A Most Unconventional Courtship

Chapter Seventeen

The warm glow from the journey lasted Alessa all night and through the next morning, despite the horrors of deciding what to pack, finding valises and boxes to put it into and remembering all the tasks to be carried out.

Finally she sat down wearily while the children ran off, bearing letters and money to pay the final bills for the landlord, Demetri’s teacher and the nuns. Kate put her head round the door. ‘All finished? Lord love us, what’s that?’

‘Papa’s pistol. I wasn’t sure what to do with it.’ With a shrug Alessa closed the polished walnut box on the deadly object and pushed it into the leather satchel that was the nearest thing she had to a reticule. Aunt Honoria was going to have a fit when she saw her niece’s inelegant baggage. Possibly she should go shopping for a few such pretty trifles, but that could wait until Venice.

Not that she knew how she could pay for such things. Her small savings were already dwindling, what with having to pay all her bills at once and buy new clothes and shoes for the children. She supposed she would have to ask her aunt to advance her some money, but she recoiled from anything that put her deeper into Lady Blackstone’s debt. Or she could borrow from Chance, which of course no respectable young woman would dream of doing. But then, as her aunt kept warning her, she was not respectable.

‘Stop frowning,’ Kate ordered. ‘Now, Fred’s here—what of this needs to go downstairs for the children, and what are you taking to the Residency?’

Alessa had decided to leave the children with Kate until they sailed. With any luck, until the last minute, her aunt would think she had given in to her. In any case, if there was to be any unpleasantness about their travelling, the further the children were from it, the better.

It seemed very strange to be living in the Residency, after the many times when she had come here for the laundry or to physic one of the staff. But everyone was tactful and after half a day Alessa stopped worrying that one of the servants would let something slip in front of her aunt.

There was no sign of the Lord High Commissioner or his secretary, only a subdued bustle amongst the clerical staff and several arrivals of groups of naval officers for meetings.

For the ladies, the first day back was filled with fittings for Alessa and shopping expeditions for last-minute items. However disapproving her aunt might be about the children and her niece’s lifestyle, she was sweetness and light in the shops. ‘My dear, consider it a present,’ she kept saying, pressing trifles such as fans, shawls and the necessary reticule into Alessa’s hands, and laughing off any suggestion that Alessa repaid her.

‘How generous your aunt is,’ Helena whispered after they had emerged from the milliners in the Liston. ‘I wish mine were as kind.’

‘Indeed, yes,’ Alessa responded, wondering uncharitably if all this generosity was intended to give a good impression to the Trevicks. Depressed, she decided it probably was.

The next morning the young ladies were invited by the wife of the colonel of the garrison to a picnic on the hill south of the town, where a sweeping view of the Bay of Garitsa might be had. It was Alessa’s first social gathering and she dressed in her fashionable new promenade dress with trepidation. It did not seem to her, with its complicated skirts, that it would be much use for walking, but she soon realised that the gentle, gossipy strolls amidst the olive trees while the view was admired was considered quite vigorous exercise.

She instinctively moved to join the young matrons sitting on their rugs and sipping lemonade, until Maria caught her arm. ‘We girls are supposed to giggle together over here,’ she said with a shrug. ‘They’ll be talking about men and childbirth and lovers—all the things we are not supposed to know about.’

They sat and shaded their eyes to admire the bulk of the Paleó Frourio—the Old Fort—as it jutted out into the bay, the little Venetian harbour nestling on the southern side.

‘I wonder which is your ship,’ Maria mused.

‘I know that, I asked Mr Harrison yesterday,’ Frances interjected. ‘It is the far side, in the big harbour, you can just see the top masts.’

‘That one is the Count’s.’ Alessa pointed to a smaller, rakish vessel in the Venetian harbour. It looked sleek and fast amid the British naval vessels with their high sides and banks of gun ports. Forming a backdrop to the whole scene were the looming mountains of Albania, so close across the narrow neck of sea.

Surprisingly, Alessa found she enjoyed the picnic, although it seemed criminally lazy to lounge around chattering of nothing when they could at least have been taking some exercise, or gathering herbs. Her hands, devoid of mending, or a shirt to stitch, felt restless.

At last, after the ladies had napped in the shade and taken yet more refreshments, they climbed into their carriages and drove back down the hill and along the coast road back into town.

As they reached the start of the Spianadha, a horseman drew up alongside the Residency coach.

‘Lord Blakeney! Is anything wrong?’

‘No, nothing at all, Miss Trevick; I did not intend to alarm you.’ Chance replaced the hat he had doffed and handed Frances a note. ‘Your mama asked me to deliver this, that is all. I do not believe she requires an answer.

‘Now, if you will excuse me, I have very rashly promised the Captain of Marines to join his side for a game of cricket this afternoon and I must change. Goodbye.’ The look he gave Alessa was serious—there was something in his eyes she could not read. Then he touched the brim of his hat and cantered off, leaving Frances studying the note, a rather conscious look on her face. Oh, dear, she is still fancying herself in love with him, Alessa thought.

‘Mama asks that we go out to the ship, Alexandra,’ Frances said brightly, folding the note into a tight square and stuffing it into her reticule. ‘Something to do with cabins and where the luggage needs to be stowed.’

‘Oh.’ It seemed odd, but the afternoon was hot, and the thought of the cooler breeze out in the bay was tempting. ‘Does she want us both to go?’

‘I think so. The note is rather hurried.’

‘We will drop you off,’ Maria announced, calling up instructions to the driver.

When Alessa and Frances climbed down, the farewells her cousin made to the Trevick sisters struck Alessa as somewhat excessive, given that they would all be seeing each other in a few hours. But then, she concluded, as a respectful seaman helped her into a rowing boat, Frances did seem prone to strong emotions. She hoped she would have a cabin large enough to have the children in with her; goodness knows what sort of sailor Dora would prove to be. She smiled fondly as the long oars propelled them out into the harbour—Demetri would enjoy it, whatever the weather.

Chance accepted the bat from Captain Michaels and walked out onto the grass of the Spianadha, wondering what on earth had possessed him to accept an invitation to play cricket when it was a year since he had handled a bat, the ground seemed hard as iron and all the players were a completely unknown quantity.