Dennis Wheatley - The Rising Storm

The coaches were drawn by mules and the state of the roads was so appalling that it was impossible to travel anywhere with a woman and baggage at any speed. Moreover Madrid was in the very centre of the country, four hundred miles from the nearest port. So if they went by coach and Don Diego decided to pursue them they would have little hope of reaching the coast without being overtaken. On his journey to Madrid Roger had had ample opportunity to revise his ideas, and decided that he must persuade Isabella to come with him on horseback; but he had overlooked the fact that a boy of Quetzal's age would never be able to stay the pace required to keep a lead on such a long journey.

He was still wrestling unsuccessfully with this problem when he decided that the time had come at which he might make his call; and having already located the long tree-lined avenue where he had been told that the Sidonia y Ulloa mansion lay, he turned down it. When he came to two tall pillars with stone eagles mounted on them, which had been described to him, he found that the iron gates which supported were on the latch. There was no lodge; bushes and cactus fringed the drive, and obliquely through them he could see lights, showing that the house lay some distance away. Slipping inside he walked cautiously along the drive until, on the left, about a hundred yards from the entrance, the bushes gave way to a group of palms, in the centre of which stood the pavilion.

It was a small, single-storied Moorish building with a miniature tiled court and fountain to one side of it, and in the faint moonlight it looked just the sort of romantic setting to appeal to the impressionable Georgina. Stepping up to the low door Roger knocked, and it was opened almost instantly by his old friend Tom, Colonel Thursby's valet, who said he had been warned to expect him. After they had greeted one another warmly Tom showed him into a pleasant room with windows of arabesque lattice-work that looked out on the fountain court. There was no European furniture in it, only chests, stools, vases and brasses of Eastern design; and Georgina, now clad in a becoming neglige1, was reclining gracefully against a pile of cushions on a low divan.

"Roger, how truly marvellous this is!" she exclaimed, as he hurried smiling towards her. Then, as he made to kiss her hand she flung a bare arm round his neck and, pulling his head down, kissed him on both cheeks.

Releasing him after a moment, she hurried on: " 'Tis now over a year since we met, and I declare you are grown more monstrous handsome than ever. For two pins I would throw away my Spanish Count for you, and seduce you anew, even if in the meantime you have gotten yourself a wife. But you must tell me all - everythmg.''

Sitting down beside her, he shook his head "Nay. I am not married yet. Whether it will be even possible for me ever to be so to the lady of my choice seems doubtful. But we are fully committed to one another, and 'tis about the matter that I have come here tonight to see you."

Georgina pulled a rueful face. "Fie, sir! And shame upon you! When Papa told me of your projected visit he winked an eye and said he knew us far too well to think that in any attempt to play gooseberry he could outsit you. Do you tell me now that the poor man has sought his bed thus early for no good reason?"

Knowing she was not speaking seriously, Roger grinned at her. "Could I but die tomorrow I would glory in my last act having been to make love to you; for you have grown to a beauty that positively takes the breath away. But since I cannot, and have now developed a conscience in such matters, I beg you spare me the terrible temptation that your words suggest."

"So you have developed a conscience?" She gave him a mocking smile. "Poor fellow! But you'll recover from it, I have no doubt. To be honest, though, I understand that better than I would have done a year ago; for I, too, have one now. Or shall we say that for a time it pleases me to be chaste? In Vienna, in Budapest, on the Rhine! Ah me! Even my zest for that type of entertainment became a trifle jaded; so for this winter at least I decided to become a prude. I am discovering a new pleasure in turning over in my bed in the morning and not having to argue with myself whom I will or will not allow to tumble me in it during the coming night. But perhaps that is a sign that I am growing old."

Roger threw his head back and laughed aloud again. "Old! Why, you are not yet twenty-four, and with a face and figure unrivalled since Helen of Troy. What you really mean, my sweet, is that you are growing up. But seriously; it must be this new phase upon which you have entered that accounts for your steadfastly refusing your favours to Don Diego."

She frowned. " 'Tis true enough. But how comes it, sir, that you should be so well versed in my most intimate affairs?"

"Ah! I have my spies. Yet I am come here to beg you tell me if you have any interest in this Spanish Grandee, other than to amuse yourself by leading him on a string?"

Georgina's face took on a thoughtful look, then she sighed: "From you, my dearest Roger, I would never seek to conceal the truth. I am mightily smitten with him. He is a very serious person, and though there must be many such, no other of the type has ever held my interest long enough for me to get to know him well. But I will admit that 'tis unlikely I would ever have come to do so had I not first been attracted by his physical attributes. I could gaze upon that profile of his for hours. 'Tis a more lovely, perfect thing than any cameo ever carved by an ancient master."

"Do you mean," Roger asked a shade uneasily, "that if he were free to offer you his hand you would accept it ?"

"I might. I have a great respect for him; and that at least would be a pleasant change from the contempt with which I was forced to regard poor Humphrey. The castle to which Papa and I accompanied him for a few days for the birth of the Condesa's child, and the celebrations in honour of its arrival, is quite impossible. 'Tis cold as an ice-box and draughty as a barn; but 'twould be amusing to make it habitable as a new background for myself. I doubt, though, if we should visit it more than once every few years, as I would never give up Stillwaters; and whoever I married would first have to agree to allowing me to live where I would as the spirit moved me."

Roger quickly looked away from her, as he said: "Do you sometimes share these daydreams with the Count?"

"Sometimes," she murmured; then she laughed. " 'Tis a most efficient panacea to divert him from becoming troublesome whenever he is more pressing than usual that I should let him lie with me."

"Have you no thought at all for his unfortunate wife?"

Georgina's big eyes opened to their maximum extent. "His wife! And why, pray, should I have? My faults are many, but at least you should know that I would never be guilty of breaking up a romantic marriage. This was as frigid an example as ever you will meet of an alliance between two great houses. The pulses of neither of them have quickened by a beat since the day they first set eyes on one another."

"I am aware of that. Yet your encouragement of Don Diego may have terrible results for her."

"Nonsense, my dear! Do you think that she still has idealistic yearnings for him, and that I have come between her and their realiza­tion ? If you do, pray disabuse yourself of the notion. Quiet she may be; and sanctimonious, with her long thin face. But, all the same, the sly little cat has consoled herself with at least one lover."

Roger swiftly suppressed the impulse categorically to-deny this imputation against Isabella; but, controlling his voice as well as he could, he said: "What reason have you for assuming that?"

"My poor Don Diego does not know it," Georgina burbled, with sudden merriment in her eyes, "but this winter he was still the laughing­stock of Naples. It seems that in the autumn an English visitor there became enamoured of the Condesa's charms, and at that time Diego had cast his eye upon a notorious gambler's moll, named Sara Goudar; but she demanded an excessive price. The rich English milor paid up for Diego to enjoy the harlot, so that he might have a clear field to enjoy Diego's wife."