The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy (27 page)

“He was buying on behalf of the king.”

“I see, which makes it all so awkward. This painting, was it one of Titian's voluptuous nudes? I can't imagine Prinny, the king as we must now call him, longing to possess one of Titian's religious masterpieces.”

“It is a Venus, a reclining Venus.”

“With no clothes on, and a very come-hither expression in her eyes and that Titian-coloured hair? With a blue riband around her neck, and behind her Cupid at a window and a bird in a cage beside a mirror?”

Titus stared at her. “You know the painting?”

“I caught a glimpse of such a painting in Delancourt's establishment when I was there some three or four weeks ago. It was propped on an easel, with a young man painting away.”

It took a moment or two for her words to sink in. Painting away? Realisation dawned. “A young man, painting? Restoring the canvas, do you mean?”

“I do not. I mean he was working on a fresh canvas and painting from life; his model was a very beautiful girl with the true Titian hair and not a stitch on. I caught the merest glimpse, as I said, through a gap in the curtain. I was not meant to see any of it, I'm sure. I pretended I had noticed nothing, but I thought it odd at the time, and wondered if Monsieur Delancourt was up to some trickery.”

“He could never hope to pass off a copy,” exclaimed Titus.

“Don't see why not,” Harry said. “I dare say Delancourt had seen your painting at some time or other, and could instruct his artist, his faker, as to the composition of the subject. Copiers in Venice are very skilled artists, one would have no trouble turning out a Titian; it happens all the time, I'm told. With the secrecy of this purchase, it's unlikely that the buyer will place it where the few people in a position to identify it as a fake would ever see it.”

Titus was aghast. He had felt fool enough calling Warren out, and now to discover that the supposed Titian, his Titian, was no such thing, but a fake. He had nearly taken a man's life over a mere copy, the substance, not the reality.

“You are sure, ma'am?” he asked.

“I am very sure that Delancourt paints, or causes to have painted, as many canvases as he acquires in the normal way of trade. Did you not smell the linseed oil when you were there? Some might be used for restoration, but the place has the distinctive odour of the artist's studio; it is unmistakable if you are used to it. I have had my portrait painted several times, so I am quite familiar with the smell.”

Titus began to laugh. “Good God, so Warren has a bullet wound and a picture which he will hardly dare to offer to the king when I have told him it is not by the hand of Titian.”

“My advice to you,” said Harry, “is to say precisely nothing on that to Warren. If you did so, I doubt if he would believe you, and how much more delightful for the rest of us to know that the king has parted with a large sum of money for a worthless painting.”

“I've wronged Warren enough by attempting to kill him; he would be in very serious trouble if he passes this picture off as a genuine Titian.”

Harry shrugged. “That is his affair. He entered into what he knew to be shady dealing, let him suffer the consequences. Like as not there will be none.”

“The king's advisers will tell him they doubt the authenticity of the painting.”

“Why should they?” said Lady Hermione. “I am of the opinion that Monsieur Delancourt is a very clever man. I dare say his copies are very good indeed, and the king won't be the first Englishman, no, nor Italian or Frenchman to hang a fake upon his walls in the conviction that it is by a master. I agree with Harry, let the matter rest.”

Titus looked from one to the other. “Your morals are shocking.”

“We are pragmatists, that's all,” said Harry. “And now you have got this bee out of your bonnet, you may settle down to enjoy what Venice has to offer. For I sincerely hope that you are not still determined to find your missing painting, the true, the genuine Titian.”

“No.”

“What's the matter, Titus?” Lady Hermione asked. “You have the exact same look on your face you used to have as a boy, when a favourite dog went missing or you lost that special ball your mother gave you.”

“Have I?” Titus didn't care for her perception, and he certainly wasn't going to discuss Alethea's predicament with her or Harry. He remembered the lost dog, which had been recovered after some hours from an irate neighbour's barn, and the missing ball had bounced down from the branches of a tree several days later, causing an under-housemaid who was passing by just then to have a fit of hysterics.

He hoped that Alethea would turn up in as happy a condition, but a young woman alone and, he feared, penniless in a foreign city was not the same thing at all.

Lady Hermione glanced at him, and turned the subject. Were Harry or Titus acquainted at all with the Bishop of Wroxeter?

“An Anglican bishop, one assumes,” said Harry. “I'm glad to say that I'm not acquainted with a single English bishop. I number a few Jesuits and a cardinal among my acquaintance, but that's as far as it goes. Perhaps Titus knows the man.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Why do you ask?” said Harry.

“It is odd, that's all. This bishop is a self-important man, not at all clever, and a connection of the Darcys; he is cousin to Fitzwilliam Darcy's wife, as he informed me, at tedious length. You must know the Darcys, Titus, and of course Alexander's wife, Camilla, is a Darcy, so I felt I had to be civil. He told me the strangest tale, that there is an impostor abroad, a young man claiming to be a close relative of Darcy's, a nephew, in fact. Mrs. Vineham, who is such a tittle-tattle, told him that they were travelling companions across the Alps. A pleasant enough young man, she told Mr. Collins, by the name of Mr. Hawkins. She supposed him to be the son of Darcy's sister, Georgina. However, the bishop asserts that Darcy has but the one sister, and she is not married to anyone called Hawkins, she is married to Sir Gilbert Gosport, and her son is presently at Magdalen College, Oxford. His name is Christopher Gosport, so you see there is no possibility of confusion there.”

“I expect he is a connection of Mrs. Darcy's,” said Harry, whose nose for scandal was not yet twitching, and pray God it wouldn't start, Titus said inwardly. Damn this inquisitive bishop, what business had a bishop to be in Venice? He would set Mrs. Vineham's tongue clacking, and she was a shrewd woman who might well put two and two together.

“No, no, Mr. Collins is certain it is not so. That isn't all, for the bishop tells me that only two days ago, he had an encounter with a young man who was the very image of Darcy. He bumped into him, and was about to apologise when he took the likeness. Before he could say anything, or ask who he was, the youth let out a very rude exclamation—so the bishop says, but I dare say his sensibilities are extreme—and was off like a startled hare.”

“The mystery is no mystery,” declared Harry. “This elusive Mr. Hawkins is a by-blow of Darcy's.”

“Camilla has never mentioned any such person to me.”

“She has too much delicacy of mind, or maybe is not aware of her half brother from the wrong side of the sheets.”

Lady Hermione laughed. “Delicacy of mind! How gothic you sound, Harry. I'm glad to say that Camilla is not a prude, and it is not a secret she would keep from Alexander. So you are doubtless right, and she doesn't know of the boy's existence. Mrs. Vineham says he is a mere stripling, cannot be more than seventeen or eighteen, which does make it more shocking, since the eldest Darcy daughter is all of three and twenty. I think it is all a hum; Mr. Darcy is not that kind of a man. And I have experience in these matters, for my husband was a complete rake. It is a matter of temperament as much as of upbringing, you know.”

Titus could see from Harry's expression that he had no belief in anyone not being that kind of a man. “Two days ago, you say? Did the young man look to be in any particular distress?”

“Why should he be? Oh, because he ran away. There is nothing in that, I'm sure; I would have run away from the bishop if I could. No, Mr. Collins said nothing about that. He hopes he may meet him again, I feel sure; you know how these clergymen love to sniff out wrongdoing, even though if he should be a Darcy by birth if not by name, it would be a dreadful shame to bring the secret out into the open.”

“Where did he have this strange encounter?” asked Titus.

“He did tell me, but I wasn't paying attention: he is so very tiresome when he proses on about this and that in his pedantic way. Does it matter?”

Titus's mind was in turmoil. Mrs. Vineham might mention that he, too, had been in the group of travellers that included the putative Mr. Hawkins. In which case, Lady Hermione would find it extraordinary if he didn't mention it.

“I was with Mrs. Vineham and Lord Lucius, and indeed, George Warren was one of our number, as were Emily and her new husband. I took no particular notice of Mr. Hawkins; he was a well-bred young man, travelling abroad to join a sister, I believe. He did admit he was related to the Darcy family, the likeness was there, but not so marked as your bishop seems to think, although I have no recollection of his claiming to be a nephew. I think Lavinia Vineham is out to make mischief.”

“Now, that I can believe,” cried Lady Hermione.

How startled and alarmed Alethea must have been to encounter a clerical cousin, in Venice of all places, a man very likely to recognise her at once. He felt unaccountably more cheerful to think that she was on her feet and had her wits about her so recently as two days ago. She was not dead or destitute, then, by the sound of it. Wretched girl, she had probably fled from the bishop and collapsed in laughter as soon as she was clear away.

Lady Hermione had risen, and was preparing to go, but not before she had reminded Harry that, before Titus had come into the room, she had invited both men to accompany her to the opera. “It is a performance of Mozart,” she told Titus now. “With a remarkable Cherubino, they say.”

Titus, who loved music and never missed a
Figaro
if he could help it, accepted the invitation with real pleasure, and Harry, claiming that he much preferred more modern Italian operas, said that he would nonetheless join their party.

“For Lady Hermione always gathers a crowd of interesting people about her,” he said when she was gone. “One is sure to be amused in her company.”

Figgins was dressing Alethea, the task could hardly be entrusted to anyone else. To Alethea, enraptured by the life of the theatre, despite the evident hostility of her fellow musicians, Figgins's continuing disapproval and dislike of the opera house was extraordinary.

“I'm ashamed to be here, among these actresses and dancers,” said Figgins, “and they may play the part of Countesses and who knows what, but it still isn't a place where you should be singing, and nothing you say will make me think differently. I have to close my eyes, the sights I see around me, as loose as a bunch of cats in their ways these Italians are. And every time I think of what Lady Fanny would say, if she knew, or Mr. Fitzwilliam…” She closed her eyes in horror.

Alethea had a very good idea what her cousin Fitzwilliam would say. A pillar of domestic rectitude, with firm views on the need for women to be counselled and protected and guided, he would probably suffer a seizure if he had the slightest notion of what she was up to. The mere donning of masculine apparel would appal him; to run away from a husband, to travel abroad alone would be acts almost beyond his comprehension; and as for singing in public in Venice, in a breeches role—no, she couldn't imagine his reaction.

Lady Fanny would be shocked, Letty both shocked and full of outraged virtue, and as for her parents, she didn't want to think about what their feelings and opinion might be. Camilla and Wytton? In her heart of hearts, Alethea knew that even they would consider her appearance in public, in an opera, to be quite dreadful.

Only what choice had she? Should she starve? Or go upon the town? This way, she could earn the money she needed for her and Figgins to survive, and survive in a respectable way, until her sister came back to Venice.

Besides, she wouldn't have missed this opportunity for anything. It fascinated her to be among women who earned a living, a living that Figgins might consider far from respectable, but indeed, many of the singers were married women with children, living quite ordinary lives away from the paint and the footlights. Men had their independence, even if they had a satisfactory income; they could practise the law or go into politics or the navy or, lower down the social scale, any number of trades or jobs. Women of her class could write—if, like Miss Griffin, they had the knack of it—or become governesses, that was all; where was the justice in that?