Forever Remain Read online

  Many wealthy merchants, and those with title, live outside the walls of the city in houses befitting their rank. And it is only when you travel farther across the forth into Fife and beyond that you encounter estates that equate to the English equivalent of a grand mansion set in parkland. I am told that one such estate has a hot house for growing exotic fruits, and that the lord had built for his lady a large structure that resembles the pineapple. I would dearly love to see such a sight, and perhaps when you return here with me next summer, we can search out this pineapple for ourselves. I may start making enquiries and have my steward write to His Lordship with a request for a visit. Your goddaughter Rory will be most envious were we to visit this stone replica of her most favored fruit.

  I realize this small excursion into my surroundings is most unsatisfactory for one such as you who has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, but I must most reluctantly sign off this letter and have it sent at once, so that you will receive it as soon as possible. I have a few days of meetings in the capital to settle my affairs here in the north until my return in the spring. It is as well I have complete faith in my steward, a gentleman aptly named Mr. Colin Record. Between he and Ffolkes—to whom I have given my proxy and who will remain to catalog the library to his satisfaction—I have every confidence the repairs and renovation to the estate will continue on apace in my absence.

  I count the hours until I am in your arms and we can once again indulge ourselves in [suppressed]. [suppressed] misses you and lets me know each morning. Does [suppressed] as much as [suppressed] for you? God this wanting makes me feel as if I am fifteen again in need of [suppressed] and that’s all your fault, you wicked woman. Has a man ever desired a woman as much as I desire you? I shall [suppressed] and [suppressed] and you will [suppressed].

  Your strutting rooster,

  K

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  Proud Mary Letters

  7. Kate, Lady Paget, to the [Fifth] Duke of Roxton

  Kate, Lady Paget, Casa Rosa, vicino Ponte di Marmo via Borra, Quartieri Veneziato, Livorno, to His Grace the Most Noble [5th] Duke of Roxton, the White House, Third Hill Residences, Constantinople.

  Casa Rosa, vicino Ponte di Marmo via Borra, Quartieri Veneziato, Livorno

  August, 1767

  * * *

  My dear Roxton,

  You requested in your most recent letter for me to tell you something about Livorno. I was most surprised that you have never visited here, that you did not pass through this port on your way to Rome. But then I remembered you said you travelled overland from Paris so that you could visit Milan, Modena, and Florence before going on to Rome, and that you had a specific reason for visiting Modena. Although, Antonia did confide in me in her letter that the physician you consulted there about your little son’s condition was unable to provide you with any answers, and even less hope!

  I pray that having settled in a house in Constantinople, you are now at leisure to consult far and wide the physicians of Islam, and who you are hopeful have more knowledge about the falling sickness and its treatment than our physicians here in the west. Perhaps the change of environment and diet will offer your little boy some respite from his seizures?

  And before I forget (yet again) and give you an account of this, my adopted city, I wish to send my love to you and Antonia on being reunited with your eldest son and heir. How many years have passed since you were all together as a family? Julian must be much changed, and I do not mean in appearance only. From what you told me of the reports from his godfather, he has grown into a worthy young gentleman of whom you are justifiably very proud. I do not need to remind you I understand completely your anxiousness at this reunion, and for it to go beyond your expectations, particularly for Antonia’s sake. And I do hope you will write me an account of that most auspicious of occasions so that I may rest easy knowing the mother of your son has been reunited with her child to the mutual satisfaction of all parties.

  I have strayed again from my purpose, have I not? So here is my précis of Leghorn (as we English call it, though I do my best to refer to it as the local people do and that is Livorno).

  A great mixture of races resides here within this fortress town—Moors, Arabians, Turks, and all sort of Europeans, which I suppose is to be expected in a port where ships dock from many parts of the Mediterranean and beyond. These ships sail in as close as they can, this being a shallow water port, and then their goods are off-loaded onto smaller boats to be brought to shore. Once on dry land, they are sorted at the docks and then taken to enormous warehouses for further sorting. Those officials who supervise are not there to collect customs, as this sovereign state is free of such duties, and thus they spend their time keeping the peace and ensuring the smooth operation of the transfer of goods, and that none are stolen.

  There is all manner of cargo, from grain to tobacco, sugar, and what may surprise you (it did me), an over abundance of dried cod and herring. Why you ask? It is for the local population and those beyond the walls for their Friday meal, when the papists are forbidden to partake of meat and dairy products of any kind, and also for the eves of feasts days. My housekeeper tells me that what with all the religious festivities, when Fridays and Saturdays and Lent days are added up together, Catholics spend over a third of the year without meat, eggs, butter, cheese, and lard! Imagine going without a good egg in the morning, or milk in one’s tea or coffee? You certainly would not abide such dictates, and I dare say, were you a papist, would thumb your nose at the cardinals and Inquisition, and if I know you, get away with it, too. Damn you!

  And yet, for all its papist dictates and sinister figures of the Inquisition skulking in shadows, hoping to pounce on those who dare to go against the teachings of the Church and eat meat on a Friday, this town is remarkably tolerant of other faiths. But that is an expedience of its wise rulers. The Medici, despite their ennoblement, are first and foremost bankers and merchants, and thus ever pragmatic. Where there is great commerce, coin takes precedence over God.

  Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, Jews, and Islamists are able to worship freely here, and without fear. There are synagogues, and temples, and even an English cemetery!

  So if I were to die here tomorrow, I could safely be buried in consecrated Protestant earth. I am told it is the only English cemetery in all of the Italian states. It is fenced and well tended, and many wealthy merchants have been laid to rest under impressive monuments.

  With an English cemetery, one would then expect there to be a large community of our nationals living here. But that is not the case. It is a small community of only a few dozen families. But they are very visible economically, and given our mercantile pre-eminence, are exceedingly vocal about their wants and needs. The British factory (as these English merchants banded together are known) are well organized into a mercantile corporation, and do very well for themselves.

  Of course, they are merchants born and bred and I will tell you how starved they are for good society: when it was known that I, the widow of a much-decorated admiral lord, had taken up residence here, it was as if the Queen herself had come amongst them! You chuckle and shake your head, but it is so. I have not had dinner at home in over a month, and while it is all very well to be feted and scraped to, I would prefer in my time of life to have a quieter existence, particularly with my failing sight not allowing me to gauge the mood of the room as well as I would like.

  How I miss catching your eye from across a crowded drawing room and sharing a raised brow at some creature’s outlandish outfit or a dandy’s appalling wig looking more poodle than hair, and you pulling that face which would have me ducking behind my fan to hide my smile. But most of all I miss that dead stare, the one where I am convinced you can look straight through persons who bore you, so that they become as a ghost and might as well not be there at all, much you care for their conversation or their
groveling addresses.

  Come to think on it, you would not like Livorno at all. While you might approve of the townhouses on the canals along the via Borra where I have my apartment, which are uniform and spacious and there is a hint of Venice about the aspect, the company which I keep would not suit. Perhaps if you were to visit incognito, leaving your ducal coronet at the fortress wall. Visiting as His Grace of Roxton would fatigue you. Besides, this town is not large enough for the two of us! Ha!

  [Paragraph of four or five sentences unreadable.]

  I should have started a fresh page, or perhaps another letter, and sent what I had already written, but I could not or you may have surmised something untoward had happened to me to end so abruptly such a mundane correspondence.

  Oh, my dearest friend! I have the most wonderful, wonderful news to impart. My son—and he has given me permission to call him that in private, though he will call me Kate while his adoptive parents live—has left Lucca and is here with me now. Yes! Christopher is here in my apartment. In truth it has been two weeks since I began my letter to you, for he walked through my door while I was here at my desk, and I was so shocked to see him that I spilled ink and forgot my letter altogether. I know you will forgive me.

  Christopher and I have spent every waking moment since his arrival talking, and he talking of a future which includes me... Renard, I cannot convey to you the euphoria I am feeling except to equate it with the very same feeling I had when I first held him in my arms as a newborn. The feeling is that powerful, that overwhelming, that even now, as I ink this news to you, tears are filling my eyes, so that if my eyesight was poor before, it is even worse as I write this all down! So please do forgive this old lady her handwriting and the splotches to the page.

  Did you ever expect such an outcome? I know you hoped, as I did, that my boy would come to his senses and see that all I ever wanted was to be a small part of his life. When I wrote to you of my first and only meeting with him late last year, he was still part of the De Nobili triangle. I was convinced he intended to continue in his vocation as a cicisbeo and would forevermore be known as Cristoforo.

  What altered to make him change, you ask, when he has been the contractual gentleman companion and lover of other men’s wives for a decade? And this last contract has been to the wife of a politically powerful Lucchesi count, Maddalena De Nobili, who was so taken with him as her companion-lover that she wanted, nay begged, him to sign a second contract for another two years, and her husband added his voice to hers!

  I will never fathom how these arrangements are conducted so civilly, with legally-binding contracts, and all parties concerned, most particularly the husband and the wider community, accepting this ‘love triangle’ as if it is an everyday occurrence. No one looks down their nose on the cicisbeo, and everyone sees it as an honor and a stepping stone to greater things. The young gentlemen of the Italian aristocracy scramble about to acquire such a position, and I am told that as Christopher has been accepted as one of them, indeed, much sought after, is a great honor indeed.

  You roll your eyes at me when I tell you I do not approve of my son as part of such a marital ménage a trois. And no, I am not being prudish, and well you know it! After all, you may well say he is following in my salacious footsteps, at the very least, his birth father’s. Sir George was no saint, in and out of the bedchamber. But what I am referring to is Christopher’s many and varied tasks out of the bedchamber as cicisbeo to a married woman. It is the servile nature of such a position, of him being at her beck and call, and the husband not only tolerating it, but being part of it all! You would never have bowed to such an arrangement. Jump into bed with a married woman, yes, but take her husband’s place at the theatre and on outings and the like, and be obliged to fetch and carry her fan? Absolutely not! Your arrogance would never have allowed you to be anyone’s lap dog.

  I should not cast aspersions on an arrangement that is as foreign to me as Catholicism and the food (though I do enjoy the food!). After all, it is not my country, and it is not my social circle. But he is my son and an Englishman born and bred, and I would much prefer he spend his time as a muddy-booted squire, than as a silk-clad, perfumed jackanapes to a painted Italian countess.

  No! I have not been in my cups to wish my son returned to the backwaters of the Cotswolds where he grew up, when all I ever did when he was a child was bemoan such a provincial upbringing. Laugh all you like! What I most wished for has certainly come to pass, for ten years living amongst the Tuscan nobility has transformed him into a most polished and accomplished gentleman. He does not walk, he glides. He does not merely move, he slithers. He does not talk, he converses, and in three languages, if it is required. He dances like a master, can fence to save his life, strums a mandora and plays the viola, and would be your equal for sartorial elegance. And if all these things are a measure of his assiduousness as a student of cicisbeism, and complete transformation, one can extrapolate this into the bedroom and confidently assume that he is a consummate lover, and like you, well able to satisfy his lovers in every particular.

  Am I jealous you ask? Why yes! I most certainly am! To think he gives of his time and his talents to these women, and with the husband’s permission, while I was never permitted to even be known to him as his aunt while he was growing up because I might infect him with my licentiousness, sticks in my throat like a fishbone. But I can hear you say that I now have had the last laugh, given my illegitimate son, brought up as a squire’s son has transformed from backwater grub to aristocratic butterfly! So it must be in the blood, and no amount of hayracking and cider was going to make an ounce of difference. I have won, have I not?

  It is a hollow victory because I do not, despite their disdain of me, wish my sister and her husband ill. But I would be lying to you and myself if I did not tell you when Christopher told me he had received a letter from his adoptive father that my sister, his ‘mother,’ was ill, I was not as upset as I should have been. I did try to appear so for his sake.

  I do not wish for my sister to be ill, and I am exceedingly grateful to her and my dull brother-in-law for raising Christopher as their own, but it was news of her illness which provided the catalyst for his decision to give up this way of life he has here in Tuscany. Indeed, he has decided to quit Italy altogether and return to England to be with her.

  And am I jealous that it took my sister’s illness for him to come to his senses? Why, of course I am. But I do not let on to him, for he would not understand my resentment. And I would not want to jeopardize the delicate balance to our reconciliation. And so I bite my tongue and nod and agree and enter into all his plans. I can hear in his voice the love he has for Sophie, that she is in truth his mother, though I was the one who carried him in my womb, and went through the pain of childbirth to give him life.

  And whatever the animosity between him and his ‘parents’ for their deception at not telling him the truth of his birth, which led him to run away to the Continent, he loves her, and he loves his father, and forgives them. And I know that none of my letters of entreaty, and the fact I settled here to be closer to him held any sway with his decision-making. And I must live with this and accept it, and be thankful that I am permitted a small piece of him.

  I had Fran make me a coffee, and I went up to the turret that gives a splendid view of the harbor, to clear my thoughts, and because Christopher wished to speak to me of the future. Now I have returned, with my thoughts clearer, and wish to ask your forgiveness for a letter that started one way and has ended in quite another direction.

  I will write again soon and let you know my plans, and what the future holds for me and my son. Ah! To be able to write those two words makes my heart sing.

  Give my love to Antonia, and tell her I am thinking of her with her two sons, particularly more so now that I am able to be a mother again. Enjoy your sojourn amongst the Ottomans. You asked in your previous letter if I would care for you to bring me a little something back to England. I would, thank you. Let
it be a silk turban and perhaps one of those shawls, so that I can look the part of a respectable matron, though I can assure you I never shall be!

  Until next time, dearest friend,

  All my love,

  Kate

  8. Kate, Lady Paget, to the [Fifth] Duke of Roxton

  Kate, Lady Paget, Casa Rosa, vicino Ponte di Marmo via Borra, Quartieri Veneziato, Livorno, to His Grace the Most Noble [5th] Duke of Roxton, the White House, Third Hill Residences, Constantinople.

  Casa Rosa, vicino Ponte di Marmo via Borra, Quartieri Veneziato, Livorno

  August, 1767

  * * *

  Your letter arrived the day after mine was sent, and so I am replying immediately so you know I received it, and because I must relate an incident that occurred, which, if I do not ink it now, I shall not want to write about it at all. But I must tell you, not only because you will find it amusing, but because you are well acquainted with the main actors in this tragic comedy. Naturally, you may share this with Antonia (I know you will anyway, but for what it is worth, she has my permission to read it).