Moonflower Madness (4 page)

Sensing someone's gaze on him he turned his head. His eyes met Gianetta's and, for a heart-stopping second before she could drag her gaze away, held. She saw surprise flash through the dark depths of his eyes followed immediately by an ill-concealed mental shrug of dismissal.

That the dismissal was because it was she and not Serena he had surprised looking at him was obvious, as was his mortifying assumption that her gaze had been one of admiration. Furious at herself for giving so false an impression, she moved so that her shoulders were set firmly against him and, with an effort, returned her attention to Lord Rendlesham.

‘Some provinces of China, those that are easily approached by sea, have of course already been thoroughly explored,' he was saying to her uncle. ‘The problem is that the provinces in question all have tropical or sub-tropical climates, and the flora found there will not grow happily in England. Our objective is to find unknown plants growing in a temperate zone. Plants that will flourish in English gardens.'

She would have to follow them at a distance for two or three days, possibly longer. If she caught up with them too soon they would simply have her escorted straight back to Chung King. She would have to wait until the distance they had travelled was so great that they would have no option but to allow her to continue with them.

‘And does Kansu have a temperate zone?' her aunt was asking with polite interest.

Lord Rendlesham grinned. ‘Oh yes. Weatherwise, Kansu is influenced by the high plateau of Tibet. The plants we find there will live very happily in northern Europe.'

Gianetta listened to him avidly. She would have to bring clothes that were both serviceable for travelling, suitable for wear now and warm enough for the colder climate of Kansu. It wouldn't be an easy task, especially as she could only take what could be easily carried on a mule or a donkey.

Mr Zachary Cartwright had finished his perusal of her uncle's books and was sitting in a chair to the left of the Viceroy. Gianetta kept her eyes steadfastly away from his, aware, nevertheless, that his own attention was once more focused upon Serena.

‘It was Zac who fired my imagination and tempted me into accompanying him,' Lord Rendlesham was saying frankly. ‘Compared to his, my botanical knowledge is nil.'

Her uncle politely said he was sure that couldn't be true, but Zachary Cartwright made no attempt to correct his friend's statement. Gianetta wondered if other people, apart from Lord Rendlesham, referred to him as Zac. Certainly the name suited his hard masculinity far better than the more biblical Zachary.

‘I still think you should spend longer in Chung King before departing on such a hazardous venture,' her aunt was saying to Lord Rendlesham.

Gianetta suppressed a smile. If her aunt had deigned to look in Zachary Cartwright's direction she would have seen the way he was looking at Serena and wouldn't, then, have been so keen for him to prolong his visit.

Lord Rendlesham smiled, ‘I would have liked to stay here for several weeks, but if we are to avoid the summer rains we must leave immediately. Our equipment merely has to be repacked on to the mules we have hired, and that is being done at this very moment.'

Gianetta felt a slam of shock that left her almost breathless.

‘When … when do you intend to leave?' she asked. She had thought it would not be until the end of the week. Possibly not until the beginning of the week following.

‘Tomorrow at dawn,' Lord Rendlesham said, and as he spoke to her there was sincere regret in his voice. He would have liked to have stayed longer. Gianetta Hollis had a dark, magical quality about her that aroused him deeply. He saw her eyes widen. Eyes so startlingly violet against her night-black hair that their beauty took his breath away. He wondered what her ancestry was. Her eyes, and the creamy whiteness of her skin, were obviously the legacy of her English father, but her mother must have been Irish, or Italian perhaps, to account for the glossy darkness of her brows and lashes and the unbelievable blue-black lustre of her hair.

‘Oh!' For one devastating moment, Gianetta was certain that all her plans were in vain, and then she knew that time made no difference. She needed only a mule, some provisions, and detailed knowledge of the route Lord Rendlesham and Mr Cartwright were to take. The mule could easily be borrowed from the Residency stables, and so could the provisions, from the Residency kitchens. The only item she lacked was information.

‘How far do you hope to travel on your first day?' she asked.

He smiled, his warm blue eyes crinkling attractively at the corners. ‘I'm afraid you will have to ask Zac that question. He has far more knowledge than I have about how far we might be expected to travel in one day.'

Unwillingly Gianetta transferred her attention to Mr Cartwright. ‘How far do you expect to travel tomorrow, Mr Cartwright?' she asked coolly.

He gave a barely discernible shrug of his broad shoulders. ‘Possibly to Fu-tu Kwan,' he said laconically.

She had heard of Fu-tu Kwan. It was a small, walled town some fifteen miles to the north.

‘And then, after Fu-tu Kwan?' she asked with studied carelessness.

Again there was a slight lifting of his shoulders. ‘It isn't possible to say with any certainty. Kaingpeh maybe, or Lingtao.'

‘I do not understand why you t'avel by'oad and not'iver,' the Viceroy said, breaking his self-imposed silence. ‘It much easie'to t'avel by'iver.'

‘If the plants we find on our way to Fu-tu Kwan are disappointing, then we will alter our plans and travel the rest of the way, as far as Peng, by river,' Zachary Cartwright said, and Gianetta was intrigued to note that there was a pleasant courtesy in his manner towards the elderly Chinaman that had been lacking in his previous, brief conversation with her uncle and aunt.

‘You speak Manda'in?' The Viceroy asked him suddenly, leaning towards him, his robe of brocaded silk shimmering in the lamplight.

Zachary Cartwright nodded. ‘Yes, Your Excellency. And Cantonese.' There was no boastfulness in his voice. It was merely a statement of fact.

‘Then you will have no p'oblems in Szechuan or Kansu,' the Viceroy said. ‘It is only people who have no love or Chinese cultu'e or unde'standing of the Chinese people, who have p'oblems.'

His eyes flicked momentarily towards Lord Rendlesham and then towards his host. Although his face was impassive, Gianetta was sure that both gentlemen fell into the Viceroy's category of men who had no deep understanding of his country.

‘I cannot envy you the inns you will have to stay in
en route
to Kansu,' her aunt said to Lord Rendlesham with a shiver of distaste. ‘I am sure that the Viceroy will be in agreement with me when I say that the local inns leave much to be desired.'

She was being polite. The local inns were lice-infested horrors no European willingly entered.

Gianetta felt her stomach muscles tighten. She had not thought about where she would sleep at night. The inns were not only lice-infested, they were rat-infested as well. They possessed no fresh water and had no sanitary arrangements.

‘We shall very seldom be using inns,' Lord Rendlesham said reassuringly. ‘So far, unless we have been on board a boat, we have slept out in the open.'

‘Umph,' Gianetta's uncle grunted disapprovingly. ‘Healthier certainly, but not very safe. This isn't Lincolnshire. There are bandits and robbers by the score. And on the river there are pirates.' He pursed his lips. ‘I wouldn't give much for your chances unless you are heavily armed and the Chinese accompanying you are one hundred per cent trustworthy.'

‘The men I have engaged are all trustworthy,' Zachary Cartwright said, the underlying steel in his voice repudiating the unsaid suggestion that they might not be.

Gianetta's uncle looked disbelieving, but good manners and the Viceroy's presence prevented him from pursuing the subject.

The grandfather clock that had been laboriously transported from Lincolnshire to Chung King began to chime ten o'clock. Lady Hollis rose to her feet.

‘Goodnight, gentlemen. I doubt that I will see you again in the morning, but you have my very best wishes for your journey.'

She turned to the Viceroy and wished him a courteous goodnight. Gianetta and Serena hastily rose to their feet to say their own goodnights and to follow their aunt, as she swept from the room.

As Gianetta followed her aunt up the wide staircase, she was aware that Lord Rendlesham had been disconcerted by their sudden leave-taking. His regret that he had not been able to talk to her further was obvious. A smile quirked in the corner of her mouth. They would soon have plenty of time to talk to each other. All the time in the world.

‘If the noise of Lord Rendlesham's and Mr Cartwright's departure disturbs you in the morning, please ignore it,' her aunt said as they reached the broad landing from which the bedrooms led off. ‘I do not want either of you downstairs saying goodbye to them at such an hour. You would only be in the way.'

‘Yes, Mama,' said Serena, her thoughts too full of Henry to care about Lord Rendlesham's and Mr Cartwright's dawn departure.

Her aunt took Gianetta's silence as being equally agreeable and, after receiving a dutiful kiss on the cheek from each of them, retired to her room.

‘Goodness, I thought the evening would never come to an end,' Serena said as they entered their own room and she threw herself face down on her bed. ‘Mama wanted to tell Lord Rendlesham and Mr Cartwright of my engagement to Henry, but Papa said that she must not announce it publicly until it has appeared in
The Times
.' She giggled. ‘By the time it has done so, Henry and I will already be married!'

Gianetta was no longer interested in Serena's engagement to Henry Plaxtol. She was trying to make up her mind whether or not it would be safe to take Serena into her confidence.

‘You will be my bridesmaid, won't you, Gianetta?' Serena continued dreamily, ‘and you will live with us after we are married, won't you?'

Gianetta withdrew a large carpet-bag from the bottom of her
armoire
saying affectionately, ‘You're assuming rather a lot, Serena. How can you be so sure that Henry will want to have a cousin-in-law living under his roof?'

‘Because if he didn't, he would not be the sort of person I would wish to marry,' Serena said simply. ‘And he is.'

Gianetta smiled, amused by her confidence. ‘I think you're probably right, Serena, and I'm sure you and Henry will be blissfully happy together. But I will not be living with you. I couldn't. I should feel as if I had turned into an old maid overnight.'

‘Don't be silly …' Serena began good-humouredly. Then she saw the carpet-bag. ‘Gianetta! What on earth are you doing?'

Gianetta lifted an ankle-length skirt and a lace-trimmed blouse from a hanger. All along, deep inside her, she had known that she could not leave without taking Serena into her confidence. Now the moment for confession had come. She tried to think of words that would persuade Serena that what she was about to do was both sensible and sane, and failed to find any. She said starkly, ‘I'm going to go with Lord Rendlesham and Mr Cartwright to Kansu.'

‘You're going to
what
?' Serena rolled off her stomach and sat bolt upright.

‘I'm going to go with Lord Rendlesham and Mr Cartwright to Kansu,' Gianetta repeated, folding the blouse and skirt neatly and placing them in the bottom of the carpet-bag.

Serena swung her legs from the bed and ran across to her, seizing her arm. ‘Gianetta, you can't be serious! Even you would not do something so dangerous and rash!'

Gianetta surveyed a pale pink chiffon dress and regretfully left it on its hanger. Pink chiffon would not be suitable either for travelling or keeping warm. She packed another skirt, a blouse with trimmings of fluted muslin and a bolero cut in the fashion of a boy's Eton jacket.

‘They will not take you with them, Gianetta! It would ruin their reputations!'

Gianetta turned away from the
armoire
and gently removed Serena's hand from her arm. ‘I know that, Serena, and so I am not going to ask them to take me with them, nor am I going to make any attempt to go with them. I am going to follow them at a distance. When they have travelled so far that to return would be impractical then I will catch up with them.'

‘Gianetta! You
cannot!
' Serena said, her eyes ablaze with urgency.

‘You
cannot
travel across China with two men you barely know! It's impossible!'

‘Then it shouldn't be impossible,' Gianetta said crossly. ‘Both Lord Rendlesham and Mr Cartwright are gentlemen. If it's my virtue you are thinking of, it's going to be no more at risk than it would be in Lincolnshire.'

‘You can't know that. Lord Rendlesham looks very honourable and kind, but we know nothing of Mr Cartwright except that he is a respected botanist. He doesn't look to me at all the sort of man a woman would be safe with on her own, and certainly not in the wilds of China.'

Privately, Gianetta was in agreement with her, but she wasn't going to be on her own with Zachary Cartwright. She was going to be with him and Lord Rendlesham and she was sure that she could trust Lord Rendlesham completely.

‘Listen to me, Serena,' she said, taking Serena's hands and holding them tightly in her own. ‘This is something I
must
do. Much as I love you, I can't face the thought of returning to England and living with you and Henry as if I were a maiden aunt. Neither can I face the thought of living alone in that mausoleum of a house in Lincolnshire. And there's no reason that I should have to. It's 1905, not 1805. Lots of women are now living their lives exactly as they want to and I'm going to be one of them. I want to see China and I'm going to see China. All I want from you is your promise that you won't tell your mother or father what I intend to do.'