The Rising Storm

With unsteady hands he opened it, and with his eyes jumping from line to line swiftly took in its contents. The paragraphs were not many but every one of them aroused his deepest emotions.

She loved him more than all the world. She was desperately unhappy. She believed her life to be in danger. Would he endeavour to reach Madrid by mid-April and snatch her from hell to the paradise of his protection?

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

THE KING'S BUSINESS

WITH his heart hammering in his chest, Roger read the letter through again more carefully. It had been written as recently as the 4th of the month, and its swift transit was explained by Isabella having sent it by fast personal courier as far as Lisbon. She added that she had sent a duplicate of it to La Belle Etoile in Paris, with her prayers that one or the other would reach him in time for him to save her.

She and her husband had left Naples at the end of January in order that she might have her baby in the traditional manner at the castle from which he took his title. She expected the event in the latter part of March. She still felt that she had been right in her decision not to elope with Roger from Naples, and that he could not love her less on that account. To have done otherwise would have been shameful. She had intended to resign herself to a life without love except that for her child. But she had discovered that her husband was a monster.

Little Quetzal was one of the very few people who did not shun the village witch, so the old crone doted on the boy. She had told him that Don Diego had bought poison from her, and that from her private reading of his horoscope he intended to use it on his wife. The motive for such a frightful act was, alas, all too plain. Some weeks previously he had conceived one of his uncontrollable passions for an English­woman. She was a beautiful creature, but cold, designing and ambitious.

Like other Spanish noblemen Don Diego never stooped to conceal his infidelities from his wife; and, in one of his black, morbid fits, he had told Isabella frankly that the cause of his distress was that their beautiful visitor would not give in to him or any other man for either love or money; she wanted both a title and a fortune, and her price was marriage. A week later Quetzal's terrible discovery had disclosed the way Don Diego's mind was now working. Since he was in no situation to pay the Englishwoman's price without first getting rid of Isabella, his wild obsession was such that he had determined to take the step which would enable him to pay it.

Isabella felt confident that she would be safe until she had had her child. Afterwards, she meant to exercise the utmost caution and keep to her bed for a fortnight, as there she need eat nothing but food that had been specially prepared for her by Maria. But by mid-April, or possibly earlier, it was certain that the doctor would declare her well enough to leave for Madrid. From then on she would be in extreme danger, but fit to travel. So she begged Roger to hasten to Madrid at the earliest possible moment and carry her off back to England with him.

Roger noted that it did not seem to have even entered her head that since she had refused to leave Naples with him his passion for her might have cooled. It was clear that her love for him had not abated one iota; and obviously she assumed that his love for her had equally sustained no diminution. Now that her letter, with her desperate plea, raised her image so clearly in his mind again it seemed as if for the past four months he had been boxed up in an airtight compartment, and that its walls had suddenly been whipped away like paper in a gale.

Georgina Etheredge was a case apart, and—with the possible exception of his calf-love for Athehais de Rochambeau—he knew that he had never felt so deeply for any woman as he had for Isabella. The idea that her life was in danger made his throat contract; yet he caught himself wondering if he would ever quite recover the wild passion for her that had obsessed him in Naples, and that he had since striven so successfully to kill.

The thought of Amanda gave him pause for a moment. He was not committed to her in any way; yet for these past few days he had been envisaging the seductive possibilities of married life with her. If she felt as he did, everything could be so simple and so suitable. The wedding would be from Walhampton, the ceremony in the old parish church at Lymington, blessings and good wishes would be showered on them by all their friends. They would have only themselves to blame if they were not happy; and his poor, darling mother would be over­joyed in seeing her dearest wish come true.

In contrast to that picture Isabella did not even mention the prospects of an annulment, and he could not possibly expose her to the risk of insult, as his kept woman, in London; neither could he take her to Lymington. During his fit of madness in Naples he had had vague thoughts of taking her down to Hampshire and passing her off as his wife, but he knew that he would never be able to bring himself to do that now. Should some ill-chance reveal such a deception, in his mother's present state the shock and shame involved might prove so great a blow that it would aggravate her illness and send her into a swift decline.

Yet Isabella was asking no more of him than he had asked of her four months ago, and in her case with far greater reason. From the moment he had first skimmed through her letter there had been no real doubt in his mind. He knew that he must go to Spain, if only to save her from becoming the victim of Don Diego's ungovernable passion. As there were no other possible means of doing so than eloping .with her, it followed that Fate had, after all, decreed that their lives were to be permanently united.

It struck him that the blind goddess had behaved with a certain cynicism, in first causing him to wreck his professional career by refusing a journey to Spain that would have led to reopening his nerve-racking affaire and now compelling him to go there at the price of his new prospects of quiet, domestic happiness. But he swiftly upbraided himself for a thought so disloyal to the woman whom only four months before he had loved so desperately. That love would blossom anew once he was with Isabella again and prove a buckler to them against all the difficulties they might meet with when he got her to England.

Fortunately he had ample money to keep them in modest comfort for a long time to come. They could live very quietly somewhere in the country under an assumed name; perhaps in Kent or Sussex, as in both counties there were now many French exiles, so Isabella being a foreigner would not arouse unwelcome interest in either of them. He would give out in London that he had been sent abroad again; and could only pray that the Catholic Church would allow Don Diego to repudiate Isabella so that they could regularize their union while his mother was still able to give them her blessing. There was, too, always just a chance that Fate might intervene again, and give Isabella her freedom through her husband's death.

Swiftly upon these thoughts another came to Roger. Since he was going to Spain, both courtesy and his own interests suggested that he ought to offer himself to Mr. Pitt to carry any despatches that were awaiting transit to Madrid. At least by doing so he could show that he bore no rancour against the Prime Minister, and was still willing to serve him in any way he could. It was possible, too, that by this time Mr. Pitt had had confirmation of de Mirabeau's alliance with the Court, and so took a better view of his ex-agent's last activities in Paris. If so, Roger felt, there was just a chance that he might be forgiven his insub­ordination, and entrusted with a new mission on his return from Spain.

At even this slender prospect of reinstatement his spirits went up with a bound. He had felt all along that no opening he could find would prove so congenial to him as his old work and, with luck, a resumption of it would enable him to live abroad with Isabella as Madame de Breuc, which would solve a multitude of problems for them.

At once he hurried off to Downing Street; but it was a Monday, and he learned that the Prime Minister, having as usual spent Sunday at Holwood, was not expected back until it was time for him to take his place in the House of Commons that evening.

Roger knew it would be useless to leave a note, as Mr. Pitt was too poor to be able to afford a private secretary and very often left his letters lying unopened for weeks.

It was one of the strangest anomalies that by his financial genius Mr. Pitt should have brought Britain, in the space of a few years, from the verge of bankruptcy to a wonderful prosperity, yet be quite incapable of managing his own affairs; and another that, while he was incredibly hardworking and extremely punctilious about the discharge of all business that could be transacted verbally, he was one of the worst correspondents in the world. He was shamefully robbed by his servants and hopelessly in debt; but, maintaining that the nation's affairs must come before his own, he refused to open letters from fear they would be bills, which would distract his attention from more important matters; and he never answered a letter unless he thought it absolutely imperative to do so.

In consequence, Roger, being reluctant to waste a whole day, decided that the best course was to go down to see him in the country. So, returning? to Amesbury House, he had a horse saddled and rode through Southwark, down the Old Kent Road, to Bromley. A few miles beyond the village he came to Mr. Pitt's country home and, having had himself announced, was shown through into the garden.

There he found the tall, lean, worn-looking Prime Minister admiring his crocuses and daffodils. He smiled as