Miss Weston's Masquerade

by Louise Allen

  ‘You look much better,’ she said briskly, whipping away the tray and bringing him warm water and cloth. ‘I think you ought to go back to sleep again. I’ll leave you in peace and go and find out about the sea bathing.’

  ‘Cassie?’ He seemed bemused by the transformation from vulnerable femininity to brisk efficiency. ‘Is anything wrong?’

  ‘Wrong? Of course not.’ She shook out the starched tray cloth with a snap, not meeting his eyes. All she wanted to do was throw herself back into his arms and tell him… What? That it was the only place she felt content?

  To her intense relief, Nicholas was up and about when she tapped on his door the next morning.

  ‘What about the salve?’ she asked, gathering up discarded clothing to avoid looking at him.

  ‘It’s all right, I put it on myself. Smells disgusting, so it must be doing some good.’

  Cassandra could feel herself blushing with relief. Her sleep had been troubled by half dreams, half fantasies of rubbing the salve into Nicholas’s naked shoulder and what might follow afterwards. The thought of what Nicholas might assume if he realised how he preoccupied her was mortifying. Why, he might imagine her to have a tendre for him.

  All it was, she told herself firmly, was the natural attraction of finding herself in the constant company of one of London’s most eligible men, a man who had offered her sanctuary and a means of escape when her world had been turned upside down. As soon as she reached Vienna, this allure, the dreams she had of him, would fade as other companions filled her life.

  ‘Should you be up?. She shook out a shirt, then folded it briskly.

  ‘Of course. I can’t lie in bed on a beautiful day like this. It would take more than a blow from a ruffian’s cudgel to keep me on my back. Now, here’s some money You go and do some shopping, buy what you like, some lace or some sweetmeats. I’ll see you here for dinner, I’m going to try the good doctor’s sea bathing.’

  ‘Shouldn’t I come?’ Cassandra asked without thinking.

  Nicholas caught her eye and pointed to the window. ‘Lean out and to your left and you can just see the men’s bathing beach. I assume you didn’t go and look last night.’

  ‘No.’ Cassandra did as he said, then gasped with shock at the glimpse of bare flesh. ‘Nicholas! They have no clothes on.’

  ‘Then I suggest you stay well away from the shoreline, Cassie. In fact, take care where you wander if you do go out.’ The door banged shut, leaving Cassandra gaping after him.

  Despite the money burning a hole in her pocket, Cassandra didn’t feel like mingling with the crowds. She headed away from the centre, climbing through the narrow streets past the close-packed stone houses to the ramparts crowning the town. Below her lay a vista of the sea to one side and, in the distance, white capped mountains. In between the land was full of fruit trees, already heavy with oranges, lemons and pomegranates and the hot air hummed with the song of cicadas.

  Even the simplest house among the groves was neat and white painted, hung about with bougainvillea, roses and climbing vines. Cassandra wandered down into an olive grove, touching the ancient twisting trunks in wonderment. They seemed a thousand years old. She found a shady patch under an olive and sat watching the spear-shaped leaves trace patterns as they filtered the sunlight. Below her a goatherd was leaning on his staff and flirting with a dark-eyed girl who had brought him a dinner basket.

  Cassandra leaned back against the gnarled trunk and closed her eyes. This was all she had ever wanted, to get away from home, to travel, to experience foreign ways and see strange sights. This place was idyllic, almost paradise, yet, like Eden, it had its serpent. Every time she closed her eyes, she could feel the heat of Nicholas’s body under her palms, feel his lips on hers, hear the warm strength of his voice caressing her. It was no use pretending to herself any longer: she was falling in love with him.

  And he would never love her, however much it seemed on occasion he was physically attracted to her. The Earl of Lydford had no time for gauche girls fresh out of the schoolroom.

  She could imagine his embarrassment, how kind he would be if he discovered her tendre. She could live without his love, somehow, but she couldn’t bear his pity.

  ‘Cassandra, wait a moment.’

  She hesitated on the threshold of the bedchamber, her arms full of Nicholas’s freshly pressed shirts, then reluctantly came back into the room.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I need to talk to you, sit down.’ Nicholas gestured to the chair opposite him in front of the cold fireplace. ‘I’ve scarcely seen you the last two days, you haven’t even eaten your meals with me.’

  Cassandra sat down awkwardly, still hugging the shirts to her chest. ‘The doctor said you had to be quiet,’ she said defensively. ‘And you did say I could explore the town.’

  ‘I have no complaint if you wish to go about and enjoy yourself.’ He hesitated, obviously at a loss to know how to deal with her in this uncommunicative mood. ‘I was worried about you.’

  Still she wouldn’t look at him, risk meeting his eyes. Instead she sat scuffing the parquet with the toe of her shoe.

  ‘I know what it is that’s troubling you,’ he began, then broke off as the fierce blush swept up to the roots of her hair.

  Cassandra felt sick with humiliation. How could he have guessed how she felt for him? Oh, the mortification of it. He was going to be kind about it, she could tell. Tolerant of this puppy love. He wouldn’t take her seriously, or worse, he would pity her.

  ‘I can see I was right,’ he began. ‘It pains me to embarrass you, but I think we should talk of it.’

  ‘How did you guess?’ Cassandra whispered.

  ‘It was natural you should be upset to find you had fallen asleep in my bed the other evening. After all, you are a gently brought up young woman. But we shouldn’t reproach ourselves for what was entirely innocent.’ He leant forward and patted her hand gently. ‘We had both suffered a terrible shock, but it was natural we should fall asleep like that. Try not to feel so conscious of it, Cassie, nothing happened, after all.’

  Cassandra could only gape at him. He thought she was stricken because she had slept in his arms for an hour? And she had so very nearly blurted out her love for him.

  Nicholas obviously misinterpreted her expression. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Cassie.’ He stood up and ranged around the room while he searched for the right words for what he had to say. ‘I admit there have been moments when my… instincts have led me to regard you in a way I now regret.’

  ‘Like that evening in Paris?’ Cassandra heard her own voice sharp with reaction.

  ‘Yes, like Paris.’ Nicholas turned to face her. ‘But I promise that won’t happen again, Cassandra.’ He managed a laugh, although it sounded hollow in the high-ceilinged room. ‘Do you realise how good you are for me? Why, I declare, by the time we arrive in Vienna, my mother will not recognise the man she left behind, I will have become so responsible and sober.’

  Nicholas was as good as his word. Two weeks later, as their carriage neared the Venetian lagoon, Cassandra reflected that she could hardly have had a more sober, correct, boring companion if Godmama had appointed a strict chaperone for her.

  Nicholas had dutifully pointed out the beauties of the Plain of Lombardy, encouraged her to read improving passages from the guidebooks he acquired along the way and ensured she went to bed early after a good dinner.

  Even the excitements of passing from one independent kingdom or duchy to another were kept from her, for Nicholas insisted she stay in the carriage while he ruthlessly bribed officials and negotiated passports and health certificates at the endless customs posts.

  By the time they reached Padua, Cassandra had decided she had been quite mistaken: far from being in love with the man, she actively disliked him.

  With bad grace she clumped on board the burchio waiting to take them down the Brenta Canal from Padua to Venice and glowered out at the unlovely town crowding the banks.

  ‘Stop s
ulking, Cassie,’ Nicholas said sharply, then seemed to relent. In a softer tone, he added, ‘I’m sorry, I should have realised. Are you frightened to go on a boat again?’

  ‘No.’ She scowled down into the greenish depths of the still water. It was true, she wasn’t afraid, not on this placid canal. She was quite simply bored. ‘I’m bored. I’m tired of dirty inns and bumpy roads and greasy food and no diversions at all. And don’t say you warned me, I know you did.’

  That was only part of it. Nicholas had withdrawn into the half avuncular, half patronising manner of their first meeting in London. If he had ever found her tempting or alluring, it was quite plain he no longer did. Sulking was not going to improve matters, but she was too hot, tired, dusty and cross to care.

  ‘If you don’t take that mulish look off your face, I’ll tell the officials in Venice that you haven’t got a bill of health and they’ll shut you up in the Lazarrette for forty days with all the pestilential seamen.’

  Cassandra glowered at him. He was only half-joking and it seemed he was as tired of her company as she was of his. ‘Well, it would have to be more entertaining than the last fourteen days.’

  Nicholas’s eyes narrowed, and not against the slanting evening sun. ‘You are asking to be put across my knee and have your britches paddled, my lad,’ he began between clenched teeth.

  ‘I would like to see you try it.’ Cassandra knew she was going too far, but she couldn’t stop herself. She had tried being good and obedient and meek, and he treated her like a troublesome scrub of a boy. The knowledge that she must look like one only rubbed salt in her wounded vanity. Her hair was full of dust no brushing would remove, the fleas last night had been worse than usual and she had had no clean linen for three days.

  ‘When we get to the palazzo…’ Nicholas began, real displeasure in his voice.

  ‘Oh, be quiet.’ Cassandra was on the verge of tears and didn’t care who knew it. Abroad was dangerous and squalid, travel was boring and uncomfortable and Nicholas was a beast. Or perhaps he was just a man and they were all like that.

  She sniffed loudly and cast him a darkling look, half expecting him to carry out his threat and put her across his knee. She was saved from whatever retaliation Nicholas was contemplating by the arrival of another party of travellers with a pile of baggage.

  Wordlessly he handed her a large pocket handkerchief and then ignored her as they embarked for the fairy-tale city of Venice in a mood of sullen antagonism.

  The burchio was a long, flat-bottomed craft with an awning of canvas over metal hoops and the passengers were a mixed bag who would have entertained Cassandra under different circumstances. Opposite her a soberly dressed lawyer, with his equally sober young family, divided their disapproving glances equally between the two loud-voiced gallants perched precariously in the stern and a gaudily dressed and painted woman who winked at all the menfolk unwise enough to catch her eye. A party of peasants complete with malodorous goat added to the general discomfort.

  By mid-afternoon on the second day, Nicholas, after a look at Cassandra’s set face, began to worry that she was not sulking but sickening. ‘Cass,’ he began in a low voice, then saw her face light up for the first time in many days.

  ‘Oh, look.’ She pointed out under the half-moon of the awning to where the banks of the canal opened out into a vast lagoon. Across the shimmering water the towers and palaces of Venice hung like a mirage as cloud shadows chased across the water and mud made the whole scene unreal and dreamlike. ‘Nicholas, it is beautiful,’ she whispered.

  ‘It is rather fine,’ he remarked casually, then grinned at her fierce expression, ‘Oh, yes, you’re right, it is wonderful. A dream city.’

  Their passage across the lagoons of Chioggia and Malamocco gave them different vistas every few minutes as the boatmen wove between mud banks and islets. At last they entered the Canale della Giudecca, a waterway as wide as the Thames at London, and as crowded, with craft of all sizes, from sea-going galleys with banks of oars, to the narrow black gondolas.

  ‘Look,’ she said, pointing, her grip on his arm making him smile. ‘Gondolas, I’ve read about those. But reading of Venice in Papa’s study gave me no idea it would be like this, so alive.’

  Seeing it through her eyes added to his own perception, Nicholas realised. The noise of bargemen shouting, the bustle of constant activity between the shore and the boats, the vivid colours under the brilliant sun and the exotic shapes and colours of the buildings were almost overwhelming. At his side Cassandra seemed to have forgotten her miseries and discomforts.

  ‘Ouch! Cass, let go of my arm.’ The excited grip sent sharp fingernails digging in. She hadn’t even known she had hold of him, he realised as she let go and smoothed down the creased cloth of his sleeve with a penitent hand. ‘Never mind that.’ He pointed ahead. ‘There’s St Mark’s and the Campanile.’

  Cassandra was trying to find the correct page in the guidebook without taking her eyes off the gorgeously exotic facade of the Doge’s Palace, its delicate pink and white walls seeming to float on the water, its walls crowned with Arabic ornaments and spikes.

  No sooner had the barge drawn up alongside the crowded pavement than she had scrambled ashore and was hopping from one foot to the other with impatience, while Nicholas retrieved their luggage. ‘Come on,’ she urged, ‘we go up here to get to the Piazza.’

  Nicholas had to seize her by the collar to restrain her. ‘Not now, Cass. Wait here and guard the luggage while I hire a gondola to take us to the palazzo.’

  ‘A palace? We’re staying in a palace?’ All thoughts of exploration had clearly fled.

  ‘If you hadn’t been sulking for the last sennight, I would have told you,’ he said, amused ‘It’s been hired by my friend Beckwood, but he’s been summoned to Rome by his uncle at the Embassy, so we’ll have the place to ourselves.’

  And the thought of that privacy and comfort was a considerable relief. In a private lodging Cassie would have only the servants to deceive. There would be no sharp-eyed noblemen to avoid, no sharp-tongued harridans to gull. And he could relax, knowing she was in a safe, comfortable environment.

  Travelling in the gondola after the heavy barge was like riding a horse after being in a carriage. The gondolier, dextrously propelling the swift craft with strokes of his oar, dodged between the shoals of boats ferrying people of all classes about their business. They made their way up the Grand Canal, under the Rialto Bridge, then turned sharply into a little side canal no more than twelve feet wide and flanked by twisting alleys and landing stages.

  Their gondolier finally drew into the side of a miniature square with marble steps leading down to the water. The paving was decorated with coloured inlays and in the centre a little fountain bubbled.

  Close to, the glamour was a trifle tarnished, he realised. The fine frontages were stained with water marks and the stucco was peeling to expose the stonework. Greenish water lapped at the walls and he laughed as Cassandra’s nose wrinkled at the smell. ‘The tide will not flush these little waterways as it does the main canals. Is the palace not as grand as you expected?’

  ‘It is wonderful,’ Cassandra protested. ‘So old and mysterious.’ She fell silent at the appearance at the door of a black-coated major domo flanked by footmen. With a gesture, he dispatched them to unload the rowing boat loaded with luggage which had followed the gondola and then advanced on Nicholas.

  ‘My lord.’ He bowed low. ‘Welcome to the Palazzo Lucca. Signore Beckwood is devastated that he cannot be here to greet you, but all is prepared. Pray enter.’

  Nicholas rolled his eyes at Cassandra and followed the self-important little figure as it swept up the steps to the main door. Cassandra began to follow, then stopped, looking up. He followed her gaze to where her eye had been caught by a flash of colour at a window in the facade to her right.

  A woman dressed in a robe of emerald green taffeta was leaning on the sill watching their arrival, idly brushing out the mass of coppery-gold curls whic
h cascaded over one bare shoulder. Nicholas knew he was staring, but he had rarely seen such a blatantly sensuous creature before. As she watched, a man’s bare arm appeared, caressing the naked shoulder, and the woman turned and disappeared into the shadowy room.

  ‘I thought you said there was no one else staying here,’ Cassandra hissed when she caught him up in the monumental entrance hall.

  ‘There isn’t.’ He turned as she tugged at his sleeve.

  ‘But I thought I saw someone in the window over there.’ She pointed to the wing of the palazzo.

  ‘That’s another house,’ he explained. ‘Every building is crowded in against its neighbour, land is so scarce.’ He turned away and mounted the staircase in the wake of the major domo, trying not to think about the alluring woman so close and the temptations of the one even closer.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Cassandra mused to herself that she was certainly learning a great deal about the world. She could hazard a guess at the woman’s profession, but somehow the broad daylight made her state of undress seem even more scandalous. Nicholas had not seemed to react at all. Perhaps he hadn’t seen quite as clearly as she had.

  They were shown into a suite of rooms overlooking the canal at the front and the courtyard at the side. Nicholas’s bedchamber faced directly across from the courtesan’s balcony and Cassandra closed the carved wooden shutters and jammed down the locking bar. ‘The sunlight is bad for the draperies,’ she explained, as he blinked in the sudden gloom.

  ‘The perfect housewife,’ he remarked drily, but made no move to re-open them. ‘Baths and hot water for myself and for my valet,’ he said to the major domo, but the man was already ushering in footmen with hip baths and brass water jugs.

  Cassandra retreated to her own room which adjoined Nicholas’s with a shared balcony between them. As she closed the shutters, she peeped across at the opposite window, but it, too, was shuttered now.