‘Of course, Majesty. I will attend to it directly.’
Without another word, the Empress turned her horse towards the road at the end of the valley. Bay nodded again to Karolyi and went after her.
As soon as they were out of earshot, the Empress laughed.
‘Well, my new riding costume will be the talk of the Hofburg now,’ she said. ‘Karolyi would be far better off to keep it to himself, but he lives to gossip, and he won’t be able to resist turning this into a story. It will all be about my heroic act in setting your shoulder, but he will find it impossible not to mention the state of my dress.’
Bay said nothing. He had seen the look on Karolyi’s face at the sight of the Empress’s legs. He hoped that the Ambassador was not a club man. The story of the man wearing a sling made out of an imperial riding habit would keep the gossips of Brooks and White’s busy for weeks. It was not an entirely comfortable thought. But his worries about a possible scandal dissipated as he saw the gates of Easton Neston and he started to follow the Empress along the long drive to the house.
When he dismounted he could barely stand. Noticing this, the Empress clapped her hands and ordered the grooms to fetch Baron Nopsca immediately.
The Baron arrived a moment later, looking flushed. He almost managed to conceal his surprise at seeing the Empress’s costume. The Empress spoke to him in German and the little man nodded, touching the ends of his moustaches as if to reassure himself that some things at least were unchanged.
Sisi put her hand on Bay’s uninjured arm. ‘Now you must get some rest. The Baron will take care of you.’
‘You are very kind, but I feel that I am an imposition.’
She put up her hand to stop him.
‘One of the prerogatives of royalty is that no one is allowed to contradict me. Isn’t that right, Nopsca?’
The Baron bowed. ‘Majesty.’
Inside the house, the Baron helped Bay up the broad marble staircase to a large bedroom on the first floor.
‘This is the room formerly used by His Majesty the King of Naples. The Empress has directed me to accommodate you here.’ The disapproval in the Baron’s tone did not escape Bay. ‘She has told me of your accident and has instructed me to send for the doctor. Please let me know if there is anything that you need.’
As the door closed Bay murmured some thanks, then, sitting down on the bed, he lay back and fell instantly asleep.
* * *
He woke with a start. The room was dark apart from the glowing fire. Moving gingerly, Bay felt the ache in his shoulder. It was so stiff that he could hardly move. Someone had taken his boots off and put a blanket over him, but he was still in his riding clothes apart from his jacket. Someone – the doctor, presumably – had strapped up his shoulder. Bay realised that he must have been unconscious.
It was impossible to know what time it was. He could have been asleep for minutes or hours. His head began to fill with worries. Had anyone sent word to Melton about his accident? He knew that he had to send a letter before the hunt gossips turned his accident into the story of the season: ‘the pilot who had to be rescued by his royal charge’. He must write to Charlotte before she received some spiteful retelling of the day’s events courtesy of Augusta. But even if he could get out of bed, he didn’t think he could hold a pen with his injured right arm.
It was an unfamiliar feeling to be powerless – immobile in a strange house, surrounded by foreigners in his own country – yet there was something thrilling about this helplessness. Something was coming, he knew, but would it be pleasure or pain? It was like the moment before jumping an unfamiliar fence, the surge that went with taking off followed by the fear of landing.
Outside a high wind was sweeping across the Leicestershire plain, rattling the panes in the large baroque windows, sending drafts through every chink in the walls and gap in the glazing. Bay felt himself listening to every squeak and groan from the house around him. He tensed when he thought he heard the sound of whispering voices followed by a cry, but then relaxed when he realised that it was a combination of the wind and a squeaking door. Then there was another noise, a rhythmic creaking. Was it his imagination, or did he hear that quick, familiar step outside his door?
He tried to sit up when the door opened, but the pain in his shoulder made it impossible.
Sisi’s face was lit from below by the Nightingale lamp she was carrying. The light cast a strange glow upwards on her face. There was something strange about her silhouette, he did not recognise the shape of her head, and then he realised that her hair was down.
‘Are you awake?’ Her voice was low and covert.
‘Yes, over here.’ He answered in the same whisper,
As the light came towards him, he saw that she was wearing some kind of white gown, and as she moved her head he saw the great sheet of her hair fall over her shoulders to the ground. When she approached the bed, he knew that he should not, indeed he could not move; to reach out his hand and touch her hair would be the moment of no return – the start of the race. But now she was so close to him that he could smell it – that mixture of violets, brandy and something more animal that he thought of as fox. His hand moved towards it. The hair felt warm and somehow springy, as if possessed with its own life force. He took a lock and wrapped it round his good hand. It was so long that he could wind it three times through his fingers without pulling at the scalp.
‘Do you like my hair, Captain Middleton?’ The same low whisper.
‘Yes, Your Majesty, I do.’ Bay tugged gently on the lock in his hand and pulled her face down to his. ‘It is very useful to an injured man.’ As he put his lips to hers he felt the hair fall around his face like a silken cocoon. He put up his good hand and felt the firm curve of her uncorseted waist under the silk of her gown.
‘You may kiss me again, Captain Middleton.’
‘Is that an order?’
‘Not an order, I think, but a wish.’
‘Then, Your Majesty, you will have to lie next to me, if I am to kiss you properly. Remember I am an injured man.’
‘Oh, I am very worried about your injuries.’ She put one finger lightly on his bandaged shoulder.
‘Does that hurt?’
‘No.’
‘And this?’ She leant over and, pushing back his shirt, put her lips to his skin. He felt her tongue touch his flesh, it felt rough like a cat’s, and the caress sent a shock of pain and pleasure through his whole body.
‘That was the best kind of hurting.’
She licked him again, this time bringing her tongue down to the hair on his chest.
‘You taste of salt and something else also, the stable, perhaps.’
‘You should have told Baron Nopsca to give me a bath,’ Bay said.
She laughed. ‘Oh, but I like your taste. I find it interesting.’
‘So long as I can amuse you, Ma’am, I shall be content.’
Sisi began to undo the buttons on his shirt and when she had them all open she laid her head on his chest. He felt her breath against his skin and and her hair tickling his armpits.
‘Your heart is beating most rapidly, Captain Middleton. Perhaps I should send for the doctor.’
‘I don’t think that will be necessary. If Your Majesty were to leave now I am sure that my heart rate would soon return to normal.’
‘I see. Would you like me to leave? I don’t want to endanger your health.’ She was leaning over him directly and he could feel her breasts pressing against his chest.
‘No, Ma’am, I would not.’
She lay there for a moment, her fingers tracing the outline of his lips.
‘But you can’t sleep like this, in your riding clothes, like a peasant.’
‘It is very hard to undress with one arm.’
‘Then you need help. Perhaps I should call Nopsca. No, it would be too cruel to wake him at this hour. I will just have to help you myself, Captain Middleton. I hope that I am equal to the task.’ She sighed and her breath made the
hairs on his chest tighten.
‘So do I, Ma’am. But I feel sure that we will both rise to the occasion.’
She laughed and put her finger to his lips.
‘Now be quiet, I need to concentrate.’
* * *
Later he listened to her breathing in the dark and thought that she had fallen asleep. Her head lay on his chest, her hair covering them like a blanket keeping them warm. He wondered what time it was. Somewhere in the darkness, he heard a clock strike four. There was still time then, before the household began to rumble into life. This was not a house, like some that Bay had stayed in, where they rang a bell in the small hours to summon the unfaithful to their rightful beds.
The Empress moved and Bay felt the blood return to his good arm, the one that she had been lying on. In the darkness he could just make out a glimpse of white as she stood up. He felt the cool brush of the linen sheet as she drew it over his bare skin and he sighed.
‘Are you in pain? Did I hurt you?’ Her voice was almost anxious in the dark.
‘Not exactly,’ he paused, ‘Ma’am.’
He felt her hand against his cheek. ‘When we are here you can call me Sisi. That is what my family call me, and my friends.’
Bay could not suppress the flicker of jealousy. ‘Do you have many friends?’
‘Not in England. No friends at all, apart from you. You are my English friend, Bay. And now you must sleep. I need you to get better. I can’t hunt without you.’
‘What about your courtiers in the gold braid?’
‘Max and Felix are not reliable. They can be distracted.’
Bay thought of what he might have seen in the mirror, in the gallery after the dinner at Easton Neston.
‘I shall have to ride with one arm then. I hope I can manage.’
‘Oh, I think you will manage. You have so far’. He heard the creak of the floorboards as she walked across the room.
‘Goodnight, Bay.’
‘Goodnight, Sisi.’
In the Dark Room
‘Why, Charlotte, Lady D told me you were a paragon of every conceivable virtue, but she didn’t let me know that you had such an eye. I am quite jealous. Such a luscious composition, all these girls tumbled together in one great, wanton heap. It looks so artless and yet every detail is perfect.’ Caspar Hewes was holding up Charlotte’s print of the Melton maids. They were in the studio of Lady Dunwoody’s house in Holland Park, a large room with a great north-facing window, which was rattling in the wind. There was no fire in the studio; Lady Dunwoody believed strongly in living with beauty but was indifferent to comfort.
As he talked, Charlotte could see Caspar’s breath condensing in the chilly air, like a dragon or a steam engine.
‘When Lady D comes back, I shall tell her that this just has to be included in the exhibition. Everything we have is so stiff. This will add the essential note of decadence – loose and languorous, with just a touch of the harem.’ Caspar turned to Charlotte and smiled a dazzling, very un-English smile that revealed a gleaming row of sharp white teeth; the puff that followed was definitely dragon-like, thought Charlotte – a Chinese dragon. Today he was wearing a green velvet jacket over a yellow brocade waistcoat and nankeen trousers. The splendour of his outfit was in contrast to the stained linen apron that he wore on top, but somehow he managed to make his costume look exotic rather than absurd. As Lady Dunwoody had predicted, he had barely drawn breath since his arrival at the house that morning. His voice was so different to an Englishman’s: when Fred and his friends spoke in their club drawl they sounded as if they really did not have the energy to finish pronouncing their sentences, but Caspar gave every word its own privileged existence, rolling its around in his mouth before releasing it into the world. Charlotte thought that she had never met anyone who enjoyed talking as much as this American. The only word that was not in his extensive vocabulary was silence.
‘You are very kind, Mr Hewes, but I doubt if the Queen will be interested in a group of servant girls. All the other portraits are of distinguished personages: Lord Beaconsfield, the Poet Laureate, Miss Nightingale, and members of the court. I am not sure that housemaids, however decadent, would be allowed to hang beside them.’
‘Everyone needs youth and beauty, however distinguished they are,’ Caspar said, and then, spinning round so that his face was so close to Charlotte’s that she could smell the limes in his cologne, ‘but why won’t you call me Caspar? Mr Hewes makes me sound like a minister of the lord and I have to tell you, Charlotte, dear Charlotte, that I have Doubts, so when you call me Mr Hewes I feel like an imposter. Now I don’t believe that a young lady as charming and as personable as yourself would want a poor foreigner like me to feel like a fraudulent man of God, by the constant use of his last name, now would you?’
Charlotte laughed and put up her hands in surrender. ‘Enough, enough. I will call you Caspar, but only if you promise to stop talking, just for a minute.’
‘But why? What is the point of being in a room with a lovely and talented young woman if you don’t make every effort to talk to her? To be silent would be a terrible waste of a golden opportunity. Unless, of course, you want me to be silent while I cover your face with burning kisses?’
‘Burning kisses? Well, it is rather cold in here, so only if you could guarantee they would be burning…’ said Charlotte.
‘You are teasing me now, an orphan all alone and friendless in a strange country.’
‘Friendless! I am quite sure that you have more friends in London than I do. I suspect that there can’t be many people you want to know who aren’t already your intimate friends,’ said Charlotte.
‘Mere acquaintances. They are not soulmates. If you only knew, dear Charlotte, how I long for a confidante. I don’t feel that I have had a genuine conversation since I left America.’
As he was talking Caspar took out the other prints from Charlotte’s portfolio and arrayed them on the table in front of him. Charlotte noticed that, for all his height and lankiness, Caspar’s movements were deft and precise. His hand hovered over the picture of Bay and his horse and he pointed at it with one long finger.
‘Why, Carlotta! I think I like Carlotta more than Charlotte, it suits you better. You are not the prim little English miss that you appear; I know by your pictures that you have a dangerous soul. Already you are making me jealous. Do you know how fearsome I can be when my passions are aroused?’ He held out out his hand with a thespian flourish.
‘I know very little about you, as we only met yesterday,’ said Charlotte.
She could feel a blush reaching her ear lobes. There had been nothing from Bay at breakfast, no letter, no telegram. But then he did not know where she had gone. She had a sudden image of Bay standing on the steps at Melton and laughing with Fred and Chicken and she felt her mouth go dry. She would write to her aunt and ask her to tell Bay where she was. Adelaide Lisle might have some reservations about Bay, but the prospect of the house in town and the barouche with the matching greys that came with her role as Charlotte’s chaperone might overcome her scruples.
Caspar saw the reddening of Charlotte’s skin and continued, ‘Already you are taunting me with this Adonis on horseback, with his tight breeches and his gleaming boots. But I will not despair, no, I will not lose heart – because as I look at this picture I see that this man is not in love with you. No, he only has eyes for his horse, who is a fine animal, undoubtedly, but compared to you, Carlotta … The man must have water in his veins.’
‘Do you talk to every lady you meet like this?’
Caspar opened his eyes in theatrical outrage.
‘Carlotta, how can you say such a cruel thing? Do I look like a man who makes love to every woman he meets? A rake, a reprobate, a Lothario?’
Charlotte shook her head, laughing. From another man, Caspar’s declarations would be not just eccentric but alarming; however, there was something about the smooth fluency of his speech and the way that he was examining all her prints with pai
nstaking care even as he declaimed undying love, that made her think that his extravagance of word and gesture was just as much an affectation as his style of dress.
‘I don’t know what you look like, an American, perhaps.’
‘Oh, Carlotta, you make my nationality sound like an unfortunate disease. And yet I think you would like America. It is the land of the free, you know.’ He began to sing ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ in a remarkably true baritone, while at the same time picking up Charlotte’s box of undeveloped plates.
He stopped singing. ‘You have two plates here that you haven’t printed yet. Shall I develop them for you? It would be an honour. I long to see what else you have done. Please allow me to render you this one small service.’
Charlotte hesitated a moment. She felt a little uncomfortable about Caspar’s offer – it was as if he was offering to wear her clothes – but she could think of no good reason to refuse.
‘If you really want to. And now that you have looked at my portfolio, can I see yours?’ she said.
‘Oh, Carlotta, nothing would make me happier. I don’t have much here. Perhaps one day I can lure you to Tite Street, but Lady D was kind enough to pull out a few things that she thought were worthy of being in the exhibition.’
He pulled a morocco folder down from one of the shelves.
‘Here they are. Now I am altogether too bashful to stand by while you look at my work, so I am going to hide myself in the dark room with your plates, and then I won’t have to squirm as you try to hide the contempt that it undoubtedly deserves.’ Despite his words, Caspar did not look particularly apprehensive. He opened the portfolio with a flourish.
‘There you are, Carlotta mia, the fruit of my labours. Be merciful, remember that I was not so fortunate as to have Lady Dunwoody as a teacher.’
He picked up her plate box and went into the wooden cubicle that Lady Dunwoody had built in the corner of the studio as a dark room. Charlotte could hear him moving around in there, still singing. She turned her attention to his portfolio, grateful for a brief respite from the torrent of chat. The first batch of photographs was of a desert dotted with huge cacti and strange, eroded rock formations. Charlotte had never seen a landscape like this before – no plants, no grass, nothing but sand and rock and sky. In one picture a young man was standing next to a cactus that topped him by at least two feet. The desert pictures were followed by a series of pictures of Chinese families – ten or more people, from the old men who wore pigtails and traditional costumes to their children who wore western clothes, right down to the babies swaddled in papooses. Some were studio portraits, some were posed outside the family’s shop. Charlotte was surprised to see that all the signs were in Chinese characters. She wondered where Caspar had taken these pictures. It was an extraordinary thing to have these images from the other side of the world in front of her – the scenes they showed were so outlandish, and yet they were undoubtedly real.
The Fortune Hunter Page 22
