Secrecy by Rupert Thomson Read Free Book Online Page A

heavy-lidded eyes on me for so long that I felt I must have spoken out of turn. ‘You don’t know? I thought everybody knew.’
    After her father’s death, Marguerite-Louise had lived in Paris, which she thought of as the cradle of civilization, the centre of the world. Her marriage had taken her away from all that. When she arrived in Tuscany, she was only fifteen, but she already had strong opinions. She saw herself as having been banished to some dismal backwater, as she never tired of telling him.
    ‘I got a letter from her once. Do you know what it said? I remember the exact words.
I swear by all that I most hate, that is yourself, that I enter into a pact with the devil to drive you mad.
Her handwriting was huge, and it slanted across the page like rain. Torrential rain. The word “hate” took up the whole of one line.’ He gulped, then shook his head. His eyes had filled with water.
    It sounded to me, I said, pouring two glasses of red wine, as if his wife had taken leave of her senses.
    The Grand Duke blinked back his tears. ‘There were those who thought she drifted in and out of sanity. My mother, for one. My physician, Redi, too. And some of the reports that reach me from the convent in Montmartre which is now her home seem to confirm that view. She has become a compulsive gambler, appearing in Versailles in rouge and a blond wig. She’s quite capable of losing an entire fortune in a single night. No wonder she’s always asking me for money. Did you know she tried to steal my family jewels?’
    I shook my head.
    ‘Not so long ago, she chased the Reverend Mother through the cloisters with a pistol in one hand and a hatchet in the other. When some attempt was made to restrain her, she threatened to burn the convent to the ground.’ He laughed, but more in horror than amusement.
    I suggested, gently, that he might be better off without her.
    ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ he said. ‘But there’s something I haven’t told you. I fell in love with her the moment I saw her, and I have loved her ever since – despite everything.’
    The Grand Duke’s talk of an impossible love reminded me of Ornella Camilleri. For years after I was driven out of Siracusa I had clung to the hope that she might join me. Sometimes, in the small hours, I would wake believing she was beside me in the bed. If I turned over, there she would be. The twin hollows of her collarbone. The cool, glossy skin of her hip. And on her thighs a dusting of gold hair, which was only visible in sunlight. All of it imagined. Invented. For, whatever Jacopo might have thought, I had never slept with her. I had never even kissed her. Our love had been destroyed before it had the chance to come into being.
    Late one night, when I was seventeen, I was pulled from my bed so roughly that the back of my head hit the floor. When I looked up, Jacopo was standing over me, his eyes like silver discs in the darkness, his breath sour with wine.
    ‘What are you playing at?’ he said.
    I stared at him blankly.
    ‘You’ve been
seen
.’
    ‘Seen where?’ I said.
    ‘The Camilleri house.’
    ‘I’m working with Ornella’s father –’
    ‘Don’t say her name!’
    ‘But it’s true. He’s teaching me about anatomy –’
    ‘You’ve been seen with
her
. Talking.’
    ‘I’ve
spoken
to her.’ What could I say that would not provoke him? ‘We talk about books.’
    Rather than ridiculing books, which was the response I’d been hoping for, Jacopo seemed to think I was parading my intelligence. ‘Books?’ He wrapped a hand round my throat and began to squeeze. ‘If I find out there’s something going on between you two –’ The silver drained from his eyes, and they became unnervingly opaque. ‘
Gesù bambino merdoso
, if I find out you’re up to something …’
    He threw me aside and stumbled out of the room, but it was hours before I slept. From that moment on, I knew he would be watching me. I also knew that he already thought of