by Juliana Gray
She shook her head. “I know. I realize that. Which is why I’ll stay here until it’s all finished. Refuse any visitors. I’ll endeavor not to see anyone, until it’s final. And if he does find out, there’s no proof . . . The dates are close enough . . . He can’t say for certain . . . and everyone here will support us, will say we haven’t been together.”
“It could be months. Years. The birth, my God, if something goes wrong . . .” His voice was hard, desperate. How she wished she could see his face through the darkness! Somehow it was all harder, talking to a voice in the void that had all the characteristics of Roland, and yet seemed a stranger.
“Then I’ll deal with it, Roland,” she said. “I have to. Don’t you understand? You can’t be involved, not at all. Every moment we spend alone could damn us in court. It could ruin everything.”
He stepped forward and seized her hands again, pulling her against him. “No. I don’t understand. We’ve waited more than six years already. And now that you’re finally here, in my arms, with Somerton at last behind us, you can’t possibly expect me to stay away. I’ll go mad, Lilibet.”
She couldn’t make out his face, but she could feel the weight of his eyes, drenching her with the intensity of his emotion. That magnetic allure of his, pulling at her, drawing her under his spell; the sweet madness taking over her brain again. She squeezed her eyes shut and placed her hands against his chest. “No, you won’t. And neither will I. We are human beings, Roland, not animals. We won’t do this. Not yet.”
He said nothing. The warmth of his skin gave her an instant’s warning before his lips, firm and tender, brushed against hers: once, twice. “Lilibet.” He touched his forehead to hers and drew his hands up to cradle her face. “Please. I can give you so much pleasure, darling. So much love. Just let me. Allow me the privilege. Just once. Just tonight. Who will know?”
“Roland, please . . .” she murmured into his lips, every cell of her body whirling and aching at his touch. He felt so right; so exactly fashioned for her alone.
“I want you so much, so deeply.” His voice rumbled in her ear as his thumbs caressed her cheekbones. “You can’t imagine how hard it’s been, waiting for you.”
No doubt about that, she thought. The physical evidence pushed like a fire iron into her belly.
“Yes, I can imagine,” she said, pulling back. “Do you think I don’t want it, too? I want you desperately. I long for you, every night. I . . .” She could hear the hoarseness, the plea in her own voice, and stepped outside the circle of his arms to breathe the air in great cleansing gasps. “You asked me to have faith in you,” she went on quietly, at last. “And I’m showing it to you now, Roland. I’m trusting you with everything right now. Don’t you see?”
He turned away a few degrees, staring up at the castle. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Quite serious. Please understand.”
“Oh, damn,” he said. “Oh, damn.”
Silence spun about them. She felt his acquiescence seep into the air, reluctant and agonized and . . . well, rather sulky.
She couldn’t really blame him.
“Very well,” he said at last. “I won’t touch you, if that’s how you want it.” He leaned close, so close she could feel his warm breath on her face. “But I’m not leaving, Lilibet. Not on your life. I’ll stay, and keep watch on you and the baby and Philip. And Norbert the damned grasshopper, I suppose.” He tilted his head and spoke into her ear. “And I will not, for one moment, stop trying to change your mind.”
“You won’t succeed.”
“Yes, I bloody will,” he growled.
She reached up and pushed away the lock of hair on his forehead. “Oh, cheer up,” she said. “It’s not as desperate as that. After all, if you give up on me, there’s always Francesca.”
“Francesca,” he muttered.
They walked back to the house, arms held rigidly away from one another. At the doorway, just before they parted, Lilibet remembered something.
“Oh, I meant to tell you. I had the oddest note under my door this afternoon. Do you perhaps know where it came from?”
“Haven’t a clue,” he said. “I advise you to burn it.”
He strode past her, up the wide stone stairs to the western wing, where the gentlemen slept.
SIXTEEN
Midsummer’s Eve
There were times, while acting as a de facto tutor for a boy of five, that Roland looked back with yearning on his tranquil existence as an intelligence agent for Her Majesty’s Bureau of Trade and Maritime Information.
“Uncle Roland,” said Philip, in perhaps his fiftieth question during the past hour and a half, “how old is the castle?”
Roland put his hands behind his head and stared up at the library ceiling. “Haven’t a clue, old boy,” he said, “though I daresay we could find out.”
“Do you think one of the Medicis lived here? That would be smashing,” Philip said. He jumped up from the rug and began to slash with his imaginary sword. “Fighting off the . . . well, whoever it was.”
“Various parties, through the ages, I believe,” Roland said. “Shall we look it up?” It was defensible research, after all. They were supposed to be reading history at the moment, not that Philip’s course of study was what Roland’s own boyhood tutor might have called structured.
He hadn’t planned on spending his hours teaching Philip his Latin grammar and English kings. He’d only been looking for a diversion, a way to keep his mind out of Lilibet’s bed, where it had a disturbing tendency to burrow if left unchecked. He’d begun by taking the boy out riding and swimming, thinking that he ought to get to know the little fellow better, if he planned on marrying his mother. It would please Lilibet to see them getting on, and he rather liked Philip. He had a certain ardent and ingenious charm to him, always taking things full tilt, always sticking up for underdogs.
Then Abigail had taken to disappearing in the afternoons, right around lesson time, and Roland had shrugged his shoulders and pulled out the books himself. What else had he to do, after all?
“Are you certain?” Lilibet had asked, her eyes turned up to his like a pair of anxious cornflowers. “I can do it myself. You really don’t mind?”
“Not at all,” he’d said. “You need your rest.” Because really, he’d do anything she wanted at the moment. Anything at all to promote a sense of obligation, which might at any point (so he hoped, against all hope) be returned in the form of sexual favor. Over the past few months, he’d discovered that all previously known forms of physical torture were nothing, compared to the agony of watching the woman one loved grow round and ripe with one’s child, without being allowed to touch her.
Well, that wasn’t quite true. He’d stolen the odd kiss, now and again, but only after excruciatingly exact planning and cunning subterfuge, combined with excessive outpourings of the legendary Penhallow charm. Worth it, every time, even though her kisses had only made him burn even hotter.
Given the incentive, the prospect of teaching Philip his conjugations and sums seemed a small price to pay. He’d plunged into it with a sort of haphazard method, moving from Scottish history to the Chinese abacus in the course of an hour, and somewhere along the way he’d realized he was enjoying himself. Immensely, in fact. He kept spotting little bits of Lilibet in the boy, expressions and habits that stopped his breath in astonished rapture, until spending time sprawled on the library rug with slates and books became, improbably, the next best thing to spending it sprawled in bed with Lilibet.
Not that he had any prospect of the latter, at the moment.
“Where would we look it up?” Philip asked, casting his eyes about the library walls.
“I suppose there must be an estate book of some kind, lying about,” Roland said. He heaved himself up from the rug and went to the nearest shelf. “Wallingford has th
em in his library, collecting dust, all the way back to the first duke. Land grants and revenues and dowries and all that rubbish. Makes me dashed glad I’m not the heir.”
“I know,” Philip said, with a mournful sigh.
Roland glanced downward. “Oh, buck up, old boy,” he said. “It’s not so bad, being an earl. Proper title, you know, not like this flimsy pretend one I’ve got.”
“Pretend title?”
“Well, I’m not lord of anything, am I?” Roland read the faded gold letters stamped on the leather spines. Italian history, Italian letters. Where the devil would the estate books be kept? Here, or elsewhere? He knew next to nothing about this Rosseti who owned the pile. “I’m just Lord Roland of Nothing.”
“Really?” Philip went silent for a moment, digesting this morsel. “So if Mama were married to you, she’d be Lady Nothing?”
Roland’s finger froze on the binding of a Machiavelli. “No,” he said slowly. “She’d be known as Lady Roland. Lady Roland Penhallow.”
“Oh. Well, that’s rubbish. What would happen to her real name?”
Roland’s finger resumed its travels along the leather bindings. “Well, you’d still call her Mama, and her friends would still call her Elizabeth.”
“What would you call her?”
“I’d call her Lilibet. Or darling, or sweetheart. All those tedious names husbands are obliged to call their wives.”
“My father doesn’t call her those. And what about the baby in her tummy?”
Roland spun around. “How the deuce did you know about that?”
Philip looked up at him, perfectly composed. “I asked her last night why she was getting so big in her tummy. And she told me there was a baby inside, and I wasn’t supposed . . .” His hand flew to his mouth.
“Exactly. See that you don’t tell anyone else, young man.” Roland ran his hand through his hair. “Your mama wants to keep it a surprise, for now.”
Philip’s eyes narrowed. “Then how did you find out?”
Roland moved on to the next shelf, thinking fast. “Well, she had to tell someone, didn’t she? To run for the doctor and all that. Not an easy job at all, having a baby.”
“Oh.” Philip followed him without speaking, eyes cast down to the worn rug beneath their feet.
“Let’s see here,” Roland said. “This looks a bit more promising. Might be ledgers, here.” He glanced down. “Everything all right?”
“Uncle Roland,” Philip said, in a quiet voice, “is my father dead?”
Roland started. “Dead! No. No, Philip. Good God, no. Alive and well. Just . . . well, just very busy. Earls have all sorts of responsibilities.”
Philip looked up at him steadily, his dark eyes round and doubtful. “Are you sure?”
“Quite sure.”
“Is he sick?”
“No. Not sick.” Christ. He wasn’t prepared for this at all. He’d no idea what Lilibet had told the boy about his father, no idea at all how to corroborate her story. Philip continued to examine him with those preternaturally wise eyes, as if he could see right through Roland’s fine speeches to read the truth behind them. “I suppose you miss him a great deal,” he said at last, crouching down to look Philip straight in the eye.
“Yes.” The word was brief, uncertain. Philip looked as if he wanted to say more.
“Yes, but?”
“Well, I didn’t see him much. And when I did, he always seemed angry at me.” The words tumbled out and then stopped, like the closing of a sluice gate.
“He wasn’t angry at you, Philip. I’m sure he loves you very much.” Roland fisted one hand, wishing Somerton were here right now, so he could drag him into the hallway for the thrashing of his life. The other hand he placed gently atop Philip’s slender shoulder. “You’re a fine lad. Any father would be proud of you.”
Philip shrugged.
“Look here.” Roland gave the shoulder a last pat and rose to his feet. “I think I’ve found what we’re looking for. Looks ancient enough. Ledger-like.” He drew a wide, slim volume from the shelf. “I can’t make out the Italian properly, but I recognize a bit of Latin in there. Let’s take a look, shall we?”
He carried the book to the wide table near the windows—he pictured Medici princes, spreading out their maps of conquest atop the worn wood—and opened the pages to the middle. “Accounts, all right. Good God, it’s frightfully old. Look at this, Philip: November the third, 1597. Double-entry bookkeeping, even. Didn’t know they had that sort of thing back then.”
“What’s double . . . double . . .”
“Double-entry bookkeeping. It’s how we keep track of incoming and outgoing funds, keeping everything in its proper order. You make an entry in the credit side and an entry in the debit side, to show where the money went.” Roland thumbed through the pages. “Household receipts. Seems to have acquired a great deal of silver.”
Philip made a restless movement at his elbow, boredom radiating from his small body.
“Let’s try something else.” Roland closed the book with a snap and went to the shelf again. “Ledgers, ledgers. Now, that’s odd. This one looks more like a portfolio.” He pulled it out. “Stuffed with papers. A good sign. I keep a few of these myself, for official papers and whatnot.”
“What are those?”
“Deeds, that sort of thing. I’ve a pair of estates in the Midlands, part of my mother’s dowry. Look here.” He spread the papers out on the table. “My God. These must date from the building of the castle. Look here, the deed of gift, from the Pope himself. Ought to be in a museum, really.”
“From the Pope? Really? Can I touch it?”
“I daresay you won’t burst into flame, though the Archbishop of Canterbury won’t want to hear of it.” Roland turned the pages over, marveling at the paleness of the sheets, the crispness of the ink. As if the papers hadn’t aged at all. “In any case, it answers your question. The original deed’s dated in 1567; I expect they started building the castle shortly afterward. Here’s where they added on, in the next century, if my Latin roots are up to the challenge. And here . . .”
Roland’s hand arrested the page in midair.
“What? What is it?” Philip crowded his shoulder and peered over the line of his arm.
He set the paper down on the table and straightened it. The familiar name jumped out at him again, its plain English syllables projecting from the lines of Italian like a tavern chorus at a grand opera. “Well. That’s odd.”
“What’s odd? Tell me!”
Roland put the paper back in the stack, slid the lot back into the portfolio, and tied the ribbons in sharp, tight strokes. “Nothing, really. Transfer of ownership, that’s all. Happens often enough. I expect they ran out of heirs. But see here!” He rose to replace the portfolio in the shelf. “We found the answer to your question. The castle’s as old as Good Queen Bess. Aren’t you impressed?”
The library door swung open with a crash against the wall. “There you are!”
Roland looked to the door. Abigail stood there, hair escaping in wild locks from the pins at her nape, energy snapping around her like an electric charge. She held out her hand. “Come along, Philip! We need your help with the party masks.”
“Party?” Roland slid the portfolio between a pair of ledgers and turned around. “What party?”
“The Midsummer’s Eve festival tonight. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”
“All that rumpus in the courtyard, with the tables and the lanterns?”
“Oh, it will be such fun, Lord Roland. Do say you’ll come. Lilibet and Alexandra and I will be dressing up as serving girls, and everyone’s going to wear masks, with dancing and music.” She made an impatient movement with her hand, still outstretched. “But we’re badly behind making the masks, Philip, and we need you to glue feathers fo
r us.”
“Look here,” Roland said. He leaned back against the library shelves, in an irrational urge to protect the contents from her view. “We’re engaged in serious academic endeavors and all that. Can’t one of the maids be called in?”
Philip turned to him and snatched his hand. “Oh, can I go, Uncle Roland? Please? We can study an extra hour tomorrow.”
“The maids are busy getting the feast ready. You don’t mind, really, do you?” Her eyes sparkled. “I’m sure Lilibet will thank you for it afterward.”
Roland wasn’t quite sure at which point in the past three months he and Abigail had become allies. Like Wallingford’s loss of interest in the matter of the wager, it had come on gradually, in tacit gestures, until only the thinnest of polite veneers remained over the obvious fact that love seethed like springtime in the air of the castle and its environs, with the active encouragement of Abigail herself. “In that case,” he said, with a slow wink, and a firm squeeze of Philip’s hand, “take him, with my blessing.”
Philip ran to Abigail, shoes striking in eager thumps against the rug-covered wood.
Roland stared at the open door of the library, leaning against the shelf, legs crossed at the ankles, for a long time after Philip and Abigail had disappeared around the corner into the hallway. His fingers traced the edge of the shelf behind him, back and forth, brushing against the bottoms of the books inside.
There is no such thing as coincidence.
At last he straightened, pulled his watch out of his waistcoat pocket, and gathered his jacket from the back of the armchair by the desk. Nearly four o’clock. He’d most likely find Wallingford out riding at this hour, taking out his frustrated longing for Miss Abigail Harewood in endless bouts of physical exercise.
The duke, he felt certain, would want to know the name of the legal owner of the Castel sant’Agata.
