The Mask of love E-Book

Barbara Cartland

• Herausgeber: Barbara Cartland Ebooks Ltd
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: The Eternal Collection
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 234

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

A half-English, masked but clearly beautiful young girl flees an arranged marriage to an aging Marchese into the gaiety and chaos of the Venice Carnival… A dashingly handsome Marquis in Venice on a top-secret mission for the English Prime Minister… A terrible storm that blows the Marquis's yacht off course and into the hands of murderous and lustful Barbary Pirates… A hastily arranged prison wedding to save her from a Fate worse than death. And a kiss that changes two lives forever…

Leseprobe

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The details of the last days of Venetian Independence and the description of the Bagno at Tunis and the habits of the Barbary pirates are all accurate.

In 1792 France declared war on Austria and four years later the Republic of Venice received its death sentence from Napoleon Bonaparte.

Ludovico Manin was the last Doge.

For all of three centuries the Barbary pirates or corsairs terrorised and plundered the Mediterranean.

In 1634 there were over twenty-five thousand Christian slaves in the City of Algiers and the Barbary fleet numbered over one hundred and fifty ships.

‘Christians are cheap today’ was a business quotation of the time and the prettiest women were usually shipped to Constantinople for the Sultan.

Only when the French occupied Algiers in 1830 was this brutal trade brought to an end.

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1791

“We cannot stand about here all night! Are you going to dance with me or are you not?”

The woman’s voice was sharp, but her eyes behind her black velvet mask were bright with excitement as she watched the merrymakers revelling in the Piazza San Marco, so well disguised that even their nearest relations would not know them.

There was a kaleidoscope of colour and a wild variety of costumes.

“It is too crowded,” a man’s voice replied languidly “and far too hot.”

“Nothing could be too crowded for me,” the woman then retorted, “not after weeks of contemplating the deadly tedium of a grey sea and feeling it heaving beneath me.”

Behind his mask the Marquis of Melford looked bored.

He had heard this complaint not once but a thousand times and once again he regretted his impetuosity in inviting his mistress to come with him to Venice.

He had imagined that she would alleviate the boredom of the voyage, but instead she had merely accentuated it.

“Look at that man!” Odette exclaimed, forgetting in a new object of interest her irritation with her companion.

As she spoke, an acrobat on a rope slid to the ground from the top of the Campanile face downwards and holding on with his feet.

The applause rang out when he reached the ground safely. But there were so many other feats of strength and agility to watch, so many amusing sideshows to command the attention that the eye was bewildered.

There were men on stilts, men pretending to be bears, men astride wooden horses, men disguised as devils with horns and long nails.

There were dervishes and a multitude of clowns and Merry Andrews.

There were Harlequins dancing with pretty Columbines, a gypsy telling fortunes, a lace maker of Chioggia and ragged urchins turning cartwheels.

The crowd was a show in itself, as in striped gowns, pointed caps and huge turbans, false noses and spangled finery, they booed and clapped, their laughter ringing out as the witty quips flew from one gallant to another.

Above it all there was the constant sound of music.

In the centre of the Piazza hundreds of people were dancing and Odette put out her hand to pull the Marquis by the arm.

“Come on,” she cried, “I must dance! I must!”

“Why not, pretty lady?” a man interposed and a second later she was whirled away in his arms, leaving the Marquis standing alone.

He was not perturbed in the least by her disappearance.

He had been in Venice before and he knew that the many different Carnivals, which occupied up to six months altogether in one year, were the excuse for continual gaiety and merrymaking when all the conventions and all the proprieties were laid aside.

Venice, the City of Pleasure and the City of Love, had given itself over to frivolity to such an extent that it was just impossible to be serious in this Fairytale-like place where a wonderful brightness of the air seemed to beautify the domes, the Palazzos and the towers with an exquisite luminosity.

In the Piazza, in front of the cafés, customers were drinking wine and gossiping, while the gondolas with gaily coloured canopies flashed over the green surface of the Lagoon and down the canals, their pendants streaming behind them.

“Can I – speak to you, my Lord?”

It was a small, cultured, breathless little voice that commanded the Marquis’s attention and he looked down to see that a woman was standing beside him.

It was difficult to guess what she was like for she wore a mask and a lace veil covered her hair under a little tricorne hat and it fell over her shoulders.

But her lips were not concealed and the Marquis noted that they were exquisitely curved and very young.

“I should be honoured,” he replied.

She had spoken in English and he therefore replied in the same language.

“Can we sit down – somewhere?”

“But, of course,” the Marquis answered.

He offered the stranger his arm and led her through the jostling throng. His great height enabled him to make the passage easy until they reached a café that was not as crowded as some of the others.

The Marquis selected a table set back against the walls of The Coach of Fortune where there were a few customers. Most people seemed to prefer to be as near as possible to the perambulating and dancing crowds in the Piazza.

The stranger seated herself and the Marquis called a waiter over.

“Will you have wine,” he asked, “or chocolate?”

“Chocolate, please.”

The Marquis gave the order.

Then he turned to look at his companion.

She was very young, he decided, from what he could see of her face and he fancied, although he might well be mistaken, that her eyes through the black mask were regarding him a little apprehensively.

“You must think it very strange of me, my Lord, to speak to you like this,” she said, “but I wanted so – desperately to ask you about – England.”

“About England?” the Marquis echoed in surprise.

“I am homesick,” she answered.

The Marquis looked amused. It was not what he expected anyone, especially an English woman if that was the nationality of the girl, to say in Venice.

“You are not enjoying this?” he asked with a wave of his hand towards the Carnival.

“I hate it!” she declared.

Under his mask the Marquis raised his eyebrows and she added quickly,

“But I do not wish to talk about myself, I want to know if the daffodils are golden in the London Parks, if the horses are still fine in Rotten Row, if the street-sellers are crying ‘sweet lavender’ when they bring their baskets up from the country.”

There was a little throb in the voice, which made the Marquis know that everything she had said meant something to her.

“Will you tell me your name?” he next asked her.

Then, as she stiffened, he added quickly,

“Not your whole name, of course. I am well aware that we all remain anonymous at Carnival time. But you knew that I am English.”

“Yes, I know you are English,” the girl answered. “I saw you in a gondola on the Grand Canal and someone told me who you were.”

“I have a feeling that is cheating,” the Marquis remarked jokingly.

“Perhaps,” the girl answered, “and so I will tell you that my name is ‘Caterina’.”

“A famous Venetian name,” the Marquis commented, “and yet you are English.”

“Half-English,” she corrected him. “My father was Venetian, but I have always lived in England. I only arrived in Venice three weeks ago.”

“So that is why you are homesick,” the Marquis said.

“I love England!” Caterina exclaimed passionately. “I love everything about it. The horses, the people – and even the climate!”

The Marquis laughed.

“You are indeed prejudiced. Yet Venice is indeed very beautiful.”

“It is like a child’s toy,” Caterina said disparagingly, “and its people are children. They play games all day long and all the time no one speaks seriously.”

“And why should you wish to be serious at your age?” the Marquis asked.

“Because I am interested in things that the Venetians either ignore or they are completely ignorant of,” she replied.

She gave a deep sigh and put her elbows on the table resting her chin on her hands so that the Marquis noticed her long, thin aristocratic fingers.

“When I lived in England,” she said in a low voice, “the people who came to our house talked of Politics, of books and plays, of scientific discoveries and inventions. It was all so interesting. But all anyone speaks about here is love.”

There was a scornful note in the young voice, which the Marquis could not help finding amusing.

“When you are a little older,” he said, “you will doubtless find love as interesting and enthralling as the majority of your sex do.”

There was a slightly mocking tone in his voice, which made Caterina turn her face to look at him.

“Can love be enthralling?” she asked.

“If one is really in love,” the Marquis answered.

There was a cynical note in his tone that Caterina did not miss.

“You have not answered my – question,” she said slowly.

“About the daffodils?” the Marquis asked. “When I left, they were like a golden carpet round my house in the country and all over London one could see them like small yellow trumpets, in the garden of Berkeley Square, in St. James’s Park and in great baskets being sold in the streets.”

“I thought they would be,” Caterina said a little breathlessly. “And there will be lilacs, purple and white, and bluebells under the almond trees, their blossom falling onto the green lawns.”

She gave a little sigh.

“Shall I ever see green lawns again?”

“Few people,” the Marquis said, “would change the canals, the Piazza, the blue Lagoon and the sunshine of Venice, for the fogs, the rain and often the intense cold of London.”

“I would,” Caterina replied quickly.

“How long must you be in Venice?” the Marquis asked.

“Forever,” she replied – and her voice was tragic.

“You will grow to like it,” he said prophetically. “A change of environment is always disturbing. By this time next year you will be enjoying the Carnivals and laughing at their frivolity, besides enjoying the wild adventures that are always very much a part of Festival time.”

As he spoke, the Marquis wondered how anyone so young had escaped the chaperonage that he knew even at Carnival time was compulsory for girls.

Women who were married enjoyed a licence that could not be found anywhere else in Europe. Masked by their domino cloaks known as tabarros, they could go anywhere and speak to anyone without being recognised.

The gossips were always full of the most scandalous adventures that had taken place in cafés, on the lagoon or even in the Churches themselves.

Men who were masked could get into Convents when they wanted to. All the barriers were down. There was neither rich nor poor, Police nor Facchini. There were no longer valid laws or lawmakers.

There was only Sior Maschera? and who would rebel against anything so exciting and so irresistibly enticing? In fact as one famous Venetian said,

“The whole world is bewitched by the Venice Carnival”.

“How long are you staying here?” Caterina then asked the Marquis.

“Not long,” he replied.

“Then you are not enjoying yourself?”

“That is a quite unjustifiable assumption on your part,” he replied coldly. “I find Venice very interesting, but perhaps like you I am not in the mood for so much frivolity.”

“You will sail back to England,” Caterina said, “your friends will be pleased to see you and you will find them discussing so many things of import.”

“How did you know that I am not just a dilettante, a gambler or a seeker of amusement, such as you quite obviously despise?” the Marquis asked.

“Because when you were pointed out to me yesterday,” Caterina answered, “I was told that you were very clever and that you had come here to have a serious conversation with the Council of Ten.”

The Marquis was suddenly very still.

His eyes through his mask regarded Caterina carefully.

This was not at all what he had expected to hear and certainly not from a woman at the Carnival.

It was true, although he thought that no one knew it, that he had come to Venice at the request of the British Prime Minister, Mr. William Pitt, to discuss secret matters of Political importance with the Council who ruled Venice.

It was just unfortunate that he should have arrived after the Carnival had begun, rather than a week earlier as he had intended.

But a storm in the Bay of Biscay had slowed his journey and a few repairs to his yacht in Malta had delayed him further.

Nevertheless he had not thought it possible that anyone outside the Council was aware that his visit was anything but that of a pleasure seeker.

He was silent in his surprise and after a moment Caterina said nervously,

“Perhaps I should not have said that. Maybe the reason for your visit is a secret.”

“I thought it was,” the Marquis replied.

“Then I promise you that I will not speak of it to anyone else,” Caterina said. “You need not be afraid that I would make trouble for you.”

“It is unlikely that you could,” the Marquis said, “nevertheless it would be better if you kept such ideas to yourself.”

“I promise that I will keep absolutely silent on any matters that concern you,” Caterina told him. “It was wrong of me to come to the Carnival, but I did so want to speak with you.”

The Marquis was surprised, but he merely said,

“You have surely not come alone?”

“No, of course not,” Caterina replied. “My maid is with me and she is waiting in a gondola under the first bridge as one leaves the Piazza.”

“Then perhaps it would be wise if I took you back to her,” the Marquis suggested.

“Must I go?” Caterina asked. “I cannot tell you what it means to me just to hear your voice, to hear you speaking English and to know that I am with someone from – home.”

There was a little sob behind the last word and the Marquis enquired,

“Does England really mean so much to you?”

“It means happiness, security and a feeling of belonging,” Caterina answered. “Here I am just a foreigner, I am not part of their lives, their interests or anything that they believe is important.”

“It will get better,” the Marquis said consolingly.

“I wish I could believe you. But I have no wish, my Lord, to burden you with any of my troubles. Instead tell me if the Prince of Wales is still giving his gay and extravagant parties at Carlton House.”

“His Royal Highness is still deeply in debt,” the Marquis replied.

“And the King is still incensed with him?”

“And refusing to pay his debts,” the Marquis smiled.

“Are people still talking about Mrs. Fitzherbert?”

“But of course! What else did you expect?”

“It all sounds very familiar,” Caterina sighed. “And now tell me, when you left London what performances were being given at the Drury Lane Theatre?”

The Marquis described the last Opera he had attended. He told Caterina of a new singer who had caused a sensation at Vauxhall Gardens.

He then described a pair of chestnuts he had bought at Tattersalls in April and which had proved to be the most outstanding horses to be seen in Hyde Park.

He realised that Caterina sitting beside him was listening intently to every word he said.

Her lips were parted and he knew that beneath the valuable lace that covered her to the waist, her breasts were moving tumultuously because his words appeared to excite her.

Her little fingers were clasped together so tightly that the knuckles were white and her eyes through the holes in her mask were fixed on his.

Never had the Marquis in the whole of his life ever known anyone to listen to him so attentively. He could not help feeling slightly flattered and at the same time amused that anything he should say should be so absorbing.

Finally, after he had talked to her for quite some time, he lifted a glass of wine to his lips. Beside him Caterina relaxed and gave a deep sigh that sounded almost ecstatic.

“Thank you,” she said in a low voice. “Thank you more than I can ever say. I shall remember every word you have said to me. I shall think about everything you have described and it will help. Help me to bear what has to be borne!”

The Marquis was curious.

“Can I help you?” he asked and wondered even as he spoke if he was being rash in suggesting such a thing.

“There is nothing you can do, my Lord,” Caterina answered, “but I am grateful for your kindness. And now, if it is not too much trouble, would you be gracious enough to escort me to where my maid is waiting? I think that I should be rather frightened to walk there alone.”

“I will take you,” the Marquis said realising that she was wise in thinking that it might be dangerous.

The noise in the Piazza was much louder and, as it had grown later in the evening, the masked merrymakers were playing practical jokes upon each other.

Somebody had brought a live elephant into the Square, white confetti was falling like snow and the strings of coloured lanterns that hung from pole to pole were being lit.

There were barrel-organs with monkeys dancing over the top, hundreds of booths all crowded with customers and all the time the dancers went on moving, jigging, twirling their way over the paved ground.

As they danced, the ladies’ skirts swirled out into a mass of frills, their long dominos moved to reveal cascades of silk like rippling waves.

The laughter was growing louder and louder and was almost drowned out by the music of the band.

Slipping his hand under Caterina’s arm to help her through the crowds, the Marquis gradually edged his way from the Piazza with its Fairyland of lamps into the semi-darkness of the street that led to the canal where her gondola was waiting.

As they reached the bridge, the Marquis saw a number of gondolas waiting below it. They were gaily decorated, some of those belonging to rich families being exquisitely carved, as the gondoliers wore silk jackets, short breeches, long stockings, red sashes and red caps.

Caterina obviously did not expect the Marquis to escort her to the gondola itself.

She stopped at the top of the steps leading down to the canal and the Marquis, thinking that she might well be embarrassed, made no attempt to persuade her that his company was necessary any further.

“Thank you,” she said again in the same rather shy, breathless little voice in which she had first spoken to him. “Thank you, my Lord. I have been very happy with you.”

“It has been a privilege to know you,” the Marquis replied. “May I now wish you every happiness in the future?”

As he spoke, a crowd of noisy Maskers came surging over the bridge and because the Marquis knew how rough and impertinent they could be, he took Caterina’s arm and drew her away from the top of the steps into the shadow of a nearby Palazzo.

They were almost hidden under an arch and the Maskers shouting, jeering and jostling every one whom they met passed by without noticing them.

“You can see now,” the Marquis said a little severely, “it is not really wise for anyone as young as you are to come to the Carnival alone. You should have an escort to protect you.”

“I understand that,” Caterina murmured.

She looked up at him and in the gathering dusk he could see the slight glitter of her eyes and the little tremor of her lips.

“Goodbye, Caterina,” he said and his voice deepened.

Then, as she did not move, he put his left arm round her shoulders and lifting her chin a little higher with the fingers of his right hand he bent and kissed her lips.

Her mouth was very soft, sweet and innocent and for a moment the Marquis held her captive.

It was a moment of enchantment that he did not expect. He had not known for many years a woman’s lips that were so defenceless or so gentle beneath his.

Then he set her free.

For a moment she was completely still, her face turned up to his until without speaking she turned and ran away from him.

He saw her reach the steps that led down to the canal. Without moving he watched her descend them and only when she had vanished out of sight did he turn and slowly walk back to the Piazza San Marco.

The noise seemed to impinge shatteringly upon him and, after contemplating the square for a few minutes, he walked through the crowds to the jetty and, hailing a gondola, told the man to take him to the Palazzo.

The gondolier sped his frail craft through the rippling water of the Grand Canal singing as he went. All gondoliers were prepared to sing at Carnival time and inevitably his song was of love.

The Festivities after Ascension Day were the best and most brilliant of all the Carnivals.

The Féte of the Sensa, when the Doge carried out his unique right to marry the sea, was also a celebration for the famous victory over Barbarossa.

Venice had fought for Pope Alexander III who had in gratitude given the Doge a ring and told him,

‘Let posterity remember that the sea is yours by right of conquer, subject to you as a wife to her husband.’

The marriage had been solemnised every year since 1177.

The Doge in his State litter preceded by pipes and trumpets followed by a brilliant train of Ambassadors, Grandees and Senators who boarded a huge vessel called the Bucintoro and sailed over the flower strewn waters to San Nicolò del Lido.

Banners and standards flying, the peotte of the Noble families garlanded and beflagged, with gilded oars, the gondoliers in rose and sky-blue uniforms, the gorgeously dressed men and women trailing lengths of velvet and silk, the bells pealing, the crowds shouting, all made a magnificent spectacle.

But the Marquis was glad to have missed it. He was not at all interested in that sort of pageantry.

It was only a short distance to the Palazzo that he was seeking. It was a palatial residence and the servants who helped him from the gondola were dressed in an elaborate uniform festooned with gilt braid.

As he walked through the passages to the Reception rooms, he noticed that they were as magnificent as anything that he had seen at other Palazzos in Venice.

Zanetta Tamiazzo was the most famous courtesan in Venice.

She was exquisitely beautiful, to be seen in her company was a distinction in itself and she was courted and acclaimed as if she was Royalty.

When the Marquis was announced, she was standing in an enormous salon on the first floor of her Palazzo and was talking to half a dozen men whom the Marquis knew all had distinguished names.

As she saw the Marquis enter, she ran towards him holding out both her hands.

“Mon cher,” she said in French because it was chic in Venice to speak French, “I heard that you had arrived and I was so looking forward to seeing you.”

The Marquis raised her white hands one after another to his lips.

“I should have called on you sooner,” he said, “but I was unavoidably detained.”

“But now you are here,” Zanetta smiled, “and what could be more delightful?”

She then introduced the Marquis to the other gentlemen present and they looked at him speculatively wondering whether he could be a serious rival for her affections.

The Marquis had met Zanetta in Paris and taken her to London. For a short time she had accepted his protection, until the wanderlust that consumed her made her leave London and return to her own country.

“You are more handsome and more elegant than ever,” she said to the Marquis, looking up into his face with its clear cut and almost classical features, framed by his dark hair which, unpowdered in the latest fashion, was tied at the base of his neck with a black bow.

“You flatter me,” he said, “And let me remind you, Zanetta, it is I who should be paying the compliments to you.”

“The English do not understand such delicacies,” a gentleman next interposed.

“That is where you are mistaken,” the Marquis replied. “We do not pay compliments if they are insincere, but, when we do speak, we speak from the heart and therefore I can say very sincerely, Zanetta, you are positively the most beautiful woman in Venice or indeed in the whole of Europe.”

Zanetta clapped her hands together in sheer delight while the gentlemen surrounding her looked sour.

Then she said to the Marquis,

“I must talk to you, I have so much to hear since it is over three years since we met. You have a little time now?”

“Where you are concerned I have Eternity,” the Marquis replied.

Zanetta laughed and, turning to her other guests, she held out her hand to them one after another.

“You must go, my friends,” she said. “The Marquis is someone who holds a very special place in my heart. Unless I am mistaken he will not stay long in Venice and therefore, when I can steal a little of his time, you will understand that I must not put off until tomorrow what I can do today.”

The gentlemen cast glances of undisguised jealousy at the Marquis, but they could do nothing but take their leave.

When they had gone, Zanetta told her servants to bring wine and to say that she was not at home to anyone who called.

Then she took the Marquis by the hand and drew him down beside her on a comfortable sofa.

“Why are you here?” she then asked him.

“Pleasure,” he replied, “and, of course, to see you!”

“I will accept such an explanation, although I am sure it is untrue,” Zanetta said. “When I heard of your arrival, I learnt that you were not alone.”

The Marquis did not answer and she went on,

“You are married?”

“No, no!” the Marquis replied. “As I have told you before, Zanetta, I shall never get married. I find it far more amusing not to be tied down and not to be confined by the chains of matrimony.”

“Then, your companion?”

“Of no consequence, a mistake. We all make them.”

“We do indeed,” Zanetta replied and from that moment Odette was dismissed from her mind and from the Marquis’s.

They talked for a long time.

When dinner was announced, they withdrew into a small intimate boudoir where there was a table laid for two and the low candles shed a soft light on Zanetta’s lovely and very eloquent eyes.

She was a woman of intelligence, a woman who had a sympathy and understanding, which many men found irresistible.

There was no doubt too that she used every allurement that a woman could use to make herself attractive to a man.

They sat for a long time over dinner, but then, when at last they rose to their feet, the Marquis took Zanetta in his arms.

She smiled up at him enticingly, her red mouth quite obviously eager for his.

“Vou are very lovely,” he sighed in a deep voice.

“And you are absurdly handsome,” she answered.

There was no need for further words.

The Marquis’s lips were on hers. Hard and passionate, they met a fiery response and he knew that Zanetta was still capable of arousing his desire as no other woman was able to do.

Then, as her lips, like her body, moved seductively against his, he remembered for one moment the softness and the innocence of Caterina’s mouth.

‘I would swear,’ the Marquis told himself, ‘that I am the first man who has ever kissed her.’

Then, with Zanetta’s arms round his neck, the allurement of her beauty engulfed them both.