Whispering by Jane Aiken Hodge Page B

first difficult steps back into our little society.’
    â€˜She’s Portuguese too, mother, don’t forget. Something she said made me think it is very much on her mind.’
    â€˜I am glad she has so much good feeling. But all the more reason why I should launch her in our English circle. It’s going to be hard enough for her, I think, after all the talk, but my countenance should just turn the scale, I am sure. And the money, of course. It may do very well yet, dear boy. And as to this Mr Craddock, tell him he is welcome to move in tomorrow.’ The sooner her English cousin was removed from Caterina’s side, the better. There was everything to be said for having him to live with them. ‘I’m pleased with you for thinking to invite him, Frank. We will treat him quite like one of the family, tell him …’
    â€˜Except for the little matter of his paying his way.’
    â€˜Well, that’s of course.’ Impatiently. ‘I wonder how he is getting on with that dubious Miss Emerson. Naturally, we must hope that she can help him. It’s the falling sickness, is it not? Poor young man! Impossible for him to lead any kind of a man’s life – still less to marry. No wonder Senhor Gomez did not scruple to let him escort his daughter out from England.’
    â€˜You are well informed as always, mother.’ Frank Ware thought he began to understand his mother’s motives.
    â€˜I do my best to be, dear boy. For your sake.’ She watched him pick up his hat and gloves. ‘You are going out?’
    â€˜I thought I’d stroll down to the Factory, take a look at the papers and see if Dickson is about.’
    â€˜You’re surely not still thinking of that wild goose plan of going to work with him? Now that things are looking so promising –’
    â€˜Another string to my bow, mother. Here I am, able-bodied, unlike poor Mr Craddock. It sometimes makes me ashamed to be kicking my heels here in idleness while the future of Portugal may be being settled up there on the Spanish frontier.’
    â€˜You’ve heard something?’ Sharply.
    â€˜Just a rumour going round town. You know how they come and go with the wind. There’s talk that Marmont has taken over from Masséna and is on the move in Spain.’
    â€˜Coming this way?’
    â€˜Who can tell?’ Shrugging. ‘But let us hope that if he is, Wellington is ready for him. Of course he has the inner lines of communication and much better information than the French ever contrive to get, having made such enemies of the peasants, but it’s a tricky enough business up there in the mountains.’
    â€˜I don’t know what makes you think Wellington so well informed. Just think how Soult showed him a clean pair of heels after he retook this place.’
    â€˜That was quite different, mother. Pouring with rain, mountain roads, and the English troops had been marching for days. Some of them were without shoes, Dickson tells me. You can’t get far through the mountains in that state.’
    â€˜Soult did.’
    â€˜He was running for his life. It makes a difference. I wish I knew the rights of what went on here when he was in control. Nobody seems to want to talk about it. Nobody who was here, that is. Caterina was asking about it …’
    â€˜Was she so? Well, dear boy, I think the less said on that head, the better. Specially to Caterina. Let bygones be bygones and all that. If you ask me, half the population, or at least half the ones who mattered, were standing eagerly in line to sign those fawning petitions in support of Soult. Oh, they tore them up quick enough when Wellington got across the Douro, but that didn’t mean any more than signing them had. What with the democratic faction who don’t much like being ruled from Lisbon, andthe crusty old
fidalgos
who think only of their own comforts, I think there were plenty of people who quite