Read Online Black Diamond by Rachel Ingalls - Free Book Online Page A

Claudia’s mother.
    Mrs Schuyler knew the girl as soon as Beatrice described her. ‘Ernestine,’ she said. ‘It’s a peculiar family. They came here from Brazil. They were running away from something.’ She appeared to think that the question had now been answered. She reached for another almond cake. The family was at the dining table for tea; one of the younger boys had broken a leg off the tea table: he’d been jumping on the top, but the parents weren’t supposed to find out about that. Beatrice felt honored to be treated so completely as part of the family that she was expected to keep from one member of it the secrets of another.
    â€˜What were they running away from?’ she asked.
    â€˜Oh, I don’t know.’
    â€˜Something political,’ her husband said, getting up from the table. ‘In that part of the world.’ He put down his napkin and took his teacup with him into his study.
    Mrs Schuyler said that every country had its politics. However , in the case of the Cristo-Marquez family it was probably something simpler: debts, or a partnership that had fallen to pieces. ‘There are lots of reasons why people leave a country. If the whole family has to get out, it’s liable to be business, I suppose.’
    â€˜Or politics,’ Claudia repeated.
    â€˜Yes, but they aren’t that kind. The mother’s a stay-at-home, the father’s reserved and silent. They hardly talk to anyone. You see them out shopping with their servants and they never open their mouths. I don’t think anyone in town has ever been inside their house.’
    â€˜Is it a very small house?’ Beatrice asked. People who shared a small house with a staff of servants might not have room to ask anyone in.
    â€˜Enormous. Like a palace. One can’t imagine what they find to do with themselves. Unless you believe the gossip, of course.’
    â€˜What does the gossip say?’
    â€˜We’d better not talk about that. One never learns much from gossip.’
    â€˜Could you tell me where the house is?’ Beatrice said.
    â€˜Why?’ Mrs Schuyler asked. ‘Why do you want to know that?’
    Beatrice couldn’t think of any reason. Sometimes people didn’t have reasons; or sometimes they didn’t know exactly what their reasons were. She said, ‘Just to know. A big house, like a palace – is it near the legation? The one with the two white pillars and the tiled roof?’
    â€˜No, that belongs to the medical institute. The Cristo-Marquez house is on the other side of town. About three streets away from the building they call the summer palace. It stands in part of the park there. It has a garden.’
    â€˜Are you sure?’ Beatrice said.
    â€˜Of course, I’m sure. What a question, Beatrice.’
    â€˜It’s just that if it’s the same place, I remember driving past there one evening and all the lights were on – all of them. And it really is huge. I’ve always thought it was a hotel.’
    â€˜Exactly. That’s the way they live. All the lights on, and the singing going on all night. That’s why people talk.’
    *
    She was moved to a school in Constantinople, then to Athens and to Rome. In Rome she looked up Mrs Schuyler’s sister, a Signora Arnoldi, whose address she’d been given.
    The Arnoldis had three daughters, two of whom were already married. The third, Vittoria, was exactly the same age as Claudia: in fact – a fact considered magically propitious to everyone in the family – they had been born on the same day. She too, like Claudia, became a close friend. And though Beatrice was always being shunted on to other cities and countries, she never lost touch with Claudia herself. She thought of the Schuylers as her second family, although in some respects they were her only family. Other people had aunts and uncles, in-laws: she had only her father. There were no relatives