Chapter 1

Authors who write in the first person cannot expect their readers to be seriously concerned about the survival of the main character. A heroine who can describe her trials and tribulations in carefully chosen phrases obviously lived through those trials without serious damage. Yet I remember being absolutely breathless with suspense when the madwoman entered Miss Jane Eyre's chamber and rent her wedding veil asunder; and I bit my nails to the quick as I followed the perils of Mrs. Radcliffe's haunted heroines.

Not being Miss Brontë or Mrs. Radcliffe, I have no hope of engaging my reader's attention to that extent. Yet some of the experiences that befell me, at a certain period of my life, were as distressing and almost as improbable as any of my favorite heroines' adventures. Perhaps my youth and inexperience made my problems seem worse than they were. But even now, when I am a good many years older (I prefer not to state how many)—even now a reminiscent shiver passes through me as I remember Lord Shelton, and that dreadful moment when he held me helpless in his grasp, with his breath hot on my averted face and his hands tearing at my gown.

I anticipate. It is necessary to explain how I found myself in such a predicament; and that explanation must incorporate some of my family history.

My father was an artist—not a very good one, I fear. It is a pity, in a way, that his father was able to leave him a small sum of money, for without it Father would have had to seek gainful employment instead of pursuing the elusive genius of art. His small inheritance was enough to keep him in relative comfort for several years, while he traveled on the continent, ending, finally, in that artists' mecca, Rome. To a young man of romantic tastes and ardent spirits, the old capital of the Caesars had many attractions beyond its artistic treasures—the colorful models who waited for employment on the Spanish Steps, the companionship of other struggling young artists, the wine and laughter and song in the soft Italian nights.

Father was a remarkably good-looking man, even when he was dying. Consumption is not a disfiguring disease. Indeed, that is one of its diabolical qualities, that it should give its victims a ghastly illusion of health and beauty just before the end. Father's slenderness and delicacy of features were intensified by the ravages of the disease. The pallor of his complexion was refined by soft dark hair and lustrous black eyes framed by lashes so long and thick that any woman would have envied them.

Knowing him as he was in his decline, I can imagine how handsome he was at twenty, when he met my mother, and I can understand how he won her heart so quickly. Her family did not find it so easy to understand; for she was the daughter of a noble Italian house. In the ordinary course of events my father would never have met her. A romantic accident threw them together. The carriage in which she was traveling to Rome was delayed by bad weather, and in the darkness was set upon by bandits. Her attendants fled or were overcome; and Father happened upon the scene at the most critical moment, just as the miscreants were dragging the lady from the carriage. As his horse came thundering down upon them, the bandits thought him the leader of a troop of defenders, so that there was time for him to lift my mother's fainting form into the saddle and escape before they discovered their error.

By the fitful moonlight he had seen enough to make out the shrinking form of a woman, beset by the men who threatened her person or her property, or both; but it was not until they reached the inn, fortunately not many miles distant, that he saw the face of the girl he had saved.

I resemble her only in my coloring—which some might find surprising, for I am fair-haired and blue-eyed. In fact, not all Italians are dark. Those of the northern regions are often fair, and there was some such strain in my mother's family. My features are more like those of my father, and although he could not be overly modest about his looks without denigrating mine, he would never allow that any woman could equal my mother's beauty.

Of course the circumstances of their first meeting were romantic enough to dazzle any young man. My mother was in a dead faint when he carried her into the inn and placed her on a settle by the hearth. The firelight turned her tumbled ringlets to red-gold; and this gleaming halo framed a countenance of pure perfection. As he knelt beside her, supporting her head upon his arm, her lashes fluttered and lifted. The first thing she saw was his face—young, handsome, glowing with emotion; the first sensation she was conscious of feeling was the strength of his arm, tenderly yet respectfully embracing her.

It is no wonder they fell in love at first sight. What is wonderful is that their love should have won out over all obstacles. That first night they were both too young and too bewitched by one another to think sensibly, or they would have realized that their only hope lay in an immediate elopement. But the practical difficulties were great. For one thing, it was virtually impossible for them to be married in a country where Protestants were not even allowed to hold church services. So the authorities were notified of the attack upon the carriage, and Prince Tarconti was informed that his daughter was safe; but not before the lovers had had time to converse for hours in a language more eloquent than Father's fluent if ungrammatical Italian.

How well I knew each detail of that romantic history! It was my favorite bedtime story in childhood, and if my mother was the saint to whom I addressed my childish prayers, a certain Count Ugo Fosilini was the villain of my youthful nightmares. A remote family connection, he was the suitor destined for Francesca Tarconti by her aristocratic father; she had been on her way to visit his parents in Rome when Fate intervened. It was natural that he should be the emissary sent by Prince Tarconti to recover his daughter. As soon as Count Ugo set eyes on my father he knew he had a rival; and he took care to insult him by offering him money as a reward for the rescue.

Of course Father dashed the gold indignantly to the ground. The gesture was gallant but ill-advised, for it confirmed what the Count had until then only suspected. My mother was at once removed to the Fosilini palazzo in Rome, where she was kept a virtual prisoner. This was not enough for the Count. He was too arrogant to challenge a man whom he considered his social inferior, so he hired assassins, of whom there were plenty to be found in Rome. My father was saved only through the devotion of his friends, struggling young writers and artists like himself. Some of them were members of a revolutionary secret society, so they were more than willing to frustrate the plans of Count Ugo, whose reputation as a cruel landlord was well known. The members of one such group aided my father when he followed Mother to the family estate in the hills of Umbria, and they were instrumental in assisting in the couple's eventual escape from Italy. That was the most exciting chapter in the story—Mother's flight from the sleeping castle, accompanied by a devoted maidservant, through whom she had maintained communications with Father; their desperate ride through the night, with Mother in men's clothing, astride her plunging steed; the fishing boat in Genoa, and the rough patriots who sailed it, carrying, quite often, other cargo than fish; and the triumphant landing in Marseilles.

They were married in London. My mother's rejection of all she had left was total; she even gave up her religion. At first the young couple lived obscurely, fearing retaliation; but as the months passed they realized that Mother's family had reacted with the cold arrogance typical of their class. Finally they learned, through friends in Italy, that Prince Tarconti had disinherited his daughter and forbidden her name to be pronounced in his hearing. To her family she was as good as dead.

Alas, in only too short a time she was. She died at my birth; and when Father wrote to Italy, to announce the two events, he received no reply. Since he had acted only out of a sense of common decency, he was not sorry that the correspondence ended there.

The succeeding years—seventeen of them—may be passed over quickly. They were not good years for him; but I did not know that until it was too late. With the selfishness of youth I wore the pretty dresses, played with the expensive toys, and accepted the presence of maids and nurses without wondering where the money came from, or why Father was so often absent from home. He continued to paint and, I assumed, to sell his paintings. It was not until one winter night, when he collapsed in a fit of uncontrollable coughing as he bent to kiss me good night, that I realized he was ill.

I was too young to understand the ominous portent of the attack. He was quick to reassure me; and the action of a lady of his acquaintance, in sending him to the south of France, undoubtedly did prolong his life. I remained in England, in boarding school. I did not realize that my school fees were part of Mrs. Barton's payment for my father's services; nor that the term "patroness" was a euphemism for her real role in his life.

She was not the first of his "patrons"—nor the last. I understand that now. I do not judge him. I still believe he did it primarily for me, to give me the comfort and security he could supply in no other way.

After the incident I have mentioned, his health seemed to improve, as it sometimes does with this illness. I saw very little of him, and I was selfish enough to resent his neglect, as I saw it. I cannot completely blame myself for failing to understand why he had to keep me from him. He even managed to delude the innocent ladies who ran the boarding school. It was in Yorkshire, far from the vicious gossip of London, but the dear old Misses Smith would not have believed the gossip if they had heard it. They adored my father, and always hovered over him when he came on his rare visits, accepting him as the gentleman of means he pretended to be.

Yet I loved him; and I ought to have sensed the increasing desperation under his smiling manner.

He had good reason to be desperate that winter before my eighteenth birthday. The precarious pattern of existence he had built was tottering on its foundation—and I, like a dweller in a house riddled with insects, would have lived on in fancied security until the floor collapsed under my feet. Certainly I would never have guessed from his manner, when he came to fetch me for the Christmas holidays, that anything was amiss. He had never looked more handsome, and the dear old ladies fluttered about him, offering him wine and seed cake. He was wearing a magnificent new watch chain of heavy gold, all hung with beautiful little trinkets—carved cameos and lockets and the like—which I longed to examine.

Copyright © 1977 by Barbara Michaels.