A Rather Curious Engagement

by C. A. Belmond

  Kurt looked at his watch. “They would be downstairs having their lunch now,” he said. “In the cook’s kitchen.”

  Chapter Forty-three

  All four of us couldn’t fit in that elevator, so Kurt went down first with the Count, wheeling him outside to his garden for his daily breath of fresh air. When the elevator returned, Jeremy and I took it down to the basement, where the doors opened right into the cook’s kitchen.

  There was a giant black potbellied stove roaring away, a narrow wooden table, and a big pantry off the staircase with a swinging door, out of which came the cook, busily carrying a great big bowl of bread-dough. When the pantry door swung open, I could see rows and rows of shelves with canned and dry goods, boxed and bagged. The plump old cook went straight over to her work-table, where she set out busily thumping and kneading the dough. We nodded to her when we came in, and Jeremy told her that we were meeting Kurt down here. She glanced at us with polite interest, but then she went right back to her work, as if she had decided that we were none of her business and that she, therefore, was none of ours.

  Seated in an alcove around the corner, at a larger, utilitarian wooden table, was the staff—the gardener, nurse, butler and the servant girl. They were having their lunch of cold meat and cheese with pickles and mustard, all set on plain sturdy cookware, with a small dark raisin cake in the center of the table, to have with their tea. A few minutes later Kurt joined us.

  As gently as we could, we asked each of them to recall what they remembered of the night the Count returned from his long stay at the hospital. At first they defensively said that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred that night. The gardener, a cheerful, burly man, remembered the bad weather, and how he’d struggled up the stairs with the suitcases.

  “Who unpacked them that night?” I asked.

  The English butler, a thin old man, looked up with a slightly guilty expression. “Normally I would have unpacked everything for him,” he said, appearing a bit ashamed. “But it was quite late, and we were so very worried about the Count. He was terribly exhausted, and the nurse said he should get into bed. We did not want to make him wait for me to unpack every suitcase and put things away in his dresser drawers. I had already laid out a fresh pair of pajamas for him. And, since I did not want to keep him awake by thumping about with trunks in the hall, I asked his permission to let the unpacking wait until morning. Which he gave me.”

  Jeremy turned to the young servant girl. She said, “I was busy helping the nurse get settled into her room. It was her first day with us. The rain came down in sheets!”

  The nurse nodded vigorously. “I made certain that the Count took his medicine. After he went to bed, I, too, retired, and heard nothing till morning.”

  They all looked innocent, yet uneasy, because Jeremy and Kurt were watching them so closely. I reached into my bag, and unrolled my drawing of the Lion. I placed it on the table and they all bent over it intently. While they were deeply engrossed, Pepi came bounding in, then stopped in his tracks, shocked by the sight of guests in the cook’s kitchen. Only the cook glanced at him, and told him that he could have a cookie. He sidled over to a cookie jar, took one, and then drew nearer to us to see what we were all looking at.

  Pepi peered curiously at the drawing, studying it closely. Seeing what it was, he smiled delightedly, and growled like a lion and said, “Ah-wumph!” and pretended to chomp on his sister’s arm. The men reacted with mild amusement and strained patience, as men do when they are preoccupied, and a child has intruded on their thoughts.

  “Leonhard!” he said.

  “Pepi, go in your room and play quietly,” his sister said absently.

  He now saw that I was watching him intently. His smile quickly faded, and his face went red. Then he turned and bolted from the room.

  Jeremy and Kurt were still questioning the servants about what happened the next morning. The butler vehemently denied ever seeing any Lion in the suitcase. He could not remember if the closet door had been ajar. But one by one, each said absolutely that they had never seen the Lion.

  By now, however, I was hardly listening to them anymore. My thoughts had followed little Pepi, and I wanted to know where he had gone. So I slipped out of the kitchen in the same direction. Ahead, there was only a flight of cement steps leading upward and outdoors. But to the right was a small room off the kitchen with a swinging door that was still swinging. I peered in the door’s little round window, then went in. In the old days, this had probably been where the cook slept. Now it was a kind of playroom and nap room, because there was a little cot, covered with a bedspread that had funny-faced clowns printed on it. There was a pajama case that was shaped like the head of a floppy-eared dog. Pepi was sitting, scrunched into a guilty little ball on the bed, nervously petting the head of his pajama-dog.

  “What a nice room!” I said, in a light, encouraging voice that seemed to make him relax a bit. I glanced around. “You have some great toys here. Want to show me?”

  Warily at first, he pointed out that he had some story books, and some balls, and some puppets, on a shelf near the bed. He was very pleased as I marvelled over each one, and this calmed him more.

  Finally I said, “Pepi, what’s your most special toy?” There was a long pause.

  “Leonhard?” I whispered conspiratorially.

  Pepi flushed again. He glanced toward the kitchen worriedly.

  “It’s okay,” I said gently. “I’ll tell them you were a good boy and showed it to me when I asked you to.”

  Well, a kid knows when the jig is up. So he got on his knees and reached under his bed, and he pulled out a wide wooden toy chest. And I watched, rooted to the spot, as he threw back the lid of the chest and pulled out a shiny metal object.

  “Ahh!” I said softly. “Can I see?” He nodded, and gave it to me.

  I took it gently into my hands, almost afraid it might vanish at my touch. But it was heavier than I expected. A shiny copper figure, about nine inches tall, and ten inches long, and four inches wide. It possessed a strange natural authority, in the way the Lion stood proudly on all four legs, his head fiercely alert, with glittering, jeweled eyes; his back straight, his tail aloft and curving over the back to form the handle. A bona fide aquamanile, all right.

  I looked straight into the face of the Lion. It was so remarkable that I caught my breath; for it had the characteristics of both the king of the beasts, and the great genius of music, in its regal, wild mane and intense, ferocious scowl. Yet somehow its creator had also managed to capture, in the lines of the face, Beethoven’s intelligent humanity, vulnerability, and passionately generous heart. Then, I studied the tiny metal figure clamped in the mouth. Oh, yes, indeed. That little monkey’s face bore a startling resemblance to a certain audacious, visionary French emperor, trapped in the jaws of his own destiny.

  Remembering what I’d heard of its construction, I ran my finger over the stopper at the top of the Lion’s head. It was sealed shut. It took all my effort to keep my voice calm, so that I would not spook the kid.

  “The Count will be so happy that you found it!” I said. “Let’s go tell him together, what a good boy you were, to find his Lion for him.”

  After that, it wasn’t hard to fill in the blanks. Of course, we had to promise the kid that, as long as he returned the Lion, he wouldn’t get in trouble with his father, who would be very angry if he thought his son had stolen anything from the Count.

  We found the Count sitting in his wheelchair outdoors, in the side-garden, watching birds darting around the bird feeder he’d placed in his trees. I marched right up to him, and plunked the Lion in his lap. Startled at first, his face broke into a wide grin, and the years seemed to melt away.

  “But—wherever did you find it?” he cried, grasping it with both hands and holding it aloft as if even he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  “Father,” Kurt said wearily, “it appears that the Lion has been in the castle, all along!”

  “Well
,” said the Count triumphantly, “I told you I had found it!”

  Pepi’s sister shoved the child forward, to tearfully apologize for the theft. The Count was very gracious, as the girl explained that Pepi had been up and about, ahead of the entire household, on that morning after the Count returned from the hospital, because Pepi’s mother had dropped him off quite early that day, since she had to work on an early shift. Pepi was told to play quietly, because the Count was back home. The Count sometimes brought Pepi a little present from his travels, and gave it to him at Christmastime. So Pepi ran upstairs to see if the Count was awake yet, but found only an open suitcase with a toy that surely had been bought for a child. As there were no other children in the house, naturally it must be for Pepi.

  And, with the logic of a kid, Pepi decided that, since the Lion was meant for him, they’d probably just forgotten to give it to him at Christmas, when the Count had been away. So he solved this easily, and took it downstairs in his room to play with. And when it was time for his lunch, he put it away in his toy chest, as he’d been taught to do with his favorite toys. (Besides, he had the funny feeling that if he left it lying about, somebody might take it away from him.)

  It was many weeks later when another hubbub ensued, once the Count recalled that he had bought the Lion, but lost it. They turned the house upside down, to no avail. But Pepi was not around when this happened; he was away visiting his cousins. So he never really knew how important the Lion was. And everyone assumed that the Count had left the Lion on the yacht . . . if indeed he’d ever had it at all.

  “Well,” Jeremy said, after we’d pieced this together, “we’ve found the Lion. But, the question remains—is it the Beethoven Lion?”

  The Count had been sitting quietly listening the whole time. When he saw his nurse coming purposefully toward him with a blood-pressure measurer in her hand, and a stethoscope around her neck, he said to her, very firmly, “You must take this Lion upstairs and X-ray it. Right away.”

  The nurse opened her mouth as if she were about to protest, but when she saw the look on Kurt’s face, and then ours, she shut her mouth tightly and did not speak. Wordlessly, she took the Lion into the house.

  Chapter Forty-four

  The suspense,” Jeremy said, “is killing me.”

  We were standing in the back garden outside the castle, overlooking Lake Como. Kurt told us he’d call us the moment the X-rays were ready.

  We gazed out at the rippling lake, which was far below us but still seemed to fill up the view, rising to meet the sky. We could watch, but not hear, the little speedboats chugging by, leaving visible white wakes as they sliced against the blue water.

  Under a fine old chestnut tree, there was a wooden table near a bench. Pepi’s sister had packed up our sandwiches for us in a wicker picnic hamper. We sat down and ate.

  “Jeremy, look down there!” I said, pointing across the lake. “Isn’t that the Isola Comacina where we had that great lunch? Where your mum used to take you as a boy?”

  “Yes, it certainly is,” Jeremy said, and there was something in his tone that made me slide over to sit closer to him.

  “Want mustard?” I asked, teasingly.

  He grinned, and said, “Penny. I just want to say, I’m sorry for all that kerfuffle with Lydia and the whole London crowd.”

  “Don’t even speak of it,” I said, “don’t even mention her name, or she’ll turn up again.”

  “No, she won’t,” he promised. “Not anymore.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked with mock skepticism.

  “Absolutely. You see, the final straw was when she came clomping onto our boat in those wretched high heels,” Jeremy declared. “Did you happen to notice all the little holes she made on that priceless deck? I thought Claude was going to cry. It looked as if she’d jumped up and down on a pogo stick all over the bloody deck.”

  “To tell you the truth,” I said dryly, “I didn’t notice. I was too busy watching her make lipstick marks on your collar.”

  “Well, she very nearly ruined Penelope’s Dream,” Jeremy said. “We can’t have that sort of thing in our lives. No, sir.”

  “What about all your posh friends?” I asked.

  “Not a problem,” he added ruefully, “because they know this time it’s the real thing.”

  I glanced up at him quickly. “You see,” he said slowly, “blockhead that I am, I finally figured out why I was willing to keep letting Lydia disrupt our lives.”

  “You felt guilty about the divorce,” I said promptly.

  “No,” Jeremy said, “I felt guilty because I never loved her.” He said this with genuine sadness, and there wasn’t a trace of a put-down; he wasn’t acting like a guy who was dismissing one woman to placate another. I could tell that it was something truly painful for him.

  “And that’s why,” he said softly, “I couldn’t face it until now. Nor tell her outright to leave us alone. I knew I’d caused her pain without even realizing why. I was just too stupid to understand. I must have deceived myself, too; sometimes you just persist in believing you can straighten things out without looking too closely at them.

  I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. But it wasn’t until you came back into my life that I could even begin to comprehend what it feels like to honestly be in love with someone, for keeps.”

  I had an unusual, joyous sensation of something very calming, very peaceful, very eternal, descending on me like a feather-light but protective cloak. I have never felt so serene and quiet in my entire life. I felt strong enough to reach out and embrace the entire world.

  “Then,” I said gently, “there’s room for all your friends.”

  Jeremy looked at me with gratitude. But what he said teasingly was, “Well, of course, they’re all utterly aware that I’ve got my hands full with this one particular woman of mine, who is more than enough for any mortal man.”

  “Humph,” I said. “That makes me sound like a little trouble-maker. Like one of those dizzy dames.”

  “Not at all,” Jeremy assured me. “It would be a most noble job to look after Penny-the-heiress, and I am willing to devote the entire rest of my life to it. Anyone can see what a full-time occupation this will be. It’s bad enough that, already, I’ve had to fend off a Russian oligarch, a young French gendarme, a German count’s son . . . Not to mention countless future suitors,” Jeremy continued. “I can see it all now: a Swiss ski instructor, a Japanese international play-boy, an Australian tennis pro . . . all chasing after the famed American heiress with the copper-colored hair.”

  “You’ll be my bodyguard?” I inquired, deliberately misunderstanding. “I rather thought you were heading in a different direction, ” I said, “what with that serious tone and all.”

  He leaned closer to me, and took my hand in his.

  “You fool,” he said sternly. “I am trying to tell you, in my own torturous way, that I think it’s time we made this rather personal engagement of ours official.”

  “Hmmm,” I said playfully. “I can certainly see why you need me. What other woman could possibly put up with such a grumpy—albeit sexy—Englishman like you, for all eternity?”

  I cocked my head, pretending to consider all my options. “Should I actually agree to a return engagement with you . . . when, after all, as you’ve pointed out, I now have all these interesting, tempting men at my doorstep . . . ? Hmmm . . .” I said, gazing skyward.

  “You really have no choice,” Jeremy warned. “You’ll never get rid of me now. Wherever you go, I shall follow you, just like a bloodhound. If necessary, I shall hire a skywriter declaring that you are mine. If need be, I will have the police stop all cars and planes and boats, and put out a dragnet, and I will haul you in like a big fish.”

  “You still haven’t quite said it,” I noted. “Not in so many words. Not really. Therefore, I’m not really sure what you have in mind.”

  He put his hand in his jacket pocket, and he pulled out a little dark blue velvet box.


  “Ordinarily,” he said, “I wouldn’t dare go out on a limb and try to make a purchase of this magnitude for a woman who clearly has her own personal tastes in fashion. But, you see, this ruby has been in my family, on my mum’s side, for years. Her mum gave it to her when she was sixteen. It was a pendant, and she said her mum made her keep it in a vault, so she hardly ever got to wear it. She’d almost forgotten about it. For some odd reason, she gave it to me when we were at her place in London. I can’t imagine why, can you? So, I had it made into a ring for you. If you want it.”

  I opened the box with slightly shaking fingers. Inside was a beautiful glowing ruby, surrounded by sparkling diamonds and set in that lovely antique gold which has the look of endless time.

  “Jeremy,” I said, too choked up to say what I really wanted to. “When did you do this?”

  “In Frankfurt,” he said. “I’ve been hanging on to it ever since then, waiting for the proper moment. Because it really does have to be a proper moment, doesn’t it? The very second that you pointed to the Isola Comacina, I felt my life had come full circle, and that, when I was a boy, sitting there gazing across the lake this way, you were the one I was waiting for. You and I are a team, in work and life, and wherever you go I want to be there with you.”

  Now my eyes did fill up with tears, which I tried to wink away. Jeremy saw them, and said, “Penny!” and hugged me tightly, and kissed the tears away. “Will you marry me?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I whispered. “Oh, yes.”

  “Excellent,” he said.

  And as we sat there, the mysterious winds of Lake Como began to shift, stirring the blossoms in the trees to carry the bewitching fragrance of jasmine and roses to us. It was a soft, sweet wind, and it made us breathe deeply as I leaned my head against Jeremy’s shoulder, watching the tide ripple in response.

  “When the breva and the tivà winds shift like that,” I told him, “legend says we must each make a silent wish.”