LORD OF MANY SECRETS

ONE

Tellaro was left behind, and the post chaise and four entered on a stretch of flat country which offered little to attract the eye, or occasional remark. Miss Elizabeth withdrew her gaze from the landscape and addressed her companion, a handsome young man who was bored to death in his corner of the chaise somewhat sleepily surveying the back of the nearest post boy.

"Oh, how tedious it is to be sitting still for so many hours at a stretch!" Elizabeth remarked. "When do we reach Florence, Patrick?"

Her brother yawned. "Lord, I don't know! It was you who wanted to go to Rome".

Miss Elizabeth made no reply to that, but picked up a Traveler's Guide from the seat beside her, and began to flutter the leaves over. Young Sir Patrick Tellaro yawned again, and observed that the new pair of wheelers that had been put in at Tellaro, were good sized strong wheels, very different from the last pair, which had both of them been touched in the wind.

Miss Elizabeth was lost in the Traveller's Guide, and agreed to that without raising her eyes from the closely printed page. She was a pretty young woman, rather above the average height, and had been used to hearing herself proclaimed a remarkably beautiful young girl since the last four years. She could not, however, admire her own beauty, which was of a type she was inclined to despise. She preferred that she'd had and thought the brightness of her gold curls insipid. Happily for her, her eyebrows and lashes were dark, and her eyeballs which were startlingly blue - in the manner of a wax doll, as she once scornfully told her brother - had a directness and a fire which gave a great deal of character to her face. At first glance one might write her down as a mere Cadimare miss, but a second glance would inevitably discover the intelligence in her eyes, and the decided air of resolution in the curve of her mouth.

She was dressed neatly, but not in the latest style of fashion. She was in a plain round gown of European fabric, the neck was surrounded with lace, and a close mantle of illusion net. A bonnet of basket willow with a striped velvet ribbon rather charmingly framed her face, and a pair of York tan gloves were drawn over her hands, and buttoned tightly round her wrists.

Her brother, who had resumed his slumbrous scrutiny of the post boy's back, resembled her closely. His hair was more inclined to brown, and his eyes less deep in color than hers, but he must always be known as her brother. He was a year younger than Miss Elizabeth, and, either from habit or carelessness, was very much in the habit of permitting her to order things around as she chose.

"It is forty miles from Tellaro to Florence", Miss Elizabeth announced, raising her eyes from the Traveller's Guide. "I didn't think it would be so far". She bent over the book again. "It says here - it is Kingsley's Entertaining Guide, you know, which you procured for me in Baia Blu - that it is a neat and populous town on the River Arno. It is supposed to have been a Roman station, by the remains of a castle which have been dug up. I must say, I would like to explore there if we have the time, Patrick".

"Oh, lord, you know ruins always look the same!" Sir Patrick objected, digging his hands into the pockets of his buckskin breeches. "I tell you what it is, Elizabeth: if you are set on poking about all the castles on the way, we shall be a full week on the road. I am for pushing forward to Roma".

"Very well", Miss Elizabeth submitted, closing the Traveller's Guide, and dropping it on the seat. "We will pre-order an early breakfast at the Vinaio, then, and you must tell them at what hour you will have the horses ready".

"I thought we were supposed to sleep at the Antico", Sir Patrick remarked.

"No", his sister replied decidedly. "You have forgotten the wretched account the Mincemans gave us of the comfort to be expected there. It is the Vinaio and I already wrote to preserve our rooms, on account of Mrs Minceman warning me of the fuss and to-do she had once experienced, when they would have had her go up two fleet of stairs to a miserable apartment at the back of the house".

Sir Patrick turned his head to grin at her amicably. "Well, I don't see how they will succeed in ripping you off with a back room, Lizzy".

"Certainly not", Miss Elizabeth responded, with a severity somewhat belied by the twinkle in her eye.

"No, that is certain", Patrick added. "But what I am waiting to see, my love, is the way you will handle the old man".

Miss Elizabeth looked a little anxious. "I could handle Papa, Patrick, couldn't I? If only Lord Clements is not a subject to gout! I think that was the only time when Papa became quite unmanageable".

"All old men have gout", Patrick said.

Miss Elizabeth sighed, acknowledging the truth of that pronouncement.

"It's my belief", added Patrick, "that he doesn't want us to come to town. Come to think of it, didn't he say so?"

Miss Elizabeth loosened the strings of her bag, and groped in it for a slender packet of letters. She spread one of them open. " 'Lord Clements presents his compliments to Sir Patrick and Miss Elizabeth and thinks it inadvisable for them to attempt the fatigues of a journey to Rome at this season. His lordship will do himself the honor of calling upon them in Massa when next he is in the North'. And that," Miss Elizabeth concluded, "was written well over three months before, you may see the date for yourself, Patrick: 29 July, 1811. And not even in his own handwriting. I am sure it is a secretary who wrote it, or one of those horrible lawyers. You can count on it, Lord Clements has forgotten about our very existence, because you know all the arrangements about the money we should have were made by the lawyers, and when ever there is any issue to be settled it is they who write about it. So if he does not want us to come to Rome, it is quite his fault for not having made the least attempt to come to us, or to tell us what we must do. I think him a very terrible guardian. I wish our father had named one of our friends in Tellaro, someone we are acquainted with. It is very disagreeable to be under the governance of a total stranger".