"She'll be twenty next year and then we'll be married. That's the contract. Sure you'll see her then. You'll be getting along splendidly. She's the daughter of a baronet, just like you."
"Oh, is that so?"
Flora had heard enough of Lord Lackerby's engagement. These people were simply not like her.
Why had she ever come here? She should have known it would haven taken a turn to the worse, sooner or later.
Silently, she finished her breakfast.
"I wish you a pleasant day, my Lord," she sang hypocritically as she left the table and walked down to the lakeshore.
Eight
Somewhere near the western shore of Lake Maggiore
Francesco had not been able to resist.
Wounds or no wounds, he wanted to swim. Swimming had always been his remedy.
It was a way of forgetting one's self, forgetting the world, forgetting fear, forgetting sadness. Even as a boy in England he had gone swimming in the river near Seventree as soon as the weather would permit it.
Pulling himself in long strokes against the current, letting the the cold water wash over him… it had been the best medicine for his ails: The longing for his family, far away and scattered. The fear of a French invasion. The fear of more bad news from the continent, of more relatives in France beheaded. Later, the grief over the Duchess' death, over the Duke's illness and the senselessness of his existence.
Now that Napoleon had been defeated and his family reinstated, it was easy to pretend those nineteen years of exile had been just a transitory holiday. Many a nobleman grew up on a foreign estate with another noble family. It was quite the norm, was it not?
But in the case of the Karlsburg children, it was different.
Nobody could have known the old rule would ever be re-established in Europe. A battle ending differently, maybe only a contract differently worded and the Karlsburg-Sforzas would have been condemned to a life of persecution or exile in lands even further away than England.
As a boy, before the Congress of Vienna, Francesco had often played with the idea of emigrating to Mexico. One of his cousins was king there. Still today, he sometimes wondered whether he should not simply leave it all behind.
Even if he was, again, a Prince not only in name, he still felt he had no purpose. His far older brother ruled since their father's death and he had sons of his own, of whom the first had recently married and fathered yet another male child. The Karlsburgs were a profligate lot, he mused, but how else would they have kept so many thrones over so many centuries?
There was really no way for Francesco ever to rule in Lombardy.
He was not even wanted as a political advisor, because everybody believed he lacked seriousness and did not feel rooted in Lombardy. He grew up in England after all! How ironic.
He often did lack seriousness, that was true, but how could he take it all seriously? Did they truly believe, monarchic rule would last forever, now that the peoples of Europe had seen what power lay within their reach?
No. He gave Lombardy another twenty, maybe thirty years before the Italian people would decide it was time to unite under Italian rule and kick the Karlsburgs out. Francesco had decided he did not want to be there when that happened. In the darkest corners of his heart, he even sympathised with the common man's desire for freedom. Had it not been all he had longed for when he had been cooped up in Seventree? Freedom?
He did not want to think about it. As a matter of fact he had been thinking so much these past three days, his head was aching from it. But those had not been reflection on politics.
No. He did not want to think at all. So he swam.
His first intention had been to swim to a small beach further south, but as if pulled by an invisible hand, he found himself swimming towards his unloved cousin's residence across the lake.
It was going to be a hot day but Palazzo Sforza still lay in the shade of the mountains rising up behind it. The beautiful yellow palace from the early 18th century had always reminded Francesco of a fairy-tale castle, with its little towers and merlons and the elongated arched windows.
Dominic must have spent quite a sum on renovating it, Francesco reasoned as he approached. Palazzo Sforza had been just as neglected as all the other noble residences around the lake in the time of the French occupation.
He turned onto his back an glanced towards his own home.
Castello Maggiore was far bigger and older than the elegant Surrey-Sforza residence and whereas Dominic's house was merging into the surrounding nature, Francesco's baroque residence was build on top of a protruding peninsula.
Looking at it from so far away, the Prince thought that it looked bulky and naked. The park needed to be changed, there needed to be life. Colours! He would have to discuss it with his gardener.