100. A Rose In Jeopardy (15 page)

For something inside Rosella felt as fragile and icy as glass. She felt unreal, dreamlike, as if she had become someone else and left her old shy self completely behind.

Her body felt so weak that if they had stopped, she would have fallen to the ground, unable to stand. Yet the young man’s eyes, glowing at her through the slits in his mask, drew her after him like a magnet, whirling over the dance floor.

It was as if they were one being, as she knew before he spun her to the left or right what he was going to do.

Even before he had taken the next step, she knew whether he would move swiftly or slow down a little.

The music of the flutes and the violins seemed to pulse inside her soul, exactly as she had heard it so many weeks before in the dressmaker’s shop in Winchester.

“You dance like an angel,” he whispered, his voice sending a sweet thrill that ran through her body from her toes to her fingertips.

The music began to slow, to die down and the fire and excitement ebbed from her body, leaving her shivering and afraid.

“What is it,
bellisima
?”

He held her hand in his and guided her to the far end of the room, where tall windows overlooked the Grand Canal.

“Is something wrong?”

“I – don’t know what is happening to me,” she said.

He laughed.

“You have just been dancing with someone who thinks you are the prettiest girl in the room. That is nothing to be upset about, surely. Why are you shivering so? It’s very warm tonight.”

“I must – speak to you,” she stammered.

“Speak away!”

His eyes shone through his mask.

The musicians were striking up another tune and people were crowding onto the floor once again.

Rosella flinched as one couple almost barged into them as the next dance began.

The young man pushed at the window where they stood and it opened a little, revealing a narrow balcony.

“We could slip out here for a moment, if you would like that.”

They stepped out into the night and the damp breath of the canal rose up to meet them, filling Rosella’s head with its cool freshness.

She pulled the clinging mask away from her face.

“Do you remember me?” she asked him.

He was silent for a moment, staring at her.

“Of course I do. Of course. Why do you look at me like that?”

Rosella shook her head.

How could she find the words to explain about her vision and the painting –

“You are – so beautiful,” his deep voice cracked a little as he spoke. “It – unnerves me.”

He swallowed and then continued,

“I came here because of you. I saw you in the boat by San Michele and at first I could not remember where I had seen you before. Then I heard the Contessa’s name and someone told me she was giving a ball for a beautiful young girl – an English girl – her protégée.

“And then I knew you were the girl from the River Thames that day. The girl I had given the Contessa’s card to. And I understood that you must be the girl everyone was talking about.”

He lifted her fingers and kissed them gently and, as she felt the tender warmth of his lips against her silk glove, a sensation as clear and bright as a flickering candle flame ran over her skin.

“Something is still wrong, what is it?” he said after a moment.

“I have to tell you – ” she faltered. “Yes, we have met before, but – there is more to it than that – ”

She gripped his hand in hers, suddenly fearful that, when he heard what she had to say, he might run away and leave her alone on the balcony above the Grand Canal.

Trembling, forcing herself to speak the words, she told him of the portrait that hung on her bedroom wall of the young man who looked so much like he did.

She explained about her aunt dying and her lack of fortune and her uncle’s insistence that she marry a man she utterly disliked.

“But you saved me,” she whispered. “It was
you
! You looked down from the wall and you smiled. You gave me courage and you told me what to do – even before we met by the river, it was you who helped me to escape.”

The young man had now gone very white and his fingers, where she clasped them, felt suddenly cold.

“Who are you?” he asked her, his voice strained. “Where have you come from?”

She shook her head.

“I must not tell you, I cannot. They must never find me.”

Now he took both her hands in his.

“You don’t have to tell me, as I think I know – ”

“How? How can you know?” she asked him and then she saw the look in his dark eyes and, though she did not understand how or why, she knew that he did know the truth about her and that in some way he was deeply upset by it.

There was a sudden blast of laughter and voices just behind them from inside the ballroom and the window next to them was pushed wide open.

“Here she is!”

The Contessa’s ringing voice stabbed at Rosella’s ears.

“Come, my English Rose – here is a fine English gentleman who insists that he must dance with you.”

She seized Rosella’s hand.

“Where is your mask?” she hissed, pulling it from where Rosella had tucked it into her belt. “What do you mean by taking it off?”

She then glared at the young man in the turban and pushed the mask roughly back onto Rosella’s face.

And next she thrust her towards a portly gentleman whose large body amply filled the baggy pantaloons of his Harlequin costume.

“I say, Contessa, what a little beauty! Just look at those pretty curls!”

The man’s words rang in Rosella’s ears in a strange distorted way, as if she were hearing them from the other end of a long tunnel.

Harlequin grabbed her waist and pulled her onto the dance floor, the long nose of his white masked bobbing in front of her face.

She moved with him in slow circles, following his clumsy steps as if in a trance.

But she saw nothing except the dark eyes that had just been fixed on her face and the echo of his voice saying over and over, “
you don’t have to tell me, as I
think I know
!” drowned out the loud and foolish comments of Harlequin as he pulled her across the dance floor.

*

Lyndon fled from the ballroom and then wandered through an endless maze of dark alleys without any idea of where he was heading.

His heart felt as if it had been split wide open and a torrent of painful emotions surged up inside him, so that he had to keep walking on and on.

He had just seen a vision of perfect beauty in the ballroom – a woman, tall and slender in a gorgeous silk gown and with golden hair streaming over her shoulders.

A woman lovelier than he had ever pictured, when he imagined all the beauties of Venice he might flirt with.

He had danced with her and she had flown across the ballroom with him as if they were twin souls.

And then she had torn the jewelled mask from her face and he had seen how young she was, how innocent and vulnerable.

He shivered as he recalled how she had struggled to tell him her story, how the tears had shone in her blue eyes and her voice had faltered as she described the man who had inherited her aunt’s home.

She had mentioned no names, but it had to be his father. Lyndon had heard about the death of Beatrice, Lord Brockley’s sister.

And he knew that his father would be taking over her home, New Hall.

But much worse than that, the disgusting Algernon Merriman, for surely it was he, must have been at New Hall as well and he had proposed to her and tried to force himself upon her.

At one moment Lyndon felt pity for the girl and at the next he was consumed with rage and horror at the very thought that Merriman’s fat hands had touched her and that he may have even pressed his thick lips against her sweet mouth.

Perhaps the best thing he could do would be leap into the canal and let the dark waters close over his head.

But then he would drown the image of her beauty too and the vision of her lovely face that filled his mind.

And he would never see her again.

Lyndon walked and walked, until totally exhausted, he leaned up against the brick wall of an ancient house.

Up above him the sky was turning green as dawn approached and one large star glowed brightly.

At last his feelings were beginning to calm down and the only sensation that filled his heart was pain.

What hurt was not that she had become embroiled with his father and Algernon Merriman, but a growing fear that he might lose her.

‘I love her,’ he told himself and the words seemed to echo along the alley, bouncing off the walls and losing themselves in the water of the nearby canal.

He could not deceive so innocent and gentle a girl, use her for fun and harmless flirtation as he had planned. He could only love, adore and worship her.

He must be as honest and candid with her as she had been to him.

But what would she think of him, if she knew that he was Lord Brockley’s son?

If indeed he spoke to her and told her who he was, she might recoil from him in horror and the sweet openness and trust she had shown his masked self on the balcony would turn to loathing and disgust.

No matter that he had repudiated his family, that he was deeply ashamed of them, she would see on his face the hated Brockley features and be repulsed by him.

Then it came to him exactly what he must do.

‘I will write to her,’ he decided, pressing his head against the wall. ‘I will tell her everything. I will tell her who I am and that I love her and I will ask her, if she could bear to, to meet me when she has had time to think about it all.’

The sky was growing lighter every minute and he realised that he had been up all night.

He must hurry back to his room and compose the letter and then he would deliver it to the Palazzo himself.

*

When Rosella woke up, there were rays of bright sunlight shining through the slats of the shutters and onto her silk bedcover.

‘I have overslept,’ she reflected. ‘It’s very late.’

Her head was throbbing and her heart felt heavy.

She had no memory of going to bed last night, only of looking for the young man everywhere in the ballroom and on the balcony, but he was nowhere to be seen.

She could not erase from her mind the picture of his troubled eyes gazing at her through the velvet mask, as she told him her story.

And yet, what Heaven it had been to dance with him. Surely, now that they had found each other, he would come back to her.

Mimi tapped at the bedroom door and came in with a tray of tea and pastries.

“
Signorina
,” she whispered, bending low over the bed. “You must get up! There is someone to see you. A gentleman.
Un Inglese
!”

An Englishman!

Joy flooded through Rosella’s body and she felt her headache evaporating as she sat up.

He had come! He was waiting for her downstairs.

She would see him in just a few moments in the bright light of day without a mask, just himself right there in front of her.

“Come on, Rosella,” the Contessa said, opening the door of her private salon, a little frown on her lined face.

“There is someone here who is very eager to speak with you.”

Her heart in her mouth, Rosella then stepped into the salon.

And there, sprawled over one of the Contessa’s best velvet chairs, was
Algernon Merriman
, a wide smile on his face.

“Well, my sweetheart!” he crowed. “At last I have found you. Your friend the Contessa was very surprised to hear that we are engaged. But she says there will be no problem arranging a marriage, as soon as may be.”

He pulled himself out of the chair.

“I have always liked the idea of a honeymoon in Venice,” he sighed, as he reached to embrace Rosella.

*

Lyndon sighed.

Much to his annoyance he had emerged from the maze of alleyways on the opposite side of the Grand Canal from the Palazzo and now he would have to go back on his tracks and find a bridge.

He stood for a moment, gazing up at the balcony where he and the beautiful girl had stood last night.

He did not even know her name, but that would soon change, if she read his letter and agreed to meet him.

Suddenly he heard raised voices and the shutters of one of the rooms above the ballroom burst open.

A grey bird with a red tail fluttered out and Lyndon saw it fly up into the sunshine and disappear.

“Pickle! No!” a girl’s voice, torn with despair, rang out.

And then he saw her in the window, her fair hair catching the sunlight.

Lyndon waved to her and held up the letter with his heart pounding, but behind her a bulky figure loomed.

A man in a grey morning coat with a round face and an all-too-familiar pointed moustache.

Lyndon watched in horror as the man seized the girl in his arms and pressed her to him, burying his moustache in her golden curls as he kissed the top of her head over and over again.

Lyndon took his letter and tore it in two, before throwing it into the canal.

He waited a moment, hoping the pieces of paper would sink, but they bobbed on top of the water, moving away from him like two tiny boats.

He turned on his heel and ran back into the maze of alleys.

“What is going on?”

The Contessa stormed into her salon.

“And where is Signore Papagallo?”

She then stared at the open window, her thin black eyebrows arched with rage.

“Did I not see him, just now, flying away over the rooftops?”

“If you are referring to that useless bird, he has just bitten my finger to the bone!” Algernon growled, clutching Rosella to him with one arm and waving the other hand in the air to show off his injury.

“It was my absolute pleasure to fling him out of the window!”

The Contessa gave him a black look, but she said no more on the subject, but instead she turned her fury onto Rosella.

“Why did you not tell me that you were
fidanzata
?” she shouted. “And that you have promised to marry this gentleman?”

“I did not promise anything,” Rosella gasped.