Lament for a Lost Lover (68 page)

“I shall tell your mother that you have been so helpful to me, and I am not really cut out to be a mother, and that she must spare you to me often.”

“Harriet, you are a darling, but even so I shall have to leave her for long periods.”

“We’ll work something out, never fear,” said Harriet.

Oddly enough Carlotta managed to bewitch Harriet, who admitted that before the coming of this infant, young children had had no great charm for her. Perhaps all the effort we had made for Carlotta had given this child something extra.

She was going to be a beauty, Harriet declared. “Look at those eyes! That deep sparkling blue. And that adorable button of a nose. It is just right. She knows it, too, I am sure. See how determined she is to have her own way.”

“Really, Harriet,” I chided, “you positively drool over this baby.”

“I find her excessively drool-worthy.”

She talked of the nursery at the Abbas which would have to be completely refurbished. “Would it be a good idea to get old Sally Nullens over?”

“She’s an old gossip.”

“There’ll be nothing to gossip about and your mother says she is wonderful with children.”

“Perhaps it would be a good idea,” I said. “We were fond of her when we were little.”

“Old Nullens it shall be. I’ve had enough of this place. It’s romantic enough if your sense of smell is not too strong. I believe they throw all sorts of rubbish into the canals. I shouldn’t care for it in winter, and I do really think we should be making plans.”

She was right, of course.

When Gregory returned to Venice at the end of October, he, too, seemed to fall victim to the baby’s charms.

He agreed that we should start the journey home almost immediately. To leave it later could mean that we might run into really severe weather.

I was sure that he had been prompted to such a comment by Harriet who, now the baby was born and the real difficulties of the initial stages of the project were over, was growing tired of the monotony of life and was determined to return to England.

So with some misgivings I made my preparations to leave. While I was packing with Christabel, I remembered seeing Beaumont Granville on the night before Carlotta’s birth. Strangely enough, in view of everything that had happened I had forgotten the incident.

I said to her as she was helping me put my things together: “I had a shock on the night my pains started. I thought I saw Beaumont Granville.”

“Beaumont Granville,” she repeated, as though she were trying to remember who he was.

“The man who tried to abduct me. The one whom Leigh nearly killed.”

“Do you think you really did?”

“I was sure of it. I saw him clearly. He was going past in a gondola, and he looked up at the palazzo.”

“You could have been mistaken. Do you think he would come back here after what happened?”

“I shouldn’t have thought so.”

“You haven’t seen him since?”

“No.”

“Well, you were in a state of tension, you know. You were expecting the baby at any moment … and I imagine it could have been someone who looked like him.”

“That could be so,” I agreed.

And I believed that might be true.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 1977 by Philippa Carr

All rights reserved.

Cover Design by Jason Gabbert

ISBN: 978-1480403710

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.