by Juliana Gray
But the back of his brain was very, very far away.
“Oh,” said Miss Harewood, pulling her lips away a fraction. “Oh, Wallingford.” The words brushed his mouth, absorbed into his skin. “Oh, that was lovely. Thanks ever so much.”
Her booted foot unwrapped itself from around his leg.
“Thanks?” he repeated stupidly. His brain whirled in an eager spiral of desire and bliss.
“That was quite the nicest kiss yet.” She slipped her hands from the nape of his neck and patted one cheek, as she might reassure a lapdog. “You will do splendidly.”
“Do . . . splendidly?”
Wallingford’s arms were still braced against the wall. In a graceful movement, she ducked beneath them and slipped her shawl over her head. Her eyes, he noted without thought, sparkled beautifully beneath the shifting glow of the stable lantern.
“Yes. But I must fly, before the others wonder where I’ve gone. It’s very useful to have a reputation for absconding, but even Alexandra’s patience has its limits.” She gave his cheek another pat. “Dear me, you look quite dumbfounded.”
“I am not . . . I am . . . What the devil?” he said helplessly.
She smiled. “Never fear. I’m quite sure we shall find each other again soon. I’m a great believer in fate, and why else should our paths have crossed? You shall be my first lover. I’m certain of it. Oh dear! Half past ten already! I must fly.”
“Look here . . .”
But she was already kissing his cheek, already securing her coat collar about her neck. She dropped a kiss on Lucifer’s nose and bent to pick something up from the doorway: an umbrella, large and practical.
“Miss Harewood!”
She turned and put her finger to her mouth. “Don’t follow me! What if someone should see us?”
And she was gone.
Wallingford sagged back against the wall, every muscle slack and stunned. Lucifer pushed against his arm, gentler now. The horse’s large brown eye regarded him with liquid sympathy.
“Don’t even think it,” said Wallingford. “Nothing’s changed. I did not flee a thousand miles from one scheming young lady only to fall victim to another.”
Lucifer blinked his large eye.
“After all, she’s not duchess material. Not at all.”
Lucifer reached for his net of hay and snagged a few stalks. Wallingford lay breathing against the wooden boards, gazing at a point just to the left of the lantern.
“I don’t know what came over me. Lost my head entirely.”
Lucifer made no answer. He was entirely absorbed in his hay.
Wallingford straightened and drew a deep breath. “In any case, that’s that. I shall never see her again, or at least not for years, when we’re all back in London and married off and all that. Shall be quite happy to be her first lover then, ha-ha.” His hat had fallen from his head; he fished around on the ground and replaced it on his head, pulling the woolen brim snugly down his forehead. “Mad as a hatter, that one.”
Lucifer lipped his hay ruminatively.
“That’s that,” he said again, and started forward through the stable door. His muscles, he found, had a rather curious feel: almost like jelly. And his lips seemed burned, swollen, impossibly sensitive.
The rain pattered down against his back; the inn loomed like a black shadow across the yard. He shoved his hands in his pockets and hurried forward, looking down to avoid the puddles, and collided with a resounding thump against the familiar brown wool chest of his brother.
“What ho!” said Lord Roland. “Out for a walk?”
Wallingford’s swollen lips opened and closed. “Yes, a walk,” he said. “Fresh air.”
“Fresh air, that’s the thing,” said Lord Roland, as the rain poured off the brim of his woolen cap.
They stared at each other.
“Well, I’m off,” said Wallingford, dodging to Roland’s right.
“Right-ho!” said Roland, dodging left.
In the common room, there was no sign of her. Not that he was looking, really; one’s eyes naturally searched about a room, on entering. One’s ears naturally tuned for the sound of a human voice. It didn’t mean one was looking, or listening, for any person in particular.
Heavens, no.
The landlord and his wife were bustling about in the corner, setting up straw pallets and spreading wool blankets. Wallingford gazed in dawning horror.
His straw pallet. His wool blanket.
A few men still huddled about one of the trestle tables, muttering and laughing. At another, Phineas Burke sat by himself, flaming ginger head in his hands, staring at a glass of grappa as if he expected it to shake itself off and perform a jig.
Wallingford sat down next to him with a rainy plop.
“You’re wet,” said Burke, without looking up.
“I daresay.”
The bottle sat next to Burke’s left elbow. Wallingford eyed it, picked it up, sloshed it about. Not much left. He tipped it up and drained the last drop. The wine tingled against his kiss-swollen lips.
“I daresay the women are setting up quite comfortably upstairs,” Wallingford said.
“No doubt.”
“No straw pallets for their ladyships’ precious backsides.”
“No, indeed.”
Wallingford set his wet hat down on the table before him and gazed at the woolen houndstooth. “Well, it’s just one night, I suppose,” he said. “We’ll be on our way tomorrow, and won’t have anything more to do with them, praise God.”
“Except for the wager.” Burke drank the rest of his wine and set down the glass with a precise and deliberate stroke of his wrist. “The wager you proposed with Lady Morley, over dessert.”
There was something accusing about Burke’s tone, something foreboding. Wallingford staggered backward in his mind to dessert, only a couple of hours ago, at this very table. Miss Harewood and Lady Somerton had retired with the boy, leaving him oddly out of sorts. Lady Morley had been as baiting as ever and he—as ever—had risen to the bait. It seemed like another age, another Wallingford. “Now, look here,” he said, feeling defensive. “You had something to do with that wager, remember? You proposed the stakes.”
“So I did.” Burke stood abruptly, swinging his long legs over the bench, and picked up his hat.
“Where are you going?” Wallingford demanded.
Burke settled the hat firmly on his forehead. His face was grim, his green eyes dark with determination. In fact, exactly the way he looked when Wallingford was foolish enough to interrupt him in his mechanical experiments.
“Out,” Burke said, in a voice as grim as his face. “For a walk.”
Wallingford drew a long sigh. “In that case, I’d suggest an umbrella.”
THREE
People, Abigail knew, were rather like horses. Some were mudders, and some were not.
Her sister Alexandra was decidedly not a mudder.
Abigail—who prided herself on a cheerful willingness to plow through whatever weather was thrown in her direction—endeavored simply to ignore both the rain and Alexandra’s complaints, and took refuge in warming thoughts. Specifically, the warming thought of the Duke of Wallingford kissing her in the stables last night.
She hoped he hadn’t noticed how flustered she was. Flustered? She’d been in a transport, shocked and shimmering, her entire body overturned by the mere action of his mouth on hers, by the way his long and immense body had flattened her against the stable wall, by the scent of bergamot from his skin and the taste of wine on his lips. She tried, now, to remember exactly what had happened—which parts of her had tingled, where she had ached and melted—but the sensations defied description.
She had simply been alive.
Alive.
And now?
Well, a little numbness, a little anticlimax, was only to be expected.
Abigail trudged on into the dank Tuscan morning. Her boots sucked valiantly against the mud. The rain was letting up, a mere drizzle n
ow, but the mud remained: heavy and viscous, snatching greedily at her feet with every stride. Before her, the baggage cart slowed. The horses, poor beasts, were straining into their harness. Somewhere ahead of them, the Castel sant’Agata rose up from the remote and rocky hills, refuge and sanctuary, their home for the next year. Untroubled, so the plan went, by visitors of any sort, and by lovers most particularly.
What now, then? She had slipped away in the nick of time last night, flushing and trembling, throwing her scarf up around her head so he wouldn’t see how thoroughly his kiss had affected her. The Duke of Wallingford had probably kissed dozens of women, if not more. He would laugh if he knew what effect he’d had on Abigail’s inexperienced lips. No, far better to leave and recompose herself. It would never do to let such a man gain the upper hand.
It would never do to let any man gain the upper hand.
But in fleeing, had she not given up her last opportunity? Last night, with Wallingford so warm and real beside her, their next meeting had felt so inevitable, the logical act of a fate desperate to bring them together. Here, amid the wet rocks and cold mud, the drizzle and the mist and the laboring horses, the Duke of Wallingford and his iron arms and his mad ardent kisses seemed as distant as the other side of the world.
As distant as the sun itself.
What on earth had she been thinking, running away like that, expecting him to . . . what? To pop on over to the Castel sant’Agata next week? Rap on the door and drag her to some convenient tapestry-draped bedroom and complete his seduction?
What a fool. What a silly, frightened fool she’d been. Now, she might wait for another year before such an opportunity arose again.
An unfamiliar sensation invaded Abigail’s chest. She couldn’t name it. It crept across her heart, cold and hollow and lonely, and yet as heavy as a blacksmith’s anvil. It seemed to weigh her very footsteps, to suck against her boots like the mud itself. Could it be . . . no, it could not, this was not at all in Abigail’s nature, she never succumbed to such things and wouldn’t start now. Yet there was no other word but . . .
Melancholy.
Oh, God. Perhaps even . . .
Despair.
Buck up, Harewood, she told herself. A solution would be found. She just had to think, to discover a plan, to break free from this ungodly and wholly unnecessary sense of inertia, of . . .
“Bollocks,” said Alexandra, next to her elbow, yanking her boot free from an unexpected hollow of mud.
Abigail jumped. “Oh! It’s you!”
“Good heavens, my dear. Who else would it be?” Alexandra looked sadly at her ruined boot and carried on walking.
“I beg your pardon. I was lost in thought.”
“Evidently. I’m rather out of sorts this morning myself. I’ve a dreadful headache, for one thing.” Alexandra drew a massive sigh and glanced over her shoulder at the cart, in which Lilibet and Philip sat among the trunks, playing some sort of a game with a string. “Lilibet had us up at such a shocking hour. Quite exceptionally uncivilized, though I suppose it was for the best. The earlier we reach the castle, the better. If only we could have taken the coach.”
“It would have been stuck in the mud at the first turn,” said Abigail. “And we couldn’t take such a chance. Coaches are so easily traced.”
“Instead it’s our own feet that will be stuck in the mud. Heigh-ho. It might be worse. We might be forced back into the insufferable company of Wallingford’s party.”
“I thought they were rather nice,” ventured Abigail, jumping over a puddle.
“You weren’t there over dessert.” Alexandra’s voice went dark. They were climbing a short rise; the mud had diminished, replaced by small sharp rocks. She kicked at one of them, sending it skidding and leaping across the road. “You retired with Lilibet and Philip.”
“What happened at dessert?” Abigail asked.
“Nothing in particular.” Another kick. “Well, Wallingford was an ass, of course, and poor Penhallow sat there in a daze of love for our cousin.”
“And Mr. Burke?”
“Oh, the ginger? I hardly noticed him at all.” Alexandra looped her arm through Abigail’s. “Dear sister. Do you know, that wretched Wallingford and his friends are embarked on the very same mission as we are? A year of academic retreat, for the betterment of their souls. If they had any to speak of, that is.”
Abigail tightened her arm around Alexandra’s thick wool-coated elbow. “What’s that?”
“Oh yes.” Alexandra nodded vigorously. “It’s true. They’ve got their own secluded villa somewhere about. Wallingford even had the temerity to suggest that we weren’t up to the challenge. That we should be running back home to England by Easter.”
“Did he?” Abigail tried to quash the excitement that rose up from her belly, lifting the black anvil of despair and tossing it effortlessly overboard, into the muddy track beneath her boots.
“Quite. The cheek. I put him in his place at once, of course. I insisted we’d outlast their party with ease.” Alexandra made a little cough. “I . . . well, that is, I even accepted a wager on the matter.”
“Alexandra! You bet him?”
“Of course not. Ladies never bet, my dear,” Alexandra said, pronouncing the word bet with distaste, as if referring to some unmentionable function of the body that ladies never committed, either.
Abigail laughed. “But how marvelous! You darling, Alexandra! I could kiss you. What are the stakes? A hundred pounds? A thousand?”
“Heavens, no.” An injured air. “Nothing so crass as money, my dear. I’m amazed you would even think such a thing. Where do you get such ideas? No, no, the thought of money never once crossed my mind.” She smoothed her coat with one hand and clenched Abigail’s forearm with the other.
“What, then?”
“Oh, Mr. Burke suggested something. A newspaper advertisement of some sort, I believe, conceding the superiority of the other sex. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that we made our point.”
“What point?”
“Why, that women are equally as capable as men in academic endeavors, if not more.”
A pit of mud lay before them. Without a pause, Abigail dragged her sister around its rim, her mind racing, melancholy quite banished, ideas and possibilities and hope—oh, blessed hope—making her very sinews vibrate with delight. A wager with Wallingford! Of course! Here it was, the intervention of fate, bringing them together again as inevitably as the dice collided on a gaming table. Or perhaps that was not quite the right metaphor. In any case: “But I thought the academic superiority of women was quite self-evident. Why else would men require entire universities to further their studies, whereas we have always made do with a room and a few books?”
“You should have seen the look on his face,” said Alexandra.
“I’m sure His Grace was positively thunderous.” Abigail sighed longingly.
“Not Wallingford,” said Alexandra. “Mr. Burke. He was silent about it, of course, but I could tell he was enraged at the idea. He left the table in an absolute state.”
“And Wallingford? What did he say?”
“Oh, the duke? I don’t recall. I left myself, directly after.”
Abigail laughed aloud.
“What is it?” Alexandra said crossly.
“I was only thinking. Wouldn’t it be jolly fun if the gentlemen were bound for the same castle as we are? All unknowing?”
“That’s quite impossible. I have the lease right here in my pocket.” Alexandra patted the breast of her coat with satisfaction. “All signed and sealed and airtight. I shan’t allow so much as Mr. Burke’s right toe upon the property, I assure you. Besides,” she added, “there must be dozens of other castles about. The odds of such a coincidence are therefore . . . something like . . . er . . .”
“Yes?” Abigail said eagerly.
Alexandra patted her pocket again. “Incalculable.”
Several hours later
The Duke of Wallingford stood in the
middle of the drizzle and stared at the two papers in his hands. He looked back and forth. His heels dug into the stony earth, seeking further security; his back stiffened into iron.
In the course of his duties as head of one of Britain’s most august families, Wallingford was often called upon to adjudicate disputes of one kind or another. He found the ritual more bemusing than anything else. The faces trained upon him, eager and anxious. The weight of respectful silence, suffusing the air with expectancy. The universal belief that he, Arthur Penhallow, had somehow been endowed by nature with a greater share of wisdom than the ordinary run of mankind, simply by virtue of having been born the eldest son of a man who happened, by that same lucky accident of birth, to hold the title of duke.
He took the responsibility seriously, of course. Whether sitting in judgment of some fellow peer in the House of Lords or deciding the rightful ownership of a peripatetic village sow, he understood the gravity of the charge he’d been given by his Creator. He endeavored to be impartial. He endeavored to consider all sides of the matter, every piece of evidence. He endeavored to give his full attention, the full weight of intellect at his disposal, to delivering a just decision.
But this? This was quite outside the realm of his experience.
He hadn’t seen the lease agreement until now. Burke had taken care of all that, all the legal arrangements for the yearlong rental of the Castel sant’Agata. Burke was a clever fellow, a genius, with plenty of money and lawyers at his disposal. Wallingford hadn’t given the matter a second thought. It had never occurred to him that he might, on the very day of their arrival, with the Castel sant’Agata rising nearby from the wet hillside in a jumble of yellowing walls and red-roofed turrets, hold not one but two copies of the lease agreement in his hands, exactly and word-by-word identical to each other, signed and notarized in perfect order.
Identical, except for the names of the leaseholders.
One agreement let the castle to Mr. Phineas Fitzwilliam Burke, R.S., and the other named, in plain black ink, one Alexandra, Dowager Marchioness of Morley.
