Connie walked through the hall putting out lights and then slowly climbed the stairs to her bedroom. This was over the drawing room and shared with it a lovely view across the canal. After getting undressed, but still feeling restless, she put on her dressing gown and stood by the window thinking of the difference between where she was now and the place where she was born. The difference too between the heir to centuries of Counts Colomb-Paravacini, and the fourteenth baronet, successor to the equally ancient Woodvilles. One was a deeply cultured, elegant man of the world, at home in salons and opera houses, art galleries and Venetian palaces. The other, despite his heritage, was a son of the soil, an unlettered man who could not discourse about Dante or Tiepolo, Verdi or Mazzini, even supposing he knew who they were. He was plain and simply a countryman turned into a brave soldier by the war. In many ways a simple man. Yet Carson was not a simpleton and, for her, he still possessed the enormous power to attract.
It was perhaps fortunate that a woman in her position, a spinster in her thirties, even if a wealthy one, could even contemplate marriage to two such different men.
But if the opportunity were given her which would she choose?
She slipped off her gown and climbed rather wearily into bed where she lay for a long time, hands beneath her head, gazing at the reflection made on the ceiling from the lights that still burned on the water. But her last thoughts as she drifted off to sleep were not of the grandeurs of Venice, but of that small town so far away, and Young Lochinvar.
Connie slept fitfully, perhaps not surprisingly as she had a lot on her mind. If, as seemed possible, Paolo intended to propose marriage to her, how would she respond? She could hardly ask for more time as he had virtually been courting her for over three years. But was it what she wanted? At the risk of spending the rest of her life as a spinster did she really want to be Contessa Colomb-Paravacini with all the duties and responsibilities that that entailed? But, really, the most important thing was whether or not she was in love with Paolo, and she thought she knew the answer to that.
Despite the lateness of the hour at which she went to bed she was up early and she took a walk through the streets as far as the Rialto Bridge before returning home. Winter was fast approaching and the wind blowing in from the sea was keen. When she got back her maid Elena had laid breakfast in the small sitting room, much favoured by Miss Fairchild when she was alive as in size and its atmosphere of cosiness it reminded her of Wenham to which she probably remained more drawn than Connie.
As Connie sat down, Elena breezed in with a coffee pot and the morning’s post which she accompanied with a patter of gossip and news from the locality. Each little area of Venice was in its way a counterpart of Wenham being just as preoccupied with trivia and banalities, the doings of the neighbours, the innuendoes and speculations of small town life.
Elena poured coffee while Connie buttered her bread and covered it with a smooth layer of apricot jam. Connie’s mastery of the Italian language was by now complete. For days, even weeks sometimes she spoke nothing else, so she was able to understand even the nuances of what was going on in and around the campi Manin and San Luca. As Elena spoke, Connie idly looked through her mail and was delighted to see a letter from Eliza. Tearing open the envelope she held up a hand to Elena with a smile and fluttered the pages of the letter at her. It seemed to be a surprisingly long one. Elena understood, knowing the importance of letters from home, ceased her torrent and made her departure, closing the door gently behind her.
Connie loved her letters from England. If anything they increased her nostalgia, and this one was no exception.
Eliza started conversationally enough, apologising for taking such a long time to answer Connie’s last letter, giving her the news of Dora, Hugh and Julius. Alexander Martyn was to be sent to Sherborne school when he was older and, meanwhile, would attend a prep as a weekly boarder.
Connie turned over the pages absorbing it all, feeling she was there. She read on hurriedly, subconsciously eager to have news of Carson.
“I have saved my most important news until last, dear Connie, because I suppose I still have some difficulty understanding what has happened. In a way it is so heart-breaking that, whatever one thinks of Agnes, one cannot help but pity her.
At the end of last month Owen suddenly disappeared from Pelham’s Oak. He apparently stole not only every piece of jewellery, some of it very valuable, that Agnes possessed, but also part of the Woodville family silver, small items but all of great value. Obviously he was limited by what he could physically carry.
He left no letter and no explanation and has not been heard of since. Arthur actually saw him drive away in a cab some time in the afternoon while Carson and Agnes were both out, but thought nothing of it. Carson managed to trace the cab to Blandford and ascertained that Owen had called it earlier on in the day and wished to be taken to Blandford station where he caught the train to London. He was accompanied by a quantity of heavy luggage.
Agnes was left in a state of prostration and Carson had to call the doctor.
It appears that only the day before Owen had offered to buy the Chesterfield Street house for her as she told him she was tired of living in the country. I think also that she and Carson had had quite enough of each other! I should have written to you about this before – it happened over a month ago – but I wanted to wait and give you all the news I could as Carson engaged a private investigator to try and find Owen or, at least, what happened to him.
He found no trace of Owen after he left Blandford, bound for Waterloo, and of course he may have alighted at any station on the way.
However he did find some most interesting facts about him.
Owen apparently had no right to the title ‘Sir’. He does not appear in the Baronetage and Knightage of the United Kingdom and Ireland, or on any list pertaining to India or the rest of the Empire. As Mr Wentworth he worked on the tea plantations in Assam as manager for Sir Cuthbert Moran for many years, but left under a cloud before the war on a charge of misappropriation of funds! He was apparently a heavy gambler, a condition which got worse after the death of his wife from some tropical illness. They had no children.
No one seems to know what happened to him during the war until he resurfaced in London in 1918, calling himself “Sir” and giving the impression of being a wealthy gentleman of leisure. He met Agnes some six months later. (We all here, of course, thought there was something not quite top drawer, rather phoney, about Owen; but said nothing for fear of being accused of snobbery. Maybe now, with the gift of hindsight, we were wrong).
The rest is speculation, but it is likely he might have been on the lookout for a rich widow and Agnes seemed to fit the bill. She told Carson she and Owen did not discuss money until after they were married, in fact until very recently.
She realises she was very foolish but as he did not bring up the subject, nor did she. When they did discuss it, she was honest about her circumstances, and thought that if she’d asked him earlier he might have thought her a gold digger! He lied to her and gave the impression he was very well-off.
What also puzzles us is what happened to all the money Agnes was supposed to have inherited from her American railroad millionaire husband? That, as much else about your sister, still remains a mystery.
However, for Owen obviously the crunch came over the question of the house and he realised he would be exposed. Some of Agnes’s jewellery had disappeared a few days before and it is not known if Owen was the thief, and he had been planning his escape all along, or if it gave him an idea and, faced with an impossible situation, he decided to do a bunk.
This business has preoccupied us considerably as you may guess. Poor Carson, who has behaved terribly well, and generously, has offered her a home for as long as she wants in Pelham’s Oak, but he says the London house has to go.
Agnes now finds herself in the distressing situation of being legally married to a rogue and a thief whose whereabouts are unknown, and she is not even “Lad
y Wentworth”, a matter which exercises her almost more than anything else!
Dearest Connie, I wish I could be with you to tell you all this because I know how upset you will be. As I said, whatever we think of her Agnes is, after all, your half-sister and my sister-in-law.
In a way she is the responsibility of us all, and we must rally round her and Carson and help them all we can.
Dora has come back from riding and it is time for lunch. Her friend May is still here. She seems to have become rather attached to a local farmer, Bernard Williams, who farms at Anstey. I think Dora is a bit upset because she thinks May too good for him. However it is a rather odd situation here, between ourselves, and I wouldn’t be too sorry to see the back of May as she can be a little bit of a trouble-maker between me and Dora. But please keep this to yourself.
Do write soon,
Fondest love from us all,
Eliza.”
Paolo Colomb-Paravacini, clutching a huge bunch of flowers in his arm, a broad smile of anticipation on his face, politely removed his hat as Elena opened the door.
“Good morning, Elena.”
“Good morning, Count,” she replied with a respectful bob.
“Is Signorina Yetman ...”
Before he could finish his sentence she stood back and, with a sweeping gesture, ushered him inside saying, as she closed the door:
“Signorina Yetman had to leave suddenly for England. She had some bad news by post this morning concerning a member of her family. She sent her apologies, Count, and left this.”
Elena handed Paolo a letter and, the flowers still in his arm, he tore open the envelope and extracted a single sheet of paper:
‘Dear Paolo,
I do hope you will forgive me for not letting you have notice about cancelling our lunch date, but I received some very bad news this morning from Eliza Heering, my half-brother Ryder’s widow.
I felt I had to be with the family as soon as I could, and the train for Milan leaves in an hour. I will contact you on my return.
With kind regards,
Constance Yetman.’
Elena, hands linked in front of her, watched the visitor critically as he read through the letter once and then twice. Finally he shook his head and stuffed it back in his pocket.
“Well that’s that, then. Did she say when she hoped to be back?”
“She gave no indication, Count. By the amount of luggage she took I think she expects a long stay.”
“I see.”
Paolo put on his hat as Elena opened the door and ushered him outside looking questioningly at the bunch of flowers which, however, he hung on to.
“Shall I give the signorina any message if she telephones, Count?” Elena enquired on the doorstep.
Paolo shook his head. “Just say I called. I’ll be in touch with her. Good day, Elena.”
“Good day, Count.”
Elena watched him as he walked off down the street and then shut the door, wondering what he was going to do with the flowers.
Poor Count Colomb-Paravacini. He might be in love with Miss Yetman but Elena, her personal maid, knew she was not in love with the count but, she suspected, with the very handsome English gentleman whose photograph she had on a dresser in her bedroom, along with other members of her family. It was a happy picture taken, the signorina had said, earlier on in the year and showed them all playing croquet on the lawn of a country house. It had caught the couple glancing at each other and, in Elena’s view, that look spoke volumes.
At the waterside Paolo stood for a long time contemplating the ripples made by the traffic that plied busily along the Grand Canal. Something told him that he had left it too long. He should have proposed much earlier. But how could one be sure that one’s feelings were reciprocated by a cool English miss, seventeen years one’s junior who, moreover, according to the Valentis, was also a woman of exceptional wealth?
He had bided his time and now he felt that the moment had passed. If she had been in love, if she had been anticipating his proposal, as he thought she had, she would surely have put that before any problems to do with her family. After all she was an only child and her mother and father were dead.
Raising his arms Paolo tossed the beautiful and expensive bunch of flowers far out into the canal, watching them separate and drift slowly away as if marking the site of a watery grave and the end of his dreams.
“Miss Yetman to see you, Mrs Wentworth.” Arthur’s plummy tones dwelt somewhat longer on the title than seemed necessary. Agnes looked round angrily but Arthur had slipped out of the door leaving Connie standing looking at the woman she hardly knew, but was now her closest surviving blood relation. There were two half-brothers, with families, but she had not seen them since her father’s funeral in 1895, when she was only eight years old.
“Constance!” Agnes exclaimed in a weary voice, putting down the book she was reading, or attempting to read, so preoccupied were her thoughts with other matters these days. “Constance, no one told me you were coming.”
“No one knew,” Connie said walking slowly up to her half-sister. “As soon as I heard from Eliza about your misfortune I came at once.”
“Well,” Agnes rose and stretched out her arms to embrace Connie, kissing her lightly on both cheeks, “that was very kind of you.”
“I’m terribly, terribly sorry, Agnes.” Connie took her by the hand and led her back to the chair by the fire where she’d been sitting. “It must have been a terrible shock to you.”
“It was. It was indeed.” Agnes sank into her chair and nodded her head vigorously. “I can’t tell you what a shock. I was completely deceived and taken in by a blackguard.” She looked up at Connie piteously. “He has made off with every piece of jewellery I possessed and left me penniless. I am a beggar, at the mercy of Carson and the kindness of friends. Owen liked me to think he was a man of substance. He spent a fortune trying to impress me when we travelled the continent. I must say, to my shame, he succeeded. I thought I knew the opposite sex very well, but I deceived myself.
“It now transpires Owen Wentworth was merely the manager of a tea plantation in India, dismissed years ago for dishonesty. Heaven knows what he had done with himself since then. Somehow he had the money to spend. No expense spared, of course, just to trap me into marriage. He thought I was the one with the money.” Agnes gave an unsteady laugh.
Knowing as much as she did, through Eliza’s letter, Connie thought it unnecessary to probe further.
“But to claim that he had a title! That was monstrous. I am now reduced to being Mrs Wentworth, something the staff here don’t let me forget.”
“That’s a very trivial matter to the harm that has been done you.” Tentatively Connie put out a hand and gently stroked Agnes’s brow. It was, she thought, the closest she had ever come to this woman who was capable of inspiring love and hatred in extreme measures. People fell under her spell and then, when they discovered her true nature, they hated her although, from what she had heard, Guy had adored his fickle, spendthrift wife to the end.
Agnes leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. At the roots of her blonde coiffeur, Connie was shocked to see that her hair was grey. Her face was more lined than she had ever imagined possible and she found she was looking at a prematurely aged woman. Her mind flew back to the dazzling impression Agnes had made when she had returned to Wenham in 1912. All eyes turned as she came into the room, her hair piled high, with a fringe and a cluster of ringlets behind one ear, a sapphire-blue, full-skirted evening dress with a rather daring neckline displaying a glimpse of her voluptuous breasts. Although she was not tall she seemed to tower over everyone and all eyes turned to her. Not a glance had been spared for Connie – ostensibly the star of the evening – dowdy, frumpish, ill at ease in the ridiculous dress Miss Fairchild had had made for her. A more unflattering contrast to Agnes could hardly have been imagined.
Now, Connie fancied, a mere eight years later the boot was on the other foot, and Agnes seemed to reali
se it. She was staring at her young sister with a puzzled expression.
“I can’t get over the change in you, Constance. It is as though you were another person. I used to think of you as a little mouse, but now...”
Still hurt by the term Connie removed her hand from Agnes’s forehead and slumped into a chair beside her. “I used to be a little mouse,” she said.
“I think Miss Fairchild liked you that way.” Agnes pursed her lips grimly. “But she came unstuck when she tried to marry you off to Carson ...”
“Please, Agnes,” Connie said urgently, gripping her arm, “please don’t refer to that ever again.”
“I hope you haven’t really come to see Carson?” Agnes gave her a sharp, shrewd look. “Not trying to throw yourself at him again, are you?”
“Of course not!” Connie riposted angrily. “Don’t be so cruel.”
“I am being realistic, child. You have been hurt once and I don’t want it to happen to you again. After all, we are sisters and I have some care for you, though you may not think so.”
Now Agnes reached out and the palm of her hand curled round Connie’s cheek, lingering there for a moment. “Carson is not to be trusted. He is a womaniser and they never change. He is also as short of money as his father was when I came on the scene and unwisely married him, thinking I should have a home and security for life. If Carson can get his hands on you he will, but I’m afraid it will be for your money and not for any other attribute you may think you have.”
Connie got to her feet and stood looking down at her sister.
“Agnes that is a perfectly horrible thing to say.”
“Nevertheless it is true.” Agnes met her eyes with equanimity, rather as though the chance to needle Connie and cast aspersions at the hated Carson had cheered her up. “I want you to take care. I understand you are a wealthy woman, very wealthy indeed as you had three fortunes left you. Your mother left you all her money and estate, so did our father and so did Miss Fairchild. Would that I had had the chance.” Agnes interrupted her flow with a deep sigh. “Life might have turned out very differently for me if our father had shared his fortune with his two daughters, instead of leaving it all to you.”
In This Quiet Earth (Part Three of The People of this Parish Saga) Page 15
