The Rape of Venice Read Online Free PDF Page B

‘I’ll not promise that. But now is no time to pursue the topic, and at such an hour as this it was foolish in me ever to have raised it. At any moment Jenny will be bringing my chocolate. Be off with you now, this instant.’
    Jumping out of bed he snatched up his chamber robe, and exclaimed in mock distress, ‘You drive me from Paradise! How I’ll live through the day I cannot think!’
    She laughed. ‘What a liar you are. You know full well thatyour mind will be filled with schemes to win over the Venetian. You’ll not give me another thought till it’s night again and time for us once more to essay a flight to Heaven. But the woman is not yet born who would not love your pretty speeches.’
    Grinning, he blew her a kiss over his shoulder before disappearing into her boudoir. Beyond it, through another door, lay the room he always occupied when at Stillwaters. Having rumpled the sheets of the unslept-in bed, he got into it and lay down. As Georgina had predicted, his mind had already switched from her to the members of the house-party that had assembled there the previous afternoon. She had made no difficulty about asking Richard Brinsley Sheridan to bring down the Venetian envoy for the weekend, and both had come accompanied by their wives.
    Roger had known Sheridan for some years and, much as he detested his politics, could not help liking him personally. The son of talented parents, the gifted Irishman had early achieved fame. At twenty-three, his play
The Rivals
had scored a great success, a few months later his opera
The Duenna
had taken the town by storm, and at twenty-five his
School for Scandal
had placed him among the immortals of the British stage. During the years that followed, as poet, playwright, producer, manager, and principal shareholder in Drury Lane, he had become the arbiter of London’s theatrical world.
    A little before he was thirty, realising what an asset his quick brain and silver tongue could prove to their party, the Whig politicians had persuaded him to contest Stafford in their interests at the elections of 1780, and he had won the seat.
    From his entry into Parliament he had given his unquestioning allegiance to Charles James Fox. Now, leading only a rump of Whigs who refused to join the Coalition formed for the better prosecution of the war, Fox was old, embittered and discredited; yet Sheridan continued to support him in his venomous attacks on the Prime Minister and near treasonable advocacy of the policies of the French revolutionaries. Even so, on other matters Sheridan was high-principled and full of good sense; while his fertile mind, charming manner and amusing conversation made him a delightful companion.
    His first wife, Elizabeth Linley, had been a concert singer. Her great beauty and golden voice had brought her a score of rich suitors while still in her teens, but Sheridan, himself then only a few years out of Harrow, had won her heart, fought aduel on her behalf and carried her off to France. Their romantic elopement had proved the prelude to a marriage lasting eighteen years and, although towards its end he had caused her much pain by his unfaithfulness, her death from consumption had proved a terrible blow to him.
    He was now forty-five, and a year earlier he had married another beauty—this time a daughter of the Dean of Winchester. They had bought the estate of Sir William Grey at Polesden, near Leatherhead, and, as it was only seven miles from Stillwaters, Georgina had ridden over several times to see them. She had told Roger that ‘dear Sherry’s new young wife was having the effect of an Elixir of Life on him’ and, apart from the fact that his face had become very red from heavy drinking, Roger, now having met him again, fully endorsed her opinion.
    The couple the Sheridans brought with them were so different from themselves that at first Roger was puzzled by their close association; but during the Friday evening