The Sun With A Face

by Meriol Trevor

Genres: Historical Fiction; Sagas; Historical Romance

Synopsis

Olivia Thorne was pretty, penniless and unmarried - and likely to stay that
way. Because the only man who had ever made her heart beat faster was
also penniless; a charming rogue of an Englishman named Lucian who
played the piano and acted the gentleman in public, but was a rebel at heart.

Against the colourful backdrop of nineteenth-century Italy, honeycombed with
revolutionaries and patriots, this spellbinding novel unfolds the tale of lovers
and villains - and of a woman who knew what she wanted and would stop at
nothing to achieve it.

Release date: January 12, 1982

Publisher: Fawcett

Print pages: 224

Sample

“What can have become of that courier? It is too provoking!”

The English travelers stood bewildered on the quay at Genoa, surrounded by Italians, not a word of whose language they could understand.

Thea Furness was annoyed; she prided herself on her practical efficiency and she would not have dreamed of taking Olivia and her little nephew abroad, that spring of the year 1823, without making sure of the services of a reliable courier, recommended by an English family just returned from Italy.

Thea was the widow of a Midlands manufacturer and Olivia Thorne was her cousin; their mothers had been sisters. Thea was thirty, a slender, well-dressed woman, with a thin intelligent face. Olivia was twenty-one, but hardly looked as much, still less like an aunt in charge of an orphaned nephew, for she was slight and looked fragile, with large serious gray eyes in a small pale face. Seven-year-old Richey, the only child of her sister, hazel-eyed and fair-haired, was not much like her, in looks or in temperament, for he was full of self-confident charm and well aware already that he was an important person. Richey, indeed, was the reason for their journey to Italy.

Thea looked ’round with increasing anxiety.

The rough dockside men crowding ’round were not a little alarming. Seen from the boat, Olivia had pronounced them romantic, like the pirates and bandits in illustrations to Lord Byron’s poems, but at close quarters they looked less handsome and smelt strongly of sweat and garlic. They seemed about to seize on the travelers’ luggage by force.

Turnbull, the manservant, doubled his fists.

“Keep off, you villains!” he roared in English.

Turnbull had been brought for his defensive powers rather than for his intelligence and Thea was conscious that he would be no help in this particular emergency.

“Is Giuseppe Bacco here?” she called out for the third time, a note of desperation in her clear cool English voice.

A young man with a broad-brimmed round hat on the back of his black curly hair came pushing through the crowd.

“I’m not Bacco,” he said, in perfect English accents, “but perhaps I can help you, madam.”

It was such a relief to meet an English speaker that Thea found herself telling him that their courier had not turned up. She showed him the letter with the man’s name and address.

“Well, you can’t go there, it’s a very poor district,” he said. “Let me take you to an hotel and then I can go and see what’s happened to Bacco—let’s hope he’s not a votary to that jolly old vine-leaved god.”

And hardly waiting for her to agree, he picked out some porters to carry their luggage and cleared a way for them, shouting in Italian, in which he seemed quite as at home as in English. But when they got free of the crowd and Thea gained a clear view of him, she felt suddenly doubtful.

In spite of his educated English voice he looked anything but an English gentleman. He was certainly clean and did not smell of sweat or garlic but his clothes were of a cut and color no Englishman would have worn. Like many of the Italians they saw in the streets he wore knee breeches and stockings, not the long trousers now in vogue in England, and his coat, ill-fitting, was a brighter blue than was fashionable. For all that, his manner was easy, not to say familiar, as he inquired their names and where they came from.

“Coventry? I don’t know anyone there,” he said. “Except Lady Godiva, of course.”

Olivia could not help a startled gasp of a laugh.

Thea looked at the young man suspiciously. “We intend to travel overland to Rome,” she said. “The courier was to come with us and make all the arrangements for the journey.”

“Rome?” he said thoughtfully, looking at her.

He had blue eyes, a dark brilliant blue, the best feature in a long bony face, rather pale in color and with a wide mouth whose curling lips Thea found somehow mocking and disturbing. Although he could not be more than a few years over twenty, he was quite plainly not a simple and innocent youth.

He took them to a small but decent hotel, run by a fat Swiss woman, who spoke to him in French.

“Ah, Monsieur Lucien, so you have found your friends at last,” she said.

“Well! I hope they soon will be friends,” he replied in the same language, evidently as able to speak in that as in English and Italian. “Now, madam,” he continued to Thea in English, “I will leave you to make yourselves comfortable with Madame Süssli, and go and hunt out the devotee of Bacchus!”

And off he went, with an easy lazy stride. He was thin and looked taller than he was because of his thinness.

Thea, who could speak French, if rather carefully, asked the Swiss innkeeper about him. But it seemed she knew very little. He had turned up a few weeks ago, saying he had come to meet a friend with whom he was going to England, but so far as she knew no friend had arrived. Madame Süssli suspected that Monsieur Lucien had come to the end of his resources, for he had been out every evening lately playing the guitar in the cafés for a few soldi.

“How does he know English?” Thea asked.

“He says he is English,” said the Swiss woman, with a shrug, and she laughed. “Not a milord, evidently!”

They were at dinner when the strange young man returned. He took a chair and sat down near their table as if he were already an old friend.

“Mrs. Furness, your courier won’t be available for a long time,” he said. “The poor fellow is ill—a bad attack of fever—old mother wailing to the Madonna, children ranged round looking hungry, etcetera, etcetera.”

“Oh, poor things!” said Olivia. Her soft gray eyes, looking huge in her small face, opened wide with horror at this tragic scene. “Thea, can’t we give them something?”

“Well, perhaps,” said Thea. “But is he too ill to recommend someone to take his place?”

“Madam,” said the young man, leaning forward, “I wonder if you would consider taking me as your courier? I want to get to Rome and have no means of doing so unless in the service of someone else. I am sure I could manage your journey successfully. I was born in Italy, and I’ve been here a couple of years now.”

Thea did not immediately agree, but neither did she refuse. The idea of finding another courier daunted her and after all, if she kept a sharp lookout this young fellow could hardly cheat them. So she said she would think about it and asked him to call in the morning. As he got up to go she added, “But I know nothing about you—not even your name.”

“My name is Lucian,” he said, pronouncing it the English way. He hesitated for quite a moment before adding a surname, which sounded like Viner.

“How do you spell that?” she asked.

“Well, I spell it with a V and Y,” he said, smiling. “But in Vienna it got spelt W-E-I-N-E-R.”

“In Vienna!” cried Richey, staring. “Is that where you come from?”

“I lived a year or two in Vienna before coming here,” he replied “But I am English—at least my father was English, and I grew up in Devon—what could be more English than that?”

He seemed quite willing to stay and chat but Thea firmly said good night, so, with a bow and a smile, he took himself off. They heard him going upstairs, whistling.

As soon as he was out of the room they began talking about him.

“I don’t believe he is English,” said Thea. “He does not look it, with that black hair.”

“But why should he pretend to be English if he isn’t?” said Olivia. “I wonder what he has done wrong?”

“Done wrong? What do you mean?” said Thea, gazing at her in some apprehension.

“Well, he talks like a gentleman and yet here he is on the Continent with no money and such funny clothes,” said Olivia. “He must have had to fly the country. Perhaps he has gambled away his inheritance or—or run away with somebody’s wife.”

Thea laughed. Olivia’s imagination was always inventive, perhaps because of her lonely childhood in the house of her elderly and scholarly father, in Hampstead.

“Where is the unfortunate lady then?” she said. “I don’t think Mr. Vyner—if that is his real name, which I doubt—has done anything so romantic. I should say he is more likely to be an out-of-work actor or musician.”

“Oh, yes!” said Olivia, at once. “In an opera company, and the prima donna’s husband was jealous—”

Thea laughed. “You silly child,” she said. “Now, it’s time for Richey to go to bed.”

Richey, as they climbed the stairs, was stoutly maintaining that Mr. Vyner was probably a bandit. Italy, he was sure, was bristling with bandits. Imagination was perhaps the one likeness between him and his young aunt.

The boy had been christened Richard, after his father, but was always called Richey, in distinction from him. Olivia’s elder sister Elinor, who was beautiful, had made a great match, for a scholar’s daughter, to a baronet, Sir Richard Mallison of Ashbury Hall in Hampshire, but the marriage had turned out unhappily and Elinor had fled to her cousin Thea in Coventry, taking her child with her.

Sir Richard made a few efforts to get his son and heir back, but as he had brought his mistress to the Hall and spent his evenings drinking with the less reputable characters of the district, nobody felt inclined to assist him, and he was too erratic of will really to invoke the law, as he constantly threatened to do. When he suddenly died, he had not even named a guardian for his son, who therefore remained in his mother’s care. She did not, however, get more than her jointure, for the estate was administered by Mallison relations. But Elinor never wanted to see Ashbury Hall again, and was content to live with Thea Furness, by this time a widow herself.

Olivia had only joined this household about three years ago, when she was eighteen, at the time of her father’s death. He had left her the house in Hampstead and they all planned to go and live there together. But before Thea could wind up her affairs in Coventry Elinor had fallen ill, of a consumption, and presently died. She left Richey to the joint guardianship of her sister and her cousin, for Olivia was too young and inexperienced to bring up a boy alone.

Then an aunt of Sir Richard Mallison’s appeared on the scene, incensed that the heir to the baronetcy and the Hall should be left to the care of those she was pleased to call “two middle class women in the Midlands.” Although Thea was sure Lady Platt could make out no legal claim to Richey, it was partly to escape her lecturing letters that this long-planned holiday abroad had been arranged. When they returned, it would be to Olivia’s house in Hampstead, and a new life.

Thea was looking forward to it. She was fond of Olivia and had been educating her for the last few years, taking her to the theater, to concerts, exhibitions, and lectures in the high-minded liberal circles she frequented. And although the house would be Olivia’s, very little money went with it, and it was Thea, the rich widow, who would finance them, and who was now paying for the Italian tour.

They had landed at Genoa with the idea of going first to Florence, but their self-appointed new courier was against this.

“You ought to go straight to Rome,” he said, when he arrived next morning, still in his cheap foreign suit but armed with a map and apparently under the impression that he had been engaged, for he had already ordered the carriage for their journey south. “It’s already getting late in the season and will soon be too hot for comfort. You can see Florence later.”

“Don’t you say that just because you want to go to Rome yourself?” Olivia asked him, with her innocent directness.

Lucian Vyner smiled; he did not seem put out.

“I admit that, but it’s true about the heat,” he said. “We might take in Pisa en route, so that you, Miss Olivia, can make a drawing of the Leaning Tower, in case it tips over before you come back.”

“Tips over? Is it going to?” Olivia gazed at him, wide-eyed, for a moment before she realized he was joking.

“Miss Thorne,” said Thea severely, deciding that the new courier must be kept in his place.

“And I’m Sir Richard Mallison,” said Richey, rather spoiling the effect.

Lucian Vyner made him such a magnificent bow that Olivia decided Thea must be right in putting him down as an actor.

“Your servant, Sir Richard!”

Richey giggled.

Thea Furness found she had engaged Mr. Vyner without actually saying so, and they were soon looking at the map, planning the stops and calculating when they would reach Rome.

“I will start ahead and book your rooms for the night,” said Lucian Vyner. “That is, if you will hire me a horse, for I must admit I have nothing left but these horrible clothes and my guitar, which I’d be sorry to part with. Perhaps you could bring it in the carriage?” And seeing Thea’s look of surprise he added, with that quick smile, “As a hostage.”

“As a hostage,” said Olivia solemnly, “a guitar is hardly the equal, in worth, of a horse.”

Lucian Vyner laughed aloud. “It is to me,” he assured her. “I can make more money with it than I can with a horse, especially such a nag as I’m likely to get.”

At least he seemed open about his difficulties.

“I suppose you don’t choose to let us know why you find yourself in such a predicament, Mr. Vyner?” said Thea.

He hesitated and then said, “It’s a long story and involves so many other people I don’t think I will burden you with it. But once I get to Rome I should be all right. You don’t have to give me more than my expenses, for this trip, ma’am. It will be much easier than being an under-steward on a ship, which was my plan when I came to the quay yesterday, though I must say I felt seasick at the mere sight of your vessel.”

“Oh, do you get seasick?” said Olivia, with sympathy. “So do I! Thea—Mrs. Furness is a marvelous sailor.”

“I am sure she is,” said Lucian Vyner. “I knew she was an admiral by nature as soon as I saw her.”

Thea thought him extremely impudent but his remarks were made without any malice, so that she found she was not as annoyed as she felt she ought to be. Admiral or no admiral, she was not sure she was not being manipulated to suit Mr. Vyner’s convenience but she had to admit that he was efficient in the task he had undertaken. With the minimum of fuss he organized their departure for the next day and rather to Thea’s surprise she found there was no debt to be settled for his room at the top of the little hotel.

“He’s always paid all right,” said the fat Swiss woman. “He must have resources elsewhere, for he’s got a pair of pistols that would fetch a good sum, if he was to sell them.”

“Pistols?” said Thea, alarmed. “Duelling pistols?”

“I daresay, madame,” said the landlady. “Well, the country is still in a disturbed state, isn’t it? Though it’s two years since the Austrians smashed the rebels down in Naples—that was the last big trouble we had, that and the business in Piedmont.”

Thea felt uneasy, but hoped the woman was exaggerating. At any rate she knew that there were a great many visitors going to Italy from England, and of the highest society, too.

Before he rode off on his hired nag, Lucian Vyner handed his guitar to Olivia.

“I’m sure you will be kind to her,” he said.

“Her?” echoed Olivia, gazing up at him with startled gray eyes.

“Don’t you agree?” said Mr. Vyner, laying his hand caressingly on the smooth wood. “I always think of my guitar as she.”

Thea, overhearing, thought this improper, but said nothing.

In the coach Olivia held the guitar on her knees.

“I do not think you should enter into conversation with Mr. Vyner as if he were an equal, Olivia,” said Thea.

“Shouldn’t I?” said Olivia, vaguely. “But isn’t he a funny person? He’s so unexpected.”

The white-tiered tower of Pisa leaned graciously, brilliant against the blue sky.

Thea and Olivia were not the only English visitors gazing at it, for quite near them a couple of gentlemen were standing, the older brisk and military-looking, the younger lounging and bored, but so handsome that the ladies could not fail to notice him.

“Just like a tipsy wedding cake, eh, Denby?” said the older man, whose short-cut hair had a few gray threads in it; his face was weathered brown, with small lines round the eyes.

The young man laughed, but only dutifully.

“Well, are we going to risk climbing it?” said the other.

Just then a voice behind them said obsequiously, “I thought you might like to have your letters, my lord.”

“Uncle Randall,” said the young man, in a resigned voice, for his military elder was already stepping out for the Tower.

“Eh? Oh yes,” he said, turning back. “Thanks very much, Mr.—er … I don’t think I have the pleasure of your acquaintance.”

“My name is Pickering,” said the man. “I have the honor to be staying in the same hostelry as your lordship and volunteered to bring you your post.”

A middle-aged nondescript, he was evidently anxious to scrape acquaintance with a traveling lord, and seemed quite satisfied with the “Very kind of you, I’m sure,” that he received.

The noble lord glanced through his letters without much interest.

“Here’s one from your mamma, Denby—recognize her arabesque style,” he said, handing it over.

“Mamma writes too often,” said the young man lazily. “She has nothing to do but worry about me. It’s the greatest pity she never married again.”

“Very sensible of her,” observed his lordship. “Overrated institution—marriage.”

His nephew laughed. “Well, you seem to have got along very well without it, sir, by all accounts.”

“None of your innuendoes, Denby!” said his uncle cheerfully. “Couldn’t afford to marry in India—damn bad place for Englishwomen, anyway. Now, are we going to climb this Tower or not?”

They walked off. Mr. Pickering, noticing the two sketching ladies, bowed to them and could not resist informing them that it was Lord Wynde and his nephew—“nephew and heir, I believe.”

Thea tried to freeze him off, and it was partly to avoid his company that she suggested, presently, that they too should climb the Tower. Olivia was rather afraid Mr. Pickering was going to escort them, but fortunately Mrs. Pickering, looking very suspicious, put in an appearance and carried off her husband to the shops.

Unfortunately Richey proved to have a bad head for heights. When they came out on the tilting platform which ran round the Tower outside, and which had no rail, he became paralyzed with fright and unable to move.

Olivia, rather nervous herself, and Thea, determinedly reassuring, stood one each side of him, but nothing would persuade Richey to move. He leant back against the wall, white, and sick.

Lord Wynde, descending, suddenly appeared ’round th. . .