The Lady Julia Grey Bundle (70 page)

A
fter I left Charlotte, I had no desire for company. But I still carried Plum’s sketchbook, and I knew he would want it back. A page had come askew when it fell, its corner poking out from between the thin morocco covers. I opened the book to put it to rights, and suddenly realised the page was not part of the sketchbook at all. In fact, it was not even a page. It was the corner of an envelope, a thick, creamy envelope stamped several times over with Italian postmarks. There was a letter inside, written in formal Italian and penned in a thin, ornately spidery script. The paper bore the cipher of the Palazzo Fornacci in Florence.

For what I did next, I do not apologise. Too many secrets had been kept in our house already. I went straight to
Father’s study, closing the door softly behind me. Grim
quorked
at me from his cage and I let him out. With a whirr of black wings, he came to settle himself on Father’s desk, watching me with great interest. I took the letter from Plum’s book and retrieved Father’s Italian dictionary. It was slow going. My command of the written language was poor, and for all the purity of the Florentine dialect, the letter was liberally sprinkled with colloquialisms I could only guess at.

When I had at last deciphered it, I sat back in Father’s chair, musing.

“Sweeties,” Grim demanded, bobbing his glossy dark head at me. I gave him a pat and tossed him a sweetmeat. He devoured it happily, then toddled across the desk, looking for more.

“No, you shall get fat,” I scolded him, pushing the box out of reach. He cocked his head at me, then lowered his beak and began to peck at Plum’s sketchbook.

“Don’t do that, Grim.” But ravens are somewhat less obedient than dogs, and he did not listen. He worried at the cover until he managed to open it.

“That is quite enough,” I told him, pulling the book onto my lap. He gave me an irritable
quork
and withdrew to his cage, turning his back to me.

“You needn’t sulk,” I began, but then my eyes fell to the open book. Something about the image Plum had sketched there caught my attention. I ruffled through the rest of the book. There were a few sketches of me, one of Charlotte, an assortment of Italian
signorinas,
and one
form in particular, rendered in a variety of poses. He had caught her unawares, it seems, for most of the sketches were of her profile, sometimes laughing, once in tears. But for one sketch, she must have sat for him. She looked out from the page, her expression at once both apologetic and triumphant.

I snapped the book closed, sorry I had seen it. But now that I had, those few lines of charcoal had changed everything.

I went directly to Plum’s room. He called irritably for me to enter when I knocked. He was sitting in the window embrasure, looking out at the melting snows, scratching at the glass with a fingernail. He glanced up when I entered, then turned back to the window.

“If you’ve come to call me a fool, be content. I’ve done it a hundred times. I understand she stole your pearls?”

I crossed the room and levered myself up into the embrasure to sit next to him. It was cool there, and I wrapped my skirts about my legs as I gathered them under me.

“Apparently, she did. But she will not say where she has them hid, and the Abbey is simply too massive to search. She cannot leave with them, and I am sure they will turn up one day.”

He rested his head on the stone wall behind him, one hand draped over his knee, the fingertips smudged softly black with charcoal. “I ought to have known better. I ought to have
behaved
better. It was bad form to dally with Brisbane’s fiancée, even if the engagement was a sham.”

I shrugged. “We are all of us stupid at times. Perfection is dull, my love.” I brandished the sketchbook. “You dropped
this outside the drawing room. I thought you might go looking for it.”

I laid it on the bit of window seat between us. He made no move to touch it but simply looked at me, his eyes half-lidded in pain.

“I suppose you looked through it.”

I nodded slowly. “I did. And I’m sorry. Perhaps that is why you behaved so badly with Charlotte. Because you cannot have
her.
”

He made a little sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob. “No. And now that she carries my brother’s child, I never will.”

He thumped a fist against the windowpane, the glass shuddering lightly under his hand.

“Plum, you would never have had her in any case. She loves Lysander. She married him,” I said, my voice low and soothing.

He looked at me with something like pity. “You still do not understand. I saw her first, I loved her first.”

I blinked at him. “But how? Lysander came back to Florence already married to her.”

Plum stared out at the winter landscape, but I knew he was seeing another place and another time. “It was last summer. Lysander and I were in Rome, awaiting your arrival. We went to a church, something about a new organ Lysander wished to hear. She was there, just across the aisle, her head draped in a veil of Venetian lace. I saw only her profile, but it was enough. I sat and listened to the music and worshipped her for an hour. And when it was
done, Lysander simply rose and left, complaining about the organist’s sense of timing. He never sensed her, never realised that she was there, like a goddess stepped from Olympus to grace mere mortals with a glance.”

I suppressed a sigh. It was very like Plum to romanticise his feelings for Violante, and I knew it would be fatal to remind him that she was simply a pretty girl with lovely eyes and indigestion.

He went on, dreamily. “You cannot imagine what a shock it was to me when Lysander brought her into the room that first night and made his announcement.
I have taken a wife, Plum. Come and kiss your sister.
And I had to press my lips for the first and only time to that alabaster cheek, knowing she would never be mine.” He roused then, smiling from faraway. “Lysander has always been generous with me. Anything I admired, he gave me freely. But she is the only thing of his I have ever envied, and the only thing I cannot have.”

“And that is why you have been beastly to him? And cold to Violante? This is what was behind that ludicrous display in the billiard room when you punched him on the nose, is it not?”

“Julia, you do not know. You cannot imagine the torment—”

“Eglamour Tarquin Deiphobus March, don’t you
dare
tell me what I do not know,” I began, rising from my perch. “I know a very great deal about eating your own heart out over someone you cannot have. And do you know what I have learned? It is pathetic and sad. You are a strong,
healthy, passably handsome man with a reasonably good intellect, if you would care to use it, and a talent for drawing that Michelangelo himself would have approved. And what do you do with all those virtues? You flirt with betrothed women and moon about over your own sister-in-law. You are maudlin and sentimental, and it is high time you took a rather hard look at yourself and realised you are in danger of becoming ridiculous.”

He gaped at me, open-mouthed. He did not even attempt to speak.

“Now, I am about to go and bruise the heart of your friend. If you can have a care for anyone other than yourself, you should make preparations to take him back to Italy. It would be the best thing for the both of you. Alessandro can get on with the business of his life, and you can do something with yourself.”

He slumped against the window, his brows drawn together. “Like what?”

I spread my hands. “Restore a church. Learn to quarry marble in Carrara. Go to Greece and build boats. Only for heaven’s sake, do not let this destroy you. You love her now, but in a year or two, when she has had a child and grown fat and content, you will not. You will have replaced the memory of her with a hundred more precious. But you must try.”

For a long moment he did not move. Then, by way of reply, he held the sketchbook out to me. “Burn it.”

I took it from him, noting how his fingers trailed over the cover as if to memorise the pages that lay beneath.

“Are you quite certain?”

He nodded. “You are right, of course. I must cut her out, painful as that may be. And who knows, perhaps something else may grow there.”

“And what of Alessandro’s letter?” I ventured.

He gave a tiny smile. “You were thorough. I ought to give that back to him. He wanted me to read it, to advise him how best to handle his father. A moot point now, if you mean to send him away.”

I shrugged. “It is better this way. For everyone.” I handed him the letter and took the book away with me. He had been brave enough to ask me to burn it. I was not cruel enough to make him watch.

After I had burned the sketchbook, waiting until it fell to thin, grey ash, I retrieved a Kashmir shawl from my room and went in search of Alessandro. I finally ran him to ground in the library, gamely working his way through
Pride and Prejudice.
He sprang to his feet when I entered, smiling broadly.

I nodded to the book. “How are you enjoying Jane Austen?”

He waggled his hand from side to side. “She is a little silly, I think.”

Now I was more certain than ever of my decision. I could not love a man who did not love Jane Austen. “The great Duke of Wellington thought her the greatest literary talent in all of England.”

He smiled politely. “Perhaps she improves upon second reading.”

“Hmm. Perhaps. I wanted to speak with you.”

His smile froze, his lips suddenly quite stiff. He swallowed hard and laid down the book. “You are refusing me.”

I put out my hand to him and he took it. His was warm and firm in mine. “I am. Walk with me in the courtyard and I will try to explain.”

It was characteristic of his youth that he did so. An older man would have armoured himself in his pride and refused an explanation. Only the young have such a gift for self-torture.

We moved out into the courtyard arm in arm. The sunshine, after days of mournful grey, was a revelation. The warmer air had melted off most of the snow and what remained was slowly dripping away against the stone. It was cold to be sure, but nothing like what it had been, and I stopped to raise my face to the sun.

“You are sure you do not wish to come to Italy?” he joked bravely. “We have the sun almost the whole of the year. You do not have to search for it as you do in England.”

I opened my eyes and smiled at him, taking a moment to memorise the soft black hair touched with bronze, the noble profile, the gentle eyes staring into mine with such sadness, and perhaps the merest touch of relief.

The wind rose a little just then, scudding a cloud over the face of the sun and throwing the courtyard into shadow.

“You are shivering. Take my coat,” he insisted, draping the garment over my shoulders. I murmured my thanks and took his arm, leading him toward the iron gate that led to the gardens.

“You see, Alessandro,” I began slowly, “you come from an old and proud and very dignified family. I too come from an old and proud family, but I am afraid we are a little short on dignity.”

He opened his mouth to make a polite protest, but I held up a hand. “Oh, do not, I beg you. I know my family for what we are. From the manner of our dress, our speech, our small eccentricities and our grand follies, we are odd. We do not fit the pattern of society, and as a result we are often talked of.”

He said nothing and I pressed on, gently.

“I should not suit you, Alessandro, not truly. I keep a pet raven and I speak my mind and I associate with those who are beyond the pale of society, and yet I am very nearly the most conventional member of my family. People are still talking about my cousin Charles’ appearance at a house party last month. He wore his wife’s gown and demanded to be addressed as Carlotta.”

Alessandro choked back a laugh and I squeezed his arm. “You may think it amusing, but to us, he is family. We will not hide him in the cellars and pretend he does not exist. We will welcome him with open arms, and very likely give him the names of our dressmakers,” I finished, smiling at my own little jest.

Alessandro’s brow puckered. “But surely such things are better left unknown. I too have the curious cousins, but we do not speak of them.”

“That is the difficulty, my dear. In your family you do not speak of them. In my family, we celebrate them. In Italy,
one must always be conscious of
la bella figura,
of presenting one’s best self. Among the Marches, we please ourselves and the devil take the rest.”

His brows lifted slightly and I patted his hand. “You see? I even shock you with my language. We would be very badly suited indeed. Besides,” I said carefully, “I believe your father has plans for you. Exalted ones.”

There was a sharp intake of breath. “How did you know that?”

I smiled, not looking into his eyes. His father’s letter had been idiomatic and excessively difficult to translate. I had deciphered perhaps one word in five. But those words were enough. “It is not difficult to guess,” I temporised. “Your father is a judge, is he not?” I hoped I had gotten the translation correct from the letter. Father’s dictionary had been printed two centuries back and mice had nibbled a fair number of holes through the most useful words.

Alessandro nodded, his lovely mouth turning sulky. “
Si.
He is an important man in Firenze, with much influence and power.”

“And he wishes you to be the same, in your time. A very natural ambition for a father, I think.”

Alessandro scuffed his shoe against a paving stone. “But should a man not be ambitious for himself?”

“Of course. What is it you would like to do?”

He dropped my arm then to spread his hands. Like most Italians he was incapable of speaking for any length of time without gesturing.

“I also want to be a judge, to give justice, to have the
power to influence people. But I want to want such things for myself. Why are you smiling at me?”