And as far as possible from Sam. Not that Ally had seen or spoken to him again. Which was good. He had been so cavalier about the situation in the park. It had been just another evening of fun for him. No responsibilities. No worries. Just dance! It was infuriating. She wished she could be so daft and outrageous, treat life as a game.
And yet she had called Sam, he had come running, and she had acted like a nun and hadn’t heard from him since. Not that she cared—certainly not. Why would she care? She had too many other things to deal with.
The obsessive checking of her cell phone was utter childish silliness.
“Oh, Ally!” Granny Donny cried, breaking into her thoughts. “Look! Salvatore brought along a wedding gown for you!”
“How did you arrange all this?” Ally asked her grandmother, ignoring the wedding gown the way she was learning to ignore talk of corsets and earls and roasted pigs. Amazing how quickly the impossible became routine.
“What kind of silly question is that, dear? Salvatore and I correspond by post, like normal people,” Granny Donny exclaimed.
“She messengers me letters,” Salvatore explained.
“You act as if I’m too dumb to know how to write,” Granny Donny went on. “I might be old, but I’m not doddering, you know.”
Sal nodded at Ally, four pins sticking out of his mouth. “We write with fountain pens,” he said with some difficulty. He used the pins, then said more clearly, “On very heavy paper. It’s delightful! Did you know Lady Donatella also has extensive correspondence with Jane Bonds, New York’s best antique milliner, and a man from Sotheby’s who specializes in antique jewels and accessories?”
Ally didn’t doubt it. No one wanted to remind Granny Donny it was the twenty-first century if they could make a fortune keeping her thinking it was the nineteenth.
Ally made a mental note to call Granny Donny’s accountant.
“I usually do costumes for Broadway,” Sal admitted when Granny Donny was out of hearing and Ally had questioned him further. “But I’m between shows, and this is a lovely distraction. I adore your grandmother. Would do anything for her. Now, let’s get you fitted, darling.” Salvatore held up the wedding dress for her to admire.
The gown was gorgeous. It had a tiered bottom and a fitted bodice with long, capped sleeves.
Her grandmother and all three assistants descended on her. “Oh, yes. Try it on.”
“You must, go on.”
Before Ally knew what was happening, she was stripped of her sundress, positioned on a small riser, and draped in white.
The vintage satin was unspeakably delicate on her skin.
“It’s a 1907 gown,” Sal explained as he turned Ally this way and that, measuring and pinning. “We could adjust it to suit the Regency age so you’d match Mrs. Giordano better, but I hate to ruin its integrity.”
Ally fingered the ancient lace, awed by the intricate workmanship. She didn’t want to think about how much the dress must have cost her grandmother. “You don’t have to make it fit the age or fit me,” she told Sal. “I’m trying it on this once. For fun.”
But Sal shook his head in disgust. “What good is a wedding gown that doesn’t fit?” He and Granny Donny shared a look. “Such an odd girl.”
Realizing resistance was futile, she allowed them all to fuss. But the more they fussed, the more Ally couldn’t stop thinking about Sam. How had that man gotten under her skin like this? It was humiliating to take a man seriously who didn’t take anything in life seriously. As soon as she could, she shed the gown. Granny Donny reclaimed the spotlight, and Ally sank onto the couch to watch the proceedings, mercifully forgotten.
It was an elaborate process to fit the gowns. Even with two assistants, it took what seemed like forever to get just one dress right on her grandmother’s tiny frame. Three more dresses still waited on the chrome rack, but no one seemed in any sort of hurry to get to them. After all, they had to break for tea and cakes and gossip about made-up earls and viscounts.
In the old days, Ally realized as she sipped her third cup of tea, with the absurd conversation swirling around her, an elderly woman living alone was still surrounded by her servants and still had important things to do, like having necklines adjusted and waists taken in. There were letters to write and send by urgent messenger. And, of course, everything had to stop for tea. Then, if you happened to forget you’d stopped for tea just moments ago, you could stop again!
“I can’t wait to tell the duke we’re almost ready to go,” Granny Donny said as Sal turned her this way and that in her gray silk gown.
“He’ll catch up with us later,” Ally lied.
“Oh, no!” Granny Donny cried. “I won’t leave London without him. Absolutely not. We need an escort, after all, if we’re to go into the wild countryside.”
* * *
Sam.
He was the only piece of the trip to Lewiston that Ally didn’t know how to handle. She looked at the lists spread before her on her grandmother’s coffee table: medicines, phone numbers, supplies. Which list did Sam fit in? Imaginary Nobles? Beautiful but Dangerous Dukes? She had hoped that Granny Donny would be satisfied with her virgin teenage granddaughter and vague excuses that “the duke was on his way.” But as the days of planning passed, that was looking less and less likely, and now it was midnight, four days before she and Mateo had decided they’d leave, and Ally had no answers. She wanted to give her grandmother the trip of her dreams. She wanted even more to get her grandmother out of Manhattan until she was well again. But if Granny Donny kept insisting on the duke’s presence, would it all fall apart?
Of course it would. Granny Donny was as stubborn as a mule. It was impossible to explain to her that Sam Carson would never come on a trip that was obviously nuts with Ally, a woman without enormous boobs or a yen to rip off her clothes at the sight of his angled cheekbones.
She tried not to think of his angled cheekbones.
She picked up her yellow pad and started her own list: What I Want.
For a long moment, the paper remained blank. Did she still want San Francisco? Her new job? Did she want to go back to June and sleep in her childhood bed?
Sam Carson.
She wrote the name before she could think it through.
She resisted the urge to crumple the paper and toss it away.
So, she would take a deep breath and admit to herself that a part of her wanted him to come, too. The dumb-ass, moronic part. She stared down at his name. Okay, it wasn’t so bad to admit it. After all, Sam was dashing and handsome and rich, and he had come to the park and behaved like a perfect gentleman.
But he hated her. That much was clear. His scorn in the park when she broke up the “ball” was palpable. He had come out of duty, or maybe a sense of adventure, and she had disappointed him somehow. Of course she had disappointed him. She had called like a damsel in distress, like a princess, and then refused to swoon.
And now she needed his help again.
How did the princess in The Dulcet Duke handle Duke Blackmoore?
I have to read the book.
Why hadn’t she thought of that before?
Ally crept into her grandmother’s bedroom. Granny Donny slept, snoring quietly, a pitifully small bundle of sharp-angled bones in her enormous king-size bed.
Don’t worry; I’ll take care of us, Ally thought. She hoped she could back up her intentions, but images of her grandmother lost in the park shook her.
The room was filled with romance novels. They over-flowed the bookcases and were stacked on the floor. The Wilted Flower, The Rose and the Vulture, To Tame a Maiden…
Then she saw it. On the bed stand, the cover worn and creased. The Dulcet Duke. Ally snatched the book and replaced it with a copy of Dog Fancy, which one of the home aides had left behind.
I’ll just read a few pages. Skim it for pertinent information.
But when she looked up hours later, she was on the couch, thirsty and needing to pee, but unable to put the book down. She w
as breathless, alarmed, confused, and only up to page 172.
The dulcet duke of the title, Duke Blackmoore, was tall, manly, rich, and impossibly sexy. Ally got the resemblance to Sam Carson after the first paragraph. Not that Sam Carson had “rippling” thigh muscles that “gripped his horse’s heaving, sweating sides.” Well, Sam certainly might have grippy thighs; Ally couldn’t be sure. What was more disturbing was the spiritual affinity—the rakish charm, the devil-may-care attitude, and the lack of anything resembling responsibility for himself or his fellow creatures, especially his fellow female creatures.
And the hair. Both dukes had alarmingly unruly hair. Except that Sam wasn’t a duke. Why was that so hard to remember?
Still, the facts stood undisputed. Duke Blackmoore was a womanizing, irresponsible rake who didn’t deserve the incredible privilege he took as his due. He didn’t deserve the good woman, who at this point in the novel was avoiding him at all costs with a disgust Ally found deliciously exciting. Good sir, spoke the princess, I do not find your childish antics delightful as the other females who seem to fawn over you.
Right on, Princess! Don’t fall for adolescent swagger. For classic beauty. For that longing in your soul—
Oh, hell. Ally wanted more of that swagger. At least, she wanted it on the page. Why fight it? It was only a book, after all. She got herself a bowl of chocolate ice cream, a few more pillows, and settled down on the couch for a night with the dashing duke.
* * *
The princess wore a translucent nightgown. Her hair was loose and flowed behind her as if there were a constant wind. She walked, barefoot, through the dark night. Her body trembled with fright, but she kept going forward. She held a candle, its flame also trembling, the flickering light making the night seem alive with evil. The path under her naked feet was cold and scattered with fallen leaves that crunched ominously.
Suddenly, a hand gripped her. Before she could scream, she was pulled into the briar hedge.
Duke Blackmoore!
“Don’t scream, Princess. It won’t do you any good.”
The princess was furious, but she was also relieved to be in the duke’s arms and no longer alone in the dark.
The weight of him crushed into her and then, somehow, they were in his bed, still outside, the leaves of the massive oaks rustling against the black, starless sky above. “This is what you want,” Duke Blackmoore growled.
“No. I want to find my grandmother.” She was Ally, and she tried to pull away but was no match for the more powerful man.
“She’s fine. She’s with your mother.” He grasped her closer.
“No. That’s not possible. My mother is dead.”
“Shhh…it’s okay. You don’t need her anymore. All you need is me.” Duke Blackmoore had transformed into Sam.
He pulled her against him, catching her mouth with his own. And then, they were making love. A violin played a waltz in the distance as he ravaged her, his ferocious, savage rhythm out of sync with the playful waltz. Shegripped the posts of the mahogany bed, trying not to cry out in ecstasy. He was too much for her. Too powerful. But there was nothing she could do. Her body responded to him, rising up to meet his. It was too good. She spiraled deeper into the sensation of him—
The violin music stopped, replaced with the heavy bass of a boom box—
Ally awoke with a jolt.
Around her, the night was silent.
The book had slipped to the floor along with her covers. Had she been thrashing in her sleep?
She let her head fall back on the pillows. Oh, hell. She was hot and sweaty—and thank God, alone on her grandmother’s couch. But lovely sensations of the dream still tingled in her nerve endings. Ally felt a rush of hope. She could use a hero these next few weeks.
Wait. No. Reality check. Dream over. She wasn’t some wimpy nineteenth-century woman who needed a man to save her from the dark. She was no virgin Princess Alexandra, swooning and fawning. In her dream, what had happened to her grandmother? She couldn’t remember exactly, but the haze of unease she still felt meant it had been nothing good. Ally had abandoned her grandmother, left her in the park while she fulfilled her own desires.
The dream felt like a warning: I must not abandon Granny Donny the way my parents abandoned me. She shoved the book under the seat cushions, determined not to read another word.
Ally didn’t need a hero. She would get Granny Donny to the beach house and they’d have a good time doing it. She would figure out a way to make sure her grandmother was safe and cared for. She would get by, with help from no one. After all, she’d lived most of her life without help from anyone but Granny Donny. She didn’t need a man’s help now.
Except the increasingly irritating fact was that she did. Her grandmother wouldn’t leave Manhattan without the duke.
Ally got up and paced the dark apartment. The grand windows opened onto the shadow that was Central Park at night: dangerous, unknown, unsafe, beautiful, magical, unpredictable.
Just like Sam.
And then it struck her: Ally wasn’t capable of lying to her grandmother about Sam coming.
But she knew someone who probably wouldn’t mind lying one bit.
A man’s house said everything about him. The rooms of Blackmoore Manor said, “Enter at your own risk, for herein, the rules of polite society do not signify.”
—From The Dulcet Duke
Chapter 8
The next day, Ally stood outside Sam Carson’s ornate prewar building, pacing. The unbearable heat wave hadn’t let up, and even in her vintage cotton sundress, she was sweltering.
She had called Sam, and he had agreed to see her with surprisingly little hesitation. In fact, he had seemed almost glad to hear from her.
Maybe he had forgotten who she was, thought she was one of his floozies.
She practiced her speech as she paced outside his building: Sam, my grandmother has the delusion that you will escort us to the country and then marry me. So if you could spare a few moments, pretend to be the duke again, come and visit her, and tell her you’ll go, I’d be very appreciative.
Ally reconsidered. She ought to cut out the bit about marriage.
She practiced again. Then, with a final huff, she strode past the doorman and presented herself to the Russian-looking man behind the marble desk. “Mr. Carson,” she said. She had meant to say “Sam,” but in the face of the gilded marble lobby and the exceedingly handsome Slav in the blue uniform with gold buttons and braided trim behind the grand desk, “Mr.” had slipped out, then “Sam” had retreated, leaving only “Carson.” At least she hadn’t asked for the duke. “He’s expecting me. Ally Giordano.”
The man, whose name tag read Misha, looked her over and shook his blond bangs. He had blue eyes, slanted and heavy. “Mr. Carson isn’t in.” He put out both hands palms up in an old-world gesture of apology.
Great. Sam had said he would be here, she had walked all the way across the park and up to Seventy-second Street in the awful heat, and now he was gone? “I can’t believe he’s not here. I just spoke to him.”
Misha shook his head. “Gone. Just left.”
Ally felt the weight of dealing with her stubborn grandmother crash down on her. She sank onto a too-small, upright chair across from Misha’s desk. Caring for her grandmother kept putting her in these straight-backed chairs—at the doctor’s, the therapist’s, the Rite-Aid pharmacy with its endless take-a-number line. She saw her life as a series of hard, straight-backed chairs stretching to infinity. The good woman… She could hear echoes of June’s voice in her head: Taking this trip is crazy…
“I’ll wait.”
She was annoyed but not surprised that Sam could be so rude as to tell her to come, and then not be here. She looked at her watch. She had hired a new woman from the agency to watch Granny Donny, but she was anxious to get back.
Misha darted a sly glance around the deserted lobby and then came around his desk to her side. He leaned in close, his hands on his knees. He sighed and
stared into her eyes with the peculiar intensity only foreigners would dare in New York City. Ally wondered if he was about to tell her that she was supposed to slip him a twenty.
“You should go,” Misha whispered. Youshooghoh.
He said it with such gentleness, it took Ally a moment to understand him. “Go? Oh, I really have to see Sam, er, Mr. Carson.”
Misha clasped his hands together, interlacing his fingers. He shook them with urgency, as if in prayer. “You find a better man.” Youfindabeddermin. “Mr. Carson is no good.”
“Oh. No. It’s not that.” Ally was amazed that the man had taken so much risk to warn her off Sam. The things Misha must see. She didn’t want to think about it. “I know Mr. Carson is—” Dangerously gorgeous? Childishly irresponsible? All of the above? “It’s just business.”
“I don’t want that such a good woman to be hurt.” Coming from Misha’s mouth, “hurt” was drawn out and softened, so that it ended up sounding like a thing that one became forever, for others to stare at in pity. “He’s with someone. Yes? You know?”
I’m not the good woman, and no, I didn’t know, and tell me, what does he do that’s so awful? Ally composed herself. “Of course I know he’s with someone,” she lied. The news struck her harder than made sense. She had to stop reading The Dulcet Duke so those upsetting, lovely, very wrong dreams about Sam Carson and his four-poster bed in the park would stop. The book was in her purse now, and she touched it like a talisman. She had not intended to finish it, but this morning she couldn’t resist taking it with her, so she’d dug it out from under the seat cushions. One had to finish what one started, after all. “Really, it’s business.”
Misha looked at her like he was a priest and she was a sinner condemned to a particularly nasty level of hell.
They stared at each other a few moments. Ally tapped her foot impatiently. She looked around the same way Misha had earlier, then lowered her voice to a whisper. “Besides the women, what’s so bad about him?”
“The drinking,” Misha said, shaking his head sadly.
“Anything else I should know?” Buggering? Sword-play? Snuff?
How to Tame a Modern Rogue Page 6
