Love and Lucia Page 14
“I think you can guess what happened,” Lucia answered. “The Princess was brought to England by her grandmother, to stay with the Duke on his estate in Cornwall.”
“How old was she?” the Marquis interposed.
“By the time the journey had been arranged she was nearly eighteen, and although her grandmother the Dowager Duchess was very excited at the thought of the marriage, Princess Ilena felt very nervous.”
Lucia’s voice was very revealing as she continued,
“To marry a man who she learnt already had a grown-up family of three sons and two daughters, was extremely frightening.”
“I can understand that,” the Marquis murmured.
“Then when the Princess arrived at the Duke’s house in Cornwall,” Lucia went on, “she met his youngest son Bernard – ”
“And they fell in love!”
“From the moment they saw each other, Mama said, it was as if Papa had a light blazing from him, and he felt the same way about her.”
“What happened?”
“At first they thought despairingly that there was nothing they could do, and Papa decided to go abroad because he said he could not stay in the same country with Mama and see her married to his father.”
“That is how I should have felt,” the Marquis said.
“They were both very – unhappy, until Papa – had an idea.”
“And what was that?”
“It was clever – but it needed very careful – planning.”
“What did they do?”
“First of all Papa took his two best horses from the stables, and told the grooms he was selling them to a friend who lived not far away.”
As if she felt the Marquis must understand every detail of what happened, Lucia was speaking slowly and clearly as she said,
“Papa also smuggled out of the house all the clothes that he could carry on the back of his saddle and left them also at his friend’s house.”
She paused before she continued,
“It was more difficult for Mama, who had a lady’s-maid with her, but she managed to give him one or two things that she felt were essential and they too were conveyed secretly to Papa’s friend.”
Lucia gave a little sigh before she said,
“You can imagine how frightened they were, having made their plans, that they would be discovered at the last moment, or that the servants might be suspicious and tell either the Duke or my Mama’s grandmother what was happening.”
“It certainly must have been nerve-racking,” the Marquis agreed.
“Then just four days before my mother, having seen her future home, was to return with the Duke to Valenstein for the wedding, she and Papa put their plan into operation.”
“What did they do?”
“They left the house very early in the morning, and Mama left a note for her grandmother to say that Papa had promised to show her the dawn breaking over the Dragon Caves.”
Lucia explained quickly,
“The Dragon Caves were very famous, and everybody who stayed with the Duke visited them, but one could only see them properly from a boat.”
The Marquis was listening intently and now he began to understand what had happened.
“Papa rowed Mama in a boat down the coast. Then he set her down on the shore, undressed, and having rowed the boat towards the cave, threw the oars overboard.
“Although he said it was a very difficult thing to do, he turned the boat over so that it was afloat upside-down.”
“That was clever of him!” the Marquis exclaimed.
“Papa pushed the boat out to sea,” Lucia continued, “before he swam back to the shore where he had left Mama. He put on his clothes and they hurried to a wood where his friend was waiting with the two horses.”
The Marquis smiled.
“A very ingenious plan.”
“They galloped away,” Lucia went on, “putting as much distance between them and the Duke’s house as they could before there was any likelihood of anyone wondering why they had not returned.”
“And they got away with it?”
“The tragedy of their deaths was published in the newspapers and it was also reported that it was expected that their bodies would be washed up on a different part of the coast.”
Lucia gave a little laugh as she added,
“It was known how strong the currents were round the caves, and that at times they could be dangerous.”
“And nobody ever guessed they were alive?” the Marquis asked.
Lucia shook her head.
“Papa had some money of his own, and shortly before what was presumed to be his death he had drawn out all he had in the Bank, leaving a large overdraft.”
“And that is what they had to live on.”
“Of course, they realised that they had to be very careful,” Lucia said, “and when I was born two years later in 1805, although they were thrilled to have me, I was an added expense.”
“So they settled in Little Morden.”
“Papa had visited Worcestershire when he was a young man and had thought it a quiet, isolated County. So they rode there having, Mama said, a blissful honeymoon with nobody to disturb them, and found a tiny cottage they could rent for a few shillings a week.”
Lucia’s voice was very tender as she said,
“It was our – home and I – loved it very much.”
“That I can understand,” the Marquis said, “because your parents were two people who had dared everything for love.”
“Of course they were always frightened that somebody would discover they were not dead, for it would have caused a – great scandal.”
“Of course it would,” he agreed, “but they were not discovered.”
“Mama encouraged Papa to paint because she realised how gifted he was, and as I have already told you, when we grew very poor he was able to make some money by painting conventional pictures rather than the ones he preferred doing.”
The Marquis did not speak and after a moment she said,
“Now you – understand why, because I really have no name that – I can use, and because – no one must ever guess – who I am, I cannot marry anybody like you.”
The Marquis put his arms around her and drew her close to him.
“Do you really think,” he asked, “that as your father was so clever, we could not be as clever as he was, and not only avoid detection but make quite certain no one sees any reason for being curious about you, as they would be if you were just ‘Miss Beaumont from Nowhere’?”
Lucia looked up at him.
“What are you – saying? I do not – understand.”
“I cannot allow you to underestimate my intelligence,” the Marquis replied. “Your father and mother were clever enough all those years to escape detection, and we will do the same.”
“It would be impossible – if I was your wife – for them not to ask questions,” Lucia said quickly.,
“I quite agree,” the Marquis replied. “That is why we must have the right answers for them.”
She looked at him in a puzzled way and asked,
“How can we do that?”
“I am just working it out,” he said. “In the meantime, my precious, I want you to tell me again that nothing is important except our love and nothing will prevent you from loving me as I love you.”
“I love you! I love you!” Lucia replied, “but – ”
“There are no ‘buts’,” the Marquis said, “because I love you and I intend to marry you and we just have to be clever. But first of all, I am going to kiss you.”
He put his fingers under her chin and lifted her face to his as he spoke.
Then he was kissing her with long, slow, passionate kisses which made her feel as if there were no problems, no difficulties, only a love which vibrated between them like the rising sun.
He kissed her until she felt the fire burning in her that had burnt the night before, and she knew his heart was beating as violently as hers.
“My precious, my darling,” he said. “I intend to marry you at Nice, which is only two days’ sailing away. I cannot wait any longer!”
“But I have just told you – we cannot be – married!”
“What you told me has made it very much easier, although you may not think so, than it was before.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because, my adorable one,” the Marquis said, “I am not going to marry ‘Miss Beaumont’ and have people questioning me, as they undoubtedly will, as to who your father and mother were! That would definitely be dangerous.”
“Then what – can we do?”
The Marquis paused for a moment as if he was thinking it out. Then he said,
“I presume you know that Napoleon overran Valenstein at the time he fought the Austrians?”
“Yes, Mama knew that and it upset her very much.”
“What was left of the country,” the Marquis went on, “was incorporated into the Austrian Empire, and after your grandfather there have been no more Grand Dukes.”
“Mama cried when she read that in the newspapers,” Lucia said, “but actually there was no direct heir because she had no brother.”
“That is what I thought I could remember,” the Marquis said, “and so, my darling, our story is quite simple.”
“How? What are you – saying?”
“You are the last remaining member of the family,” the Marquis said, “and just before Napoleon started to march on your country, when he was gobbling up all the other small Principalities and States of Europe, you were sent to Venice to live with friends, where you have been ever since.”
Lucia looked at him wide-eyed and he went on,
“I doubt if anybody will be particularly curious and certainly not at all knowledgeable about Princess Lucia of Valenstein.”
“Princess!” Lucia exclaimed.
“A title which,” the Marquis went on, “as your mother’s daughter, is yours, and which will be entirely acceptable to my family, who as you suspected are extremely snobbish about whom I marry.”
“And you really – think they would – believe that?”
“And can they question it,” the Marquis asked, “if I tell them the story myself?”
He smiled before he added,
“I assure you that my relatives are on the whole, I think, rather frightened of me, and that is how we will keep them.”
Lucia laughed.
“It would certainly be a tale of ‘from rags to riches’ and very much – a fairy-story.”
“How could it be anything else when your father and mother were so clever in getting what they wanted? And we must do the same!”
Lucia looked up at him as she asked,
“Are you really – saying it will not – hurt you and it will be quite – all right for me to – marry you?”
“I am going to marry you,” the Marquis replied, “and, my darling, if your father and mother could do anything so brave as running away together in such circumstances, how can we not be just as clever in getting away with our story, which incidentally is far more credible.”
“I love you!” Lucia cried. “I love you, I love you! As I have already said, I will – do anything you – want me to do.”
Then it was impossible to say any more for the Marquis was kissing her passionately, possessively, and the sunshine came through the mist over the horizon and enveloped them in a blaze of light.
*
Lucia stood in her cabin looking at herself in the mirror and thinking that what she was seeing could only be part of a dream.
It seemed as if it was only yesterday that she had been hungry and frightened, when she had left the attic in which her father was so ill to go early in the morning in search of food, and instead found the Marquis in the Piazza San Marco.
‘How could I have guessed – how could I have known for one moment that I would become his – wife?’ she asked her reflection.
She knew now that God and her mother had been looking after her, guiding and helping her, and she had been very foolish not to realise it.
But still she could not forget how frightened she had been of her father dying and of being left alone.
Then when she had found the Marquis everything had changed, and now, seeing herself in her wedding-gown in the reflection in the mirror, she thought that she might have stepped out of one of her father’s pictures.
The sunshine coming through the port-holes glittered on her hair and on the wreath of orange-blossom holding a veil that was so fine it seemed it might have been made by fairy fingers.
The Marquis had bought it for her at the same time that he had provided her with a number of gowns brought to the yacht by the smartest and best dressmaker in Nice.
“I have always wanted to see your beauty framed as it should be,” he said, “and I have lain awake imagining you in the sort of gowns I can now give you without your being proud and refusing them.”
Lucia laughed.
“How do you know I would have refused them?”
He smiled and turned her face up to his.
“I know everything about you, my darling,” he said, “and I love your pride, just as I love everything else about you, because it is an intrinsic part of your character.”
“If you had offered me gowns, I hope I would have been correct in – refusing them.”
Even as she spoke she knew that, because she loved him and wanted to look beautiful for him, it had been very hard not to allow him to give her anything he wanted to.
“As my wife I want you to dazzle everybody you meet,” he said. “Besides, how can a Princess be dressed as anything but a Queen?”
She laughed and said,
“I think you are calling me a Princess not only to save your face, but because at heart, like your relatives and all English people, you are a snob!”
“I admit there is some truth in that,” the Marquis said, “but, darling, whether you are a Princess by right or not, you look like one, and when you are gowned as you should be, no one will question for a moment that you have Royal blood in your veins.”
He kissed her as he spoke and she had no chance to reply.
But she thought now her mother would be very thrilled that, after all the years of hiding and being a nobody, her daughter should now take the place in Society that she had once occupied.
She had sometimes said to Lucia,
“I never for one moment regret running away with your father and being the happiest person in the world! At the same time, my darling, I would like you to live as I did in a Palace, to have the finest horses to ride, and to know that the people over whom you ruled were happy and content.” She paused for a moment to add,
“They certainly used to cheer and throw flowers into the carriage whenever we drove about Valenstein.”
But to Lucia, who had only known the confines of a small cottage in Little Morden, it was difficult to visualise.
Now, when she had learnt from the Marquis of the many houses he owned as well as his ancestral home in Buckinghamshire, she knew that her mother would be glad that she was to live like a Princess in what, to all intents and purposes, was a Palace.
It was easy to understand that as there had been so much confusion after Napoleon’s conquest of almost the whole of Europe, and the extinction of so many small countries and Principalities, no one in England was likely to be suspicious or ask awkward questions.
When they returned to the yacht the Marquis said,
“I know the present Duke of Beauhampton who, I suppose, is your uncle. It will be interesting to see when we meet him if there is any resemblance to your father.”
“It is fortunate that, except that I am fair, I do not very closely resemble Papa.”
“I was always certain that you were not entirely English,” the Marquis said, “and because you were so evasive about it, I was suspicious when you kept insisting that you were.”
He put hi
s arms around her and added,
“You are not a very good liar, my darling, and you must promise that never again will you lie to me.”
“I promise you faithfully,” Lucia replied, “because I have no wish ever to lie to you or tell you – anything but – what is absolutely true.”
The Marquis kissed her before he said,
“Your eyes are very lovely, and I know because we are so closely attuned to each other that I will always know what is true and what is untrue.”
Now, as she turned away from the mirror, Lucia thought that the truth was very simple, she loved the Marquis, and when they were married she would dedicate her whole life to making him happy.
‘He saved me, and he has given me so much,’ she thought, ‘that I cannot begin to express my gratitude except by adoring him and worshipping him for the rest of my life.’
There was a knock at the door, and when she said,
“Come in!” Evans stood there.
“ ‘Is Lordship’s askin’ if you’re ready, Miss,” he said. “’E’s waiting for you in the Saloon and the carriage’s on the quay.”
“I am ready,” Lucia said. “Is my gown all right?”
“You looks reel beautiful,” Evans replied, “and that’s a fact!”
There was a note of admiration in his voice that could not be anything but sincere and Lucia smiled as she walked across the cabin.
The Marquis had already told her that when he had informed Evans they were to be married, thinking perhaps his valet might resent it, he had said,
“That’s good news, M’Lord! If you’d ’ave asked me to choose your Lordship a wife, I couldn’t ’ave found you anyone better than Miss Beaumont. She’s a reel Lady, even if her father were a poor artist.”
Because he thought it best to have Evans telling the story they wanted everybody to know, the Marquis had then told him who Lucia was, and that it was only because her father had lost so much money in the war that he had been forced to paint under an assumed name.
“I think, Evans,” he finished, “It would be wise to forget the circumstances in which we found Miss Beaumont, and I look to you to say nothing about it when we return to England.”
He paused before he added,
“I am not marrying ‘Miss Beaumont’, but Princess Lucia of Valenstein, and that is how our marriage will be reported in the London newspapers.”