Lovers in Lisbon

Chapter One ~ 1890-1

Chapter One ~ 1890The Manager stepped forward eagerly.

Down the stairs, moving with a grace that had been acclaimed all over Europe, came the Duchesse de Monreuil,

“Good morning, madame,” he greeted her in French.

She replied in Portuguese, which was his own language,

“Good morning, senhor, it is a beautiful day.”

“Beautiful, madame,” he replied, “for the sun always shines wherever you go.”

She smiled at him and he added,

“The special carriage I have ordered will be arriving here in a few minutes and perhaps, madame, you would prefer to wait in the salon?”

“No, I will wait here,” the Duchesse replied.

As she spoke, she seated herself elegantly in an armchair in front of a writing desk.

It stood in the centre of the large Reception Hall of The Grand Hotel.

She looked very attractive as she did so, wearing a gown that had obviously come from Paris. Precious stones glittered in her small ears and on the long thin fingers of her ungloved hands.

“Tell me,” she enquired, as the Manager hovered near her, “what has been happening in Lisbon since I was last here?”

Even as she asked the question of him, she thought that it was most certainly a mistake.

How could she bear to talk about Lisbon?

The last time she had stayed in what has been called the most beautiful City in Europe she had suffered an agony of misery that she wanted so much to forget.

It had not been beautiful to her then.

Yet it seemed so ridiculous that it was thirty-two years since she had last set foot in the country of her birth.

She remembered, she felt now, every single brick and stone of the City of Lisbon.

She recalled the sunshine glittering on the sea, the beauty of the ancient buildings and the flowers which were bountiful everywhere she looked. Especially those in the sellers’ baskets around the stone fountains.

When she had arrived last night at the hotel and then smelt the familiar fragrance that was essential Lisbon, she knew that she had really made a mistake.

Her first impulse, therefore, on waking this morning was to leave immediately and return to Paris.

Yet, having forced herself to come to Portugal, now that she was here, her pride, which was very much part of her character, would not let her play the coward.

Once and for all she would lay the ghost that had haunted her for so long, a ghost that she was afraid she would carry with her to her grave.

She had tried hard to forget when she was being acclaimed lavishly in France, in Monte Carlo, in Greece, in Hungary, in Vienna and in London.

She had told herself that she would not think of him, she would not remember him and she would try and try to forget everything about him.

And yet he was always there.

If she closed her eyes, she could see his handsome face as if it was yesterday.

“Darling little Inès, I love you!” It was his deep voice echoing down the years. “You are mine, mine completely and I am the first and the only man in your life.”

Prophetic words.

So prophetic that she felt even now, when she was approaching old age, like screaming because she could not escape from him.

With an effort she brought her thoughts back from the past.

The Manager was still hovering near her chair.

“Tell me,” she asked him, “now that the Marques Juan de Oliveira Vasconles has died, who is living in the Palace da Azul?”

“His son, madame, the Marques Alvaro now lives there.”

“His son!” the Duchesse repeated the words beneath her breath. “I did not know he had a son.”

“Si, si, madame, the Marques Alvaro is very much like his father. Very handsome, very charming and, let me see, he must be over thirty by now.”

“I had no idea,” the Duchesse remarked in a faint voice.

“Madame must have met the Marques Juan when you were last here?”

For a moment the Duchesse closed her eyes.

Then she said in a voice that did not sound at all like her own,

“Yes – I met him.”

“You will recollect, madame, how magnificent the Marques looked when riding one of his superb horses.”

“And the new Marques – his son?”

“He looks just like his father and as a rider is admired by every young man in the whole country while his horses win all our most important Classic races.”

The Manager smiled before he added,

“We are indeed very proud of the Marques Alvaro, just as we were very respectful of his father.”

Again the Duchesse closed her eyes.

She could see the Marques as the Manager had described him, riding towards her on a huge black stallion.

The moment she had seen him it was as if he had just stepped down from the mountains that the simple people still believed were the habitation of the Gods.

He was certainly God-like to her, God-like from the moment she first saw him and when he swept her into his arms and proclaimed that she was his, how could any girl, innocent and unsophisticated, have resisted the Marques Juan?

“Perhaps Madame will drive out and see The Palace,” the Manager was suggesting. “It is even more impressive than it has been in the past. The new Marques has spent a great deal of money on it and the gardens are unique in their beauty.”

The Duchesse drew in her breath.

How could she ever forget those gardens with the stone fountains throwing their water, iridescent in the sunshine, up towards the sky?

She particularly remembered the scent of lilac, white and pink.

They looked, Juan had told her, as if the Gods had made them especially as a background for her beauty.

There had been Japanese bridges, rock gardens, summerhouses and grottos.

And he had kissed her in each and every one of them.

They had wandered in the bright sunshine into the hothouses and he had then picked her orchids from his fabulous collection from all over the world.

He had said, as he so often did, that they were not as beautiful as she was.

Yes, she certainly remembered the Palace da Azul with its Gothic turrets, Arab minarets, Renaissance cupolas and gazebos.

She had called it a Fairy Palace.

And how could Juan be anything but a Fairytale Prince?

Never, never would she forget the hot summers when they had been together.

Only when his family came to stay with him and he filled The Palace with aristocratic guests for the races was she banished to the house a little way down the hill.

There she was looked after by a number of kind elderly servants until she could be with Juan again.

It had been a glorious dream.

Like a child she had never envisaged that the day would come when she would ever wake up to reality.

Juan had taken her to Paris. He had bought her wonderful clothes and jewels that she had never thought to own in her wildest dreams.

She had gloried in them because they made her more beautiful for him.

They had visited other countries in his yacht, but looking back now, the Duchesse could remember very little about them.

All she could recall was Juan’s lips on hers, Juan’s arms around her body and the ecstasy and rapture when he made her his.

“Yes, madame, you will certainly enjoy seeing the Palace da Azul,” the Manager then continued. “We have been laughing among ourselves and saying it might have been built for our King, but there is still a King in residence, for how could the Marques Alvaro be anything else?”

The Duchesse was wondering how she could possibly endure this talk of the Palace da Azul. any longer.

Then there was an unexpected interruption.

A girl came to the side of the Manager and in a low pleading voice the Duchesse heard her saying,

“Please, senhor, please, please let me show my needlework to the ladies staying here at your hotel.”

The Manager made a gesture with his right hand as if he would brush her away.

But the girl interposed.

“I beg of you, senhor, to help me, as you have sometimes done before. I am starving and I have no money to buy any more material for my work.”

The Manager parted his lips as if he was determined to be rid of her, but then he found it difficult to refuse the pleading in the girl’s eyes.

He obviously recognised the desperate note in her soft educated voice.

On an impulse, because he was a kindly man, the Manager turned to the Duchesse,

“I wonder, madame, if you would care to look at the very beautiful needlework that this young woman brings here from time to time. It is, I assure you, of the very highest quality and not easily obtainable elsewhere in the City.”

The Duchesse, deep in her thoughts, was about to reply that she was not interested.

Then she looked at the girl standing a little distance away and realised that she was very beautiful, so beautiful in fact that it passed through her mind that it might have been herself thirty years ago when Juan first saw her.

For a long moment she thought that by some unaccountable magic she was looking at her own face.

Then she realised that, although the girl was surely beautiful, she was different from any Portuguese she had ever seen before.

While she had dark hair that was so like the pictures of the Madonna in the Cathedral, incredibly her eyes were blue.

For a second the Duchesse thought she must be mistaken, but, though her eyelashes were dark, her eyes were unmistakably blue. It was the deep blue of the Mediterranean.

She had a small oval face and a little straight nose.

Looking at her the Duchesse saw that she was undoubtedly speaking the truth when she had said that she was starving.

There was no mistaking that the sharpness of her chin was unnatural and the bones stood out in her wrists above the hand that held the parcel of needlework and it was trembling.

“Let me see what you have to sell,” she suggested.

The Manager moved to one side and the girl came forward and, going down on her knees at the Duchesse’s feet, pulled off the wrapping of her parcel, which was a piece of grey cloth.

Underneath was a nightgown made of silk and appliquéd with ecru lace.

One glance told the Duchesse that her work was exceptional, indeed so exceptional that she asked her sharply,

“Is this entirely your own work?”

“I was taught at the Convent, Donna,” the girl replied, “and the nuns there are noted for their needlework.”

“It is certainly very beautifully done,” the Duchesse said. “I will buy it from you and any other garments you have completed.”

The girl gave a little cry and tears came into her eyes.

“Thank you – thank you – you have saved me! I thought when I came – here that this was my – last chance of living.”

“Just how can you think of dying when you are so young and beautiful?” the Duchesse asked.

As she spoke, she remembered the agony and the misery when she had been determined to die. In a very different way she had been saved at the last moment.

“Life is precious,” she now said aloud.

She thought as she spoke that she was being hypocritical. Life had not seemed precious to her when she was this child’s age.

In fact death would have been infinitely preferable to living without Juan and so without love, she surmised.

“I have two other – garments at – home,” the girl said. “May I fetch them for – you, Donna?”

The eagerness in her voice made the Duchesse smile. How easy it was to be kind when one could afford it!

“Excuse me, madame,” the Manager intervened in their conversation, “but your carriage is at the door.”

The Duchesse rose slowly to her feet.

“See that what this young woman has to sell me is taken up to my suite,” she said, “and pay her what she is asking.”

She heard the girl draw in a deep breath.

Then the Duchesse changed her mind.

“Come with me,” she now said. “I will take you to your home and then you can show me what else you have made.”

“That is so very gracious of you, madame,” the Manager said, “and I can assure you that this young woman is completely trustworthy.”