“Did Viscount Delford agree to cooperate with us?”
“He had no choice. Lord Delford will keep mum about me. Father can be most persuasive.”
“Aye, I’ve been with your father since before you were born. I wouldn’t want to cross him. Now, my lord, I must go. Vincenzo will be near, and you can send a message to me anytime of the day or night at my lodgings.”
Adam rose and shook his head. “Thank you, Daniele. With any luck at all, we’ll have this wretched mess resolved and be back in Genoa before too much time. My only real concern is that Napoleon will descend with one of his armies and take Naples.”
“Nay,” Daniele said, “it will take time to break the treaty. If it should come to pass, my lord, you will simply bundle your sister out of here before she can catch her breath to protest.”
Chapter 6
“How am I supposed to feel like a princess with my slippers pinching my toes?” Arabella whispered behind her white-gloved hand to Rayna Lyndhurst. Rayna was staring wide-eyed at the sprawling magnificence of the Palazzo Reale. The palace was lit with scores of flambeaux, held high by royal liveried servants outside the palace and secured in golden wall sconces within.
“It was your idea to wear my slippers, Bella. I cannot help it if my feet are smaller than yours.”
“How kind of you to point that out,” Arabella said on a snort. “Oh, I just heard, Rayna,” she continued in a whisper, not wanting either Lord or Lady Delford to hear her, “that King Ferdinando has returned from his favorite retreat, Belvedere, and will make an appearance tonight. I understand he is sated with his latest mistress and with hunting deer in his private preserves. I also heard it said that he did not pay much attention to the game, but more to Lucia, his overblown mistress.”
“Is she here tonight?”
“No, I think she is being protected from other gentlemen’s sight at Belvedere.”
“Bella, where do you hear all these spicy things? No one tells me anything.”
“This person or that,” Arabella said, and returned her attention to the vast reception hall. Soaring white marble columns, carved with eager cherubs, divided the huge hall into smaller salons. What seemed to be miles of crimson velvet draperies fell from ceiling to floor along two entire walls. And so many beautifully attired people. The men, she noted with a smile, appeared every bit as flamboyant as the ladies, many of them still wearing wigs, some dyed in dazzling colors.
She was excited about meeting the Kin
g and Queen of Naples, but she was anxious about Adam. She scanned the brightly colored throng for him, but could not see him. She glanced at Rayna, who was standing quietly beside her mother, seeming quite nervous. She was sorry Rayna could not understand the lilting Italian, or smile, as she could, at the chattering nonsense she heard, no different from the nonsense spoken at the fashionable balls in London. She looked back to the hall where the bewigged musicians began playing at the far end of the chamber, and many of the gentlemen and ladies stepped out to dance the minuet. She finally saw Adam in the distance, in conversation with a tall young man. Was it the Comte de la Valle? He certainly didn’t look particularly debauched, with his blond good looks.
“Come, ladies,” Lord Delford said. “We are about to be graced with the royal presences.”
Arabella followed in the wake of Lord and Lady Delford. Lord Delford, tall and severely lean, was immaculately dressed in formal black velvet with frothy white lace at his throat and his wrists. His only jewelry was a large emerald signet ring on his right hand and a diamond stickpin in the folds of his cravat. His viscountess looked a bit pale, Arabella thought, as if she hadn’t yet fully recovered from their voyage from Genoa. But she held her head high, her auburn coloring set off by a rich gown of green satin. Rayna was wearing a gown of old ivory satin, with a strand of creamy pearls about her throat. Arabella thought her young friend looked exquisite, but of course, she wouldn’t tell her, not after the insult to her feet. As they neared the royal presences, Arabella patted Rayna’s hand.
“Head up, Rayna,” Arabella whispered. “You are far more beautiful than the queen’s two daughters. I vow they’ll hate you within minutes.”
“If only I were as tall as you, Bella, instead of squat.”
“The old satyr has returned to the queen to rest for a while,” the Comte de la Valle was saying to the marchese di Galvani on the far side of the salon. “Do you know that he was ready to leave for Palermo several months ago for hunting? Sent ninety of his hounds over by ship. Acton convinced him it wasn’t wise to leave Naples, with Napoleon breathing down our necks. How the old fool cares for his throne.”
“A pity,” Adam said obscurely. He kept his gaze fixedly on the queen, not wanting to glance toward Arabella. The queen sat upon a high-backed chair, flanked by her two daughters. She looked pale and painfully aged, Adam thought, with her crimped gray hair and the wrinkles obvious on her face, even from a distance. The Princess Amélie was a tall, quite lovely young woman, but her sister, Christine, some three years older, had unfortunately inherited her father’s rather bulbous nose and his rounded shoulders. The king had not yet made his appearance, and Adam had heard that the prince royal, Francesco, and his young Bourbon princess, Isabel, were at his farm near the palace at Caserta. He did not particularly care. He would not have come to the reception in any case if it had been his choice, but the Comte de la Valle had baited him, insisting in his hoarse voice that he must see the lion in his den surrounded by all his cubs and keepers before deciding if he deserved to rule.
“Such a pity that the lazzaroni starve,” Adam said in a sneering voice, “while that fat king fills his belly.”
“Ah, but the lazzaroni adore King Ferdinando, mon ami. He is one of them, you know. Despite his royal Bourbon blood, he is as ignorant as a pig, talks in the most vulgar parlance I’ve ever heard, and enjoys himself most when he is selling fish in the market.”
“You sound most critical for a royalist, Gervaise,” Adam said.
The comte shrugged. “It’s the truth. Prepare to compose your pirate’s face into a more accepting expression, Pietro. Here is his royal majesty.”
King Ferdinando, closer to sixty now than to the fifty he proclaimed, strolled into the vast salon, nodding to his right and left, acknowledging bows and curtsies. He wore rich purple Genoese velvet, adorned with thick gold braid at the shoulders and over his breast. He greeted the queen and his two daughters when he reached them, and heaved his bulk into his chair beside the queen’s.
Adam watched him greet Edward Lyndhurst and his wife, his guests of honor, and then bestow his most beguiling stare on the two rather taken-aback young ladies with them. When at last he had looked his fill, he waved toward the musicians to begin their music again, and strains of the minuet filled the huge chamber.
“Would you look at that lovely little morsel.”
Adam turned and saw that the comte was gazing fixedly toward the Lyndhurst party. Adam’s eyes fell upon Arabella, breathtakingly lovely in a gown of pomona-green satin with rich embroidered gold binding the material beneath her breasts. Her honey-colored hair was braided into a high coronet, with thick tresses falling over her shoulder.
He said in a dismissive voice, “If you like her washed-out coloring, I suppose the girl is passable.”