cheeks burned. ‘Don’t threaten me, Celeste. I support myself, you know. I don’t need any assistance from you.’
‘No, perhaps not. But this hospital you are training at in London could no doubt use some funds, and if you cross me I’ll find someone on their staff who is corruptible enough to do anything for money, understand?’
Emma stared at her. ‘You must be joking!’
‘I was never more serious in my life.’
‘There are other hospitals.’
‘I would always be able to find you. I have the money, darling, and believe me, I know, money can buy anything, but anything!’
‘I believe you would hound me,’ said Emma wonderingly. ‘Why? Celeste, why? What have I ever done to you?’
‘Nothing. And that has nothing to do with it, Emma. I want you here, and if you walk out on me, your life will become so unpleasant you will surely wish you’d never crossed me.’ She sighed, and her tone changed again. ‘Darling, what am I asking, after all? Six weeks of your time, six weeks during which time you can explore one of the most exciting cities in the world; surely that’s not so much to ask?’
Emma shook her head, too choked to speak, then without a word she turned and walked back into her bedroom. She was nineteen, which was not a very great age, inexperienced and a little frightened by her stepmother’s threats, and there was no one in the world to whom she could turn, apart from a couple of distant relatives back there in England, who couldn’t care less really what happened to her. It seemed she would go with Celeste, because just at present she didn’t feel up to standing up to her.
At breakfast the next morning the scene the previous evening might never have happened. Celeste had resumed her earlier indulgent attitude, and if she thought Emma was a little silent, and perhaps rather subdued, her own inconsequential chatter amply covered any evidence of that.
She told Emma lightly that she had met Count Vidal Cesare the previous evening.
‘He joined us after dinner,’ she recounted, a smile on her lips, a little self-satisfied smile like the look of the cat when she has just been at the cream. ‘He couldn’t join us for dinner, because he had commitments which couldn’t be broken, but he stayed long after the Contessa had returned home, and we went for a trip on a gondola. Emma, darling, it was marvellous! We must see what we can do about arranging an escort for you while you are here, because one cannot enjoy any of the delights of Venice by night without a suitable male in tow.’
‘Thank you, but that won’t be necessary,’ said Emma quietly, and Celeste looked at her sharply.
‘You are not leaving.’ It was a statement rather than a question.
‘No, Celeste, I’m not leaving. But nor do I intend to be manoeuvred by you into accepting the company of some hangabout relation of this Count’s.’
‘Don’t be so vehement, darling. No one is going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do … now.’ She rose elegantly to her feet. ‘And now I’ll go and get dressed, and you can finish the packing, if you’d be so kind. A gondola is coming for us at eleven. Some fellow who works for the Contessa, Giulio, I believe his name is, will arrive to escort us to the Palazzo. Imagine it, Emma, me, Celeste Bernard, staying at a Venetian palazzo!’
To Emma, the Palazzo represented many things. It was certainly old, and she supposed it might be called beautiful, but the thoughts uppermost in her mind were those concerning Celeste, and she did not find the excitement in the visit she might have done in different circumstances.
Celeste shivered as they crossed the chill dankness of the lower hall and ascended the staircase in the wake of Giulio, who was laden down with two of Celeste’s larger cases. Emma was carrying a small case and a hold-all which accommodated most of her belongings, while in the hall below stood the huge trunk which Celeste had filled with her evening gowns and shoes and jewels.
‘We must have a lift installed,’ remarked Celeste, over her shoulder to Emma. ‘No one walks upstairs in the States!’
The Contessa awaited them in the large lounge, and Celeste was relieved to note that in these apartments central heating had been installed and the furniture was reasonably modern and comfortable. She saw no reason to retain the inner rooms of the Palazzo in the same state as the outer walls, and Emma felt sure her first thoughts were the amount of renovation which would take place as soon as it was certain that she was to be the next Contessa.
The maid, Anna, was waiting to serve coffee and biscuits, and after several cups and a couple of cigarettes, Celeste and Emma were shown their rooms.
Celeste’s room was a huge barnlike salon with a massive tester bed hung with velvet drapes from a central cornice that could be let down to enclose completely the occupants of the bed. The tesselated floor was strewn liberally with soft piled rugs, and the furniture was made of dark stained wood accentuated by the bright colours of the bed covers and curtains.
‘Heavens!’ exclaimed Celeste, in amazement, ‘It’s like a small auditorium.’
‘Perhaps that’s what it was used for in the olden days,’ remarked Emma, forgetting for a moment her own problems. ‘Maybe the Contessas used to hold audience in their bedchambers like kings and queens used to in days gone by.’
‘Is that a fact?’ Celeste made a moue with her lips. ‘Ah, well, so long as the bed’s comfortable, I don’t suppose I shall worry. Actually, though, I imagine those drapes could prove rather stuffy on a hot evening.’
‘In this place?’ Emma shook her head. ‘I shouldn’t imagine these rooms ever get stuffy, as you put it. They’re built of stone, you know, these palazzi. And stone takes an awful lot to warm up.
Celeste sighed. ‘And where is the bathroom? I wonder if the plumbing is modern. Let’s hope so.’
The bathroom was huge, and stately, and the bath was big enough to hold half a dozen adults at one go, but the plumbing was modern, and when the taps were turned on, a refreshing stream of steaming water splayed out on to the porcelain basin.
Anna had offered to unpack for Celeste, so leaving her stepmother to the maid’s ministrations, Emma decided to explore. Her own bedroom was far less imposing than Celeste’s, but it was still rather big although the bed was a modern divan-type four-footer, for which she felt rather disappointed. She, much more than Celeste, would have welcomed the genuine atmosphere of old things in their proper place.
The lounge when she returned to it was deserted, but sounds penetrated from a door opening off to the left which seemed to lead to the kitchen quarters and she thought perhaps the old lady might be supervising the arrangements for lunch.
She stepped back out on to the long gallery which ran from front to back and stood for a moment looking down on the deserted and rather dark hall below. She could picture what the Palazzo must have looked like in the days when the hall was used for receptions, when the room was filled with beautifully adorned women in silks and satins and brocades, their jewels more fabulous than any Emma had ever seen, while the men, bewigged perhaps, or simply elegantly clothed themselves in satin breeches and waistcoats joined their ladies in the minuet, the strains of violins floating up to the younger members of the family, as they watched perhaps from the secrecy of this very balcony.
She was lost in thought, a faint smile touched her
