Moonflower Madness

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• Margaret Pemberton
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Chapter Six
  
• Chapter Seven
  
• Chapter Eight
  
• Chapter Nine
  
• Chapter Ten
  
• Chapter Eleven
  
• Chapter Twelve
  
• Chapter Thirteen
  
• Chapter Fourteen
  

Margaret Pemberton is the bestselling author of over thirty novels in many different genres, some of which are contemporary in setting and some historical.

She has served as Chairman of the Romantic Novelists' Association and has three times served as a committee member of the Crime Writers'Association. Born in Bradford, she is married to a Londoner, has five children and two dogs and lives in Whitstable, Kent. Apart from writing, her passions are tango, travel, English history and the English countryside.

The British Residency in Chung King was ablaze with flowers. Yellow jasmine climbed the walls, honeysuckle tumbled down the steps of the entrance, white anemones with lamp-black centres surged from terracotta pots, deep drowned-purple pansies vied for space with drifts of golden fabaria. Beyond a tangle of aged roses the broad, glittering curve of the Yang-tze River could be glimpsed, surging on and down to the distant sugarloaf gorges of Ichang.

Gianetta Hollis sighed and pushed a glossy black tendril of hair away from her face. The garden she sat in was supremely beautiful. The light had the pearl-like translucence peculiar to China, the air was heavy with scent and the only sound to be heard was the gentle tinkling of pagoda bells. And she was bored. Unspeakably, unimaginably bored.

She had been in China for nearly a year and apart from the week's voyage by steamer up the Yang-tze from Shanghai to Ichang and the thrilling, perilous five-week journey by junk through the gorges and ravines that separated Ichang from Chung King, she had seen nothing of the country. Nothing at all.

She sighed again, this time with rising impatience. It really was ridiculous for her aunt to be so over-protective of Serena and herself. It was five years now since murderous rebels had rampaged through the country vowing to kill every foreigner on Chinese soil. Her aunt and uncle had been living in Peking and for fifty-five terrifying days had been besieged, with over a hundred other Europeans, inside the Legation Quarter. They had held the rebels at bay with great cost of life until, at last, an international rescue force had marched into the city and relieved them.

It was an experience her aunt would never forget. Although the country was now calm again, she would not allow her daughter or her niece to venture beyond the Residency compound into the narrow crowded streets of Chung King or the wild, unexplored countryside beyond.

To Gianetta's chagrin, their only journeys were to the nearby Anglican Mission, and even then they were obliged to travel by sedan-chair and under heavy protective escort. It was not what Gianetta had imagined when she had dreamed of China. She had envisaged exotic vistas; horseback rides into the foothills of mysterious mountains; magical walks through the courtyards of ancient temples; adventure, danger, excitement. Instead she was obliged to spend her days in a monotony as unrelieved as the one she had left behind at Sutton Hall, her aunt and uncle's family home in Lincolnshire. Her pleasures were now, as then, circumscribed by Serena's pleasures.

If Serena wanted to go on a picnic or an expedition to a local beauty spot, then of course such expeditions were arranged. If Serena wished to ride, suitable horses and grooms were speedily found. If Serena wished to take up the fascinating new pastime of photography, then the very latest whole-plate camera was purchased for her use. Unfortunately for Gianetta, it was very rare that Serena expressed the wish to do anything as exciting as ride or experiment with photography. She was easy-tempered, sweet-natured and unimaginative. As Gianetta's aunt was often heard to say with relief, Serena was as dissimilar to her cousin as chalk from cheese.

Gianetta kicked a smooth white pebble away with the toe of a neatly-booted foot and watched as a lizard scurried away, seeking fresh cover. What her aunt said was true. She and Serena
were
dissimilar in temperament, but that was only to be expected. Serena was totally English and had been brought up in the calm atmosphere of the Lincolnshire fens. She, Gianetta, was half-Italian and had, for the first twelve years of her life, been brought up in the exciting, mercurial atmosphere of the Villa Simione, overlooking Lake Garda.

Her father, Edward Hollis, had embarked on a Grand Tour in 1887 and had travelled no further than Florence when he had fallen in love not only with the Duomo, the church of Santa Croce and the slow-moving waters of the Arno, but also with the bewitching and incomparably beautiful Lucrezia Segatti.

It had not been a love affair looked fondly on by either family. The Hollises had been appalled at the thought of Italian blood sullying their ancient family tree. The Segattis had been equally aghast at the prospect of their high-born daughter throwing herself away on an Englishman with only a minor title. Both familes had agreed on one thing only. There would be no marriage. It was then that Edward Hollis had shown his true mettle. He had ridden at night from his
penzione
in Florence to the Segatti's family villa and he had urged Lucrezia to climb down from her room and elope with him.

The result had been a marriage that the Hollises had eventually accepted only grudgingly, the Segattis not at all. Twelve years later, an unrepentant Lucrezia had succumbed to tuberculosis. Her heart-broken husband, riding too recklessly in an effort to assuage his grief, had been thrown from his horse and had never recovered consciousness.

Gianetta, aged eleven, had been obliged to accept the offer of a home in England with a cousin she had never seen.

All in all it had not been so very dreadful. She had not been beaten or starved, but she had hated the cold, flat greyness of the Lincolnshire fens and the cheerlessness of a house which, during her aunt and uncle's long absences in China, was inhabited only by Serena, Serena's governess, and an army of servants.

It was Serena who had made it bearable. She had been overjoyed at having her loneliness relieved by Gianetta's arrival, and greeted her as if she were a long-lost sister. Five years later, at Gianetta's urging, Serena had written to her parents asking if, accompanied by Gianetta, she could travel out to join them. The reply, to Serena's nervous apprehension and Gianetta's ebullient delight, had been in the affirmative.

They had sailed from Gravesend aboard the SS
Eastern Queen
, chaperoned as far as Hong Kong by Sir Archibald and Lady Plaxtol, old friends of the Hollises, returning to China after a year's furlough. Also accompanying them was their son Henry, a pleasant-faced, mild-mannered young man who had recently been ordained into the Church of England. In Hong Kong they had said goodbye to the Plaxtols, continuing their journey to Shanghai under the protective eye of the ship's captain.

Shanghai had been all that Gianetta had dreamed it would be. The narrow streets were crowded with Chinamen, their hair worn in long single pigtails down their backs. Rope-dancers span and twirled, pedlars cried their wares, jugglers and acrobats vied for attention with storytellers and scribes. Gianetta had sighed with rapture at the strangeness of it all, oblivious to the heat, and the stench of garlic, tobacco and stale, unwashed bodies.

Her rapture had been short-lived. Her uncle who had met them off the boat, had no intention of delaying his return to Chung King by spending unnecessary time in Shanghai. At seven the next morning they had boarded the steamer that was to take them to Ichang. A week later, they had transferred from the steamer to the junk for the long, laborious last stage of their journey up the Yang-tze to Chung King.

Since then, to Gianetta's chagrin, there had been no exploratory excursions into the surrounding countryside. For her, China was the carefully tended grounds of the Residency. It did not help that Serena was happy to accept this restriction. With a gesture of impatience, Gianetta flicked a fluttering butterfly away with her hand and rose to her feet. For all the excitement she was experiencing, she might just as well have stayed in Lincolnshire. At least there she had been able to go for long, unaccompanied walks. Here, there was no outlet for her frustrations and she was rapidly beginning to feel as if she were in an exotic, flower-filled prison.

‘Gianetta! Gianetta!'

She turned her head as Serena, in a high-necked white lace blouse and an ankle-length turquoise skirt, ran lightly down the shallow stone steps towards her.

‘What do you think? We are to have visitors this evening. A Mr Zachary Cartwright, who Papa says is a very famous botanist, and his cousin, Lord Rendlesham.'

Serena's corn-coloured hair was brushed away from her face in a sleek chignon, her grey-green eyes alight with pleasure at being the bearer of such agreeable news.

Gianetta frowned, determined not to be shaken out of her despondency so easily. Lord Rendlesham was eighty. She knew, because his birthday had been announced not long ago in
The Times
. His friends would no doubt be equally aged and uninteresting. All her uncle's dinner guests were.

‘Is that the only reason for your good humour?' she asked, her eyes going to the tell-tale envelope protruding slightly from the pocket of Serena's skirt.

Serena laughed and linked her arm as they began to walk back towards the house.

‘No,' she said, a light blush touching her cheeks. ‘I received another letter from Henry Plaxtol this morning. He is returning to England very soon, but is visiting Ichang and Chung King before he does so.'

‘And is that such wonderful news?' Gianetta asked unimpressed.

The blush in Serena's cheeks deepened. ‘Yes,' she said, unconcealed happiness in her voice. ‘It is for me.'

Gianetta stood still on the flower-edged path and stared at her in disbelief. ‘You can't possibly be in love with him!' she said incredulously. ‘He's a clergyman!'