Read Online The Malaspiga Exit by Evelyn Anthony - Free Book Online

been patient.’
    â€˜It won’t matter,’ Katharine said. ‘She’ll have forgotten it. I shouldn’t worry about it.’ Again there was silence.
    â€˜I’ve had a fascinating time,’ she said, ‘reading my great-grandmother’s letters. It’s been so kind of Alessandro to make everything available to me.’
    â€˜I know it’s given him pleasure,’ the Duchess said. ‘His family means so much to him. All the Malaspigas are very proud. Being forced to leave the Castle helped to kill his father. It was very difficult for us after the war.’
    Katharine looked down at her clasped hands. They were gripped very tight. ‘It’s amazing how he’s restored everything,’ she said slowly. ‘He was telling me about it at lunch. And it’s all been done so quickly.’
    â€˜He’s an extraordinary man,’ the Duchess said. ‘Nothing deters him. He promised his father he would make up for all that we had lost. A number of my friends were ruined after the war.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Politics are always dangerous, but men love to play at them. I’ve never understood what fascinates them. Our friends supported the Fascists, just as my husband did. But most of them have remained ruined. We owe everything to my son.’ She smiled at Katharine. ‘I hope I haven’t bored you talking about family matters. It must seem very strange, coming from the United States.’
    â€˜A little,’ Katharine admitted. She looked at the beautiful old woman, wreathed in chiffon, emphasizing her remarks with graceful gestures and that constant smile, and wondered how much she had deliberately suppressed a keen intelligence in order to accommodate the conventions of her generation. Isabella di Malaspiga was not a fool; she was a woman of taste and judgement who had assumed the role allotted her by circumstances and the accident of her exquisite beauty. Her destiny had been relinquished into the hands of her husband, and her son. An extraordinary man, she called him. A man whom nothing deterred, who had given a death-bed promise and carried it out. It should have sounded like melodrama, but it didn’t. There was a cool, factual quality about the magnificent old lady and her acceptance of what he had achieved. Men ordered the world in which the Duchess lived. If one was fortunate, they governed wisely. Otherwise one suffered as a result of their mistakes. Whatever happened there was nothing to be done about it.
    Katharine recalled herself to the present and to the purpose which had brought her there; she was shocked at how easily she had slipped away, and how pervasive even the old Duchess was as a personality.
    â€˜I didn’t have time to read everything,’ she said. ‘I was so absorbed I didn’t realize that it was getting late. I wonder—do you think Alessandro would mind if I came back and finished all the letters?’
    â€˜But of course not,’ Isabella di Malaspiga said. ‘Come whenever you like.’ It was easy then to get up, to cross to her chair and take the hand that was as light as a leaf.
    â€˜Thank you for tea,’ Katharine said. ‘I’ll come again in a day or two.’
    â€˜I shall look forward to it,’ the Duchess said. ‘We can have another talk.’ The bright smile was still on her lips when Katharine left the room, but her eyes were looking somewhere else. She realized suddenly that this was Isabella di Malaspiga’s secret, the recipe for her survival. Nothing and no one came too close to her. The beautiful smile, the gracious manner, were an impenetrable barrier against the outside world. As she began the long walk down the Viale Galileo to the bridge, Katharine envied her that barred-and-bolted attitude to life. She herself had never felt more vulnerable or more uncertain. Her home and the life she had lived, even the nightmare of her