De L’Isle breathed a sigh of heartfelt relief.
“That’s something,” he said grimly.
“Do you want me back in Philadelphia?”
“Yes, that would be for the best.”
“If it is a coup of some kind going on in Spain that might not be the worst thing,” the Governor’s spy master remarked, uncharacteristically surprised by the trend of recent world events.
“Why not?”
“The current regime is sclerotic and ineffective, unable to enforce its writ abroad and incompetent at home. If, say, the Army or a Navy or an Air Force faction was to take charge a few heads might get knocked together…”
The Governor of New England gently disagreed.
“What if the Inquisition or one of the opposing Royal factions takes over and wages a reign of terror against its enemies?”
“Yes,” Matthew Harrison conceded, “there is that!”
One thing Philip De L’Isle had always agreed about with his old friend, Sir George Walpole, the eminent historian reluctantly turned politician who had ruled the FCO for most of the last decade, was that ‘Old Spain’ was best understood within a frame of reference based on a Byzantine, rather than a contemporary model of governance.
Basically, there was no telling what might emerge from a coup in Madrid, whoever was responsible, or whomsoever eventually ended up wielding the levers of power in the Royal Alcázar, the El Escorial or in Aranjuez.
There was a knock at the door.
“Admiral Lord Collingwood is here, My Lord.”
“I’ll let you go about your business, Matthew,” the Governor of New England decided, “the C-in-C of the Atlantic Fleet has just arrived at Government House.”
Chapter 9
Saturday 18th March
Hacienda de los Conquistadores, Chinchón
Henrietta De L’Isle thought she was dreaming even after she blinked awake in the cool darkness of the spring mountain morning. Melody’s breath fell on her cheek, the women’s hair was crazily tangled, strands of her lover’s burning red mane and her own, girlishly long auburn locks seemingly intertwined like their warm, relaxed limbs.
Was that fireworks in the distance?
Henrietta imagined she heard movement in the corridor outside the bedroom, and distantly, doors opening as she sleepily nuzzled Melody’s brow with her nose and mouth, sucking in the scent of her, luxuriating in the tingling pleasure of it as it suffused her whole being.
Melody had finally opened her heart to her; allowed her into her secret world and that had made moving on from the events of last weekend if not painless, then easier and in some ways made them the sisters Henrietta had always hoped they might one day become. She had known from the outset that there were no fairy tales, especially not involving two princesses◦– conventional wisdom being that there had to be a prince in the deal somewhere along the line◦– and perversely, it had probably not helped that initially, she had been both infatuated and a little in awe of Melody, who had had no real idea exactly how much Henrietta had set her on a pedestal.
Melody had been a heroine to her and ought to have been to all other young women with aspirations to be the best that they could possibly be in a man’s world!
Well, to those of her sisters who cared a fig for an Empire in which the contributions of women were valued…
Ha…
That was a joke!
What use was female suffrage in societies which refused to even acknowledge women’s suffering or gumption? Let alone ‘valued’ it in most places where the map was painted Imperial Pink!
Anyway, sisters like Melody were very special, outriders who had by dint of sheer will power, and in her case a native intelligence which allowed her to run rings around most men, achieving firsts or near firsts in two separate careers.
She had been called to the Virginia Bar at just twenty-four years of age, practiced criminal law as a Colonial Prosecutor for two well-publicised and middlingly controversial years and without warning, applied for and gained admittance to the Colonial Police Academy at Boston, emerging top of the intake in 1967 and been subsequently inducted into the pilot ‘fast track’ program of the New York Constabulary, a short-lived initiative abandoned by the current Governor of the Colony. Nevertheless, she had still become the youngest Detective Inspector in New England at the age of thirty-two, albeit hitting the glass ceiling thereafter, her brilliant career idiotically becalmed by a Constabulary which had come to regard her as an embarrassment, something of an inadvertent celebrity in some liberal Manhattan-Long Island circles.
Back in the British Isles where clever, ambitious women routinely infiltrated the ‘old boys’ club’, and one by one the professions were opening their doors on the basis of merit, not exclusively on gender, birth or wealth or colour, reading about how Melody was ‘bucking the trend’ in New England had been an inspiration to an untold number of young women like Henrietta.
It was pure happenstance that Henrietta had not met, or contrived to ‘bump into’ her personal exemplar-heroine until last year. She could honestly say◦– cross her heart and hope to die if she fibbed◦– that had the Colonial Security Service not passed Melody’s file to her father when a high-profile detective-auditor familiar with but not obviously beholden to any of the political factions within the New York Constabulary, had been required to quickly, efficiently ‘look into the case against the Fieldings’◦– she might never have got to know the woman she now loved too, and sometimes, a little beyond reason.
Henrietta had been unashamedly fascinated with Melody on first sight. Love had come along a little later, although thinking about it, very fast on the heels of infatuation. Melody had only caught up with her later but then for all Henrietta’s experience at Government House and the privileges of her upbringing◦– in private she called the King ‘Uncle Bertie’ and the Queen ‘Aunt Eleanor’, after all◦– she had not understood how gauche and frankly, a tad shallow, or how over-protected she had been until she had been around Melody for a while.
Not that Melody had ever belaboured the point. All things considered she had let Henrietta down very, very gently. As for the ‘Alonso incident’, Henrietta would have forgiven her lover even faster had not Melody steadfastly refused to concede that she had anything to be forgiven for, or in fact, that she had actually done anything wrong. However, moving on, it was as if having learned the important lesson◦– that sometimes one simply could not account for one’s feelings and physiological drives◦– that they could finally both be genuinely ‘grown up’ about their commitment one to the other.
‘Sometimes I like it sweet,’ Melody had quirked self-deprecatingly, ‘mostly, actually, but sometimes, very occasionally, I like it sour…’ She had added: ‘You’re the sweet side of that, just so you know.’
Henrietta shrugged closer to her partner; Melody stirred but did not awaken, half sighing, half moaning as she lay, loose-limbed in the nest of blankets blissfully unaware of the sudden commotion somewhere within the big house.
“What…” The older woman muttered.
Instantly, Henrietta was electrically awake, alert without knowing why and for a moment paralysing alarm coursed through her veins.
Melody propped herself on an unsteady elbow.
There was a hammering at the door.
Quickly followed by the dazzle of a torch and the loom of one, then another person entering the bed chamber.