Shadow of the Moon (15 page)

Alex's eyes narrowed. So this was the girl who had been in the gallery last night and whom he had rescued from the unwelcome attentions of the Honourable Edmund Rathley. It was evident, too, that the white hand of Lady Sybella, which Herr Winterhalter had depicted as gracefully holding a rose, was possessed of surprising strength.

‘Who is that?' inquired Captain Randall of his companion. ‘The young lady over there by the yew tree?'

Lady Wycombe turned. ‘That? We were discussing her last night - the Condesa de los Aguilares. That is Winter.'

If Alex was surprised, it was because he did not know that Mr Barton was not the only person whose appearance had altered drastically during the past few years. Winter too had changed.

In the months following Zobeida's death she had grown paler and thinner and more silent than ever. Her skin appeared to be stretched too tightly over the fine bones of her skull, making her mouth seem even wider than its wont and her eyes far too large for her small sallow face.

Her Spanish blood might have been expected to lead to an earlier maturity than is found in women of purely northern and Anglo-Saxon descent, but the shock and sorrow of Zobeida's death had affected her both physically and mentally, and although Sybella at fifteen had the appearance of a petted and poised young woman, Winter, her junior by less than three months, seemed only a skinny child with several years in the schoolroom still ahead of her.

But even the deepest sorrows outwear their first bitterness, and although the cruel void left by Zobeida's death remained unfilled, the natural health and resilience of youth eventually reasserted itself and a change came over her. Almost overnight - or so it seemed - Sabrina's daughter grew from a plain child into a young woman of strange and disturbing beauty. It was a beauty that many (and they were all women) could neither appreciate nor understand, for England was in the throes of a sentimental age: an era where the ideal of feminine beauty consisted of a smoothly oval face of a stereotyped pink and whiteness, a small rosebud mouth, limpid eyes - preferably blue - and long sleek curls
à la
Stuart caressing the cheeks and dressed so as to accentuate the oval of the face, or at least to give that effect to those unlucky enough not to possess the fashionable features.

Sybella was the very embodiment of the Victorian ideal of beauty. But Winter possessed none of these attributes, and it was therefore not altogether surprising that to the majority of feminine beholders she should still appear entirely unremarkable, if not actually plain. But it was quite otherwise with their men. By the time she reached her sixteenth birthday, masculine heads began to turn when she passed by, and masculine eyes followed her whenever she entered a room.

The scrawny angular child had grown into a slender girl whose slim seductive shape even the overblown hoops of the newly-fashionable crinolines could not entirely disguise. Her thin little face had filled out, setting her features in proportion at last, and the wide mouth was seen to be curved with beauty and of a rich and lovely redness. The sallow skin had warmed to ivory and the sweet curve of her young breasts owed nothing to the ruffles and padding so often resorted to by Victorian maidens. Winter's expressive dark eyes tilted slightly upwards at the outer corners, which women pronounced unbecoming and men found irresistible. But even the sternest of feminine critics were obliged to allow that her long slender neck and the thick sweep of her silky black lashes were both exceptional beauties.

The girl appeared to have acquired, too, the graceful carriage that is possessed by so many Spanish women. Perhaps, like her colouring, it was a legacy from Marcos; and possibly she had always possessed it, only no one had troubled to notice it until now.

It was not until the summer of 1855, when Winter was sixteen, that Lady Glynde awoke to the fact that the ugly Anglo-Spanish duckling had turned into a swan. Julia had given a young people's party for Sybella: a summer dance (it was not to be termed a ball, because Sybella would not make her official debut until the following spring, but was a ball in all but name). Ware was filled with young ladies and gentlemen of quality and wealth, and the guests had been most carefully chosen. The gentlemen were not all so young, and those young ladies who had been invited had been the subject of much thought, for Julia was nothing if not thorough and none was asked who could rival Sybella in looks - though she was far too astute to invite only the plain.

For some years past Julia had kept a secret list locked away in a drawer of her escritoire. It bore the names of those few eligible men who in her opinion would be acceptable as suitors for the hand of her peerless Sybella; young men who had inherited or would inherit both titles and riches. There were other names on a second list. Their owners were none of them possessed of sufficiently spectacular wealth or title to make them eligible as a husband for Julia's daughter, but it did no girl any harm to be surrounded by admirers, and provided that they were kept at a suitable distance by a vigilant mama, they enhanced a girl's value and desirability in the eyes of the more favoured few.

During the past year several names had been removed from these lists, their owners having contracted alliances with other young ladies who had already made their debuts. The party for Sybella might therefore with more truth have been termed a Private View, for whatever glamour might attend her future debut, this comparatively small assembly constituted her real introduction to the social world in which her mother intended that she should be queen. And certainly Julia had every reason to feel proud of her child as Sybella stood before the long pier-glass in her mother's bed-chamber, complacently admiring her enchanting reflection.

Sybella's white satin bodice, tiny waist and soft, sloping, flower-wreathed shoulders rose out of a wide crinolined ball-gown of white
gros de Naples
with an overskirt of satin-striped gauze trimmed with blonde and looped up at intervals with bouquets of white primroses, heath and lily-of-the-valley. Her golden curls were adorned by a wreath of the same flowers, and in deference to her youth she wore only a simple necklace and bracelet of seed pearls.

Winter's dress had received considerably less attention. It had in fact, been selected by the housekeeper, Mrs Flecker, who had been told by Lady Julia to see that Miss Winter had a suitable gown: it would have to be white, and as simple as possible, since Miss Winter was younger than Lady Sybella and therefore must consider herself fortunate in being permitted to attend at all.

Mrs Flecker procured a sufficient quantity of white Indian muslin and the services of an elderly dressmaker from the market town of Wareburn, and the result was a gown that met with Lady Glynde's approval. But the effect of the same garment when worn by Winter was entirely unexpected. The blood of her grandmother, Anne Marie de Selincourt, may have had something to do with it, but the fact remained that the simple and unadorned muslin gown acquired from its wearer that look of rare distinction that many Frenchwomen and few Englishwomen can give to an otherwise unremarkable dress.

Winter's wealth of blue-black hair had been drawn straight back and confined in a net of white silk, so that its shining weight tilted her little pointed chin as though with pride, and she wore no jewels - she was as yet unaware that she possessed any. But Mrs Flecker, tying the wide white taffeta sash about her slender waist and turning the girl about to see that she was ready to be sent downstairs, had reached out of the window to where the climbing roses nodded just below the sill, and breaking off a white rosebud had tucked it into the dark sweep of hair above one small ear.

Winter had had an astonishing success, and Julia was both angry and bewildered. She could not understand why the girl received so much attention from men whom she had confidently expected to have eyes for no one but Sybella. It was not that Winter had outshone her cousin; she could not do that. Sybella had attracted the lion's share of attention, but Julia was not slow to note how the older and more eligible men turned to look again and yet again at Sabrina's daughter. Lord Carlyon, handsome, wealthy, bored, thirty-five and still a bachelor, had inquired of Sybella who the beautiful creature in white might be. Sybella had not recognized her cousin by this description, and Lord Carlyon had been more specific.

‘You mean
Winter?
' demanded Sybella, astounded.

‘Winter?'

‘ My cousin Winter. Such a peculiar name, is it not?'

‘
Winter
!' He repeated the word almost with awe. ‘But how perfect.'

‘What
do
you mean?' Sybella's fluting voice had a sudden sharp edge to it.

‘I mean that it suits so admirably. She is like snow and black shadows: cool and mysterious and yet—' He laughed on an odd note. ‘So this is the plain cousin from the East. I have heard of her. The ugly duckling in person. Pray introduce me, Lady Sybella.'

Arthur Carlyon was no impressionable youth but a coldly handsome rake with a considerable experience of women. Match-making mamas, attracted by his fortune and undeterred by his reputation, had cast hopeful eyes in his direction for well over a dozen seasons past, but Carlyon had remained languidly aloof and more interested in mistresses than marriage. He had attended Lady Julia's ball expecting to be bored, but with a mild feeling of curiosity as to the appearance of the heiress of Ware whom report had rumoured to be outstandingly beautiful. He had been bored. Surveying Sybella with an indolent and experienced eye, he had summed her up as spoilt and insipid. Blondes, though fashionable, were not in his line; he considered that they lacked fire. In the role of eligible bachelor he had had occasion to meet most of the other young ladies present, and had found nothing to interest him, and he was considering an early retreat from the festivities when his eye had alighted on Winter de Ballesteros.

Carlyon's confident approach and suavely experienced manner had, however, made no impression on Sybella's young cousin: Winter had not been in the least sensible of the honour implied by his interest, and Carlyon, who had imagined that such a youthful creature would be easy game, found himself being put in his place and dismissed with a cool grace that would have done credit to an experienced London hostess. He was unwise enough to treat her dismissal of him as a piece of girlish coquetry, and Winter had been driven to administer a snub that left no room for doubt as to her opinion of him. It was an entirely new and salutary experience to Lord Carlyon, and an unpleasant one.

But he had by no means been the only one to comment on Winter's unusual style of looks. ‘Striking gel,' cackled old Lady Grantham, who was playing chaperon to her grand-daughter Camilla. ‘I don't recollect seeing her before. Who is she, Julia? What? What?
Who
? Dear me - you don't say so! Sabrina's daughter. Well, well! Yes, of course I have seen her before. Hideous little thing she was. Skinny. Like an owlet - all eyes. And look at her now. Well, her mother was a beauty too. The girl is really quite remarkable. Such a welcome change from all these insipid die-away creatures. And presumably inherits her mother's fortune … I must see that Harry meets her.'

No, the evening could not be considered an unqualified success from Julia's point of view, and she did not repeat her mistake. Winter attended no more balls, but it was surprising how many young men, calling at Ware ostensibly to see Sybella, contrived at the same time to see her cousin Winter. Even Lord Carlyon had called; though he had made no pretence of
wishing to see Sybella and inquired after the Condesa; only to be frostily informed by Lady Glynde that Winter was still in the schoolroom and too young to receive visitors: her appearance at Sybella's party, explained the Viscountess, had been only in the nature of a special treat for the child. Carlyon had not been sufficiently interested to pursue the matter further, but others had.

Sybella had admirers in plenty, but Julia was quick to notice that these were for the most part the younger and less eligible men. The select few whom she had considered as possible husbands for her peerless daughter showed more interest in the young Condesa - who did not conform to the prevailing fashion in looks and was not in the least interested in any of these excessively eligible gentlemen. A combination that had the merit of novelty, which has always had its own attraction. But the girl possessed something more: that indefinable something that for lack of a better word is known as ‘allure', and when several titled heirs to great estates who had initially been intrigued by novelty fell victims to it, Sybella was at first astounded and then outraged, and her mother coldly furious.

There was only one thing to be done. Conway Barton must come home and marry the girl as soon as possible. She would be seventeen in the following spring and quite old enough to be married.

‘I have already written,' said the old Earl.

He had not meant to write. He had not wished Winter to marry until she was eighteen or nineteen - or even twenty. He had celebrated his ninetieth birthday the previous year and felt unusually well … better than he had felt for a long time. He would see a hundred yet! There was no hurry …

But the snow had lain late into the year, and spring had been tardy and wet. The damp cold to which he had been impervious for so long seemed to seep into the old man's very bones and he could not keep warm. He felt the tide of his life running out and drawing away from him, driven by that driving rain, and he had written to Conway Barton.

It was, all at once, not enough for old Lord Ware to know that when he was dead Winter would be taken care of by the husband he had chosen for her. He wanted to see her married before he went, and to know that she was safe, so that he would be able to face Johnny again, and Sabrina, and tell them that all was well with the child. The Earl would not have considered himself in any way a religious man, and his beliefs - or lack of them - had frequently shocked his chaplain. But he believed profoundly in an after-life. When he died he would meet again, instantly and in the earthly form in which he remembered them, those few people whom he had loved: Selina, his wife. Johnny, his pride. Sabrina, his darling …