return to England? Torture a confession out of me?”
“If you agree to help us,” she said, “we shall naturally assume your innocence.”
I feigned grateful astonishment. “Oh, my God! You’re so kind!”
She had the grace to blush, but continued pressing her case. “We need your knowledge. You can remember what happened four years ago. You know more than I do about those two wretched men. Someone fears what you know, but if you’re lost in the oceans, then they won’t show themselves again. So please come back, my lord, and help us.”
She had asked very nicely, and she was so very pretty, so I very nearly agreed, but every time I went home I regretted it. I’d been back at sea just long enough to get the taste again, and I was dreaming of those palm-edged rivers and impossibly blue lagoons. “You have my verbal authority,” I said wearily, “to do whatever you want, so go and do it. But leave me alone.”
She nodded, almost as if she had expected the refusal. “I have some other news for you.”
I waved a negligent hand as if to suggest that I did not much care whether she revealed the news or not.
“Your sister, Lady Elizabeth Tredgarth, is initiating proceedings to take your younger sister back to England.”
She had spoken in a very matter-of-fact voice, a poker-player’s voice. She had also appalled me, as she had doubtless hoped to do. “She’s doing what?” I could not keep the anger from my voice.
Jennifer Pallavicini shrugged, as if to suggest that none of this was of much importance to her. “It seems there’s a nun who is particularly fond of the Lady Georgina?”
“Sister Felicity, yes.”
“The Lady Elizabeth feels that Sister Felicity is too old and too sick to look after Lady Georgina any longer. There’s also a possibility that the convent hospital might be sold, so Lady Elizabeth wants her younger sister brought home.”
“Home?”
“To where she lives, of course. In Gloucestershire, isn’t it?”
I stared in horror at Jennifer Pallavicini. “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “Elizabeth can’t stand the sight of Georgina!”
Jennifer Pallavicini didn’t reply.
“How the hell do you know all this?” I demanded angrily.
“Because we take a great deal of interest in your family,” she said equably. “It’s a family that might bring our gallery a great treasure.”
“You’re making this up,” I said. “You’re telling me this nonsense in the hope that it will bring me back to England!”
“Your sister didn’t want you to know,” she said. “Indeed, she didn’t institute proceedings until she’d heard you had sailed away. Of course, you don’t have to believe me, but I thought perhaps the news might be of some slight interest to you.”
The trouble was that I did believe her. Why else had Elizabeth been at the convent? “But we paid for Georgina,” I protested, “for her lifetime!”
“A large sum of money was put into trust for your younger sister’s care,” Jennifer Pallavicini said pedantically, “but our legal informant tells us that the trustees retain the right to dictate how that money should be spent. If the Lady Elizabeth is confident that she can care for her sister, then there is no reason why the trust fund should not also be given into her care.”
And how that made sense, brilliant clear lucid sense. Elizabeth, married to her impoverished and useless husband, would get her claws into Georgina’s money, while Georgina could be stuck into a cottage on the Tredgarth farm with some harridan to guard her.
“The matter hasn’t been decided yet,” Jennifer Pallavicini went on. “The trustees need to be convinced that the Lady Elizabeth can provide a proper home for your younger sister, but there seems little doubt that she will succeed in so convincing them.”
“Damn you,” I said to Jennifer Pallavicini. “Damn you, damn you, damn you.” The ties of duty, unavoidable duty, were wrapping about me. I could desert Stowey, I could watch my mother die and not shed a tear because of it, but Georgina was different. The only people who had ever been able to pierce that tremulous insanity had been Nanny, myself and Charlie. Now she needed me.
“Sir Leon” – Jennifer Pallavicini could not resist a small smile as she played her ace – “is willing to guarantee a secure future for the Lady Georgina whether the painting is retrieved or not.”
I said nothing. I was remembering the spitefulness with which Elizabeth had treated Georgina as a child. It wasn’t a deliberate spitefulness, merely a reflection of Elizabeth’s impatience. But, deliberate or not, it was unthinkable that Georgina should be put into Elizabeth’s care.
Jennifer Pallavicini watched me, then opened her handbag and took out an air ticket which she laid on the thwart beside me. “If you go to your family’s solicitors, my lord, you can doubtless stop this nonsense instantly.”
I picked up the ticket. It was for a first-class seat, Azores to Lisbon and Lisbon to London. “When it comes to my family,” I said haughtily to Jennifer Pallavicini, “I don’t need your damned help.” I tore the ticket into shreds, then scattered the scraps into the water. “Goodbye, Miss Pallavicini.”
I had angered her, but I had also succeeded in surprising her. She took a few seconds to recover, then tried to turn the screw on my guilt. “It will be no good writing to your solicitors, my lord. Your objections to the Lady Georgina’s fate won’t be taken seriously unless you’re in England to take some personal responsibility for her.”
“I said I don’t need your help to look after my family, Miss Pallavicini. So, goodbye.”
“You’re not going to help your younger sister?” she asked incredulously.
I smiled at her. “I’m going to sail away, Jennifer.” I suddenly clicked my fingers as though I had been struck with a brilliant and timely idea. “Would you like to sail with me? You can cook, can’t you?”
She stood up. “I cannot believe,” she said with a frigid dignity, “that you could be so careless of your younger sister’s future.” She paused, evidently seeking some final and crushing farewell. “You are undoubtedly the most selfish and unfeeling man I have ever met.”
“And you’re cluttering up my boat. So if you don’t want to come with me, go away.”
She went away.
An hour later, as I was taking off the mainsail cover, I saw her being ferried out to Ulf’s yawl. I assumed she was going to pay her informant his reward, so I wrestled my fibreglass dinghy over the guardrails, took the outboard from the stern locker, and motored over to join the happy party. I ignored Miss Pallavicini, instead I killed the small engine, drifted alongside the yawl, and told Ulf that he was a slime-bag.
“Johnny, how nice to see you! You know Miss Pallavicini, I think? You would like a drink with us?”
“I wouldn’t drink your bloody prune juice if I was dying of constipation.” I climbed out of the dinghy, hitched it to one of his shrouds, and walked down his scuppers. “I told you to keep your Swedish mouth shut.”
Jennifer Pallavicini’s eyes were wide with alarm. She clutched her handbag to her belly, but otherwise seemed unable to move. She doubtless believed that the huge Swede was about to pulverise me, and doubtless, in principle, she approved of that pulverisation, but it’s one thing to want someone beaten up and quite another to see real blood on the deck. I also believed that Ulf would pulverise me, but I was fed up with the bastard and wanted to hit him.
“It was only a business arrangement,” Ulf said smugly.
“And this is your profit.” I jumped into his scrubbed cockpit and punched him in the belly. He gasped, but did not hit back, so I smacked him hard across the mouth. The blow jarred his head and brought a fleck of blood to his lips.
He still wouldn’t fight. “Johnny!” He wiped his mouth. “This is not like you.”
“That’s because you don’t know me. So listen. If you ever open your mouth about me again, anywhere, to anyone, I’ll find your rotten carcass and I’ll feed it to the bloody fish. Do you understand me?”
He had backed away. Jennifer Pallavicini’s face showed utter horror. She made a small noise of protest, but I ignored her. Ulf waved a placatory hand. “I was only trying to help you, Johnny. Maybe it was important to you, yes?”
“Maybe it wasn’t your business, you Swedish bastard.” His reward money, in Portuguese escudos, was
