Claire's Last Secret Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Titles by Marty Ambrose

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Titles by Marty Ambrose

  The Mango Bay Mystery series

  PERIL IN PARADISE

  ISLAND INTRIGUE

  MURDER IN THE MANGROVES

  KILLER KOOL

  COASTAL CORPSE

  Other titles

  ENGAGING

  HEAT WAVE

  CLAIRE’S LAST SECRET

  Marty Ambrose

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2018 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.

  This eBook edition first published in 2018 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2018 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  Copyright © 2018 by Marty Ambrose.

  The right of Marty Ambrose to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8797-9 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-919-1 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-975-6 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  For Jim – my hubby and best friend.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book has been the culmination of an amazing journey, and so many people helped me along the way. First of all, I want to thank the team at Florida SouthWestern State College who provided a grant for me to research the background of this novel in Geneva and Florence during the 200th anniversary of the ‘haunted summer.’ I never dreamed that I would actually see Mary Shelley’s journal from 1816 or walk in the footsteps of the Byron/Shelley circle. From our president, Dr Allbritten, to Michelle Wright and Stella Egan, they were always supportive. But most of all, I want to express my appreciation to Susan Hibbard who spent many afternoons chatting with me, encouraging my travel and work – I am forever indebted to you, my friend. Grazie mille.

  On the publishing side, I could not have found a home for this book without my incredible agent, Nicole Resciniti, who is just a gem in every way. Many thanks as well to the lovely people at Severn House: Kate Lyall Grant who wrote the most beautiful letter about my writing and Sara Porter who is one of the best editors with whom I have worked. Thanks to all of you for giving Claire’s Last Secret a chance!

  As always, my family has been there cheering me on – especially my husband, Jim McLaughlin, who endlessly read draft after draft of my chapters, bringing his journalist’s red pen to my prose. Love you.

  Lastly, I want to acknowledge the beautiful, mysterious, maddening Claire Clairmont, whose letters and life spoke to me through the centuries. I hope I did justice to your legacy.

  ‘I am unhappily the victim of a happy passion. I had one; like all things perfect of its kind, it was fleeting, and mine only lasted ten minutes, but these ten minutes have discomposed the rest of my life …’

  Claire Clairmont

  ONE

  Florence, Italy, 1873

  His letter came just at the point when I thought death was my only option.

  Poverty had been creeping in like a shadow edging out the light, and it was only a matter of time before it engulfed what was left of my life and snuffed out any prospect that fate would offer another way. I could no longer envision a road that led to some lost yet cherished land of dreams – especially when I was too old to pick up and start over on some adventure that would lead me into a new dawn.

  It was too late for that.

  Those were the youthful regions where fortune bestowed some great, golden happiness on anyone who had the courage to live with soulful purpose – hardly the reality of my present circumstances.

  Yet the letter brought a glimmer of hope … a wild fancy that I might, even at this late stage, turn things around. What I did not realize was that it would take me back to the early days and expose a labyrinth of deception and lies that had altered the course of my existence.

  But I digress …

  I must start at the beginning because the echoes of one’s origin never fade to silence, no matter how much it is desired. I did not know my own origin because I never knew my father – not that I needed to learn his identity, but it would have centered my world at the very least with a starting point. A compass for my life. A moment when I first became aware that I drew breath.

  Sadly, it never happened.

  My last name is Clairmont. A melodic sobriquet to be sure, but my mother simply chose the name like someone would choose a ribbon for the bodice of a dress – it seemed appealing and created just the right effect of class and respectability – but it was for show, nonetheless, since she never married a man named Clairmont. Not that I particularly minded her choice. I love showiness. In my opinion, modesty in a woman is highly overrated, though no one in my family agreed with me. But I, Clara Mary Jane Clairmont, always went my own way – even without the compass – and I am prouder of that than of anything else in my seventy-five years on this earth.

  Just as I claimed my version of my name: Claire Clairmont.

  Il mio nome.

  ‘Aunt Claire, don’t overtax yourself,’ my niece, Paula, said as she strolled into the warm, slightly stuffy room, a cup of my favorite oolong tea in her hand. It was late morning – not terribly hot yet, but by afternoon the midsummer Florentine temperature would soar and everyone would take refuge inside, resting and praying to St Clare of Assisi for a breath of air. My rented apartment faced the Boboli Gardens – a lush, open space on the outskirts of Florence, perched on a hill, that often provided a slight breeze, whispering through the centuries-old cypress trees and hidden grottos.

  Paula set a delicate blue-and-white patterned china cup on my tea table, already cluttered with letters, books, and an inkwell. ‘You need to move around more, Aunt. Your ankle is starting to swell again, and if you cannot walk, I will have to call in Raphael to carry you to bed.’ My niece’s voice took on that familiar combination of love and exasperation of the young who are tethered to the old; she cared for me deeply, but I tried her patience when I refused to heed her advice, which occurred quite often. I wasn’t ready to give up my independent ways yet.

  Besides, she would not mind calling our domestico, Raphael; I’d seen the sweet longi
ng in the glances that she cast at him when he was distracted by some task in the kitchen. Paula might be the daughter of my dearly departed brother, Charles, but she was also my niece, after all. Spinning romantic fantasies around a handsome face was embedded in her nature. Certainly, I had done that a time or two in my life – sometimes finding regret in my impulsive feelings, sometimes not. But always true to my passions.

  Quickly, I slipped the letter under the stack of books, shifting in my chair and smoothing down my faded blue cotton dress. I was not ready to share it with her yet.

  ‘Is that the missive you received this morning?’ she asked absently, leaning down and plumping the delicately embroidered pillow under my sprained ankle, which was propped up on a footstool.

  ‘Nothing important.’ Assuming an air of nonchalance, I shrugged. ‘Just a letter from one of my many old friends, Edward Trelawny, inquiring as to our well-being.’

  Paula straightened with a sigh. ‘Do we have any old friends left who have not abandoned us to our state of poverty, except Trelawny?’

  ‘Thank you, my dear, for pointing that out. I am well aware of our impoverished state of affairs since my last ill-conceived investment in that farm.’ Folding my wrinkled hands in my lap, I echoed her sigh. Investing in my nephew’s farm in Austria was a foolishness that I could ill afford, but I never could resist helping my family, even though it had pushed me to the brink of bankruptcy.

  ‘I apologize – that was unkind, Aunt.’ She placed a hand on my forearm, glancing down at me with her blue eyes clouded in guilt.

  ‘You are forgiven, even though I must remind you that friendships can ebb and flow during the years regardless of one’s financial status – even those who are closest to us can disappoint us.’ Of course, I meant the members of the sacred Byron/Shelley circle of my youth: Byron, the great poet who broke my heart, and Shelley, the husband of my stepsister, Mary, whose brilliance lit my life and whose small annuity protected me in my advanced years. I had loved them all – especially my accomplished and beautiful stepsister, Mary. Even though Mary had created a hideous monster in her novel Frankenstein, she herself possessed that kind of tranquil loveliness that made everyone gravitate to her.

  Serenità, as the Italians would say.

  Unlike me.

  I could never sit still.

  I talked incessantly.

  And I never let my head rule my emotions, which caused me more heartache than I can say. But my life was never dull.

  Geneva, Vienna, London, St Petersburg – I saw the world and I loved many men, though not always wisely.

  ‘I have heard that Trelawny can barely read now his eyesight is so weak,’ Paula said with a shake of her head. ‘He is—’

  ‘Old and decrepit? Like me?’ I raised my brows, waiting for the truth to spill out of her. No one would deny that my once-glossy dark curls were now threaded with gray, my smooth olive skin had more than its share of wrinkles and my body experienced a variety of aches and pains. But my eyes still sparkled with the fires of my youth – just somewhat dimmed, from what I could see in the mirror. I knew all of that. Paula would not say it because, at heart, she had a fondness for me, and I had for her – and her young daughter, Georgiana. My niece and I were bonded in mutual affection and penury, but I refused to let the latter sink my spirits. ‘In truth, I am quite ancient—’

  ‘Hardly. You are only chair-bound because you twisted your ankle in the gardens. You should know better than to go there alone. The walkways are very uneven from all of the twisted roots underneath, especially near the citrus trees.’ She avoided mentioning my arthritic limbs and inability to walk beyond short distances; I loved her for that sensitive avoidance of reality. But we both knew it.

  ‘Oh, but the sunset was so beautiful last night that I could not resist a sunset stroll through the meadow to the island pond.’

  As I noted the tightening of her mouth, I sympathized with my poor niece’s irritation over my behavior. In truth, I would have hated it at her age, but I parted with my mother and stepfather at seventeen and never had such entanglements.

  I gave her hand a brief squeeze as I added, ‘The gardens speak to my soul, and I cannot always resist them.’ There were too many sweet memories not to indulge myself – no matter the cost. Glancing out of the back windows that overlooked the Boboli Gardens’ gentle terraces, lined with cypress and oleander trees, I could almost smell the sweetly perfumed roses that grew around the Judas trees. And just beyond them stretched out a richly landscaped profusion of camellias, azaleas and hydrangeas. More aromatic sensual delights. Beyond that stood the Egyptian obelisk, surmounted by a gilded orb. It stretched skyward, straight and tall, positioned behind the Pitti Palace, the splendid residence that once housed the Medicis when they ruled Florence with their wealth and power.

  I closed my eyes.

  Dear God, I wish I were a girl again, moving through the gardens with a lightness of careless youth.

  The Boboli Gardens were the reason that I had come back to spend my last days in these shabby rooms at the nearby Palazzo Cruciato – so I could stroll through the shaded walks of the gardens, hear the dreamy expanse of flowing fountain waters, gaze out over the whole of Florence … and remember the past.

  Paula’s delicate cough startled me out of my reverie. She then tapped the cover of an engraved leather book on top of the stack. ‘Are you thinking about him? How can you?’

  I winced inside.

  She meant Byron. George Gordon, Lord Byron.

  My lover. My enemy. My torment.

  He had said to others that he had never loved me, but I knew that wasn’t true. He did love me – in his own way. And he hurt me in every way possible.

  Paula knew the details of my grand love affair, including the child who came from it. My darling daughter, Allegra. To my niece’s credit, she never judged me with that pinched-faced expression of Victorian tourists who gave me a sidelong glance of pity (and curiosity) when I walked down the narrow, crooked streets of Florence. I saw them murmuring to each other behind their fans, but I pretended not to notice, smiling and nodding to each and every one of them.

  Most certainly, they talked about Paula and her own illegitimate daughter, as well.

  L’amore è cieco. Love is blind.

  I suppose that is why my niece never judged me: we were too similar, except in appearance. Where I had the exotic coloring of the Mediterranean climes, Paula possessed the delicate features of a pale cameo, complete with ivory complexion and soft blonde waves. An English rose to my hothouse flower.

  She flipped open the thick volume and saw the inscription: To Claire – my greatest heart’s desire. B.

  ‘You never told me about how you met Byron.’

  I smiled inwardly. ‘No, I did not.’

  Paula looked up, her brows raised. ‘And I suppose that means that you will not ever tell me.’

  ‘What has spiked this sudden interest in my past?’

  ‘Trelawny’s letter, I suppose.’ She shrugged. ‘He was part of your literary group, was he not?’

  ‘Not in Geneva – he came into our lives later when we lived in Pisa, but he was certainly an … interesting addition with his bold, forceful presence – more Byronic than the poet himself.’ I smiled.

  ‘And he wanted to marry you?’

  Trelawny. Not Byron. Not the one that I loved.

  Sidestepping a direct answer with an averted glance, I continued, ‘It was a long time ago, my dear – half a century – so there’s no point in bringing up all of that again. I rarely think about Byron – or any of them, at all.’ All lies, of course. Our little circle in Geneva during that summer of 1816 had fashioned my entire world for most of my life; they were the most precious memories of my youth and had shaped everything that I held sacred – even to my own detriment. My family, my friends, my lover … they had all often treated me with a careless affection reserved for one who was not center stage but a secondary player in their grand dramas. Still, I loved them.


  1816. ‘The Year Without a Summer,’ as the newspapers had called it.

  A volcano had exploded on the other side of world and, by June, the whole of Europe was covered by a dust cloud which made the days rainy and the nights cold with a damp chill that crept into one’s very bones. Mostly, we had to take refuge inside Byron’s Villa Diodati – an elegant, porticoed house perched high on the eastern shore of Lake Geneva. Even over the expanse of time, I could still hear the evening conversations around the massive stone fireplace, everyone telling ghost stories until each one of us had the germ of an idea for a poem or a book.

  In truth, every day of that summer was burned in my memory and, somehow, each recollection became stronger as I grew older.

  But Paula did not need to know that.

  ‘Who would have thought you would outlive the whole lot of them?’ Paula murmured, flipping through the gilt-edged pages, pausing at an illustration or two.

  ‘Indeed – I never thought I would live this long.’ They were all dead now, except for Trelawny. I would have liked for him to visit Florence before he died, but I had to content myself with his letters since travel was too arduous in the summer heat for him now.

  Paula stopped on the page where I had left a bronze agate bookmark decorated with a tiny Scottish thistle on the tip. After scanning the page, she yawned. ‘I never liked poetry. It always seemed so artificial to me – even Byron’s work, though I know you’re partial to it, of course.’ She glanced at me sideways with a subtle look of amusement, but I kept my features composed and calm. Inside, I was protesting, but I would not let my niece see it. I had learned to tame my volatile temper somewhat – at least outwardly. Paula had no idea what it was like to have a great and brilliant poet express his passion for her in his work. She had never lived to hear words written about her that transcended the very language in which they were written. She had never touched the edges of fame. A heady place.