Guilty Series (91 page)
Authors: Laura Lee Guhrke
Elena sighed and rested her elbow on the table, chin in her hand. “What happened?”
“Cesare found out, Armand married someone else, and I got sent to a convent.”
“What?” Elena sat up in her chair, looking outraged. “I thought you were going to tell me some tragic tale of how he died of love for you.”
“What romantic ideas you have, Elena.”
“He was a cad! If he loved you, andâ¦and kissed you, he should have married you, not some other girl!”
She could be philosophical about it now. “These things happen.”
“I don't suppose you could have married a blacksmith anyway. Papa would never have consented.”
Lucia knew she would have married Armand if he had loved her enough to defy her father. He'd taken Cesare's bribe of money and a merchant's daughter instead, and he'd broken her heart. That, she vowed, would never happen again. “When I wed,” she told Elena, “it will be to a man who loves me so madly, so passionately, that nothing else matters to him. Otherwise, marriage is a trap, and a woman is a prisoner.”
To her amazement, Elena nodded in agreement. “I am not yet married, but already I am trapped.” Her pretty face took on an unhappy expression. “I have to wed some Austrian duke. His mother is English. It was all arranged by the British and Austrian ambassadors.”
“I know. I heard all about it.”
“I don't love him. I've never even met him, but I have to marry him. Papa insists on the match.”
“Defy Cesare.”
“I can't! It's all arranged. The treaties have been signed. Dowries paid. The Congress of Vienna will be preserved, we will have peace with Austria, and Bolgheri will have alliance with
England. There is nothing I can do to stop it. It is my duty.”
Lucia wished there was something she could say to comfort her half sister, but there was nothing comforting about being forced to marry a man you did not love. She diverted the conversation. “At least when you feel trapped, you don't go off doing wild things and driving Cesare insane.”
“Oh, I don't know,” Elena said with a rueful smile. “I'm here with you, aren't I? Though I suppose it's the only time I'll ever have the chance to do something wild.” She paused, and her expression became thoughtful as she studied Lucia. “Why do you always defy Papa? Do things that are forbidden?”
Lucia opened her mouth to answer, then realized she didn't know the answer. She fell silent, thinking it out before she spoke. “I like excitement, and there is a certain excitement in breaking the rules,” she said after a moment. “Also, I love a challenge. Telling me what I can't do makes me want to do it.”
“And when you break the rules, Papa has to remember you exist.”
Lucia stiffened at her sister's words. For a sheltered, naive girl who didn't know much about life, Elena was very perceptive. “That, too,” she admitted, and took a pull on her cigarette. Blowing out smoke, she added, “Why should he be allowed to pretend I was never born?”
“He shouldn't.”
Lucia looked away from the compassion in her sister's face. That was ironic, since only a few hours earlier, it had been she pitying the younger girl. “It doesn't matter,” she said, her voice brittle to her own ears. “I don't care.”
“Yes, you do. But if it's any consolation to you, Papa forgets I exist most of the time. Antonio is allowed to do whatever he wants, but I cannot go anywhere, or do anything. Papa won't even let me attend a ball until I am eighteen. Before you came, there were times when I thought I'd go mad.”
“I'm only in the palace because Cesare didn't know what else to do with me. His plan was for his palace guards to keep me under control.” She paused to cast a meaningful glance around, then gave Elena a grin. “Do you think it's working?”
Elena grinned back at her. “I'm afraid not.”
“I won't be controlled as if I am a puppet.” Turning in her chair, she dropped the stub of her cigarette to the cobblestones. As she crushed it beneath her heel, Lucia spied the cart and oxen they'd seen earlier. It was circling the piazza, and the two men were standing in the back, scanning the crowd. “Don't turn your head,” she ordered, “but I see those two men again. I think they are searching for us.”
“Why should they be? They don't even know us.”
“What does that matter? Men always want women, especially those who smile and laugh and flirt with them.” She watched as the taller one turned in her direction. When he caught sight of
her, he blew her a kiss, his answer to the one she'd given him, and she laughed, appreciating this sort of male attention for exactly what it was and enjoying it.
“They've seen us,” she told Elena as her admirer turned to his companion and pointed in their direction. “They are coming this way.”
“Oh!” Elena's eyes widened with excitement. “What if they want to talk to us?”
“Maybe we'll let them.” Lucia leaned back in her chair with a casual air. “Or maybe,” she added with a shrug, “we won't.”
The cart pulled up beside the café where they sat, and a bouquet flew through the air to land in Lucia's lap. She looked down at the violets, then glanced at the man. After a moment, she picked up the bouquet and smiled at her admirer.
“What do the flowers mean?” Elena asked, glancing at the cart and back again.
“He wishes to make my acquaintance.” The bouquet in her hand, she pushed back her chair and rose. “Let's go.”
Without looking at the men, she turned and started in the opposite direction.
Elena hurried to catch up with her. “I don't understand. Don't you want to meet him?”
“I haven't decided.”
“What if they lose us in the crowd?”
“Then I won't meet him, will I?”
“He'll think you don't like him, and he'll give up.”
“He won't do that, I promise you.”
As if to prove her words, the men's teasing voices called to them from close behind, indicating they had abandoned their cart and were following on foot. Within moments, they raced past Lucia and Elena, then turned to block their path through the crowd. Out of breath and laughing, Lucia's admirer dropped to one knee before her. “Sweet peasant,” he said, “I beg you and your companion to let us walk with you a while.”
“If we do,” she answered, “you must first remove your masks, for I cannot walk with a man who keeps his face hidden from me.”
He stood up. “If we show our faces, will you do the same? We know you must be beauties indeed behind those masks.”
She considered that for a moment, then she consented with a nod. “But we must all unmask at the same time.”
“Agreed.”
Laughing, Lucia pulled off her kerchief and mask, then shook back the long, loose curls of her hair. She looked at the unmasked faces of their admirers and found the two men staring back at her and Elena in utter astonishment. As she studied their faces, Lucia realized their identity, and her laughter faded away.
“Sweet Gesù,” she whispered, suddenly sick. She was staring at a pair of palace guards.
I
t was a well-known fact among those in the British diplomatic corps that whenever His Majesty, King William IV, had a sticky situation on his hands, Sir Ian Moore would get the assignment. No one else had a chance.
It was true that Sir Ian, thirty-five years of age, had a successful, decade-long career as a diplomat. It was true that he was unmarried, unfettered, and willing to be a roving ambassador, able to go wherever duty to king and country sent him. Of course it was true that his loyalty and honor were beyond question. But during this time of peace in Europe, truly sticky situations where a diplomat could make his mark were rare, and many of Sir Ian's colleagues wished His Majesty's
favorite ambassador would retire to his estate in Devonshire and give the rest of them a chance to shine.
The Turks and Greeks were a perfect example. Those people would test the mettle of any diplomat, so when a minor skirmish between those factions threatened to break into all-out war, no one was surprised when Sir Ian was sent to Anatolia. But everyone was surprised when scarcely a fortnight after his arrival in Constantinople, he was recalled to Gibraltar. Ambitious young diplomats crossed their fingers, hoping that somehow, some way, Ian Moore had finally blotted his copybook.
Ian knew his copybook was still quite satisfactory. As to the reason for his recall from the East, however, even Ian had to confess he was baffled.
“Why fetch me to Gibraltar?” he wondered aloud, sitting in his cabin aboard the
Mary Eliza,
one of His Britannic Majesty's finest and fastest ships of the line. As the ship carried him across the Mediterranean, Ian studied the map of Europe spread out on the table before him. “What could it mean?”
His valet, Harper, looked up from the shirt he was mending. “It must be very serious indeed for them to send for you so suddenly. Something big is happening.”
“I cannot imagine what. The Turkish situation is the only thing of significance in this part of the world at present, and they intend to replace me in the middle of it. To what end?”
“All I know is it's a shame. There we were in
Constantinople, just settled in for a good, long stay, and then in the wink of an eye, there's a change of plan, and we're sailing off again.” Harper shook his head with a sigh of regret. “Pity, that,” he added. “Mighty fetching, those Turkish ladies looked in those trousers, and those veils of theirsâ¦makes a man wonder what's underneath. The sultan was going to give you one of his slave girls, you know.”
“Harper, a true British gentleman would never own a slave girl. Barbaric practice.”
“Maybe so, sir, but one of those Turkish girls would have worked on you like a tonic. Not to say you've been short-tempered of late, butâ”
“That's absurd,” Ian shot back, nettled. “I have not been short-tempered.”
“If you say so, but you have been working hard for many months and haven't had any time for ladies.” He paused, then added, “A man needs what he needs, you know.”
Ian did not want to think about how long it had been since his needs in that particular area had been met. Too long. He shot a warning glance at the servant. “Harper, that's enough. Any more impudence from you, and I shall begin a search for a new valet.”
The manservant, who had been valeting him since his fifteenth birthday, wasn't the least bit intimidated. The censure in Ian's voice slid off him like water off a duck. “Do you a world of good to loosen your cravat once in a while, sir, if you don't mind my saying so.”
“I do mind.” Ian drummed his fingers against the table, focusing his thoughts on important matters. “Why fetch me to Gibraltar?” he wondered again as he considered and rejected various possibilities. “Morocco is stable. Things in Spain are quiet. As for the French, well, our relations with them aren't good, but that's nothing new. I cannot imagine what the trouble is.”
“Something to do with those Italians again, I say.”
Ian hoped not. “I don't see how that is possible. The Italian situation is resolved. The Treaty of Bolgheri has been signed, the Congress of Vienna remains intact, and Princess Elena will be marrying the Duke of Ausberg when she reaches the age of twenty-one.”
“Talk is, she doesn't want to marry him.”
“She will do her duty. She has no choice.”
Harper shrugged. “That's as may be, but girls are most unaccountable, sir. Especially the Italian ones,” he added with feeling. “It's the temperament.”
If there was anyone who ought to understand the Italian temperament, it was Ian. He'd spent a lot of time in that part of the world these past few years, pouring the soothing words of diplomacy over the Prince of Bolgheri and the Dukes of Venezia, Lombardy, and Tuscany, to preserve peace in the region and keep Italian nationalists from rebelling against the Austrian Empire, but despite his many trips to the region, he did not understand the Italians. He found their passions
too dramatic and their moods too volatile for his fastidious British nature.
Ian gave up his speculations as a futile exercise and rolled up the map. Regardless of where they proposed to send him, he would do his duty. He always did. Nonetheless, when the
Mary Eliza
arrived at Gibraltar, and Ian presented himself at Government House, he could not help being surprised by his next assignment.
“You're sending me to London?”
“Not I, Sir Ian,” Lord Stanton corrected him. “These orders are from the Prime Minister himself. You are to depart for home at once. I have dispatched Sir Gervase Humphrey to Constantinople to take your place and deal with the Turkish situation.”
Sir Gervase hadn't enough experience. The Turks would make mincemeat of him. Ian, of course, refrained from expressing his opinion of his colleague. “What is the purpose of sending me to London?”
“This isn't any sort of demotion or reprimand. Quite the contrary, in fact. Consider this assignment a reward for all your hard work.” Stanton clapped him on the shoulder, smiling. “You're going home, man. I'd have expected you to be overjoyed at the prospect. I'm going home myself in a couple months, and I'm delighted.”
Ian wasn't delighted, and he was far more concerned with the reasons than the destination. “What diplomatic matter in London requires my attention?”
Stanton's expression became serious. “Sir Ian, you worked long and hard on the Italian situation, then there was that whole Dalmatian debacle, and then we sent you straight on to handle the Turks. You've only been home half a dozen times in the past four years and never for more than a few weeks. That's asking too much of any man, even you. So, the Prime Minister consulted with His Majesty, and they decided to send you back to England for a bit. It's almost June, the midst of the London season, you know. You'll have the chance for some pleasant company and good society. Think of it as a holiday.”
“I don't need a holiday,” Ian said, the sharp reply out of his mouth before he could stop it. Remembering the words of his valet, he pressed two fingers to his forehead until he regained his composure. It wasn't like him to be so testy. Perhaps he did need a rest, but that was hardly a reason to send him home.
He lifted his head and let his hand fall to his side. “William, we've known each other a long time. Between ourselves, could we stop doing the dance of diplomacy and come to the point? Why are they sending me home?”
“It's not a crisis by any means.” Stanton pulled out a chair from the table and sat down. “But it is important. Prince Cesare of Bolgheri is coming for a three-month state visit in August, and they want you to handle the preparations. But this is really about Cesare's daughter.”
The Italians again. Blast Harper for being right.
“Princess Elena is in London?” Ian also sat down, taking the chair opposite.
“No, not Elena. The other one.”
“What other one?”
“Cesare's illegitimate daughter.”
Ian raised an eyebrow. “Didn't know he had one.”
“I'm sure he has a dozen, but this girl, Lucia, is a special case. Her mother was Cesare's favorite mistress. Seems he actually loved the woman. Years ago, of course.”
“He fell in love with his mistress? Hard lines for a prince.”
“He was quite a young man at the timeârash, hot-tempered, unmarried, and still sowing wild oats. A few years later, when he married Sophia of Tuscany, he set his mistress aside and sent the daughter off to live with her mother's relations in the countryside. He paid for her support, but he never publicly acknowledged her as his daughter.”
“Cesare embarrassed over a bastard child?” Ian could not credit it. “Surely not.”
“Not Cesare. The Duke of Tuscany demanded it during the negotiations of Sophia's marriage settlement. Later, Lucia was put in one of those academies for young ladies somewhere in Europe under her mother's name. She's been to half a dozen schools in Switzerland and France, but the girl's wild as a gypsy. Three years ago some scandal happened with a young manâa blacksmithâand right under the noses of the governesses at
Madame Something-or-Other's Academy outside Paris.”
“How old is this girl?”
“Twenty-two. She was nineteen at the time. Anyway, nothing untoward happened to her, if you understand me.” Stanton actually blushed. “The incident was all hushed up, Cesare got the young man married off to someone else and had Lucia locked up in a convent.”
“To ensure there were no blacksmiths in the future.”
“Exactly so. Problem was, the girl kept slipping out, doing God knows what. Cesare decided the only way to control her and avoid a public scandal was to have her right under his nose. He had her brought back to Bolgheri about six months ago and put her in an isolated wing of the palace until he could figure out what to do with her.”
“And?”
For an answer, Stanton pulled a folded newspaper out of his dispatch case and tossed it across the table. It was clearly a scandal sheet. Ian scanned the article, quickly translating the Italian words, then he set the paper down without a change of expression. “So much for keeping the girl a secret. How accurate is this description of the incident?”
“They got their facts straight for the most part.”
“What about Elena?”
“Nothing happened to either of the girls. They
wanted to go out for Carnival, just for a lark, you know. The guards, who were off duty at the time, escorted them back to the palace.”
“They were not physically harmed?”
“No. Doctors examined them, and both girls are still⦔ His voice trailed off in acute embarrassment.
“Virgo intacta?”
Ian supplied, Latin being the most tactful way of putting it.
Stanton gave a stiff nod. “Deuce of a mess if they hadn't been. Anyway, Cesare banished her, sending her off to live with cousins in Genoa, and he decided it was high time to find her a husband, one as far away from Bolgheri as possible.”
“He acted for the best. The girl is clearly a bad influence on her sister.” Ian fingered the edge of the three-month-old scandal sheet in front of him. “No success hushing up her indiscretions this time, however.”
“Unfortunately not. Cesare was hoping to keep the incident quiet until he could get the girl married off, but as you can see, the story got out, along with rumors of her wild behavior. Like you, no one knew about this girl, and now word of her existence and this Carnival escapade is spreading throughout Italy. Prince Cesare finally admitted the girl was his own and granted her his surname of Valenti. His wife, Princess Sophia, is furious about it.”
“Perhaps, but Cesare has no choice. His acknowledgment makes the girl better marriage
material.” Ian shoved the scandal sheet aside. “What about the Duke of Ausberg? Does he wish to back out of marriage to Elena for her part in this?”
“No, no. Elena is being seen as the victim of her half sister's influence. The marriage is going forward, and every aspect of the treaty remains intact.”
“Then what is the problem?”
“Lucia wasn't in Genoa a month before she ran off. We have word she got herself to London and is living with her mother.”
“Scandal sheets notwithstanding, if Elena suffered no harm from the incident, the Duke of Ausberg still wants to marry her, the treaty remains intact, Lucia's living with her mother, and all's well that ends well, where do I come in?”
“Cesare has a great deal of admiration for your diplomatic skills. He feels you are the perfect person to resolve the situation.”
“What situation?”
“It's going to be tricky.”
Ian leaned across the table, striving for patience. “What situation?” he repeated.
“While you are in London, you are to arrange a marriage for Lucia.”
Ian stiffened in his chair. “You must be joking.”
“You know I never joke about international relations. Cesare wants to get the girl married before she can cause the House of Bolgheri any further embarrassment. You are to find a suitable husband for her, make the diplomatic arrangements,
and assist with negotiation of the marriage settlements.”
“I have been removed from an important diplomatic mission in Anatolia to play matchmaker for some chit of a girl?”
“She is the daughter of a prince,” Stanton reminded him. “And you played matchmaker for her sister.”
“That was different. There was a treaty involved. The Congress of Vienna was at stake. Damn it, Williamâ” Ian could feel his temper fraying, and that would never do. He bit back the frustrated words on the tip of his tongue and took a deep breath.
“Cesare does not want the girl back in Bolgheri for obvious reasons,” Stanton went on. “Arranging a suitable marriage for her is the only alternative. Give her a strong-minded husband and a few children, and she'll settle down.”
“And if she doesn't, she's her husband's problem?”
