by Juliana Gray
Perhaps that was the case with Roland, too. A clever chap, his brother Roland, beneath all that laziness, but since the precocious days of his youth, he had seemed to settle into an intellectual somnolence that few books could penetrate.
Abigail’s footsteps tripped lightly behind him down the stone passageway. “Wait, Your Grace!” she called. “A word with you!”
He could not ignore her. Ass he might be—he admitted it freely—but certain breaches of etiquette were impossible even for him. He stopped and turned, warily. “Yes, Miss Harewood?”
The passageway was even darker than the great hall, without any moonlit windows to speak of, and only the distant glow at either end to lighten the shadows. Abigail was panting a little, from the effort of keeping up with him, and his fevered imagination fastened at once on the undoubted heave of her breasts—God, such breasts, he could feel their echo on his palm even now—beneath her dress.
“You never answered my question, Your Grace. Why change the terms of the wager? Are you so eager to see us away?”
“You and your friends, Miss Harewood, are an entirely unnecessary distraction,” he said, “quite antithetical to the purpose of our . . . our sojourn here in Italy.” The word sojourn sounded so pompous; he shuddered as he said it. “And what’s more, I strongly suspect that you’re attempting to do the same thing by us, only with rather more subversive means. It’s an act of preemption, nothing more.”
“But I don’t want you to leave at all. I’ve told you so.”
He hesitated. “Perhaps you don’t, Miss Harewood, but your sister does. And Lady Morley is even more inclined to have her own way than you are, isn’t she?”
A delicate pause settled between them, and then, quite unexpectedly, Abigail drew nearer, put her hand beneath his elbow, and spoke in a gentle voice. “Please, Your Grace. All this—it isn’t necessary. Can we not simply try to get along with one another? Must everything be battle and conflict?”
Her voice was so low, so sweet. Her hand cupped his elbow caressingly. He could not resist her like this, soft and pleading. He could not resist her elfin form with its graceful curves, her generous warmth reaching out to surround him, to breathe life into the stiffened cells of his body. Yes, he wanted to tell her, I should be miserable if you left, more miserable than before; I should wither and die.
Wallingford took a step closer. His hand reached up to enclose the curve of Abigail’s jaw.
My dear boy, said the stern Duke of Olympia, has the entire conduct of your adult life ever suggested your usefulness for anything else?
“Wallingford,” whispered Abigail, the smallest breath of a word.
He stood still, muscles locked, brain hammering. Abigail’s face was dark and shadowed; his eyes couldn’t seem to resolve a single detail of her, and yet he knew exactly how she lay before him, exactly how her eyes tilted, exactly how her ear curved beneath the soft chestnut wave of her hair. Her skin was pure warm satin beneath his palm.
He leaned his lips toward her opposite cheek. “Miss Harewood,” he whispered, even softer than she. “The library.”
* * *
Abigail walked as slowly as possible along the flagstones, feigning uncertainty. “It’s so dark,” she said. “I can’t see a thing. I do hope Philip hasn’t left any of his toys on the floor, or we shall be done for.”
“For God’s sake, Miss Harewood,” Wallingford growled behind her, “hurry along.”
How long had it been since Lilibet had crept downstairs to meet Lord Roland in the library? Abigail didn’t dare check her watch, not that she could have made it out in the darkness. Half an hour, perhaps? An hour? How long had she been standing in the great hall with Wallingford, in the passageway with Wallingford, stringing him along while her nerves frizzled and her brain spun? Enough time for poor, lovesick Lord Roland to work his magic on poor, lovesick Lilibet?
The irony, of course, was that Lilibet actually expected Abigail to march through the library door and surprise them. That was the plan, after all, as Abigail had presented it to her cousin: Seduce Penhallow, and then Abigail would catch them in the act, and the gentlemen would be dispatched out of harm’s way before any attention—say, that of beastly Lord Somerton—could be brought to bear on the Castel sant’Agata.
Lilibet, therefore, would not be surprised to hear Abigail and Wallingford pound on the door to interrupt her in flagrante with Lord Roland Penhallow on the library sofa. She would be ready to claim that Penhallow had come after her while she looked for a book, and Penhallow—dear honorable gentleman that he was—would immediately accept all the blame and that would be that.
According to plan.
Except that Abigail had not actually intended to interrupt them. She had intended to let nature work its undoubted course on the two of them, and then at least one loving couple under the roof of the Castel sant’Agata would be well on their way to reversing the ancient curse.
Until the Duke of Wallingford had blundered into things.
“Oh!” Abigail feigned a desperate stumble. “Oh, my ankle!”
“Shall I lead the way, then?” came Wallingford’s dark voice, unsympathetic.
“Of . . . of course not.” She limped on with gallant head held high, more slowly than before. “I can manage. Just. Only a little strain of the sinews. I shall be right as rain by morning, I’m sure, though I shall perhaps need some trifling assistance on the stairs.”
The end of the passageway drew near. Just around the corner lay the door to the library. A glow spread out along the stones, from the large window at the entrance to the library wing, which caught the moonlight at a perfect angle. Abigail put her hand on the wall and held up her foot like an injured hound. “Oh, how it twinges!” she said.
“Shall I carry you, then?” Wallingford’s voice nearly bowed under the weight of his sarcasm.
“Oh, how kind of you! I should like that very much. Shall I put my arm around your neck, like this, or can you manage without it?”
Wallingford’s skin quivered under her fingers, just above his starched collar. He removed her hand with great care. “I assure you, Miss Harewood, I was only making a joke. We both know how unsuitable it would be, were I to carry you unchaperoned through the castle at night. A clear breach not only of the terms of our wager, but of propriety itself.”
“Yes, of course. I . . .” She swallowed and pushed back a lock of her hair, which had fallen from its pins to curl below her ear. Her fingers smelled ever so faintly of bergamot from the contact with Wallingford’s neck. She nearly swooned. “What was I saying?”
“We were going to visit the library, Miss Harewood, to arouse my brother from his academic stupor.”
“Yes, of course. Though I rather think he won’t be pleased to be disturbed, now that I reflect on it. In fact, he’s sure to be quite cross. I know I should be, if somebody interrupted me while I was reading something I particularly liked. It’s like a slap to the face. I’m certain that’s why he locked the door in the first place.”
“No more certain than I am.” Again, the dripping weight of sarcasm. “Come along, then, Miss Harewood. Better to face trouble straight on, don’t you think, rather than delaying the inevitable? Particularly for someone of your straightforward nature?”
“Oh, quite,” she said. Her back seemed to have settled helplessly against the wall. “All part of being straightforward. Let me just . . . pin up this silly hair of mine, which has got quite loose . . .”
Wallingford sighed, straightened, and turned around the corner in a single long stride.
“Wait!” she called, scrambling upward, forgetting to limp.
“Well, well.” Wallingford’s voice rumbled to her ears.
Oh, God.
Abigail whipped around the corner. The library doors stood open, moonlight spilling faintly from the shadows. Wallingford towered before them, hands on the door handles, wool-covered arms magnificently outstretched.
He turned his head to her, and his expression wasn’t
dark and thunderous, as she’d feared, but rather admiring. Almost . . . amused.
“It appears we were both wrong, Miss Harewood,” he said. “The library is quite empty.”
NINE
When the Duke of Wallingford had entered the sacred gates of Eton College at the age of thirteen, he had noticed Phineas Burke at once. A difficult chap to ignore, Burke, with his great height and his astonishing head of red gold hair ablaze in the September sun; he had been clutching a satchel under his sticklike arms, and was flanked on one side by a black-clad servant carrying a large leather-buckled chest, and by a woman of eye-watering beauty on the other. Wallingford had poked his companion in the ribs and said, in the offhand way of thirteen-year-old boys discussing something vitally important, “Who the devil’s the ginger?”
The other boy—heir to the Earl of Tamdown—had followed his nod and laughed. “Why, don’t you know, old boy? That’s your own bloody uncle.”
Wallingford had blackened his friend’s jaw, of course, as was only proper in affairs of libelous insult, but when he’d gone out for a walk early the next morning, he had been astonished to encounter his grandfather, the august Duke of Olympia, standing on the Thames footbridge, under the very shadow of Windsor Castle, engaged with the lanky ginger-haired newcomer in what appeared to be a discussion of an intimate fatherly nature.
The sort of discussion in which Wallingford’s own father had never once seen fit to engage with him.
On alternate Mondays, when the weather was dour, Wallingford fancied he could still feel the burn of bile in the back of his throat.
But today was a Tuesday, and the weather was as fine as only an Italian spring morning could be, and Wallingford had long since come to regard Phineas Burke with a sort of bemused affection, and a great deal of concern for the state of his common sense.
Not that Wallingford’s own common sense was in the best of shape these days. He ran his palm over the smooth curve of his saddle, picked up the cloth, and began to rub in small meditative circles. He had no idea, in fact, if this was the proper way to oil one’s saddle. He’d never witnessed a saddle being oiled, and had only the faintest notion that saddles were oiled at all. But he imagined it was rather the same case as one’s boots, which were also made of leather, and he had come to terms with the regular oiling of such several weeks ago. Like everything else, one simply rolled up one’s sleeves and plunged in.
If a valet could figure it out, by God, a duke should have no trouble at all.
Wallingford rubbed a little harder, and saw with satisfaction that the leather was growing shinier, turning butter soft and supple beneath his oily cloth and oilier fingers. That was something, anyway. After a night fraught with erotic images of Miss Abigail Harewood atop the massive dining table, awash in candlelight; after waking at dawn to saddle Lucifer for a twenty-mile circuit about the hills; after hours spent swinging wildly between the ecstasy of succumbing to mad passion and the satisfaction of withstanding it, Wallingford welcomed the tactile reality of the softening leather. The usefulness of it. That he could point to this saddle and say to himself, See there, I have done something right today. I have returned my saddle to its former glory.
He could master himself. He would master himself.
Still, the mastering bit would be a damned sight easier if there were no elfin-faced, round-bosomed temptresses about the castle, plotting his moral downfall with cheerful straightforwardness.
The sun shone pleasantly on Wallingford’s back. He had set the saddle atop the fence rail in order to both enjoy the fine weather and to facilitate his work, and expected the cheerful voice of Abigail Harewood to deliver its straightforward observations into his ear at any moment. She did not, however. This ought to have been a relief, and was instead unsettling.
Wallingford rubbed furiously, until the high gleam of the leather burned his eyes. Unsettling why? Unsettling because of what Abigail might be planning, or unsettling because he longed, in fact, for her to arrive by his side? Longed to hear her voice, longed to feel her hand on his elbow?
Wallingford stepped back to admire his handiwork, and was rewarded by a chorus of vowel-rich Italian profanity, delivered in shrieking contralto.
“Giacomo, my good man,” he said, turning. “By damn, you ought to have announced yourself. I might have injured you.”
“Signore Duca, my foot, it is broken!” Giacomo clutched the appendage in question and hopped in an irregular circle.
Wallingford folded his arms. “Oh, I say. Hard luck, that. When you have caught your breath, however, perhaps you might condescend to explain why you were skulking over my left shoulder just now, in such a suspicious fashion? Take your time,” he added, plucking a stiff black horsehair from the immaculate tweed of his jacket. “I am quite at leisure.”
“Not this . . . this skulking, signore!” Giacomo gasped. He stopped hopping and placed his injured foot tentatively on the grass, toe first. “Is not suspicious.” Slowly the foot eased flat; slowly Giacomo shifted his weight, ounce by ounce, to his ravaged tarsals. An aggrieved sigh marked each step of his progress.
“In your own time, Giacomo,” said Wallingford. “Or perhaps I can save you the bother and divine your purpose myself.” He tapped his finger against his chin. “If I should hazard a guess—and I’m not particularly a betting man by nature, though I’m known to dabble in the odd wager or two—I should imagine it has something to do with . . . now, let me ponder a moment . . .” He snapped his fingers. “The women.”
“The women,” Giacomo said scornfully, as he might say the fermenting compost. He sighed, with a trace of regret. “Is not the women.”
“It’s not? You astonish me.” Wallingford could not help a twinge of relief. God knew he was no particular champion of the sex, but Giacomo’s relentless whining and plotting in re the female inhabitants of the Castel sant’Agata made him feel positively chivalrous. No one but Wallingford, after all, should have the right to insult Abigail Harewood.
Giacomo shook his head. “No, Signore Duca. The women, they are cleaning the castle today. Is the visit of the priest.”
“The priest is coming? The devil you say!”
“Signore Duca!” Giacomo crossed himself. “Si, signore. The priest. For to bless the house for the . . . the spring . . . the come to life of our Lord . . .” He snapped his fingers frantically.
“Easter?” Wallingford hazarded. Good God, was it Easter already?
“For the Easter! Si! The women, they are busy today, grazie a Dio. But Signore Burke . . .”
“Burke? What the devil’s the matter with Burke?” Wallingford demanded. Lurid images filled his head: gas explosions, engine combustions, tea spilt over the battery. Anything might happen when one was tinkering with infernal machines all day long.
Giacomo put his hand to his heart. “He is needing help, signore. He has the wires, the . . . the batteries . . .” He leaned forward. “And that Signora Morley, that devil-woman, she like for to visit him, to torment him . . .”
“Aha! So it is the women!”
Giacomo shrugged. “Who can say, Signore Duca? But is better to be safe, no?”
Wallingford pictured Burke’s workshop, filled with sunshine and machine parts, with the masculine scents of oil and metal and leather, with the sound of Burke’s little grunts and snarls of concentration. A place of purpose, of genius and invention.
Also a convenient and secluded place for Lady Morley to play her tricks. In the struggles of last night, he had almost forgotten that Burke had his own troubles; clever, steadfast Burke, a gem of a chap, really, easy meat for the Dowager Marchioness of Morley.
And finally, and perhaps most importantly, the last place in the world Abigail Harewood would visit, on a fine spring morning.
Wallingford swung the saddle over his arm.
“Say no more, old fellow. I shall be down to buck him up directly.”
* * *
Abigail cocked her head and gazed at the plate on the dining room table. �
��Are you quite certain?” she asked.
“Si, signora. Is the tradition. The priest, he bless the eggs, for to make the castle full of life.” Signorina Morini bobbed her headscarf—white today, presumably in honor of the purity of Our Lord, and of His earthly representative, due at the Castel sant’Agata in a scant few hours—and ran her hand over the rounded tops of the half dozen or so eggs on her most festively decorated plate.
“And you really believe that sort of thing?”
Morini turned to her with a reproachful slant to her eyes. “Signorina, you believe the other, the great curse, and you are not believing the eggs?”
“But they seem so . . . complacent.” Abigail stared once more at the smooth white shells, which indeed had not the smallest scrap of magic attaching to them. “Quite ordinary, in fact. I only fetched them this morning, straight from the coop, just like any other eggs.”
“Is not what is happening to the eggs now,” said Morini confidently. “Is after the blessing.”
“And you’re quite certain this priest of yours knows what he’s doing? Won’t accidentally cast some different blessing altogether? Our plans are fragile enough as it is, Morini.” Abigail drummed her worn fingernails against the wood. “I had the most difficult time with the duke last night; he’s really dead set against any sort of amorous activity whatsoever, let alone the transcendent curse-defying love of which we’re in desperate need. Why, he nearly caught Lord Roland and Lilibet in the library himself, which would have brought an end to everything!”
Morini smiled and shook her head. “You are not worrying about the duke. You are not worrying about the priest. Is fate. I know this, the very first minute I see you in the hall. This time, the fate is with us.”
