Ariadne's Diadem Page 4

  Gervase reined in to scan the gently moving foliage, and his breath was silvery in the dawn cold. A shiver passed through him. Fanciful thoughts came more easily in places such as this, so fanciful it was possible to believe in Pan’s power to strike unreasoning terror into men’s hearts. He removed his hat to run his fingers through his hair, and looked at Hugh. “Right, Coz, this is your expedition, so which direction do you select? Back to the Riviero de Chiaia, I hope?”

  “That Sylvanus fellow said we would find our way straight to our destination, and having come this far, I intend to test his claims,” Hugh replied.

  “So he did, and if one believes that, one will believe anything, including the existence of Ariadne’s diadem.” Gervase smiled.

  Hugh flushed. “I’m not here because I believe in any diadem.”

  “No, we’re here because you were drunk and allowed yourself to be goaded.” As he replaced his hat, Gervase recalled those moments at the inn. Just why had the stranger set out to lure them up here? Maybe it would prove to be an ambush after all, but somehow he didn’t think so. No doubt all would soon be revealed. He kicked his heel to move his horse on, but the animal balked, and so he dismounted. “It seems my nag doesn’t wish to proceed,” he murmured, tying the reins to a low-hanging branch.

  “Flea-bitten Neapolitan jades,” Hugh muttered, alighting as well.

  The two men made little sound as they walked through the springy grass. In spite of the night chill, the scent of flowers was almost heady, especially the violets that bloomed so freely in the hollows. The trees continued to rustle, and Vesuvius grumbled in the distance, but then the sound of trickling water carried on the air. They made toward it instinctively, and gradually the trees thinned into a grove where a spring splashed gently into a deep shining pool.

  Gervase smiled. “Behold, the sylvan resting place of Ariadne’s diadem,” he observed.

  “It’s just a grove,” Hugh answered disappointedly, although what else he had expected he didn’t know.

  They approached the pool and looked down at the shimmering surface, from where the moon and stars gazed back as clearly as if from another universe. Suddenly the hitherto constant rumble of Vesuvius was briefly stilled, and in the fleeting silence Gervase thought he heard something.

  He put a hand on Hugh’s arm. “Do you hear that?”

  “What? Oh, you mean Vesuvius has stopped. Yes, I hear.”

  “No, it’s something else. There it is again. It’s like...well, it’s like someone snoring.”

  Hugh gave him a look. “Someone snoring? You’re imagining things.”

  Vesuvius’s rumble recommenced, and Gervase heard nothing more.

  Hugh bent to dip his hand in the pool to drink, and as he did so, something in the depths caught his eyes. “Good God,” he gasped, staring down.

  “What is it?”

  “There’s something down there—I can see it glittering. There are colors—red, green, blue.” Hugh straightened excitedly. “The diadem! Gervase, it’s the diadem!”

  “Hugh, you’re still in your cups, there is no diadem.”

  Hugh pointed into the pool. “Look down there and still say that,” he challenged.

  With a sigh Gervase obeyed, and to his astonishment saw a small rainbow of iridescent colors that had nothing to do with the stars.

  Hugh clutched his shoulder excitedly. “You have to go down for it, Gervase!”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you can dive better than I can, and besides, we both know I’m less than sober.”

  “Yes, but...”

  “Do it, Gervase, otherwise we’ll never know. What if it is Ariadne’s diadem?”

  Gervase hesitated, but then began to unbutton his greatcoat. The dawn air made him shudder as he undressed, but he knew Hugh was right—unless they examined it in full now, they would wonder ever after what it had been. Taking a deep breath, he dove into the icy water, cutting the surface so cleanly that he hardly made a sound.

  Down and down he swam, his skin taut with the shock of the cold. His lungs felt as if they would burst by the time he was within reach of the enticing little rainbow. His questing fingers closed over a hard, intricate surface that was wedged tightly between two rocks. He tugged, and at first it wouldn’t budge, but suddenly it came away in his hand, and he kicked for the surface.

  He burst up into the pale gray air again, waving the trophy aloft, then swam to the bank to toss it onto the grass at Hugh’s feet. There Ariadne’s diadem lay, its gold gleaming, its precious stones ablaze in the early light. It was still perfect, as if it had fallen in the water but a few minutes earlier.

  Hugh stared at it, then looked incredulously at Gervase, who was still in the water. “Dear God above...” he breathed.

  Gervase stared at it, too. The magnificent craftsmanship was ancient, and it was studded with jewels so rare that he could not begin to identify some of them. Even if it wasn’t the wedding crown that had slipped from Ariadne’s dying fingers, it was certainly a priceless treasure from the time of the Romans.

  Hugh picked it up with trembling hands. “Sweet Jesu,” he whispered, his eyes gleaming with anticipation of the fortune such an item would fetch.

  Gervase reached up to him. “Help me out,” he said.

  Hugh hardly heard, for excitement suddenly bubbled so irrepressibly through him that he laughed and gave a loud whoop of triumph.

  The sound echoed around the grove, awakening Sylvanus in his hiding place among the roots of a tree. The faun sat up sharply on his snug bed of leaves, and in the process banged his little horns and pointed ears on a protruding root. For a moment his rather comical face was a picture of sleepy confusion, but then his dreams of the pursuit and ravishment of nymphs fled, as with a start he realized that the diadem he was supposed to guard with his life was in danger. He should have been lying in wait for the two Englishmen, not sleeping! With a bleat of dismay and fury he scrambled out into the dawn-lit grove, making so much noise that both men heard.

  Hugh thought he saw one of the lazzaroni in costume, but Gervase’s lips parted as he beheld the creature with the head and upper body of a man, and the legs and tail of a goat. Since the night began he had seen revelers dressed this way, but this was no disguise; what he was seeing now was the real thing!

  Still bleating, Sylvanus scampered toward Hugh, his hands outstretched to grab the diadem. In the brief ensuing grapple, during which Hugh held on tightly to the prize, the frenzied faun slithered close to the water’s edge. Gervase had the presence of mind to seize one of the creature’s cloven hooves and haul him into the pool. Filled with dread as his lower half was dragged into the water, Sylvanus pointed a quivering finger toward Gervase. Mystical words in a strange, unknown language began to ring shrilly from the faun’s lips.

  Gervase clung to the bank with one hand and stretched the other desperately toward Hugh. “For God’s sake, help me out!” he cried.

  But an instinct for self-preservation cut through the remains of Hugh’s alcoholic haze. He had no intention of putting himself at risk in order to save his loathed cousin, and with sudden, savage decision, he brought his heel crashing down upon the hand Gervase was using to hold the grass.

  Gervase let go with a gasp of pain and disbelief, and his eyes cleared as he finally understood the depth of loathing and jealousy consuming his only kinsman. Then the faun finished his dreadful incantation, and as Hugh began to run for his life with the diadem, the blood became slow and cold in Gervase’s veins. His limbs began to petrify. His flesh turned to the whitest of marble, and there was nothing he could do, no movement he could make, but his mind was still alert and clear as he sank slowly to the bottom of the pool. He’d become as perfect a Roman statue as any yet found.

  Hugh glanced back in time to see Sylvanus trying to clamber from the water, but no sign of Gervase. Had he drowned? What other explanation was there? He ran on and didn’t look back again as he reached the horses. Within moments he was riding like the wind for Nap
les, trying to convince himself that it was a mere mortal who’d attacked them.

  Sylvanus was desperate to pursue Hugh, but his frantic scrambling only made the bank so muddy that his clawing fingers found nothing to grip. The dawn was lightening by the moment, and he wasn’t permitted to leave the grove in daylight. Hugh was going to escape with the diadem! With a huge effort the faun tried to think sensibly, and after a moment edged farther along the bank until he reached a dry portion, then he pulled himself out next to Gervase’s discarded clothes. But he knew it was already too late to chase Hugh, for there was too much light.

  The guardian of the grove lay face down on the grass, his hands clenched into frustrated, frightened fists. How was he going to explain his incompetence and stupidity to Bacchus? The gravest of punishment lay ahead, for the god was going to be very angry.

  Sylvanus got up and with a spurt of anger kicked Gervase’s costly clothes across the grass. Then, his little goat tail drooping, he crept despondently back to his hiding place and curled up in a ball on his bed of leaves.

  * * * *

  As soon as darkness fell again, the desperate faun hurried down the mountain to Naples, there he was dismayed to learn from Teresa that Hugh had already taken passage for England. Gervase’s disappearance had been explained by a very convincing tale of an ill-fated nighttime excursion to Vesuvius, during which Gervase had slipped and fallen into a smoking, red-hot crater. The British consul had believed the story, and so had the Neapolitan officials whose palms had been discreetly crossed with silver, in order that a death certificate would be issued the same day. Hugh had been able to set sail immediately, with not only the priceless diadem, but also every hope of becoming the next Duke of Wroxford. Sylvanus knew there was nothing more he could do, and so returned dejectedly to the grove, where he collected Gervase’s clothes and took them in a neat bundle to his lair to await Bacchus. But it was to be two long months before retribution came.

  And while Hugh made good his escape to England to claim his cousin’s wealth and title, Gervase remained at the bottom of the pool, fronds of weed wafting gently around him. He was marble to the very heart and believed he would remain there forever.

  Chapter Five

  Hugh arrived in London on a fine April day a week or so before Anne’s birthday. He found a capital that was ringing to the news of the betrothal of Princess Charlotte, heiress to the throne, and Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, who had supplanted the Prince of Orange in her affections. The wedding was set to take place at the beginning of May, and the jostling for invitations was quite shocking. Also shocking were the rumors about the famous poet Lord Byron, whose wife had left him because he was whispered to be far too close to his half sister, but none of this meant anything to Hugh, whose preoccupation was solely upon the golden future that had suddenly opened up before him. With this in mind, he swiftly secured a meeting with his late uncle’s lawyer, Mr. Critchley, senior partner of Messrs Critchley, Faulkner, Oliver, and Danby.

  Lilac was in full bloom, just as it had been in Naples in February, and the air was warm and pleasant as Hugh strolled through Mayfair to keep the appointment. He was the picture of restrained mourning elegance. Weepers trailed from his arms, and his eyes were suitably downcast, but he hummed lightheartedly because he was entirely without conscience regarding the cousin he believed had drowned at the hands of a deformed Neapolitan beggar. In fact, it would be true to say that he was probably the happiest man alive, because not only was he sure of Gervase’s title and wealth, but also of Kitty Longton.

  It had taken him only a few hours to woo the actress once she learned that he now had every expectation of being confirmed as the next Duke of Wroxford. Suddenly, the formerly uninteresting Hugh Mowbray was very interesting indeed, although her final capitulation had not been the matter of abandoned passion it appeared, for it followed his frustrated and rash declaration that if she would only be his, he would make her his duchess the moment a decent period of mourning for Gervase had been observed. Hugh didn’t suspect her of the same cold calculation he himself displayed; indeed he was so besotted that he believed her when she swore she had finally realized he was the one she had loved all along. In truth, he and Kitty Longton were splendidly matched, for they were both so deeply unpleasant that they fully deserved each other.

  Since leaving Naples, his only disappointment had been the diadem, and—had he known it—this was simply due to an error by a jeweler’s assistant. The person in question had imbibed too much at luncheon and was alone in the fashionable Bond Street shop when Hugh entered. After casting his somewhat blurred vision over the rare stones and priceless workmanship, the assistant declared me diadem to be a paltry item of little consequence. Since the shop in question was second only to the royal jewelers, Hugh did not doubt that he was being told the truth, so without seeking a second opinion he disappointedly returned the matchless piece to the pocket in his traveling valise and forgot all about it

  Ariadne’s wedding crown therefore did not figure anywhere in his thoughts as he was shown up to Mr. Critchley’s second-floor room. The portly, red-faced lawyer presided at a vast desk, behind which was a window with a fine view over Hyde Park, where the sun had attracted a throng of fashionable carriages and riders. Mr. Critchley and his partners boasted the most exclusive clientele in London—mere honorables hardly figured at all—which meant that where Hugh was concerned the lawyer was at first guilty of a certain snobbish condescension. His attitude changed for the better on discovering that the “grief-stricken” young gentleman in black was not merely the nephew of the seventh Duke of Wroxford and the cousin of the eighth, but apparently the ninth duke himself! From that moment the startled lawyer listened very attentively indeed to the harrowing tale of how Gervase had met his demise in the mouth of Vesuvius.

  When Hugh finished, Mr. Critchley wiped his forehead with a silk handkerchief. “What a tragedy, what a terrible, terrible tragedy,” he muttered, pouring two glasses of brandy from the decanter on his desk.

  “If I had been more agile, maybe I would have been able to save him, but my foot slipped, and all I could do was watch as he fell into the crater.” Hugh managed to make his voice catch, then reached inside his coat for one of the cigars he’d been careful to filch from Gervase’s things before leaving Naples. “I trust you do not mind if I smoke? I find it calms my distress.”

  “Of course, sir, of course.” The lawyer got up to light a spill at the fire, and held it for Hugh, who made certain his hand trembled convincingly. His acting was accomplished, for the lawyer pressed one of the brandy glasses concernedly into his other hand. “Drink this, sir, for you have suffered a dreadful ordeal. I can understand that you blame yourself, but there was clearly nothing you could do. Vesuvius chose to claim the duke, and that is the end of it.”

  “I fear so,” Hugh replied, draining his glass in one gulp.

  “Well, the death certificate issued in Naples cannot be argued with, and in the absence of any other heirs, you, my dear sir, are bound to be raised to the rank of ninth Duke of Wroxford.”

  “It is not an inheritance I accept gladly, Mr. Critchley,” Hugh declared sanctimoniously.

  “I realize that, for you are still consumed with grief for the cousin you loved, but nevertheless it is your duty to accept your destiny.”

  “I realize that,” Hugh answered earnestly.

  The lawyer resumed his seat and toyed thoughtfully with the stem of his glass. “There is one problem—at least, it may be a problem. Tell me, is there a lady in your life, sir?”

  “A lady?” Hugh repeated blankly.

  “Are you married? Betrothed, maybe? Or do you have an understanding with anyone?”

  Hugh became very still. “Why do you ask?”

  “No doubt you knew that your late lamented cousin was to have been engaged to Miss Anne Willowby of Llandower in Monmouthshire?”

  “Yes.” Hugh was puzzled. Where was this leading?

  “Well, the match was a condition of the
seventh duke’s will, and although the eighth duke died before the betrothal actually took place, I’m afraid the stipulation remains in force as far as you are concerned.”

  Hugh was thunderstruck. “I beg your pardon?”

  “In order to inherit, you will have to marry Miss Willowby.”

  Hugh stared at him. “If this is a jest...”

  “No jest, sir, merely a statement of legal fact. To inherit the Wroxford title and fortune, you must make Miss Willowby your bride.” The lawyer spread his hands, apologetically. “I fear that is how it must be, sir.”

  The ash fell from the end of Hugh’s cigar. His mind was racing, for this certainly had no place in his scheme of things. “Isn’t there any way out of it?” he asked then.

  “Sir, if there was, you may be assured that your late cousin would have found it.” Mr. Critchley’s displeased gaze followed the gray-white ash to the floor, where it scattered only too visibly upon the costly Axminster carpet. The lawyer cleared his throat. “Do I take it that you consent?” he asked after a moment.

  Hugh could only nod, for what other choice did he have?

  “I will write to Llandower immediately. Shall I inform the Willowbys that you will leave within a day or so?”

  “Leave? For Llandower, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Whatever for? My cousin certainly wasn’t obliged to go there.” Hugh intended to postpone things as long as possible.

  Mr. Critchley shifted a little uncomfortably. “Forgive me for having to point this out, sir, but your cousin was wealthy in his own right—through his mother—so he could afford to delay. I fear you do not have the same...er, cushion, so to speak...so you do not get anything until the clause is met.”