Whispering (2 page)

‘How was he? We've neither met nor written for over three years and didn't see all that much of each other before that. I was a bitter disappointment, don't you see, a mere girl. Girls don't run vineyards. And then my mother was so disobliging as to die. No son. No heir. Very inconsiderate, he thought that. They were her vineyards, you see. What he married her for.'

‘His now, surely.'

‘Oh, that's of course. Do you know my father?'

‘We have not met, no. Only corresponded. I look forward to meeting him.'

‘No law against that,' she said. ‘So you don't know what has made him relent and have me back.'

‘Relent? But he sent you home for your safety, surely?'

‘It made a most convenient pretext. With the French holding Lisbon, the Spanish holding Porto, and the English ordered to leave. But this is not home. I am not English, cousin, I am Portuguese like my father.' She had switched into fluent Portuguese to say this.

If it had been meant to baffle him, it failed. ‘Of course,' he spoke in Portuguese as idiomatic if less fluent than hers. ‘I had quite forgotten, finding you in such very English surroundings.' That was careless of him, he thought. He must not let this surprisingly grown-up child throw him off balance.

‘Where are we going?' she asked now in English, surprising him again, not at the question but at the fact that she had not asked, nor he answered it sooner.

‘Into Bath for a change of horses. Then to Falmouth. There's a ship loading there. When she is ready, and the wind serves, she will sail. And I mean to be on her.'

‘So masterful! And what about my abigail, cousin? You have not been to Porto, I take it, so you do not know what a scandal
broth they brew in that tight, smug little British community. I don't suppose you much wish to have to marry me on arrival. Though really,' judiciously, ‘there might be something to be said for it.'

She had silenced him, and knew it. ‘Here we are, almost into Bath,' she went on in the same reasonable tone. ‘If you will have your coachman follow my directions, I think I can find us a chaperone. She's an old friend. I promised her long ago that she should share my fortunes, if any. I had been wondering how in the world to get her to Trellgarten if I had to go there. This works out most admirably. We need to turn right here, cousin.'

‘Who is this? And will she agree to come?' But he gave the order.

‘Oh, she'll come all right. She's a friend, I told you. We met – No, I don't think I will tell you how we met. You might be shocked.'

‘I think I am beyond being shocked.'

‘Good,' she said. ‘Left here, tell him, then right at the corner and stop at the end of the mews. I just hope Harriet is in.'

‘Harriet?'

‘Harriet Brown. A dear friend. And I promise you will make a most convincing chaperone. We may have to outfit her a little. Are you game for that, cousin?'

‘Your father undertook to pay your expenses.'

‘Handsome of him. For once. I do long to know why he decided to have me back. Tell me, if Harriet is there, how long can she have to get ready?'

‘Half an hour at the very longest. I want to be well on the road before we stop for the night.'

‘I should just about think so,' she agreed. ‘Bath is another fine spot for scandal. I'm glad you do not intend to rack up at York House with me. Even with Harriet in attendance.'

‘York House is well above my touch.' He meant to quell her.

‘Not above my father's,' she reminded him. ‘Here we are.' The carriage had pulled up at the end of an extremely unsavoury mews. ‘With luck, if Harriet is home, we will be no more than fifteen minutes. If it's to be longer, I'll let you know.'

‘But I am coming with you.'

‘Oh no you are not. I go alone or not at all.' She was ready for this. ‘Be reasonable, cousin. Look at me. Look at yourself. You're a swell. I'm – just a girl. I can go down there without being noticed; you cannot.'

It was true. He had been momentarily appalled at her plain, even dowdy appearance when she joined him in bonnet and pelisse. ‘We will buy you some clothes in Falmouth if there is time,' he told her and realised that he had let her win her point.

‘Splendid.' She turned back to smile at him from the carriage step. ‘And Harriet can have mine.' She looked up at the coachman. ‘If you want to walk the horses, there's some open ground over there.' She turned and walked swiftly away down the crowded, insalubrious alley, only her erect carriage and purposeful stride differentiating her from the shabby crowd around her. He should not have let her go. Could he have stopped her? ‘Yes,' he said irritably in answer to the coachman's question. ‘Walk them as the young lady said.'

Young lady. He had thought a young lady would grumble at the leaking carriage, and that was one thing his surprising young cousin had absolutely not done. He looked at his watch. She had been gone five minutes. He had known her now for not much more than an hour, and, amazingly, he was regretting that from now on they would have a companion, this mysterious Harriet Brown who lived in such a poor way, and whom Caterina had met in circumstances that, she said, would shock him. He rather looked forward to the process of getting to know this cousin of his, and perhaps letting her learn how very little there was in the world that shocked him. The younger son of a younger son, he had been fighting his own battles for ten years since his father died bankrupt when he was fifteen. And fighting them, he reckoned now, with some success. After all, here he was, on a secret and fascinating mission to a strange country, and he could congratulate himself on having acquired an equally fascinating companion.

What would she be saying to her friend Harriet Brown? He wished he could be a fly on the shabby walls that enclosed their confidences.

‘So that's our story,' Caterina summed up for her friend. ‘We met when the carriage nearly ran you down. I was on my way to – what did I go to alone? – my drawing lesson. The other girl was ill. I made the carriage stop; you weren't badly hurt but I insisted on taking you home.'

‘You're a great insister,' said Harriet Brown lovingly. ‘I take it this gentry cousin of yours has found that out by now.'

‘He's learning. And less of the cant talk, if you please. It was the penniless gentlewoman I recognised in you, don't forget. There should be a word for gentle girl, should there not?'

‘What we are not,' said Harriet. ‘There,' she closed the shabby little portmanteau. ‘That'll do me till we get to Falmouth and the gentry cousin fits you out like the lady you always were. I can't wait to get into that gown of yours. It's short on you, and a bit tight; skinflints, those nuns; it'll do me a treat, but I reckon the cove's in for the fright of his life when he sees you rigged up proper. Good,' she wrapped herself in a shabby shawl. ‘That's the last bit of cockney you'll hear out of me, Cat my love, and what a strain it is going to be.' She had modulated into the genteel accents of an abigail.

‘No, no,' protested Caterina. ‘You are coming as friend and chaperone, not abigail. Not so genteel if you love me!'

‘Which I do. And so we should, shouldn't we, you and I. What we've been through together.' Quickly, lovingly, they embraced.

Jeremy Craddock thought Miss Brown a sad, pale little shrimp of a thing, all bones and angles, in her darned shawl and shabby bonnet, and it surprised him when it was she who asked the question he had been expecting from Caterina.

‘I'm ashamed to have to confess it,' he told her, ‘and to two such intrepid young ladies, too, but I have been ordered to Oporto for my health. The doctors advise some winter sunshine for a problem of mine.'

‘I just hope you get it then,' said Caterina. ‘I thought everyone knew about the winter rains in Spain and Portugal since Sir John Moore's terrible retreat on Corunna. And Soult's flight from Porto, come to that. It was the weather saved him, if you ask me. And what a pity that was. But what's your complaint, cousin? You don't look like an invalid to me. Is there anything Harriet and I should know? In case you were to take ill during the voyage.'

‘Oh, it's nothing.' He had not expected to dislike this so much. ‘A slight tendency to the falling sickness, that's all. It has unfitted me for the army, much to my regret. There's an American lady has lived in Oporto for a year or so, a student of Dr Mesmer's. They say great things of the cures she has worked. I expect you will think me a hypochondriacal fool, but I have allowed myself to entertain hopes of her treatment. It's a deuced inconvenient complaint to suffer from, as I am sure you two young ladies will understand.'

‘I should just about think so,' said Caterina. ‘We had a girl at the convent for a while. She used to foam at the mouth and fall down, and we had to force her teeth open so she didn't bite her tongue. I'll be able to do that for you, cousin, if need be. No need to fret.'

‘What happened to her?' This was very tiresome indeed.

‘Oh, Reverend Mother sent her home in the end. She said we were a convent, not a hospital. She wasn't a great one for loving kindness.'

‘I've not had a seizure for years,' he hastened to tell her. ‘But something happened last winter that made the doctors a little anxious. Rest and sunshine, they said. In happier times I'd have gone to the south of France, or Italy.'

‘Combining health with pleasure,' agreed Caterina. ‘Never mind, I don't suppose it will rain all the time in Porto, cousin, and you will have plenty of distractions if you like cards, and dancing, and gossip. But tell me about the American lady. What in the world is she doing in Porto?'

‘She and her brother were expelled from France, where she went after studying with Dr Mesmer in Switzerland. She's an
outspoken young lady, as I believe Americans tend to be. She was a friend of the former Empress Josephine and said something a little too frank when Napoleon divorced her to marry Marie Louise of Austria. The tale is that she and her brother had to leave on the first ship – and it was taking supplies to Soult when he held Oporto.'

‘Why do you say Oporto when Caterina says Porto?' asked Harriet.

‘She is right and I am wrong,' Jeremy told her. ‘Porto is the Portuguese name for the city. It means port, of course. It's only we English who have tagged on the “O” from the Portuguese for “the”. Should I try to change my habits, do you think, cousin?'

‘It depends which society you mean to join,' Caterina told him. ‘The English or the Portuguese. They don't mix much, I should warn you. I wonder where the American lady and her brother have managed to fit themselves in. What is her name, by the way?'

‘You've not heard about her?'

‘How should I have? I have heard about as much from Porto these three long years as I have from the moon, I don't even know if my friends survived the French massacre two years ago. I don't know if I have any friends.' She reached out to clasp Harriet's hand. ‘I can't tell you how glad I am that you are coming with me, Harriet dear.' And then, to Jeremy. ‘Is the nameless American lady young?'

‘I believe so. Miss Rachel Emerson. Her brother is a good deal older, I understand, and has acted as her manager in this strange career of hers.'

‘You mean she is in the way of being a professional healer?' Caterina had recognised the note of disapproval in his voice.

‘She does it for money, if that is what you mean.'

‘As a doctor would, surely? Tell me, cousin, is it because she takes money for her healing that you disapprove of her, or because she is a woman setting up as a healer?'

‘A bit of both, I suppose.' Ruefully. ‘I hope you never draw my caricature, Cousin Caterina. You see too far into a man's thoughts for comfort.' And that was all too true.

‘Ah, but I like you, Cousin Jeremy,' said Caterina.

‘There you are!' Ralph Emerson came angrily out on to the tiny balcony with its high view down the Douro River to the sea. ‘I've been hunting everywhere for you. What is this about Mrs Ware cancelling?' A big, burly, fair-haired man, he had the remains of what had been striking good looks, marred now by broken veins, too high a colour, and a look of habitual bad temper.

‘Not very far to hunt.' Rachel Emerson put down the shabby sheet she had been darning and looked up at him with large, thoughtful grey eyes. Much younger than he was, she did not look in the least like him. She was small and neat-featured, he was large and flamboyant; where he was ruddy, she was pale. ‘You know I like to work out here in the evenings. The light is better, for one thing, and I love to see the colours changing on the river. You were right to insist on a place with a river view, even if it is such a tiny one.'

If she had hoped to placate him with this remark, she failed dismally. ‘And whose fault is it, pray, that we cannot afford a better place? What have you done now, to offend Mrs Ware?'

‘Nothing that I know of. She just sent a note to say she was sorry, she was too busy to come. One of the children is ill, I expect.'

‘More likely she is not satisfied with the treatment she is getting! I've told you over and over again that they want a show, these stupid Englishwomen. It's not enough just to lay your hands on them. They want dark curtains and soft music, all the trimmings old Mesmer supplied. And the group thing, the holding of hands, the magic circles –'

‘That was Dr Mesmer's way.' She had said all this many times before. ‘Mine is different, Ralph. Different, but just as effective. He told me so himself. He said my hands were quick to feel trouble, and quick to soothe it. He told me to concentrate on that. And you know I have had results –'

‘Those suggestible French! Of course you have. Rub them with sweet oil, smile your charming smile, and hey presto, they
are cured. The English are quite other; and so I warned you when we came here. They need the hocus pocus.'