The Sultan's Daughter by Dennis Wheatley

Author:Dennis Wheatley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2014-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

15

The Looker-on sees most of the Game

Sir William Hamilton urged Roger to become his guest, but he regretfully declined. It was only just over ten years since the Young Pretender had died and a number of the Jacobite nobles who had made up his little Court-in-Exile in Rome still had apartments there. As Roger pointed out, although he might pay his respects to British Ambassadors when in foreign countries, it would not be in keeping for him, while he remained a MacElfic, to stay at the Embassy of the Hanoverian King.

It was agreed, therefore, that he should deliver his despatch late the following night and come again to the Embassy only once a week, to the Ambassador’s official reception, as long as he chose to stay in Naples.

Returning to his hotel he procured ink, paper, quills and sand, and took them up to his room. There he spent several hours covering page after page with fine writing, giving Mr. Pitt every particular he could think of concerning the situation in Egypt.

Next morning he went out to renew his acquaintance with the city which, after Paris, was the largest in Europe. Superficially he found it unchanged. The waterfront spread along the northern end of the vast bay which ran out westward to the peninsula of Pozzuoli. Beyond the point lay the islands of Procida and Ischia. Inland from the centre of the bay the great cone of Vesuvius, with its plume of smoke, towered up against the blue sky. In the distance to the south the other arm of the bay curved seaward, forming the twenty-mile-long peninsula of Sorrento. A few miles beyond its tip could be seen the island of Capri. Under a wintry sun the prospect was as beautiful as ever, and the narrow, smelly streets behind the waterfront still teemed with bronze-skinned men and sloeeyed women.

Yet before the day was out he found that the atmosphere and spirit of Naples had become utterly different. His memories of the week he had spent there in ’89 had always caused him to think of it as a Paradise on earth. That, perhaps, was largely due to his having found there again the beautiful Isabella d’Aranda, who had refused him her favours as a maid but, as a neglected wife, had given herself to him willingly. He had stayed with Sir William, who had proved the perfect host; and who had nicknamed his Embassy ‘The Royal Arms’, in token of the fact that he liked his constant stream of guests to regard themselves as absolutely free to take their meals there only when they wished and to come and go at any hour they liked. That had enabled Roger to spend the greater part of each night with Isabella, and a good part of each day as well.

But it was not only this love-affair that had made the week pass for him in such a haze of happiness. Isabella had introduced him to many of her friends among the Spanish-Neapolitan nobility.

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