advantages when, flanked by her dragoons, she came to cross the threshold of the Villa Sant'Anna for the interview which lay ahead. If Prince Corrado Sant'Anna was contemplating any vengeance on Marianne, the obstinate bulldog Napoleon had fastened to his friend's heels might well guarantee her life. Nevertheless, it was extremely trying…
Half-annoyed and half-amused, she looked at him for a moment. It was a pity the lad should carry about with him that angry cat-like glare, because he had it in him to attract a woman, even one not easy to please. He was not tall but strongly built, with a stubborn face, tight-lipped and given an added arrogance by the jutting beak of a nose which projected from the shadow of his helmet. He blushed with a readiness surprising in one of his dark ivory complexion, but the eyes revealed beneath the bushy black brows and the lashes which rivalled Marianne's in length were, curiously, of an attractive light grey, flecked with gold in the sunshine.
Partly, perhaps, out of a very feminine desire for conquest, Marianne had amused herself on the journey by making occasional idle attempts to win him, but Benielli had remained as impervious to her charming smiles as to the flash of her green eyes.
One evening, when the inn they were dining at was less than usually grimy, she had offered him the bait of a white gown cut low enough to have done credit to Fortunee Hamelin, with the result that throughout the meal the lieutenant had performed a succession of astonishing ocular gymnastics. He had looked everywhere, from the strings of onions hanging from the beams, to the great black andirons in the hearth, or concentrated his attention on his plate or on endless pellets of bread rolled on the doth, but he never once regarded the golden curves revealed by her gown.
On the following night, more vexed and angry than she cared to admit, Marianne had dined alone in her room, wearing a dress whose frilled muslin collar came up almost to her ears, to the unspoken delight of Jolival who was deriving intense amusement from his friend's performance.
For the present, Benielli's attention was directed to a snail which had ventured out from beneath the friendly shade of a bay tree and was crossing the stone desert of the balustrade on which Marianne was leaning.
'Decided, Lieutenant? What should I have decided?' she asked at last.
The note of irony in her voice could not have escaped Benielli, who promptly flushed beetroot-coloured.
'But – what we are to do, Princess! Her Imperial Highness the Grand Duchess Elisa is leaving Florence tomorrow for her villa at Marlia. Do we go with her?'
'I don't see what else we can do, Lieutenant. Do you expect me to remain here alone? By alone, of course, I mean in your own delightful company…' As she spoke she snapped shut her sunshade and pointed with it in the direction of the imposing frontage of the Pitti Palace.
Benielli shrugged. It was evident that this cavalier reference to what was in effect an imperial residence had shocked him. A great respecter of persons, he had an inbred reverence for all things connected with Napoleon, even his houses. But he prudently held his peace, knowing that this strange Princess Sant'Anna could, when so inclined, make herself as disagreeable as he.
'We are leaving, then?'
'We are leaving. Besides, the Sant'Anna estates, to which you are to escort me, are quite close to her Imperial Highness's villa. Naturally I shall go with her.'
For the first time since Paris, Marianne saw on her bodyguard's face something which might, at a pinch, have been described as a smile. Her news had given him pleasure. At once, however, he clicked his heels, very correctly, and gave a military salute.
Then with your permission, Princess, I'll make the necessary arrangements and inform his Grace the Duke of Padua that we shall be leaving tomorrow.'
Before Marianne could open her mouth, he had swung on his heel and was heading for the palace, apparently in no way discommoded by the sabre banging against his legs.
'The Duke of Padua?' Marianne murmured in astonishment. 'Whatever has he to do with it?'
She could find no possible connection between her own affairs and this admittedly remarkable man, who had arrived in Florence two days previously. Until yesterday, she had never met him in her life, although Benielli, who regarded him as one of his three household gods, had been visibly delighted by his appearance.
A relative of the Emperor and also inspector general of cavalry, Arrighi had arrived at the Grand Duchess's court with no more than a single squadron of the fourth Colonne Mobile, destined for the service of the Viceroy of Italy, Prince Eugene. His real business was to enforce the laws concerning recruitment and to hunt down deserters and those avoiding military service. Ostensibly, his journey into Tuscany had been undertaken for no more serious purpose than to visit his cousin Elisa and renew old ties with the Corsican members of his family, whom he had not seen for years but who were now to make the journey expressly to meet him. No one at the court of Tuscany had the faintest inkling of the deeper reason underlying this family reunion in the midst of military duties.
The Grand Duchess, who had accorded a most gracious welcome to the Princess Sant'Anna, the ambassadress charged with the news of the birth of the little King of Rome, now welcomed Arrighi with enthusiasm, being almost as enamoured as Benielli of heroes and glory and Napoleon. At the grand ball held the previous night in honour of the Duke of Padua, Marianne had found her hand being bowed over by this distinguished, grim-faced person – a man who was still one of the finest horsemen in the world, despite the countless serious wounds received in the Emperor's service, almost any single one of which in another man might well have proved fatal.
Drawing on information gleaned from Elisa and from Angelo Benielli, Marianne had stared with a very natural interest at this man who had had his skull cracked open by a scimitar blow at the battle of Salalieh in Egypt, his external carotid artery severed by a shot before Acre, and suffered a terrible wound in the neck from a sabre at Wertigen, not to mention innumerable 'minor scratches', the man who, when half-decapitated by shrapnel, had still risen from his bed to charge at the head of his dragoons – only to return to it more shattered than before. In the interim, though, he had been a lion, saving countless lives and swimming unnumbered rivers – including recently the torrents of Spain.
Marianne had experienced a curious shock as their eyes met. She had the extraordinary impression, fleeting but real, that she was face to face with the Emperor himself. In Arrighi's eyes there was the same steely glint which seemed able to pierce through her like a knife. But her new acquaintance's voice broke the spell: it was low and hoarse, broken perhaps from yelling orders above the heat of charging cavalry, and utterly different from Napoleon's clipped accents, and Marianne had felt strangely relieved. An encounter with such a faithful image of the Emperor was certainly the last thing she wanted now, at the very moment when she was preparing to disregard his orders and flee from France, far away with Jason.
That first meeting with Arrighi had gone no further than an exchange of polite commonplaces which gave no hint that the general might be in any way concerned in Marianne's affairs. Consequently Benielli's oracular remark left her somewhat at a loss. Why on earth did he have to go and tell the Duke of Padua that she was leaving?
Too much put out to feel any inclination to await the return of her impetuous bodyguard, Marianne left her vantage point and began to descend the terraced slopes towards the palace, intending to go to her own rooms and give her orders to her maid, Agathe, regarding the morrow's departure. As she reached the Artichoke Fountain, she repressed a gesture of irritation. Benielli was coming back. But he was not alone. A few paces in front of him walked a man in the blue and gold uniform of a general, wearing an enormous cocked hat decked with white plumes. The Duke of Padua himself was coming hurriedly to meet her.
A meeting was unavoidable. Marianne paused, waiting, feeling vaguely uneasy and yet at the same time curious to know what the Emperor's cousin might have to say to her.
As he came within reach, Arrighi pulled off his cocked hat and bowed correctly, but his grey eyes were already boring inexorably into Marianne's. He spoke, without turning.
'You may leave us, Benielli.'
The lieutenant clicked his heels, about-turned and disappeared as though by magic, leaving the general and the Princess alone.
Not best pleased at finding her way thus effectively blocked, Marianne coolly folded her sunshade and setting the point to the ground, leaned both hands on its ivory handle as though she meant to consolidate her position. Then, with a little frown, she prepared to move in to the attack. Arrighi was before her.
'From your expression, madame, I deduce that this meeting is not to your liking. I must ask you to forgive me if I've interrupted your walk.'
'I had finished my walk, General. I was just about to go in. As to my pleasure or otherwise, I shall be able to
