Margarita and the Earl Read online

  “No, Captain.”

  “They are horsemen who live on the llanos—the grassy plains around the Orinoco River in the east of Venezuela. They are half-naked savages who kill for the pleasure of it. Boves has raised them for Spain, promising loot as their reward. Rape, torture, and mutilations follow in their wake. They lanced or knifed both the soliders and civilians who had withstood their siege in Valencia. I have heard that Boves personally lanced to death Don Antonio Carreño.”

  “Dear God, Captain,” said the earl, his strongly marked brows drawn together. “What kind of a country is Venezuela?”

  “A country that is bleeding to death, my lord.”

  “Then why did you leave my granddaughter there?” the old man demanded harshly.

  “I said Valencia fell on July 9, my lord. On July 6 Simón Bolívar evacuated Caracas. When I arrived in the city from La Guaira, it was virtually deserted. Twenty thousand people had decided to go with Bolívar rather than wait for Boves.”

  The earl had long since raised his eyes from his hands and was now regarding Captain Williams steadily. “Evacuated?” he asked. “Where did they go?”

  “I understand they were heading for the coast, my lord. They had not been heard of when I had to leave for England.”

  “And my granddaughter was with them?”

  “Yes, my lord. Thank God her brother Fernando was with her. And Bolivar is a cousin of the Carreños. He will take care of Margarita, if he can.”

  “Was this Boves in pursuit?”

  “It is not so much Boves they have to fear at present as the climate. They have left the mountains, my lord, and it is the rainy season. Fever will be their biggest foe.”

  There was a tiny pause, then the old man leaned forward in his chair, his eyes commanding the attention of Captain Williams. “I want my granddaughter, Captain Williams. She is all that is left of me in this world, and I want her here. In England. Do you understand me?”

  “Perfectly, my lord.”

  “Do you return to South America?”

  “I do not think immediately, my lord.”

  “Prepare to embark, Captain,” the earl said grimly. “I still count for something in this country. I will speak to Yorke at the Admiralty. I want you to find my granddaughter and I want you to bring her to England. You may bring her brother, too, if he will come.”

  “I doubt if Fernando will come, my lord,” Captain Williams answered with sober deliberateness. “But if Margarita is alive, I shall bring her, you may rest assured of that.”

  *

  Six weeks later Captain Williams was sailing into the port of La Guaira. He stood on the deck of his ship and watched the deceptively peaceful sight before him. Mountains plunged straight into the sea from heights of seven thousand feet. The water around the ship was green and blue and violet. Porpoises played in the sparkling sea, and gulls circled slowly and gracefully. Next to the ship a flying fish leaped out of the water in a shimmering shower of light. It did not seem possible that war could exist in such an enchanted place.

  The news Captain Williams learned at La Guaira was not good. On August 18 Bolívar had tried to make a stand against Morales at Aragua de Barcelona, on the coast. He had had three thousand men against Morales’s eight thousand. Morales had prevailed and, disciple of Boves that he was, had cut the throats not only of all the prisoners but also of a large part of the inhabitants, as well as a large number of refugees from Caracas. He had even, Captain Williams’s informant told him, carried the massacre into the parish church, killing more than a thousand people who had sought sanctuary. Bolivar had subsequently fallen out with his captains Ribas and Piar and had been forced to flee to Cartagena. The refugees from Caracas had dragged themselves to Cumaná, where they were now, awaiting transportation to Margarita Island, the last Republican stronghold. Hours after he heard this news, Captain Williams set sail from La Guaira for the port of Cumaná, two hundred and fifty miles east.

  *

  The sun had come out at last and beat warmly down on the deck of His Majesty’s gunboat Revenge. Captain Williams looked at the small, solitary figure standing so quietly by the rail, hesitated, then slowly approached it. “I hope you are warmer, Margarita, now that the sun is out,” he said gently.

  The girl, who was clad in a man’s cloak, turned to look up at him. “It feels good on my face,” she said in reply, and he came to stand next to her at the rail. He looked for a moment in silence at her hand as it rested on the rail, and he thought that although it was still too thin, at least it did not look like a skeleton’s hand anymore. After a few days of seasickness, she had started eating, thank God, and even the uninteresting ship’s fare had put some flesh back on her bones.

  Captain Williams still found it difficult to recognize in this silent, impassive girl the sweet and lovely child he had known two years ago in Caracas. She had not given him any trouble about coming. When he found her at Cumaná she was with Doña Eleña de Mora, one of the few survivors of the evacuation march. Of all the twenty thousand Caraqueños who had left with Bolívar, only a few thousand were left. Margarita told him, with no expression in her voice, that Fernando had been killed at Aragua de Barcelona. Dona Elena was the one who told him that Margarita had spent hours searching the battlefield for his body, refusing to leave him, if wounded, for the llaneros’ spears. She had found him, and he was dead.

  She had no clothes but the thin dress she was wearing, and after they were out in the Atlantic a few days, Captain Williams gave her clean sailor’s clothes to wear and his own cloak to wrap herself in for warmth. She had accepted both with the unquestioning passivity that he found so disturbing.

  “When will we reach England, Captain Williams?” she asked him now.

  “In a week or so, I should say. Your grandfather will be very pleased to see you, Margarita.”

  “It was kind of him to send you for me,” she replied politely.

  “He has been very worried about you.”

  “Yes. My father asked me if I wanted to go to England after my mother died. My grandfather had written to ask him if I might go. Of course I could not leave my family.”

  There was a bleak pause as they both realized once again that she no longer had any family to leave. “You will like England, I think,” he said at last, gently.

  “Yes.” For a moment the huge dark eyes looked at him. “It hardly matters, now, where I go.”

  Captain Williams looked back into those eyes and realized that there was nothing he could find to say. So he put his large, warm hand over her small, cold one for a moment, then turned and left her to the solitude she so clearly preferred.

  *

  They arrived in England precisely ten days later, and Captain Williams brought Margarita, wearing her thin dress under his cloak, to the Winslow town house in Berkeley Square. The Earl of Winslow was clearly pleased to see his granddaughter. He had summoned a widowed cousin to Berkeley Square to act as her chaperone and guide, and Margarita had been consigned, with kindly concern, to the gentle ministrations of this lady. The earl then thanked the captain in measured tones, listened without comment to his report of the death of Fernando, and dismissed him with promises of mentioning his satisfaction to First Admiral Yorke at the Admiralty. Of Nicholas Beauchamp there had been no sign.

  Captain Williams did not know why he felt such uneasiness over leaving Margarita. The earl would certainly take good care of her. Had he not called her “all that is left of me in this world.” The captain wondered, and not for the first time, where that left his nephew. And he wondered again why it was his granddaughter the earl had been so anxious to see and not his grandsons.

  Chapter Three

  “Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;

  O Death in Life, the days that are no morel.”

  —Tennyson

  December 1814

  The Earl of Winslow, Lady Moreton, his cousin, and Margarita Carreño, his granddaughter, were seated in the dining room at Berkeley Square having
dinner. “We will be going down to Winslow for Christmas, my dear,” the earl told his granddaughter. “A few weeks in the country will do you good, although I am pleased to see that your looks have already improved considerably since your arrival.” He frowned a little. “However, you are still far too thin. Eat your dinner, my dear. Don’t pick at it.”

  “Yes, grandfather,” Margarita said docilely and put some food in her mouth. The earl smiled at her approvingly. He was very pleased with Margarita. For one thing, she spoke English beautifully. The earl had been afraid she would have a disfiguring accent, but her mother had seen to it that she spoke with correct, English upper-class diction. The only indication she gave that English was not her native language was the formality of her style and an occasional tendency to slightly emphasize the last syllable in a word.

  The earl was also pleased with her appearance. She looked like a half-starved kitten when she first arrived, but several weeks of good food and a new wardrobe had done wonders. She did not look English, but even the earl had to admit that she was lovely.

  “When will we be leaving for Winslow, my lord?” It was Lady Moreton speaking. It had taken her a few minutes to get over her surprise. The earl, as far as she knew, hadn’t set foot in Winslow since his wife died, and that was at least twelve years ago. He had, tacitly, already ceded it to his nephew. Lady Moreton wondered how Nicholas felt about his uncle’s proposed visit. And she wondered, also, how Nicholas felt about the sudden arrival of this cousin from South America. If she knew Nicholas at all, and she did, a little, Lady Moreton thought that he would not like it.

  They left for Winslow at the end of the week. The earl always traveled in a large, old-fashioned coach, emblazoned with his crest. There were a coachman and footman on the box and two footmen behind. Inside the carriage, dressed in a black pelisse of fashionable cut, her hands thrust into a warm chinchilla muff, Margarita sat with the Earl of Winslow and Lady Moreton. It was her first glimpse of the English countryside, and she gazed out of the window with mild interest. The bleak, cold, colorless land seemed to her very satisfactory, its leaden deadness preferable to the warmth and color of tropical Venezuela. It was easier not to feel in such a landscape as this. “Winslow is in Worcestershire, is that correct, grandfather?” she asked after a while.

  “That is right, Margarita,” Lord Winslow responded. “Winslow is one of the oldest sites in England. It is mentioned in Domesday Book.”

  “Domesday Book?” she inquired, a slight pucker between her straight, dark brows. “Please, what is the Domesday Book?”

  Lord Winslow stared at her. “You don’t know?”

  “No,” said Margarita finally, and her small chin elevated a trifle.

  “It was a tax survey made for William the Conqueror, my dear,” said Lady Moreton calmly. “It listed all the major holdings in the country. Winslow is one of the few places mentioned that is still held by the same family.”

  “‘Roger of Beauchamp holds Winslow and there is his castle.’ That was written in 1086, my dear child, and there are still Beauchamps at Winslow.” The earl sounded complacent. “For you it should be a coming home.”

  Lady Moreton glanced quickly at him, then turned her eyes to the window. She thought of the Beauchamp who was waiting for them at Winslow now, and she frowned. She was not looking forward to this Christmas holiday. Nicholas and his uncle mixed about as well as oil and water, and she had a feeling that Margarita would only prove to be an irritant to Nicholas’s already-precarious temper.

  They were perhaps ten minutes from Winslow when the accident happened. The road had narrowed and there was a sharp turn. The phaeton coming so swiftly toward them had evidently not realized the coach was just around the curve. Margarita was turned toward her grandfather, listening to what he was saying, when suddenly the coach rocked violently. There was the sound of shouting. The earl reached out for her but she was pitched violently sidewards, her head struck the side of the coach, and she lost consciousness.

  *

  When she woke, she was lying in an enormous four-poster bed in a large room with a carved wooden ceiling. There was a fire roaring in the fireplace. Her head ached and she raised a hand to her forehead. There was no bandage. She closed her eyes for a minute and memory returned. The rocking coach. The shouting. There had been an accident. “Grandfather,” she said out loud. “Where is grandfather?” Slowly she pushed back the covers. She was wearing a nightgown that she recognized dazedly as one of her own. She slid her legs off the side of the bed. She wasn’t thinking clearly, only that she must get dressed and go find her grandfather. There was a wardrobe on the far side of the room. Her dress must be in there. Her feet touched the floor and she stood up. She took two steps forward, but a sudden onslaught of dizziness caused her to cry out and grab for the nearest post of the bed, clinging to it while she tried to clear her head.

  The door opened and a man’s voice said, “You’re awake! Where is Lucy? You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

  She looked up, still holding to the bedpost. “My grandfather?” she asked. “Where is my grandfather?”

  The man came into the room. “He’s here,” he said. “You’re at Winslow. Get back into bed, please, before you faint.” There was a pause. “I’m your Cousin Nicholas.”

  He seemed enormous. She raised her eyes to his face. It was unsmiling, and the eyes that were watching her steadily held no hint of sympathy. “Is he all right?” she asked.

  There was a brief silence as he watched her, measuringly. She did not care for his look and let go of the post, standing up straight, unconscious of her nightgown and loose hair. “You can tell me the truth,” she said firmly. “Is he badly hurt?”

  Nicholas hesitated, but her eyes on him never wavered. “He’s dead,” Nicholas said. “It wasn’t the accident itself that injured him, but the shock of it was too much for his heart. He was, after all, an old man.” He came no closer to her. “Get back into bed,” he repeated. “You have a concussion. You shouldn’t have been left alone. I’ll send Cousin Lucy to you.”

  She didn’t answer but obediently turned toward the bed. He was putting his hand on the doorknob when he glanced back, briefly. He was just in time to see her pitch forward, soundlessly, to the carpeted floor. He swore and moved quickly to bend over her. Her eyes were closed, the dark lashes lying still on too-pale cheeks. He bent and picked her up. She weighed hardly more than a child, but he knew that already. He had been the one to carry her upstairs. He put her carefully on the bed and pulled the covers over her, then he went to fetch Lady Moreton.

  *

  They wouldn’t allow her to attend the funeral. She had been unconscious for almost eight hours and the doctor insisted that she stay in bed for a few days. When she was allowed up, she was very quiet, keeping mostly to her room. Lady Moreton was very kind. Nicholas she hardly saw, except at dinner. She was painfully aware of him when he did appear. He was so large; she was not used to men as big as he was. He spoke quietly enough to her, but there was an atmosphere of contained force about him that made her shy away. It was there in the hard, arrogant line of cheek and jaw, in the graceful, catlike way he moved. In a way she could not explain, she felt he threatened her. But she was also painfully aware that Winslow now belonged to him and that she was there as his uninvited guest.

  Those days of almost complete solitude gave her an uncomfortable amount of time to think. Her grandfather, the only anchor left in her life, was gone. She had no clue as to what would happen to her next. All her life Margarita had been surrounded by wealth and the security of a family who loved her. She now faced the fact that she was penniless, dependent on the good will of relations whom she did not know. She worried about the future, but no coherent thoughts would come. The problem, she realized dully, was that she did not greatly care what happened to her. There was a frozen sea inside her where once there had been warmth and laughter and love. She ate, she talked, she answered questions, but it was only the outside shell of her that acted. The core
was dead.

  *

  Five days after the funeral, the earl’s lawyer arrived from London. Nicholas, the new earl, had awaited his coming with considerable apprehension. He knew that Winslow was his; it was entailed, there was no choice involved in its disposal. But the means to run Winslow, to bring it back from the neglect of too many years, of this he was not sure.

  There had been no love lost between Nicholas Beauchamp and his uncle. Nicholas had been conscious all his life that the earl resented him, resented that it was Christopher’s son and not his own who would inherit Winslow. Christopher was home only rarely, and the earl stood to Nicholas in the position of a father, but they never got along. Lord Winslow had not liked Nicholas’s mother, either. He could not forget that her father’s money came from manufacture, even though he was glad enough to see Christopher spend it. When she ran away with the young historian John Hamilton, who had been doing research at Winslow, the earl had felt justified in his opinion of her.

  The earl’s insatiable buying of art had been a subtle way to punish him, of that Nicholas was sure. The money that he took out of Winslow he put into his own private collection—a collection that was now world-famous, and which the earl was able to leave as he chose. Nicholas had always been fairly certain that some of the collection at least would be left to him: enough of it, at any rate, for him to put Winslow back on its feet again. But that was before the arrival of Margarita Carreño.

  The Beauchamp family had been stunned by the welcome the earl had accorded to Margarita. His determined silence on the subject of his daughter had convinced everyone that he would have nothing more to do with her or anything that belonged to her. But Nicholas had not been so surprised. He never spoke of his mother either, but that did not mean he had forgotten. He feared that the earl might have decided that his own granddaughter would be a worthier recipient of the Winslow Collection than his graceless nephew. The earl had been under no illusions as to what Nicholas would do with the collection once he got his hands on it.