An Appetite for Violets Read online

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Map

  I: Villa Ombrosa

  II: The Kitchen, Mawton Hall

  III

  IV: The Kitchen, Mawton Hall

  V: The Stillroom, Mawton Hall

  VI: The Blue Chamber, Mawton Hall

  VII: Mawton Lodge

  VIII: Mawton Hall

  IX: Mawton to Nantwich

  X

  XI: The Great Midland Bogs

  XII: Stony Stratford

  XIII: Stony Stratford to London

  XIV

  XV: The Kitchen, Devereaux Court

  XVI: Devereaux Court, London

  XVII: London to Dover

  XVIII

  XIX: Hotel d’Anjou, Paris, France

  XX: Maison de Santé, Paris

  XXI: Lyons

  XXII: Lyons to Savoy

  XXIII

  XXIV: Piedmont to Montechino

  XXV: Villa Montechino

  XXVI: Villa Ombrosa

  XXVII

  XXVIII: Villa Ombrosa

  XXIX: Villa Montechino

  XXX: La Foresta

  XXXI: Villa Ombrosa

  XXXII: Villa Ombrosa

  XXXIII: Villa Ombrosa

  XXXIV

  XXXV

  XXXVI: Villa Ombrosa

  XXXVII: Florence

  XXXVIII: The Queen of England, Florence

  XXXIX: The Queen of England, Florence

  XXXX: The Queen of England, Florence

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  To my two great-grandmothers,

  Ada Hilton, famed for her wedding cakes,

  and Gertrude Hill,

  remembered for her fine pies and a tea kettle

  forever boiling on the fire.

  I

  Villa Ombrosa

  Tuscany, Italy

  Low Sunday, April 1773

  As Kitt tramped on alone towards the villa, unease clung to him like the rancid sweat that soaked his shirt. He was weak-headed, sure enough, after five days of throwing up over the boat rail. At Leghorn, his port of arrival in Italy, he had disdained the other disembarking English passengers. They had jostled and jawed in gaudy Paris costumes, their ruddy faces peering into Mr Nugent’s Grand Tour. While they dawdled over vast portmanteaus, he had pushed past them with only a saddlebag slapping his hips. He was no mere tourist, Kitt told himself. He was here to hunt down Carinna, not follow some vulgar Itinerary.

  Yet, at eighteen years old, Italy was entirely unknown to him. Uncertainly, he had hired the first unshaven ruffian who grasped his sleeve and offered himself as a guide. Soon he regretted that attempt at swagger: at Lucca, the rogue had urged him to enter a squalid inn to meet his purported bellissima sister. By then Kitt understood he was very far from his usual Covent Garden haunts. No doubt a gang of sharpers, or even cut-throats, waited inside. The coin of dismissal he had tossed at the scoundrel lost him use of the horse, but later he blessed Lady Fortune for that.

  There had been no news from Carinna since her last letter, the letter he kept tucked against his ribs. He knew the words by heart and worried them afresh, squinting at the bleached ribbon of road she had ridden more than six weeks before him:

  7th March 1773

  Villa Ombrosa

  My Dearest Kitt,

  I have at last arrived and am mighty glad to have the key to our uncle’s villa. Trust your sister, for all will turn out well in time. Forgive my evasions – if only clocks would run faster we might soon be together again and all our troubles over. I can say no more, for I cannot trust the truth to a post that may be tampered with.

  Your sister,

  Carinna

  When he had first read her letter he had felt only mild alarm. What was this truth she concealed, and who did she imagine would open her post? He had persuaded himself he could do nothing, suffering as he was from his usual lack of funds. Then, when his letters begging for news had remained unanswered for four, then five weeks, his agitation had heightened to a sort of madness, and he had pawned his best coat and set off without a word to any other soul. He had written to her from Marseilles, assuring her he would arrive on Easter Sunday. But that damned boat had first been delayed by the weather and then blown about like a cork on the heaving ocean. All had been against him. Yet – how had it taken him six weeks?

  * * *

  The iron gates of the villa yielded with a rusty squawk and Kitt glimpsed the white bulk of the building through the avenue of lime trees. The sun was sinking, and bands of honeyed light fell between the trees as his boots crunched loudly across the gravel. A sudden gust rose and lifted the branches with a hiss like a hidden torrent. Even the evening breeze was as warm as an animal’s breath.

  It was a decent property, this retreat of their uncle’s. Though the devil only knew what vice Uncle Quentin had purchased it for, so far from English eyes. He would certainly stay awhile, Kitt mused, as the broad house with its leprous statues, terrace and lawns came into view. Whatever Carinna was running from, this was a comfortable bolthole. He revived to picture her at first overjoyed to see him, then sympathetic as she heard the account of his damnable journey. They must still be at siesta, he thought. A clever notion that, however foreign. Later he would rest on a cool pillow to ease his throbbing head. Before supper he would bathe, have the servants clean his clothes, and drift away from all his burden of cares in luxurious sleep.

  ‘Carinna?’ He called her name into the stillness, but only a shower of paper-dry leaves sighed in reply. Mounting the terrace he found inviting chairs and cushions bleached by many seasons of sunshine. The door stood ajar.

  He entered the hall’s deep shadow. ‘Carinna,’ he demanded, blinking in the murky coolness. ‘Carinna? I am here.’

  He was answered by silence. Ah, not quite. The jingle of a silvery bell reached him from the rear of the house. Someone was at home. Opening his mouth to call again, he found his tongue was suddenly too dry to speak. There was a new sound that was oddly irregular and – inhuman. A clink, and claw-like tapping. And then that tinkling of a doll-like bell. With silent care he pushed the door open and passed into the first room. It was empty. There were shabby furnishings: a sofa, gilded mirror, and ticking clock. Standing on the hearthrug Kitt listened acutely, all the time watching the gaping door that led to the back of the house. Now he could hear no sound save a low irregular buzzing. It was only then, as he inhaled sharply, that he noticed the stench: a gross, high stink that recollected the putrid bowels of the ship from which he had just escaped. He gagged and buried his mouth in his linen. In the act of dropping his head, he had only one moment to comprehend a small demonic being rushing across the floor towards him. With a cry he kicked out hard with his riding boot. The creature screeched with pain and then retreated, whimpering backwards against the sofa.

  ‘Bengo!’

  By Christ, it was Carinna’s little pug, a dog no larger than a rat, with tinder-stick legs and doe eyes. Around his neck was a silver collar hung with a tiny bell.

  Crouching, he whispered the dog’s name and stretched out his hand to pet its trembling back. ‘Where is she, little fellow?’

  The dog’s eyes flickered with suspicion, his worm’s tail twitched. Crusty yellow vomit hung from his snout.

  Holding his kerchief to his mouth, Kitt hesitated. He
would have wagered that death lay in this house. He steeled himself to go into the back room and confront what he had travelled so far to find.

  Before him stretched a table laden for a feast. Yet no guests sat on the velvet chairs. No bodies slumped across the cloth. A vast lump of meat had place of honour, rippling as if alive with a swarm of steel-blue flies. The tarts standing on gilded china were blotched grey with powdered mould; the bread sprouted puffy hairs of creeping fungus. A pyramid of sweetmeats had collapsed. Grapes had wrinkled into puckered raisins. Groping backwards, he saw a decanter of wine on the sideboard and reached out instinctively for a restorative gulp. Yet as his hand clutched the glass, a bulbous fly crawled over the rim and buzzed towards his face. Slapping it away, he saw the scene with greater clarity: pearly maggots wriggled amongst dishes of mould. The white cloth was smeared with trails of hardened dog excrement. On the instant he fled back to the hall and the gaping entrance door, where he gasped fresh air in greedy mouthfuls.

  The air revived Kitt a little, though it brought no peace to his racketing head. Sweat broke out on his face. Where the devil were the servants? As furtive as a snake, Bengo slinked between his boots and bolted for the undergrowth. That dog had the right notion, Kitt decided. Carinna was not here. Something had happened. His youthful loathing of petty laws and officials made him keen to run away, too. Pretend you were never here, his instincts whispered. Rapidly he reviewed his route: he had kept his destination secret. He could be far from here by midnight. Yet, if he left now, he would never know Carinna’s fate. She might be upstairs. She might have left a message. Christ be damned, he would have to go back inside.

  Turning on his heels he made a rapid tour of the lower rooms. He found a fussy sitting room with signs of occupation by a housekeeper or other damned hireling. Then, a kitchen still in disarray from preparations for the meal. Broken cakes on the table cast up a nauseous fragrance. The scent fleetingly recollected lilies at a funeral. All the downstairs were deserted. He had to pause at the gaping front door once again to refresh his lungs. If she is here, he thought, alive or dead, I must go upstairs and find her.

  The stairs groaned as he climbed. He could give no name to what he feared. For which untimely guests was that sickening banquet laid out? And why would Carinna abandon Bengo? Reaching the first floor he entered the lesser rooms and found them all empty. Then he found a dressing room with water growing putrid in a ewer. Finally, he faced a closed door with a brass handle. He guessed it was the finest room, the one with broad windows above the villa’s entrance. He grasped the handle and swung it open.

  ‘Carinna!’ For an instant he believed he had found her. She stood with her back to him in a ruffled gown of rosy silk, quite motionless in the centre of the room. Approaching, his sight cleared: the gown was hanging on a wooden dressing stand, the face a globe of wood on which Carinna’s hat was hung, the whole display a cruel masquerade. He strode up to the figure and gaped at it in bafflement. Carinna’s familiar scent of violets rose from the gown, tantalising him with her presence. In frustration, he hit out at the mocking skeleton of wood and sent the head crashing to the ground. That it was a jest intended to torment himself he knew for certain when he saw his own letter tucked deep in the gown’s bodice. It bore the imprint of his broken seal. He had himself written it from Marseilles, barely a week past. He felt like a lunatic; brain-choked and baffled.

  Yet in dislodging the letter something else had clattered out onto the floor – the Mawton Rose. It was the ruby belonging to that old fumbler Sir Geoffrey, a jewel so famed for its fierce scarlet fire that it was valued at more than one thousand pounds. So she had taken it, the clever puss. Greedily, he pocketed the Rose and his own crumpled letter. Finally, his mind lurched to the only possible conclusion. Carinna might have left Bengo behind if she were ill or crazed or forced by a pistol. But to abandon a jewel worth a fortune? He knew in his blood that Carinna was dead.

  He could not bear another moment in that mocking house. In a tumbling descent he fled down the stairs, through the trees and gates and back to the lonely road. Should he find some authority, he wondered? Make a report? No, no. He had the Rose – why surrender that to some buffoon of a magistrate? His need was greater than theirs. Besides, if Carinna was dead he was her closest living family. And he needed cash so badly. It was providence. Oh, but Carinna was gone. He sensed he was only a few desperate days too late.

  Behind him a twig snapped loudly. Crying out in anguish, Kitt swivelled as he ran, half stumbling but fearing to halt and investigate. Deep shadows loomed about him now; the undergrowth on each side of the track rose like the walls of a labyrinth, far taller than he remembered. Footsteps rustled behind him. Had they seen him? God damn that he had lingered! He ran faster, his fingers clutching at sharp briars, his boots stumbling. Why had he come here? It was almost dark; he would be hunted through the night.

  Then the jingle of a silver bell unmasked his pursuer. It was only that squashed-snout lapdog Bengo, fearful of being left behind.

  ‘Be off, damn you,’ he shouted at the pale smudge of conscience that followed him. Yet still it trailed behind him over each wearisome furlong. Every few minutes he believed he had outrun the dog, only to hear, once again, its patter and jingle. Then at last he saw the huddled rooftops of a village and heard the tolling of an evening bell. Finally, a wagon crossed his path drawn by a plodding donkey. In desperate tones Kitt hailed the driver. ‘Taverna. Presto,’ he urged, shoving a coin at the startled man. Inside the tented cart a gaggle of dark faces peered at him in inquisitive silence.

  He ached for the hot sting of spirits against his throat. Cards, a fine bottle, the baize table; that was his realm. Fingering the Rose inside his pocket he traced its cold angles and wondered how quickly he might turn it into cash. He needed to find a town where a bed and brandy were cheap, and questions were few. Rocked by the wagon, he felt suddenly as vacant as air, as if the uncertain attempt at manhood that was Kitt Tyrone had vanished from the earth along with his sister. Until that day he had smouldered with fury at his life’s injustices, but now only fitful ashes of fear fluttered at his core.

  He dropped his eyes into his grimy fists. He could not rub from his inner eye that final image of the dog. It haunted him again – indeed, it continued to patter at his heels all his life. Especially when fatigued, when alone, or most horribly, when passing from waking to sleep, he heard that whimpering and those scurrying short steps. Even when he had finally given up hope of finding her and wanted only the oblivion of an empty bottle, it still followed him. Long after all the lire from pawning the Rose had disappeared into quick Italian fingers, that pale shadow hobbled after him through the darkness. To his desperate end he could not stop himself from picturing that dog’s jingling journey, backwards down the white road, once again to face the gaping gates and that mouldering feast.

  A half year earlier

  II

  The Kitchen, Mawton Hall

  Being the day before Souling Night, 1772

  Biddy Leigh, her journal

  * * *

  My Best Receipt for Taffety Tart

  Lay down a peck of flour and work it up with six pound of butter and four eggs and salt and cold water. Roll and fill with pippins and quinces and sweet spice and lemon peel as much as delights. Sweet spice is cloves, mace, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar & salt. Close the pie and strew with sugar. Bake till well enough.

  Martha Garland her best receipt writ on a scrap of parcel paper, 1751

  * * *

  Every cook knows it’s a rare day when you have all the parts of the perfect dish. But that day back at Mawton I had everything I needed: white fleshed pippins, pink quince, and a cinnamon stick that smelled like a breeze from the Indies. My flour was clean, my butter as yellow as a buttercup. It’s not enough, mind you, to have only the makings of a dish. There’s the receipt honed through the ages, written down in precious ink. And beyond that is the cook, for only she can judge how much stirring is enough, or have the light f
ingers to rub a pastry well. It’s no common event, that gathering of all the parts that make the perfect dish.

  It makes me think that’s how it is for us servants. No one pays you much heed; mostly you’re invisible as furniture. Yet you overhear a conversation here, and add a little gossip there. A writing desk lies open and you cannot help but read a paper. Then you find something, something you should not have found. It’s not so very often, with your servants’ broken view, that you can draw all the ingredients together. And it’s a rare day when all the parts combine in one story, and the chief of those parts is you.

  So that is where I’ll start this tale, on that October baking day. I was making taffety tarts that afternoon in the kitchen at Mawton, as the sunlight flittered across the whitewashed walls and the last roses nodded at the window. I’ll begin with a confession, mind. I’d crept into Mrs Garland’s room when she wasn’t there and secretly copied out her best receipt. It’s no wonder our old cook used to say I was as crafty as a jackdaw. ‘Your quick eyes miss nothing, Biddy Leigh,’ she always said, shaking her head, but laughing. I’d kept my scrap of paper secret all year long and often pondered how to better it. That baking day was the third day Mrs G had shut herself away in the stillroom, dosing herself with medicinal waters. As I rolled the pastry I lived out a fancy I had nourished since the first apple blossom pinked in May – the making of the perfect dish.

  Next day was All Hallows Eve, or Souling Night as we called it, and all our neighbours would gather for Old Ned’s cider and Mrs Garland’s Soul Cakes. After the stablemen acted out the Souling play, the unmarried maids would have a lark, guessing their husband’s name from apple parings thrown over their shoulders. So what better night, I thought, for Jem to announce our wedding? At the ripe age of twenty-two years, the uncertainties of maidenhood were soon to pass me by. Crimping my tarts, I passed into that forgetfulness that is a most delightful way of being. My fingers scattered flour and my elbows spun the rolling pin along the slab. Unrolling before my eyes were scenes of triumph: of me and Jem leading a cheery procession to the chapel, posies of flowers in my hand and pinned to Jem’s blue jacket. In my head I turned over the makings of my Bride Cake that sat in secret in the larder – ah, wouldn’t that be the richest, most hotly spiced delight?