by Juliana Gray
Wallingford shrugged. “He has been all that is accommodating.”
“Yes, of course. And in return, one expects that you would demonstrate a certain degree of respect. A modicum”—here Olympia’s voice began to intensify, signaling the approach of the attack—“a modicum of good breeding, which would prevent your indulging that wayward prick of yours with another diversion, whilst you remained the acknowledged lover of Cecile de la Fontaine.” He turned to Wallingford, eyes ablaze. “Under her own roof, no less, and at her own party. How else to humiliate her so thoroughly?”
“I never made Cecile any promises.” Wallingford’s insides were turning rapidly to stone, defending him against onslaught. Of course he had been wrong; he’d known it even as he was committing the very act—up against the wall of the de la Fontaines’ elegant conservatory, quite efficient, quite pleasant, if rather oppressively drenched with the scent of Cecile’s prize orchids—and to quit the lady in question (what the devil was her name, anyway?) with so little ceremony had represented the height of stupidity. Every lady, even one willing to take an uprighter with her hostess’s own lover against her hostess’s own conservatory wall, required a little ceremony.
But who would have expected her to confront him so publicly, and so half-nakedly, and with such quantities of fine French champagne flung at his head? His hair was still sticky with it.
“No, of course you did not. I’d have expected nothing else,” said Olympia, in a voice laden with scorn. “But there’s a promise implicit in taking such a woman to bed, a respectable woman, a woman of position. Indeed, a woman of any sort, though I should hardly expect you to possess the chivalry to go so far as that.”
No one wielded scorn so brutally as the Duke of Olympia. Wallingford felt it pound against the hard stone of his innards in a familiar rhythm, searching for weakness. He added a few buttresses for support against the assault and hardened them into granite. When he had finished, and felt sufficiently confident of the results, he idled his way to the carved wooden bedpost and leaned against it, arms crossed. “A bit of the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it, Grandfather?”
“I don’t deny I’ve taken many women to bed,” said Olympia, “and, on the whole, a far more interesting lot than you have troubled yourself to assemble, but I have always had the decency to finish with one lover before taking another.”
“Except your wife.”
The words snapped and spun in the pale morning light. Wallingford regretted them instantly.
Against Olympia’s hand, where it fisted atop his waistcoat, a gold watch chain caught the sun with a sudden glitter. “In the future,” he said evenly, “you will avoid any mention of Her Grace in vulgar context. Do you understand me?”
“Of course.”
“I have often wondered,” Olympia went on, relaxing his fist, “whether a wife might not have civilized you, or at least contrived to soften your worst instincts.”
“I am perfectly civilized. I am a perfectly good duke. My estates are in excellent order, my tenants prosperous . . .” He sounded like a schoolboy, Wallingford realized angrily, desperate for some crumb of approval.
“Yes, for which I give you full credit,” Olympia said. “Your father, that scapegrace, was not capable of so much. I often wonder at my daughter’s lack of sense in marrying him. A duke, to be sure, and a handsome one, but . . .” He shrugged his shoulders expressively.
“I beg you to remember that the scapegrace in question was my father.”
Olympia lifted the watch and flipped open the case. “You have an abundance of natural qualities, Wallingford. It grieves me to see so much promise go to waste.”
“I beg your pardon,” drawled Wallingford. “Am I keeping you from an appointment? Do not stand on ceremony, I implore you.”
“I will come to the point. I understand Mr. Burke has laid a certain proposal before you.”
Wallingford rolled his eyes and left his post at the bed to sprawl in an armchair. “What, his mad scheme to retire to Italy for a year of monastic reflection?”
“You cannot imagine yourself capable of such restraint?”
Wallingford leaned his head against the forest green damask and laughed. “Oh, come, Grandfather. Why should I? What use would it be? I have never understood this religion of self-sacrifice among the Burkes of the world.”
“Do you not? Have you never contemplated the peculiar difficulties of his life?”
“His life as your bastard son, do you mean?” Wallingford said.
Again, the silence echoed about the room; again, Wallingford wished his words back. Phineas Burke was an excellent fellow, after all: a bit tall and ginger haired and taciturn for some, but a genuine scientific genius, an inventor of the highest order, building electric batteries and horseless carriages and whatnot the way other men tinkered with watches. A colossus, really. Moreover, he had none of your tempers and thin-skinned resentments, your vain strivings and artificial manners, so common in well-bred bastards. Burke simply went about his business and did not give a damn, and as a result he was received everywhere. In his heart, Wallingford counted Burke as his closest friend, though of course one could never publicly admit such a thing of one’s natural uncle.
Really, Burke was so steadfast and clever, so stalwart in any crisis, Wallingford could almost forgive him for being the apple of Olympia’s eye.
“You see,” Olympia said softly, “I know how it is. You’ve always been a duke, or else in daily expectation of a dukedom. You have been blessed with a handsome face and a sturdy figure. You take these things for granted. You think that you have earned all this around you”—his arm, at a wave, took in the splendid furnishings, the army of servants moving soundlessly behind the walls, the rarefied pavement of Belgrave Square outside the windows—“instead of having it dropped in your lap like an overripe peach. You think you deserve to enjoy sexual congress with some mere acquaintance, against the wall of your own mistress’s conservatory, simply because you can. Simply because you are His Grace, the Duke of Wallingford.”
“I recognize my good fortune. I see no reason not to enjoy its fruits.”
“Its fruits? This woman, this lady of good family, with a mind and soul of her own—she is reduced to a mere vegetable, in your calculus?”
Wallingford turned his attention to the sleek cashmere sleeve of his dressing gown, searching for a piece of lint at which he might brush, laconically, to show his disinterest. But Shelmerstone was far too efficient a valet to allow any flaws to disturb the impeccable line of the ducal sleeve, and Wallingford was reduced to brushing phantom lint into the dustless air. “I seem to recall,” he said, “that the lady in question was enjoying herself.”
“Really?” Olympia’s voice was cold. “I rather doubt you would have noticed either way. In any case, I’ve decided that all this nonsense has gone far enough. You are nine-and-twenty, and a duke. With regret, I must demand you not to accept this proposal of Burke’s, however edifying, and turn your attention instead to marriage.”
Wallingford looked up, certain he’d misheard the old man. “Marriage?” he asked, as he might say the word castration. “Did you say marriage?”
“I did.”
“Are you mad?”
Olympia spread his hands. “Surely you recognize the necessity.”
“Not at all. We still have Penhallow, who would make an extraordinarily decorative duke, should I have the misfortune to choke on a chicken bone at dinner this evening.”
“Your brother has no interest in your title.”
Like a pitcher turned upside down, Wallingford found his patience had run abruptly out. He rose from the chair in a bolt of movement. “Have we come to the point at last? Is this why you came to see me this morning? I am to be a stud? My ability to breed another duke constitutes the sum total of my usefulness to you, does it?”
“My dear boy,” Olympia said, “has the entire conduct of your adult life ever suggested your usefulness for anything else?”
Wallingford turned to the tray of coffee and poured himself a cup. No cream, no sugar. He wanted the drink as black as his mood. Marriage, indeed. “I have many talents, Grandfather, if you ever bothered to count them.”
Olympia waved that away. “Don’t be a child, Wallingford. In any case, you need not concern yourself with the tiresome matter of choosing a wife. I’ve done all the work for you. I have, in my deep and abiding regard for you, found you the perfect bride already.”
Wallingford, in the very act of lifting the cup to his lips, let it slip instead with a thump to the rug below. Such was his astonishment, he did not bother to retrieve it. “You have found me a bride?” he repeated, in shocked tones, clutching the saucer as if to a life buoy.
“I have. Charming girl. You’ll adore her, I assure you.”
“I beg your pardon. Have I gone to sleep and woken up two hundred years ago?”
Olympia patted his coat pocket and withdrew a slim leather diary. “No,” he said, examining a few pages. “No, it remains February of 1890. Thank goodness, as I’ve an immense number of appointments to make today, and I should hate to have to wait so long to complete them. If this is all agreeable to you, Wallingford, I shall invite the girl and her family around at the end of March, when they return to town. A private dinner would be best, I think. Allow the two of you to get to know each other.” He turned a few more pages in his diary. “A wedding around midsummer would be ideal, don’t you think? Roses in bloom and all that?”
“Are you mad?”
“Sound as a nut. I must be off, however. I’ll send in Shelmerstone on my way out. No doubt he stands ready at the keyhole. And Wallingford?”
“Yes?” He was too stunned to say anything else.
“Do contrive not to embroil yourself in any further scandal before then, eh? The Queen doesn’t like it, not a bit. Oh yes! And orchids.”
“Orchids?”
“Orchids to Madame de la Fontaine. It seems they’re her favored blooms.”
Olympia left in a flash of tweed coat and silver hair, and Wallingford stared at the door as if it were the gate to Hell itself.
What the devil had come over the old man? He’d never so much as mentioned the word marriage before, and all at once it was brides this and weddings that and bloody roses, if you will! He looked down at his hand, holding the blue and white porcelain saucer, and saw it was shaking.
The door slid open in a faint rush of well-oiled hinges. “Your shave is ready, sir,” said Shelmerstone. He took in the faintest of breaths at the sight of the pool of coffee settling into the priceless rug, surrounded by long ambitious streaks of brown and, at their tips, the final tiny droplets, still winking atop the rug’s tight woolen weave. Without a pause, he snatched the linen napkin from the coffee tray and fell to his knees, blotting, going so far as to murmur a reproachful Sir! in the depths of his distress.
Wallingford set down the saucer. “I beg your pardon, Shelmerstone. His Grace has delivered me the devil of a shock.”
“What was that, sir?” Shelmerstone asked, covering a sob.
“Marriage,” Wallingford said. He then added, for clarification, “Mine.”
A dreadful pause. “Sir.”
“Yes. Most distressing. He’s picked out the bride, the date, the damned flowers. I daresay he’s chosen her a dress already, and embroidered the pearls himself, God rot him.”
Shelmerstone cleared his throat. His face was white, either from the coffee or the bride or some combination of the two. A funereal gravity darkened his voice. “Her name, sir?”
Wallingford squinted his eyes. “It was . . . something like . . . By God. Do you know, Shelmerstone, I don’t think he even saw fit to tell me.”
“Sir.”
“Not that it matters, of course. I shan’t do it. I shall tell my grandfather exactly where he can stash his arranged brides.” His words sounded hollow in the great cavern of a bedroom, and he knew it. He could hear Shelmerstone’s thoughts, as he bent over the coffee stain.
Ha. Like to see him try. No going against His Damned Bloody Grace Olympia, when he has one of them ideas in his noggin.
“I believe I shall fetch the bicarbonate,” Shelmerstone said faintly, and rose to his feet.
Wallingford fell into the armchair, staring blankly at the room around him. His familiar room, grand and yet with a certain worn comfort, bare of unnecessary decoration, not a flower in sight, his favorite books piled on the nightstand, his aged single-malt Scotch whiskey at the ready. The very notion of a woman inhabiting this sanctum made his mind vibrate with dissonance.
No. No, of course not. Not even the Duke of Olympia would dare such a thing.
True, he’d hand-selected more than one prime minister in the last half century. And the Queen herself had been known to change one or two of her notoriously firm opinions after an hour of private conversation with His Grace.
And there was that time he traveled to Russia aboard his private steam yacht and told the tsar in no uncertain terms . . .
Good God.
Wallingford leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees, and covered his face with his hands.
There had to be a way out.
He spread his fingers and peered through them. The scent of last night’s tossed champagne still hung in his hair, pressing against his nostrils, making him feel slightly queasy. Champagne. Orchids. His brain sloshed about with the memories of last night: the impulsive coupling, banal and sordid, the work of a mere minute or two, and then the sour distaste as he had wiped himself with his handkerchief and looked at the lady’s flushed face and perspiring bosom and tried to recall her name.
He needed more coffee. He needed . . .
Something caught his eye, in the stack of books atop his bedside table, next to the coffee tray. Something that was not a book at all.
A tickle began at the base of Wallingford’s brain, as if a pair of fingers were nudging him. It felt . . . it felt . . . almost like. . . .
An idea.
He rose, paced to the table, and lifted the three topmost volumes.
There it was, beneath the Dickens, atop the Carlyle. A folded newspaper, given to him a month ago, the edges already beginning to yellow under the inexorable poison of oxygen.
Wallingford picked it up and smoothed the page. There, circled in thick black ink, the print as crisp as it had been when Phineas Burke had handed it to him in the breakfast room downstairs, read an advertisement:
English lords and ladies, and gentlemen of discerning taste, may take note of a singular opportunity to lease a most magnificent Castle and Surrounding Estate in the idyllic hills of Tuscany, the Land of Unending Sunshine. The Owner, a man of impeccable lineage, whose ancestors have kept the Castle safe against intrusion since the days of the Medici princes, is called away by urgent business, and offers a year’s lease of this unmatched Property at rates extremely favorable for the discerning traveler. Applicants should inquire through the Owner’s London agent . . .
A year, Burke had proposed. A year of study and contemplation, free from the distractions of modern life and the female sex. Four weeks ago, Wallingford had laughed at the idea, once he had overcome his initial shock that such a notion should even occur to a sane and able-bodied man, in full possession of his youthful animal spirits.
A year, free of the interference of the Duke of Olympia, and his brides and his June weddings. A year—it must be said—free of recriminations from Cecile de la Fontaine and her vindictive French temper.
A year free of temptation, free of ducal trappings. In a remote Italian castle, where nobody knew him, where nobody had even heard of the Duke of Wallingford.
Wallingford slapped the newspaper
back down on the books, causing the topmost volumes to tumble to the floor in surprise. He poured himself a cup of coffee, drank it in a single burning gulp, and stretched his arms to the ceiling.
Why, it was just the thing. A change of scenery from gray and changeless London. He could use a change. He’d been dogged with a sense of dissatisfaction, of restlessness, long before his outrageous indiscretion last night, long before Olympia’s unwelcome visit this morning.
A year with his brother and his closest friend, both decent chaps who minded their own business. Tuscany, the land of unending sunshine. Wine in abundance, and decent food, and surely a discreet village girl or two if absolutely necessary.
What could possibly go wrong?
Berkley Sensation titles by Juliana Gray
A LADY NEVER LIES
A GENTLEMAN NEVER TELLS
