriage and, as they drove down the hill, she did not notice a ramshackle cart carrying a small group of rough-looking men pull out onto the road and start following them.

  All through the congested streets they were keeping her carriage within sight.

  After a bit, they drew closer to the Church that Anthea was so keen to see. However the driver appeared perturbed about something.

  He stopped the carriage and turned round to speak with her.

  “I am so sorry, signorina,” he apologised. “But la strada, it is too narrow for the carriage.”

  ‘Oh, I shall have to continue on foot,’ she sighed. Although, so far, the rain had held off, she was certain that the clouds would burst at some point.

  Climbing down from the carriage, she ordered the driver to wait for her in a side street.

  “I will not be too long,” she told him, as she tucked her umbrella under her arm. “Then I should like to go and find a nice café for luncheon if you can recommend one for me?”

  The driver nodded and closed the carriage door.

  Anthea scanned the hill in front of her.

  Rows of whitewashed houses rose up and the road seemed to become narrower as it reached the summit.

  Using her umbrella as a walking stick, she set off.

  The road was very quiet as she started up the hill and she saw no one except a large black cat who sat washing itself on a balcony.

  Recalling the Earl’s warning, she wondered if she should return to the carriage, but then dismissed the idea.

  ‘This is a very popular Church in Naples,’ she told herself, ‘and I cannot imagine there not being other people about. And, although I cannot see anyone, we must have approached it via a different route to the one taken by most other tourists.’

  As the driver pulled the carriage away into a side street, the men in the cart took his place.

  Their cart was narrower and lighter than a carriage and they urged their horse up the hill closer behind Anthea.

  ‘Goodness! It’s a long way up,’ she panted, as she paused to let a dogcart pass her.

  The noise of the horse’s hooves and the rattle of the wheels drowned out the sound of the cart in pursuit.

  At last she reached the churchyard.

  ‘Now where are these ancient ruins I have read so much about?’ she wondered, scanning the tombs.

  She moved off along the path and decided that there must be someone inside the Church who could point her in the right direction.

  However, if she had turned, she might have noticed two men creeping through the graves towards her, one holding a sack in his hands.

  The entrance to the Church was at the back of the building and Anthea had to walk some distance to find it.

  Just as she put her hand on the brass door to open it, she was grabbed from behind and, before she knew it, a sack was thrown over her body.

  “Help! Help!” she cried out, dropping her umbrella. “Aiuto!”

  But the men were too strong for her.

  Almost as soon as the sack was over her head, they had fastened it with strands of heavy rope.

  Her cries were so muffled they could not be heard.

  Speaking to each other in a strange dialect she had not encountered before, the men dragged Anthea down the path to their waiting cart.

  Inside the sack she was terrified.

  Not only could she not see a thing, she dreaded what might happen next.

  ‘It must be the Camorra,’ she thought, as the men roughly bundled her onto their cart.

  Her elbows were grazed in the struggle and the thin cotton of her dress had ripped, exposing her delicate skin to the hairy material of the sack.

  She winced with pain as the cart jolted into life.

  ‘If I keep quiet then perhaps they will not harm me? I have often heard that it is best not to struggle if you don’t wish to be hurt,’ she tried to comfort herself.

  ‘I hope the carriage driver realises that something is wrong and goes to raise the alarm.’

  The journey was most unpleasant, jerking around in the cart with the top half of her body tied into the sack, she could neither see where she was going nor understand what the men were saying to each other.

  ‘I had heard that there was a Neapolitan dialect, but I had not anticipated that it would be so hard to fathom,’ she thought, as the cart came to a halt.

  Before she knew it, they had carried her kicking and screaming body from the cart into a building that was obviously their hideout.

  Eventually, and after a long exchange of words, the sack was untied and, for the first time, she came face-to-face with her captors.

  The three men were swarthy with rough faces and ill-fitting clothes.

  They waved their arms as they spoke to each other and seemed to be disagreeing about something.

  In the torrent of unfamiliar language, she caught the word ‘Earl’ and then ‘daughter’.

  ‘Goodness they think I am the Earl’s daughter!’ she felt shocked. ‘It must be my colouring! Although the Earl’s hair is darker than mine, to an Italian we must look alike. With Linette having such different hair and eyes,
it’s no wonder they have made this mistake.’

  She looked up at the tallest of the three and began to speak in Italian.

  At once he paused and listened to her.

  “Ah,” he muttered menacingly. “You speak Italian. That makes it easier as we don’t speak no English, although Gianni here reads it quite well.”

  “Then, you must understand it when I tell you that you are mistaken. I am not who you think I am.”

  “You are the Earl of Hayworth’s daughter.”

  “No, I am his daughter’s chaperone.”

  The man laughed in her face.

  “You think I am stupid? You are so like him! Look – same hair!”

  He pulled roughly at an escaped curl and flicked it up in the air.

  “No, you are wrong,” she cried, trying to prevent the tears from flowing. “I tell you, I am not his daughter.”

  “You lie,” snarled Gianni. “We have seen you go with him to his business meetings.”

  “But that is because I speak Italian and his daughter does not.”

  Gianni talked to the others and they cast suspicious looks in Anthea’s direction.

  After a long and furious debate, the taller man came towards her.

  “We are holding you to ransom and, unless the Earl backs out of the ship deal, we will kill you!”

  “No! You cannot! He will not!” she yelled, almost fainting with horror and fear.

  “Shut up!” shouted out Gianni, moving towards her with a threatening look on his face. “Now, you will write a letter to this English Earl and we will have it delivered. Don’t try any tricks – I understand the English words even if I cannot speak them.”

  Gianni grabbed hold of her arm and dragged her to a small wooden table in the middle of the room.

  Anthea’s eyes had by now adjusted to the dim light and she saw that there was a grubby sheet of paper laid on it.

  “Here, write,” he barked, then said something to his friends in Neapolitan.

  As she took up the rough pencil he had given her to write the note, Anthea could not stop herself from crying.

  Both her elbows were now sheer agony and she was feeling bruised and humiliated as well as utterly terrified.

  Her hand shook as she tried to write with the thick pencil and her writing looked appallingly bad as a result.

  As she wrote, she wracked her brains to think of a way to alert the Earl without Gianni noticing.

  ‘I just cannot imagine that such an uncouth ruffian will be able to read English.’

  “Why are you stopping?” he screamed, banging his fist on the table. “Write quickly! We want this delivered tonight. We will make plenty money out of you, bella!”

  He pushed his face threateningly close to hers and pinched her cheek between his rough fingers. She shrank from his overpowering smell and went back to her task.

  ‘I must not annoy him or he might kill me,’ she told herself, finishing the note as best she could.

  “Here,” she said, handing it to Gianni. “Is this what you want?”

  He took the note over to a window and pulled back the shutter just a fraction. He pored over the piece of paper and then nodded.

  “Good,” he growled.

  Then he folded it up carefully and gave it to the taller man.

  ‘He must be the gang leader,’ surmised Anthea, as she watched him leave the house and go out to the cart.

  She now heard new voices outside and guessed that more men had arrived at the hideout.

  ‘I hope they are not going to harm me anyway,’ she thought, ‘but surely the Earl will be coming to look for me soon? The driver must have realised something is wrong and gone to sound the alarm. Oh, but he is dozy and what if he has fallen asleep?’

  The leader of the gang came back and immediately ordered Gianni to take Anthea into another room.

  He practically threw her inside it and then she heard the sound of a key in the lock.

  Looking around, she saw that she was in a small bedroom with just a single bed and a chair in it. There was one tiny high window and everywhere was thick with dust.

  ‘Not even a table and what if I want to wash?’ she murmured, rubbing her sore elbows.

  She sank down onto the bed and burst into tears.

  ‘So what will become of me? Oh, Mama! Can you not do something to help me? Is there not some way you can make the Earl come and rescue me?’

  She was still crying as Gianni came into the room with a glass of water –

  *

  As Anthea had suspected, her lazy driver had indeed fallen asleep. He awoke after a long nap and, upon hearing the Church bells strike two o’clock, realised that something was dreadfully amiss.

  “Signorina Preston!” he cried. “Signorina Preston.”

  He stumbled from the carriage and ran up the hill. Reaching the summit, he found the Church but no sign of Anthea.

  “I must go back to the ship and alert his Lordship,” he said, pushing through the crowds of tourists who stood around in the churchyard.

  Jumping onto the carriage, he whipped up the horses into action and drove off like fury.

  “I must tell his Lordship! I am in such trouble!”

  When he reached the ship, the Earl was up on deck enjoying a postprandial stroll.

  He had finished a delicious luncheon and decided to enjoy the afternoon sun, when he saw the empty carriage rocketing through the crowds towards him.

  ‘Something is very wrong here,’ he said to himself, before shouting for Captain MacFarlane.

  “My Lord!” cried out the hapless driver. “Signorina Preston – she has vanished!”

  The Earl ran and shook him as hard as he could.

  “And my daughter, where is she?”

  “She is safe – we left her at the artist’s house. But Signorina Preston – I took her to the Church on the hill and the road was too narrow – ”

  “You let her go on her own? You damned fool!”

  For a moment Captain MacFarlane thought that the Earl would strike the cowering driver.

  He stepped forward and touched him on the arm.

  “My Lord, we should rush to that Church at once. Perhaps there is a plausible explanation for this. I know of that Church and the Priest is also known to me – perhaps he has seen Miss Preston.”

  The Earl let go of the driver with a sigh.

  “You are right. The important thing is to find her without further ado. Could you muster a band of men and follow me in your carriage?”

  “At once, my Lord.”

  Captain MacFarlane ran back up the gangplank.

  The Earl, with a stern look at the cowering driver, ordered him to take him immediately to the Church.

  “I want you to leave me at the exact spot where you dropped Miss Preston – and make haste, man,”

  He jumped into the carriage and drew out the pistol that was kept underneath the seat.

  ‘I may need this,’ he murmured to himself checking it and then sliding it into his overcoat.

  At the same time the Captain came charging down the gangplank with his group of men. They all leapt into a nearby carriage and Midshipman Jones took the reins.

  “Let’s go!” shouted the Earl.

  The two carriages took off at speed in the direction of the Church. As they swept along they almost knocked down a few pedestrians, such was their haste.

  At last they reached the road where the driver had left Anthea.

  “It was here, my Lord,” he said, as he pulled the horses up short.

  The Earl jumped down and waited for the Captain and his men to join him.

  “Captain, you come with me. Midshipman Jones, you go with the driver to the house where my daughter was dropped off and fetch her back to the ship.

  “Now,” muttered the Earl under his breath, “we go and search for Miss Preston.”

  With grim expressions the small band advanced up the hill towards the Church. They soon made headway and came to a halt amongst the tombstone
s of the churchyard.

  A group of tourists was just emerging from inside the Church and the Earl scanned the party hopefully.

  But Anthea was not with them.

  “Come, let’s find this Priest,” he insisted, indicating that they should all move forwards.

  As they gathered at the Church door, the Earl almost tripped over a long dusty object that lay in his path.

  “What is this?” he cried, picking it up.

  “It’s a green umbrella, my Lord,” answered Captain MacFarlane. “And I am certain that I saw Miss Preston with one just like that this morning when she left the ship with Lady Linette.”

  Bending down the Earl could quite clearly see the marks of a scuffle on the ground.

  “The Camorra!” he breathed with an agonised look on his face.

  Within seconds they were all running back to where Captain MacFarlane’s men had left their carriage.

  “Where are we headed?” asked the Captain. “It will not be easy to find the Camorra hideout. They are wily men who are highly adept at concealing their whereabouts.”

  “We are going to see Signor Benedetti. If anyone has an idea of where to find them, then he will. Come, we must hurry, there is no time to lose.”

  As they drove off, the Earl was thumping his fist repeatedly against his thigh, saying over and over again,

  “Oh, God! If anything has happened to Anthea – I shall never forgive myself!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Anthea watched miserably as the sun slowly sank in the sky plunging her into darkness inside her prison.

  ‘I must be in a basement,’ she now decided, as she shivered in the gloom, ‘because I can hear people outside in the street and they seem to be floating above my head.’

  She could hear sounds of heavy footsteps overhead and the sound of singing.

  ‘Perhaps we are beneath a restaurant or tavern, but whereabouts we are in the City, I have no idea. I wish I could get my bearings.’

  Her rumbling stomach reminded her that she had not eaten a thing since Roberto’s delicious sfogliatella.

  ‘Now I am glad I ate so much this morning, but I shall soon want something else. But do these men intend to starve me as well as hold me to ransom?’

  Outside she could hear her captors’ voices.